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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77058 ***
+
+Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the
+original, some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries
+in the reference-lists, and vice versa.
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD
+
+[Illustration: MARTIN]
+
+
+
+
+                              THE HISTORIANS’
+                                  HISTORY
+                               OF THE WORLD
+
+     A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
+    as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages:
+     edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers
+                           and contributors, by
+
+                        HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                          IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
+
+                        VOLUME XI--FRANCE, 843-1715
+
+                            The Outlook Company
+                                 New York
+
+                          The History Association
+                                  London
+
+                                   1905
+
+                             COPYRIGHT, 1904,
+                         BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
+
+                          _All rights reserved._
+
+                        Press of J. J. Little & Co.
+                            New York, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.
+
+
+    Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
+    Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
+    Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
+    Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
+    Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
+    Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
+    Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
+
+    Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
+    Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
+    Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
+    Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
+    Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
+    Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
+
+    Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
+    Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
+    Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
+    Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
+    Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
+    Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
+
+    Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
+    Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
+    Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
+    Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
+    Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
+    Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
+
+    Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.
+    Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
+    Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
+    Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
+    Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
+    Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
+    Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                VOLUME XI
+
+                                  FRANCE
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+                                CHAPTER I
+
+  THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS (843-987 A.D.)                                 1
+
+    Charles the Bald, 1. The Northmen, 2. Edict of Mersen, 3. The
+    Northmen’s allies, 4. Beginning of the great fiefs, 5. Edicts
+    of Pistes and Quierzy, 6. Louis II to Carloman, 7. Charles the
+    Fat, king and emperor, 8. The feudal régime, 10. The church,
+    13. Capetians and Carlovingians, 14. The last Carlovingians, 17.
+
+                                CHAPTER II
+
+  THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY (987-1180 A.D.)                22
+
+    Henry I, 24. Deeds of the great barons, 26. Philip I, 27. Louis
+    the Fat and Louis the Young, 30. Battle of Brenneville, 31. The
+    abbot Suger, 34. Emancipatory movements after the Crusades,
+    38. The communes, 38. Philosophy and thought; Abelard and St.
+    Bernard, 40. Abelard and the university, 44. The position of
+    woman, 45.
+
+                               CHAPTER III
+
+  THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY (1180-1270 A.D.)             47
+
+    Prince Arthur of Brittany, 49. The Albigensian Crusade, 51.
+    League against Philip Augustus, 54. The battle of Bouvines,
+    54. Last years and influence of Philip Augustus, 56. Louis
+    VIII, 56. Louis IX, called St. Louis, 58. First Crusade of St.
+    Louis, 60. Last years and death of St. Louis, 61. Hallam’s
+    estimate of St. Louis, 63. Piety and christianity of St. Louis,
+    64. Progress of the monarchy under St. Louis, 67. Aspects of
+    thirteenth-century civilisation, 71.
+
+                                CHAPTER IV
+
+  PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS (1270-1328 A.D.)                    74
+
+    Philip (III) the Bold, 74. Philip (IV) the Fair, 75. New war
+    with Flanders, 76. The quarrel between Philip and Boniface
+    VIII, 77. Sentence of the Templars, 83. Philip’s fiscal policy,
+    84. Execution of Jacques de Molay, 85. Political progress in
+    Philip’s reign, 87. Louis (X) the Quarrelsome, 89. Philip
+    (V) the Tall, 91. Charles (IV) the Fair, 92. Aspects of
+    civilisation, 93. The great fairs, 95.
+
+                                CHAPTER V
+
+  THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR (1328-1350 A.D.)                98
+
+    Edward III claims the throne of France, 103. The battle
+    of Sluys or L’Écluse, 104. The war in Brittany, 107. Joan
+    de Montfort defends Hennebon, 108. Philip’s financial
+    difficulties, 110. Renewal of the war with England, 111. Edward
+    returns to France, 112. Froissart’s description of Crécy, 114.
+    Michelet on the results of Crécy, 118. The siege of Calais,
+    119. Suspension of the war, 121. Territorial acquisition, 122.
+
+                                CHAPTER VI
+
+  JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE (1350-1380 A.D.)                  124
+
+    Trouble with Charles of Navarre, 126. The states-general of
+    1355, 128. The battle of Poitiers, 130. The states-general of
+    1356-1357, 132. The dauphin repudiates the _Grande Ordonnance_,
+    134. The Jacquerie, 135. Death of Marcel, 137. Peace
+    negotiations; Edward in France, 138. The story of Le Grand
+    Ferré, 139. The Treaty of Bretigny, 141. The last years of King
+    John, 142. Charles the Wise, 143. Early exploits of Bertrand du
+    Guesclin, 144. End of the Breton War; battle of Auray, 146. Du
+    Guesclin leads the free companies into Castile, 147. The Peace
+    of Bretigny is broken, 149. The English invasion, 150. Last
+    years of Charles V and of Du Guesclin, 152.
+
+                               CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE BETRAYAL OF THE KINGDOM (1380-1422 A.D.)                         155
+
+    War in Flanders; battle of Roosebeke, 156. Insurrections in
+    Paris and Rouen, 157. The King assumes the rule, 159. Hatred
+    of the nobles for the ministry, 162. The king goes mad: the
+    princes return to power, 163. Domestic troubles and scandals,
+    165. Civil war, 167. Henry V invades France; a French view,
+    169. Michelet’s account of the battle of Agincourt, 170.
+    Massacre of the Armagnacs in Paris, 174. The duke of Burgundy
+    master of Paris, 175. Siege of Rouen, 176. Henry and John the
+    Fearless, 177. The Treaty of Troyes, 178. Henry’s struggle with
+    the dauphin, 180. Woes of the people; the _Danse Macabre_, 182.
+    The University of Paris and the council of Constance, 184.
+
+                               CHAPTER VIII
+
+  THE RESCUE OF THE REALM (1422-1431 A.D.)                             187
+
+    Monstrelet describes the siege of Montargis, 189. The siege
+    of Orleans, 190. The “battle of the Herrings,” 191. The Maid
+    of Orleans (La Pucelle), 194. Joan at the court, 196. The
+    deliverance of Orleans, 198. Joan of Arc leads the king to
+    Rheims, 200. Joan defeated at Paris, 203. Capture of Joan of
+    Arc, 204. Trial of Joan of Arc, 206. The Twelve Articles,
+    207. The findings of the faculty, 211. The sentence and its
+    execution, 213. The rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, 218. The
+    British estimate of Joan’s services, 219.
+
+                                CHAPTER IX
+
+  “THE CONVALESCENCE OF FRANCE” (1431-1461 A.D.)                       220
+
+    The Treaty of Arras, 222. The French return to Paris, 224. The
+    Pragmatic Sanction, 225. The atrocious crimes of the barons,
+    226. Gilles de Retz, 226. Charles begins the work of reform,
+    228. Agnes Sorel; the Praguerie, 230. Effective progress
+    against England, 233. Expedition to Switzerland and Lorraine,
+    235. The battle of Sankt Jakob, 236. Military and financial
+    reforms, 236. The close of the Hundred Years’ War, 238. The
+    battle of Castillon, 239. The last years of Charles VII, 242.
+    Quarrels with Burgundy and with the dauphin, 242. Death of
+    Charles VII; the influence of his reign, 244.
+
+                                CHAPTER X
+
+  THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI: THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROWN (1461-1483 A.D.)     247
+
+    Relations with the Church, 249. The war of the Public Weal,
+    250. The battle of Montlhéry and the Treaty of Conflans, 250.
+    Political intrigues, 253. The struggle with Charles the Bold,
+    254. Comines describes the visit to Péronne, 255. The storming
+    of Liège, 259. The return of Louis to France, 262. Edward IV
+    of England aids Charles the Bold, 263. Gold and diplomacy make
+    Louis the victor, 265. Last deeds of Charles the Bold, 266.
+    Mary of Burgundy, 268. War with Maximilian, 270. Last years
+    and death of Louis, 272. Martin’s estimate of Louis XI, 274.
+    Louis’ influence on civilisation, 275. Establishment of posts
+    in France, 275.
+
+                                CHAPTER XI
+
+  CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII--THE INVASION OF ITALY (1483-1515 A.D.)   278
+
+    Charles VIII, 278. The rule of Anne de Beaujeu, 279. The
+    struggle with the duke of Orleans, 284. Charles VIII in Italy,
+    288. Death of Charles VIII, 293. Louis XII, “the father of his
+    people,” 293. Marriage with Anne of Brittany, 295. Foreign
+    affairs, 297. Internal affairs, 302. Last years of Louis XII,
+    304.
+
+                               CHAPTER XII
+
+  IMPERIAL STRUGGLES OF FRANCIS I AND HENRY II (1515-1559 A.D.)        306
+
+    Critical survey of Francis I and his period, 306. A brilliant
+    campaign in Italy, 308. The Concordat, 309. Strife between
+    Francis I and Charles V, 310. Meeting of Henry VIII and
+    Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 311. Francis I
+    and Charles V at war, 313. Defection of the duke de Bourbon,
+    314. A disastrous campaign in Italy; the battle of Pavia, 316.
+    Francis captive in Spain; the Treaty of Madrid, 320. Further
+    dissensions and the “Ladies’ Peace,” 322. Internal affairs,
+    325. The French Renaissance, 328. War again between Francis I
+    and Charles V, 332. Last years and death of Francis I, 335.
+    Gaillard’s estimate of Francis I, 336. Character and policy of
+    Henry II, 337. Court favourites, 338. Religious persecutions
+    and royal marriages, 339. War with Charles V and his successor,
+    342. The siege of Metz, 343. Minor engagements; the abdication
+    of Charles V, 346. Battle and defence of St. Quentin, 347. The
+    retaking of Calais, 347. The Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis, 348.
+    The last days of Henry II, 349.
+
+                               CHAPTER XIII
+
+  CATHERINE DE MEDICI AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-1589 A.D.)          351
+
+    Francis II, 352. Religious parties, 353. Death of Francis II,
+    355. The accession of Charles IX, 356. Civil war, 357. The
+    Edict of Amboise and its results, 359. The Second Religious
+    War, 361. The Third Religious War, 362. Admiral Coligny; the
+    Peace of St. Germain, 364. A troubled peace; the marriage of
+    Henry of Navarre, 365. The attack on Coligny, 368. Preparing
+    for the massacre, 370. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 374.
+    Effects of the massacre, 376. Last years, death, and character
+    of Charles IX, 378. The accession of Henry III, 380. Political
+    conditions, 381. The Holy League, 383. The war of the Three
+    Henrys, 384. The battle of Coutras, 386. The Day of the
+    Barricades and the Treaty of Union, 388. The meeting of the
+    states-general, 388. The assassination of Henry, duke of Guise,
+    390. Death of Catherine de Medici, 392. The siege of Paris and
+    the death of Henry III, 392.
+
+                               CHAPTER XIV
+
+  HENRY OF NAVARRE, FIRST OF THE BOURBONS (1589-1610 A.D.)             395
+
+    Henry’s struggle for the crown, 395. The battle of Ivry, 397.
+    The duke of Parma and the Spaniards, 400. Henry IV and the
+    league, 401. Opposition of the pope and Philip II, 404. The
+    Edict of Nantes, 405. Reorganisation of France with the aid
+    of Sully, 407. Amours and second marriage of Henry IV, 409.
+    Intrigues of De Biron, 412. The last years of Henry’s reign,
+    414. Grand design of Henry IV; his death, 415. Character and
+    policy of Henry IV, 417. Martin’s estimate of Henry IV, 418.
+    Stephen’s characterisation of Henry IV and his times, 419.
+
+                                CHAPTER XV
+
+  THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY             422
+
+    Calvin, 426. Montaigne, 427.
+
+                               CHAPTER XVI
+
+  THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII AND THE RISE OF RICHELIEU
+    (1610-1628 A.D.)                                                   432
+
+    The regency of Marie de Medici, 432. Disgrace of Sully,
+    434. First revolt of the lords, 434. Last assembly of the
+    states-general, 436. Majority of Louis XIII; marriage with
+    Anne of Austria, 438. Richelieu appears, 438. Assassination of
+    Marshal d’Ancre, 441. The ministry of Luynes, 443. The Huguenot
+    uprising; the siege of Montauban, 445. Death of Luynes,
+    448. Richelieu’s return to the ministry, 449. Conspiracy of
+    the court against Richelieu, 450. The siege of La Rochelle
+    described by Seignobos, 452.
+
+                               CHAPTER XVII
+
+  THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU (1629-1643 A.D.)                       457
+
+    Richelieu and the king, 458. Richelieu enters the European
+    arena, 460. Enmity of Marie de’ Medici against Richelieu, 462.
+    The Day of Dupes, 462. Exile of Marie de’ Medici, 464. The
+    revolt of Gaston and the execution of Montmorency, 465. Foreign
+    affairs, 466. Wars with Austria, 468. Attempt to assassinate
+    the cardinal, 469. Character of Louis, 470. Revolt of the count
+    de Soissons, 472. Caillet’s estimate of the administration
+    of Richelieu, 472. The church and the state under Richelieu,
+    475. The conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, 478. Recovery and triumph
+    of Richelieu, 480. The last days of Richelieu, 482. Stephen’s
+    estimate of Louis XIII and of Richelieu, 484.
+
+                              CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN (1643-1661 A.D.)                            487
+
+    Battle of Rocroi, 489. The _importants_, 491. The education of
+    the young king, 493. Military glory, 494. Treaty of Westphalia,
+    496. Mazarin’s domestic policy, 497. First insurrection of the
+    Fronde, 499. The Day of the Barricades, 500. Second act of the
+    Fronde; arrest of Condé, 505. Resistance of Bordeaux, 506.
+    Disgrace and exile of Mazarin, 507. Condé in power, 508. Return
+    of Mazarin, 509. The last phase of the Fronde, 511. Battle of
+    St. Antoine, 513. Second exile of Mazarin, 513. Mazarin again
+    in power, 515. War with Spain continues, 516. Alliance with
+    Cromwell; war in Flanders, 517. The Treaty of the Pyrenees,
+    520. Last years and death of Mazarin, 522.
+
+                               CHAPTER XIX
+
+  “_L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI_” (1661-1715 A.D.)                               525
+
+    The ministers, 528. The man with the Iron Mask, 531. The
+    ministry of Colbert, 531. Reorganisation of the finances, 532.
+    Michelet’s estimate of Colbert, 535. Louvois, 538. Vauban,
+    539. Séguier, legislative works, 540. Lionne, foreign affairs
+    and diplomacy, 541. Triumph of the absolute monarchy, 541.
+    Submission of Parliament, 542. Submission of the nobility,
+    543. The third estate, 543. Louis XIV and the church, 544.
+    The Protestants, 545. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 546.
+    The Jansenists, 548. The police, 549. The court of the grand
+    monarch, 550. Mademoiselle de la Vallière, 551. Madame de
+    Montespan, 555. Poisoning: the Brinvilliers case, 556. The
+    retirement of Montespan, 558. Madame de Maintenon, 559. Effect
+    of Louis XIV’s policy on the nation, 561.
+
+                                CHAPTER XX
+
+  LOUIS XIV, SPAIN, AND HOLLAND (1661-1679 A.D.)                       563
+
+    The war of the Queen’s Rights, 566. The Triple Alliance, 569.
+    Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 570. Projects against Holland, 571.
+    The Treaty of Dover; death of Madame, 572. Treaties with other
+    powers, 573. The war with Holland begins, 574. The passage of
+    the Rhine, 575. The French in Holland and Germany, 576. The
+    new coalition against France, 577. Defection of England and
+    the imperial allies, 581. Operations in Franche-Comté; Turenne
+    in Alsace, 581. Condé in the Netherlands, 584. Last campaigns
+    of Turenne and Condé, 584. Events of 1676; affairs in Sicily,
+    585. Campaign of 1677; negotiations for peace, 587. Louis XIV
+    settles with the coalition, 589.
+
+                               CHAPTER XXI
+
+  THE HEIGHT AND DECLINE OF THE BOURBON MONARCHY (1679-1715 A.D.)      592
+
+    Acquisition of frontier places, 593. Preparations for a second
+    coalition, 596. Relations with Turks and Berbers, 598. Second
+    coalition; the league of Augsburg, 599. The Revolution in
+    England, 600. War of the league of Augsburg, 601. Attempts to
+    restore James II, 601. Devastation of the Palatinate, 603. The
+    war in Savoy and Piedmont, 604. The war in the Netherlands,
+    604. Steenkerke and Neerwinden, 605. Last years of the war;
+    treaty with Savoy, 606. The Treaty of Ryswick, 608. Louis
+    XIV and the Polish throne, 609. The question of the Spanish
+    succession, 610. Accession of the Bourbons in Spain, 612.
+    The Grand Alliance or third coalition against France, 613.
+    War of the Spanish Succession; the French victories, 615.
+    The _camisards_, 617. War of the Spanish Succession; French
+    reverses, 617. The battle of Blenheim, 618. The battle of
+    Ramillies, 620. The battle of Malplaquet, 624. The battle of
+    Denain, 626. Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt, 627. Death of
+    Louis XIV, 629.
+
+                               CHAPTER XXII
+
+  THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV: ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION (1610-1715 A.D.)   632
+
+    Foundation of the French Academy, 632. The patronage system,
+    633. Literary characteristics, 635. Science, 637. Poetry:
+    Boileau, 640. Oratory: Bossuet, 641. The third period, 642.
+    The drama; tragedy, 643. Corneille, 643. Racine, 644. Comedy,
+    645. Architecture, 647. Sculpture and painting, 648. Music and
+    the opera, 650. Rapid decline of the age of Louis XIV, 651. A
+    French view of the effect of the age, 651.
+
+  BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS                      653
+
+
+
+
+                                 PART XVI
+
+                           THE HISTORY OF FRANCE
+
+               BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES
+
+  A. ALISON, ALEXIS BELLOC, L. P. E. BIGNON, LOUIS BLANC, JULES CAILLET,
+      J. B. R. CAPEFIGUE, THOMAS CARLYLE, FRANÇOIS R. CHÂTEAUBRIAND,
+       ADOLPHE CHÉRUEL, JOHN WILSON CROKER, E. E. CROWE, C. DARESTE
+      DE LA CHAVANNE, BRUGIÈRE DE BARANTE, A. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC,
+          PHILIP DE COMMINES, JURIEN DE LA GRAVIÈRE, LE COMTE DE
+           TOCQUEVILLE, JEHAN DE VAURIN, VICTOR DURUY, GABRIEL
+                HENRI GAILLARD, FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, C. P. M.
+   HAAS, ERNEST HAMEL, LUDWIG HÄUSSER, KARL HILLEBRAND, G. W. KITCHIN,
+        LACRETELLE, A. LAMARTINE, T. LAVALLÉE, P. E. LEVASSEUR, J.
+        MALLET-DUPAN, HENRI MARTIN, JULES MICHELET, F. A. MIGNET,
+         MONSTRELET, C. PELLETAN, VICTOR PIERRE, JULES QUICHERAT,
+            ALFRED RAMBAUD, J. E. ROBINET, DUC DE SAINT-SIMON,
+            J. R. SEELEY, C. SEIGNOBOS, J. C. S. DE SISMONDI,
+               ALBERT SOREL, H. M. STEPHENS, H. VON SYBEL,
+                     H. TAINE, M. TERNAUX, A. THIERS,
+                          F. AROUET DE VOLTAIRE
+
+                   TOGETHER WITH AN ESSAY IN FOUR PARTS
+
+               THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF FRANCE
+
+                                    BY
+
+                              ALFRED RAMBAUD
+
+                      WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM
+
+ J. AMBERT, MARQUIS D’ARGENSON, A. ARNETH AND M. A. GEFFROY, JULES BARNI,
+    E. BERTIN, PAUL BONDOIS, A. BOUGÉART, M. N. BOUILLET, E. BOUTARIC,
+       H. T. BUCKLE, T. BURETTE. F. CANONGE, HIPPOLYTE CASTILLE, H.
+           CARNOT, SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER, CHRONIQUE DE ST. DENIS,
+               CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, OLIVIER
+                D’ORMESSON, C. A. DAUBAN, A. DE BEAUCHAMP,
+                    G. AND M. DU BELLAY, MAXIMILIAN DE
+                     BÉTHUNE, DUC DE SULLY, ÉMILE DE
+     BONNECHOSE, MARQUIS DE CHAMBRAY, MARQUIS DE FERRIÈRES, PIERRE DE
+        L’ESTOILE, CHARLES MERCIER DE LACOMBE, BERNARD DE LACOMBE,
+            FRANÇOIS DE LANOUE, LA BARONNE DE STAËL, DU FRESNE
+             DE BEAUCOURT, H. FORNERON, C. A. FYFFE, BERNARD
+              GERMAIN, ABBÉ GIRARD, HENRI GIRARD, SAINT-MARC
+                 GIRARDIN, HENRY HALLAM, HERMANN HETTNER,
+                   VICTOR HUGO, W. H. JERVIS, J. B. F.
+                     KOCH, H. LEBER, U. LEGEAY, G. H.
+                          LEWES, L. DE LOMÉNIE,
+   O. DE LA MARCHE, SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, MARQUIS OF NORMANBY, E. DE
+    MÉZERAY, COUNT VON MOLTKE, WILHELM MÜLLER, DAVID MÜLLER, W. F. B.
+      NAPIER, J. B. PAQUIER, JULIA PARDOE, A. RASTOUL, P. ROBIQUET,
+         C. ROUSSET, ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, D. SAUVAGE, MAURICE DE
+            SAXE, EDMOND SCHÉRER, F. C. SCHLOSSER, SIR WALTER
+                 SCOTT, A. SORBIN, J. L. SOULAVIE, SAINT
+                  RENE-TAILLANDIER, EUGÈNE TÉNOT, J. E.
+                    TYLER, MAURICE WAHL, JAMES WHITE,
+                       E. F. WIMPFFEN, HENRY SMITH
+                          WILLIAMS, R. T. WILSON
+
+                             COPYRIGHT, 1904,
+                         BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
+
+                          _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS
+
+
+CHARLES THE BALD (843-877 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [843-877 A.D.]]
+
+Up to the present we have told the history of the Gauls, the
+Gallo-Romans, and the Franks; with the Treaty of Verdun we begin the
+history of the French people. There now existed in France, except
+the Northmen, who already were beginning to appear on its coast and
+who established themselves there only in small numbers, all the
+races of which her people are formed, and all the elements, Celtic,
+Roman, Christian, and Germanic, whose combination goes to make up her
+civilisation. The medley is even already too sufficiently advanced
+for one to distinguish any longer the Gallo-Roman from the Frank, the
+civilised man from the barbarian. All have the same customs and almost
+all the same tongue. The French idiom showed itself officially in the
+Treaty of Verdun. Law ceases to be personal and becomes local; national
+custom replaces the Roman or barbaric codes; there are scarcely any
+slaves; there are but few free men--we shall soon see nothing but serfs
+and lords.
+
+But this France has no longer the extent of Gaul; the Treaty of Verdun
+has confined it to the Schelde and the Maas, the Saône and the Rhone, and
+the population within these narrow limits finds them still too broad;
+they wish to live apart, for themselves alone, and not to sustain a vast
+dominion which is crushing them and which they do not understand.
+
+The son of Judith and Louis le Débonnaire, Charles the Bald, king of
+France since 840, was nothing but an ambitious man of the people.
+Length of days was generously bestowed upon him, as it had been with
+Charlemagne, for he reigned thirty-seven years--but he knew how to do
+nothing with his life. Difficulties, it is true, were great. The same
+year when the destinies of the empire were moulded at Fontenailles,
+Asnar, count of Jaca, helped himself to the sovereignty of Navarre, and
+the Northmen burned Rouen--in 843 they pillaged Nantes, Saintes, and
+Bordeaux. At the same time the Aquitanians rose up for a national king.
+The Bretons had found theirs in Noménoë, whom Charles had excommunicated
+by the bishops, but who defeated his lieutenants; and Septimania had its
+chief in Bernhard. The Saracens and the Greek pirates ravaged the south
+while the Northmen devastated the north and the west. And as if to fill
+the cup of misfortune of which this age was the bearer, the Hungarians,
+successors of the Huns and Avars, were putting in an appearance in the
+east.
+
+
+THE NORTHMEN
+
+[Sidenote: [843 A.D.]]
+
+These dreaded pirates, the Northmen, were the men whom hunger, thirst for
+pillage, and love of adventure drove each year from the sterile regions
+of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In three days an east wind brought their
+two-masted ships to the mouth of the Seine. The fleet obeyed a _kuning_
+or king. “But,” says Augustin Thierry, “he was king only at sea and in
+battle; for when the banquet hour arrived the whole troop sat at the
+same table, and the beer-filled horns passed from hand to hand without
+there being a first or a last. The sea-king was followed everywhere with
+fidelity and obeyed with zeal, for always he was reputed the bravest of
+the brave, like him who had never drained a cup at a protected fireside.
+
+“He knew how to handle ships as a good knight his horse, and to
+the ascendency of courage and skill there was added the power that
+superstition gave him. He was initiated in the sciences of the Runes. He
+knew the mysterious characters which, graven on swords, would procure
+victory, and those which inscribed on the stern or on the oars would
+prevent shipwreck. All equal under such a chief, supporting lightly their
+voluntary submission and the weight of mailed armour which they promised
+themselves to exchange for an equal weight of gold, the Danish pirates
+gaily travelled the ‘path of the swans,’ as their ancient national poetry
+called it. Now they hugged the shores and watched their enemy in the
+narrow straits, bays, and little anchorage grounds, from which they got
+their name of vikings,--children of the bays and creeks,--now they hurled
+themselves forth in pursuit of him across the ocean. The violent storms
+of the North Sea scattered and crushed their frail ships. There were
+always some missing when from the chief’s ship came the signal to gather
+together, but those who survived their shipwrecked companions had no less
+confidence and no more concern. They laughed at the winds and the waves
+which could not destroy them. ‘The might of the storm,’ they sang, ‘aids
+the arms of our oarsmen--the tempest is at our service; it throws us
+where we would go.’”
+
+Some of them often, in the midst of the clash of arms and the sight of
+blood, became possessed with a sort of mad fury which redoubled their
+strength and made them insensible to wounds--as if they saw revealed to
+their eyes the palace of their god Odin and the shining hall of Valhalla.
+Others showed an irresistible courage under torture, and sang their
+death-song in the agonies of torment. Thus the famous Lodbrog, when
+thrown into a ditch filled with vipers, flung proudly back these words to
+his enemies:
+
+“We have fought with the sword. I was still young when in the East, under
+the stars of Eirar, we dug a river of blood for the wolves and invited
+the yellow-legged bird to a great banquet of corpses: the sea was red
+like a fresh-opened wound and the ravens swam in blood.
+
+“We have fought with the sword. I have seen near Aienlane (England)
+numberless bodies filling the decks of the ships; we continued the fight
+for six whole days and the enemy did not give in; the seventh, at
+sunrise, we celebrated the mass of swords. Valthiof was forced to bend
+under our arms.
+
+“We have fought with the sword. Torrents of blood rained from our swords
+at Partohyrth (Pesth). The vulture could find no more in the bodies; the
+bow thrummed and arrows buried themselves in coats of mail; sweat ran
+over the sword blades. They poured poison into the wounds and harvested
+the warriors like Odin’s hammer.
+
+“We have fought with the sword. Death seizes me. The bite of the vipers
+has been deep. I feel their teeth at my heart. Soon, I hope the sword
+will avenge me in the blood of Ælla. My sons will rage at news of my
+death--anger will redden their visages; besides, brave warriors will take
+no rest until they have avenged me.
+
+“I must cease--behold the Dysir whom Odin sends to lead me to his joyful
+palace. I go thither with the Ases, to quaff hydromel at the seat of
+honour. The hours of my life have run out and my smile braves death.”
+
+[Sidenote: [837-847 A.D.]]
+
+Religious and warlike fanaticism are here joined together--these pirates
+loved to shed the blood of priests and stable their horses in the
+churches. When they had ravaged a Christian land: “We have sung them,”
+they said, “the mass of spears; it began at early morn and lasted till
+the night.” Charlemagne felt these terrible invaders from afar; under
+Louis le Débonnaire they grew bolder. Some of them set up abodes, in 837,
+on the island of Walcheren, and made tributary the river lands of the
+Maas and the Waal. After 843 they came every year. From the mouth of the
+Schelde, the Somme, the Seine, the Loire, and the Gironde, they ascended
+into the interior of the country. A number of towns, even the more
+important, as Orleans and Paris, were taken and pillaged by them without
+Charles being able to make any defence. From the Rhine to the Adour, from
+the ocean to the Cévennes and the Vosges, all was devastated. They even
+acquired the habit of not returning home during the winter and settled
+down on the island of Oissel--above Rouen, at Noirmoutiers at the mouth
+of the Loire and on the island of Bière, near St. Florent. It was thither
+they carried their booty and thence they set out on new expeditions.
+
+
+EDICT OF MERSEN (847 A.D.)
+
+Chroniclers not understanding that apathy of the Frankish nation once so
+brave, who now let themselves be pillaged by a handful of adventurers,
+could only explain these things on the supposition that there had been a
+tremendous massacre at Fontenailles (Fontenay).
+
+    _La peri de France la flor_
+    _Et des baronz tuit li meillor_
+    _Ansi troverènt Haenz terre_
+    _Vinde de gent, bonne a conquerre._
+
+    [There perished the flower of France
+    And the best of all the barons died
+    And thus was the land of Haenz
+    Void of the brave--easy to conquer.]
+
+There is some truth in these words. Charlemagne’s fifty-three expeditions
+had used up the Frankish race, and his conquests, where always some
+of his warriors were left behind to rule, had spread it over three
+kingdoms. The dissensions of Louis le Débonnaire’s sons completed this
+dissemination. Now there were no longer free men to be found, because of
+the terrible results of so many wars, because in the midst of growing
+anarchy almost all the free men had renounced an independence which left
+them in isolation and consequently in danger, to become the vassals of
+men able to protect them. The Edict of Mersen (847) says, “Every freeman
+may choose a lord, either the king or one of his vassals, and no vassal
+of the king will be obliged to follow him in war unless against a foreign
+enemy.” With the subjects thus disposing of their obedience, the king in
+civil war remained unarmed and powerless, and as he was as incapable of
+making the great obey him as he was of protecting the small, the latter
+gathered around the former. The king’s vassals diminished; those of the
+great lords increased. On all sides national interest was forgotten in
+solicitude for that of the individual. Rouen troubled itself little
+about the misfortunes of Bordeaux, Saintes, and Paris, and that is why
+in this age, as in the last days of the Roman Empire, and for the same
+reason, namely the absence of that common and spirited sentiment known
+as patriotism, a few small bands could ravage a great country. Charles
+tried to send them back by giving them gold; but this was the surest
+means to attract them. The Roman Empire had done the same thing with the
+barbarians, and we know with what result.
+
+
+THE NORTHMEN’S ALLIES
+
+[Sidenote: [843-850 A.D.]]
+
+The number of true Northmen must have been comparatively few, since they
+came from afar and over the sea. “But,” as a chronicler of the time
+remarks, “many inhabitants of the country, forgetting their regeneration
+in the holy waters of baptism, plunged into the dark errors of the
+pagans: they ate with these pagans the flesh of horses sacrificed to Thor
+and Odin, and took part in their atrocious crimes.” And these renegades
+were the most to be feared. They acted as guides to the invaders, they
+knew how to foil the ruses their countrymen adopted to cheat the greed of
+the barbarians, and showed even less respect and mercy than the latter
+for the religion and the people they had abandoned. Sometimes even some
+of the powerful nobles were paid by the Northmen, with money raised by
+the pillage of France, so as not to be disturbed in their expeditions.
+
+The most dreadful of these pirates was Hastings, who ravaged the banks of
+the Loire from 843 to 850, sacked Bordeaux and Saintes, threatened Tours,
+which still celebrates to-day, on the 21st of May, a victory won from
+him, circumnavigated Spain and, robbing and burning the while, reached
+the shores of Italy. He had been drawn by the great name and wealth of
+the capital of Christendom; but he mistook Luna for Rome. Hastings sent
+word to the count and the bishop that his companions, conquerors of
+France, wished no harm to the people of Italy and only wished to repair
+his storm-battered ships, and that he himself, wearied of his roving
+life, wished to seek repose in the bosom of the church. The bishop and
+the count refused him nothing; Hastings even received baptism; but the
+gates of the town remained shut. Some time after the camp was filled
+with lamentations; Hastings was dangerously ill. Messengers came with
+the news and declared at the same time that the dying man intended to
+leave all his booty to the church provided his body might be interred
+in consecrated ground. The Northmen’s cries of grief soon announced the
+death of their chief. They were permitted to bring his body into the
+town, and the funeral ceremony was prepared in the cathedral itself. But
+when they had set down the corpse in the middle of the choir, Hastings
+suddenly rose up and struck the bishop down, while his companions,
+drawing their concealed arms, massacred both priests and soldiers.
+Master of Luna, Hastings perceived his mistake. He was made to understand
+that Rome was a long way off, and could not be so easily captured, so he
+set sail with his booty and at the end of several months reappeared at
+the mouth of the Loire.
+
+[Illustration: ANCIENT FRENCH DOORWAY]
+
+[Sidenote: [850-882 A.D.]]
+
+Charles the Bald had reunited one part of the country, between the
+Seine and the Loire, under command of Robert the Strong, ancestor of
+the Capetians, in order to oppose a more efficacious resistance to the
+Northmen and the Bretons, a great number of whom had joined the pirates.
+Robert gained two victories over the Bretons and defeated a body of
+Northmen loaded with the booty of Brie and of the town of Meaux. This was
+the valiant leader whom Hastings encountered on his return from Italy.
+He had just sacked Le Mans when Robert and the duke of Aquitaine caught
+up with him at Brissarthe (Pont-sur-Sarthe) near Angers. The barbarians
+numbered but four hundred, half Northmen, half Bretons; and at Robert’s
+approach they betook themselves to a church and barricaded it. It was
+evening, and the French put off the attack until the next day. Robert
+had already taken off his helmet and coat of mail, when the Northmen,
+suddenly opening the doors, threw themselves upon the dispersed troops.
+Robert rallied his men, drove the enemy back to the church, and tried
+to follow them in. But he fought with bared head and breast and on the
+threshold was mortally wounded. Duke Rainulf of Aquitaine fell by his
+side (866). Hastings, delivered of his dread adversary, ascended the
+Loire and made his way as far as Clermont-Ferrand. No other means could
+be found of ridding France than by giving him, in 882, the county of
+Chartres. But he even abandoned this at the age of nearly seventy, to
+resume his life of adventure.
+
+
+BEGINNING OF THE GREAT FIEFS
+
+[Sidenote: [848-877 A.D.]]
+
+The Northmen were the greatest but not the only one of Charles’ troubles;
+the Breton Noménoë repelled all his attacks, crowned himself king,
+and left the title to his son Hérispoë. The Aquitanians elected as
+leader the son of their late king, Pepin II, whom Charles the Bald had
+deposed. Driven out on account of his vices, Pepin allied himself with
+the Northmen and Saracens to pillage his former subjects, but he was
+captured and shut up in a cloister. Charles recovered, for the time,
+Aquitaine, lost it, recovered it again and gave it to one of his sons.
+But the true masters of the country were Raymond, count of Toulouse,
+who also ruled over Rouergue and Quercy; Walgrin, count of Angoulême;
+Sancho Mitara, duke of Gascony, whose capital was Bordeaux; Bernhard,
+marquis of Septimania; Rainulf, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers;
+Bernard Plantevelue, count of Auvergne; all of whom founded hereditary
+houses. To the north of the Loire, Charles had been constrained in the
+same way to constitute, for Robert the Strong, the grand duchy of France,
+from which sprang the third line of kings. North of the Somme it had
+been the same thing with the county of Flanders, given to the king’s
+son-in-law, Baldwin Bras de Fer (Iron Arm), and between the Loire and
+Saône, the powerful duchy of Burgundy for Richard the Judge. Thus under
+Charlemagne’s grandson not only was the empire divided into kingdoms, but
+the kingdoms themselves were dismembered into fiefs.[1]
+
+
+EDICTS OF PISTES AND QUIERZY
+
+Charles made, however, more and more the effort to retain in his service
+and that of the state the class of freedmen. In 863, the Edict of Pistes
+ordered a census of the men bound to military duty. The most severe
+penalties were pronounced against those who deprived these men of their
+horses and their arms, and also against the artful ones who sought to
+avoid military duty by giving themselves to the church.
+
+This prince, so weak at home, wished nevertheless to aggrandise himself
+abroad. The king who could not wear his own crown undertook to acquire
+others. At the death of the emperor Lothair, in 855, the inheritance
+was shared between his three sons. The eldest took Italy, the second
+Lorraine, and the third Provence. The last only lived until 863, and the
+king of Lorraine until 869, and neither had any children. Charles the
+Bald tried, on their death, to lay hands on their dominions. His plans
+miscarried in 863, but succeeded in 870, when he shared Lorraine with his
+brother, Louis the German. In spite of the weakness and dishonour of his
+reign, Charles the Bald brought together again, at least on one side, the
+France which the Treaty of Verdun had broken up.
+
+Instead of continuing this policy Charles sought for the imperial crown,
+left once more without a wearer in 875. He sought it in Rome from the
+hands of the pope, took on his return to Milan that of the Lombard
+kingdom, and as his brother, Louis the German, had died, he attempted to
+annex the latter’s dominions to his own--that is, Germany to France. At
+this moment the Northmen took Rouen from him. He was beaten on the Rhine;
+Italy likewise escaped him.[b]
+
+Unity existed only in the ambitious fancy of the feeble Charles. In
+spite of his titles and his crowns, his power in Italy, Lorraine, and
+Provence was as much a cipher as it was in Gaul; the dismemberment of the
+kingdoms into duchies and counties, and of the latter into viscounties,
+_sireries_, and _seigneuries_, still continued; and, at the very moment
+when he was dreaming of his grandfather’s empire, he was finally
+completing his own destruction by changing the feudal system from a
+custom into a law.
+
+Before going to Italy in 877, he assembled a diet at Quierzy to formulate
+rules for the government of Gaul by his son, and there was delivered that
+famous capitulary from which we may date the feudal revolution: “If one
+of our trusty subjects,” runs this capitulary, “inspired by the love of
+God, desire to renounce the world, and if he have a son or some other
+relative capable of serving the state, he is free to transmit to him his
+privileges and honours at pleasure. If a count of this kingdom dies, we
+desire that the nearest relatives of the deceased, the other officers of
+the county, and the bishops of the diocese provide for its administration
+until such time as we shall be able to intrust his son with the honours
+with which he was invested.”
+
+This capitulary effected no change in the existing state of things, it
+only confirmed accomplished facts and legalised a revolution which had
+its origin in the customs of the Germans even before their entry into
+Gaul, that is to say the transformation of fiefs into freeholds and the
+acquisition of hereditary rights in duchies and counties. From this time
+the distinction between _allods_ and _feods_ had no longer either reality
+or importance; as the son of the count inherited not only the domains but
+also the offices of his father, the distinction between the magistrate
+sent from the king and the lord of the manor was done away; and the
+titles of duke and count no longer expressed merely an office, an honour,
+or a dignity, but sovereign rights. The feudal system was thus inscribed
+in the law.[c]
+
+[Sidenote: [877-879 A.D.]]
+
+Such was the condition in which Charles the Bald left France when, in
+877, he went to Italy, to fulfil the obligations he had contracted on
+receiving the imperial crown. Pope John VIII had begged him to drive the
+Saracens from the peninsula, and repress the aggressions of his nephew
+Carloman, king of Bavaria, a pretender to the empire. It is astonishing,
+the persistence with which Charlemagne’s descendants, in taking arms
+against each other, not only hastened the disorganisation of their own
+states, but accomplished the rapid ruin of their house in Italy, Germany,
+and even France, where it lasted three or four generations longer than
+anywhere else. The campaign of 877 bore no result. Charles’ only idea
+after he got to Italy seems to have been to pillage the imperial domains.
+Abandoned for the most part by his vassals, he was obliged to return to
+France, fell ill during the return, and died the 6th of October, a few
+days after he had crossed the Mont Cenis.
+
+
+LOUIS II TO CARLOMAN (877-884 A.D.)
+
+Louis the Stammerer, given a share in the throne during his father’s
+lifetime, was crowned by Hincmar at Compiègne in presence of most of the
+great vassals. By the advice of Hincmar the new king pledged himself
+to disturb no man in the possession of his benefices or offices and
+to respect the liberty of the churches. He was also obliged to make
+a distribution of lands, abbeys, and counties “to whoever,” says one
+chronicle, “demanded them first.”
+
+Charles the Bald had worn four crowns, those of France, the empire,
+Italy, and Lorraine. His son inherited the first only. The imperial crown
+and the crown of Italy passed to the head of a Carlovingian prince of
+the Germanic branch. Ludwig of Saxony contended with Louis the Stammerer
+for that of Lorraine and the two claimants came to terms by dividing the
+kingdom on the bases of the treaty of 870. This treaty was renewed in 878
+at Fouron on the Maas. The south was troubled by the revolt of Bernhard,
+marquis of Gothia, who took arms and formed a league of malcontents. But
+Bernhard, count of Auvergne, and Boson, duke of Provence, took from him
+successively Gothia and several counties which he possessed in Burgundy.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS III AND CARLOMAN
+
+(From an old print)]
+
+[Sidenote: [879-885 A.D.]]
+
+Louis the Stammerer, having fallen into a decline, died in 879 at
+Compiègne leaving two sons, Louis and Carloman, of whom the eldest was
+sixteen years old. The seigneurs were divided; some wished to proclaim
+the young French princes, others to give the crown to the German prince,
+Ludwig of Saxony. But the party of French princes was the most numerous
+and the abbot Hugo, who was its leader, hastened to crown the two
+brothers.[d] Two victories over the Northmen, notably that of Saucourt
+in Vimeu, gave a little glory to these princes. But these advantages did
+not prevent the recommencement of brigandage. In 885 the famous Hastings
+gave up the county of Chartres, and Carloman paid the others of his race
+to take themselves off. “They promised peace,” says the chronicler sadly,
+“for as many years as we could count them one thousand pounds’ weight of
+silver.” The two kings died by accident, Louis in 882, Carloman in 884.
+One had governed the north of France, the other Burgundy and Aquitaine.
+
+
+CHARLES THE FAT, KING AND EMPEROR (884-887 A.D.)
+
+These two had a brother, Charles the Simple, but the nobles preferred a
+grandson of Louis le Débonnaire, Charles the Fat, then emperor and king
+of Germany. The whole heritage of Charlemagne was now reunited in Charles
+the Fat’s hands. But times had changed. This man weighted down with so
+many crowns could not even inspire terror in the Northmen.
+
+[Sidenote: [885-887 A.D.]]
+
+Charles had already ceded Friesland to one of their chiefs. Another, the
+famous Rollo, a kind of giant who, as legend tells us, always went about
+on foot because no horse could be found for his mount, had recently taken
+Rouen and Pontoise and killed the duke of Le Mans. At the approach of
+his countrymen, the new count of Chartres, the former pirate Hastings,
+hastened to meet them and all marched upon Paris, which had already three
+times submitted to the sack. But Paris had recently been fortified.
+Great towers covered the bridges (Petit-Pont and Pont-au-Change) which
+connected the island of the city of Paris with the two shores. The Seine
+was then barricaded with seven hundred huge barges in which the Northmen
+intended to voyage into Burgundy, a region they had not yet visited. The
+inhabitants, encouraged by their bishop Gozlin and by Count Eudes, son
+of Robert the Strong, held out for one year. The attack began November
+26th, 885. The tower of the Grand-Pont, on the right bank, not being
+finished, the Northmen assailed it. For two days they fought there with
+great fury and Bishop Gozlin was wounded by a javelin. The Northmen were
+driven back and intrenched themselves in a camp around the church of St.
+Germain l’Auxerrois, where deserters soon taught them all the knowledge
+of Roman military science that had survived the ages. The invaders first
+built a three-storied rolling tower, but when they tried to bring it up
+to the walls, the Parisians killed with arrows those who were moving
+it. Then they advanced with battering-rams, some under portable screens
+covered with raw leather for protection from fire, and some under
+shields in the form of the Roman testudo. When they came to the edge of
+the moat they began to fill it up with earth, fascines, whole trees, and
+even the bodies of captives whom they put to death before the very eyes
+of the besieged. While those farthest away drove off the defenders of
+the battlements with a hail-storm of arrows and leaden ball, those close
+to the tower hammered it with the rams; but all in vain. The Parisians
+poured streams of boiling oil, wax, and molten pitch upon the enemy;
+their catapults hurled huge rocks which crushed the assailants’ screens
+and shields, and let down iron hooks which tore away the coverings and
+made the enemy a target for their arrows. Three blazing ships floated
+down to the bridge, were stopped by the abutting stone piles, and could
+not set it on fire.
+
+This hopeless resistance had lasted for more than two months when a
+sudden rise of the river carried away, on the night of February 6th, 886,
+a portion of the “Petit-Pont.” The Northmen immediately rushed upon the
+tower on the left bank, now cut off from the city. Only twelve men were
+stationed there, but they held out for a whole day and then retired,
+still fighting, to the wreckage of the bridge. Finally they surrendered
+on the promise that their lives would be saved, but as soon as the
+barbarians got hold of these brave men they put them to death. One of
+them, of gigantic frame, appeared to be a chief, and the Northmen decided
+to spare him; but he begged to share the fate of his companions. “You
+will never get ransom for my head,” he told them, and so forced them to
+kill him.
+
+Meanwhile reports of the Parisians’ courage had spread over the land and
+others were emboldened to emulate their example. Several pirate bands
+which had left the siege were beaten; the counsellor of the emperor
+Charles, Duke Henry, succeeded even in getting relief into the besieged
+town, but the pagans still maintained the blockade. Misery became extreme
+in the city and many people died. Bishop Gozlin and the count of Anjou
+“passed to the Lord.” The brave count Eudes managed to make his way out
+and went to hasten the emperor’s arrival, and when he saw the latter
+started, went back to his besieged people. The promised relief finally
+appeared, Duke Henry at its head. Wishing to reconnoitre the situation
+himself the duke advanced too near, and his horse fell into one of the
+Northmen’s pits. Here he was killed and those who had come with him
+were disbanded. Paris was once more left to its fate. The Northmen now
+believed that despair reigned there, and that they could have the people
+at little cost. They began a general attack, but the walls covered with
+valiant defenders proved insurmountable. They then tried to fire the door
+of the great tower, by heaping up against it a great wooden pile, but the
+Parisians made a sudden sortie and drove back the assailants and the fire
+at the same time.
+
+At the end of long months, Charles finally arrived with his army on the
+heights of Montmartre. The Parisians, filled with ardour, awaited the
+signal of combat, when the news came to them that the emperor had bought
+with money the withdrawal of their half vanquished enemy and given the
+barbarians permission to “winter” in Burgundy, that is to say, to ravage
+that province. They at least refused to be a party to this shameful
+agreement, and when the Northmen’s ships presented themselves at the
+bridges they refused to let them pass. The pirates had to drag their
+boats upon the shore and made a wide detour in order to avoid the heroic
+city (November, 886). The brave people of Sens imitated the courage of
+the Parisians and resisted the Northmen for six months.
+
+In that year Paris gloriously won its title of capital of France; and its
+chief, the brave count Eudes, laid the foundation of the first national
+dynasty. The contrast between the courage of the little city and the
+cowardice of the emperor turned everyone against the unworthy prince.[b]
+On all sides he was accused of indolence and incapacity. A great weakness
+of body and spirit had come over him. The vassals wanted an able and
+active king.
+
+Those of Germany and Lorraine, assembled at Tribur, near Mainz, in
+887, pronounced Charles’ deposition “because he was lacking,” says the
+_Annals_ of St. Waast, “in the necessary strength to govern the empire.”
+The feeble and unfortunate emperor suffered the fate of the “do-nothing”
+Merovingian kings. He was shut up in the monastery of Reichenau,
+on Lake Constance, and died in about two months.[d] The empire of
+Charlemagne was irrevocably dismembered; its pieces served to form seven
+kingdoms--France, Navarre, Cisjurane Burgundy, Transjurane Burgundy,
+Lorraine, Italy, and Germany.
+
+
+THE FEUDAL RÉGIME
+
+[Sidenote: [843-887 A.D.]]
+
+But it was not only the empire that was dismembered; it was also the
+realm and royalty itself. At the close of Charlemagne’s reign, feudalism
+was not yet founded, but it was almost completely established at the
+death of Charles the Bald a half century afterwards. And this was because
+the progress of feudal institutions was singularly hastened by the
+historical events we have just been studying.
+
+Royal authority at the end of Charles the Bald’s reign was ruined, as it
+had been under the later Merovingians, for the same reasons and in the
+same fashion. The king had no more money and he had no more land to give
+away. He tried to take from the church, but the church resisted. The
+bishops assembled in council at Meaux and at Paris in 846, in the early
+years of the reign, advised Charles the Bald to send _missi dominici_ to
+make a thorough investigation of the lands of the royal fisc, which had
+been usurped. “You must not,” they told him, “let a state of poverty,
+which does not accord with your dignity, push your magnificence to do
+things you would not wish to do. You cannot have attendants to serve
+you in your house, unless you have the means to pay them.” Here we see
+royalty reduced to indigence. The king himself recognised it. “We wish,”
+he said, one day, “to determine, with the advice of our faithful, how we
+may live in our court honourably and without poverty, as our predecessor
+did.”
+
+Since the reign of Charles the Bald, public authority had disappeared.
+The kingdom, ravaged by the Northmen, the Bretons, and the Aquitanians,
+was in the throes of brigandage. Brigandage had sunk so deeply into
+the customs of the country that oaths were exacted from freemen not to
+attack houses or to conceal robbers. In his twenty-third capitulary
+(857) the king, after speaking of the infinite evils caused not only by
+the incursions of the pagans, but also by the vagabondage of some of
+his own royal subjects, orders the bishops, counts, and _missi_ to call
+together general meetings which everyone without exception must attend.
+The bishop was to read to the gathering the precepts of the Gospels,
+the fathers, and the prophets against brigandage. The capitulary itself
+furnished quotations from Christ, the prophet Isaiah, St. Augustine and
+St. Gregory. If these were not sufficient the bishop was to add all those
+he might find himself. He was also to threaten all hardened sinners with
+anathema, and to explain to them what a terrible punishment it was. On
+their own side the counts and missi were to read the laws of Charles and
+of Louis against brigandage.
+
+If these readings had no effect the guilty man was threatened with the
+sentence of the bishops and the prosecution of the judges. If he showed
+contempt for the one or the other he could be summoned to the king’s
+presence. If he refused to come he would be excluded from the holy
+church, on earth as well as in heaven. He would be pursued until driven
+from the realm. But to this there must be a public force, and such
+existed no longer; and this is why the king was compelled to replace it
+with sermons and threats of hell.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF A NORMAN CHURCH, FRANCE]
+
+In no age of history did the weak have more need of protection than
+in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and this is why the last freemen
+disappeared throughout a large portion of Gaul, especially north of the
+Loire.
+
+After having fled for a long time at the approach of the pagans to the
+forest, among the wild beasts, some stout-hearted had turned their heads
+and refused to abandon all they had without some attempt at defence. Here
+and there in mountain gorges, at river fords, or on the hill overlooking
+the plain, walled strongholds were raised up where the brave and the
+strong held their own. An edict of 862 directed the counts and the
+king’s vassals to repair their old castles and to build new ones. The
+country was soon covered with these strongholds against which invaders
+often flung themselves in vain. A few defeats taught these bold people
+prudence, and they dared not venture so far amid these fortresses which
+had sprung out of the ground on all sides, and the new invasion, now
+made hazardous and difficult, came to an end in the following century.
+The masters of these castles became later the terror of the country side
+they had helped to save. Feudalism so oppressive in its age of decadence
+had its legitimate term. All power is raised up by its good services and
+falls by its abuses. These hedged and walled-in castles were places of
+refuge from the Northmen, but often also they became nests of brigands.
+However, little by little, out of the chaos came a new order of things.
+
+We have seen how the king and his nobles assured themselves of the
+services of a greater or less number of men by giving them benefices
+or rather taking these men under their protection by making them their
+vassals. One might be a beneficiary without being a vassal or a vassal
+without being a beneficiary; in the days of Charles the Bald there
+were vassals who held no land. These were the _vagi homines_, so often
+mentioned in the prince’s edicts--brigands in search of fortune and who
+transferred their loyalty from one noble to another at their pleasure.
+It was to remedy these disorders and to organise these unruly members of
+society that Charles the Bald ordered every freeman to choose a lord and
+remain faithful to him.
+
+Doubtless it happened more often than otherwise that the man who received
+a piece of land made himself a vassal of the man who gave it to him, but
+the two states finally became much confused. One might be at the same
+time both beneficiary and vassal, and take upon himself the very narrow
+obligations of one and the other condition. Indeed after a property had
+been held for several generations by men who inherited their obligations
+together with the land, it seemed as if the fief carried its rights and
+duties with it and communicated them to those that held it. In the end
+the property, which always remained, was considered rather than the men,
+who came and went. It was no longer the weak man who bound himself to
+the strong one but the little acreage to the great domain, and certain
+formalities symbolised this new relation. The land became his in a manner
+to replace itself in the hands of the great landlord, in the shape of a
+clod of sod or the branch of a tree, which the petty proprietor brought
+himself. This land, so burdened with obligations, was the fief.
+
+When France became covered with fiefs each property had its own
+organisation; it had its lord, great or small, and there was no land
+without its lord. Whoever had no land had no condition, for there was
+no lord without his land. Certain relations were established between
+the different fiefs--there were some which were dominant and others
+which were dominated. The dominant fiefs were those of the dukes and the
+counts, who assumed all the power which royalty had delegated them and
+who ruled as petty kings over their duchies and counties. Their vassals
+and the latters’ sub-vassals depended upon them before depending upon the
+king. As for the dukes and counts, they were the vassals of the king,
+but as the feudal hierarchy developed, the obligation of the vassal
+became, as a matter of fact, less strict. The duke of Burgundy’s vassals
+obeyed him; of course the duke of Burgundy would not make the mistake of
+disobeying the king.
+
+Such was the great revolution accomplished at the end of the ninth and
+in the tenth century. After the deposition of Charles the Fat appeared
+the great fiefs whose names we find over and over again throughout the
+whole of French history. The duke of Gascony owned all the country south
+of the Garonne, and the counts of Toulouse, Auvergne, Périgord, Poitou,
+and Berri, the district between the Garonne and the Loire. To the east
+and north of the latter river everything belonged to the count of Forez,
+the duke of Burgundy, the duke of France, and to the counts of Flanders
+and Brittany who exercised their royal rights over the land. To the kings
+remained only a few towns which he had not yet been constrained to give
+away in fiefs.
+
+
+THE CHURCH
+
+In the ninth century royalty fell and feudalism arose; the former had
+lost its strength, the latter had not yet acquired that which it was soon
+to have. The church alone had all the power. She wanted nothing--the
+authority in knowledge and morality, the ardent faith of the people,
+rich domains--in fact, while everything was breaking up and civil and
+political society going to pieces, the ecclesiastical body showed its
+unity and its healthy condition in the fifty-six councils which were
+held in the reign of Charles the Bald alone. The bishops, reasoning on
+the right of the church to interfere in the conduct of every man guilty
+of sin in order to correct and punish him, arrived logically at the
+pretension that they could depose kings and dispose of their crowns. They
+were not only the ministers of religion, but participated at the time
+in the administration of public affairs. Since Charlemagne, who brought
+them into the government of his empire, they may be found taking part in
+all affairs and speaking everywhere with authority. These were they who
+degraded and re-established Louis le Débonnaire, who told at Fontenailles
+on which side justice lay. In 859 Charles the Bald, threatened with
+deposition by some of the bishops because he violated his own laws, could
+find nothing further to reply to this assumption of authority than that
+“having been consecrated and anointed with the holy chrism, he could
+not be overthrown on his throne, nor supplanted by anyone without being
+heard and judged by the bishops who had crowned him king.” This right
+Archbishop Hincmar, of Rheims, the most illustrious personage of his day,
+had haughtily claimed.
+
+This power of the church was a fortunate thing in these days, when might
+made right, for she alone found herself in a position to keep alive the
+idea that justice was above strength; and to oppose the aristocratic
+principle of the feudal organisation, she put forward that of the
+brotherhood of man. In place of hereditary primogeniture which prevailed
+in civil society, she practised election for herself and proclaimed the
+rights of the intellect. If the prerogative of deposing kings which she
+claimed was a usurpation of temporal authority it must be recognised that
+the latter had no antidote but the sacerdotal power, and the weak and
+oppressed no other security than the protection of the churches. When
+Lothair II, king of Lorraine, put away without reason Queen Thietberga
+in order to marry Waldrada, Pope Nicholas I took up the poor, betrayed,
+outraged woman’s cause, and at the risk of persecution established her
+rights. While law was impotent and opinion without strength, it is well
+that somewhere there existed an avenger of outraged morality.[b]
+
+
+CAPETIANS AND CARLOVINGIANS (887-936 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [887-911 A.D.]]
+
+Eight kings shared in the division of the empire through the deposition
+of Charles the Fat. In France it was Eudes, count of Paris, who had just
+defended that town against the Normans and whose glory was heightened by
+contrast with the ignominious conduct of Charles the Fat.
+
+The accession of Count Eudes was an important fact, although
+overestimated perhaps, if one wishes to regard it as a bridge between
+Gaul and France and between the Franks and the French. It was not the
+beginning of a revolution of which he was the consummation; nor yet
+a point of departure, for it was Frenchmen rather than Angevins who
+fought with Robert the Strong at Brissarthe. However, apart from the
+fact itself, the reign of the first French king was certainly important.
+The Normans, turned loose upon Burgundy by Charles the Fat, had gone
+still further; they threw themselves upon Champagne which they were
+proceeding to ruin with fire and sword when the new king attacked them
+in the defiles of the Argonne, near Montfaucon. A brilliant victory
+made a worthy beginning to his reign, but that was all. Wearied by the
+fruitless struggle, occupied elsewhere by the anxieties which Aquitaine
+gave him where through race jealousy his “usurpation,” as the monks of
+that time and the seventeenth century historians called it, had not
+been recognised, and at a time when they placed at the head of acts,
+_Christi regante: rege nullo_ (“in the reign of Christ and absence of
+the king”). Eudes finally adopted the Carlovingian policy and drove the
+Normans back with his purse. What brought about his ruin was that he
+broke too abruptly with the feudalism that made him king. His cousin
+Vaucher rebelled against royal authority. Eudes could not understand that
+this authority was no longer anything but a phantom, even in his hands,
+and he had his cousin’s head cut off after obtaining his submission. The
+people deplored the light-hearted nonentity of a Carlovingian king, but a
+faction which formed in favour of young Charles the Simple, youngest son
+of Louis the Stammerer, waxed in strength until the former count of Paris
+was obliged to capitulate. He admitted his rival to a sort of partnership
+and at his death the kingdom of France returned to Germanic dominion, if
+we can admit, that it is still possible to recall the Austrasian origin
+of Charles the Simple (898).
+
+Under this reign the people were finally delivered from the long Norman
+invasion, which stopped of its own accord, and by act of the invaders
+rather than resistance of the invaded. Since the time the Norman vassals
+collected at the mouth of the Seine, the country round about had been
+nothing but a desert, towns abandoned, villages in ashes; one could
+travel whole leagues without even hearing a dog bark. Since there was
+nothing more to be got they ran the risk of dying by hunger. The Normans
+finally perceived with their positive spirit that it was better to take
+possession of the land than to pillage its ruined inhabitants, and that
+it was worth more to make these rich territories valuable than to get
+sustenance from their ruins. Thenceforth everything was changed. The
+fleets from the north brought colonists instead of pirates, and the
+peasants found in their midst a protection which they could not have
+gotten anywhere else.
+
+[Sidenote: [911-923 A.D.]]
+
+The new plan had been in operation for some time when a great emigration
+was determined upon in the north, owing to the subjection of all the
+chiefs under one head. The movement set out in the direction of Neustria
+under the leadership of Rollo, the famous sea-king--one of those who had
+assisted at the siege of Paris in the days of Charles the Fat, and had
+established a fixed home in that country. For some years the new-comers
+kept up their old practises. They burned St. Martin of Tours, and went
+to Bourges and killed the bishop. Rollo reappeared before the towers
+of the châtelet. Finally he came to an understanding with Charles the
+Simple, who gave him his daughter Gisela in marriage and raised him to
+the rank of the feudal barons, by legalising his seizure of Neustria.
+Rollo became duke of Normandy, and the king of France’s vassal, not
+without making the latter often feel that he troubled himself little
+about the nominal suzerainty. When the time for doing homage came and
+they wished him to do it in the Carlovingian manner, by kissing the
+sovereign’s foot, “No, by God,” exclaimed the proud sea-king, and he
+signed to one of his soldiers to kiss the royal foot for him. But the
+soldier, not less proud, seized Charles’ foot and put it to his lips
+without kissing it. The king fell back and his people remained dumb and
+motionless amid the laughter of Rollo and his companions[2] (912). The
+barbaric traits of the Normans did not prevent their quickly assimilating
+the semi-civilisation they found in their new country. Normandy was
+soon the most prosperous and best policed province in the kingdom. As
+Ordericus Vitalis[i] says, a child could have crossed it in safety, a
+purse full of gold in his hand. There runs a tale that one day while
+hunting Rollo hung his gold bracelets on a tree and they remained there
+two years without anyone’s daring to touch them.
+
+Charles the Simple lost no time in indemnifying himself for the cession
+of Neustria by the acquisition of Lorraine which became his on the death
+of Louis the Child, son of the emperor Arnulf; but he did not profit long
+by this addition to his realm. He had made a favourite of a person of low
+degree, a man named Haganon. Haganon, more solicitous than his master
+to uphold the royal dignity, soon displayed the desire of raising it,
+to his own profit, from the state of subjection in which it was kept by
+the powerful nobles. Two of the latter presented themselves four days in
+succession to speak with the king and waited in vain at the door of his
+bed-chamber. They finally went away thoroughly angry, saying that Haganon
+would soon be king with Charles, or Charles a man of low condition with
+Haganon. Of these two noblemen, one was Henry the Fowler, or the Saxon,
+king of Germany, and the other Robert, duke of France, brother of the
+late king Eudes.
+
+In 920, at a court held at Soissons, the nobles assembled together, all
+broke the blades of straw and threw them on the ground at the feet of
+Charles the Simple, declaring that they disowned him as their king. Each
+took his departure at once, and Charles remained alone on the spot where
+the assemblage had met. There followed two years of hesitation, at the
+end of which Robert, duke of France, caused himself to be proclaimed king
+in the cathedral of Rheims by his vassals and those of his son-in-law,
+Rudolf of Burgundy. Charles having retired to Lorraine, the new king
+prepared to seek him as far as the foot of the Ardennes. He did not
+anticipate any resistance, but Haganon purchased the services of a
+band of Normans, living along the Maas, which Charles led in person
+into Robert’s domains. A battle took place on the plain of St. Médard
+(Soissons) near the Aisne (923). Robert, throwing his long white beard
+over his coat of arms, seized his banner and flung himself into the
+mêlée. He fell upon Fulbert, his rival’s standard-bearer, when Charles
+cried out, “Take care, Fulbert.” The standard-bearer, turning, dodged
+the blow which Robert was aiming, and cleft the duke’s head with his
+sword. Charles the Simple gained nothing by this. Robert’s son, Hugh,
+hastened up with his brother-in-law, Héribert de Vermandois, and remained
+to the end master of the battle-field, strewn with eighteen thousand dead.
+
+[Sidenote: [923-927 A.D.]]
+
+Of the two men who had claimed the title of king that morning, one lay
+cold in death, the other was dethroned by defeat. Robert’s son sent to
+consult his sister Emma, wife of Rudolf of Burgundy, to know what he
+should do with the crown on his hands. Emma replied that she would prefer
+to kiss the knees of her husband rather than those of her brother, and
+Rudolf was made king (July 13th, 923).
+
+The aged Rollo was now minded of the homage which he had formerly held so
+cheaply, and as faithful vassal loudly declared himself the protector of
+the vanquished king. Doubtless he preferred such a sovereign as Charles
+the Simple to a connection with that powerful house of the dukes of
+France, who moved everything at their pleasure. Unfortunately he did not
+have the king in his hands. Charles had taken refuge at Bonn with the
+king of Germany, the same Henry the Fowler whom he had once kept waiting
+at his own door. He wished now to make use of the services of Héribert of
+Vermandois, who swore to replace him on the throne. The king sought Count
+Héribert at the gates of St. Quentin, where the latter knelt and kissed
+the king’s knee. The count’s son refused to do the same and Héribert took
+him by the neck and forced him to kneel. Then he conducted the king into
+St. Quentin and entertained him with great magnificence. But the next day
+he had him seized in the night and conducted to Château Thierry, whence
+they carried him to the tower of Péronne. Héribert then marched with
+Rudolf against the Normans, who were with great difficulty driven back
+from the Île-de-France and Beauvoisis. Rudolf believed himself mortally
+wounded during an encounter in Artois and the inhabitants of Laon saw him
+carried into their city on a barrow. Rollo died a short time afterwards,
+leaving as successor his son, William Longsword.
+
+[Illustration: RUDOLF, KING OF FRANCE]
+
+[Sidenote: [927-942 A.D.]]
+
+The count of Vermandois had not undertaken this piece of treachery
+for nothing, and had already obtained the archbishopric of Rheims for
+his son, a child of five years. They placed the boy on a table in the
+presence of the bishops, and after stammering a few words of catechism,
+he was consecrated with the approbation of the onlookers. But even
+this did not satisfy the father’s ambition, who demanded the county of
+Laon for himself. Rudolf, who was finding his restless and dangerous
+auxiliary too powerful, feared perhaps the fate of Charles the Simple,
+and met the demand with a refusal. Thereupon Héribert dragged Charles
+from prison, clothed him in rich raiment, and took him to the court
+of William Longsword, who saluted him as king. This was all that was
+needed to decide Rudolf, who ceded the county of Laon, and Charles was
+put back in Péronne. But when Héribert tried to commence the same game
+again, Rudolf this time took up arms and pressed him so hotly that he
+was obliged to flee to Germany. There now remained to him nothing but
+Péronne, but Henry the Fowler, the count of Flanders, and the duke of
+Lorraine interfered; Rudolf gave him back his possessions and died soon
+after without a male heir (936). Charles the Simple had preceded him by
+a few years to the tomb (929). The vacant throne was for a second time
+at the disposition of the duke of France, who did not want it, since
+he found it much pleasanter to remain peacefully in real possession,
+pre-eminent as he was among the feudal lords, than to plunge himself
+into interminable controversies by placing on his head a crown which
+had become the target for so much contention. Rudolf’s enemies, of whom
+we have mentioned but a small part, had much reason to support the duke
+in this resolution. Hugh now remembered that at the time of the fall of
+Charles the Simple the latter’s wife Odgiwe had taken to England their
+son Louis, then a child, but now, after thirteen years of exile, entering
+upon his sixteenth year. Hugh congratulated himself on his great mind and
+went after him.
+
+
+THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS (936-987 A.D.)
+
+Louis IV, surnamed Louis d’Outre-Mer on account of his long sojourn on
+the other side of the Channel, occupied the throne eighteen years, but
+his reign was one long humiliation. Hugh exploited his generosity to the
+king, as Héribert had done about his treachery, and scarcely got him
+to the shores of France than he dragged him to the duchy of Burgundy
+and made Louis invest him with it; and moreover Louis had the chagrin
+of seeing that his act was useless. Hugh the Black, Rudolf’s brother,
+bravely defended his heritage. The royal signature served nothing to
+the duke of France who, armed as he was, could only snatch a few shreds
+from the duchy of Burgundy. Thwarted in his ambition he turned to other
+things and demanded the county of Laon. Following Rudolf’s example, Louis
+refused this demand, but for a still more powerful reason. The county
+of Laon was the sole domain left the crown through the usurpations of
+feudalism. Louis, who would have been nothing more than a stranger in
+his kingdom if this were taken from him, preferred a one-sided struggle.
+Fortunately for him, the emperor Otto came to his rescue, but not before
+he was besieged in his own city, and deserted by his most faithful
+partisans. The presence of the imperial army saved him from disaster, but
+Otto when he went home did not leave him any the stronger. Incapable of
+holding his own so close to the duke of France, Louis appeared before the
+people of Aquitaine, always favourably disposed towards the Carlovingian
+kings, since they had nothing to fear from them and had shown no more
+preference for the kingship of Duke Rudolf than they had for that of
+Count Eudes. Well received everywhere, Louis nevertheless encountered but
+a sterile compassion, and must have thought himself fortunate in that
+the duke of France, become more formidable than ever since the death of
+Héribert de Vermandois, was willing to await an occasion of revolt or
+rather of war.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS IV
+
+(From an old print)]
+
+[Sidenote: [942-948 A.D.]]
+
+Meanwhile William Longsword had met a tragic end, assassinated by Arnulf,
+count of Flanders, after an interview on one of the islands of the Somme,
+in December, 942. He left one son named Richard, only ten years old.
+The moment was now favourable for Louis to assert the royal authority,
+inactive in his hands. He appeared at once in Rouen, received the homage
+of the young Richard, and made himself the child’s guardian. The people
+nearly besieged the house in which he lodged when they learned that he
+intended to take the boy back to Laon, but a few tactful words calmed
+everything. But once he had the young duke in his palace he used no
+more caution. The child, separated from all his Norman attendants, even
+from his tutor, found himself in truth a captive. The people who looked
+after him were severely reprimanded on one occasion for having taken him
+outside the city on a hunt for birds. Evidently the king’s intention was
+to strengthen the royal crown by putting it under the protection of the
+ducal crown of Normandy. Osmond, Richard’s tutor, cut this dream short by
+a bold stratagem. Disguised as a groom he managed to get near his pupil,
+enveloped him in a bale of hay, and carried him thus on his shoulders to
+the outskirts of Laon, where horses were waiting. Touched to the quick
+Louis d’Outre-Mer appealed to the ambition of Hugh of France and proposed
+to share Normandy with him if he would help get it back. Hugh agreed, but
+scarcely was Louis established in Normandy than he forgot his promises
+and sent the duke back to Paris. But the king paid dearly for this breach
+of faith. At news of the subjection with which their Neustrian brothers
+were threatened, the Northmen sent a large fleet under the command of
+Harold, the Dane. A battle took place on the banks of the Dive, not far
+from Rouen, in which the French were completely routed (945). Louis,
+wandering swordless through the country at the will of his horse, whose
+bridle had been cut by sword-blows, met a soldier from Rouen who, anxious
+for the king’s safety, concealed him on an island in the Seine, where
+however he was discovered. The king’s liberty was negotiated with great
+show by Hugh of France, who finally got him out of the Normans’ hands.
+Great was the surprise when the end of this fine devotion became known.
+From his Norman prison Louis entered another which Hugh was determined
+he should not leave until he gave up the city and county of Laon. After
+this last misfortune Louis seemed less a king than a ruined lord. He
+filled the German court with his plaints, wrote to the pope, and summoned
+councils. Councils, pope, and emperor all failed before Hugh’s will.
+Finally tired of the fight, and knowing well that Louis would be none the
+more formidable with it, Hugh gave the county back to the king, who did
+not enjoy it for long. Four years later, while pursuing a wolf on the
+road from Rheims to Laon, Louis’ horse threw him and he died from the
+fall (954).
+
+[Sidenote: [948-980 A.D.]]
+
+Hugh had obtained a part of Burgundy on the return of Louis d’Outre-Mer;
+he now made use of the accession of Louis’ son Lothair, to have Aquitaine
+given him. But this time again, the royal sanction was powerless.
+William, duke of Aquitaine, received the invader in arms, and the war
+lasted for two years, when the duke of France died. He had named two
+kings and permitted a third to reign. Hugh Capet, his eldest son,
+inherited the duchy of France, and at the same time his father’s great
+influence, which he used in more moderate fashion.
+
+He never came into hostility with Lothair throughout the latter’s whole
+reign. He looked on quietly while the king was active in the east, west,
+and north, trying to get his hands on Normandy, seizing some territory
+from the count of Flanders, which he had to give back, and making
+military excursions into Lorraine as far as the borders of Germany. This
+fruitless activity, this restless desire to attempt hopeless conquests,
+was in singular contrast with Hugh Capet’s power of repose. One would
+have said that the latter divined the future and that he disdained to
+forestall fortune by a single step in the belief of what would come to
+him.
+
+In all this empty reign there is but one event that offers anything
+of interest. During an expedition in Lorraine (978), the principal
+object of his covetousness, Lothair came unexpectedly upon Aachen
+(Aix-la-Chapelle), where Otto II was then staying. The emperor was about
+to sit down to table when the arrival of the king of France forced him
+to flee, and Lothair ate the dinner prepared for Otto. Otto swore to
+sing to him beneath the walls of Paris such a Halleluiah as the king had
+never heard; and what seemed like an angry piece of bravado was really
+carried out. The emperor appeared with sixty thousand men upon the
+heights of Montmartre after having ravaged the country around Rheims,
+Laon, and Soissons, and caused to be intoned by a number of clerks the
+Halleluiah with which he had threatened Parisian ears, and in the chorus
+of which this whole army joined.[3] Paris was avenged for this din; for
+in crossing the Aisne, swollen by storms, on his return, Otto lost his
+booty, baggage, and all his rearguard (980). It is true that he carried
+away with him the remembrance of the most formidable psalmody of which
+history makes mention, and the honour of having planted his lance in
+one of the gates of Paris; but these were rather frivolous achievements
+for the son of Otto the Great, and his Halleluiah would certainly have
+produced much more effect had he taken his sixty thousand men to sing it
+at Rome.[f]
+
+The campaign, however, was successful in having raised mutual disgust
+between Lothair and Hugh Capet, the latter finding himself exposed to
+incursions and ravage from the idle ambition and provocation of Lothair,
+who was unable to support him by any force; while Lothair, on his side,
+saw that Hugh merely protected his own territories, without caring for
+Laon or Lorraine. Lothair, therefore, became reconciled to Otto, held
+a meeting with him on the Maas, and, as the price of the emperor’s
+friendship, waived his pretensions to Lorraine, at which his followers’
+hearts _corda Francorum_, says the Chronicle of St. Denis,[j] were much
+saddened. If the descendant of Charlemagne gave up his claims upon
+Lorraine to Otto, it was idle for Hugh Capet to remain in hostility with
+the German emperor. The latter, after his pacification with Lothair,
+had gone to Italy; thither Hugh Capet sent, proffering friendship and
+alliance with Otto. The reply was an invitation to the duke to visit the
+emperor in Italy: a request with which Hugh Capet complied, to the great
+anxiety and suspicion of Lothair, who, according to Richer,[k] used every
+effort to have Hugh’s return intercepted. The latter felt it necessary to
+pass the Alps in the disguise of a groom, and thus returned to his duchy.
+
+[Sidenote: [980-987 A.D.]]
+
+Otto II expired in 982. Henry of Bavaria claimed the throne, setting
+aside the right of the future Otto III, a boy of but five years of age;
+and Lothair, alive to every opportunity of gaining Lorraine, leagued
+with Henry, and undertook an expedition to the Rhine. The people of
+the country were, however, hostile to him, and he retreated with some
+difficulty. In the following year he was more fortunate; aided by
+Héribert of Troyes, he succeeded in winning possession of the strong
+town of Verdun, from the walls of which he repelled all the efforts of
+the Lorraine chiefs to expel him. A gleam of prosperity thus shone upon
+Lothair, when death carried him off in 986. His eldest son, who had been
+crowned by anticipation several years previous, succeeded to the hopeful
+position of his father. Even Hugh Capet seemed inclined to restore his
+friendship and protection, as the first act of the young king was, in
+concert with the duke, to march to the reduction of the archiepiscopal
+town of Rheims.
+
+It is considered by M. Thierry, who has been in general followed by
+modern French historians, that the principal cause which about this
+time led to the enthronement of Hugh Capet as king of France or of the
+French, in place of the Carlovingian princes, was the antipathy of race,
+and especially that of French against Germans, which prompted the chiefs
+and the population of the central provinces to throw off the yoke of
+the Germans, which the Lorraine or Belgian princes were to a certain
+degree. A study of the records and chronicles of the time does not lead
+to this conclusion. On the contrary, they prove beyond a question that
+the personages and the party which were most influential in awarding the
+crown definitively to Hugh Capet were precisely Belgian or Lorraine, and
+attached moreover to German interests.
+
+Hitherto the Carlovingian princes had maintained their hold and
+influence in their own circumscribed territories by the support of the
+archiepiscopal church of Rheims, which maintained its jealousy both of
+the duke of Paris and of the German emperor, labouring at the same time
+to save and to recover its church property, as best it might, from the
+counts ever ready to despoil it.
+
+Adalbero, son of Godfrey, count of the Ardennes, had been promoted
+to that see, and had laboured to reform and restore it. The prelate
+Adalbero was not what his predecessor had been, a devoted partisan of
+the Carlovingian princes. He saw that they were too weak to protect the
+church, especially that of Rheims, which, situated between the frontiers
+of two great nations, was continually the spoil of both. Adalbero,
+connected with all the German noblesse and princely families of Lorraine,
+was for preserving that province for the young emperor Otto; and his
+letters of exhortation written by Gerbert, addressed to all the prelates
+and counts of the border region, entreat them to resist all the efforts
+of Lothair and Louis, whilst recommending that they make a friend of
+Hugh, duke of France.
+
+Policy so hostile to them on the part of the prelate of Rheims excited
+the inveterate enmity of the Carlovingian princes; and, at length, Louis
+marched to reduce Rheims with an army that Adalbero could not for the
+moment resist, for he gave hostages to answer for his conduct before
+an assembly that was to be convened. The prelate did this, apparently,
+in connivance with Hugh Capet, between whom and Adalbero there was in
+all probability an early agreement to aim at the setting aside of the
+Carlovingians, and the division between the German emperor and Hugh
+Capet of the countries between France and Lorraine. The great obstacle to
+the completion of such a scheme, young king Louis, was at this very time
+carried off.[g] As the result of a fall from a horse “he was seized with
+a great pain in his liver and a burning fever; much blood flowed from
+his nose and throat”; he died May 21st, 987. Such is the simple account
+of the contemporary, Richer.[k] But if Adhémar de Chabannes[l] and other
+more recent chroniclers are to be believed Louis died “the same death as
+his father, of a poisoned draught given by his wife.” This more dramatic
+tradition has prevailed with the greatest number. The multitude were not
+willing to believe that so famous a dynasty could have come to an end by
+a burning fever or a commonplace accident. Both father and son died most
+opportunely for Hugh Capet, and what we know of the moral tone of that
+century allows us to suspect anything: but the testimony of Richer lends
+all the more weight to Hugh’s justification, since the monk of Rheims is
+a partisan of the ancient dynasty and not of the Capets.[h]
+
+The meeting of chiefs and prelates already summoned at Compiègne to
+hear Louis’ accusation of Adalbero took place. But no accuser appeared.
+Charles the uncle of Louis held aloof. By his conduct as lord of Cambray,
+which dignity he had accepted under the suzerainty of the emperor, he had
+alienated the clergy, the French or Franci, both of Laon and of the duchy
+of France, as well as public opinion in general. He had made a lowly
+marriage, lived a dissipated life, and had, in fine, but few friends.
+Hugh Capet took upon himself to absolve Adalbero of the crime laid to his
+charge, that crime being treason to the Carlovingian family, which was
+then in the thoughts and purposes of all. It was, however, judged right
+to defer the final decision, and to appoint another meeting at Senlis,
+where, after due reflection and deliberation, a solemn resolve might be
+made. In the interval between the assemblies, Charles came to remonstrate
+with Adalbero. The prelate repelled him as one given to the worst vices
+and the worst associates. When the second meeting took place at Senlis,
+Adalbero represented Charles as unworthy of the crown, which he declared
+had never been hereditary. And no doubt Adalbero, as archbishop of
+Rheims, had in view the example of Hatto, archbishop of Mainz, who, on
+the extinction of the German Carlovingians, had rendered the crown of the
+empire elective, and attributed to the church and its metropolitan the
+chief influence in the election. Hugh Capet was therefore unanimously
+declared king in the midsummer of 987, and was solemnly crowned soon
+after at Noyon.[g]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[1] [The gradual re-absorption of these fiefs or provinces into the royal
+domain is the story of the development of the French monarchy. They were
+annexed at different periods by conquest, purchase, voluntary or forced
+cession, confiscation, forfeiture, inheritance, marriage, or treaty. The
+reader is referred to the chronological table for the dates and manner of
+these annexations.]
+
+[2] [“In this unseemly manner,” says White,[e] “the pirate of the Baltic,
+and worshipper of the almost forgotten Odin, took his place among the
+Christian chivalry of Europe as duke of Normandy and one of the twelve
+peers of France.” On his conversion Rollo took the name of Robert.]
+
+[3] [It must be stated that this incident, though related by many
+historians, is based solely upon tradition.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY
+
+
+[Sidenote: [987-1180 A.D.]]
+
+The period of 240 years--from the accession of Hugh Capet to that of
+St. Louis--is described by Sismondi[i] as “a long interregnum, during
+which the authority of king was extinct, although the name continued
+to subsist.” A history of France, during this period, is a history not
+of its monarch but of its nobles. And as yet these details are neither
+heroic nor important enough to be interesting. A duke had sprung up in
+Aquitaine, a king in Provence. The establishment of the Norman princes
+has already been narrated. Betwixt them and Aquitaine, Anjou obeyed a
+warlike count. To the north, the first Baldwin possessed the county
+of Flanders betwixt the Somme and the Maas. The duchy of Burgundy was
+formed in the east; whilst that of Lorraine was altogether independent of
+France, and held by tongue as well as régime to the empire of Germany.
+Taking away these provinces from the map of France, a central portion
+will be found to remain betwixt the Loire and the Flemish border. Even
+here, however, the last Carlovingians possessed scarcely a castle which
+they could call their own. The counts of Paris possessed that city, as
+well as Orleans. The counts of Vermandois, whose capital was St. Quentin,
+at this time ruled Champagne also; but soon after that province came
+to increase the territories of the counts of Blois. The only town that
+obeyed the last reigning descendants of Charlemagne was Laon, and here
+they usually resided, unless when obliged to take refuge at Rheims, under
+the protection of the archbishop, against the attacks of the surrounding
+nobles.
+
+Charles of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis V and sole heir of the
+Carlovingians, though thus prevented of his rights, was neither
+friendless nor vanquished. He soon took forcible possession of Laon and
+of Rheims, from which Hugh Capet was unable to drive him by force of
+arms. He adroitly, however, contrived to attach to his interests Ascelin,
+bishop of Laon, whom Charles, somewhat mistrusting, kept with him at
+Rheims. A conspiracy, formed by Ascelin, was attended with complete
+success. Charles was seized in his bed, and, together with his nephew,
+the archbishop of Rheims, delivered over to Hugh Capet. That monarch
+placed his prisoners in confinement at Orleans, where the competitor,
+Charles of Lorraine, soon after died (991).
+
+[Sidenote: [991-996 A.D.]]
+
+These, if we except a long quarrel respecting the archbishopric of
+Rheims, are the sole events of the reign of Hugh Capet, which is supposed
+to have occupied nine years. Some modern historians regard the founder
+of the third dynasty of French monarchs as a hero and a master spirit,
+whose talents won for him a crown. Others, amongst whom is Sismondi,[i]
+represent him as a pious sluggard, indebted solely to fortune for his
+elevation. Both are in extreme. We see no proof of his heroism. But his
+was an iron age, in which the exertions of individuals had slight power
+in changing the course of events. Nor does it follow that, because he
+was pious, he was pusillanimous. He made war on the count of Montreuil,
+to recover the relics of St. Riquier, which that count had stolen. Hugh
+Capet compelled him to surrender them, and himself bore the memorable
+remains on his royal shoulders to the abbey of the saint. Such is the
+account of the chroniclers. But if we observe that Hugh at the same time
+built and fortified Abbeville, the monarch will not seem altogether sunk
+in the superstitious votary.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT II, KING OF FRANCE]
+
+“Who made thee count?” demanded Hugh Capet of a refractory noble,
+supposed by some to be Talleyrand, count of Angoulême. “The same right
+that made thee king,” was the bold reply. Such was the measure of the
+new monarch’s authority. The great feudatories, in consenting to place
+the crown on one of their own body, thought less of his elevation than
+of humbling the throne. Their views were sound, if they considered but
+themselves--short sighted, if they looked forward to posterity. Feudality
+ascended the throne with Hugh Capet; and, despite the precautions or
+intentions of the founders, the head of so powerful a system could not
+long remain powerless himself. Organised as society now was in regular
+and successive gradations of inferior and superior, a supreme chief
+became necessary to complete the whole. There was something wanting to
+crown the structure. The nobles imagined to adorn it with the lifeless
+image of royalty. But their statue, like Pygmalion’s, took life as it
+became the object of veneration, and grew at length to wield its sceptre
+with a muscular arm.
+
+[Sidenote: [996-1035 A.D.]]
+
+Hugh Capet had taken the precaution to have his son crowned and
+consecrated during his own lifetime. Thus, on the demise of the former,
+Robert II found himself the undisputed king of France. The young monarch
+was one of those soft, domestic tempers which fate so often misplaces
+on a throne. He had married Bertha, the widow of the count of Blois,
+and was tenderly attached to her. The spouses had the misfortune to be
+distantly related, and Robert had been godfather to one of Bertha’s
+children by her former husband. The pope considered these circumstances
+sufficient to render the marriage incestuous; and he accordingly issued
+a command to Robert, desiring him to put away Bertha, under pain of
+excommunication. The popes had erected themselves into the censors of
+princes, and they were especially rigid in prohibiting the marriage of
+cousins. Such unions, they said, drew down divine vengeance, and were to
+be avoided, lest they should produce national calamities. Nor was this
+mere superstition on their part: it had its policy. It was chiefly by
+intermarriages that the great aristocracy at this time increased their
+territories and influence. Every obstacle thrown in the way of these
+alliances consequently checked the growth of their exorbitant might;
+every difficulty or scruple, being in the power of the pontiff alone to
+remove, brought considerable advantage, both in revenue and respect, to
+the holy see. Robert struggled for four or five years in behalf of his
+legitimate wife, against the terrors of excommunication; but he was at
+length compelled to yield, to chase poor Bertha from his presence, and
+to take another wife, Constance, the daughter of the count of Toulouse.
+With her, a woman of more spirit than her predecessor, Robert was less
+happy. The monarch dreaded her, and was even obliged to do his alms in
+secret for fear of her reproof. His chief amusement was the singing and
+composing of psalms, to which the musical taste of that age was confined.
+In a pilgrimage to Rome, Robert left a sealed paper on the altar of
+the apostles. The priesthood expected it to contain a magnificent
+donation, and were not little surprised and disappointed to find it to
+contain but a hymn of the monarch’s composition. The piety of Robert was
+most exemplary. He was anxious to save his subjects from the crime of
+perjury; the means he took were to abstract privately the holy relics
+from the cases which contained them, and on which people were sworn. He
+substituted an ostrich’s egg, as an innocent object, incapable of taking
+vengeance on the false swearer.
+
+Such are the facts which we have to relate of a reign of nearly
+thirty-five years. The good king Robert slumbered on his throne, with a
+want of vigour and capacity that would have caused a monarch of the first
+two races to totter from his seat, or at least would have transferred
+his authority to some minister or powerful duke. The Capetians as yet,
+however, unlike the Carlovingians, had neither power nor prerogative to
+tempt the ambition of a usurper. The very title of king was unenvied. And
+whilst the sovereign led the choir at St. Denis, France was not the less
+vigorously governed by its independent and feudal nobility.[b]
+
+
+HENRY I (1031-1060 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1031-1060 A.D.]]
+
+Robert’s son and successor, Henry I, had first of all to sustain a family
+war against his mother, Constance, who put his young brother Robert
+on the throne. The church declared for Henry, and the famous Robert
+the Magnificent, more commonly known as Robert le Diable, duke of the
+Normans, lent him the support of his sword and secured the crown upon
+Henry’s head. Henry vanquished his brother, pardoned and granted him the
+duchy of Burgundy, the first house of which was founded by Robert. During
+this reign a famine made terrible ravage among the French and in several
+places men ate one another. Following this scourge, troops of wolves
+devastated the country, and the lords, more terrible than wild beasts,
+carried on their barbaric wars in the midst of this widespread desolation.
+
+[Illustration: EXCOMMUNICATION OF ROBERT THE PIOUS]
+
+The clergy with difficulty husbanded their anger in calling the vengeance
+of heaven upon this state of affairs and in affirming a multitude of
+miracles, and finally, in councils, ordered everyone to lay down his
+arms. They put forward the “Peace of God” in 1035, and threatened
+excommunication to those who violated so holy a decree. When the council
+in each province had formulated this peace deacons made it known to the
+people assembled in the churches. After the Gospel had been read the
+deacons mounted the pulpits and launched against infractors of the peace
+the following malediction: “Cursed be they who aid in doing evil; cursed
+be their arms and their horses! may they be banished with Cain, the
+fratricide, with Judas the traitor; with Dathan and Abiram, who descended
+living into hell. May their joy be extinguished at the sight of the holy
+angels as are these flames before your eyes.” At these words the priests
+who were holding lighted tapers threw them down and put them out, while
+the people, seized with fear, repeated with one voice, “May God thus
+extinguish the joy of those who will not accept peace and justice.”
+
+[Illustration: HENRY I
+
+(From an old engraving)]
+
+But passions were too rampant and ambitions, too indomitable for evil
+thus to be rooted out entirely. The Peace of God only multiplied
+perjurers without diminishing assassins. Five years later another law
+known as the “Truce of God” was substituted for it. The councils which
+proclaimed this did not try to stop the flow of all human passions but to
+control them and regulate war according to laws of honour and humanity.
+Recourse to force was no longer forbidden to those who could invoke
+no other law, but the employment of this means was submitted to wise
+restrictions. All military attack and all shedding of blood was forbidden
+from sunset Wednesday evening to sunrise Monday morning, as well as on
+all fast and feast days. A perpetual inviolability was accorded the
+churches, unarmed clerics, and monks, while the protection of the truce
+was extended to the peasants, their flocks, and implements of tillage.
+Promulgated first in Aquitaine, this wise and beneficial law was adopted
+throughout almost all Gaul, where the lords swore to observe it; and
+although it was often violated and soon fell into desuetude, it did much
+good in softening the manners of the nation and was the finest work of
+the mediæval clergy. Rumour spread that a horrible malady known as the
+“sacred fire” would punish infractors of the truce. The weakling king
+Henry, through “unreasonable pride,” was almost the only one to refuse
+to recognise it within his estates, giving as a pretext that it was an
+encroachment of the clergy upon his authority.
+
+This king has left no creditable impression upon history.[d] Save for a
+few expeditions into Normandy, most of which were unfortunate, he did
+nothing. In 1046 he refused the homage of the duke of Upper and Lower
+Lorraine, and even allowed the count of Flanders to declare for the
+emperor of Germany as suzerain.[c]
+
+It is said that from fear of unwittingly marrying a wife who might be
+allied to him by ties of blood, he sought one at the extremities of
+Europe, and married for his third wife the princess Anne, daughter of the
+grand duke Yaroslaff of Russia. Henry had three sons by this marriage, of
+whom he caused the eldest, Philip, to be made joint king in the last year
+of his life. He died in 1060 after a reign of twenty-nine years.[d]
+
+
+_Deeds of the Great Barons_
+
+[Sidenote: [1028-1054 A.D.]]
+
+The king did nothing, but the great lords accomplished much. Three
+especially filled France with the noise of their ambitions and their
+wars. Robert, surnamed the Magnificent by the nobles and the Devil by
+the people, had usurped the ducal crown of Normandy by poisoning his
+brother Richard III and his chief barons at a feast (1028). By force of
+energy and courage he crushed the opposition which his crime aroused and,
+uncontested sovereign of Normandy, interfered with all his neighbours.
+
+He upheld King Henry I against his brother, for which he received the
+French Vexin in return. He set out to oust Canute the Great from the
+throne of England for the profit of the sons of Ethelred, his cousin;
+but a storm having driven his fleet from the English coast upon that
+of Brittany, he invaded this country and forced the duke Alain to do
+him homage (1033). In 1035 struck with remorse he went to seek peace of
+conscience at Jerusalem. While returning he died in Asia Minor. Below
+Rouen, in one of the most beautiful positions in Normandy, you may see
+a hill covered with shapeless ruins. These are the remains of Robert
+le Diable’s castle, which, according to tradition, was haunted by evil
+spirits. The place is not far from the spot where John Lackland is said
+to have stabbed his nephew.
+
+The son and successor of Robert the Magnificent was William the Bastard,
+who had much to do to obtain the obedience of his vassals: the battle
+of Val-des-Dunes, near Caen (1046), finally rid him of his adversaries.
+King Henry, his suzerain, who fought that day on his side, soon found the
+young duke too powerful, and formed an alliance of all his enemies. This
+was the cause of numerous encounters between the Normans and the French
+(inhabitants of the Île-de-France), the latter in every event sustained
+by the Angevins and the Bretons. The bloodiest of these combats was that
+fought at Mortemer in 1054. The king supported by the count of Anjou had
+entered Normandy through the county of Évreux, while his brother Eudes
+penetrated the Pays de Caux with horsemen from Picardy, Champagne, and
+Burgundy.
+
+Duke William met this double invasion with two armies--that which marched
+against Eudes encountered, near Mortemer, the French, dispersed, and
+engaged in pillaging. The Normans killed some, took others, and put the
+rest to flight. Swift messengers bore the good news to the duke. “When
+night had come he despatched one of his men who climbed a tree near the
+king’s camp and began to utter loud cries. The sentinels asked why he
+thus cried aloud at an unseemly hour. ‘My name is Raoul de Ternois,’
+he replied, ‘and I bring you bad news. Take your wagons and carts to
+Mortemer to carry away your friends who are dead, for the French came
+against us to test the Normans’ chivalry, and they have found it much
+greater than they liked. Eudes, their standard-bearer, has been put to
+flight in shame; and Guy, count of Ponthieu, has been taken. All the
+others have been made prisoners or are dead, or have had great difficulty
+in saving themselves by rapid flight. Announce at once this news to the
+king of the French, on the part of the duke of Normandy.’” The frightened
+king retired in all haste, and Geoffrey Martel was obliged to abandon to
+William the sovereignty of Maine.
+
+Eudes II, count of Blois, desired to seize the kingdom of Provence and
+afterwards Lorraine, and to this reconstructed Lorraine he hoped to add
+the crown of Italy. But a battle in Barrois ended the schemes of the
+turbulent baron. Eudes was defeated and killed (1037); his wife alone was
+able to recognise his body among the corpses which strewed the field,
+and pay the last honours to his remains.
+
+[Sidenote: [987-1066 A.D.]]
+
+A prince against whom Eudes often fought, Fulk (Foulques) Nerra--or
+the Black--count of Anjou, was even more renowned. Thrice did he make
+pilgrimages to the Holy Land. On the last he caused himself to be drawn
+on a sledge, naked, and with rope around the neck, through the streets of
+Jerusalem, whipped the while with great blows by two valets, and crying
+with all his might, “Lord have mercy on the traitor, the perjurer Fulk.”
+Then he attempted to return on foot, but died on the way (1040). Fulk
+had indeed many crimes to expiate. Queen Constance was his niece. One
+day she complained to him of one of her husband’s favourites, and Fulk
+immediately despatched twelve knights with orders to stab the favourite
+wherever they might find him. Of his two wives, he had one burned to
+death, or according to other accounts stabbed her himself after she had
+been rescued from a precipice over which he tried to throw her; the other
+he compelled by ill treatment to retire to Palestine. His son Geoffrey
+Martel was also a fighter. He tried by force of arms in 1036 to compel
+his father to cede him the county of Anjou, but the old Fulk defeated and
+made him undergo the punishment of the _harnescar_. The rebel son had to
+travel several miles on all fours, a saddle on his back, to reach the
+count’s feet and implore his pardon.
+
+Geoffrey Martel, jealous of the duke of Normandy’s power, united with
+Henry I against him. His successors kept up this policy and the kings
+of France found the Angevin counts useful allies against the Norman
+duke--now become kings of England, at least until the moment the counts
+inherited the English crown themselves. It is related that Geoffrey
+Martel’s wife was fond of reading, but such was the scarcity of books
+that she was obliged to give two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat,
+and as much rye and millet for a manuscript of the homilies. The
+beautiful cathedral of Angers was begun under Fulk Nerra.[c]
+
+
+PHILIP I (1060-1108 A.D.)
+
+Philip I at the age of eight succeeded his father under the regency
+of Baldwin V, count of Flanders. The most important event of Philip’s
+minority, and one in which he took no part, was the conquest of England.
+The Norman knights were distinguished above all others by their
+immoderate desire for warlike adventure and their brilliant exploits.
+Some of them, landing sixty years before as pilgrims on the south coast
+of Italy, had helped the besieged inhabitants of Salerno to drive off a
+Saracen army. Inspired by the success of their compatriots, the sons of a
+petty nobleman, Tancred de Hauteville, followed by a band of adventurers,
+wrested Apulia from the Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs, and sustained
+with success a most unequal struggle against the German and Byzantine
+emperors, who joined forces to exterminate them. They made prisoner the
+German pope Leo IX, devoted to the family of the emperor Henry III;
+and, humbling themselves before their captive, obtained permission to
+hold their conquest as a fief of the church. Robert Guiscard completed
+the subjection of Apulia and Calabria, and his brother Roger conquered
+Sicily, and it was thus the Normans founded the kingdom of the Two
+Sicilies and the pope obtained suzerainty over it.
+
+Norman valour was the talk of Europe, when William the Bastard, son of
+Robert the Magnificent, began to assemble an army for the conquest of
+England. Warriors, full of confidence in his destiny, rushed from all
+directions to his standard.[4] It was several hundred years since Britain
+had been conquered by the Saxons, and the country was now under the rule
+of King Harold, whom a storm had once wrecked, before he was king, upon
+the coast of Normandy. As William’s prisoner, Harold was compelled to
+cede the Norman his rights to the throne; and when free at this price no
+longer considered himself bound by an oath extracted under compulsion. It
+was the custom in those days to consider shipwrecked persons as delivered
+by the judgment of God to the lord of the shore on which the storm had
+cast them. They could be held captive and even put to torture for the
+sake of ransom. William recalled to Harold his promise, especially
+invoked the will of Edward the Confessor, the last king of England, and
+declared his willingness to abide by the decision of the church. The
+consistory, assembled at the Lateran, pronounced in William’s favour,
+and at the instigation of the monk Hildebrand awarded him the kingdom
+of England and sent him, together with a blessed standard, a diploma as
+sovereign of the country. A great battle fought between the two rivals
+near Hastings in 1066 decided the issue. Harold lost his life; and
+England, after a desperate struggle, became the conquest of the Normans.
+William divided the country into fiefs for his barons and knights, and
+thenceforth feudalism spread over England the network it had already
+fastened upon France, Germany, and Italy.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIP I
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+This great event inflamed people’s spirits and disposed them to
+adventurous expeditions in distant lands. It was the forerunner of the
+Crusades; although the latter had a nobler motive than the others,
+springing, as they did, from the enthusiasm of exalted piety.
+
+[Sidenote: [1066-1073 A.D.]]
+
+A great revolution was taking place at this time in the church. Nicholas
+II occupied the pontifical chair at this moment. He had for counsellor
+a monk who deplored the vices of the clergy and the degradation of the
+church as much as the encroachments of the temporal upon spiritual
+authority. This monk, this man so celebrated in ecclesiastical history,
+was Hildebrand. He resolved to deprive the princes and lords of every
+source of influence over the clergy, to strengthen the ecclesiastical
+hierarchy, and to raise the pope above the kings of the earth, hoping
+thus to regain for the church her virtue, her splendour, and all her
+power. Such a project of universal domination, which would seem like
+madness to-day, was in Hildebrand’s age a conception of genius. It
+was Hildebrand’s glory to have wished to free the church’s spiritual
+authority from all temporal bonds; it was his mistake to have listened
+too much to his own ambition in trying to enslave the political
+government of the princes to ecclesiastical authority. In 1073 Hildebrand
+was chosen by the people and clergy of Rome as successor to Pope
+Alexander II. He took the name of Gregory VII.
+
+[Sidenote: [1071-1099 A.D.]]
+
+Philip of France was leading a life filled with scandal and violence.
+To satisfy his unbridled desires he, like Henry IV of Germany, was
+carrying on, in contempt of Gregory’s prohibition, the most shameful
+traffic in clerical benefices. The angered pontiff threatened Philip
+with excommunication. The colossal structure raised by the pontiff did
+not perish with him; his successors bound it together. He founded the
+universal monarchy of the popes upon a durable basis and on the ruling
+spirit of the time, and this domination reached a century after him, its
+highest point. The Crusades contributed powerfully to hold it together.
+Gregory conceived the plan of these, but it was not given to him to carry
+it out. The first of these memorable events took place in the time of
+Philip I and in the pontificate of Urban II. Philip was not associated
+with the First Crusade; he took no part in any of the great enterprises
+which marked the age in which he lived, and his reign offers nothing
+worthy of remembrance.
+
+In 1071 the widow of his guardian, Count Baldwin of Flanders, was robbed
+by the latter’s brother, Robert the Frisian, and she had recourse to
+Philip. The king took up arms in her behalf and marched against Robert,
+but suffered a shameful defeat at Cassel.[5] He also fought a twelve
+years’ war with William the Conqueror, but it was a war marked by no
+memorable event. William seduced Philip’s counsellors and partisans by
+offering them great domains in England. Philip on his side promised
+protection to the discontented element among the Normans and took the
+part of William’s eldest son Robert, in revolt against his father. After
+a truce and during an illness of the duke, the king made fun of the
+former’s extreme fatness by inquiring when he expected to be brought to
+bed. William heard of this and, furious, swore to bring the king the
+candles for the churching. He assembled a formidable army and was setting
+out to ravage Philip’s estates when he fell ill at Rouen and died there
+in 1087. When he was scarcely cold the lords who were with him departed
+in haste for their castles; his servants pillaged his effects, taking
+everything but the bed he lay on, and left the body of the conqueror
+naked on the mattress. A poor knight found it in this state and moved to
+pity covered it, at his own expense, with mourning robes and prepared to
+bury it. He had spoken the funeral service and the body was in the grave
+when a Norman named Asselin came forward and said, “This ground belongs
+to me; the man whose eulogy you have just pronounced robbed me of it. On
+this spot stood my father’s house, this man seized it against all justice
+and without paying a price for it. In God’s name I forbid you to cover
+the robber’s body with earth that is mine.” This is a memorable example
+of the vanity of an existence full of greatness and iniquity--a striking
+sign of the forerunner of the judgment which threatened, on the threshold
+of the other life, him who had founded his power on rapine and the
+extermination and misery of a people. This William, conqueror of a great
+realm and ravisher of immense domains in a foreign land, only obtained a
+resting-place in his native soil through pity; those who assisted at his
+funeral had to lay the price of it upon his coffin.
+
+[Sidenote: [1087-1108 A.D.]]
+
+None of his three sons paid him his last duties, but waged fierce war for
+his heritage.[d] William Rufus succeeded to the throne in England, and
+his brother Robert Courte-Heuse (Court-Hose or Short-Hose) in Normandy.
+But William was not content with his portion. He invaded Normandy in
+1090, and also disturbed the peace of the French monarchy by a vigorous
+claim on the French Vexin and a war on the count of Maine. When Robert
+joined the First Crusade he mortgaged his duchy to his brother, who
+occupied it. But William’s tenure was short. An arrow in the New Forest
+ended his life (1100). Robert Courte-Heuse hastened home and resumed his
+rule, but Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son who succeeded William
+Rufus in England, thirsted likewise for the paternal dominions. In 1104
+he appeared in Normandy and two years later the struggle was over. At
+the battle of Tinchebray Robert lost his lands and his liberty. Normandy
+passed to the English crown.[a]
+
+The death of the Conqueror was a great cause of joy to Philip and enabled
+him to continue his indolent and scandalous career. He had married
+Bertha, daughter of Count Florent of Holland, but tired of her and shut
+her up while he eloped with Bertrade, wife of Fulk le Réchin, count
+of Anjou, and married her. Pope Urban ordered the dissolution of this
+marriage, and on the refusal to obey a council assembled at Autun in 1094
+excommunicated the king. Philip no longer wished to wear the external
+marks of royalty; he was afflicted with grievous infirmities, which he
+recognised as the chastisement of God; so in 1100 he associated his son
+Louis with the crown, and thenceforth reigned only in name. A terrible
+fear of hell seized upon him. In humility he renounced burial in the
+sepulchre of the kings at St. Denis, and died in 1108 in the habit of a
+Benedictine monk.[d]
+
+
+LOUIS THE FAT AND LOUIS THE YOUNG (1108-1180 A.D.)
+
+Feebleness and inertness mark the reign of the first four Capetians. In
+the successor of Philip the race began to partake in the general activity
+of the age.
+
+The reign of Louis VI, better known as Louis le Gros, or the Fat, began
+in the lifetime of his predecessor. He was the first French monarch that
+entertained any settled maxim of government, or whose ideas reached a
+system of policy. His predecessors had been the creatures, the followers,
+of events. Louis knew how to control these. The whole effort and aim of
+his reign was to reduce the barons of the duchy of France to obedience.
+His views did not extend to the kingdom. He prudently limited his
+exertions to the counties within or bordering upon his power. History
+may disdain to recount minutely the wars carried on by Louis against the
+barons of Montmorency, whose castle rose within view of his capital, or
+against the lords of Puiset, of Montlhéry, or of Coucy, possessors of
+strongholds within a few leagues of Paris, from whence they were wont
+to sally forth to the plunder of travellers and merchants. And yet,
+of all the wars that adorn or sully the French annals, none was more
+wise in aim, more useful or important in consequences, than these petty
+enterprises of Louis.
+
+His first attempt was against the Burchards, lords of Montmorency, who
+were continually in quarrel with the abbaye of St. Denis; and, if we
+are to believe the chronicles of the day, written for the most part
+in that famous convent, the Montmorencys were impious spoliators and
+enemies of the church. Louis stood forth the champion of the clergy, and
+brought the Burchards to reason. His next efforts were directed against
+the château of Montlhéry and its rapacious owners, who interrupted all
+communication betwixt the royal towns of Paris and Orleans, greatly to
+the detriment of commerce and the annoyance of the townsfolk. Louis here
+took care to have a pretext also. He did not assert his royal authority
+and arm to avenge it. It was as the ally of the clergy that he subdued
+the Montmorencys; it was as the friend of commerce, and the avenger of
+the plundered burgesses, that he besieged Montlhéry. Louis XI did not
+use more policy and feint in his undermining of the aristocracy than did
+Louis VI; the latter, unfortunately for his own fame, having only the
+smaller sphere of action (1101).
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS VI
+
+(From an old engraving)]
+
+[Sidenote: [1101-1119 A.D.]]
+
+Nevertheless, the name of Louis the Fat stands connected with one of the
+most important revolutions in the civil history of France, _viz._, the
+enfranchisement of the _communes_ or commons, as the early municipalities
+were called. From him towns received their first charters; from his reign
+their first liberties date. In some towns the bishops favoured, in some
+they opposed, the enfranchisement of the commons. The barons were, in
+general, averse. The king was obliged to wage a tedious war against the
+family of Coucy, which, by means of a fortress, kept possession of the
+town of Amiens. He at length took and razed it; and the seigniory of the
+De Coucys merged in the township of Amiens.
+
+It was not merely by military exploits, and by the elevation of the
+_tiers état_ or third estate, that the royal authority progressed during
+the reign of Louis VI. The judicial authority attributed to the monarch
+by the feudal system, and exercised by him in his court or council of
+peers, made him the arbiter of disputed successions. It was thus that
+Philip I had extended his influence over the province of Berri. His
+son Louis interfered in the quarrels of the house of Bourbon, where a
+minor struggled against the usurpation of his uncle. Louis entered the
+Bourbonnais with an army in 1115, took Germigny, the principal fortress
+of Aymon de Bourbon, and compelled him to submit. Not since the early
+Carlovingians had the banners of a king of France been seen so far from
+his capital.
+
+[Sidenote: [1119-1127 A.D.]]
+
+The continued rivalry betwixt the Normans, or English, and the French
+excited and kept alive the warlike spirit of both nations. Henry I
+reigned in England, and also in Normandy, which he had usurped from his
+brother Robert. Louis took the part of the latter, as well as of his son
+William Clito; and mutual wars, or rather ravages, were frequent, with
+intervals of peace, betwixt the nations.[b] The principal feud between
+Henry and Louis was produced by accident.
+
+
+_Battle of Brenneville_
+
+On the 20th of August, 1119, Louis and Henry found themselves
+unexpectedly face to face on the plain of Brenmule or Brenneville,
+three leagues from Les Andelys. Henry descended from the height of
+Verclive with his sons Richard and Robert, five hundred men-at-arms,
+and some infantry. Louis, seeing that what he had long desired was now
+approaching, marched straight at the enemy at the head of four hundred
+knights, accompanied by William Clito, who had taken arms to deliver
+his father from a long captivity and to win back the heritage of his
+ancestors. William de Crespigny, a Norman knight on Clito’s side, charged
+first with eighty men-at-arms, penetrated as far as King Henry himself,
+and smote him such a blow on the head as, but for his cap of mail, must
+have split his skull; but Crespigny was instantly thrown from his horse
+and made prisoner with most of his followers. The knights of the Vexin
+and the rest of the French then fell impetuously on the Anglo-Normans,
+and at first caused them to give way, but Henry’s soldiers, closing up
+their ranks, pressed between them and overthrew the assailants, who were
+thrown into disorder by the sheer force of their charge. King Louis,
+seeing his followers in disarray and anxious to effect a retreat in order
+to avoid an irreparable loss, fled at full gallop, leaving his royal
+banner and 140 of his knights in the hands of the conquerors.
+
+“Of nine hundred knights who were present at this battle,” says Ordericus
+Vitalis,[g] “there were only three killed; for they were completely cased
+in iron and, moreover, mutually sparing one another as much from the fear
+of God as for the sake of brotherhood in arms. They concerned themselves
+less to kill the flying than to take them prisoners.”
+
+The king of the French, divided from his companions in his fright, lost
+his way in a forest (that of Lyons) where a peasant, who did not know
+him, guided him to Les Andelys in the hope of a large reward. King Henry
+bought the silver standard of Louis for forty marks from a man-at-arms,
+who had seized it and kept it as a witness of his victory; but the next
+day he sent back to King Louis his horse with its saddle, its rein, and
+all the royal trappings (Louis had apparently changed horses that he
+might fly without being recognised). And William Ætheling had sent back
+to his cousin, William Clito, the palfrey which the latter had lost in
+the battle, with other presents which King Henry had thought needful
+for an exile.[e] After this defeat Louis had to abandon William Clito’s
+cause. Pope Calixtus II arranged a peace and Henry I embarked for England
+with his family and his court. The journey is memorable for the loss of
+the “White Ship” (_Blanche Nef_) in which the most renowned knights and
+the heirs of the most illustrious house of the Norman race, including the
+two sons and a daughter of the king, perished. One child alone remained
+to the bereaved monarch, Matilda or Maud, the wife of the emperor Henry V
+but afterwards married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou.[a]
+
+[Sidenote: [1127-1149 A.D.]]
+
+Another enterprise of Louis, in the year 1121, marks the rapid increase
+of the king’s influence. A few years since he had established his
+authority in the Bourbonnais: now he extended it to Auvergne. In a
+quarrel betwixt the count and the bishop of Clermont, the latter
+appealed to Louis, who summoned the count to his supreme court, and, on
+his refusal to appear, marched with an army and subdued him, as he had
+previously the lord of Bourbon. The counts of Anjou and of Nevers aided
+him in the expedition. They felt no reluctance in carrying into effect
+the decrees of that court of peers of which they formed a part. Louis
+was not so fortunate in his treatment of Flanders as in his subjugation
+of Aquitaine. The Flemings, indeed, proved always intractable to French
+treatment whether of amity or hostility. The count of that province,
+perplexed and curbed by the frowardness of the townsfolk and the middle
+class, sought to taunt the family of Van der Straten by asserting they
+were serfs. One of them replied by cleaving the young count’s skull
+as he knelt at prayers. There being no heir to the family of Flanders,
+Louis sought to give the county to William Clito (1127). This unfortunate
+prince soon after fell in an engagement; and Flanders passed to Theodoric
+of Alsace, a descendant of Robert the Frisian (1129). Louis VI died in
+1137. It is strange that history could find for this monarch no epithet
+save that of the Fat, at the same time that it records innumerable proofs
+of a talented mind, of an active and enterprising spirit.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS VII]
+
+Towards the conclusion of this monarch’s reign, fortune came to reward
+and crown his efforts for the extension of the royal authority. William,
+count of Poitiers, about to undertake a pilgrimage, from which he had the
+presentiment that he never should return, offered his daughter Eleanor in
+marriage to Louis the Young, son of Louis the Fat. She was the heiress
+of her father’s possessions, which surpassed in extent and importance
+those of the king of France himself, comprising Guienne and Poitou--all
+the country, in fact, betwixt the Loire and the Adour. The marriage was
+celebrated at Bordeaux; and soon after it arrived tidings of the deaths
+both of the king and of the count of Poitiers. Thus Louis VII, or the
+Young, succeeded to dominions and authority infinitely more ample than
+those which his father had inherited. But the want of talent in the son
+did away with all these advantages. Nevertheless he commenced his reign
+with spirit. He chastised several refractory nobles, and resolved to
+support the queen’s rights to the county of Toulouse. Louis besieged that
+town. He failed in taking it, indeed; but the king of France, at the
+head of an army, made his name and power known for the first time to the
+inhabitants of the south. During a war carried on about the same time
+against Thibaut, count of Champagne, an accident occurred which had a
+marked effect upon the future conduct and character of Louis the Young.
+He had taken by storm the castle of Vitry, and set fire to it. The flames
+chanced to catch the neighbouring church, into which the population
+had crowded, to preserve themselves from the fury of the soldiery. It
+appears that they had no means of escape. Thirteen hundred men, women,
+and children perished in the conflagration. Louis was horror-struck on
+beholding the mass of half consumed bodies, and the weight of the remorse
+hung ever after upon him, and weighed down his spirit. It was the chief
+cause that induced him to receive the cross, and to lead that expedition
+to Jerusalem which is known in history as the Second Crusade.
+
+Not a single feat of arms marked the stay of Louis in Palestine, where he
+lingered till 1149, ashamed to return. The ignominy of this ill success,
+and the desertion of his followers, fell upon King Louis; and he felt
+it, not to rally and redeem his character, but to sink under the shame.
+He abandoned the feelings of the monarch and the warrior for those of
+the pilgrim; refused at first to undertake any enterprise against the
+infidels, and stole from Antioch to Jerusalem like a craven. If his
+subjects were discontented with such weakness in their sovereign,
+Eleanor of Aquitaine was still more disgusted with such a husband: she
+refused longer to remain on any friendly terms with him.[b] On his
+return the king repudiated his wife, who had so displeased him during
+the crusade. [Queen Eleanor at once petitioned the pope for a divorce.
+In 1152 the pope granted her wish.] Shortly afterwards a new marriage
+transferred her duchy of Guienne to Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou,
+duke of Normandy and heir to the English crown. When, two years later,
+Henry entered into possession of his heritage, and afterwards added
+Brittany, through the marriage of one of his sons with the only daughter
+of the count of that country, he found himself master of almost the whole
+of western France.[c]
+
+[Sidenote: [1103-1180 A.D.]]
+
+Hence dates the rivalry betwixt the kings which fills up the rest of
+their reigns. But in that age war tended more to mutual annoyance than to
+conquest: it was a livelihood to the needy, a portion to the powerful;
+and neither were very serious or bent upon the destruction of an enemy.
+Feudal rights and supremacy were also held in high respect; and the name
+of suzerain, though but a name, often supplied to Louis the place of
+the armies of his vassal Henry. In time the church came to fling itself
+into the scale. The persecution and murder of Thomas à Becket roused
+all the clergy in enmity to Henry, and Louis took advantage of their
+aid. Later still, the French monarch used the more unworthy expedient of
+exciting the sons of Henry to rebel against their parent; and throughout
+he contrived to supply by intrigue what he wanted in martial spirit,
+activity, and power. Louis VII married Alix of Champagne, after the
+divorce; he was long without a son, and at length, so the story goes,
+he obtained one by dint of prayer. When the life of the prince was
+threatened by a fever, the anxious parent undertook a pilgrimage to
+Canterbury, to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, for his recovery. The young
+Philip recovered; but Louis, on his return, was struck with a palsy,
+under which he lingered for the space of a year, and died in 1180.[b]
+
+
+_The Abbot Suger_
+
+[Sidenote: [1081-1149 A.D.]]
+
+On his return from the crusade, Louis found his country in a most
+peaceful and flourishing condition owing to the skilful administration of
+his preceptor the abbot Suger, whom he had left in charge of affairs.[a]
+Suger is indubitably the most illustrious, perhaps, even, the only
+historian who has a place in the general history of France, and who
+really influenced her destinies. Such a fame cannot be usurped; whoso
+possesses it merits it.
+
+No great and lasting memorials were raised in France by Suger and his
+master, Louis the Fat; they made no great conquests, established no
+memorable laws; it is even a mistake to ascribe to them the honour of
+being the first to enfranchise the communes. This enfranchisement had
+preceded them; it arose from causes beyond their control, fulfilled its
+destiny without their aid, and was as often opposed as seconded by them.
+But Louis the Fat and Suger, the one as king, the other as minister, were
+the first since Charlemagne to have a true and just perception of their
+position and mission, and to bind themselves to act upon it. This great
+idea, without which there can be nothing of state or king, the idea of
+a public authority, devoted to the maintenance of public order, called
+to something higher than ministration to the interests and personal
+caprices of its temporary holder, had been conceived by the giant mind of
+Charlemagne, but, despite his genius and a long reign, it was not for him
+to put it into action, to found a throne and a nation. Certain customs
+of unity, of regularity, of government, in short, existed indeed in the
+earlier years of Louis le Débonnaire’s reign, but they soon vanished,
+society and authority alike fell into decay, and for two centuries there
+was neither king, kingdom, nor nation, Frank nor French.
+
+Hugh Capet, in taking the title of king, laid the first stone of a new
+monarchy in the very heart of feudalism. But it was no more than a
+title of vague meaning and no import under him. He had not the force of
+character, nor is there anything to indicate that he had the design,
+to raise the sovereignty above suzerainty and reunite in one body the
+scattered members of the nation. Under his immediate successors the
+power of the throne drooped more and more. In the reigns of Robert,
+Henry I, and Philip I, one can scarcely discern any traces of national
+and monarchical unity. Isolation and independence waxed stronger, not
+only in the case of powerful or distant feudatories, but also among the
+nearest and humblest vassals of the crown. Only the feudal tie continued
+in force, a real and precious tie since it still maintained a show of
+confederation under a leader and prevented the utter dismemberment of
+the government and the country; but its influence, always more moral
+than political, yielded at the least shock and seemed even on the point
+of disappearance. With Louis the Fat a new era begins; the extent of
+his power, even the sphere of his activities, is still very restricted;
+the results of his endeavours are, for the present at least, of little
+value. It is almost always in the outskirts of Paris, against the simple
+squires, for the securing of a route, for the protection of merchants,
+that his courage and wisdom are exercised. Nevertheless in these small
+undertakings, and in certain others more remote, we can see a definite
+design of central and regular government; sovereignty separates itself
+from suzerainty, and in its own name claims, though timidly, rights of
+another sort. It presents itself to us as a power general and superior,
+called to maintain justice and order, to the advantage of all, and
+against all comers--a power all too weak for such a task, but awake to
+a perception of its dignity and its mission, and to a dawning of the
+same in the mind of its subjects. Such is the true character of the
+reign of Louis the Fat; he did little for the liberties of the public,
+much for the forming of the state and national government. He guided
+sovereignty in its first steps out of a feudal régime, gave to it other
+principles, placed it in a different attitude; and it is in this work,
+the development of which decided the lot of France, that Suger rendered
+powerful assistance during twenty five years’ administration.
+
+He did not seem marked out by birth for so great things, his father,
+Hélinand, being only a man of the people, living, according to the
+most probable supposition, at St. Omer, where Suger was born in 1081.
+But even at that date the church busied herself in searching out and
+welcoming, even from among the lowest ranks, men capable of serving and
+honouring her. Everywhere present and active, in touch with all the
+social conditions, associating alike with poor and rich, dwelling with
+the humble as with the great, she went forward to meet even childhood
+on its way, studying its varying dispositions, surrounding its earliest
+days, unfolding to it a brilliant career, the only one which invited
+development of its intellectual faculties, in which every reward was
+accessible to merit, and, finally, in which principles of equality and
+co-operation reigned. The monastery of St. Denis received and brought
+up the young Suger; he passed ten years in the dependent priory of
+Lettrée, and when, in 1095, Philip intrusted the education of his son,
+Louis the Fat, to the monks of St. Denis, Abbot Adam recalled Suger
+into the abbey itself that he might become the companion of the young
+prince. Thus sprang up between the children the intimacy which was to
+bind them together all their lives. In 1098, Louis returned to his
+father’s house, and Suger went to complete his studies in the monastery
+of Florent-de-Saumur, where the sciences of the day flourished under
+Abbot William. In returning to St. Denis in 1103 he speedily became the
+confidant of Abbot Adam, who, not content with employing him in all
+matters relating to the monastery, frequently took him to court where
+Prince Louis, who now for four years had had a share in the throne, knit
+yet more closely the bonds that had bound him to his childhood’s friend.
+From this date there is no further need to trace the life of Suger; it
+is part of history and nearly all the details that have come down to us
+are to be found either in his _Vie de Louis VI_[k] or in the _Panegyric_
+written upon him by the monk William, his secretary.
+
+Before his elevation to the dignity of abbot of St. Denis, when
+charged with diverse missions either to ecclesiastical gatherings or
+to the court at Rome, or even called upon to defend with mailed fist
+certain domains belonging to St. Denis against the brigand nobles who
+ravaged them, he displayed in turn the tact of the ecclesiastic and the
+courage of the knight. Later on, when Louis had constituted him his
+most intimate adviser, it seems that so much power temporarily dazzled
+Suger. St. Bernard speaks of his pomp and pride, and of the disorder
+introduced into his abbey. “The interior of the monastery,” he says,
+“is filled with knights, sometimes it is even open to women; one hears
+business of all sorts being transacted there; there quarrels break out;
+lastly it is there that that which is Cæsar’s is rendered unto Cæsar,
+without deduction or delay, but never unto God that which is God’s.”
+Whether it be that St. Bernard’s warnings aroused Suger from this first
+intoxication of power, or whether he perceived of himself the harm the
+scandal would do him, he did not delay putting an end to it. In 1127 he
+introduced drastic reforms into his abbey, compelled his monks to submit
+to them, and scrupulously conformed himself, and very shortly his power
+in the court was but more firmly established by this episode. Proud of
+the austerity of his morals, whilst at the same time profiting by his
+influence, the church cried him up on all occasions, and bishops and
+abbots of the most celebrated monasteries contemplated with equal pride
+the gorgeous church rebuilt by him at St. Denis, and the humble cell,
+barely fifteen feet long by ten feet wide, where he applied himself in
+solitude to religious exercises. After the death of Louis the Fat his
+power increased yet more; the indolent and incompetent Louis the Young
+shifting to his shoulders the whole weight of the government.
+
+[Sidenote: [1147-1149 A.D.]]
+
+Suger’s regency during this king’s crusade, from the year 1147 to the
+year 1149, is the most brilliant period of his career. He firmly upheld
+the royal authority, rebuked the usurpations of the vassals, established
+some degree of order wherever his influence attained to, met the king’s
+expenses in Palestine by his excellent administration of the crown
+revenues, and the advancement of his domains, and, finally, won such fame
+throughout the length and breadth of Europe that persons from Italy and
+England came to study the salutary results of his government, and the
+title of “the Solomon of the century” was bestowed upon him by foreigners
+contemporary with him. Hitherto only illustrious bishops, or learned
+and subtle theologians had attained this European distinction by their
+authority in the church or by their writings; no other man had ever won
+it on the sole merit of his political conduct, and from the ninth to the
+twelfth century Suger remains the first example of a minister who won
+admiration for his skill and wisdom from beyond the mountains and over
+the seas. He did not show any anxiety to retain this absolute power which
+the king’s absence conferred on him, and, by a rare unselfishness, the
+interests of the state preoccupied him more than his personal ambitions.
+He was himself opposed to a crusade from which he foresaw dangers, and
+had only yielded at the instance of St. Bernard’s ardent entreaties, the
+pope’s orders, and the prevailing opinion of the day. When certain of the
+nobles, Robert de Dreux, his brother, among them, who had accompanied
+Louis, abandoned him in Palestine and returned without him to France,
+Suger never ceased from urging his immediate return to his dominions.
+
+“The disturbers of the public peace,” he wrote, “have returned, whilst
+you, under bond to defend your subjects, remain as it were captive in a
+foreign land. Of what are you thinking, sire, thus to leave the flock
+intrusted to you at the mercy of the wolves? How can you disguise from
+yourself the perils with which the robbers who have outstripped you
+menace the state? No, it is not permissible for you to remain any longer
+so far away from us. Everything here craves your presence. Therefore we
+pray your highness, we exhort your piety, we call upon your goodness
+of heart, finally we conjure you by the faith which binds reciprocally
+prince and subject, not to prolong beyond Easter your sojourn in Syria,
+lest a longer delay render you guilty in the eyes of the Lord of
+disregarding the oath which you swore on assuming the crown. You will, I
+think, find cause for contentment in our conduct. We have placed in the
+hands of the knights Templar the money which we had intended to send you.
+We have further repaid to the count of Vermandois the £3,000 which he
+had lent us for your use. At the present time your land and your people
+enjoy a happy peace. We lay in store against your return the broken
+victuals for the fiefs dependent on you, the tallage and victuals which
+we levy from your domains. You will find your houses and palaces in good
+preservation owing to the care we have taken in doing repairs. I have now
+reached the decline of life, but I dare venture to say that the works I
+engaged to do from love to God and devotion to your person have hastened
+my old age. With regard to the queen, your wife, I advise that you
+conceal the dissatisfaction she causes you till such time as, restored to
+your realm, you can quietly deliberate over that and other matters.”
+
+[Illustration: AN OFFICER OF THE KING, TWELFTH CENTURY]
+
+Louis kept them waiting for him yet a long time. Suger had to fight
+against the pretensions and plottings of Robert de Dreux and his party.
+He realised that single-handed he would not be able to hold his own, and
+boldly summoned to Soissons an assembly of the bishops and principal
+barons of the realm. This generous appeal to the opinions and the
+liberties of the times had the result he anticipated: the assembly sided
+with him and strengthened him against his enemies. Defeated in their
+purpose in France, they made an attack on him in Palestine, this time
+within the mind of the king himself, who, frivolous and credulous, at
+first believed all their accusations. But on passing through Italy on
+his return to his dominions Louis received through Pope Eugenius III,
+friend and admirer of Suger, a completely different impression, in which
+he was fully confirmed on arriving in France by the good order which he
+there found established, the resources husbanded for him by Suger, and
+the eagerness shown by the regent to hand over to the king his rightful
+authority.
+
+Other ideas were at work in the old man’s brain. He had disapproved of
+his master’s crusade as fatal to the interests of the kingdom; but the
+misfortunes to the Christians in the East, and regret at seeing the Holy
+Land on the point of once more falling into the hands of the infidels,
+preoccupied his mind continually. He conceived the idea of himself
+attempting a fresh expedition to Palestine, of raising an army at his
+own expense, of devoting all his wealth and influence to the cause, of
+inducing the leading bishops to follow his example, and of personally
+heading an undertaking by which he hoped Jerusalem would be saved without
+imperilling France and his king. In the narrative of William, his
+biographer, we can see with what ardour and perseverance he threw himself
+into this project, even after illness forbade him to hope for the glory
+resulting from it. He had already chosen the leader whom he deemed most
+competent to replace him and had presented him with the sums of money
+collected for carrying out the scheme, when death overtook him, January
+12th, 1151, at the age of seventy.[h]
+
+
+EMANCIPATORY MOVEMENTS AFTER THE CRUSADES
+
+[Sidenote: [1000-1151 A.D.]]
+
+The grand movement of the crusade having for a while withdrawn men from
+local servitude, and led them abroad through Europe and Asia, they sought
+Jerusalem and found freedom. That liberating trumpet of the archangel,
+which was thought to have been heard in the year 1000, sounded a century
+later in the preaching of the crusade. The village awoke at the foot
+of the feudal castle, whose shade hung heavy over it. The pitiless man
+who descended from his vulture’s eyrie only to despoil his vassals,
+now himself armed them, led them, lived with them, suffered with them.
+Communion in misery softened his heart. Many a serf could say to the
+baron, “My lord, I found you a draft of water in the desert; I shielded
+you with my body at the siege of Antioch, or Jerusalem.”
+
+
+_The Communes_
+
+Humanity, then, began again to honour itself, even in its most miserable
+conditions. The first communal revolutions preceded, or closely followed,
+the year 1100. They began to think that every man was entitled to dispose
+of the fruits of his own labour, and to give away his own children in
+marriage; they emboldened themselves to think that they had a right to
+come and go, to buy and sell, and they suspected, in their presumption,
+that it might very possibly be that men were equal.
+
+Until then, that formidable thought of equality had not come forth in a
+very precise and tangible form. We are told, indeed, that the peasants
+of Normandy revolted in the year 1000, but they were easily put down; a
+few knights ravaged the country, dispersed the villeins, cut off their
+feet and hands, and there was an end of the matter. The peasants, in
+general, were too much isolated from each other; their _jacqueries_ were
+always unsuccessful throughout the Middle Ages. Unhappily, too, it
+must be owned, they were too degraded by slavery, too brutalised by the
+excess of their woes; their triumph would have been that of barbarism.
+It was especially in the populous boroughs, grouped round the castles,
+and, above all, round the churches, that ideas of emancipation fermented.
+The lay, or ecclesiastical lords had encouraged the population of those
+boroughs by concessions of land, being desirous of augmenting their own
+strength and the number of their vassals. These towns were not large
+and commercial cities, like those of the south of France and Italy, but
+they had some rude branches of trade, some blacksmiths, many weavers,
+butchers, and innkeepers, in the towns of transit. Sometimes the lords
+invited skilful workmen to settle in their towns, such, at least, as
+could embroider a stole, or forge armour; it was absolutely necessary to
+leave those men a little liberty, for, otherwise, as they carried their
+all in their hands, they would have left the country.
+
+The growth of freedom, then, was destined to commence by the central
+towns of France, which, obtaining their franchises by fair means or by
+force, received the name of privileged towns, or communes. The occasion
+of this result was, generally, the defence made by the inhabitants
+against the oppression and robbery of the feudal lords, and, in
+particular, the defence of the Île-de-France against Normandy, the feudal
+country _par excellence_. “At this period,” says Ordericus Vitalis,[g]
+“popular communality was established by the bishops in such wise that
+the priests accompanied the king to siege or battle, with the banners
+of their parishes and all their parishioners.” According to the same
+historian, it was a Montfort (an illustrious family, which was, in the
+following century, to destroy the liberties of the south of France, and
+to lay the foundation of those of England), it was Amaury de Montfort,
+who advised Louis the Fat, after his defeat at Brenneville, to employ
+against the Normans the men of the communes, marching under the banners
+of their parishes (1119). But when these communes returned within their
+own walls, they became more urgent in their demands; it was a mortal
+blow to their humility, to have once seen the great war-steeds and the
+noble knights flying before their parochial banners; to have put an
+end, with Louis the Fat, to the highway robberies of the Rocheforts; to
+have harried the lair of the De Coucys. They said, with the poet of the
+twelfth century: “We are men as well as they; our hearts are as great;
+we are as capable of endurance as they.” They all wanted some franchise,
+some privilege, and for this they offered money--which they contrived to
+find, indigent and wretched as they were. Poor artisans, blacksmiths, or
+weavers, allowed, as a matter of favour, to set themselves down at the
+foot of a castle; fugitive serfs, who had taken refuge round a church,
+such were the founders of liberty; they stinted themselves of bread to
+obtain them, and the lords and the king were eager to sell diplomas so
+well paid for.
+
+This revolution was accomplished everywhere, under a thousand forms, and
+with little noise; it was only prominently remarked in some towns of Oise
+and Somme, which, being placed in less favourable circumstances, divided
+between two lords, lay and ecclesiastical, applied to the king to obtain
+a solemn guarantee for concessions often violated, and which maintained
+a precarious liberty at the cost of many centuries of civil war. It
+was upon these towns that the name of “communes” was more particularly
+bestowed. These wars are a small, but dramatic incident in the great
+revolution which was taking place silently, and under various forms, in
+all the towns of the north of France.
+
+It was in the valiant and choleric Picardy, the communes of which had so
+well beaten the Normans; it was in the country of Calvin, and so many
+other revolutionary spirits, that these explosions took place.[f] Le
+Mans in 1066, then Cambray in 1076, gave the signal, followed by Noyon,
+Beauvais, St. Quentin, Laon, Amiens and Soissons. All wrested communal
+charters from their lords, mostly of the ecclesiastical order. In 1112
+the bishop of Laon attempted to repeal the communal charter he had
+granted, somewhat under compulsion, three years before. His house was
+surrounded; the nobles who came to his assistance were killed, and the
+prelate himself fell under the blows of an axe. The king came and the
+commune was abolished. But before sixteen years had passed the communal
+party regained the ascendancy. In 1128 the king ratified a new charter
+granted by the bishop.[c] Great or small, the Picard communes were
+heroic, and bravely did they fight. They too had their belfry, their
+tower, not inclined and faced with marble, like the _miranda_ of Italy,
+but furnished with a sonorous bell, that summoned the citizens, not in
+vain, to battle against the bishop or the lord. Women went forth to these
+fights, against men. Eighty women insisted on taking part in the attack
+upon the castle of Amiens, and were wounded there.
+
+So, likewise, Joan Hachette fought afterwards, at the siege of Beauvais.
+A sprightly and laughter-loving population it was, of impetuous
+soldiers and merry story-tellers, a country of light manners, of smutty
+_fabliaux_, of good songs. It was their delight, in the twelfth century,
+to see the count of Amiens, mounted upon his big horse, venturing beyond
+the pont-levis, and caracoling clumsily; thereupon the innkeepers and
+the butchers planted themselves boldly at their doors, and startled the
+feudal animal with their loud laughter.
+
+It has been said that the king founded the communes, but the reverse is,
+rather, the fact--it was the communes that founded the king; without them
+he could not have repulsed the Normans. Those conquerors of England and
+of the Two Sicilies would, probably, have conquered France; it was the
+communes, or, to employ a more general and more exact word, it was the
+_bourgeoisies_ which, under the banner of the parish saint, achieved the
+security of public peace between the Oise and the Loire; and the king,
+mounted on horseback, carried the banner of the abbey of St. Denis, at
+the head of the lords. A vassal, as count of Vexin, abbot of St. Martin
+de Tours, canon of St. Quentin, defender of the churches, he waged holy
+war against the brigandage of the lords of Montmorency and Puiset, and
+against the execrable ferocity of the Coucys. He had upon his side the
+nascent _bourgeoisie_ and the church; feudalism had had all the rest, all
+the strength and the glory; the poor helpless king was smothered between
+the vast dominations of his vassals.
+
+
+_Philosophy and Thought; Abelard and St. Bernard_
+
+[Sidenote: [1079-1115 A.D.]]
+
+The chain of free-thinkers, broken, it would seem, after Johannes Scotus,
+had its links reunited by the great Gerbert, who became pope in the year
+1000. Educated at Cordova, and admitted a master at Rheims, Gerbert had
+for disciple Fulbert of Chartres, whose pupil Bérenger [Berengarius] of
+Tours affrighted the church by the first doubt cast upon the Eucharist.
+Soon after, the canon Rosselin of Compiègne dared to touch upon the
+question of the Trinity. He taught, moreover, that general ideas were but
+words: “The virtuous man is a reality; virtue is but a sound.” This bold
+reform gave a violent shock to all poetry, to all religion; it accustomed
+men to see nothing but personifications in those ideas that had been
+regarded as real things; it was nothing less than a transition from
+poetry to prose. This logical heresy inspired the contemporaries of the
+First Crusade with horror; nominalism, as it was called, was stifled for
+a while.
+
+Champions were not wanting to the church against the innovators.
+The Lombards, Lanfranc and St. Anselm, both of them archbishops of
+Canterbury, combated Bérenger and Rosselin. St. Anselm, an original
+genius, anticipated the famous argument of Descartes, for the existence
+of God: “If God did not exist, I could not conceive him.” It was a
+great delight for him to have made this discovery, after a long fit of
+sleeplessness. Another conflict of an intellectual kind, and one of a
+much graver nature, was about to begin, so soon as the question should
+have come down from politics to theology and morals, and the very
+morality of Christianity should have been brought in question. Thus,
+Pelagius came after Arius, and Abelard after Bérenger.
+
+The church seemed at peace; the school of Laon and that of Paris were
+occupied by two pupils of St. Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm of Laon, and
+William of Champeaux. Great signs and tokens, however, were appearing;
+the Vaudois had translated the Bible into the vulgar tongue; the
+_Institutes_ were also translated, and law was taught, simultaneously
+with theology, at Orleans and at Angers. The mere existence of the
+school of Paris was an immense innovation and danger. The ideas which,
+till then, had been dispersed, and exposed to close inspection in the
+various ecclesiastical schools, were about to converge to a centre. The
+conquests of the Normans and the First Crusade had carried that potent
+philosophic idiom everywhere--into England, into Sicily, into Jerusalem.
+This circumstance alone gave France, especially central France and
+Paris, an immense attractive force. The French of Paris became gradually
+proverbial; feudalism had found its political centre in the royal city,
+and that city was now about to become the capital of human thought.
+
+He who began this revolution was not a priest; he was a handsome young
+man, of brilliant and engaging qualities, and of noble race. No one,
+like him, could write love verses in the vulgar tongue, and he sang them
+himself; then his erudition was extraordinary for the times--he was the
+only man who knew Greek and Hebrew.[6] Perhaps he had frequented the
+Jewish schools (there were many of them in the south), or the rabbis
+of Troyes, Vitry, or Orleans. There were then two principal schools in
+Paris; the old episcopal school of Notre Dame, and that of St. Geneviève,
+on the mountain, where William of Champeaux was in the zenith of his
+fame. Abelard became one of his pupils, laid his doubts before him,
+puzzled his master, made sport of him, and put him to silence. He would
+have done the same with Anselm of Laon, had not the professor, who was
+a bishop, expelled him from his diocese. Thus did the knight-errant of
+dialectics go about unhorsing the most famous champions. He says himself
+that he renounced the other kind of tilting, that of the tournaments,
+only from his love for the war of words. Thenceforth, victorious and
+unrivalled, he taught at Paris and at Melun, where Louis the Fat resided,
+and where the lords were beginning to gather in great numbers. These
+knights encouraged a man of their own order, who had beaten the priests
+upon their own ground, and who put the most self-sufficient of the clerks
+to silence.
+
+The whole body of Christianity was at stake; it was attacked at its base.
+If original sin, as Abelard said, was not a sin, but a penalty, that
+penalty was unjust, and redemption was useless. Abelard defended himself
+from such a conclusion; but he justified Christianity by means of such
+feeble arguments, that he rather did it more damage by declaring that
+he had no better answer to give. He suffered himself to be brought to a
+stand by means of the _argumentum ad absurdum_, and then he appealed to
+authority and faith. And so, then, man was no longer guilty; the flesh
+was justified and restored to honour; all the sufferings with which
+men had immolated themselves were superfluous. What became of so many
+voluntary martyrs, so many fastings and mortifications--the vigils of
+monks, the tribulations of hermits, the countless tears shed before God?
+All was vanity--mockery. God was an amiable and easy God, who had nothing
+to do with all this.
+
+The church was then under the sway of a monk, a simple abbot of
+Clairvaux, St. Bernard. He was of noble birth, like Abelard, a native of
+Upper Burgundy. He had been brought up in the puissant house of Cîteaux,
+the sister and rival of Cluny, which sent forth so many illustrious
+preachers, and which, half a century afterwards, made the crusade
+against the Albigenses. But St. Bernard thought Cîteaux too splendid and
+too rich: he went into needy Champagne, and founded the monastery of
+Clairvaux in the “Valley of Wormwood.” There he was free to lead that
+life of sorrows that was needful to him: nothing could win him from it;
+never would he hear of being anything else than a monk, though he might
+have become archbishop and pope. Constrained to reply to all the kings
+who consulted him, he found himself all-potent in spite of himself, and
+condemned to govern Europe. A letter from St. Bernard made the army of
+the king of France withdraw from Champagne. When schism broke out, by the
+simultaneous elevation of Innocent II and of Anacletus, St. Bernard was
+appointed by the church of France to choose between them, and he chose
+Innocent. But these were not his greatest affairs, as his letters inform
+us; he lent, not gave, himself to the world; his love and his treasure
+were elsewhere. Living in the inward life, in prayer and sacrifice, no
+one could make himself more alone in the midst of bustle; the senses
+no longer spoke to him of the world. He walked a whole day, says his
+biographer, along the Lake of Lausanne, and in the evening he asked where
+the lake was. He drank oil for water, and took clotted blood for butter.
+He could hardly support himself erect, and yet he found strength to
+preach the crusade to a hundred thousand men. The multitude thought it
+was a spirit, rather than a man they saw, when he appeared thus before
+them, with his red and white beard, his fair and hoary hair; meagre and
+weak, with but a scarcely visible indication of life upon his cheeks. His
+sermons were terrible; mothers kept their sons away from them, and wives
+their husbands; they would else have all followed him to the monasteries.
+As for him, when he had sent forth the breath of life over the multitude,
+he returned with speed to Clairvaux, reconstructed his little hut of
+boughs and foliage near the convent, and assuaged a little his love-sick
+soul in writing the exposition of the “Song of Songs” which employed his
+whole life.
+
+Imagine with what grief such a man must have heard of Abelard’s
+success--of the usurpations of logic over religion; the prosaic victory
+of reasoning over faith; the flame of the sacrifice becoming stifled and
+extinguished in the world. It was robbing him of his God. St. Bernard was
+not to be compared with his rival as a logician; but the latter himself
+wrought his own downfall. He undertook to deduce its consequences from
+his doctrine, and he applied it to his conduct in life. He had reached
+that excess of prosperity in which the infatuation common to our nature
+plunges us into some great fault. Everything succeeded with him; men
+held their peace before him; women all regarded with looks of love an
+engaging, invincible young man, beautiful in face and all-powerful in
+mind, who had a whole people for his followers. “I had reached such a
+pass,” he says, “that honour what woman I would with my love, I had
+no refusal to fear.” Rousseau says precisely the same thing in his
+_Confessions_ in relating the success of the _Nouvelle Héloïse_.
+
+[Sidenote: [1115-1140 A.D.]]
+
+The Héloïse of the twelfth century was the niece of the canon Fulbert,
+very young, beautiful, learned, and already celebrated; she was intrusted
+by her uncle to the teaching of Abelard, who seduced her. This fault had
+not even love for its excuse; it was deliberately, in cold blood, by way
+of pastime, that Abelard betrayed the confidence of Fulbert. We know
+that he was cruelly punished by mutilation for his crime; he renounced
+the world, and became a Benedictine at St. Denis, about the year 1119.
+Thither he was pursued by ecclesiastical persecutions, and he found
+no rest there. The archbishop of Rheims, the friend of St. Bernard,
+assembled a council against him at Soissons; Abelard was like to have
+been stoned by the people; he was frightened, shed many tears, burned his
+books, and said whatever they pleased. He was condemned without inquiry,
+his enemies alleging that it was enough that he had taught without the
+authority of the church.
+
+Shut up at St. Médard de Soissons, and afterwards a refugee at St. Denis,
+he was obliged to fly from that asylum. He had presumed to doubt that St.
+Denis, the Areopagite, had ever visited France.[7] To impugn that legend
+was to attack the religion of the monarchy; and from that moment the
+court withdrew its protection from him. He fled to the dominions of the
+count of Champagne, and hid himself in a desert place on the Ardusson,
+two leagues from Nogent. Reduced now to poverty, and having but one
+clerk with him, he built a hut of reeds and an oratory in honour of that
+Trinity he was accused of denying, and named his hermitage the Comforter,
+the Paraclet. But his disciples, having learned where he was, flocked
+round him; they built them huts, and a town rose in the desert, dedicated
+to science and to liberty. A little more, and he would once more have
+appeared as a public teacher; but he was compelled again to hold his
+peace, and to accept the priory of St. Gildas de Ruys in Brittany, the
+language of which he did not understand. It was his fate to find no rest;
+his Breton monks, whose habits he endeavoured to reform, endeavoured to
+give him poison in the chalice. Thenceforth, the unfortunate man led
+a wandering life, and even thought, it is said, of taking refuge in
+some land of the infidels; but first he would once measure his strength
+against that of the terrible adversary who everywhere pursued him with
+his zeal and his sanctity. At the instigation of Arnold of Brescia, he
+challenged St. Bernard to a logical duel before the Council of Sens. The
+king, the counts of Champagne and Nevers, and a host of bishops were
+to be present, and to judge of the hits. St. Bernard repaired to the
+rendezvous reluctantly, conscious as he was of his inferiority. But the
+threats of the people and the timidity of his rival relieved him from all
+embarrassment. Abelard durst not defend himself, but contented himself
+with appealing to the pope. Innocent II owed everything to St. Bernard,
+and hated Abelard for the sake of his disciple, Arnold of Brescia, who
+was then roaming over Italy, and summoning the towns to freedom. He
+ordered Abelard to be shut up; but the latter had anticipated him by
+voluntarily taking refuge in the monastery of Cluny. The abbot, Peter
+the Venerable, answered for Abelard, who died there two years afterwards.
+Such was the end of the restorer of philosophy in the Middle Ages--the
+son of Pelagius, the father of Descartes, and a Breton like them. From
+another point of view, he may be regarded as a precursor of the humane
+and sentimental school, which was revived in the persons of Fénelon and
+Rousseau.
+
+[Sidenote: [1140-1142 A.D.]]
+
+There is no memory more popular in France than that of Abelard’s
+mistress. The fall of the man made the grandeur of the woman; but for
+Abelard’s misfortune, Héloïse would have been unknown; she would have
+remained obscure and in the shade, she would have desired no other glory
+than that of her spouse. At the period of their separation, he made her
+take the veil, and built for her the Paraclet, of which she became the
+abbess. There she held a great school of theology, Greek, and Hebrew.
+Many similar monasteries rose around the Paraclet, and some years after
+the death of Abelard, Héloïse was declared head of an order by the pope.
+But her glory consists in her love, so constant and so disinterested--a
+love to which Abelard’s coldness and hardness of heart give a new lustre.
+Let us compare the language of the two lovers:
+
+“Fulbert,” says Abelard, “gave her up, without reserve, to my control,
+so that, upon my return from the schools, I should apply myself to her
+instruction, and, if I found her negligent, should chastise her severely.
+Was not this giving full license to my desires, so that, if I did not
+succeed by caresses, I might compass my end by threats and blows?”
+
+This dastardly brutality of a pedant of the twelfth century is in strange
+contrast with the exalted and disinterested sentiments expressed by
+Héloïse. “God knows, in thee, I sought but thee; nothing of thee but
+thyself; such was the sole object of my desire. I was ambitious of no
+advantage, not even of the bond of wedlock; I thought not, thou well
+knowest, of satisfying either my own wishes or my own pleasure, but
+thine. If the name of spouse is more holy, sweeter to me seemed that
+of thy mistress, that (be not angry) of thy concubine (_concubinæ vel
+seorti_). The more I humbled myself for thee, the more I hoped to gain in
+thy heart. Yes, though the master of the world, though the emperor had
+been willing to honour me with the name of his spouse, I would rather
+have been called thy mistress than his wife and his empress (_tua dici
+meretrix, quàm illius imperatrix_).” She accounts in a singular manner
+for her having long refused to be the wife of Abelard: “Would it not have
+been an unseemly, a deplorable thing, that one woman should appropriate
+and take for herself alone, him whom nature had created for all mankind?
+What mind, intent upon the meditations of philosophy or of sacred
+things, could endure the crying of children, the prating of nurses, the
+disturbance and tumult of serving-men and women?”
+
+The mere form of the letters that passed between Abelard and Héloïse
+shows how little the passion of the latter was returned. Abelard divides
+and subdivides his mistress’s letters; he replies to them methodically,
+and by chapters. He heads his own: “To the spouse of Christ, the slave
+of Christ”; or “To his dear sister in Christ, Abelard her brother in
+Christ.” Héloïse’s tone is very different: “To her master, nay, father;
+to her husband, nay, brother; his handmaid, his spouse, nay, his
+daughter, his sister; Héloïse to Abelard.”[f]
+
+
+_Abelard and the University_
+
+[Sidenote: [1100-1150 A.D.]]
+
+Hasting Rashdall describes the relations between Abelard’s influence in
+Paris and the ultimate development of the University of Paris as follows:
+
+“The less imaginative historians of the University of Paris have
+generally been contented with tracing its origin to the teaching of
+Abelard. And it was undoubtedly to the intellectual movement of which
+Abelard is the most conspicuous representative that the rise of the
+university must ultimately be ascribed. But there was nothing in the
+organisation of the schools wherein Abelard taught to distinguish them
+from any other cathedral schools which might for a time be rendered
+famous by the teaching of some illustrious master. In the age of Abelard
+there were three great churches at Paris more or less famous for their
+schools. In the first place there was the cathedral (Notre Dame), whose
+schools were presided over by William of Champeaux. Then, on the left
+bank of the Seine, there was the collegiate church of St. Geneviève;
+and there was the church of the Canons Regular of St. Victor’s, where a
+school for external scholars was started by William after his retirement
+from the world. St. Victor’s became the head-quarters of the old
+traditional or positive theology, and it had ceased to exist, or ceased
+to attract secular students, before the first traces of a university
+organisation begin to appear. With both the secular schools of Paris,
+Abelard was at one time or other connected. Denifle’s repudiation of
+the old view that the university arose from a junction between the arts
+schools of St. Geneviève and the theological schools of Notre Dame goes
+slightly beyond the evidence, but in the main he is unquestionably
+right in contending that it was the cathedral schools which eventually
+developed into the university.
+
+“It was the fame of Abelard which first drew to the streets of Paris the
+hordes of students whose presence involved that multiplication of masters
+by whom the university was ultimately formed. In that sense, and in that
+sense only the origin of the University of Paris may be connected with
+the name and age of Abelard. Of a university or a recognised society of
+masters we hear nothing; nay, the existence of such an institution was
+impossible at a time when the single master of the cloister school seems
+to have been as a rule the only recognised master in or around each
+particular church.”[m]
+
+
+_The Position of Woman_
+
+Abelard had propounded the ideal of pure and disinterested love in his
+writings, as the consummation of the religious soul. Woman rose up to
+it, for the first time, in the writings of Héloïse; but still indeed
+referring it to man, to her spouse, to her visible God.
+
+The restoration of woman, which had begun with Christianity, took place
+chiefly in the twelfth century. A slave in the East, even in the Greek
+gynæceum a recluse, emancipated by imperial jurisprudence, she was
+recognised by the new religion as man’s equal. Still Christianity, but
+just liberated from pagan sensuality, continued to fear and distrust
+woman; men knew themselves to be weak and fond, and they repudiated her
+all the more strongly, the more they felt how they sympathised with her
+in their hearts. Hence, the harsh, and even contemptuous expressions with
+which they labour to fortify themselves. Woman is usually designated by
+the ecclesiastical writers, and in the Capitularies, by that degrading,
+but most expressive phrase, “the weaker vessel” (_vas infirmius_). When
+Gregory VII wished to free the clergy from its double bond, woman and
+land, there was a new outburst of invective against that dangerous Eve
+whose seduction wrought Adam’s ruin, and who evermore pursues him in his
+sons.
+
+A quite opposite movement began in the twelfth century. Free mysticism
+undertook to raise up what sacerdotal harshness had trampled under
+foot. It was especially a Breton, Robert d’Arbrissel, who fulfilled
+this mission of love. He reopened the bosom of Christ to women,
+founded asylums for them, built them Fontevrault, and there were soon
+Fontevraults all over Christendom. The enterprising charity of Robert
+applied itself, by preference, to great sinners of the female sex. He
+taught the clemency of God, and his immeasurable mercy in the vilest
+haunts. It was a curious thing to see the blessed Robert d’Arbrissel
+holding forth day and night amidst a crowd of disciples of both sexes,
+all resting together around him. The bitter sarcasms of his enemies
+had no effect upon the charitable and courageous Breton, nor even the
+scandals to which these meetings gave occasion; he covered all with the
+wide mantle of grace.
+
+As grace prevailed over the law, a great religious revolution took
+place. Piety became converted into an enthusiasm of chivalric gallantry;
+the mystical church of Lyons celebrated a festival of the Immaculate
+Conception (1134), thus exalting the ideal of maternal purity precisely
+at the period when Héloïse was expressing the pure disinterestedness of
+love in her famous letters. Woman reigned in heaven; she reigned also
+upon earth. We see her interfere, and with authority, in the affairs of
+this world. Bertrade de Montfort ruled at once over her first husband,
+Fulk of Anjou, and her second, Philip I, king of France. Louis VII dates
+his acts from the coronation of his wife Adela. Women, natural judges in
+poetical contests, and in the courts of love, sat also as judges in grave
+matters, and upon an equality with their husbands. The king of France
+expressly recognises this right.
+
+In the first half of the twelfth century women were everywhere restored
+to that right of inheritance from which they had been excluded by feudal
+barbarism in England, Castile, Aragon, Jerusalem, Burgundy, Flanders,
+Hainault, Vermandois, Aquitaine, Provence, and Lower Languedoc. The rapid
+extinction of male heirs, the softening of manners, and the progress
+of equity, restored the right of inheritance to women. They brought
+sovereignties with them into foreign houses; they linked and bound the
+world together, accelerated the agglomeration of states, and prepared the
+way for the centralisation of the great monarchies.
+
+One royal house alone, that of the Capets, did not recognise the right
+of women; it remained safe from the mutations which transferred the
+other states from one dynasty to another; it received and it did not
+give. Foreign queens might come; the female, the movable element, might
+be renewed, but the male element did not come to it from without, it
+remained always the same, and with it remained an identity of spirit and
+a perpetuity of system. This fixity of the dynasty is one of those things
+which have most contributed to insure the unity and the personality of
+this mobile country. The common characteristic of the period following
+the crusade, is an attempt at emancipation. The crusade in its immense
+movement had been an occasion--an impulse; when the occasion came, the
+attempt took place, an attempt for the emancipation of the people in the
+communes, for the emancipation of women, for that of philosophy and of
+pure thought. This echo of the crusade, like the crusade itself, was to
+display all its potency and its effect in France, among the most sociable
+of nations.[f]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[4] [Contemporaries assign very varied and incoherent numbers for the
+size of William’s army. One of them, Hugues de Fleury, estimates it at
+150,000 men. Modern historians have cut this down to about 60,000, which
+is still regarded by some as too high.]
+
+[5] [The trouble with Robert did not end until 1076, when a treaty was
+made and the king received the homage of Flanders.]
+
+[6] [She (Héloïse) was perfect mistress of Latin and knew enough Greek
+and Hebrew to form the basis of her future proficiency. He (Abelard)
+knew nothing of Greek or Hebrew, although all his biographers except M.
+Rémusat assume that he knew them both.--G. W. LEWES.[l]]
+
+[7] [A legend had identified St. Denis who flourished in the third
+century with Dionysius the Areopagite who was converted by St. Paul.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY
+
+    Almost at the moment that the Crusades broke out, an
+    institution commenced its aggrandisement which has, perhaps,
+    contributed more than any other to the formation of modern
+    society, and to the fusion of all the social elements into two
+    powers, the government and the people,--the institution of
+    Royalty.--GUIZOT.[m]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1180-1270 A.D.]]
+
+Philip Augustus, Louis’ son and successor, who was about fifteen years of
+age when he began to reign, was already the nursling of court adulation
+and homage. His predecessors had not attained dignity sufficient to
+expose them to this bane of the royal nature. Congratulations, couched
+in the language of oriental hyperbole, had greeted his birth. He was
+styled the _Dieu-donné_, “the God-given”; and self-constituted laureates
+began already to celebrate the majesty of the monarch of the French.
+Formerly, the surrounding nobles had disdained to dispute court favour
+or influence; but the first years of Philip’s reign were taken up with
+the rivalry of the houses of Flanders and Champagne, which each sought
+to be the masters and ministers of the young sovereign. Henry II of
+England gave his support to the counts of Champagne, and the partisans
+of Flanders were obliged to retire from Paris. They formed a league, and
+menaced war; but Philip, with the English monarch’s aid, easily overcame
+the malcontents. Henry showed generosity on this occasion. Instead of
+profiting by the divisions of the French, and keeping them alive, he
+frankly supported the young king against his refractory barons. He was
+king himself, and sympathised with royalty. Philip ill repaid this
+kindness: he imitated his father’s policy in seducing the sons of the
+English monarch from their allegiance; and their frequent ingratitude at
+length broke the heart of the sensitive and passionate monarch. Richard,
+duke of Aquitaine, known as Cœur de Lion, and his father’s successor on
+the throne, was the especial friend and ally of Philip in these quarrels;
+and for a long time the princes shared the same tent and the same bed.
+
+Meantime a third crusade began to be preached. This prevalent enthusiasm,
+like the rebellions of an oppressed yet brave people, was sure to arouse
+itself and reawaken as soon as time had elapsed sufficient to allow
+the disasters of the past to be forgotten. Saladin had recently taken
+Jerusalem. Fugitives instantly filled Europe with the dismal tidings. The
+cry for a crusade became general: it was no longer, however, the church
+that called a council to debate and decide upon the question; another
+power had arisen to rob the clergy of their initiative. The king called
+a parliament (_parlement_) of his barons at Gisors, and there a third
+crusade was determined upon. Cœur de Lion was the first to assume the
+cross; and king Philip, only hurt at being anticipated, followed his
+example. Frederick Barbarossa also took the same resolution.
+
+[Sidenote: [1190-1194 A.D.]]
+
+In June of the year 1190, Philip Augustus received the pilgrim’s scrip
+and staff from the hands of the abbot of St. Denis. Richard received his
+at Tours; and it was remarked, as an omen, that, as he leaned on the
+staff, it broke under his weight. In order to avoid the disasters of
+former crusades, they were to proceed to Palestine by sea. The two kings
+wintered in Sicily on their voyage thither, and there laid the foundation
+of their future jealousy and hate. The crusaders found the barons of
+Syria engaged in the siege of Acre. Their arrival hastened its surrender,
+and at the same time marked it with crime. Richard caused upwards of two
+thousand captives to be massacred in cold blood, and Philip was guilty of
+a similar piece of cruelty. The monarchs, indeed, had some slight breach
+of stipulations to allege, or might excuse their conduct as a reprisal
+for that of Saladin, who put to death many of the prisoners whom he
+made at the battle of Tiberias, more especially all those whose tonsure
+marked them to belong to the order of the Templars. It was thus that the
+ferocity of oriental manners came to alloy the more generous spirit of
+chivalry. In Palestine the French learned to be merciless towards their
+religious enemies, and hence it was that the fair page of their history
+was soon afterwards stained by the massacre of those whom they called
+heretics at home.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIP AUGUSTUS]
+
+[Sidenote: [1194-1200 A.D.]]
+
+Philip Augustus could not long endure the superior renown and prowess
+of Cœur de Lion. He seized the pretext of an illness to quit Palestine
+and abandon the field of glory to his rival. Returning home, he besought
+the pope to release him from the oath which bound him to respect the
+rights and territories of a brother crusader. The pontiff refused; but
+Philip felt himself sufficiently absolved by the Macchiavellian law of
+monarchical policy: and fortune, in making Richard fall captive to the
+duke of Austria, on his return from the Holy Land, seemed to favour the
+envious designs of the French monarch. Philip no sooner was informed of
+Richard’s captivity, than he leagued with his brother John, and invaded
+Normandy. He took several towns and castles, but was repulsed from
+before Rouen. At length Richard was released, or, as Philip wrote to his
+confederate, “the devil broke loose.” We expect on this occasion to read
+of a furious war betwixt the sovereigns. And yet no brilliant feat, no
+general engagement, marked that which ensued. Petty treason and short
+truce, varied by a skirmish or a marauding party, were all the effects
+produced by the envy of Philip and the resentment of the lion-hearted
+king. The death of the latter by an arrow-shot, as he besieged a castle
+in the Limousin, left a less formidable rival to Philip in the person of
+King John (1199). The writer of fiction never imagined a baser character
+than that of John. His cowardice and meanness form a phenomenon and an
+exception in the feudal ages. The nullity of such a rival converted
+Philip Augustus from the powerless intriguer to the conqueror and the
+hero.[b]
+
+
+PRINCE ARTHUR OF BRITTANY
+
+[Sidenote: [1200-1204 A.D.]]
+
+Although Richard on his death-bed declared John to be his heir, the
+crown of England descended by right of primogeniture to the young prince
+Arthur, son of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany and the elder brother of John;
+the latter seized it. But Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, weary of English
+domination, declared for Arthur, and invoked Philip’s protection. The
+king of France took up Arthur’s cause and then abandoned it (1200),
+after obtaining from John the advantage his political selfish policy was
+seeking.[c]
+
+But Arthur had been accepted by the Bretons at his birth as a liberator
+and avenger. Old Eleanor, alone, held out against her grandson, for her
+son John, and for the unity of the English realm, which the accession of
+Arthur would have divided. Arthur, in fact, held that unity very cheap.
+He offered the king of France to cede Normandy to him, provided he might
+have Brittany, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. John would
+have been reduced to the possession of England alone. Philip willingly
+assented to this, put his own garrisons in Arthur’s best fortresses, and
+demolished them when he had no hope of maintaining his position in them.
+John’s nephew, thus betrayed by his ally, turned once more to his uncle;
+then he came back to the party of France, invaded Poitou, and besieged
+his grandmother, Eleanor, in Mirebeau. It was nothing new in that family
+to see the sons armed against their parents. Meanwhile, John came to the
+rescue, delivered his mother, defeated Arthur, and took him prisoner with
+most of the great lords of his party. What became of the captive? This
+has never been clearly ascertained. Matthew Paris[j] alleges that John
+treated him well at first, but was afterwards alarmed by the threats and
+the obstinacy of the young Breton. “Arthur disappeared,” he says, “and
+God grant that it may not have been as malicious rumour reports.” But
+Arthur had excited too many hopes to allow of the popular imagination
+resigning itself to this uncertainty. It was confidently affirmed that
+John had caused him to be put to death, and it was soon added that he had
+killed him with his own hand. The chaplain of Philip Augustus relates,
+as if he had seen it with his own eyes, that John took Arthur in a boat,
+stabbed him twice with a dagger, and threw him into the river three miles
+from the castle of Rouen. The Bretons placed the scene of the tragedy
+in their own country near Cherbourg, at the foot of those ill-omened
+cliffs that present a line of precipices all along the ocean. Thus the
+tradition went on enlarging in details, and in dramatic interest, and at
+last Shakespeare makes Arthur a helpless young child, whose gentle and
+innocent words disarmed the most brutal assassin.[d]
+
+Philip was in the meantime checked in his projects by the court of Rome,
+which had laid an interdict upon him, on account of his divorce from
+Ingeborg (Ingeburge) of Denmark. And the preaching of a fifth crusade,[8]
+which eventually led to the establishment of the Frankish empire of
+Romania, about the same time took from him the interest and the aid of
+many nobles and chevaliers. He was, during the same interval, engaged
+in the conquest of Normandy, which the imbecility and cowardice of John
+delivered to his arms without defence. Roger de Lascy held the fortress
+of Les Andelys for several months against the French, and was the only
+valiant servitor of an unworthy monarch. The barons and warriors of
+England disdained to fight under his banner. There was as yet none of
+that rivalry which afterwards sprang up betwixt the nations. The monarchs
+of both were French princes, speaking the French tongue; and, although
+subsequent historians have given a national colour to the combats and
+conquests of Philip, the struggle was almost purely personal. Rouen, the
+capital of Normandy, surrendered to him (1204), without John’s making a
+single effort to preserve it. And thus a few years of the reign of one
+weak prince more than counterbalanced the long-established superiority of
+the monarchs of England.
+
+[Sidenote: [1204-1208 A.D.]]
+
+It has been seen what use the French monarchs made of their courts of
+peers, and of the judicial supremacy allowed them, in extending their
+authority over barons heretofore independent. Philip dared to apply
+the same principle to the dukes of Normandy, which his father had
+successfully done with regard to the counts of Bourbon and Auvergne.
+He summoned John before his suzerain court, to answer for the murder
+of Arthur and other crimes. Henry II, or Richard, would have given fit
+answer to such a summons. The Norman princes always held their homage to
+be that by parade or courtesy, not _homage-liège_. But John had neither
+the sense of his dignity, nor the spirit to maintain it. He allowed the
+jurisdiction of Philip’s court, though he feared to obey his summons; and
+he thus seemed to allow a legal right to the usurpations of Philip. The
+latter, indeed, appeared to feel the want of dignity in the assessors
+of his court. All nobles holding their lands directly of the king were
+peers in his parliament; and thus the petty lords of the counties of
+Paris and Orleans ranked equally with the dukes of Burgundy or the counts
+of Flanders. Philip remedied this, by appointing twelve great peers, or
+rather by pretending that such a number had always existed since the
+twelve paladins of Charlemagne. Of these, six were clerics, six laics;
+the latter being the dukes of Normandy, of Aquitaine, of Burgundy, the
+counts of Toulouse, of Flanders, and of Champagne. This division of
+the aristocracy in the high and low nobility, was, however, as yet but
+nominal; the lesser barons still continued to consider themselves as the
+peers of the greater, and to have an equal voice in the royal courts. It
+is important for the reader to mark the rise of this feudal institution,
+and equally so to mark the difference of its fate and progress in France
+and in England. In the former country, the parliament became amalgamated
+with lawyers, and preserved to the last its judicial functions,
+whilst its legislative authority became but a shadow. In England, on
+the contrary, it guarded the more precious privilege of legislation,
+abandoning a considerable portion of its judicial rights.
+
+By the discomfiture of John, Philip Augustus united to the monarchy of
+France not only Normandy, but the provinces of Maine, Anjou, Touraine,
+and Poitou. Artois he had acquired as the dowry of his wife, Isabella
+of Hainault. The counties of the south remained still independent of
+his sway. They looked to the king of Aragon as their suzerain; and
+there existed far more congeniality of feelings and habits betwixt the
+Spaniards and Provençals, than betwixt the Provençals and French. Certain
+events of the reign of Philip, which we are about to relate, destroyed
+the independence of the people of the south, as well as their connection
+with the Aragonese, and extended the authority of the French monarch to
+the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees.
+
+
+THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE
+
+While Philip Augustus adroitly wrested Normandy and its dependencies
+from the hands of John, a series of events took place in Languedoc which
+had the effect of destroying its independence, and of bringing that fine
+region not only nominally, as it had hitherto been, but really under the
+dominion of the kings of France.[b]
+
+At this period the southern part of France held but distant relations
+with the north. Two powerful houses, that of Barcelona and that of
+Toulouse, shared dominion over it, with the exception of Aquitaine,
+which extended to the Pyrenees. This isolation naturally gave the south
+a separate existence, character, and interest. The tongue, that of the
+Limousin or of Provence, resembling more the Aragonese than the French
+of Paris, had become, thanks to the troubadours, a literary language.
+The cities contained a large bourgeois element, which had become wealthy
+through commerce.
+
+It was in the midst of this people, active, ardent, isolated from most
+of their neighbours by political as well as natural barriers, corrupted
+moreover by the refinements of an equivocal civilisation and by the
+enervating literature of the troubadours, that there broke forth, at the
+end of the twelfth century, the Albigensian heresy, a powerful one, that
+having long undermined the ground, ended by being a menace to Catholic
+beliefs, the church, and society itself.
+
+Several heretical sects dating from the early Christian time had
+not ceased to have their obscure upholders in France. Such were the
+Manichæans or Paulicians who believed in the co-existence of a principle
+of good and a principle of evil. It was the Paulicians who were condemned
+to be burned at Orleans by King Robert (1022). During the time of the
+crusaders, the sect, revived by frequent intercourse with the Orient
+where it had originated, spread all over the centre of France. It is
+thought that this extension was the work of the emigrants who arrived
+from Bulgaria; at last the heretics received the name of Bulgarians or
+Boulgres, and it was rumoured that they had a mysterious chief, or, as
+they said, a resident pope in that country. They were called Albigenses
+because they were especially numerous in the vicinity of Albi, and by
+this last name they have been preserved in history.
+
+Some of their doctrines are known: they regarded the devil, or principle
+of evil, as the first author of the creation; they rejected the
+sacraments; they interpreted the Scriptures in a different way from the
+Catholic tradition. Also they possessed a kind of sacerdotal college
+whose members, called “the perfect ones,” performed special rites. It is
+very difficult to form any idea of their dogmas as a whole, for they had
+no theologian, no teacher, and they have left no writings. One can judge
+the basis of this heresy, and the sects belonging to it, only indirectly
+by the writings of the authors and teachers who fought them. These
+writers have attacked above all the strangeness of their practices and
+the vulgarity of their superstitions.
+
+[Sidenote: [1208-1209 A.D.]]
+
+But the dominant character of all these sects was their hatred of the
+church. They pretended to re-establish the primitive simplicity of the
+religion, which the church had corrupted, and among themselves they were
+known as _cathares_, or “the pure ones.”[e]
+
+For a long time the holy see seemed not alive to the importance of
+this sect. It was Pope Innocent III who first perceived its dangerous
+tendency, and who took certain steps for its destruction. He issued
+interdicts against such princes as should favour them, and offered the
+spoil of the heretic to whoever should subdue and slay him. The principal
+lord of the south of France was at that time Raymond VI, count of
+Toulouse; and he at least tolerated the Albigenses, as those primitive
+reformers were called, aware of their moral purity and sincere devotion.
+Peter of Castelnau, the pope’s legate, reproached the count of Toulouse
+with his want of zeal, and was indignant at his forbearance to extirpate
+the new opinions by fire and sword. The legate used no measured language;
+he not only excommunicated Raymond, but insulted him in his court, and
+then took his departure. The count of Toulouse expressed his indignant
+feelings before his followers as Henry II did after the insolence of
+Thomas à Becket, and with the same fatal effect. On the day after, Peter
+of Castelnau fell under the dagger of a gentleman of the count, in a
+hostelry on the Rhone, where he had stopped.
+
+[Illustration: AN OFFICER OF THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+Pope Innocent was driven to transports of rage on learning the
+assassination of his legate. He not only excommunicated the count of
+Toulouse, but promulgated a crusade against him. He called on all the
+nobles of France, on its princes, and its prelates, to join in the “holy”
+war, to assume the cross, as being engaged against infidels. And the same
+privileges and indulgences were granted to the crusader of this civil
+war, that previously were bestowed on those who embarked fortune and
+life in the perilous attempt to rescue the Holy Land from the Saracen.
+Spoil, wealth, and honour in this world, together with certain salvation
+in the next, were now offered at too cheap a rate to be refused.
+Crowds of adventurers flocked to the standard; and a formidable army
+was assembled at Lyons in the spring of 1209, under the command of the
+legate commander, Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux. The pope at the same time
+created a new ecclesiastical militia for the destruction of heresy. The
+order of St. Dominic, or of the friars inquisitors, was instituted; and
+these infernal missionaries were let loose in couples upon the hapless
+Languedoc, like bloodhounds, to scent their prey and then devour it.
+
+[Sidenote: [1209-1217 A.D.]]
+
+Raymond, count of Toulouse, had neither the force nor the courage to
+oppose so formidable an invasion. He repaired to the crusaders’ army,
+delivered up his fortresses and cities, and suffered the humiliating
+penance of a public flogging in the church of St. Giles. The count’s
+relative and feudatory, Raymond Roger, viscount of Béziers and
+Carcassonne, regions infected with the heresy of the Albigenses, came
+also to make submission. The abbot of Cîteaux, who was prudent enough to
+accept that of the count of Toulouse, feared to lose all his prey. He
+refused to admit the exculpation of the viscount of Béziers, and plainly
+told him that his only chance was to defend himself to the utmost. The
+young viscount courageously accepted the advice. He summoned the most
+faithful of his vassals, abandoned the open country as well as towns
+of lesser consequence to the enemy, and restricted his efforts to the
+defence of Béziers and of Carcassonne. He shut himself up in the latter.
+The fury of the crusaders fell first upon Béziers: they had scarcely
+sat down before the unfortunate town, when a sally of the garrison was
+repulsed with such vigour that the besiegers entered the town together
+with the routed host of the citizens. Word of this unexpected success
+was instantly brought to the abbot of Cîteaux, and his orders were
+demanded as to how the innocent were to be distinguished from the guilty.
+“Slay them all,” exclaimed the legate of the vicar of Christ; “the Lord
+will know his own.” The entire population was in consequence put to
+the sword; nor woman nor infant was spared. Upwards of twenty thousand
+human beings perished in the massacre--the sanguinary first-fruits of
+modern persecution. Carcassonne was next invested, bravely attacked,
+and as valiantly defended; the young viscount distinguishing himself in
+defence of his rights, while Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was
+the most prominent warrior of the crusaders. At length the legate grew
+weary of the viscount’s obstinacy, and offered him terms. He gave him
+a safe-conduct, sanctioned by his own oath and that of the barons of
+his army. Raymond Roger came with three hundred of his followers to the
+tent of the legate. “Faith,” said the latter, “is not to be kept with
+those who have no faith”; and he ordered the viscount and his friends
+to be put in chains. The inhabitants of Carcassonne found means to fly.
+In a general assembly of the crusaders, the lordships of Béziers and
+Carcassonne were given to Simon de Montfort, in reward of his zeal and
+valour; and to make the gift sure, it was accompanied with the person of
+his rival. The unfortunate viscount, the victim of the legate’s perfidy,
+soon after perished in prison.
+
+The victory of the crusaders was of course followed by executions at
+the stake and on the scaffold. The friars inquisitors of the order
+of St. Dominic did not relax their zeal. A general revolt against De
+Montfort was the consequence, in which the people of Toulouse joined.
+The Provençal army was headed by Pedro king of Aragon, the uncle of the
+late viscount of Béziers. It was he who had persuaded the unfortunate
+viscount to trust himself to the legate, and to him in consequence
+fell the duty of taking vengeance. The cross, however--the profaned
+cross--was still successful. The Provençals were routed by Simon de
+Montfort at the battle of Muret, and the king of Aragon was slain. This
+victory seemed to establish the power of De Montfort in Languedoc. He
+took possession of all the provinces of his rival, even of the town of
+Toulouse; and an assembly of prelates sanctioned the usurpation. But
+the cruel spirit of De Montfort would not allow him to rest quiet in
+his new empire. Violence and persecution marked his rule; he sought to
+destroy the Provençal population by the sword or the stake, nor could he
+bring himself to tolerate the liberties of the citizens of Toulouse. In
+1217 the Toulousans again revolted, and war once more broke out betwixt
+Count Raymond and Simon de Montfort. The latter formed the siege of the
+capital, and was engaged in repelling a sally, when a stone from one of
+the walls struck him and put an end to his existence. The death of De
+Montfort was of course considered a martyrdom by the clergy, and his
+fame in their chronicles far outshines that of Godfrey de Bouillon or of
+Richard the Lion-hearted.
+
+
+LEAGUE AGAINST PHILIP AUGUSTUS
+
+King Philip was in the meantime pursuing his darling object, the humbling
+the power of the princes of England. He had already driven John from the
+west of France. That monarch, at variance with his barons, and at the
+same time excommunicated by the church, seemed an easy prey to Philip.
+The French king meditated the conquest of England. He leagued with the
+malcontents of that country, and formed a powerful army for the purposes
+of invasion. John, to ward off the blow, not only became reconciled to
+the Roman see, but made himself and his kingdom feudatory to the pope. A
+papal legate immediately took John under his protection; and the French
+monarch, rather than risk a quarrel with the church, turned his armies
+towards Flanders, which he wasted and plundered impitiably, from hatred
+to its count.
+
+The emperor Otto, then in alliance with King John against France, came
+to the relief of the Flemings; and thus, for the first time since the
+accession of the new dynasty, the armies of France and Germany found
+themselves arrayed against each other in national hostility, each
+commanded by its respective monarch. The rival hosts met at Bouvines, in
+the month of August, 1214. Twenty thousand combatants on either side,
+together with the presence of two monarchs, gave gravity and importance
+to the meeting.[b]
+
+
+_The Battle of Bouvines (1214 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1214 A.D.]]
+
+The two armies remained for a time a short distance apart, not daring
+to begin operations; and the French were retreating over the bridge of
+Bouvines to march upon Hainault, when the enemy, attacking the rearguard,
+obliged them to turn about.
+
+The chaplain, William le Breton,[k] who during the action remained beside
+the king singing psalms, says: “Philip was resting under a tree near a
+chapel, his armour laid aside. At the first sound of combat he entered
+the church for a short prayer, armed hastily, and mounted his steed with
+as great enthusiasm as though on his way to a wedding or a feast. Loud
+shouts resounded from the field: ‘To arms, men of war, to arms!’ together
+with the blare of trumpets. The king rode to the front, not waiting for
+his banner--the oriflamme of St. Denis, a flag of scarlet silk, that day
+carried by Gallon de Montigny, a brave man. The bishop-elect of Senlis,
+Guérin, ordered the battle so that the French had the sun behind them,
+while the enemy fought with the sun in their eyes. Three hundred mounted
+peasants of Soissons, vassals of the abbot of St. Médard, opened action
+on the right wing, boldly charging the Flemish cavalry. The latter
+hesitated to engage with their inferiors, but the cry, ‘Death to the
+French!’ raised by one among them proved decisive; and the Burgundians,
+led by their duke, arriving to reinforce those of Soissons, there was a
+furious combat. On this side Count Ferrand of Flanders fought.”
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES]
+
+When the battle began the militia had already crossed the bridge; they
+recrossed in haste, rallied under the royal standard, and took position
+in the centre in front of the king and his guard. The German cavalry,
+among whom rode the emperor Otto, charged and penetrated their ranks,
+and had almost reached the king when they were checked by the prompt
+action of his officers. In the midst of this encounter arrived the German
+infantry. These dragged Philip from his horse, and before he could
+recover his feet attempted to thrust at him through the visor of his
+helmet or a flaw in his armour. Montigny, who carried the colours, waved
+his banner frantically for assistance; some horse- and foot-soldiers
+hastened up. These rescued the king, set him on his horse, and he again
+plunged into the mêlée.
+
+Otto in his turn was near to being captured. William des Barres, the
+bravest and ablest of the French cavaliers, the fortunate adversary of
+Richard the Lion-hearted, whom he had twice overcome, had the emperor
+by the helmet, and was thrusting at him furiously when overwhelmed by
+a torrent of the enemy. Unable to make him loose his hold or to close
+with him, they killed his horse under him; but disentangling himself he
+succeeded, alone and on foot, in clearing with his sword and his poniard
+an ample space around him. Otto escaped.
+
+On the right Ferrand, count of Flanders, had fallen wounded into the
+hands of the French; in the centre the emperor and his German princes
+had taken to flight: but on the left Renaud de Boulogne and the English
+held firm. They had overcome the men of Dreux, of Perche, of Ponthieu,
+and of Vimeu. “Whereupon,” says the poet-chronicler, “Philip de Dreux,
+bishop of Beauvais, happening to have in his hand a club, and forgetting
+in his rage and grief the dignity of his office, struck down the English
+commander and with him many others, spilling no blood but breaking many
+bones. He enjoined upon those about him the necessity of taking upon
+themselves the credit of this deed, that he might not fall under reproach
+for violating the traditions of his office.”
+
+The English were soon completely routed with the exception of Renaud de
+Boulogne, who had drawn up a double circle of infantry bristling with
+spears. He charged therefrom as from a fort, and there returned for
+refuge and to recover breath. At last his horse was wounded; he fell and
+was captured. Five other counts and twenty-five knights-banneret had been
+taken.
+
+The return of the king to Paris was a march of triumph. All along the
+route the churches dispersed indulgences, and the hymns of the choirs
+mingled with the clash of war implements. The houses were hung with
+draperies; the roads strewn with branches and fresh flowers. Men and
+women, children and old people ran to the crossroads to see the count of
+Flanders who, wounded and in chains, was carried in a litter; some among
+them crying: “Ferrand, bound and in irons (_ferré_), no longer shalt thou
+kick against the pricks and hurl defiance at thy masters.”
+
+At Paris the townspeople, with a multitude of clerks and students, burst
+into songs and hymns on the arrival of the king. The day not sufficing
+for the jubilation, they festooned the dark with innumerable lanterns, so
+that the night was brilliant as the day. The students kept holiday for a
+week. In the midst of these rejoicings the troops, which had comported
+themselves so creditably in the strife, delivered to the provost of Paris
+the prisoners in their charge. The king left them a certain number to be
+ransomed and imprisoned the rest. Ferrand was lodged in the new tower of
+the Louvre, where he remained for thirteen years. Near Senlis was built
+Victory Abbey, whose ruins are still to be seen.[c]
+
+
+LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS
+
+[Sidenote: [1214-1224 A.D.]]
+
+The brilliant success of Bouvines seems to have contented and allayed
+the hitherto restless ambition of Philip. In a year or two after, the
+barons of England, discontented with John, offered their crown to Louis,
+the son of Philip Augustus. The old monarch hesitated; he dreaded the
+anathema with which the pope threatened him, if he attacked his vassal,
+John of England. Prince Louis was obliged to undertake the expedition
+with but scanty aid from his parent. He was at first successful. Almost
+all England owned his sovereignty. The castle of Dover alone held out.
+But the death of John, and the proclaiming of his son, Henry III, soon
+obliged the French prince to abandon his claim and his conquests in
+England.
+
+In the south, Philip Augustus showed himself equally dead to enterprise
+and lost in spirit. Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, offered to cede
+to the king all his rights in Languedoc, which he was unable to defend
+against the old house of Toulouse. Philip hesitated to accept the
+important cession, and left the rival houses to the continuance of a
+struggle carried feebly on by either side. He at length expired, in 1223,
+after a reign of forty-three years. This period of half a century was one
+of uninterrupted progress to the French monarchy, and to its sovereign
+power. Though much of this was due to the age, to circumstances, and to
+the natural development of the country’s political system, still much
+remains due to the personal character of Philip--to his activity, his
+prudence, foresight, and courage. The mere list of the provinces which
+he subdued and united to the monarchy forms the fittest monument to his
+fame. These were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, wrested
+from John; Picardy and Auvergne, won in the commencement of his reign;
+Artois, acquired by his marriage with Isabella of Hainault; and, finally,
+the influence over Languedoc which the crusaders brought him, and which
+nothing but Philip’s age and declining strength prevented him from
+converting into sovereignty. In minor matters the active spirit of Philip
+Augustus equally displayed itself. He put the police on an efficient
+footing; he walled and paved Paris and the principal towns under his
+sway; he built and fortified; he encouraged literature by the foundation
+of professorships; improved the discipline of the army; and, with all
+his enterprises and expenses, so ordered his finances as to leave a
+considerable treasure at his death.
+
+
+LOUIS VIII (1223-1226 A.D.)
+
+When Louis VIII succeeded his father Philip on the throne, it was
+remarked with joy by the lovers of legitimacy that he was descended by
+his mother, Isabella of Hainault, from Charles of Lorraine, the last
+prince of Charlemagne’s blood, and that he thus united the rights of
+Carlovingian and Capetian. He was feeble in person, and is said not to
+have been endowed with much capacity; but the sage policy of Philip
+Augustus, together with the impulse he had given to affairs, continued
+to direct them, and to render France triumphant over her enemies. Henry
+III lost the towns of Niort and La Rochelle, and was driven by Louis from
+Poitou; yet so little did the English feel the loss of this province,
+that it is scarcely noticed by the historians of the island. The barons
+were so much occupied with jealousy of their sovereign and of his power,
+that Henry could procure or send no aid to his French provinces. A feeble
+expedition was at length fitted out, which preserved Gascony to England,
+but recovered nothing.
+
+A singular cause of contention arose about this time in Flanders.
+Baldwin, its last count, had been one of the leaders of the Fifth
+Crusade, which, in the commencement of the century, took Constantinople
+from the Greeks. He had been elected emperor of Romania, and had been
+the first of the Latin dynasty which reigned over it. Soon after, in
+the year 1205, he had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and had
+not since been heard of. His daughter Joan succeeded to the county of
+Flanders, and had married Ferdinand (Ferrand), prince of Portugal, who
+had opposed Philip Augustus, and who was taken prisoner by that monarch
+at the battle of Bouvines. Joan took no steps to liberate her husband, or
+to pay his ransom, when an aged man appeared in Flanders, calling himself
+Count Baldwin, and giving an account of his long captivity and recent
+escape from the Bulgarians. Joan denied the identity of this person with
+her father; Louis VIII was of her opinion; while Henry III treated and
+allied himself with him as the veritable Baldwin. The self-entitled count
+appeared before King Louis at Péronne, offering proofs of his identity;
+but unfortunately he could not recall the place where he had done homage
+to Philip Augustus, nor the place where he had been knighted, nor yet the
+place and day of his marriage. Whether he really could not make answer
+to these questions, or whether age had troubled his memory, the old man
+was condemned as a pretender, and the countess Joan soon after caused him
+to be hanged. The common people still persisted in giving credit to his
+identity with Count Baldwin, and looked on Joan as the murderer of her
+father. Henry III in no way supported this his unfortunate ally.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS VIII
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+[Sidenote: [1204-1226 A.D.]]
+
+The sovereignty over Languedoc was still undecided. King Louis was
+anxious to undertake a crusade in that country, with all the indulgences
+and advantages of a warlike pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The hostilities
+with England and the fickleness of the pope delayed the execution of this
+purpose. Both obstacles were removed at length. Amaury de Montfort being
+driven from the conquests of his father by the sons of Count Raymond,
+reanimated the zeal of the pope and the old crusaders. Amaury retired
+to Paris, and made cession of his claims to King Louis, who, in return,
+promised him the office of constable. A new crusade was preached against
+the Albigenses; and Louis marched towards Languedoc at the head of a
+formidable army in the spring of the year 1226. The town of Avignon had
+proffered to the crusaders the facilities of crossing the Rhone under
+her walls, but refused entry within them to such an host. Louis, having
+arrived at Avignon, insisted on passing through the town: the Avignonais
+shut their gates and defied the monarch, who instantly formed the siege.
+One of the rich municipalities of the south was almost a match for the
+king of France. He was kept three months under its walls, his army a
+prey to famine, to disease, and to the assaults of a brave garrison.
+The crusaders lost twenty thousand men. The people of Avignon at length
+submitted, but on no dishonourable terms. This was the only resistance
+that Louis experienced in Languedoc. Raymond VII dared not meet the
+crusaders in the field, nor durst one of his towns or châteaux remain
+faithful to him. All submitted. Louis retired from his facile conquest;
+he himself, and the chiefs of his army, stricken by an epidemy which had
+prevailed in the conquered regions. The monarch’s feeble frame could not
+resist it: he expired at Montpensier in Auvergne, in November, 1226.[b]
+
+
+LOUIS IX, CALLED ST. LOUIS (1226-1270 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1226-1236 A.D.]]
+
+Now we come to the true hero of the Middle Ages, a prince pious as he
+was brave; who was devoted to feudalism and yet struck it the most
+telling blows; who venerated the church yet knew how to resist its head;
+who respected law yet placed justice above it; a frank and gentle soul
+and loving heart filled with Christian charity, yet one that condemned
+to torture the body of the sinner for the salvation of his soul; who
+on earth looked only towards heaven and made of his kingly office a
+magistracy of order and equity. Rome has canonised him, and the people
+still see him seated under the oak of Vincennes dispensing justice to all
+comers. This saint, this man of peace, did more in the simplicity of his
+heart for the advancement of royalty than the most subtle counsellors or
+ten fighting monarchs, because the king, in after time, appeared to the
+people as the incarnation of Justice.[9]
+
+For more than a century the sword of royalty, so far as it pertained to
+France, had been valiantly carried. But the son of Louis VIII was a child
+of eleven years. A coalition of the most powerful vassals was formed
+at once to profit by his minority. The regent, his mother, Blanche of
+Castile, won to her side one of the confederates, Thibaut, the powerful
+count of Champagne, sent the royal army to save him from the attack of
+his former allies and obtained from him, when he inherited the kingdom
+of Navarre, the important counties of Blois, Chartres, and Sancerre.
+A treaty, signed in 1229, assured to one of the king’s brothers the
+succession of the county of Toulouse and a marriage arranged between a
+second brother of St. Louis and the heiress of Provence prepared the way,
+at a future date, for the union of that country with France. Already
+the royal seneschals were established at Beaucaire and Carcassonne, by
+which the king found himself master, through himself or his brothers, of
+a large part of southern France. The king’s majority was proclaimed in
+1236, but the wise regent still held the greatest influence over her son
+and the direction of affairs.
+
+The great pontificate of Innocent III had given new energy to the church
+and to religious sentiment. The spirit of the Crusades which had been
+extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus with Richard Cœur
+de Lion and John Lackland was rekindled. In 1235 preaching the “holy
+war” was recommenced in France, and, as on too many other occasions, the
+movement was begun by the massacre of those whose ancestors had nailed
+the sainted victim to the cross of Golgotha. Everywhere the Jews were
+slaughtered, until the Council of Tours was obliged to take these unhappy
+people under their protection. Heretics found even less mercy. Thibaut of
+Champagne burned 183 of them on Mount Aimé near Vertus. This crusade, in
+which Thibaut himself, the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany took part, was
+not successful. The crusaders were beaten at Gaza in Palestine, and those
+who returned brought back with them nothing but the honour of having
+broken a few lances in the Holy Land.
+
+[Sidenote: [1236-1259 A.D.]]
+
+Up to his war with England St. Louis gave little sign of activity; but in
+1241 the emperor Frederick II detained the French prelates who had gone
+to Rome to attend a council, and Louis demanded with great firmness that
+they be set at liberty.
+
+“Since the prelates of our realm have for no reason deserved their
+detention,” he writes the emperor, “may it please your grace to set them
+at liberty. You will thus appease us, for we regard their detention as an
+insult, and our royal majesty would lose respect if we could keep quiet
+under such circumstances. May your imperial prudence not go so far as
+to allege your power or your will, since the kingdom of France is not
+so weak that it will resign itself to be trampled under your feet.” The
+emperor released his prisoners. Some time before Louis, on behalf of
+himself and one of his brothers, refused the imperial crown of Frederick
+II which the pope had offered him, and he had also refused the pontiff’s
+request to modify a royal ordinance of 1234 restraining the jurisdiction
+of ecclesiastical tribunals--a necessary measure, since these courts had
+come to judge many more civil cases than the lay tribunals.
+
+This man who spoke so firmly acted in the same manner when forced to take
+up arms. Attacked in 1242 by the English, who sustained several of his
+rebellious barons, St. Louis beat them at Taillebourg and at Saintes.
+Perhaps he would have been able to drive them out of France, but he
+refused to push his victory. Acquisitions made in the last half century
+had tripled the extent of the royal domain, but they seemed to him
+tainted with violence because they were the gain of two confiscations.
+Through conscientious scruples he left the king of England, in a treaty
+which he did not sign until his return from the crusade in 1259 [The
+Treaty of Abbeville], the duchy of Guienne, that is to say Bordeaux,
+Limoges, Périgueux, Cahors, Agen, Saintonge to the south of the Charente,
+and Gascony, on condition of homage to the crown. And to prevent perjury
+he obliged the lords who held fiefs from both crowns to choose between
+the two sovereigns. The limits of the kingdom were equally uncertain on
+the south; he fixed them at a convention with the king of Aragon, and the
+county of Barcelona ceased to be dependent on the French crown.
+
+In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, driven out of Italy by the emperor Frederick
+II, took refuge at Lyons and there held in the cathedral church of
+St. John of that city the thirteenth ecumenical council at which 140
+bishops assisted. The pope solemnly deposed the emperor and exhorted all
+Christian princes to march to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre.
+
+The spirit of the Crusades, which had been extinguished during the
+rivalry of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion, was rekindled.
+The Spaniards had their crusade against the Moors, the Germans against
+the Slavs, and the knights of Italy fought against the cities; but
+in France, in spite of the great satiety of war from the Albigensian
+troubles, there remained sufficient martial spirit to undertake new
+crusades. In 1239 many had gone; we know with what success. Jerusalem,
+which Frederick II had bought back from the hands of the infidels (1229)
+had now come again under the power of Khwarismian barbarians (1239).
+
+
+_First Crusade of St. Louis (1248-1254 A.D.)_
+
+St. Louis had not listened to the appeal of the Fathers of the Council
+of Lyons to assume the cross, but during an illness which, in 1244,
+brought him to the edge of the grave, he made a vow to go to the Holy
+Land. His mother and counsellors struggled in vain against this imprudent
+resolution. Louis left his power again in the hands of Queen Blanche and
+embarked at Aigues-Mortes, a little city which at that time was joined
+to the Mediterranean by a canal across the swamps and salt marshes. The
+king bought it from the monks of Psalmodi Abbey in order to have a port
+of his own upon that sea, for Marseilles belonged to his brother the
+count of Provence. Many crusaders embarked at the latter city, among them
+the king’s friend the seneschal of Champagne and the sire de Joinville,
+who, with Villehardouin, is the first in point of date, as in merit,
+of the old French prose writers. It was not without many misgivings
+that he determined to follow his master. In setting out to join him he
+passed near his own castle, “but,” he said, “I dare not turn my face
+towards Joinville, for fear that my heart would fail me in leaving my two
+children and my fine castle which are so dear to me.” On the banks of
+the Rhone he saw the ruins of a castle which the king had had destroyed
+because its lord had a bad name for stripping and robbing all the
+merchants and pilgrims who passed by.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+[Sidenote: [1249-1270 A.D.]]
+
+St. Louis had been collecting for two years a large store of provisions
+on the island of Cyprus. The army left there in eighteen hundred ships,
+large and small, for Egypt. Damietta, at one of the mouths of the Nile,
+was captured (June 7th, 1249), but precious time was lost before marching
+upon Cairo. Five months and a half of delay stoutened the hearts of the
+mamelukes. The crusaders took a month to cover the five leagues which
+separated them from the town of Mansurah. A badly directed fight at
+the same place cost the lives of a large number of knights and of St.
+Louis’ brother the count of Artois. When the prior of the Hospital, says
+Joinville,[i] came to ask of St. Louis if he had any news of his brother,
+the king replied that he had, that he knew his brother was in heaven. The
+prior tried to comfort him in praising the valour the prince had always
+shown and the glory he had gained that day, and the good king replied
+that God was adored in all that he had done. And then he began to shed
+great tears, at which many people who were looking on were oppressed by
+grief and compassion (February, 1250).
+
+Soon the army was surrounded by enemies and decimated by pest. Joinville
+was stricken down, and equally so his poor chaplain. One day it happened
+that he was chanting mass before the seneschal’s bedside; when the priest
+was at the sacrament Joinville perceived him to be so ill that with his
+own eyes he saw him faint. The seneschal got up and ran to raise him
+and then he managed to finish the mass, but never said it again, and
+died. The retreat was disastrous and finally they had to surrender.
+“The good, saintly man, the king,” did honour to his captivity by his
+courage and inspired even his enemies with respect for his virtues. They
+released him for a large ransom. Once free he made his way to Palestine
+and stayed there three years, employing his influence and zeal in
+maintaining harmony among the Christians and his resources in repairing
+the fortifications of the places they still occupied.
+
+The news of these disasters only served to increase the king’s popularity
+in France. The people would not see his faults and thought only of the
+virtues he had shown. The prelates and lords had deserted and betrayed
+him, they said; it would take the humble people to rescue him, and an
+immense crowd of serfs and peasants gathered together to cross the sea
+and go to the king’s help. This was the Shepherds’ Crusade. These people
+lived, on the way, by pillage--even murders were committed. It was
+necessary to deal harshly with them, and they were scattered like wild
+beasts.
+
+The news of the regent’s death (December, 1252) recalled Louis at last to
+France. In passing Cyprus the king’s galley grazed a rock, which carried
+away fully eighteen feet of her keel. Louis was advised to change ships,
+and according to Joinville[i] said, “If I leave the ship, five or six
+hundred people who are on it and who value their life as I do mine will
+be afraid to stay behind and will land at Cyprus with no hope or means of
+ever returning to their own country. I prefer to place myself, my wife,
+and children in danger under the protection of God, than to bring such
+misfortune on so many people.”
+
+
+_Last Years and Death of St. Louis_
+
+It was after his return to France that St. Louis made treaties with
+England and Aragon to determine definitely the boundaries of the three
+kingdoms. He hoped in making substantial sacrifices to strengthen
+his hold on the provinces he kept for himself and to prevent the war
+so frequently provoked by uncertainty with regard to frontiers. This
+solicitude to do justice to all caused him to be chosen as arbitrator
+between the king of England and his barons in the controversy over the
+provisions of Oxford (1264). Louis pronounced in favour of the king,
+and this time was not successful, for the barons did not hold to his
+decision, and deposed Henry III. More fortunate elsewhere, he settled a
+dispute of succession which delivered Flanders from civil war. In the
+year 1270 St. Louis undertook another crusade in which his faithful
+Joinville this time refused to engage.[f]
+
+[Sidenote: [1270 A.D.]]
+
+A pacific expedition which should merely intimidate the king of Tunis and
+induce him to become a convert was not what suited the Genoese in whose
+vessels St. Louis was making his passage. Most of the crusaders preferred
+violence; it was said that Tunis was a rich town, the pillage of which
+might indemnify them for their dangerous expedition. The Genoese,
+regardless of the voice of St. Louis, began hostilities by seizing the
+vessels they found before Carthage. The landing took place without
+obstacle. The Moors only showed themselves to provoke the Christians,
+and make them waste their strength in fruitless pursuits. After spending
+some weary days on the burning shore, the Christians advanced towards the
+castle of Carthage. All that remained of the great rival of Rome was a
+fort guarded by two hundred soldiers, and the Saracens who had retreated
+into the vaults or subterranean chambers were butchered or suffocated by
+smoke and flames. The king found the ruins full of corpses, which he had
+removed, that he might take up his quarters there with his followers.
+He had to wait at Carthage for his brother, Charles of Anjou, before
+marching on Tunis.
+
+The greater part of the army remained under the African sun, tormented by
+the thick dust swept from the desert by the winds, and surrounded by the
+festering remains of the dead. The Moors prowled all around, continually
+cutting off some stragglers. There were no trees, no vegetable food; for
+water there was nothing but fetid marshes and cisterns full of disgusting
+insects. In eight days the plague had broken out. The counts of Vendôme,
+de la Marche and Viane, Walter de Nemours, marshal of France, the sires
+de Montmorency, Piennes, Brissac, St. Briçon, and d’Apremont were already
+dead.
+
+The legate soon followed them. The survivors being no longer able to
+bury them, they were thrown into the canal, till they covered the whole
+surface of the water. Meanwhile, the king and his sons were attacked by
+the malady; the youngest died in his vessel, and it was not till eight
+days afterwards that the confessor of St. Louis took on himself to
+acquaint him with the mournful event. The deceased was the most beloved
+of his children, and his death announced to a dying father was, to the
+latter, one tie less to earth, a call from God, a temptation to die.
+Accordingly, without perturbation or regret, he accomplished that last
+work of a Christian life, making the responses to the litanies and the
+psalms, dictating a noble and affecting instruction for his son, and
+receiving even the ambassadors of the Greeks, who came to entreat his
+intervention in their favour with his brother Charles of Anjou, whose
+ambition menaced them. He spoke to them with kindness, and promised to
+exert himself with zeal, if he lived, to keep them in peace; but the next
+day he himself entered into the peace of God.
+
+That last night of his life he desired them to raise him from his bed and
+lay him on ashes; and so he died, with his arms constantly folded in the
+form of a cross. “And on Monday the blessed king stretched his folded
+hands towards heaven, and said, ‘Good Lord God, have mercy on this people
+that here remaineth, and lead it into its country, that it fall not into
+the hand of its enemies, and that it be not constrained to renounce thy
+holy name!’ In the night before he deceased, whilst he was reposing, he
+sighed, and said in a low voice, ‘O Jerusalem! O Jerusalem!’”[d]
+
+In his lifetime the contemporaries of St. Louis suspected in their
+simplicity that he was already a saint, and more saintly than the
+priests. Says the king’s confessor, Geoffrey de Beaulieu:[l] “Whilst he
+lived a word might be said of him which is said of St. Hilary, ‘O most
+perfect layman whose life priests even desire to imitate.’ For many
+priests and laymen desired to be like the blessed king in his virtues
+and his morals; for it is even thought that he was a saint in his
+lifetime.”[d]
+
+The French during this reign accomplished a great achievement without the
+help of royalty. Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, summoned by the
+pope against King Manfred, son of the emperor Frederick II, conquered
+the kingdom of Naples in 1266. But the Latins had five years before lost
+Constantinople which the Greeks had taken possession of. It was to the
+interested advice of Charles of Anjou that was due the direction taken by
+the last crusade, since the submission of the king of Tunis would free
+Sicily from the constant attempts of the Saracens upon that island.[f]
+
+
+_Hallam’s Estimate of St. Louis_
+
+[Sidenote: [1226-1270 A.D.]]
+
+Louis IX had methods of preserving his ascendency very different from
+military prowess. That excellent prince was perhaps the most eminent
+pattern of unswerving probity and Christian strictness of conscience
+that ever held the sceptre in any country. There is a peculiar beauty
+in the reign of St. Louis, because it shows the inestimable benefit
+which a virtuous king may confer on his people, without possessing any
+distinguished genius. For nearly half a century that he governed France,
+there is not the smallest want of moderation or disinterestedness in his
+actions; and yet he raised the influence of the monarchy to a much higher
+point than the most ambitious of his predecessors.
+
+To the surprise of his own and later times, he restored great part
+of his conquests to Henry III, whom he might naturally hope to have
+expelled from France. It would indeed have been a tedious work to conquer
+Guienne, which was full of strong places, and the subjugation of such a
+province might have alarmed the other vassals of his crown. But it is
+the privilege only of virtuous minds to perceive that wisdom resides
+in moderate counsels; no sagacity ever taught a selfish and ambitious
+sovereign to forego the sweetness of immediate power. An ordinary king,
+in the circumstances of the French monarchy, would have fomented, or
+at least have rejoiced in the dissensions which broke out among the
+principal vassals; Louis constantly employed himself to reconcile them.
+In this, too, his benevolence had all the effects of far-sighted policy.
+It had been the practice of his last three predecessors to interpose
+their mediation in behalf of the less powerful classes--the clergy, the
+inferior nobility, and the inhabitants of chartered towns. Thus the
+supremacy of the crown became a familiar idea; but the perfect integrity
+of St. Louis wore away all distrust, and accustomed even the most jealous
+feudatories to look upon him as their judge and legislator. And as the
+royal authority was hitherto shown only in its most amiable prerogatives,
+the dispensation of favour, and the redress of wrong, few were watchful
+enough to remark the transition of the French constitution from a feudal
+league to an absolute monarchy.
+
+It was perhaps fortunate for the display of St. Louis’ virtues that the
+throne had already been strengthened by the less innocent exertions
+of Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. A century earlier, his mild and
+scrupulous character, unsustained by great actual power, might not have
+inspired sufficient awe. But the crown was now grown so formidable, and
+Louis was so eminent for his firmness and bravery, qualities without
+which every other virtue would have been ineffectual, that no one
+thought it safe to run wantonly into rebellion, while his disinterested
+administration gave no one a pretext for it. Not satisfied with the
+justice of his own conduct, Louis aimed at that act of virtue which
+is rarely practised by private men, and had perhaps no example among
+kings--restitution. Commissaries were appointed to inquire what
+possessions had been unjustly annexed to the royal domain during the last
+two reigns. These were restored to the proprietors, or, where length of
+time had made it difficult to ascertain the claimant, their value was
+distributed among the poor.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH PAGE, TIME OF LOUIS IX]
+
+It has been hinted already that all this excellence of heart in Louis IX
+was not attended with that strength of understanding which is necessary,
+we must allow, to complete the usefulness of a sovereign. During his
+minority, Blanche of Castile, his mother, had filled the office of regent
+with great courage and firmness. But after he grew up to manhood, her
+influence seems to have passed the limit which gratitude and piety would
+have assigned to it; and, as her temper was not very meek or popular,
+it exposed the king to some degree of contempt. He submitted even to be
+restrained from the society of his wife Marguerite, daughter of Raymond,
+count of Provence, a princess of great virtue and conjugal affection.
+
+But the principal weakness of this king, which almost effaced all the
+good effects of his virtues, was superstition. It would be idle to sneer
+at those habits of abstemiousness and mortification which were part to
+the religion of his age, and, at the worst, were only injurious to his
+own comfort. But he had other prejudices, which, though they may be
+forgiven, must never be defended. No man was ever more impressed than
+St. Louis with a belief in the duty of exterminating all enemies to
+his own faith. With these he thought no layman ought to risk himself
+in the perilous ways of reasoning, but to make answer with his sword
+as stoutly as a strong arm and a fiery zeal could carry that argument.
+Though, fortunately for his fame, the persecution against the Albigenses,
+which had been the disgrace of his father’s short reign, was at an end
+before he reached manhood, he suffered a hypocritical monk to establish
+a tribunal at Paris for the suppression of heresy, where many innocent
+persons suffered death.[g]
+
+
+_Piety and Christianity of St. Louis_
+
+The natural piety of St. Louis but strengthened with his growth. His
+Christian life, or to reduce the statement to its simplest terms, his
+daily Christianity, which edified his own century, might very easily
+fill ours with a sense of shock. But whatever it may leave of such an
+impression, the history would be incomplete which passed over in silence,
+or only vaguely indicated, that which filled so large a part in his
+life. Let us not, therefore, endeavour to build up for ourselves a St.
+Louis in accordance with our present-day tastes. Nothing is beautiful but
+the true, and that truth which the saintly king sought in all things is
+alone worthy to retrace the likeness of him which should endure.
+
+According to those of his historians who were most intimate with him--the
+chaplain who accompanied him on one and another of the Crusades, the
+confessor whom he kept beside him for twenty years, the confessor of his
+wife Marguerite--he seemed to live for God alone. The offices were read
+in the king’s chapel; almost it might have been the chapel of a monastery
+or the choir of a cathedral. There he had the Hours sung to him, the
+Office for the Dead being added by his command. He heard two masses,
+sometimes three or four; and when the grandees grumbled at his wasting
+so much time on masses and sermons, he retorted that if he were to lose
+twice as much time over gaming and hunting no one would complain: a
+remark which scarcely silenced the murmurs; the barons made no complaint
+against thus wasting their time with him.
+
+The holy Scriptures and the Fathers were his study. Marguerite’s
+confessor tells us that he caused a candle three feet or thereabouts
+in height to be lighted, and so long as it lasted read the Bible. He
+remained for so long a time upon his knees that sometimes his sight and
+his wits became confused, and, rising up quite dazed, he would ask:
+“Where am I?” Led back to his room, he would go to bed, but at midnight
+he was up again and had matins sung by his chaplains (it was no sinecure
+being king’s chaplain in those days!). He would, however, grant to his
+attendants the repose he refused for himself. So softly did he rise that
+on several occasions they did not hear him, or, awakened too late, ran
+after him barefoot.
+
+Every Friday he made his confession, after which he made his confessor
+administer “the discipline” to him. This discipline was composed of five
+small iron chains, which he enclosed in an ivory box and carried about
+with him. He had similar boxes made, with similar contents, and presented
+them to his children and his friends, counselling them to make use of
+them. When his confessor struck him too lightly, he urged him to use
+more force. This advice was not always needed. He had one confessor so
+full of zeal (_solicitus sibi_) who struck the king in such a manner as
+to terribly lacerate his flesh, which was extremely delicate. St. Louis,
+however, held his peace; he never mentioned the matter so long as the
+confessor lived, but afterwards he spoke of it laughingly to another.
+His confessors, one should add, were not commonly so zealous, and they
+reprimanded him for austerities which threatened his delicate health, and
+urged him to substitute for them alms, which, as a fact, the king did not
+stint; and they ended by forcing him to renounce the hair-shirt which
+he wore during Advent and Lent and on the vigils of certain feasts. He
+renounced it only to wear occasionally a girdle of horse-hair next his
+skin.
+
+On Good Friday he would visit all the churches barefoot; to keep up
+appearances he wore shoes from which the soles had been removed. For the
+adoration of the cross he removed his upper garments, retaining only his
+vest and coat. With bare feet and uncovered head he advanced a short
+distance on his knees, bowed himself in prayer, then advanced a little
+further, and the third time arrived at the cross, prostrated himself as
+though he too were crucified, and kissed it, bathed in tears. Fervently
+did he desire the gift of tears. When in singing the litanies the verse
+was reached: “Grant us a fountain of tears” (_Ut fontem lacrymarum nobis
+dones_), he used to say: “Lord, I dare not ask of thee a fount of tears,
+but only a few drops to refresh my parched and sterile heart.”
+
+Are all these details, which have perhaps provoked the pitying smiles
+of more than one reader, the marks of a feeble intelligence, or do they
+rather bear witness to a powerful mind that has perfected self-control
+by keeping the senses in sternest bondage? One can only truly judge of
+things by their results. His singleness of speech and his aversion to
+coarse or equivocal language bore eloquent witness to the purity of his
+heart. Not only did he detest the licentiousness of contemporary poetry,
+he was also filled with loathing for the popular songs, and innocently
+recommended one of his equerries who sang them to learn instead the
+_Ave Maris Stella_. His modesty was excessive. The purity of his youth
+had never been shadowed by the slightest hint of license, and marriage
+only served to throw his chastity into higher relief. He demanded moral
+uprightness from all in his household, and banished without mercy whoso
+offended against a virtue so dear to his heart.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+On feast days he would bid to his palace two hundred beggars, and himself
+serve them at table. On the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of Advent
+and Lent, and every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year, he would
+send for thirteen of them into his own or a neighbouring room and give
+them food with his own hand, without disgust at their dirtiness. If one
+among the number was blind the king would give the piece of bread into
+one of his hands, and guide the other to the bowl containing his portion.
+If this consisted of fish, he would remove the bones, dip it in the
+sauce and place the morsel in the blind man’s mouth. Before the meal he
+gave to each person twelve deniers or more according to his need; and
+if a mother was there with her child, he added more for the little one.
+On Saturdays he would choose three of the most decrepit, most miserable
+among the poor, and leading them into his dressing-room, where towels
+and three basins of water were in readiness, he washed their feet. With
+reverence he would dry and kiss those feet, whatever their deformity,
+however hardened by daily contact with the ground; then, kneeling, he
+would offer them water to wash their hands, give to each forty deniers,
+and kiss their hands. Nor was this all. Every day, in all weathers, he
+sent for thirteen other beggars and from among them chose out the three
+most repulsive, whom he seated at a table drawn up close beside his own.
+
+On many of these points he would not to-day have won the same universal
+approbation. It is, however, difficult for us to reinvest his figure with
+the atmosphere by which it must be surrounded before we can form a just
+judgment; it is far more difficult to place ourselves at the necessary
+point of view from which we can see him clearly. The modern historian is
+ofttimes reduced to pleading extenuating circumstances for the saints;
+for the saints, and St. Louis among them, have this much in common
+with the Saviour, that in more than one case they could say with him:
+“Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”[h]
+
+St. Louis built the asylum of the Quinze Vingts for the blind, several
+hospitals, and the church of Vincennes. To provide a place for the
+crown of thorns which the Venetians had turned over to his keeping, he
+had built by Pierre de Montereau within the precinct of his palace,
+now the Palais de Justice, the Sainte Chapelle, a shrine of open-work
+stone. His confessor Robert de Sorbon founded a community under the
+title of _Congrégation des pauvres maîtres étudiants en théologie_.
+This congregation became the Sorbonne, the theological faculty so
+famous throughout the entire Christian world that Mézeray calls it “the
+permanent council of the Gauls.”
+
+
+_Progress of the Monarchy under St. Louis_
+
+The house of Capet had made such progress that no lord now dared say to
+his vassal, “Come fight under my banner against the lord, our king,”
+much as this anarchial privilege was still recognised in the so-called
+“Establishments” of St. Louis, a compilation of customs in vogue in
+Orleans. The counts of Flanders and of Brittany and the duke of Guienne,
+were about the only ones who had not degenerated to the condition of
+docile vassals; yet feudalism still preserved some immense prerogatives
+and St. Louis attacked these in the name of justice and religion.
+
+In holding to a strict execution of the ordinances of
+_quarantaine-le-roi_[10] and _asseurement_ (inviolability) he suppressed
+nearly all private wars. As a Christian he did not approve of these
+wars which sent to God so many souls ill-prepared to appear before him.
+As a prince he wished to stop the devastation throughout the country,
+“the fires and the obstacles placed in the ways of tilling the fields.”
+He forbade in his domains the _duel judiciare_ which gave over the
+settlement and right to the chances of skill and strength. The king’s
+justice usurped the place of individual violence, and proof by witnesses
+and procedure by writ replaced justice by battle, for “battle is not the
+path of right.”
+
+The lords still dispensed justice throughout their domains. The villein
+could not escape this judgment, but the vassal had the rights of
+appeal to the sovereign from the judgment of his lord “in default of
+right,” when the lord refused to render justice; for “false judgments”
+when the condemned believed himself to have been injured by an unjust
+sentence. Now the king favoured the custom of direct appeal to his
+court, which subordinated the lord’s justice to that of his own which
+was final; “for,” says Beaumanoir,[j] “since he is sovereign, his court
+is sovereign”; and the “Establishments” explain why there could be no
+appeal from the royal decision: “There is no one who can have this right,
+since the king gets his power from no one but God and himself.” The duke
+of Brittany also retained the final appeal. When a case brought to the
+justice of the lords interested the king, in whatever way it may be, the
+bailiff raised the “conflict” as we would say nowadays and laid claim to
+the judgment, the king not being under the jurisdiction of a lord. These
+cases were the “royal cases.” Legists were most careful to define them so
+as not to deprive the king’s officials of any pretexts for interfering in
+trials before the feudal courts. It was easy to multiply these at that
+time and the officials did not fail to do so--taking as much as possible
+from the province of the lord’s justice and adding it to the king’s.
+
+At the same time the king’s _bourgeoisie_ was established. An inhabitant
+of a piece of seigniorial land might under certain conditions of
+establishment and residence in a royal city acquire the condition of
+“king’s bourgeois.” “I am a king’s bourgeois” was equivalent to “I am
+a Roman citizen.” The Roman citizen could only be judged at Rome. The
+king’s bourgeois could not be tried except by the king’s officials.
+
+The king’s court was on this account much more occupied than formerly.
+It continued to accumulate every possible prerogative. It was a court
+of exchequer, and, if it pleased the king, a political council; but it
+was above all things, in the days of St. Louis, a court of justice. The
+royal finances were always of a very simple nature; in case of crusades,
+captivity of the king, knighthood conferred upon the king’s eldest son
+or his marriage, feudal aid was demanded. The revenues of the domain, if
+well administered, were quite sufficient for royalty to live upon. When
+it had greater needs and it was necessary to increase revenues of all
+sorts, the financial prerogatives of the court became more important.
+The office of the exchequer was detached from it; but in the time of St.
+Louis justice was the court’s business.
+
+But even in this court considerable changes were taking place. The rôle
+of the great vassals and the crown officials was diminishing, that
+of the legists was beginning. Now, since judgment was pronounced on
+written procedures, it was not the knights who had sufficient knowledge
+and application of mind to deal with the stability of proof and the
+obscurities of the black-book. The lawyer was necessary to them. At first
+the barons disdainfully made these plebeian personages sit at their feet,
+on stools. But in the meeting of ignorance and knowledge the latter
+quickly asserted its sovereignty. The baron, who had nothing but nonsense
+to talk, kept quiet before the learned counsellors, and upon these latter
+soon devolved the direction of judgment; and the fate of the guilty, even
+of the noblest station, lay in their hands. The king’s court, which was
+always held at Paris, had regular sessions, usually four times a year;
+and it kept a record of its deliberations which under the name of “Olim”
+was the beginning of royal jurisprudence.
+
+In the administration of the provinces, St. Louis protected his own power
+and that of his subjects against any abuses his officials might practice.
+He forbade bailiffs and seneschals to make presents to the members of
+the council or receive money from those dependent on them or to loan
+such any, or to take part in sales, markets, or leases held in the
+king’s name. They were forbidden to purchase any property within their
+jurisdiction or to marry their sons and daughters without the king’s
+permission. If they disobeyed they were punished both in their property
+and their persons. When going out of office they were obliged to live
+forty days within their territory, in order to reply to their successors
+or to royal inquiries in any charge of misconduct that might be brought
+against them.
+
+St. Louis sent into the provinces commissioners or royal inquirers, a
+custom adopted from Charlemagne. These inquirers defended the king’s
+rights and those of his subjects as well. The care which they took to
+protect the latter against exaction, won them the name of _enquesteurs
+aux restitutions_. In all these measures can be recognised the influence
+of the legists and echoes of Roman administration.
+
+We have noted the organisation of provostships. That of Paris demanded
+large funds. Therefore several officials joined together to farm it out,
+and these provosts, according to Joinville, trampled upon the people,
+sustained their families by the “outrages” they committed, let themselves
+be corrupted by the rich, and took no notice whatever of the robbers and
+malefactors who infested Paris and its vicinity.
+
+The king resolved to give in the future “great and high wages to those
+who should look after his provostship,” and sought for someone “who would
+give good and stiff justice.” He chose Étienne Boileau who maintained so
+well the provostship that no malefactor, robber, or cut-throat dared come
+to Paris but he was at once hanged and exterminated; and neither lineage,
+gold, nor silver could save him. Justice and policing were the principal
+functions of the provost of Paris, who commanded the watch and presided
+at the tribunal of the Châtelet.
+
+St. Louis struck hard blows at feudalism by the suppression of judiciary
+duels, the interdiction of private wars, and the establishment of appeal;
+but he was not for all this a revolutionary king in the sense of Philip
+the Fair. He repeated constantly that none must “take away any one’s
+rights; but it is,” so he said at the head of an ordinance, “the duty of
+royal power to assure peace and happiness to our subjects.” Besides he
+had that same spirit of justice that is found in Roman law, and which
+united so well with the principles of Christianity. When he condemns, for
+example, the duel, he does it because “battle is not the way to determine
+right”--here is the Roman spirit; and because it “criminally tempts
+God”--here is the spirit of Christ.
+
+He expected that all would submit to what it seemed to him he was charged
+by God to establish. His brother the count of Anjou, had, on trial,
+condemned a knight; and the latter, on appealing to the king’s court, was
+imprisoned by the count. The king let his brother know that there was but
+one king in France and although Charles was his brother, he would not be
+treated in any different ways as regarded justice. The count of Anjou had
+to release his prisoner and came in person to oppose the appeal at the
+king’s court, which, however, was decided in favour of the knight.
+
+One of the most powerful lords of the realm, the lord of Coucy, caused
+three young men to be hanged for offence against the hunting laws, and
+although all the barons pleaded for him he was ordered a heavy fine.
+A lord cried with irony, “If I were king I would hang all the barons;
+for the first step taken, the second costs nothing.” The king heard and
+called him back. “How, Jean, you say that I should hang all my barons.
+Certainly I shall not do it, but I will punish them if they do wrong.”
+We have seen how the reputation for equity of the good king was so
+well established that the English barons in revolt against their king
+chose Louis as arbitrator, an example followed by the counts of Bar and
+Luxemburg.
+
+The right of coinage belonged to more than eighty lords who sometimes
+made bad money. St. Louis decided that his own should have circulation
+throughout the entire kingdom and alone should be legal tender in the
+royal domain and those whose lords had not the right of coinage; that the
+seigniorial coinage should only be legal in the province of the lord who
+issued it and that this lord could only strike off the _tournois_, and
+_parisis_,[11] and other coins whose legal value was fixed by relation
+to the _tournois_ in the ordinance. Thus the king ruled, in absolute
+power, in his own domain. He recognised elsewhere seigniorial rights, but
+limited them in the interest of the subjects whose protector he was. His
+money circulated everywhere.
+
+It only remained for the king to coin better _parisis_ and better
+_tournois_ than those of the lords; which he did. His money, like his
+justice, was worth more than his vassal’s. Another measure was extremely
+useful to commerce. It made the lords responsible for the policing of
+the roads through their domains. In Paris he established the royal watch
+and had drawn up by the provost, Étienne Boileau, the ancient rules
+concerning the hundred trades which existed in the town, in order to
+infuse peace and order into industry as he had done in the country. These
+trades grouped themselves into great corporations; in the fifteenth
+century all the Parisian merchants formed six bodies of “arts and trades.”
+
+St. Louis showed a respectful firmness towards papal authority; we
+have seen that he did not recognise the pope’s right to dispose of
+crowns. There has even been attributed to him a pragmatic sanction, the
+foundation of the liberties of the Gallican church, which would have
+confirmed the liberty of canonical elections, restrained to the most
+urgent necessities the impositions which the court of Rome could levy
+upon the French churches and contained the king’s vow that they should
+be established. This ordinance is not authentic, but its principles are
+those of the government. When the bishops demanded that the king force
+the excommunicated to submit, he declared that he could not do so without
+knowing the reasons for excommunication, which made him a judge of the
+bishops.
+
+St. Louis’ lively faith assured him against all fear of the church’s
+wrath; and led him besides to severe practices which seem to us of to-day
+barbaric. “No one,” he said, “unless he be learned clerk or perfect
+theologian, should dispute with the Jews, but may do so with the layman
+who is heard to slander the Christian faith, and defend it not only with
+words but with his good drawn sword, striking the miscreant across the
+body or even letting it cut him.” He punished blasphemers by running
+red-hot irons through their tongues.
+
+He loved to recall that on one occasion during his minority, when pursued
+up to the very walls of Paris by rebel vassals, he had been saved by the
+city soldiers who came to his rescue. He always took great interest in
+the welfare of the large towns, but without sacrificing to them the new
+needs of society. He conferred a number of charters, and amended others.
+Communal independence never seemed to him better than feudal liberties,
+and he favoured the transformation of the communes into royal cities
+which were dependent on and watched over by the supreme power, while
+their internal affairs were attended to by officials chosen in free
+election. An ordinance of 1256 prescribes that the communes name four
+candidates among themselves from whom the king shall choose a mayor who
+shall come to Paris once a year to give account of his stewardship.
+
+Thus little by little was established the principle that it was the
+king’s prerogative to deal with the communes and that all owed him
+allegiance above everyone else. Thus the communes gradually disappeared
+and with them the proud sentiments, the strong ideas of right and liberty
+which sustained the men who had founded and defended them. The “third
+estate” was beginning.
+
+Through his undermining of feudal and communal independence, and through
+his strong ruling with regard to the church, St. Louis pointed the
+way of absolute power to French royalty. He rendered it still another
+service. The remembrance of his virtues did not perish with him.
+Venerated in his lifetime as a saint, he was canonised after death. He
+put the seal of sanctification, so to speak, upon French royalty, and his
+descendants were fond of invoking at the head of their decrees the name
+and example of “Monsieur St. Louis.”[f]
+
+
+ASPECTS OF THIRTEENTH CENTURY CIVILISATION
+
+[Sidenote: [1100-1270 A.D.]]
+
+In proportion as the Middle Ages advanced, national individuality took
+more definite shape. Intellectual life had been during a protracted
+period confined almost exclusively to religious circles, and had been
+given expression in the universal language--Latin. Accordingly the
+beginning of the thirteenth century saw only three active established
+literatures--in Germany, in the north and in the south of France; the
+last having preceded the others and served them as models. This was the
+literature of the _langue d’oc_, also called Provençal, which overflowed
+the Pyrenean borders into Christian Europe, passed over the Alps into
+the whole of Italy, and awakened the muse that lay sleeping on the banks
+of the Ebro, as on those of the Po and the Arno. Brilliant, sonorous,
+harmonious, full of imagery and movement, it was unexcelled as the
+language of love and battle songs. Bernard de Ventadour, Bertram de
+Born, and Richard Cœur de Lion moulded it with a skill and ardour worthy
+of Tyrtæus. The songs of Bertram de Born, above all, were like swords,
+dazzling and penetrating; the passion of war flamed in them like fire.
+This language of the south, into which something of the Arabian accent
+has passed, lent itself gracefully to the requirements of the courts of
+love presided over by ingenious tribunals of noble dames.
+
+But the continued development of the north of France gave the
+preponderance to its idiom. The Normans carried it into Italy, where it
+failed to establish itself; and to England, where it prevailed during
+three centuries. By the crusaders it was everywhere disseminated. While
+the intellectual fame of Paris attracted there the eminent minds of the
+whole Catholic world, the vulgar tongue which the doctors disdained
+extended its empire well beyond the frontiers. We must add also that
+French genius, so often accused of epic sterility, poured over into the
+adjacent countries a flood of great poetry. The troubadours had been mute
+since the Albigensian crusade had drowned in blood the civilisation of
+the _langue d’oc_; and no more were heard the virile accents of Bernard
+de Ventadour or of Bertram de Born, nor the melodious lyrics of the _jeux
+partis_.[12] But north of the Loire the _trouvères_ still composed heroic
+songs--veritable epics, which were translated or imitated in Italy,
+England, and Germany.
+
+But these epic cycles were exhausted: the heroic ode disappeared.
+Robert Wace, “clerk of Caen,” composed about 1155 the _Roman de Brut_,
+a legendary history of Britain. Christian de Troyes, who wrote after
+1160, spun out a diluted version of the Arthurian legend in a long poem
+in lines of eight syllables, while the same tale was given a religious
+twist by another school of poets by adding the history of the Holy
+Grail. The aspect of the times was mirrored in the poem with its double
+face--chivalry and piety. The naïve inspiration of the song of Roland was
+lost; the new school subtilised, ran after novelties, or rummaged among
+the classics. The story of Ulysses and that of the Argonauts, borrowed
+from _The Thebaid_ of Statius, furnished tales which could not fail to
+please those Christian Ulysseses whom the Crusades had sent wandering in
+Asia. The Trojan War, the sorceress Medea, and Alexander, attracted the
+_trouvères_ of this period. They had already begun to imitate the style
+of the ancients. Thus the nature of the epic was altered and a transition
+took place from primitive composition to the diverse styles of advanced
+civilisation. The epic was divided: the elements dealing with the
+passions were blended into allegorical romance; the narrative elements,
+into prose history. Analysis and realism took the place of spontaneous
+and poetic inspiration.
+
+Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, began the famous _Roman de la
+Rose_, whose personages were abstract qualities--Reason, Good-will,
+Danger, Treason, Baseness, Avarice. Jean de Meun continued it later,
+after another transformation had given birth to satire. The fable
+flourished already, having derived its origin from that very romance:
+animals played the rôles of passions, of social conditions; and the tale
+of _Renard_, developed in its turn from the others, made its appearance,
+in 1236, as the comedy of the period. Rutebœuf offers the first example
+of the professional poet, ill remunerated, perishing with cold, agape
+with hunger; yet, in the depths of this misery, gay, daring, caustic, he
+wrote upon all sorts of subjects in the frank, open style which heralded
+Villon. Language acquires in his hands skill and power; it is more mellow
+and more tender than that of Guillaume de Lorris or from the lips of the
+famous count of Champagne or of Marie of France.
+
+The most noteworthy event in French literature in the thirteenth century
+was the appearance of prose. The first prose writers were not, be it
+understood, professional historians, but two noblemen, both involved
+in the events they depicted. Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of
+Champagne, has left us the history of the Fourth Crusade in the _Conquête
+de Constantinople_, in which he himself figured. He writes as a soldier,
+his style being firm and brief, not without a touch of military
+stiffness; he invents little, goes straight ahead, from one attack to
+the next, with a brief exclamation when encountering some object which
+astonishes him. The lord of Joinville, also seneschal of Champagne,
+exhibits in his _Mémoires_ a greater suppleness of style, a more marked
+refinement of mind; he observes, reflects, and talks upon all subjects,
+discussing his personal sentiments as freely as the events of war. He
+was the foreshadowing of Froissart, as only the councillor and friend of
+the pious and excellent Louis IX could be.[c] “In point of time,” says
+Villemain, “the narrative of Joinville is perhaps the first monument of
+genius in the French language,--a work of genius being, as I understand
+it, one having a high degree of originality of diction; a characteristic
+and expressive physiognomy; in short, a work that has been done by one
+man and that could not have been done by another. Such is the book of
+Joinville.”[o]
+
+France was indebted to St. Louis for the multiplication of manuscripts.
+It is remarkable that he should first, while in the East, have resolved
+to establish a library at Paris. Hearing that the soldan of Egypt was
+indefatigably collecting from all parts, and causing to be transcribed or
+translated, the works of the ancient philosophers, “he was afflicted,”
+says a chronicler of the times, “to perceive more wisdom in the sons of
+darkness than in the children of light.” He began to collect manuscripts
+of the Old and New Testaments, and of the fathers, which he caused to
+be multiplied by transcription; all these he placed in the royal chapel
+at Paris, making them accessible to professors and students. The same
+liberality was shown by the Dominicans of Toulouse, by the bishops of
+Beauvais and Paris, by the archbishop of Narbonne, by many chapters, and
+by more monasteries. The professors of the University of Paris, too,
+were eminent enough to draw students from all parts of Europe: in fact,
+such names as Alexander de Hales, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas,
+St. Buonaventura, would have conferred splendour on any establishment.
+With inferior fame, but probably with equal utility, the universities
+of Bourges, Toulouse, Orleans, and Angers--foundations of this
+century--imitated the example of the capital.[n]
+
+The thirteenth century marks the triumph of the style of architecture
+so improperly called Gothic. Its characteristic is the arch. This form,
+at no other time and in no other country employed with such profusion
+and prominence as in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, has been
+attributed primarily to the Goths, whence its name; afterwards, with
+as little justification, to the Arabs. Undoubtedly pilgrims to the
+Orient, among them many ecclesiastics, brought back from their travels
+impressions and souvenirs which left their traces upon Christian
+edifices; numerous churches were built after the pattern of the Holy
+Sepulchre. Mosaic and colour alternation appear also to be importations
+from the East. As to the arch, if it is much in evidence in the Arabian
+style, it is also prominent in that of the Byzantines; it is of all times
+and all countries, from the tomb of Atreus and the gates of the Pelasgian
+cities in Italy to the constructions of the savages of Nubia and America.
+It is simply an elementary form and easy to construct in building vaulted
+roofs, which require more precision than science.
+
+Vulgar and irregular at first, the arch became monumental little by
+little--by natural progression, by a gradual refinement of line, by
+a greater diversity of ornament, by the ribs and columns which began
+to adorn it. It lent itself marvellously, moreover, as a delineation
+of the celestial vault, to the mysticism of the Christians and to the
+passionate soaring of their souls toward heaven: thus soared the mass of
+Gothic columns, straight, bold, fearfully light, and appearing higher in
+proportion as the vaulted roof was less open. It was not in the formal
+Roman _Midi_, it was in the mystic North that the Gothic spread and
+attained perfection.
+
+The new style, born north of the Loire, crossed the Channel, the
+Rhine, and the Alps; and the colonies of French artists transplanted
+it to Canterbury, to Utrecht, to Milan, to Cologne, to Strasburg, to
+Ratisbon--even into Sweden. A crude but ingenuous statuary adorned
+portals, galleries, and cloisters; and the art of glass-painting
+possessed, for the production of magic effects on glazed windows, secrets
+which we are only just beginning to recover. Miniature paintings adorned
+the missals, and the books of Hours have preserved to us some exquisite
+masterpieces.
+
+Astrology was one of the fads of this period; it reached its highest
+development in the sixteenth century, and was not wholly extinguished
+till the seventeenth. The astrologers pretended to read in the stars the
+destiny of human lives. Another folly was the search of the alchemists
+for the philosopher’s stone--that is to say, the method of creating gold
+by the transmutation of metals. These dreams, however, led to happy
+results: the astrologers from much star-gazing discovered the laws that
+governed the movements of those bodies; the alchemists found in their
+crucibles--not gold, indeed, but new substances, or new properties of
+those already known. So were discovered the process of forming salts by
+distillation, powerful acids, enamels, and convex glasses leading to the
+making of spectacles.[c]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[8] [This is called by many historians the Fourth Crusade.]
+
+[9] [“St. Louis,” says Guizot,[m] “was above all a conscientious man, a
+man who before acting weighed the question to himself of the moral good
+or evil, the question as to whether what he was about to do was good
+or evil in itself, independently of all utility, of all consequences.
+Such men are rarely seen and still more rarely remain upon the throne.
+Truly speaking, there are hardly more than two examples in history, one
+in antiquity, the other in modern times: Marcus Aurelius and St. Louis.
+These are, perhaps, the only two princes who, on every occasion, have
+formed the first rule of their conduct from their moral creeds--Marcus
+Aurelius, a stoic, St. Louis, a Christian.”]
+
+[10] [Custom had permitted that when anyone had murdered, wounded, or
+beaten another the victim or his relatives might immediately avenge
+themselves by killing, wounding, or beating the offender or any of his
+relatives, even if the latter were ignorant of what had occurred. The
+ordinance of _quarantaine-le-roi_, forbade the injured to attack any
+of the offender’s family until after the lapse of forty days (_une
+quarantaine_). During the interval the offender himself was alone held
+answerable for his action. Furthermore, if either victim or offender
+chose to submit his cause to his suzerain he could secure inviolability
+(_asseurement_), for his goods and person, until a judicial decision had
+been given. When this inviolability had been demanded its breach was
+punishable by death.]
+
+[11] [The livres of Tours and of Paris; their values being 20 and 25 sous
+respectively.]
+
+[12] The disquisitions of the _troubadours_ or the _trouvères_ on
+questions of gallantry were called _jeux partis_; whence grew those
+“courts of love” in which were tried, before tribunals of noble ladies,
+complicated cases and subtle questions. These “courts of love” were of
+course but a poetical fiction, never a serious or permanent institution.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS
+
+    Of all epochs of French history, the second half of
+    the thirteenth century appears to be that in which the
+    subordination (of the people to the crown) was most
+    complete.--DARESTE.[k]
+
+
+PHILIP (III) THE BOLD (1270-1285 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1270-1285 A.D.]]
+
+Little is known of the reign of St. Louis’ eldest son in spite of its
+length of fifteen years. It began under the walls of Tunis whence Philip
+III brought home his father’s body, after forcing a treaty upon the
+Mohammedans in which they recognised themselves tributary to the king of
+Sicily and agreed to pay the costs of the war. One can, however, still
+follow the ascending march of royalty under this prince, who, without any
+new war, and by extinction of several feudal lineages, reunited to his
+domain Valois, Poitou, and the counties of Toulouse and Venaissin. But
+Philip gave up to the pope this last fief and half of Avignon. The count
+of Foix, vanquished and a prisoner in his own capital, was compelled
+to promise faithful obedience and cede a portion of his territory. The
+dominion of the king of France thus approached the Pyrenees; and it
+finally crossed them. Philip made a match between his eldest son and the
+heiress of Navarre and if he did not succeed in placing on the throne of
+Castile a prince subservient to his influence, or in setting the crown of
+Aragon on the head of his second son Charles, at least he showed his arms
+in Catalonia where he took the stronghold of Gerona. Thus the Capetian
+dynasty, triumphant at home since the days of Louis VI, tried to become
+so abroad. But the time for this was not ripe.
+
+The expedition to Catalonia, which turned out badly, had no other motive
+than that of family interest. Philip wished to punish Don Pedro, king of
+Aragon, for his support of the rebellious Sicilians against Charles of
+Anjou after the massacre of all the French citizens in the island, which
+had taken place during vespers on Easter Monday. (“The Sicilian Vespers,”
+1282.)
+
+An ordinance of Philip III, drawn up in 1274, obliged the advocates in
+the royal courts to take oath each year that they would defend none
+but just cases. The first example of a commoner made noble by the king
+will be found in the letters of ennoblement issued by Philip III to his
+silversmith Raoul, in 1272, if the fact is absolutely certain.
+
+
+PHILIP (IV) THE FAIR (1285-1314 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1285-1300 A.D.]]
+
+Philip IV, surnamed the Fair, was but seventeen when he succeeded his
+father in 1285. He ridded himself, as far as possible by treaties, of
+futile wars, and occupied himself in place of conquest with increasing
+his domains by acquisitions within his reach. His marriage with the
+heiress of Navarre and Champagne had only been worth two great provinces
+to him. A decree of parliament which despoiled the heirs of Hugh de
+Lusignan secured him La Marche and Angoumois. Then his second son married
+the heiress of Franche-Comté; thus through marriage, escheat, or conquest
+all France came little by little into the royal domain. But powerful
+vassals still remained--the duke of Brittany, the count of Flanders, and
+especially the duke of Guienne. Philip began by attacking the last. He
+was a formidable adversary since he was at the same time king of England.
+
+Fortunately Edward I, who had just subdued the Welsh and was now
+threatening the independence of Scotland, was too much occupied in his
+own island to come over to the continent, and owing to this the royal
+army was able to make rapid progress in Guienne. A French fleet went to
+pillage Dover; and another army led by the king in person made its way
+into Flanders, where the count had declared for the king of England, and
+beat the Flemings at Furnes (Veurne) (1297). The intervention of Pope
+Boniface VIII established a peace between the two kings which was sealed
+by a marriage. A daughter of Philip the Fair wedded the son of Edward I
+and gave the English house rights to the throne of France which Edward
+III in due time asserted (1299). By this peace the two kings gave up
+their allies, Philip the Scotch, and Edward the count of Flanders. The
+latter in terror hastened to place himself under the protection of Philip
+and Flanders was reunited to the domain (1300).
+
+[Illustration: PHILIP III]
+
+[Sidenote: [1300-1302 A.D.]]
+
+The whole French court went to visit the new acquisition. It was
+received with great pomp; the Flemings, to do honour to their noble
+visitors, donned their best attire and displayed all their riches. The
+entrance into Bruges was especially magnificent. The bourgeois wives
+showed such gold and jewels in their toilets that the queen felt her
+woman’s vanity wounded. “I thought,” she said, “there was but one queen
+of France; now I see six hundred.” Flanders was in truth the richest
+country in Europe because it was there that the people worked hardest.
+In that fruitful land men had sprung up like crops, towns were numerous,
+and the population active and industrious, devoted, like the Guienne
+towns--especially Bordeaux, because the English bought their wines--to
+England, whence came the wool necessary to their manufactures. Flemish
+cloth sold throughout the whole of Christendom as far as Constantinople,
+and the towns of the Low Countries formed the market where the
+productions of the north from the Baltic were exchanged for those of the
+south brought from Venice and the east of Italy down the Rhine.
+
+On a soil which it had taken a thousand canals to rescue from the sea,
+among the scores of stoutly walled cities, with a population accustomed
+to hard work, but none the less proud of its numbers, strength, and
+wealth, chivalry had had small chance to play its game, and there was
+little feudalism in Flanders. Every town had its privileges and it was
+not safe to tamper with them.
+
+
+_New War with Flanders (1302-1304 A.D.)_
+
+Philip had appointed James de Châtillon governor of Flanders--a man who
+did not know how to treat a conquered people, especially such a rich one.
+The people, rather intolerant and accustomed to more consideration from
+their counts, rebelled. In Bruges alone three thousand French were put
+to death. Philip sent Robert of Artois with a large army to avenge this
+deed. Twenty thousand Flemings awaited it bravely behind a canal near
+Courtrai. Before the fight the Flemings confessed their sins, the priest
+said high mass, and all, bowing down, took some earth and put it in their
+mouths, swearing thus to fight to the death for their country’s freedom.
+This gathering of a whole army usually augurs badly for its assailants.
+The latter advanced in bad order, sure of victory and not giving those
+common people the credit of believing that they would dare look them
+in the face. In vain the constable Raoul de Nesle cautioned prudence.
+He was asked if he was afraid. “Sir,” he replied to Count Robert, “if
+you come where I go, you will be well in the front,” and he spurred his
+horse forward at all speed. They did not even take the precaution to
+reconnoitre the Flemings’ position. The first ranks of the heavy columns
+of knights, advancing at full speed, had no sooner fallen into the canal
+that covered the enemy’s lines than those just behind pressed by the rear
+were precipitated upon them, and then the Flemings had only to plunge
+their long lances into the confused mass of men and horses to kill with
+perfect safety to themselves. A sortie which they made from the two ends
+of the canal completed the rout. Two hundred nobles of high degree and
+six thousand soldiers perished. And what was most humiliating was that
+the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Saint-Pol and Clermont, with two
+thousand hauberts, fled, leaving the constable, count of Artois, and
+so many noble warriors, beaten, maimed, and killed in the hands of the
+common people (1302).
+
+The battle of Mansurah had already shown the undisciplined impetuosity
+and military incapacity of the knights, but this occurred in the Orient
+and distance had helped to preserve the reputation of the vanquished;
+but the battle of Courtrai, lost by the flower of French chivalry to
+the common people, made a great sensation without, however, curing the
+nobility of their mad presumption. The defeats of Crécy, Poitiers,
+and Agincourt came from the same causes. Stripped by royalty of its
+privileges, the feudal nobility lost on the battle-field the prestige
+with which it had long been surrounded and saw, to complete its own ruin,
+arise at its very side another army--that of the king and the people.
+
+Philip the Fair took energetic measures to repair the disaster of
+Courtrai. He forced nobles and bourgeois to bring to the royal mint their
+gold and silver plate, for which he paid in debased coinage. He ordered
+each property yielding 100 livres of rent to provide one horseman, every
+one hundred villein families to provide six foot-sergeants, and every
+commoner having 25 livres income to serve in person. He sold many serfs
+their freedom and many commoners titles of nobility. By this means he
+collected in two months ten thousand mounted and sixty thousand men on
+foot. It was a royal effort and it was a great one, but that of the
+people was greater still. From the Flemish towns there issued this time
+eighty thousand fighters. With two such opposing armies the contest must
+be terrible and decisive; they felt this and not wishing to take any
+risks, the year 1302 was spent in trying to get thoroughly acquainted
+with the situation. Philip was then at the height of his quarrel with
+Boniface VIII and a new defeat would be fatal to him; he even let the
+Flemings take the offensive the following year (1303). But the pope
+died the same year and Philip attacked Flanders by land and sea. His
+fleet defeated the Flemish at Zieriksee and he himself avenged at
+Mons-en-Pévêlle, or Mons-en-Puelle, the defeat of Courtrai. He thought
+the enemy exterminated, but in a few days they were back as numerous as
+ever, asking a new battle. “But it rains Flemings,” cried the king. He
+preferred to treat rather than fight again. They promised him money and
+ceded Douai, Lille, Béthune, Orchies with all Walloon--that is to say
+French-speaking Flanders between the Lys and the Schelde. To this the
+king gave them back their count, who promised nothing more than feudal
+homage.
+
+Thus French royalty receded before Flemish democracy as did German
+royalty almost at the same period before Swiss democracy. The communes of
+France remained isolated, and succumbed; in Flanders and in Switzerland
+they united and triumphed.[b]
+
+
+_The Quarrel between Philip and Boniface VIII_
+
+[Sidenote: [1296-1304 A.D.]]
+
+The complaints made by a certain section of the French clergy to the holy
+see in 1296, against what they designated as the exactions of Philip the
+Fair, met with a far better reception than did similar complaints from
+England, where Edward was employing much more vigorous methods than those
+of his rival to obtain subsidies from the clergy.
+
+It was a great opportunity for Pope Boniface VIII, and he did not let
+it slip. The bull, _Clericis laïcos_ (1296), was familiar throughout
+Christendom. This bull, forbidding the clergy to pay taxes to temporal
+rulers, was too sweeping to be enforced. Boniface realised that, and
+forestalled the objections that it could not fail to raise. All that was
+too peremptory in the preceding bull was corrected in the one beginning
+_Ineffabilis amor_. The king might raise subsidies among the clergy, with
+the pope’s consent, who, if the kingdom were menaced, would order them to
+contribute to its defence even unto the selling of the sacred vessels.
+In the same bull Boniface demanded an explanation of the prohibition
+recently made by the king against exporting gold, silver, and merchandise
+out of the kingdom, a prohibition which threatened to dry up one of the
+principal sources of revenue of Rome.
+
+The edict which is universally regarded as Philip’s retort to the bull
+_Clericis laïcos_, was not aimed at the pope, for it was issued in the
+month of April, a few days after the drawing up of the bull and before
+its contents could possibly have become known to the king of France. It
+did not apply solely to money, but forbade also the exportation of arms,
+horses, and other things, its object being to damage England and Flanders
+with which Philip was at war. Similar edicts were issued on several
+occasions during this reign. In this same bull Boniface threatened Philip
+with excommunication. The king and his councillors were furious at this
+liberty.
+
+In 1297, came a fresh prohibition to export gold and silver, fresh
+fears on the part of the pope, fresh explanations from Philip. In the
+midst of all this the French bishops wrote to Boniface praying him to
+grant the king a tithe on all the churches. The clergy began to realise
+that they could not abstain from contributing to the defence of the
+country. Abandoned by a portion of the French clergy, Boniface made
+fresh concessions. In the bull beginning _Romana mater ecclesia_ he
+even granted permission to raise, in cases of necessity, ecclesiastical
+tithes, with the consent of the clergy but without consulting the holy
+see. The bull _Noveritis nos_ went still farther: it handed over to the
+king, if he had attained his majority, and to his council if he were
+still a minor, the responsibility of deciding as to which were cases of
+necessity, and the right of taxing the clergy even though the pope had
+not first been consulted. It concluded by declaring that the holy see had
+never had any intention of making an attempt upon the rights, liberties,
+freedoms, and customs of the kingdom, the king, or the barons. This
+compliance on the part of Boniface VIII, his sudden sweetness, must not
+be attributed altogether to feelings of benevolence towards Philip the
+Fair; they are explained principally by the difficult position in which
+the pope found himself in his own states.
+
+Harmonious relations continued between the king and the pope;
+nevertheless certain incidents occurred to mar them. Boniface
+had summoned the bishop of Laon to Rome to give account of his
+administration; the king thereupon affected to consider his benefice as
+vacant and proceeded to appropriate to himself the revenues according
+to the royal prerogative. A fresh cause for reciprocal discontent was
+found in the complaints made by the bishops against the collection of the
+first-fruits granted to the king.
+
+One event to which no one attached any importance took place about
+that time, changing the already unsettled feelings of Boniface into
+hostility. This was the alliance formed at Vaucouleurs in 1299 between
+Philip and Albert, king of the Romans, who had been excommunicated for
+having dethroned Adolphus of Nassau--a very threatening alliance for the
+papacy. The news of the negotiations between Philip and Albert spread
+consternation in Rome; a false rumour announcing a rupture between
+them was received with joy. Boniface conceived the idea of holding
+a conference with the kings of France and England and the count of
+Flanders--the only means, in his eyes, by which to establish peace on a
+solid basis. He did not dream of summoning them to Rome. He knew Philip
+and Edward well enough to be aware that they would regard it simply as
+officious interference on his part. So he determined to go himself to
+some neutral territory. He had even got so far as to make overtures to
+Philip the Fair under these conditions when a serious malady, which
+caused him excessive pain, coupled with his great age, compelled him to
+renounce the scheme.
+
+The Flemish ambassadors judged this moment to be a favourable one for
+making themselves heard, by flattering the pope’s notions of supremacy
+and exciting his suspicions against Philip the Fair. They forwarded to
+Boniface a memorial in which they prayed his support and intervention,
+and sought to reassure him as to the mightiness of this sovereign power
+which they attributed to him by appeals to the holy Scriptures. Boniface
+was only too ready to listen to insinuations which fell in with his own
+hopes and ambitions.
+
+[Sidenote: [1301-1303 A.D.]]
+
+However, causes of complaint against Philip continued to accumulate,
+among others being his usurpation of the county of Melgueil, which
+belonged to the bishop of Maguelonne, and the refusal of the viscount of
+Narbonne to do homage to the archbishop who was his over-lord. The pope
+let drop some severe remarks, and despatched Bernard de Saisset, bishop
+of Pamiers, to invite the king to restore the consecrated land. Philip,
+exasperated by the bishop of Pamiers, allowed him to return to his
+diocese; but he instituted a secret inquiry about him to which evidence
+was contributed by the bishops and barons of the south. He was accused of
+having purloined Languedoc from the crown for the purpose of re-uniting
+it to Aragon; his real offence was his hatred of the king. Bernard was
+arrested at Pamiers by the vidame of Amiens, and arraigned before the
+king and an assembly of barons at Senlis, October 14th, 1301. So haughty
+was his defence that the whole assembly rose to its feet and clamoured
+for his death. Within an ace of being massacred, he flung himself on
+the compassion of the archbishop of Narbonne, his metropolitan, who was
+present, as well as the bishops of Béziers and Maguelonne. The archbishop
+took him under his protection and made himself answerable for him. This
+proceeding of Philip was contrary to the laws of the church: a bishop
+cannot be brought up for judgment before a lay court; in the same way,
+the councils have not the right to judge him without the intervention of
+the pope, who must authorise the proceedings.
+
+[Illustration: ANCIENT CHURCH NEAR ROUEN, BUILT IN THE ROCK]
+
+Philip despatched Peter de Flotte to Rome to demand the punishment of
+Saisset. The ambassador declared that his master did not wish to avail
+himself of his right to punish a man whose crimes rendered him unworthy
+of the priesthood and of the protection accorded to the clergy; but that
+he desired to show the pope a token of deference and respect by handing
+over to him the charge of avenging the insult offered to God as the
+author of all legitimate authority, to the king as a son of the church,
+and to the kingdom as a very considerable portion of Christendom. He
+further requested Boniface to declare Bernard stripped of his episcopal
+dignity and of all clerical privileges. It was in vain that Flotte urged
+and demanded a reply; he received none, and returned raging to France.
+
+Boniface suspended the privileges accorded by himself and his
+predecessors to the crown of France, and convoked, for November
+1st, 1302, a general council at Rome, in order to put an end to the
+oppressions endured by the French clergy. The king was invited either to
+attend in person or to send someone to defend him. The bull _Ausculta
+fili_ indicated the superiority claimed by Boniface over Philip. “God, in
+laying upon us the yoke of apostolic servitude, has placed us above kings
+and empires, to uproot, destroy, annihilate, disperse, build and plant
+in his name; dearly beloved son, do not allow yourself to be persuaded
+that you are not subject to the supreme head of the church, for such
+an opinion would be folly.” He further accused the king of tyrannising
+over his subjects, oppressing the church, and offending the nobles.
+In conclusion he invites him to turn his attention to the deplorable
+condition of the Holy Land and to prepare a crusade. Another bull,
+_Secundum divina_, enjoined Philip to set Saisset at liberty and let him
+return to Rome. The king drove him out of France, and prepared to obtain
+a great demonstration in his own favour, in opposition to the pretensions
+of Boniface, by summoning the first states-general. By acting in this
+manner Philip was only defending his crown: his right was obvious, he
+needed but to claim it and exercise it with dignity. His cause was good,
+but he had the misfortune to sully it by falsehood and violence; in this,
+doubtless, following the advice of the lawyers who surrounded him.
+
+The Sunday after Candlemas (February, 1302) the king solemnly burned the
+bull _Ausculta fili_. The defeat of the French army at Courtrai, in the
+month of July, gave confidence to Boniface without disheartening Philip.
+In the month of December Philip sent the bishop of Auxerre to Rome to
+signify to Boniface that, in conjunction with the king of England, he had
+renounced his arbitration. Outwardly Philip was most deferential towards
+the pope. While all this was going on grave news came from Rome. The
+council summoned by Boniface had met on All Saints’ Day, 1302, several
+French bishops having responded to the pope’s summons, despite the king’s
+prohibitions. Philip had seized all their worldly goods, and a decree
+issued November 18th, doubtless at the instigation of the council,
+ratified the doctrine of the papal superiority.
+
+Boniface directed those French bishops who had not taken part in the
+council to present themselves at Rome within three months’ time. Philip
+forbade them to leave the kingdom, and set guards at all the passes into
+Germany and Italy. By the king’s wish Cardinal de Saint-Marcellin (the
+pope’s legate) summoned a council in France. Boniface recapitulated all
+his grievances against Philip, and called upon him to clear himself. He
+accused him among other things of coining false money and of burning the
+bull _Ausculta fili_. Philip’s answer was moderate and conciliatory. He
+expressed his wish to maintain, as his ancestors had done, the union
+between France and the holy see, and concluded by entreating Boniface
+not to meddle with him in the legitimate exercise of his rights; he
+offered to refer the matter to the decision of the duke of Brittany or of
+the duke of Burgundy, who were particularly agreeable to him. The pope
+declared this answer to be insufficient, and complained bitterly of it to
+the bishop of Auxerre and to the king’s brother, Charles of Valois, who
+for nearly two years had lived in Italy with the title “champion of the
+holy see,” and whom Philip had lately recalled.
+
+On the 12th of March, 1303, an assembly of barons, prelates, and lawyers
+was held at the Louvre in the presence of the king. William de Plasian
+(or, according to Dareste[k] and Martin,[c] the chancellor, William
+de Nogaret) read aloud a document in which were set forth accusations
+against Boniface:
+
+“He is a heretic; he does not believe in the immortality of the soul
+or in the life everlasting: he has said that he would sooner be a dog
+than a Frenchman; he does not believe in the real presence in the
+Eucharist. He has approved of a book by Armand de Villeneuve, which
+book has been condemned and burned; he has set up images of himself in
+the churches to the end that he may be worshipped; he has a familiar
+spirit who advises him; he consults sorcerers; he has openly preached
+that the pope cannot be guilty of simony; he traffics in benefices; he
+sows strifes everywhere; he has said that the French are of the Patarins
+(Albigenses); he has ordered murders; he has forced priests to reveal
+confessions; he has nourished a bitter hatred of the king of France.
+Before his election he was heard to say that if he did become pope he
+would destroy Christianity or lower the French pride; he has prevented
+peace between England and France; he has urged the king of Sicily to
+massacre all French; he strengthened the king of Germany on condition
+of his humbling the arrogance of the French, who, he pretended, boasted
+that they recognised no superior in temporal matters, in which they lied
+in their throats; that if an angel from heaven were to tell him that
+France was not subject to him, he would shriek curses against both him
+and the emperor. He has brought about the ruin of the Holy Land, having
+confiscated all the money intended for its aid, that he might give it to
+his relatives, of whom he has made marquises, counts, and barons, and for
+whom he has built castles; he has driven out the nobility of Rome; he has
+broken up marriages; he has made a cardinal of one of his nephews who is
+but an ignorant fellow and who was married, and has forced the wife to
+take the veil in a convent; he has done Celestine, his predecessor, to
+death in prison.”
+
+On the 13th of April Boniface declared Philip to be excommunicate if he
+persisted in not submitting himself to the holy see. He commissioned
+Nicholas de Bienfaite, archdeacon of Coutances, to bear to Cardinal de
+Saint-Marcellin the bull which cut off the king from communion with
+the church. But the king, warned of the archdeacon’s mission, had him
+arrested at Troyes and thrown into prison. His bull was taken from him;
+in point of fact it was not to have been fulminated except in the case of
+Philip’s remaining deaf to a final summons. In vain the legate protested;
+no one listened to him; the goods of all prelates absent from the kingdom
+were sequestrated. Realising that he compromised himself uselessly by
+remaining any longer, he quitted France.
+
+On the 31st of May Boniface, who had pardoned Albert of Austria and
+had recognised him as king of the Romans, launched a bull in which
+the nobles, churches, and _communes_ of the metropolises of Lyons,
+Tarantaise, Embrun, Besançon, Aix, Arles, and Vienne, of Burgundy,
+Barrois, Dauphiné, Provence, of the county of Forcalquier, the
+principality of Orange, and the kingdom of Arles, provinces held of the
+kingdom, were ordered to break such ties of vassalage and obedience as
+they had been able to contract prejudicial to the emperor, and to release
+themselves from such oaths of obedience as they had sworn.
+
+It was almost equivalent to dismembering France. On the 13th of June a
+great assembly took place at the Louvre at which the king was present.
+The counts of Évreux, Saint-Pol, and Dreux, and William de Plasian,
+demanded that the church should be governed by a legitimate pope.
+Boniface was charged anew with all the old crimes and infamies. The king
+was entreated, in his capacity as “defender of the faith,” to work for
+the convoking of a general council. To this he consented. On the 24th of
+June, St. John Baptist’s Day, an immense crowd of people gathered in the
+palace gardens; there the king’s challenge to the future council was read.
+
+At last, on September 8th, Boniface, in the bull _Petri solio excelso_,
+pronounced against Philip the excommunication he had courted. All
+the world knows how, in defiance of public liberties, Boniface was
+arrested at Anagni, on the evening before the very day on which the
+excommunication of the French king was to have been publicly posted.[d]
+
+One of Philip’s agents, William (Guillaume) de Nogaret whose grandfather
+had been burned as an Albigensian, had been sent to Italy. He came to an
+understanding with Sciarra Colonna, a Roman noble and the pope’s mortal
+enemy. Boniface was at that time in his native city of Anagni. By dint
+of money Nogaret won over the chief of the military forces of Anagni,
+and one morning entered the place with four hundred mounted armed men
+and some hundreds of foot-soldiers. At the noise they made in the town
+and the cries of “Death to the pope!” “Long live the king of France!”
+Boniface believed his last hour had come. But showing in spite of his age
+(he was eighty-six years old) an uncommon degree of agility, he got into
+his pontifical robes, and seated himself on his throne, the tiara on his
+head, the cross in one hand and the keys of St. Peter in the other. Thus
+he awaited his assassins. The latter called upon him to abdicate. “Here
+is my neck and here is my head,” he replied; “betrayed like Jesus Christ,
+if I must die like him at least I shall die a pope.” A story ran that
+Sciarra Colonna dragged him from his throne, struck him across the face
+with his gauntlet, and would have killed him had not Nogaret interfered,
+saying: “Oh thou wretched pope, witness and consider the goodness of my
+lord, the king of France, who, far from thee as is his kingdom, guards
+and defends thee through me.” [But the story of Colonna’s violence seems
+quite unfounded.[13]]
+
+[Sidenote: [1303-1308 A.D.]]
+
+Nogaret hesitated, however, about dragging the old man out of Anagni. The
+people had time to recover from their astonishment. The townspeople armed
+themselves, the peasants rushed in, and the French were driven from the
+town. The pope, fearing they had put poison in his food, remained three
+days without eating. A short time after, he died of shame and anger, at
+the humiliating insults he had received. His successor, Benedict XI,
+tried to avenge him by excommunicating Nogaret, Colonna, and all those
+who had helped them. The excommunication reached up to the king. A month
+after the publication of the bull, Benedict died, perhaps poisoned. This
+time Philip took measures to make himself master of the election of
+the new pontiff. Bertrand d’Agoust (de Goth), archbishop of Bordeaux,
+was elected after he had promised the king to comply with the royal
+wishes. The new pope, who took the name of Clement V, caused himself to
+be consecrated at Lyons, and abandoning Rome, fixed his residence in
+1308 at Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, where
+he soon found himself under the hand and will of the king of France.
+His successors remained there until 1376. The sojourn of the popes at
+Avignon, which so upset the church, has been called the Babylonish
+Captivity. This sojourn was memorable in connection with the history of
+Philip IV.
+
+
+_Sentence of the Templars (1307 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1307 A.D.]]
+
+Villani relates a mournful scene--the ominous interview between pope and
+king in the forest of St. Jean d’Angély where one sold his tiara and
+the other bought it. This meeting did not take place, but conditions
+were certainly proposed and accepted. One of them was nothing less
+than the destruction of the military order of the Templars. The wealth
+of these warrior monks, now of no use to them since it was no longer
+expended in armament against the infidel, had tempted the king’s greed,
+always keen-scented for money, and their powers stood in the way of his
+despotism. There were 15,500 knights with a great multitude of servant
+knights, brothers and their dependents, so that if gathered together they
+could defy all the royal armies of Europe; and their strong organisation,
+under the hand of the grand-master, made them seem more formidable than
+did their numbers and their wealth.
+
+They possessed throughout Christendom more than ten thousand
+establishments, and a number of fortresses, among them the temple at
+Paris where Philip had once found a safe asylum from a riot which stormed
+and raged in vain around its thick walls. In the treasury of the order
+there were 150,000 gold florins not counting silver or precious vessels.
+The world never knew what went on in their houses. Everything was secret,
+but there were vague rumours of orgies, scandals, and impieties, and no
+profane eye had ever penetrated the mysteries. Knights had disappeared,
+because, it was said, they had threatened compromising revelations. The
+pride of the order irritated the people, who charged it with the most
+odious crimes; but they were guilty only of great laxity of morals, and
+their religious ceremonies were perhaps mingled in the East with some
+impure alloy and strange customs.
+
+[Illustration: A TEMPLAR]
+
+The 14th of September, 1307, the seneschals and bailiffs were given
+notice to hold themselves in arms for the 12th of October, and they
+received at the same time sealed letters not to be opened until the
+night of the 12th and 13th of October. The surprised knights had no time
+to resist or gather together. Torture drew from them such statements
+as torture always draws. It was Philip’s desire to associate the
+whole nation with this great trial, as he had associated it with his
+dispute with Boniface VIII. The states-general assembled at Tours; the
+accusations and statements were put before it and the deputies pronounced
+the knights deserving of death. Provincial councils likewise condemned
+them. That of Paris consigned to the flames in one day, in the faubourg
+St. Antoine, fifty-four Templars, who retracted what they had avowed
+under torture. Nine were burned at Senlis and there certainly were other
+executions. The pope pronounced at the Council of Vienne the dissolution
+of the order throughout all Christendom, and ordered their great wealth
+turned over to the Hospitallers (knights of Rhodes). But the royal fist
+did not readily release what it held. All the money found in the temples,
+two-thirds of the personal property, credits, and a considerable amount
+of lands remained in the hands of the king. In Italy, England, Spain,
+and Germany, the order of the Temple was abolished and its wealth in
+part confiscated by the princes. But there were no executions except
+in France. The memory of Philip IV must alone bear the burden of these
+atrocities.
+
+[Sidenote: [1307-1312 A.D.]]
+
+This same Council of Vienne condemned several errors, born within the
+Franciscan order--the heresy of the “Spirituels” who regarded St.
+Francis almost as a new reincarnation of Jesus; that of the “Beguins” or
+“Beghards,” who exempted mankind, perfect according to their ideas, from
+any judgment by human standards. And finally that of the Fraticelli who
+[inquisitors tell us] abolished property and declared that everything
+should be in common, family as well as property. We see these wild
+doctrines are very old.[b]
+
+
+_Philip’s Fiscal Policy_
+
+Nothing satiated the royal exchequer, neither the spoils of the Templars,
+nor the tithes collected under pretext of the “holy war,” nor the taxes
+levied for the knighting of the king’s sons and the marriage of his
+daughter--that fatal marriage, from which sprang Edward III. Even the
+_maltôtes_ did not suffice.
+
+The maltôte, an illegal exaction, which, to a certain extent placed all
+subjects in the position of serfs taxable at their owner’s will and
+pleasure, was at least openly arbitrary and illegal; but the “mutable
+currencies” were treacherously sprung upon the citizens in the midst of
+their transactions and money exchanges, and brought dismay upon society
+at every turn, doing his subjects a wrong out of all proportion to the
+benefit gained by their ruler. In all of this there was as much ignorance
+as perversity, and one has difficulty in conceiving the ineptitude
+shown in the government financial business by legal men, ordinarily so
+clever. Philip the Fair’s statutes regarding the currency are a genuine
+chaos: sometimes the king takes the paternal tone, and pretends to so
+contrive the rate of exchange that his subjects shall suffer as little
+as possible; sometimes he throws off the mask, and prohibits the testing
+and weighing of the royal moneys issued, on pain of forfeiting the coins
+submitted to the test and of “being both body and goods at the king’s
+disposal.” No one could obtain either silver or copper but at the royal
+mints. The importation of the Florentine golden florin and other foreign
+coins was forbidden under the same penalty (for fear of comparison).
+Next Philip withdrew from circulation half of his own current coins,
+under the pretext of their having been counterfeited and tampered with
+by others--coiners, Lombards, etc. The Jews and the Lombards were always
+convenient scapegoats for the royal iniquities. They were again expelled
+in 1311-1312, with the usual confiscations. In 1310 there was a grand
+re-coining of all the moneys; everyone was forced to give in all he
+possessed to the directors of the royal mints, who gave out in exchange
+new money, much inferior in weight and purchasing power to the value
+attributed to it. The king was anxious to gain popularity at the expense
+of the money-lenders, and issued orders that all liabilities should be
+discharged in the new money, in spite of every previous stipulation to
+the contrary. To the same end, after having fixed a maximum (15 to 20 per
+cent. per annum!) for the exorbitant interest charged on silver, he ended
+by prohibiting all usury, which is to say all interest. If the rates of
+usury were scandalous, one must lay the blame of them on the king’s
+persecution of capitalists, Jews, and Italian bankers: naturally the
+rate of interest increased in proportion to the chances of loss incurred
+by the lender. By these means Philip raised fresh barriers to trade and
+swelled the public discontent.
+
+[Sidenote: [1312-1314 A.D.]]
+
+A statute enacted in June, 1313, surpassed in audacity all others that
+had preceded it. The king was no longer satisfied with managing his
+own money as he would; he wished to handle that of the barons also,
+and asserted himself to be the only coiner of the realm. By friendly
+transactions, by usurpations, by every possible means, he had already
+reduced by more than half their number the nobles who minted money. In
+the preamble to his statute he now announced his intention of restoring
+all French moneys “to their ancient currency and status” (of the time
+of St. Louis, apparently), and forbade all prelates and barons to mint
+fresh money until further orders. He was acting, he said, under the
+advice of “the whole caboodle of decent people in every decent town in
+his kingdom,” and he looked to the _bourgeoisie_ to uphold him against
+the resentment of the nobles. As a matter of fact, at another time the
+bourgeoisie would have been only too pleased to see the nobles deprived
+of the right of coining money, a right which they grossly abused; but
+under Philip the Fair, would they gain much by it? This very statute of
+June, 1313, introduced mutations more disastrous than any heretofore.
+It hit all classes of society, and all were equally irritated, with the
+exception of the lawyers and certain large tradesmen who constituted
+themselves overseers, farmers, or coiners on the king’s account.
+
+
+_Execution of Jacques de Molay (1314 A.D.)_
+
+Philip defied public discontent by redoubling his brutalities. The
+smallest murmur was reported to the king’s spies, and punished by his
+tyrants. One saw everywhere people flogged and pilloried; every lay and
+ecclesiastical court robed itself in pitiless severity. In the Place de
+Grève they burned, in 1313, a nun of Hainault, Marguerite de la Porette,
+the Mystic. Shortly after a more celebrated execution startled Paris
+and the whole of France. For more than six years the foremost members
+of the order of the Temple, the grand-master, the “visitor” of France,
+and the masters of Aquitaine and Normandy, had languished in the king’s
+dungeons; they could not be left to die unjudged in darksome cells. At
+last the pope, who had reserved the decision of their fate to himself,
+appointed a commission consisting of the cardinal D’Albano and two other
+cardinals. The archbishop of Sens and various doctors of divinity and of
+canonical law joined them. Brought before their judges, the four captives
+reiterated, it is said, the confessions made by themselves and their
+comrades. It was wished to mark their arrest with great solemnity and
+to “read a lesson” to the public, as the saying is. The court therefore
+held its sitting in the open space before Notre Dame de Paris, upon a
+scaffold draped in scarlet. The four accused were led to the foot of the
+scaffold, where they repeated their confession before all the people.
+Their sentence was then pronounced--they were to be immured for life.
+“But just when,” says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “the cardinals
+believed they had ended the affair, the grand-master, Jacques de Molay,
+and the master from Normandy, Guy, brother of the dauphin of Auvergne,
+suddenly retracted their confession, denying it in toto, and stubbornly
+defended themselves against the cardinal who had ‘pointed the moral’ and
+the archbishop of Sens, to the immense surprise of everybody.”
+
+The commission, struck dumb with astonishment and a sort of fear by
+this unlooked-for incident, did not know how to decide. They adjourned
+till the morrow to deliberate at their leisure, and handed over the
+grand-master and his companions to the guardianship of the royal warder
+of Paris till the next day. The news of what had taken place outside
+Notre Dame was promptly carried to the king, who was at that time at
+the Palais de la Cité. Philip, seized with a dread only equalled by his
+anger, sent in haste for his most trusty advisers, “without summoning
+the scholars” (_i.e._, the commission). The determination he had
+arrived at was the boldest and most atrocious that can be imagined. At
+night-fall he had the two Templars conveyed to a small island in the
+Seine, “between the garden of the Palais de la Cité and the church of the
+Frères-Hermites,” and there had them burned together. “They helped,” says
+the continuator of Nangis,[g] “to prepare the fagots with so stout and
+resolute a heart, persisting to the end in their denials with so great
+steadfastness, that they left those who witnessed their torment filled
+with admiration and stupefaction.” (March 11th, 1314.)
+
+The ecclesiastical powers swallowed this outrage as many another,
+demanding from the king no account for the double murder of two offenders
+who did not come within his jurisdiction, and whose backsliding he had
+dealt with on his own authority alone. Indeed Clement V was already
+failing, and did not long survive the unfortunates whom he had sold to
+their persecutor. He died on April 20th. An Italian historian, Ferretus
+or Fereti of Vicenza, asserts that Jacques de Molay, from the midst of
+his fagots, cited the king and the pope to appear before the tribunal of
+God, Clement within forty days and Philip within a year.
+
+Philip was in truth nearing the end of his sinister career. The last year
+of his reign will be seen to be the most bloody. France was horrified by
+more hideous scenes than any she had hitherto witnessed, more hideous
+even than the murder of the Templars, and this time the tragedy was
+enacted at the foot of the throne among the royal family. Philip’s
+three sons, Louis Hutin, king of Navarre, and count of Champagne and of
+Brie, Philip, count of Poitiers, and Charles, count of La Marche, had
+married--the first Marguerite, sister of Hugh V, duke of Burgundy; and
+the other two Joan and Blanche, daughters of Otto or Othelin, count of
+Burgundy or of Franche-Comté. In the spring of 1314 the young wives of
+the king’s three sons were suddenly arrested on a charge of scandalous
+conduct. Marguerite, queen of Navarre, and Blanche, countess of La
+Marche, were accused of frequent acts of adultery, “even on the most holy
+days,” with Philip and Walter d’Aulnai, young Norman knights in their
+service. The Aulnai brothers were not allowed to challenge to a duel in
+defence of their innocence and that of their mistresses; confession of
+guilt was wrung from them by torture, and the princesses, “stripped,”
+says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “of all temporal honours, after
+receiving the tonsure, were imprisoned, Marguerite in Château Gaillard
+d’Andely, and Blanche in the abbey of Maubuisson, where, after strict
+seclusion, and deprived of all human consolation, they ended their days
+in despair.”
+
+The fate of their lovers was even more terrible. They were conducted
+to the place du Martroi St. Jean, in Paris, and there flayed alive and
+mutilated; they were not beheaded until every means had been exhausted
+that an infernal science could devise to prolong the victim’s sufferings
+without actually killing him.
+
+Joan of Burgundy, countess of Poitiers, more fortunate than her sisters
+Blanche and Marguerite of Navarre, was declared chaste and not guilty
+by a parliament in which sat the king’s brothers and the great nobles:
+she was “reconciled to her husband.” Joan of Burgundy was heiress to
+Franche-Comté: it was not possible to condemn her as an adulteress
+and annul her marriage without renouncing the wealth she had brought
+to the royal house; perhaps her riches had something to say as to her
+innocence.[c]
+
+The general oppression nearly caused an insurrection when Philip ordered
+a new tax on the sale of all merchandise. There was, from the first, a
+union between the nobles and the bourgeoisie similar to the league which
+in England laid the foundations of the people’s liberty and imposed
+the Magna Charta on John Lackland. Philip, this time, withdrew, and
+cancelling the obnoxious tax he summoned representatives of forty of
+the largest towns to a conference at Paris at which he promised to coin
+henceforth nothing but honest money.
+
+But this ill-starred man, this king, the harshest France had had up to
+this time, although but forty-six years of age, had already reached the
+end of his days. He expired November 29th, 1314.[b] The exact cause of
+Philip’s early demise has never been perfectly understood. The commonly
+accepted account is that it resulted from an accident that occurred
+during a stag hunt. “He saw the stag coming and drew his sword, and
+clapped spurs to his horse and thought to strike the stag; but his horse
+carried him so violently against a tree that the good king fell to the
+ground, and was very severely hurt in the heart, and was carried to
+Corbeil. There his malady grew very sore.”[f] But this narrative bears
+the date 1572. “The contemporary French historian” [the continuator of
+William de Nangis[g]] says Michelet[e] “does not speak of this accident.
+He says that Philip sank without fever or visible malady, to the great
+astonishment of the physicians.” Nevertheless there was a contemporary
+rumour of an accident during a hunt of the wild boar, for Dante[h]
+writing exactly at the time of Philip’s death speaks contemptuously of
+him as “The false coiner who died of a blow from a pig’s skin” (_i.e._, a
+boar).[a]
+
+
+_Political Progress in Philip’s Reign_
+
+[Sidenote: [1285-1314 A.D.]]
+
+Whether or not Philip the Fair was a wicked man or a bad king, there
+is no denying that his reign is the grand era from which we date civil
+order in France and the foundation of the modern monarchy.[e] Under
+this reign the royal domain made important acquisitions, some of which,
+unfortunately, were not lasting; the counties of La Marche, Angoumois,
+Champagne, Franche-Comté, Lectoure, a portion of Flanders (Lille, Douai,
+and Orchies), Quercy, the great city of Lyons and a part of Montpellier.
+The count of Bar had been compelled to do homage to the French crown for
+all his land situated west of the Maas.
+
+Vassals were bound to serve their sovereign, in his court, by their
+advice and justice. The king’s feudal court had a double character, for
+in it the king called upon his barons for advice and sentences. With the
+further evolution of royalty the functions of the king’s court developed,
+and a division became necessary; there was the political court or grand
+council, and the judiciary court or parliament. Under St. Louis the
+functions of the parliament were not yet clearly defined. Philip the Fair
+perfected its organisation. He caused this court to be held at Paris
+twice a year for two months in the Palais de la Cité, which later bore
+the name of the Palais de Justice (1303). This sovereign court of justice
+which claimed to exercise its jurisdiction over the entire kingdom was
+destined to be the great instrument employed by future kings to bring the
+whole of France under their absolute authority. Philip also established
+two _échiquiers_[14] at Rouen and two _grands jours_ at Troyes and placed
+these provincial courts under the control of the parliament. The office
+of public prosecutor (_ministère public_) charged with defending in all
+causes the rights of the king and society, seems to date from the time of
+Philip the Fair.
+
+As the king had formed the parliament from the grand council, so
+he formed the chamber of accounts (_chambre des comptes_) from the
+parliament of which it first was a part but later became a separate
+institution. Thus there were three great divisions in the high
+administrative department of the country--the judiciary parliament; the
+financial, chamber of accounts; and the political, the grand council.
+
+The many ordinances of Philip which have been preserved prove his
+activity in organising the new administration, which was the debt of
+royalty to the country, since it had substituted its own powers for those
+of the feudal lords. If these laws often bear the stamp of a despotic and
+taxing spirit, they sometimes show a knowledge of the true principles of
+government. One of them prohibited private war and judicial duels during
+wars of the crown. This was done to disarm feudalism.
+
+A most important event of Philip’s administration was the convocation in
+1302 of the first states-general. Brought by his violences face to face
+with a great peril, and ruined by his constant disastrous undertakings,
+the most despotic of the French kings was compelled [as we have seen]
+to call around him the deputies of the nation, in order to obtain the
+assistance of which he stood in need and to fortify himself in his
+quarrel with the pope, with the assent of France. But in discussing
+before them the prerogatives of his crown and of the tiara, he recognised
+by implication the ancient right of national sovereignty so deeply
+obscured for centuries. Philip doubtless asked nothing but what he was
+sure of obtaining, but the men who, in 1302, fought for the king against
+the pope and in 1326 disposed of the crown, would later on be emboldened
+to the attempt to lay hands on the crown itself.[b]
+
+The states-general consisted of a strictly national assembly which the
+barons, bishops, abbeys, provosts, and deans of chapters were invited
+to attend in person, and to which each city of the realm was invited to
+send two or three deputies or representatives. This was not the first
+time that the crown had consulted the nobles and the prelates; but it
+does not appear that until now the deputies of the third estate had taken
+part in such a council. If they had been previously consulted on rare
+occasions, it was in regard to special matters such as the regulation of
+the currency, and even then certain determinate cities were represented.
+
+The states-general thus called together by Philip the Fair, and which
+assembled the 12th of April, 1302, in the church of Notre Dame at Paris,
+was convoked, to be sure, with a specific aim and under extraordinary
+circumstances. Its unique object was to show the pope that the country
+upheld the king (see p. 80). But none the less does this meeting stamp
+the year 1302 as an important date in French history.[15] Through this
+representative assembly France, as such, takes part for the first time
+in its own government; an intervention already necessary, and which is
+destined soon to become consistent and regular.[k]
+
+
+LOUIS (X) THE QUARRELSOME (1314-1316 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1314-1316 A.D.]]
+
+Philip the Fair had mingled little with the chivalry of his time. He
+forbade tournaments, and, after the fashion of oriental despots, kept
+his sons secluded. The eldest, known as Louis X, called Hutin or the
+Quarrelsome, was fond of rude pastimes. In 1305 he had been crowned king
+of Navarre at Pamplona, and succeeded at the same time to the county of
+Champagne. His uncle Charles, count of Valois, had much influence over
+him, a prince who had shown eagerness, but not perseverance, to tread in
+the adventurous and ambitious path of Charles of Anjou.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS X
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+Charles entertained an aversion for all his brother’s councillors. He
+accused his chancellor Latilly, bishop of Châlons, with having caused the
+death of the king by means of sorcery. Latilly’s obvious interest had
+been to keep Philip alive; but Charles caused him, nevertheless, to be
+imprisoned and tortured under the accusation. Raoul de Presle, another of
+Philip’s legists, was implicated in the same crime, and underwent similar
+persecution.
+
+But Enguerrand de Marigny, Philip’s prime minister, was the chief
+object of hatred to the king’s uncle. Charles blamed Marigny for the
+depreciation of the coin; but for this crime, even if considered guilty,
+Louis Hutin thought him not worthy of punishment more severe than
+banishment to the isle of Cyprus. Charles seemed unable to bring against
+Marigny himself the accusation of sorcery; he however accused his wife of
+employing others to make the terrible images of wax. All of those thus
+implicated were brought, not before parliament, but in the presence of
+the king, of Charles, and of some barons at Vincennes. The councillors
+of Philip had set the example of creating courts of justice in whatever
+way suited their convenience. It was now the turn of the barons, and
+they condemned Marigny to be hanged on a gibbet; the king, on hearing of
+sorcery, abandoning his previous efforts to save him (1315).
+
+Another murder was that of Marguerite, wife of Louis, who had been sent
+to seclusion in the château Gaillard.
+
+The young king was beset with difficulties which required a wise head
+and an established authority to deal with them. A war threatened him
+already. Count Robert of Flanders hesitated and refused to render the
+homage due to the king of France on his accession. Philip would have
+avenged such frowardness by sequestrating the county of Nevers, held by
+the eldest son of the count of Flanders. But the prince appeared at the
+French court, and was well received. The war could only be carried on by
+feudal levies; when these were summoned, the noblesse of the different
+provinces sent in their grievances in lieu of their contingents. His
+legists would have counselled Philip the Fair to resist such demands; but
+his son had surrounded his person, not with legists, but with barons,
+and these remained acquiescent with the demands of their brother nobles.
+Of course what was granted to one could not be refused to another.
+But under the date of this one year, 1315, the French statute book is
+filled with ordinances regranting their old privileges to the noblesse,
+and rescinding a large portion of the voluminous legislation [such as
+abandoning the ancient courts of justice, abolishing the judiciary duel,
+the right of private war, and procedure by written deposition which had
+made lawyers necessary] of the French monarchs during the preceding
+century.[i] The general demand was that the king should hold no relations
+with the barons’ men. But at the same time Louis, in order to get money,
+made a solemn statement that “according to the law of nature every man
+should be born free”; from which he concluded that all Frenchmen being by
+nature free, the serfs of the royal domain could ransom themselves.
+
+Serfdom began to decline from this moment, in contrast with the state
+of affairs in preceding centuries; freedom now became the prevailing
+condition amongst rural populations, as it had long been among the
+inhabitants of the towns--while serfdom was the exception.[b]
+
+Whilst the monarch made these large concessions to his noblesse, he seems
+to have derived from them no efficient aid in the prosecution of the
+war with Flanders. To raise money for this purpose, he was obliged to
+compound with the Lombard merchants of Paris; they consented to pay so
+much a pound on their importations. The Jews, too, were again permitted
+to reside in certain cities on the payment of a tax. Louis Hutin was the
+first king who formally borrowed money on the credit of the state, his
+successors being obliged to devote to the purpose of repayment all the
+sums that might accrue from forfeiture and confiscation.
+
+With an army raised at these pains and costs, Louis marched into
+Flanders. The Flemings were in the neighbourhood of Lille, and the French
+king encamped opposite to them, with a river running between the armies.
+The monarch had not an opportunity of putting his own valour and that of
+his soldiers to the proof. For the elements put a stop to hostilities,
+the rain pouring down in unusual torrents, flooding the camps, and
+destroying provisions and crops. This unsuccessful campaign flung the
+country into anarchy, the barons levying war wherever they could foresee
+profit from it; and those who had right of coinage, Charles of Valois
+included, making exorbitant use of it to enrich themselves at the expense
+of the country. The king suspended this right, but his order was set at
+naught; and he then strove to regulate the nature and fineness of the
+coin which each grandee might issue.
+
+Whilst Charles of Valois was thus employed, the king despatched his
+brother, Philip, count of Poitiers, to Avignon, to hasten the election
+of the pope. He was there when tidings reached him that Louis Hutin had
+expired at Vincennes on the 5th of July, 1316. After heating himself at
+ball-playing, the king had descended to the cellar to quench his thirst,
+an imprudence that proved fatal.
+
+
+PHILIP (V) THE TALL (1316-1322 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1316-1322 A.D.]]
+
+Philip immediately hastened to Paris, and took possession of the royal
+palace. Charles of Valois thought at first of disputing the regency; but
+the armed citizens of Paris, whom Louis had enrolled for the Flemish
+war, with the constable at their head, drove Charles’ followers out of
+the Louvre. Clemence, the young widow of Louis Hutin, now announced
+her pregnancy. In addition to this posthumous child, Louis had left a
+daughter, Joan, by Marguerite of Burgundy. The duke of Burgundy, although
+he had been unable or unwilling to protect Marguerite, maintained the
+rights of her daughter, and pleaded that Philip the Fair had acknowledged
+her legitimacy.
+
+Soon afterwards the queen gave birth to a son, who was christened John;
+but the child lived only a few days. Philip lost no time in at once
+claiming the rank of king, and appointing no distant day in January,
+1317, for his coronation at Rheims. Charles of Valois, who was at the
+head of the noblesse, already began to entertain well-founded hopes of
+the royal succession accruing to his own family. The duke of Burgundy
+was pacified by obtaining one of Philip’s daughters in marriage, with
+a considerable sum of money in dowry, as well as Franche-Comté. Joan,
+daughter of Louis Hutin, whose claims the duke thus abandoned, was
+affianced to the only son of the count of Évreux.
+
+The grounds for this exclusion of females from the throne of France are
+not to be found in any law, but in the circumstance of Joan’s mother
+having been stricken with infamy, with no staunch friend to defend her,
+whilst Philip was in possession of the royal authority, of which it
+would have required a civil war to dispossess him. With respect to the
+old Salic law afterwards invoked, it related but to fiefs and military
+service, and yet in fiefs it had been so generally set aside, that women
+succeeded to lands and to noble property in all the provinces of France.
+It must have been evident to the noblesse, as to others, that the descent
+of a fief, much more of the crown, to females weakened it for a time,
+and eventually rendered it liable to become the prey of personages,
+perhaps foreigners, who had not the interest of the kingdom at heart.
+The accession of Philip the Tall, therefore, and the exclusion of the
+daughters of Louis Hutin, were popular with the citizens, not displeasing
+to the noblesse, and not against the interest of the princes of the
+blood. And thus was it decided that the kingdom of France, instead of
+being considered as a patrimony that descended to direct heirs, even if
+female, was a high function which it required a prince to fill.
+
+The reign of Philip the Tall was marked by no chivalrous enterprise or
+military feat. French and Flemings were disposed more to negotiate than
+fight. The chief object of Philip the Tall’s efforts and edicts was to
+organise a regular administration. He ordered, first, that a certain
+number of the members of the great council should be always with the
+king, a provision afterwards repeated in the order that the small or
+privy council (_l’estroit conseil_) should meet every month. [In this
+council cruel persecutions of the Jews and lepers were organised.] He
+established the chamber of accounts, and regulated the issues of the
+treasury, no payment to be made without the king’s own signature. The
+abuses of Philip’s predecessors are chiefly known by his efforts to amend
+them. Philip regulated parliaments, their number and their sitting. No
+prelate was to sit in that of Paris unless he belonged also to the king’s
+council. Parliament should always be attended by a baron or two. It was
+empowered to send commissioners into the provinces to judge causes
+instead of bringing the parties to Paris and thereby creating expenses.
+The king forbade (1316) nobles to sell fiefs or feudal property to
+non-nobles.[i]
+
+Like his grandfather Philip III, Philip the Tall gave titles of
+nobility to people of common origin, an innovation which, by renewing
+the aristocratic body, assured its longevity, but at the same time
+altered its character. In the beginning, nobility was a personal matter;
+feudalism had made it an attribute of the military fief; here were the
+kings separating it. It is a serious change; for one day these letters of
+nobility will be bought, and there will be no real nobility when all the
+world may be noble with the power of money.
+
+Thus threatened from above by the kings, feudalism was also threatened
+from below by the people. The development of the towns continued: that
+of the country began; the bourgeois obtained from Philip V permission to
+have their own military organisations; each town had a captain for its
+citizen companies, each bailiwick a captain-general; and it was in this
+century, if not in this reign, that the ecclesiastical parishes became
+civil communities. The country people, formerly completely isolated, were
+being brought more and more together, at first around the church and the
+castle under the surveillance of the seigniorial intendant, later under a
+syndic or mayor always appointed by the lord and who brought the people
+together to discuss their common interests.
+
+This was the beginning of municipal organisation in country places.[b]
+
+One of the latest schemes of Philip, much too advanced for his time,
+was to establish but one measure and one money throughout the kingdom.
+He calculated that this could not be done without great expense, and he
+proposed taking the fifth part of the goods of all his subjects for the
+purpose. But the townsfolk objected to the tax, whilst the nobles who had
+the right of coinage persisted in retaining so profitable a privilege.
+Philip was seized in the same year with dysentery and intermittent fever,
+which terminated in languor and confined him for months to his couch. The
+people did not fail to attribute his disease to the unheard-of exactions
+and extortions that he meditated. Philip the Tall did not live to
+accomplish them; he expired in January, 1322.
+
+
+CHARLES (IV) THE FAIR (1322-1328 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1322-1328 A.D.]]
+
+No one put forward any claim on the part of the daughters of Philip the
+Tall to the regal succession. Charles, the youngest son of Philip the
+Fair, was at once hailed as king; and so incontestably, that he seems
+to have dispensed with the ceremony of coronation. The first object
+with Charles, called, like his father, the Handsome or the Fair, was to
+leave an heir to the throne. Less cruel than Louis Hutin, he obtained
+a papal dispensation or divorce from his wife Blanche, not on account
+of the adultery of which she had been convicted, but on the plea of
+consanguinity. Charles immediately married Mary of Luxemburg, daughter
+of the late emperor Henry VII. This queen produced no heir, dying in
+premature childbirth within two years, when Charles married his cousin
+Joan, daughter of the count d’Évreux.
+
+The first years of the reign of Charles the Fair were chiefly marked
+by a trial in which severity was at least warranted by justice, and in
+which the king and court were above sparing culprits even of the highest
+connection. Jourdan de Lille, lord of Casaubon, in Gascony, having
+married the niece of Pope John XXII, considered himself above restraint.
+Accused of eighteen crimes each worthy of death, the king had spared
+him, out of consideration for the pope; but Casaubon resumed his old
+habits. No traveller or merchant was safe from his rapine, nor damsel
+nor even man from his violence. Summoned to appear before the court of
+parliament to answer some of these acts, the Gascon lord beat with his
+own mace the royal sergeant who bore the summons. He came to Paris,
+nevertheless, with a noble suite, bravely reckoning on impunity. He was,
+however, committed to prison, tried, condemned to death, and hanged.[i]
+
+Contemporary writers tell us little of the life of Charles IV, or of his
+government. We know that he paid visits to various parts of his realm,
+and that while so doing he confirmed the charters of certain cities of
+the south of France. We know, too, that in his earlier years Charles
+aspired to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and that for a time
+circumstances seemed to favour his ambition. He had the support of the
+pope and of the two most powerful German houses, those of Austria and
+of Luxemburg. But the Germans as a nation were opposed to the idea of a
+French emperor, and the negotiations to this end were abandoned on the
+death of Leopold of Austria in 1326.[k]
+
+It would appear from the ordinances and other acts of Charles the Fair
+that the party of the noblesse, dominant under Louis Hutin, but repressed
+under Philip the Tall, recovered full authority under Charles. The
+Valois, who put themselves forward as the representatives of the chivalry
+of the age and as the enemy of the legists, appear dominant. They led an
+expedition against Guienne, threatened Flanders, and aided Mortimer and
+Isabella in the struggle which terminated in the murder of Edward II.
+The ordinances of Charles the Fair do not interfere with the noblesse,
+except to shield them from the encroachments of the king’s _baillis_: the
+lords of Auvergne and Brittany obtained especial immunities of this kind.
+Although armies were raised from Flemish and for Gascon war, the nobles
+were apparently not called upon to contribute to them except by feudal
+service; whilst the Parisians were called upon to keep up a body of two
+hundred men-at-arms, and to levy a tax on sales to meet this expenditure.
+Towns which had not the privileges of _communes_, and were without mayors
+or sheriffs, were ordered not to pay _taille_, but, instead of it, the
+tax on sales, of one denier in the livre, which tax was not to be levied
+on the produce sent to market by either nobles or clergy. Money continued
+to be the great trouble and principal anxiety of government, the middle
+and civic classes being singled out as the only ones which could
+regularly furnish it, except when some rich and privileged body offered
+itself to the greed of the spoiler.
+
+The same fate which had carried off his brother at so young an age
+awaited Charles. Taken ill at Christmas, he expired at the end of
+January, 1328. “Thus was the entire progeny of Philip the Fair, and finer
+was not to be found in the kingdom of France, completely exterminated in
+the space of fourteen years.”[i]
+
+
+ASPECTS OF CIVILISATION
+
+The Middle Ages themselves at this moment, at least in France, were near
+their end, for the things they were attached to--the Crusades, chivalry,
+feudalism--were gone, or fast passing away; the papacy, scoffed at in
+the days of Boniface VIII, was captive at Avignon; the successor of
+Hugh Capet was a despot, and the sons of villeins were sitting in the
+states-general of the realm, opposite the nobles and the clergy.[b]
+
+Two or three centuries before, France had seen a great movement
+accomplished in her midst, called the communal revolution. The greater
+part of the cities had acquired--be it pacifically, be it at the cost
+of struggles against the land-owners, or by dissensions and intestine
+wars--municipal rights combined with independent jurisdiction. Some of
+them had acquired a veritable sovereignty. At present, under King John,
+this sovereignty existed no longer. The cities had gradually returned to
+the royal administration, although each retained its charter; it may be
+said, in a general way, that they had again become dependent, since St.
+Louis in regard to finance, since Philip the Fair in regard to tribunals,
+and for the levying of militia since Philip the Tall. But, in spite of
+this change which took from them the character of independent republics,
+to make them members of a great state, they had retained considerable
+liberty and power of action. Their citizens formed a third order, having
+like the clergy or the nobility their own peculiar privileges and
+correlative obligations. They possessed a great and fruitful initiative
+for their commercial interests and their industries. They aspired to
+exercise a rightful influence over the government, and the states-general
+offered them an obvious means.
+
+The bourgeoisie was not hostile to seigneurial aristocracy as several
+historians have represented, but it had different interests and different
+aims, since it owed its wealth and power to industry and commerce. As
+for industry, it is well known that the corporations of crafts assured a
+monopoly more or less extensive to their members, of more or less regular
+revenues, and the perpetuity of hereditary influence. Nevertheless, it
+is necessary to recall how the development of these corporations was
+hampered by their own laws, and if there were already some of great
+wealth, like those of the butchers of Paris, they were the exception.
+Industries were restricted in their nature in proportion as they were
+reduced to the usual crafts, and this was generally the case. They
+employed only the raw materials produced in the country, like flax, wool,
+or hides. They worked in iron and other metals, but having no knowledge
+of large machinery they had little use for coal, the principal agent of
+metallic production. In general, also, they produced only enough for
+home consumption. Exportations were confined principally to the textiles
+manufactured in the south which had a market in the Levant, to the
+woollen stuffs, serges, and tapestries of Arras, to the linens of Rheims
+and Picardy. Thanks to this circumstance the towns of the latter province
+began to rival the large industrial cities of the Netherlands.
+
+The progress of industry was genuine, but would only follow that
+of commerce. Now it was principally the progress of commerce which
+amazed the fourteenth century. The use of the compass, of which no
+traces can be found before St. Louis, in permitting longer voyages,
+established connections, used more than formerly, between the coasts of
+the Mediterranean and those of the ocean and the English Channel. The
+commerce of the two seas, by the straits of Gibraltar, rare enough before
+the year 1300, took, at the beginning of that epoch, a rapid stride
+forward. On the other hand the triumph of Christianity and civilisation
+in the northern districts along the tributaries of the Baltic,
+accompanied by the establishment of German settlements along the coasts
+of that sea in Prussia and Livonia, opened to the merchants northern
+Europe, long infested by pirates and long difficult of access. Now began
+a regular exchange of the products of the north and those of the south.
+Amiens, whose ordinary commerce had long been restricted to Flanders,
+England, Scotland, and Ireland, now extended the circumference of her
+commerce to the Hanseatic countries and their towns, to the Scandinavian
+kingdoms and those of the Spanish peninsula. All these towns prospered,
+and following more or less the movement of the Flemish cities became
+store-houses for the products of northern or southern Europe and even of
+the merchandise of the Orient.
+
+Bruges and Antwerp were at that period markets of great importance.
+The whole world seemed to gather there; the influx of strangers was
+unceasing. The Hanseatics, the Venetians, the Genoese elbowed the English
+and the merchants of all the states of the continent. This favoured
+that commercial movement begun in the thirteenth century, and largely
+increased during the first years of the fourteenth, when the cloth
+industry of Flanders took such a rapid stride and became powerful enough
+to lay down the law to the governments, a thing which has hardly been
+seen before. In effect it gained thereby numerous markets for the sale of
+its products, and abundant capital to increase its operations.
+
+The commercial movement which had its centre in Flanders extended to a
+certain distance, and made itself felt in the towns of northern France.
+All these towns had treaties with the Flemish cities. Paris was even
+affiliated with the Hanseatic League, of which Bruges was the principal
+warehouse. The safety of navigation and maritime commerce preoccupied
+the French government in the fourteenth century. In order that the
+ownership of cargoes might be guaranteed to the ship-owners, Philip the
+Fair created special tribunals of _commissionaires examinateurs_, charged
+with judging the questions of flotsam and jetsam on the coasts; these
+tribunals were the originals of the admiralties. The government also
+undertook to fight piracy and restrain the usage of letters of marque.
+It was customary for the proprietors of a vessel robbed by pirates, if
+they could not obtain satisfaction from the town to which the pirates
+belonged, to indemnify themselves by selling for their own profit the
+property of foreigners of the same nation established in the realm.
+International conventions alone could destroy this barbarous custom.
+The maritime wars against England were far from being favourable to its
+suppression; but they helped to restrain and submit its exercise to
+regulations. Treaties to that effect were signed with several foreign
+rulers. One council, assembled in Paris in 1314, proscribed letters of
+marque, as contrary to religion and morals.
+
+Certain ports were opened to foreigners. Harfleur to the merchants of
+Aragon, of Majorca, Castile, and Portugal who had also free entrance
+into the Seine; Le Crotoy and Abbeville were opened to those of Castile
+who had the entrée to the Somme. Philip of Valois made the agreement to
+maintain these ports, to suppress the taxes which hindered commerce, and
+to accord various privileges to foreigners, among others that of having
+consuls and judges of their own nationality. At Harfleur the Spaniards
+were included among the inhabitants, and participated in the rights
+of the bourgeoisie. At Rouen they occupied a particular quarter. The
+Italians received, in 1315, definite privileges from Louis X, in four
+cities--Paris, St. Omer, La Rochelle, and Nîmes. The Venetian fleet,
+which came annually to the port of Bruges, stopped generally at Dieppe.
+
+
+_The Great Fairs_
+
+The fourteenth century is the epoch of the prosperity of the great fairs.
+The fairs were then to the towns of considerable importance and for
+certain parts of France what they still are to the villages. At these
+fairs were bought and sold all such articles as were not common; these
+purchases and sales could be made only there and at certain times of the
+year. Since individual commerce offered a great deal of difficulty, and
+lacked the most indispensable elements of security, it became necessary
+for the merchants to agree upon the transportation of their merchandise,
+and to unite in order to insure the fairness, often even the simple
+possibility, of transactions.
+
+The most important fairs in the fourteenth century were those of St.
+Denis, and the Lendit, of which the origin was in Merovingian times;
+those of Champagne, held at Troyes, Provins, Lagny, Rheims, and
+Bar-sur-Aube, protected by the regulations of Philip the Fair and Philip
+of Valois, those of Beaucaire in the south. They served as marts for the
+principal foreign productions, the linens of Holland, which were still
+an object of luxury; the woollens of England; the silks of Italy; the
+hides and leathers of Spain; the cloths of Flanders, whose superiority
+was recognised everywhere; the Italian stuffs, ornamented with embroidery
+and woven with gold; the wines of Spain, Portugal, and Greece. At Troyes
+were to be met the merchants of Germany and the countries of the north.
+To Beaucaire came those of the southern countries, Italians, Spaniards,
+Portuguese, Greeks, Berbers, Egyptians; the Genoese came to Beaucaire to
+buy the cloths woven at Narbonne, Perpignan, and Toulouse, and destined
+for exportation. Ordinarily the merchants of the same nation, sometimes
+those of the same town, formed a syndicate. At the fair of the Lendit
+every town had for its negotiations its particular place, as is the
+custom to-day in our great expositions.
+
+All the kings, from Philip the Bold, strove to attract foreign merchants
+by giving them new privileges, that is to say, in multiplying the
+guarantees which they needed. They were exempted from certain tolls.
+International treaties were made to assure the free land passage of
+merchandise transported from one realm to another. We have a remarkable
+example of this sort of treaty. It was a stipulation, signed in 1327 by
+the kings of France, England, Spain, Aragon, Sicily, and Majorca.
+
+The fairs of Champagne were the objects of regulations which it was aimed
+to make as definite and at the same time as favourable as possible.
+The tariff was fixed for the taxes which were collected there. Royal
+commissioners were chosen for the police, for brokers, and notaries, in
+order to assume the sincerity of transactions and of guards to certify
+to the quality of the merchandise sold. To the merchants of each nation
+was conceded the right to elect their national judges, and to submit to
+these judges the regulation of their disputes, except in case of appeal,
+which could be carried to the tribunal of fairs as a first resort,
+and as a second resort to the chamber of accounts. Guarantees were
+also accorded to foreign merchants against deterioration of money and
+arbitrary confiscations. In order to define the point where usury began,
+which the laws continued to fight, interest on commercial matter was
+fixed at fifteen per cent., and the stipulations of private persons were
+tolerated up to this figure. The importance of the fairs, and the pains
+taken by the government to make them popular, could not but be favourable
+to public wealth. A rich and enlightened bourgeoisie was founded in
+the large cities, at Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, Troyes, Orleans. All these
+towns and others enlarged their areas, raised façades of cut stone in
+their principal streets, constructed arcades, galleries, porticoes, and
+municipal buildings; but Paris already dominated them all. Her population
+rose to two or three hundred thousand souls. She already possessed some
+sort of a monopoly for the fabrication of articles of luxury.
+
+Paris had grown with the monarchy. To the advantage of a very
+considerable commerce, of extended and special industries, were joined
+others not less important. It was an ecclesiastical and literary centre.
+A whole quarter was occupied by the population of the schools. Her
+universities, at the same time French and European, could not fail to
+play an important rôle in the revolutions of the country and in the
+discussion of the great interests of the church. Finally, Paris was
+the seat of parliament, that of the highest administration, the centre
+of government, and the residence of the court. The greater part of the
+provinces possessed in the quarter of the Louvre or the quarter of
+St. Paul, hôtels, where they lived surrounded by guards and numerous
+servitors, which very often occupied vast spaces with their gardens and
+out-houses. Ever since then the merchants from the interior or from
+foreign countries, able workmen, clerks, writers, the nobility, have
+thronged into the great capital. The bourgeoisie of Paris had more
+learning, more wealth, and also more pretensions than those of other
+towns. Their chief and natural representative, the provost of merchants,
+was one of the powers of the state.
+
+The idea of a national representation, with fixed conditions and
+attributes, is a modern one, and was almost unknown in the Middle Ages.
+There were no written constitutions in existence, except civic charters,
+which had a purely local character. The government on its part, without
+being absolute, admitted of no binding control. In the meantime, public
+opinion was being consulted, as it became necessary to reckon with it,
+and the independence which asserted itself everywhere. In the thirteenth
+century deputies from the cities were convoked and consulted separately;
+in the fourteenth they were combined with those of the clergy or the
+nobility of the provincial estates or the states-general. But no fixed
+rule was followed. It was the king and his officers who determined each
+time the conditions and the forms of the election.[k]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[13] [Boutaric,[d] who has made a special study of the reign of Philip
+the Fair, bases his account of the remarkable events at Anagni on the
+narratives of Rinaldo de Supino and of Nogaret[l] himself rather than
+on those of Giovanni Villani[m] and Walsingham,[n] the source of most
+modern historians. Nogaret’s alleged speech is from the chronicle of St.
+Denis.[o]
+
+Nogaret says that Philip had sent him to Rome to demand the summoning of
+a council, but Boniface in fear of the hostile population had retired to
+his native Anagni. Nogaret learned of the impending excommunication of
+his master and determined to prevent it at all costs. The Ghibellines of
+Romagna listened to his plan, and Rinaldo de Supino, their leader and his
+friend, agreed to accompany Nogaret to Anagni and bring Boniface to terms.
+
+But Nogaret was compelled to take full leadership and promise the
+protection of France, from all consequences, temporal or spiritual,
+to his allies. Sciarra Colonna, the pope’s mortal enemy, now joined
+the scheme. All of this would indicate that Nogaret acted on his own
+responsibility in the matter of the descent on Anagni, wishing only to
+protect the king of France from the curse of excommunication, and that
+the latter was in no way connected with the conception of the affair. As
+to the events at Anagni, Boutaric says:
+
+“There are fables that Colonna struck the pope in the face with his
+gauntlet; that he was tied to a donkey with his face toward its tail and
+paraded through Anagni in the midst of insults; but all these stories
+should be rejected. It seems certain that the person of Boniface was
+respected. Nogaret contented himself with holding him captive and
+pestering him to consent to the convoking of the council. Boniface was
+immovable; Nogaret was at his wits’ end. After a lapse of three days the
+people, ashamed of their treachery, came to demand Boniface. Nogaret was
+obliged to flee.” Dareste[k] holds Colonna guiltless of violence but
+thinks that others might have injured the pope but for Nogaret.]
+
+[14] The _échiquier_ of Rouen was the ancient feudal court of the dukes
+of Normandy; it was held alternately at Rouen, Falaise, and Caen. Philip
+the Fair put royal magistrates at its head and fixed it at Rouen, where
+it met twice a year at Easter and Michaelmas, whence the expression _les
+deux échiquiers_. The _grands jours_ were presided over by a judicial
+commission appointed by the king, but like the _échiquier_ of Rouen it
+was a local institution that had already long existed.
+
+[15] [Perhaps Guizot’s[p] slightly dissenting view is worth quoting. He
+says: “It has often been asserted that Philip the Fair was the first who
+called the third estate to the states-general of the kingdom. The phrase
+is too grand, and the fact was not new. Under St. Louis deputies of towns
+were called around the king to deliberate upon certain legislative acts.
+There are other examples of this. Philip the Fair, then, had not the
+honour of the first call; and, with regard to assemblies of this kind
+which occur under his reign, far too great an idea of them is formed.
+These meetings were very brief, almost accidental, without influence upon
+the general government of the kingdom, and deputies of towns held but
+a very inferior place in them. Nevertheless under Philip the Fair they
+became more frequent than before.”]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR
+
+    Great enterprises and deeds of arms were achieved in these
+    wars; since the time of good Charlemagne, king of France, never
+    were such feats performed.--FROISSART.[e]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1328-1350 A.D.]]
+
+Although France was little prepared for a great national war, a king
+mounted its throne who was almost certain to provoke one. The princes of
+the family of Valois had always represented the ideas and the interests
+of the noblesse during the preceding reigns, when reasons of state,
+maxims of law, and necessities of finance had led the government to look
+to other councillors and undergo other influence. With the accession of
+Philip of Valois, the noblesse recovered that ascendency of which they
+had been so long deprived. And this influence they displayed with a
+petulance and a pride which could not but provoke what they most loved, a
+war.
+
+“Charles the Fair having expired, the barons assembled to take into
+consideration the government of the kingdom. The queen was pregnant,
+and until the sex of her issue was known, the title of king could not
+be assumed. The only question was to whom, as nearest in blood, the
+government of the kingdom should be committed, especially as in France a
+female could not succeed to the crown. The English said that their king,
+the son of Philip the Fair’s daughter, and consequently nephew of the
+late monarch, was, as nearest of kin, more entitled to the regency and
+to the throne, if the queen did not bring forth a prince, than Philip
+of Valois, who was but the cousin of the deceased monarch. Many learned
+in the civil and canon law were of this opinion. Isabella, the daughter
+of Philip the Fair, might, they alleged, be set aside on account of her
+sex; but one of the right sex, and of the nearest affinity, ought to
+succeed. The men of France, incapable of suffering the idea of becoming
+subjects of an English prince, replied, that Edward could only succeed by
+the right of his mother; and when the mother had no right, the son could
+have none. This opinion being accepted as the most sensible, was approved
+by the barons, and the government delivered to Philip of Valois. He
+accordingly received the homage due to the crown of France, but not that
+due to the crown of Navarre, which the count of Évreux claimed by right
+of his wife, daughter of Louis Hutin.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1328-1330 A.D.]]
+
+This narrative, by the continuator of Nangis,[c] is sufficiently
+correct. Navarre was given to the count of Évreux, he consenting to
+receive pecuniary compensation for the counties of Champagne and Brie.
+In April the queen was confined of a daughter; Philip instantly assumed
+the title of king, and gave orders for his coronation at Rheims. At the
+same time, by a letter dated Northampton, the 16th day of May, 1328,
+Edward appointed two bishops as procurators to make good his claim to the
+kingdom of France. At the close of the same month Philip was solemnly
+crowned at Rheims.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIP VI
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+The first act of the new king as regent seems to have been to order the
+treasurer of the late monarch, Peter Remi, to be tortured--thus compelled
+to confess treason, and finally hanged. He also summoned his barons to
+support him in a military expedition into Flanders. Count Louis was
+obstructed in his government, and especially in his levy of taxes, by the
+people of Bruges, Ypres, and other cities; those of Ghent alone remaining
+true to him and to France. Louis demanded aid of Philip. The greater
+part of the barons were of opinion that the season was too far advanced
+to admit of an expedition that year; but Philip, anxious to signalise
+his reign, turned to the constable, Walter de Châtillon, and asked his
+advice. “The brave heart finds all times opportune for fighting,” replied
+the constable. The king accordingly summoned his lieges to meet him at
+the feast of the Madeleine in July, at Arras. “But the good towns,”
+says the chronicle of St. Denis,[h] “did not attend, giving their money
+instead, and staying at home to mind their cities.”
+
+The king’s army was most numerous, divided into ten divisions or battles,
+the nobles from every quarter hastening to evince their loyalty by
+attending the first summons of a new and chivalrous king. The citizens
+of West Flanders alone mustered to oppose the French, and not more than
+twelve thousand of them, according to Froissart, took post under Colas
+Zannequin on the hill of Cassel. They were confident, however, and hung
+out a flag with a cock painted on it, and an inscription saying, that
+this cock would crow, ere the upstart king, the _roi trouvé_, would find
+his way into Cassel.
+
+The Flemings remained tranquil for several days, with the French
+encamped before them. At last at the hour of vespers when the latter
+were preparing supper, the Flemings marched out in three bodies, fell
+upon them, and penetrated into their camp. Philip, like his namesake at
+Mons-en-Pévêlle, was obliged to withdraw, and it was his chaplains who
+helped him to put on his armour. When the king showed himself with the
+_oriflamme_, the knights rallied round him from all quarters, the foot,
+who were more numerous, continuing their flight. The Flemings had failed
+in mastering as well as surprising Philip’s camp, and now assailed by
+the French cavalry (having none of their own), they stood firm and fought
+for a long time a defensive battle. At last a charge made a breach in
+their solid phalanx, the French knights poured in, and the Flemings were
+routed and slaughtered. One of the divisions regained the hill of Cassel,
+but all alike perished. The king estimated the loss of his enemies at
+twenty thousand.
+
+He entered the several towns one after the other in triumph, took a
+thousand citizens of Bruges as hostages, tore down the bells, levelled
+the walls, and proscribed municipal liberties. When Philip delivered the
+county of Flanders, thus humbled and mutilated, to its lord, he addressed
+him, as the continuator of Nangis[c] records, in the following words:
+“Count, I come hither at your request, and in all probability because you
+were too negligent in executing justice. I could not have come, as you
+know, without great expense; yet, out of my liberality, I restore you
+your land quiet and pacified, and I forgive you the expense. But another
+time take care. Let me not be obliged to return by your over-clemency,
+for if I do, it shall be for my own profit.”
+
+Thus exhorted, adds the chronicler, Count Louis so exerted himself that,
+within three months, he had put ten thousand persons to various kinds of
+death. In this manner was signalised the triumph of the French noblesse
+over the citizens of West Flanders.
+
+[Sidenote: [1328-1335 A.D.]]
+
+Meantime, in England, affairs were somewhat unsettled. Edward III cannot
+be considered to have undertaken the government of that country until the
+death of Mortimer and the imprisonment of the queen-mother in October,
+1330. In the first year after Philip’s accession, Isabella seemed
+inclined to dispute his title, and steps were taken to conclude alliances
+against France. But the success of Philip in the Flemish war, and the
+hostile attitude of the English barons, as well as the discontent of the
+English people with the concessions made to Scotland, precluded the idea
+of prosecuting the quarrel with France.
+
+Edward, therefore, at his mother’s bidding, proceeded to Amiens in the
+spring of 1329, and did homage to Philip, maintaining his rights to those
+portions of his possessions in the south of France which the French king
+still retained. But this act of submission led to disputes, one monarch
+pretending that it was homage simple, the other that it was homage
+_liège_. Philip thought the opportunity favourable for invading Guienne,
+the power of Isabella and Mortimer being paralysed by their many enemies.
+The king levied an _aide_ upon his barons for the expedition. So far had
+these hostile intentions proceeded, that the count of Alençon, Philip’s
+brother, attacked the English in Saintonge, and took and burned the
+castle of Saintes. On the death of Mortimer, however, and the assumption
+of full power by Edward, Philip returned to more amicable sentiments,
+and promised to make amends for the affair of Saintes, as well as for
+several other grievances. The monarchs seemed to be on the most friendly
+terms; they spoke of proceeding to the Holy Land together, and even of
+contracting a marriage between their children.
+
+The subsequent coolness and enmity between them is universally, and
+apparently with justice, attributed to the malice of Robert of Artois,
+who for some years had been a pretender to the lordship of that county.
+Robert had undoubtedly been wronged in the judgment which took Artois
+from him, the direct heir, and gave it to a female and a collateral,
+merely because she was more closely allied to the reigning king of
+France. When Robert asserted his rights in arms, Philip the Tall was
+unable to reduce him; and if Robert submitted, and even constituted
+himself a prisoner, it was on the understanding that the unjust sentence
+against him should be revoked, and the county restored to him. On this
+understanding, Robert married the daughter of Charles of Valois.
+
+Nevertheless Philip the Tall and Charles the Fair evaded the demands
+and expectations of Robert, who reckoned on having his rights at last
+from his brother-in-law, Philip of Valois. Robert accordingly served the
+crown with zeal, and was one of the principal supporters of this prince’s
+claims to the throne. “Thus, on Philip’s accession, Robert became
+everything in France,” says Froissart.[e] There having been two sentences
+of the court of parliament against Robert’s claim, it was difficult
+to rescind them, at least without some new plea, some yet unproduced
+documents in his favour. Such, probably, was the remark with which Philip
+and his law officers met the demands of Robert.
+
+If a document existed likely to prove favourable for his claim, it must
+have fallen into the hands of those who had robbed him of the county.
+The countess Mahaut, to whom Philip the Fair had adjudged Artois, died
+soon after the accession of Philip of Valois. Her chief counsellor and
+confidant had been the bishop of Arras. He also dying, left voluminous
+papers, some of which had been secreted and carried off from Arras by
+a woman named Divion, mistress of the prelate. The countess lived long
+enough to endeavour, by law or vengeance, to get back the papers from
+Divion.
+
+Aware of these circumstances, Joan, the countess of Artois, set to work
+and procured from this woman, or caused to be forged by her, certain
+documents. One was a letter from the bishop of Arras to Robert of
+Artois, craving pardon for having purloined the documents. Another was
+a charter of Robert, count of Artois, the grandfather, settling Artois
+upon his son, the father of Robert. Michelet[f] declares the documents,
+which still exist, to be forgeries. Robert of Artois boldly produced
+them, claimed by virtue of them to be restored to the possession of his
+county; and, as a proof of what value was men’s testimony in those days,
+he brought upwards of fifty witnesses in support of his false documents.
+Had the king been prosecutor, these, no doubt, would have been found
+authentic enough for the parliament. But Robert of Artois was no friend
+of the legists, and parliament remained firm to its first decision. The
+king’s _procureur_ objected to the documents, and Robert, summoned to say
+whether he would stand by them, hesitated. The woman, Divion, was seized,
+put to the torture, and acknowledged her forgery. The parliament ordered
+her to be burned. Robert of Artois being proved so far culpable as to
+have plotted with her, was accused, moreover, of aiding her to poison the
+countess Mahaut of Artois. Robert fled to Brabant. The king caused him to
+be condemned for forgery, and deprived of his estates and honours. His
+wife, his sons, and relatives were imprisoned, and, the legists accusing
+him of attempting to murder and to kill the king by sorcery, drove
+Robert altogether from the continent, and compelled him to take refuge
+in England. The fugitive was well received by Edward, appointed of his
+council, and endowed with ample domains.
+
+Philip of Valois knew not what use to make of that absolute power, which
+the efforts of so many kings had built up. Policy, he evidently had
+none. He liked the splendour, magnificence, and pride of a court; and,
+consequently, preferred his noblesse to any other class of society. Still
+he showed, in the case of Robert of Artois, his determination not to
+allow any of them to dictate or impose upon him. He consulted his lawyers
+as in the case of church encroachments, but shrunk from ordinance or
+legislation in their favour. Abroad, Philip was generally uncertain in
+purpose.
+
+[Sidenote: [1335-1337 A.D.]]
+
+The monarch’s incertitude was, however, soon relieved. Edward III became
+more and more irritated at the support which the French and Flemings
+gave to the Scots: in June, 1335, he issued an order from Newcastle to
+the Cinque Ports to arm, and intercept a naval expedition fitting out
+at Calais for Scotland. In February, 1336, an edict appeared ordering
+all Englishmen, from sixteen to sixty, to be prepared to repel invasion.
+Still negotiations continued; and it was not till August of the same year
+that Edward announced to his subjects the refusal of the French king to
+cease rendering active assistance to the Scottish foe. At the same time
+the count of Flanders threw off the mask by arresting all the English
+traders in his dominions, and Edward was obliged to respond to it by a
+similar act.
+
+The following year was spent by both monarchs in preparing alliances, and
+by Edward in making the most active and unusual preparations for war.
+Philip hired large bodies of Germans, both men-at-arms and light troops.
+By marrying the heiress of the duke of Brittany to one of his relatives,
+he hoped to have secured the allegiance of that prince and family; but
+Philip’s attention was chiefly turned towards the south and the conquest
+of Guienne, for which enterprise he had the succour of the nobles of the
+Pyrenees as well as of Languedoc. He seemed not to expect to be seriously
+attacked on the side of Flanders.
+
+Yet it was in that direction that Edward principally turned his efforts,
+spending the year 1337 in negotiations with the princes whose territories
+extended from Antwerp to Cologne. The English king had married the
+daughter of the count of Hainault, who was the first that he gained,
+or hoped to have gained; the duke of Brabant, the duke of Gelderland,
+and the archbishop of Cologne also listened to Edward’s proposals, and
+willingly received his subsidies. They might bring into the field a
+thousand knights. But Edward pushed his quest for allies still further:
+he engaged the duke of Austria to invade Burgundy, he concluded an
+agreement with the count palatine for a subsidiary force, and even
+obtained a promise from the emperor Ludwig of Bavaria that he would aid
+in the war against France with an army of two thousand knights; for this
+his imperial majesty was to be paid 300,000 florins.
+
+These counts and knights observed to the envoy of Edward that,
+notwithstanding their own prowess, the Flemish artisans would prove
+far more potent auxiliaries against France than any number of lordly
+chivalry. Edward approved of the idea; and the bishop of Lincoln and
+other envoys proceeded to Ghent, “not sparing their money by the way.”
+The subjection of Flanders had been caused by the rich citizens of Ghent
+proving false to the national cause, supported solely by the men of
+Bruges and West Flanders. This enabled the democracy of Ghent to triumph
+over them, and to become organised under the lead of a brewer of that
+city, named Artevelde. The envoys of Edward addressed themselves to
+this new king or popular sovereign, and were well received by him. He
+summoned consuls or deputies from the other towns, and these soon came
+to an accord that trade should be carried on as usual, and wool imported
+from England, notwithstanding the prohibitions of France and the count of
+Flanders.
+
+To Edward wool was at once money and alliance. Whilst the working and
+manufacturing class of Flemings thus profited by the English, the chiefs
+and Artevelde himself received money for the occasion. Still, however
+easy to win over the Flemings to neutrality, it was difficult to induce
+them to enter upon active war with France. The French, however, and
+the Flemish aristocracy did all in their power to provoke the civic
+democracy; they enticed from Ghent almost the only personage of birth
+who favoured the popular party, and had entertained the envoys of Edward.
+This was a knight of Courtrai, father-in-law of Artevelde; when he fell
+into their hands, they decapitated him, to the great irritation of the
+men of Ghent. The Flemish knights, in order to intercept the frequent
+communication and envoys passing between England and the Low Countries,
+took possession of the isle of Cadsand, close to Walcheren, and lying in
+wait there for the English, obliged them in going or in returning home,
+to take the route of Dordrecht, instead of sailing direct from Antwerp.
+Edward no sooner learned this, than he fitted out an expedition in the
+Thames under Lord Derby and Sir Walter Manny, of six hundred knights
+and two thousand archers. These assailed Cadsand, defeated the Flemish
+knights, and captured Guy of Flanders, who, after some delay, joined the
+English party.
+
+
+EDWARD III CLAIMS THE THRONE OF FRANCE
+
+[Sidenote: [1337-1339 A.D.]]
+
+In October, 1337, Edward took the important step of laying claim to the
+throne of France by right of his mother, sister of Philip the Fair, and
+of declaring Philip of Valois, descended from a brother of that monarch,
+a wrongful usurper. This he announced in letters from Edward, king of
+France and England, to his allies in the Low Countries; and he at the
+same time appointed the duke of Brabant his vicar-general in the kingdom
+of France. The king’s allies received this solemn announcement, but do
+not seem to have acted upon it; the duke of Brabant, far from assuming
+the office of vicar-general, on the contrary assured Philip of Valois of
+his friendship.
+
+In the spring of 1338, Edward embarked for Antwerp with what forces he
+could muster, hoping to make a brilliant campaign with the princes of
+the Low Countries. They showed very little alacrity, and though willing
+to receive large sums, prepared to prove themselves as little hostile to
+the French king as was consistent with their receiving the money from the
+English. The emperor, though he had promised to be ready by St. Andrew’s
+day was too anxious for a reconciliation with the pope to defeat his
+purpose by aiding in an invasion of France; and Edward was reduced to
+recommence the task of negotiation.
+
+It was late in 1339 before Edward was joined by his German allies.
+Some time was passed in solemnly declaring war, and then the English
+advanced to Cambray, which was garrisoned by French troops. But as it
+did not belong to the king of France, there was no profit in capturing
+it; Edward, therefore, pursued his march, against the advice of many of
+his allies, into France, upon which his relative, the count of Hainault,
+formally quitted his banner for that of Philip. Edward nevertheless
+advanced towards St. Quentin, at the head of about forty thousand men.
+Philip of Valois had mustered an army nearly double in number that of his
+enemy, there being forty thousand infantry raised by the money of the
+towns, and twenty thousand more Genoese and Italian foot; three divisions
+of men-at-arms were each fifteen thousand strong. When the armies were
+in presence, Edward sent to request the king of France to appoint a day
+for the battle. Philip eagerly fixed a day, but with all his chivalry,
+the monarch hesitated. King Robert of Sicily, skilled in the science
+of astrology, had written to warn the king of France not to engage in
+combat with the English whilst Edward was with them in person. The French
+monarch in consequence showed reluctance to engage, and the auxiliaries
+of both armies took the pretext to separate. Edward’s German allies
+withdrew, and Philip distributed his men-at-arms amongst the garrisons of
+the frontier.
+
+[Sidenote: [1339-1340 A.D.]]
+
+It was subsequent to this bootless campaign that Froissart fixes the
+time of Edward’s assuming habitually the title, and quartering the arms,
+of king of France with his own. This assumption of the crown of France,
+which seemed not only drawing the sword, but flinging away the scabbard,
+was a promise to the Flemings that he would wage the “great war” and
+chiefly through their means and in behalf of their interests. For this
+purpose he prepared a great expedition, whilst his Queen Philippa spent
+the winter at Ghent among the good citizens, in order to encourage and
+attach them to England. But while Edward won the Flemings, his German
+allies grew lukewarm. He had learned in the last campaign to mistrust
+their sincerity: they now offered to make peace with France; but Philip
+rejected their offer, and sent troops to ravage Hainault.
+
+In 1340, Edward had collected a formidable army on board a navy equally
+numerous. Philip directed his efforts to intercept this expedition,
+and to muster a fleet capable of performing so important a service. He
+took into pay great numbers of Genoese officers and seamen; granted
+the Normans several boons and privileges to induce them to fit out
+ships, and with these they surprised and burned Southampton, whilst
+the English visited Eu with equal severity. But on the other hand, the
+French captured two of their largest vessels, called the _Christopher_
+and _Edouarda_, in a naval engagement that lasted all day, and cost the
+lives of a thousand men. In June, Edward sailed from the Thames with his
+army for the Schelde, not expecting, indeed, to fight a naval combat, for
+there was a number of the ladies of his court on board.[b]
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF SLUYS OR L’ÉCLUSE
+
+King Edward embarked on the 22nd of June with the élite of the English
+knights and archers, and went down the Thames towards Sluys. The
+French fleet, 140 strong in large ships, “without counting the smaller
+ones,” and carrying more than forty thousand men, awaited them between
+Blankenberghe and Sluys. This naval army, under the command of Admiral
+Hugh Quiéret, the treasurer Nicholas Béhuchet, and the Ligurian corsair
+Barbavara, had for two years wrought much damage to English commerce,
+taking ships, massacring crews, and making descents on Plymouth, Dover,
+Southampton, Sandwich, and Rye. England breathed out vengeance, but
+would not have obtained it if the French fleet had been well commanded.
+This fleet, thanks to the Genoese auxiliaries, had a great numerical
+superiority, but the three commanders were at variance.
+
+Béhuchet was a rough bourgeois who had served his naval apprenticeship
+in the king’s exchequer, and whom Philip had been foolish enough to
+associate with the admirals; this man actually tried to teach an old
+sea-dog like “Barbevaire.” Hugh Quiéret, the titular admiral, was hardly
+more skilful than Béhuchet. They massed the fleet in a narrow creek off
+the coast of Flanders, as if the great thing for a navy was to choose a
+“sure and easily defensible” position.
+
+King Edward and his men, who came along with a fair wind, looked and
+beheld before Sluys so large a number of vessels that the masts seemed
+like a wood. The king was very much astonished and asked whose they could
+be. “Sire,” they said, “it is the Norman army kept by the king of France
+at sea, and which has done you so much damage and burned the good town
+of Hantonne (Southampton), and conquered the _Christopher_, your large
+ship, and slain those who manned her.” “Oh,” said the king, “I have
+wanted to fight them for a long time, and please God and St. George, we
+will; for of a truth they have caused me so much vexation that I would
+avenge myself.” After so saying, he wisely and skilfully set out his
+ships, putting the strongest in front, and giving the best places to his
+soldiers and archers. And he manœuvred and wheeled about so as to get the
+wind and sun on the poop. The Normans thought he was tacking about so as
+to flee, but the leader of the Genoese auxiliaries was not so deceived.
+
+[Illustration: CHÂTEAU OF DIEPPE]
+
+“When ‘Barbevaire’ (Barbavara) saw the English ships approaching, he
+said to the admiral and Nicholas Béhuchet: ‘My lords, here is the king
+of England and all his navy coming upon us; if you take my advice you
+will steer for the open sea, for, if you stay here, while they have sun,
+wind, and wave in their favour, they will hem you in so closely that you
+will be helpless and unable to manœuvre.’ To this Nicholas Béhuchet,
+who understood accounts better than naval warfare, answered, ‘Let him
+be hanged who goes away, for here we will stay, and take our chance.’
+‘My lord,’ replied Barbevaire, ‘since you will not believe me, I will
+not stay to be destroyed and I shall get myself and my ships out of this
+hole’” [St. Denis.[h]] And he went off out of the creek with all his
+Italian galleys and gave all his care to his own fleet.
+
+Edward immediately attacked and began by boarding the great
+_Christopher_, the ship taken from him a year ago by the Normans. The
+crew were seized, killed, or thrown into the sea, while the fight became
+general all along the haven. “The battle was hard and fierce on both
+sides, archers and crossbow-men shot stubbornly at one another, while
+soldiers closed and fought hand to hand. That they might fight at better
+advantage they had large hooks with iron chains which they threw from one
+ship to another and attached them together.”
+
+Right bitterly from six in the morning till three in the afternoon did
+they fight, Béhuchet himself behaving as a true knight, but all the
+courage in the world could not repair his error. “The French ships were
+so entangled in their moorings that they were helpless.” Their numbers
+availed not at all; one after the other they were boarded by the English.
+Nevertheless the resistance was so fierce that the fate of the day could
+yet have been changed by the aid of Barbavara, who was manœuvring on the
+enemy’s flanks, but a considerable reinforcement of Flemings arriving
+from Bruges and neighbouring districts by the port of Sluys, decided the
+fate of the French fleet.
+
+“In short, King Edward and his men gained all along the line; the Normans
+and all the other French were discomfited, dead, or drowned, none
+escaping, for if they tried to take refuge on land, the Flemings awaited
+them on the sands.”
+
+The English gave almost no quarter. Hugh Quiéret was, they say,
+slaughtered in cold blood after he had given himself up. Béhuchet was
+hanged from the mast of his own ship, “to spite the king of France.”
+Barbavara managed to make good his retreat and regained the open with
+his forty Genoese galleys, but the French were exterminated. It has been
+made out that their loss amounted to thirty thousand men. The English
+bought their victory dearly, but it was complete. The French navy was
+annihilated. That 24th of June, 1340, marks the naval début of the Valois
+dynasty.[d]
+
+This first naval battle between the two nations very much raised the
+confidence of the English and the alacrity of the Flemings. Edward had
+not only a larger army of his own than in the previous campaign, together
+with the troops of the German allies, but, in addition, forty thousand
+Flemings under Artevelde, besides those of West Flanders, who proceeded
+in the direction of St. Omer. This immense host, instead of marching to
+meet and overwhelm the French king, sat down before Tournay.
+
+Edward sent from thence a challenge to Philip of Valois, as he styled
+him, to decide their quarrel by single combat, or by an encounter of
+a hundred knights on either side. Philip replied, on the last day of
+July, that such a title could not be addressed to him; that the writer
+was his liege, and had no right to enter his dominions. He promised to
+cast the intruder out of the kingdom without loss of time; and that, as
+to the Flemings, he was confident they would rally to their own lord.
+Philip marched to the neighbourhood of Tournay with an army as formidable
+as that which he brought in the preceding year; but neither party were
+prepared to engage in a general action. The French hesitated to attack,
+and eleven weeks’ siege made no impression upon Tournay. Robert of
+Artois, who commanded the armed citizens of West Flanders, led them
+against St. Omer, not with the hope of capturing that important town, but
+for purposes of pillage and devastation. The Flemings were thus engaged
+in plundering one of the suburbs, when the French within, issuing by
+another gate, came round and surprised them in the rear, routing and
+slaying them as they fled, to the number of four thousand. This disaster
+made such an impression on the army of West Flanders, that a panic seized
+it on the following morning, and all fled and dispersed to their homes.
+
+If the campaign of the preceding year had taught Edward how little was
+to be expected from the Walloon or the German, he learned this year that
+even the redoubtable Flemings would not enable him either to conquer
+France or to reduce Philip to just and reasonable terms. He therefore
+consented that Joan de Valois, sister of Philip and countess of Hainault,
+should seek to bring about an accommodation. Her efforts led to a six
+months’ truce, consented to in order that plenipotentiaries from both
+monarchs might treat for the conclusion of a more definite peace.[b]
+
+Thus ended the campaign of 1340, “a year of misery and calamity,” says
+the continuator of Nangis; “although for two or three years past,
+the common people had been oppressed with very hard exactions, our
+misfortunes were much greater this time.”[c]
+
+
+THE WAR IN BRITTANY
+
+[Sidenote: [1340-1342 A.D.]]
+
+The belligerents had scarcely suspended hostilities on the northern
+frontier of France, when a quarrel arose in another quarter, giving equal
+facilities for English interference, and offering to Edward more sincere,
+zealous, and martial allies than the Flemings had proved, whether knights
+or artisans.[b] It also brought the English king much hope.
+
+In 1341 hostilities were revived in Brittany where the two kings each
+sustained a different claimant for the ducal throne. The duke John
+III had just died, leaving no children. Should the duchy fall to the
+daughter of his eldest brother--whose death had preceded his own--Joan
+de Penthièvre, who had married Charles of Blois, or to his own younger
+brother, John de Montfort? The two pretendants set forth the Mosaic law,
+the edicts of the Roman empire, the Salic law, and tradition; the lawyers
+piled up innumerable authorities: but politics decided the question.
+
+Charles of Blois was nephew to Philip VI; with him Brittany would be in
+closer dependence upon the crown. A parliamentary act pronounced at the
+château of Conflans decided the matter in his favour. John de Montfort
+hastened to England, and agreed to recognise Edward III as king of
+France. In view of his promise as vassal loyally to aid and defend the
+English king, he was to possess Brittany in fief.
+
+Thus began one of those wars--marked by “engagements, sallies, gallant
+rescues, surprising feats of arms, and brave adventures”--so delightfully
+depicted by Froissart[e] so grindingly oppressive to the people.
+Charles of Blois, supported by a numerous French army, among whom was
+the son of the king, besieged his adversary in the city of Nantes.
+Thirty Breton knights had been taken in a neighbouring castle. Charles,
+despite the piety which gained for him the name of “saint,” and Duke
+John, who was later to glory in the title “the good,” had these thirty
+knights decapitated and their heads thrown into the market-place by the
+ballistas. The terrified citizens capitulated; John de Montfort was
+imprisoned at Paris in the tower of the Louvre.[g]
+
+The countess Joan de Montfort was at Rennes when she heard that her
+husband had been taken. With a heart full of grief she yet bravely
+consoled her friends and supporters; and showed them her little son,
+named also John like his father, saying, “Ah, my friends, be not bowed
+down for my lord whom we have lost; he is but one man. Behold my son who
+shall be, if God so wills it, his avenger and your benefactor. I will
+give you of my wealth and will provide for you a captain who shall bring
+you consolation.”[e]
+
+She then journeyed from Rennes to all the fortresses and towns, taking
+her son with her; she encouraged her men, reinforced her garrisons with
+troops and supplies; and came at length to Hennebon, where she wintered.
+She had chosen this place, situated as it was on the Blavet, not far from
+the sea, to have facile communication with England. With the advent of
+spring, officers and troops swarmed to Nantes to join Charles of Blois;
+and the siege of Rennes was begun. The city was taken after a valiant
+defence; and the French marched on Hennebon, which they bombarded with
+showers of stones and enormous rocks.[16][g]
+
+
+_Joan de Montfort defends Hennebon_
+
+[Sidenote: [1342 A.D.]]
+
+The countess, who had clothed herself in armour, was mounted on a
+war-horse, and galloped up and down the streets of the town, entreating
+and encouraging the inhabitants to defend themselves honourably. She
+ordered the ladies and other women to unpave the streets,[17] carry the
+stones to the ramparts, and throw them on their enemies. She had pots
+of quicklime brought to her for the same purpose. That same day, the
+countess performed a very gallant deed; she ascended a high tower to
+see how her people behaved; and, having observed that all the lords and
+others of the army had quitted their tents, and were come to the assault,
+she immediately descended, mounted her horse, armed as she was, collected
+three hundred horsemen, sallied out at their head by another gate that
+was not attacked, and, galloping up to the tents of her enemies, cut
+them down, and set them on fire, without any loss, for there were only
+servants and boys, who fled upon her approach. As soon as the French
+saw their camp on fire, and heard the cries, they immediately hastened
+thither, bawling out, “Treason! Treason!” so that none remained at the
+assault. The countess, seeing this, got her men together, and, finding
+that she could not re-enter Hennebon without great risk, took another
+road, leading to the castle of Brest, which is situated near. The lord
+Louis of Spain, who was marshal of the army, had gone to his tents, which
+were on fire; and, seeing the countess and her company galloping off as
+fast as they could, he immediately pursued them with a large body of
+men-at-arms. He gained so fast upon them, that he came up with them, and
+wounded or slew all that were not well mounted; but the countess, and
+part of her company, made such speed that they arrived at the castle of
+Brest, where they were received with great joy.
+
+On the morrow, the lords of France, who had lost their tents and
+provisions, took counsel, if they should not make huts of the branches
+and leaves of trees near to the town, and were thunder-struck when they
+heard that the countess had herself planned and executed this enterprise;
+whilst those of the town, not knowing what was become of her, were very
+uneasy; for they were full five days without gaining any intelligence of
+her. The countess, in the meanwhile, was so active that she assembled
+from five to six hundred men, well armed and mounted, and with them
+set out about midnight from Brest, and came straight to Hennebon about
+sunrise, riding along one of the sides of the enemy’s host, until she
+came to the gates of the castle, which were opened to her; she entered
+with great triumph and sounds of trumpets and other warlike instruments,
+to the astonishment of the French, who began arming themselves, to make
+another assault upon the town, while those within mounted the walls to
+defend it. This attack was very severe, and lasted till past noon. The
+French lost more than their opponents; and then the lords of France put
+a stop to it, for their men were killed and wounded to no purpose. They
+next retreated, and held a council whether the lord Charles should not go
+to besiege the castle of Auray, which King Arthur had built and enclosed.
+It was determined he should march thither, accompanied by the duke de
+Bourbon, the earl of Blois, Sir Robert Bertrand, marshal of France; and
+that Sir Hervé de Léon was to remain before Hennebon with a part of the
+Genoese under his command, and the lord Louis of Spain, the viscount de
+Rohan, with the rest of the Genoese and Spaniards. They sent for twelve
+large machines which they had left at Rennes, to cast stones and annoy
+the castle of Hennebon; for they perceived that they did not gain any
+ground by their assaults. The French divided their army into two parts;
+one remained before Hennebon, and the other went to besiege the castle of
+Auray. The lord Charles of Blois went to this last place, and quartered
+all his division in the neighbourhood: and of him we will now speak, and
+leave the others. The lord Charles ordered an attack and skirmish to be
+made upon the castle, which was well garrisoned; there were in it full
+two hundred men-at-arms, under the command of Sir Henry de Spinefort and
+Oliver his brother.
+
+[Illustration: ANCIENT TOWER AT ROUEN]
+
+The town of Vannes, which held for the countess de Montfort, was four
+leagues distant from this castle; the captain whereof was Sir Geoffry de
+Malestroit. On the other side was situated the good town of Guingamp,
+of which the captain of Dinant was governor, who was at that time with
+the countess in the town of Hennebon; but he had left in his hôtel at
+Dinant his wife and daughters, and had appointed his son Sir Reginald
+as governor during his absence. Between these two places there was a
+castle which belonged to the lord Charles, who had well filled it with
+men-at-arms and Burgundian soldiers. Girard de Maulin was master of it;
+and with him was another gallant knight, called Sir Peter Portebœuf, who
+harassed all the country round about, and pressed these two towns so
+closely that no provisions or merchandise could enter them without great
+risk of being taken; for these Burgundians made constant excursions, one
+day towards Vannes, and another day to Guingamp. They continued their
+excursions so regularly, that Sir Reginald de Dinant took prisoner, by
+means of an ambuscade, this Sir Girard de Maulin and thirty-five of his
+men, and at the same time rescued fifteen merchants and all their goods,
+which the Burgundians had taken, and were driving them to their garrison,
+called La Roche Perion; but Sir Reginald conquered them and carried them
+prisoners to Dinant, for which he was much praised.
+
+We will now return to the countess de Montfort, who was besieged by Sir
+Louis of Spain in Hennebon. He had made such progress by battering and
+destroying the walls with his machines, that the courage of those within
+began to falter. At that moment the bishop of Léon held a conference with
+his nephew Sir Hervé de Léon, by whose means, it has been said, the earl
+of Montfort was made prisoner. They conversed on different things, in
+mutual confidence, and at last agreed that the bishop should endeavour
+to gain over those within the town, so that it might be given up to the
+lord Charles; and Sir Hervé, on his side, was to obtain their pardon
+from the lord Charles, and an assurance that they should keep their
+goods, etc., unhurt. They then separated, and the bishop re-entered the
+town. The countess had strong suspicions of what was going forward, and
+begged of the lords of Brittany, for the love of God, that they would
+not doubt that she should receive succours before three days were over.
+But the bishop spoke so eloquently, and made use of such good arguments,
+that these lords were in much suspense all that night. On the morrow he
+continued the subject, and succeeded so far as to gain them over, or very
+nearly so, to his opinion; insomuch that Sir Hervé de Léon had advanced
+close to the town to take possession of it, with their free consent, when
+the countess, looking out from a window of the castle towards the sea,
+cried out, most joyfully, “I see the succours I have so long expected
+and wished for coming.” She repeated this expression twice; and the
+townspeople ran to the ramparts, and to the windows of the castle, and
+saw a numerous fleet of great and small vessels, well trimmed, making all
+the sail they could towards Hennebon. They rightly imagined it must be
+the fleet from England, so long detained at sea by tempests and contrary
+winds.[e] The besiegers were forced to retire. About this time the
+traitor Robert of Artois fell in an engagement near Vannes.
+
+[Sidenote: [1342-1345 A.D.]]
+
+Little by little, the two kings found themselves drawn personally into
+the contest. In 1342 Edward went himself to Brittany and appeared at the
+siege of Vannes, of Rennes, and of Nantes. The duke of Normandy drew
+up on his side an army comprising an infinity of barons and over forty
+thousand soldiers. The two forces met near Malestroit. The English, in
+numbers less than a fourth of their enemy, were careful to obtain a
+strong position. It was in the depth of winter; provision was lacking;
+cold rains flooded the two camps and multiplied disease. The papal
+legates proposed a truce, which was accepted on January 19th, 1343, to
+continue till the feast of St. Michael, 1346.[g]
+
+It was also agreed that each monarch was to take the pope for arbiter,
+and plead his cause at Rome. Edward empowered certain commissioners to
+fulfil this office, and negotiate concerning “the right which he had, or
+might have, to the kingdom and crown of France.” That he was prepared
+to insist upon this right, is proved by his order to the authorities in
+Guienne to have all appeals from that province to the king of France
+addressed to him, in that capacity, at his court in London.
+
+
+PHILIP’S FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES
+
+These repeated truces were not the result of any diminution of inveteracy
+or of pretensions on either side, but of the impossibility to continue
+the payment and employ of such large armies. Of Philip’s financial or
+political acts we have not ample records; but sufficient exist to show
+the immense difficulty he found in supporting the military expenses of
+such campaigns. If to find proper soldiers was no easy task, to raise
+wherewith to pay them was a difficulty still greater. In 1342, Philip VI
+issued an ordinance, establishing store-houses and gabelles of salt, a
+government monopoly, in fact, of this necessary of life. Taxes on trade,
+wholesale or retail, had for some time existed. The Italian merchants
+paid so much in the pound on imports and exports. The city of Paris,
+in order to pay for the men-at-arms which were furnished to the royal
+army, had been allowed to levy a duty on all sales and purchases in the
+markets. The fairs of Champagne had always paid a similar tax. The
+king now levied this generally at the rate of five deniers the livre;
+but the chief resource was alternately debasing the coin, and raising
+its standard, until there was no ascertaining or being certain of its
+value for a month together. This incertitude put a stop to trade, and
+a scarcity coinciding with it, produced such universal distress, that
+partial insurrection and a general feeling of discontent were the
+consequence.
+
+
+RENEWAL OF THE WAR WITH ENGLAND (1344 A.D.)
+
+In the meantime, the pope made no progress in reconciling the two
+monarchs, or passing judgment upon their differences; and a cruel act of
+Philip’s so aroused Edward’s resentment, that although the term of the
+truce had not expired, he gave orders for recommencing war. Olivier de
+Clisson, a Breton noble, had been the prisoner of the English. Edward,
+it seems, released him instead of the bishop of Léon, also his captive.
+This sufficed to inspire Philip with doubts of his fidelity, and of a
+sudden, De Clisson, De Laval, and some twelve or thirteen Breton nobles,
+were seized, conveyed to Paris, and, without form of trial, or even
+public accusation, decapitated. Several barons of Normandy were soon
+after seized, and as summarily slain, one of them, of the family of
+Harcourt, alone escaping. These acts were not more cruel and unjust than
+the tortures, trials, and condemnations of Philip the Fair; but they were
+worse precedents, evincing a contempt for even the forms of justice, and
+making barefaced murder and assassination one of the regular proceedings
+of government.
+
+Many of the decapitated nobles were at least friends of Edward. Without
+being guilty of treason, they might well have considered the rights of
+De Montfort in Brittany as superior to those of Charles of Blois. Edward
+denounced the assassinations committed by King Philip in issuing an order
+to his lieutenants to recommence the war. The French were by no means
+gladdened at this renewal of hostilities. They feared not so much the
+enemy as the tax-gatherer, and began to think that their intolerable
+burdens would be made permanent. In February, 1345, therefore, Philip
+found it necessary to issue a proclamation, stating that it was not his
+intention to unite the gabelle of salt or the tax of four deniers the
+livre to his domain: in other words, he promised that they were not to be
+permanent.
+
+Edward had hitherto neglected Guienne, against which his enemies directed
+their principal efforts. The chief men of Bordeaux and Bayonne and
+the noblesse, true to the English crown, came to the festivity which
+Edward gave on the occasion of his instituting the order of the Garter,
+and their representations made so great an impression on him, that he
+despatched Lord Derby soon after, with three hundred knights, six hundred
+men-at-arms, and a greater number of infantry, to Bayonne. The French,
+not in force to defend the country south of the Dordogne, endeavoured to
+prevent Lord Derby from passing that river at Bergerac, and marching to
+the recovery of Périgord and the districts north of Bordeaux. The English
+accomplished this, the Genoese alone withstanding their arrows, and the
+troops which the French had raised in the county flying before them.
+
+Derby marched into Périgord, and so well provided was he with what
+Froissart calls artillery, his engines throwing immense stones, that
+all the fortresses in upper Gascony submitted to him. The strongest of
+these was Auberoche, which fortress, as soon as Derby retired for the
+winter to Bordeaux, the nobles of the county in the French interest came
+to besiege. There were ten or twelve hundred of them, and Auberoche was
+hard pressed. Lord Derby and Sir Walter Manny instantly left Bordeaux,
+with three hundred lances and six hundred archers, and, with this small
+force, surprised and fell upon the army besieging Auberoche at the time
+of supper. The French were routed, and all the chief nobles of the
+district taken: every English soldier had two or three. The consequence
+of this victory was not only the fall of Réole and the places held by
+Philip north of the Garonne, but the capture of the important town of
+Angoulême by Lord Derby. The general submission to the English commander
+was not only due to his prowess, but to his _gentillesse_, in preventing
+his soldiers from pillaging and burning the towns and massacring the
+prisoners, as was then generally the custom in war.
+
+[Sidenote: [1345-1346 A.D.]]
+
+Whilst Lord Derby was reconquering Angoulême, Edward was endeavouring,
+by means of Artevelde, to turn the Flemish alliance to profit.
+Notwithstanding the English king’s assumption of the arms and title of
+king of France, the Flemings seemed not disposed to go much further than
+neutrality. Artevelde himself ruling by the democracy, with the rich
+citizens opposed to him, felt himself neither secure at home nor able
+to direct the forces of the Flemings abroad. In order to strengthen his
+position, he proposed making the son of Edward (the Black Prince) count
+of Flanders. The English king came with his fleet to Sluys, and had an
+interview there with the town magistrates of the Flemings; they could
+not entertain his proposal without first consulting their townsmen. The
+people of Bruges and Ypres were not averse to having the prince of Wales
+for their count; but with Ghent it was otherwise: there the enemies of
+Artevelde accused him of wishing to sell his country to the foreigner.
+They asked what had been done with all the money proceeding from the
+revenues that had been sequestered. The “great treasure,” they said,
+had been despatched to England. Artevelde hastened to Ghent to face his
+enemies, and refute them; but he had no sooner entered the streets than
+he perceived the efforts of his enemies to have prevailed, and the minds
+of his fellow-townsmen turned against him. He shut himself up in his
+hôtel; harangued and tried to move the crowd from one of the windows.
+Their reply was, “Give us an account of the great treasure of Flanders.”
+Artevelde promised that he would do this fully on the morrow. “No,”
+replied the crowd; “we must have an account of it immediately, lest
+you escape to England, whither you have already sent your treasure.”
+Artevelde then wept, and reproached them with “having made him what he
+was, and now wanting to kill him. Recollect that your trade was lost when
+I took the government, and that I recovered all for you--procured you
+abundance, and work, and peace; and for all the great good I did you, God
+knows I obtained little profit.” Such reproaches were not calculated to
+move the mob, which clamoured but the more. Artevelde tried to escape to
+a neighbouring church; but his enemies seized him in the street, and slew
+him without mercy. Edward’s first movement was to take vengeance on the
+Flemings for the death of their leader; but the towns of West Flanders
+convinced him that they regretted the act of the people of Ghent as much
+as he did.
+
+
+EDWARD RETURNS TO FRANCE (1346 A.D.)
+
+The reverses which the French monarch suffered in Guienne had been thus
+compensated by Edward’s loss of his Flemish ally, and, at the same time,
+by the death of John de Montfort. That prince, after his escape from the
+Louvre, had led succours from England to Brittany, but was able to do
+little towards changing the aspect of affairs or the relative position
+of parties, when he died at Hennebon. All the efforts of Philip were
+directed towards repelling Lord Derby. The French king assembled his
+estates in the north and in the south, but more to appease discontent
+than to command succour or adhesion: he merely proposed continuing his
+present levies of money, on the understanding that they were to cease at
+the peace. An army was collected and sent, under the duke of Normandy,
+to the south. He recovered Angoulême, and laid siege to Aiguillon, an
+important fortress not far from Agen; but Sir Walter Manny and Lord
+Pembroke were within the walls, and infused such spirit into the garrison
+that during four months it defied the duke of Normandy and his army, said
+to number one hundred thousand men.
+
+The obstinacy of the siege as well as the defence induced the English
+king to march to the succour of his general, for Lord Derby at Bordeaux
+had no force sufficient to encounter the duke of Normandy. An expedition
+was fitted out, at Southampton, consisting of four thousand men-at-arms
+and ten thousand archers, besides the Irish and Welsh.[b]
+
+The English fleet set sail for the mouth of the Gironde, where a tempest
+hurled it back into the Channel. A new traitor, Godfrey d’Harcourt,
+advised landing in Normandy, and promised the aid of his vassals and
+the use of his entire province. The king landed (July 22nd, 1346), with
+thirty-two thousand men, at La Hogue St. Waast, in the Cotentin. He
+easily possessed himself of Barfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes, and St. Lô.
+The 26th, he was at the walls of Caen--a city larger than any in England
+excepting London.
+
+The inhabitants sallied forth bravely to the encounter. “But as soon as
+they beheld the approach of the English,” says Froissart,[e] “in three
+divisions, close and compact, a multitude of banners flying, and saw the
+archers, to whom they had not been accustomed, they were so frightened
+that they betook themselves to flight, and not all the world could have
+stopped them.”
+
+The English entered the city with the fugitives, slaying as they went,
+showing mercy to none. But the inhabitants recovered their courage and
+defended themselves in their homes; more than five hundred English
+were dead or wounded when Edward put an end to the fighting, promising
+the inhabitants to spare their lives.[18] Louviers, which was already
+great, wealthy, and commercial, was next taken. An attempt on Rouen
+had miscarried. He returned along the left bank of the Seine, burning
+Pont-de-l’Arche, Vernon, Poissy, and St. Germain. His couriers came
+within sight of Paris, and burned Bourg-la-Reine and St. Cloud.
+
+Hereupon Philip assembled a large force and marched on the English.
+Edward rebuilt the bridge at Poissy and by it passed over the Seine and
+retreated to his fief at Ponthieu, to establish himself beyond the Somme.
+Philip fortified and sentinelled all the fords of that river. At that of
+Blanquetaque he posted one thousand men-at-arms and five thousand Genoese
+archers. Edward forced a passage; but realising that he could retreat
+no further he halted, and on the 27th of August disposed his army for
+battle on the slope of a hill near Crécy, his men being in good order and
+condition.[g] His knights and nobles were to fight on foot, there being
+but four thousand of them.
+
+The total English army must have numbered from twenty-five to thirty
+thousand combatants. Froissart evidently underestimates its size as he
+increases the total of the French force, doubtless in order to make the
+issue of the battle all the more marvellous.
+
+But all exaggeration aside, the disproportion was enormous. Philip
+marched at the head of at least seventy thousand men among whom were
+about ten thousand men-at-arms, and a large body of Genoese archers whose
+numbers have been placed at from six to fifteen thousand.[d] But the
+French were a disorderly and undisciplined host while the English were
+professional soldiers and old campaigners, obedient to their chiefs and
+their sovereign.[b]
+
+Philip had left Abbeville in the morning to go in quest of the enemy,
+then five miles distant. Heavy rains impeded the march. Four scouts sent
+to reconnoitre returned with the report that they had found the English
+waiting in the position they had chosen; and they counselled the king to
+allow his soldiers a night’s repose.
+
+Philip gave the order to halt. But the great lords of France, instigated
+by vanity, moved one ahead of another, to get nearer the enemy. Neither
+the king nor his marshals could exercise any control over the troops,
+on account of the multitude of nobles each striving to assert his own
+authority. These rode about, without orders and without discretion, until
+they stumbled suddenly upon the camp of the enemy.[g]
+
+
+FROISSART’S DESCRIPTION OF CRÉCY (1346 A.D.)
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+The English, who were drawn up in three divisions, and seated on the
+ground, on seeing their enemies advance, rose undauntedly up, and fell
+into their ranks. That of the prince[19] was the first to do so, whose
+archers were formed in the manner of a portcullis, or harrow, and the
+men-at-arms in the rear. The earls of Northampton and Arundel, who
+commanded the second division, had posted themselves in good order on his
+wing, to assist and succour the prince, if necessary.
+
+You must know that these kings, earls, barons, and lords of France
+did not advance in any regular order, but one after the other, or any
+way most pleasing to themselves. As soon as the king of France came
+in sight of the English, his blood began to boil, and he cried out to
+his marshals, “Order the Genoese forward, and begin the battle, in the
+name of God and St. Denis.” There were about fifteen thousand Genoese
+crossbow-men; but they were quite fatigued, having marched on foot that
+day six leagues, completely armed, and with their crossbows. They told
+the constable, they were not in a fit condition to do any great things
+that day in battle. The earl of Alençon, hearing this, said, “This is
+what one gets by employing such scoundrels, who fall off when there is
+any need for them.” During this time a heavy rain fell, accompanied by
+thunder and a very terrible eclipse of the sun; and before this rain
+a great flight of crows hovered in the air over all those battalions,
+making a loud noise. Shortly afterwards it cleared up, and the sun shone
+very bright; but the Frenchmen had it in their faces, and the English
+in their backs. When the Genoese were somewhat in order, and approached
+the English, they set up a loud shout, in order to frighten them; but
+they remained quite still, and did not seem to attend to it. They then
+set up a second shout, and advanced a little forward; but the English
+never moved. They hooted a third time, advancing with their crossbows
+presented, and began to shoot. The English archers then advanced one
+step forward, and shot their arrows with such force and quickness, that
+it seemed as if it snowed. When the Genoese felt these arrows, which
+pierced their arms, heads, and through their armour, some of them cut
+the strings of their crossbows, others flung them on the ground, and all
+turned about and retreated quite discomfited. The French had a large body
+of men-at-arms on horseback, richly dressed, to support the Genoese. The
+king of France, seeing them thus fall back, cried out, “Kill me those
+scoundrels; for they stop up our road without any reason.” You would then
+have seen the above-mentioned men-at-arms lay about them, killing all
+they could of these runaways.
+
+The English continued shooting as vigorously and quickly as before; some
+of their arrows fell among the horsemen, who were sumptuously equipped,
+and, killing and wounding many, made them caper and fall among the
+Genoese, so that they were in such confusion they could never rally
+again. In the English army there were some Cornish and Welshmen on foot,
+who had armed themselves with large knives; these, advancing through
+the ranks of the men-at-arms and archers, who made way for them, came
+upon the French when they were in this danger, and, falling upon earls,
+barons, knights, and squires, slew many, at which the king of England was
+afterwards much exasperated. The valiant king of Bohemia was slain there.
+He was called John of Luxemburg; for he was the son of the gallant king
+and emperor, Henry of Luxemburg; having heard the order of the battle,
+he inquired where his son the lord Charles was; his attendants answered
+that they did not know, but believed he was fighting. The king said to
+them: “Gentlemen, you are all my people, my friends, and brethren-at-arms
+this day; therefore, as I am blind,[20] I request of you to lead me so
+far into the engagement that I may strike one stroke with my sword.”
+The knights replied, they would directly lead him forward; and in order
+that they might not lose him in the crowd, they fastened all the reins
+of their horses together, and put the king at their head, that he might
+gratify his wish, and advanced towards the enemy. The lord Charles of
+Bohemia, who already signed his name as king of Germany, and bore the
+arms, had come in good order to the engagement; but when he perceived
+that it was likely to turn out against the French, he departed, and I
+do not well know what road he took. The king, his father, had ridden
+in among the enemy, and made good use of his sword; for he and his
+companions had fought most gallantly. They had advanced so far that they
+were all slain; and on the morrow they were found on the ground, with
+their horses all tied together.
+
+The earl of Alençon advanced in regular order upon the English, to fight
+with them; as did the earl of Flanders, in another part. These two lords,
+with their detachments, coasting, as it were, the archers, came to the
+prince’s battalion, where they fought valiantly for a length of time. The
+king of France was eager to march to the place where he saw their banners
+displayed, but there was a hedge of archers before him. He had that day
+made a present of a handsome black horse to Sir John of Hainault, who had
+mounted on it a knight of his, called Sir John de Fusselles, that bore
+his banner; which horse ran off with him, and forced his way through the
+English army, and, when about to return, stumbled and fell into a ditch
+and severely wounded him; he would have been dead, if his page had not
+followed him round the battalions, and found him unable to rise; he had
+not, however, any other hindrance than from his horse; for the English
+did not quit the ranks that day to make prisoners. The page alighted, and
+raised him up; but he did not return the way he came, as he would have
+found it difficult from the crowd. This battle, which was fought on the
+Saturday between La Broyes and Crécy, was very murderous and cruel; and
+many gallant deeds of arms were performed that were never known. Towards
+evening, many knights and squires of the French had lost their masters;
+they wandered up and down the plain, attacking the English in small
+parties; they were soon destroyed; for the English had determined that
+day to give no quarter, or hear of ransom from anyone.
+
+Early in the day, some French, Germans, and Savoyards had broken
+through the archers of the prince’s battalion, and had engaged with the
+men-at-arms; upon which the second battalion came to his aid, and it was
+time, for otherwise he would have been hard pressed. The first division,
+seeing the danger they were in, sent a knight in great haste to the king
+of England, who was posted upon an eminence, near a windmill. On the
+knight’s arrival, he said, “Sir, the earl of Warwick, the lord Stafford,
+the lord Reginald Cobham, and the others who are about your son, are
+vigorously attacked by the French; and they entreat that you would come
+to their assistance with your battalion, for, if their numbers should
+increase, they fear he will have too much to do.” The king replied,
+“Is my son dead, unhorsed, or so badly wounded that he cannot support
+himself?” “Nothing of the sort, thank God,” rejoined the knight; “but
+he is in so hot an engagement that he has great need of your help.” The
+king answered, “Now, Sir Thomas, return back to those that sent you, and
+tell them from me, not to send again for me this day, or expect that I
+shall come, let what will happen, as long as my son has life; and say,
+that I command them to let the boy win his spurs; for I am determined, if
+it please God, that all the glory and honour of this day shall be given
+to him, and to those into whose care I have intrusted him.” The knight
+returned to his lords, and related the king’s answer, which mightily
+encouraged them, and made them repent they had ever sent such a message.
+
+It is a certain fact that Sir Godfrey d’Harcourt, who was in the prince’s
+battalion, having been told by some of the English that they had seen the
+banner of his brother engaged in the battle against him, was exceedingly
+anxious to save him; but he was too late, for he was left dead on the
+field, and so was the earl of Aumarle his nephew. On the other hand,
+the earls of Alençon and of Flanders were fighting lustily under their
+banners, and with their own people; but they could not resist the force
+of the English, and were there slain, as well as many other knights
+and squires that were attending on or accompanying them. The earl of
+Blois, nephew to the king of France, and the duke of Lorraine his
+brother-in-law, with their troops, made a gallant defence; but they were
+surrounded by a troop of English and Welsh, and slain in spite of their
+prowess. The earl of Saint-Pol and the earl of Auxerre were also killed,
+as well as many others. Late after vespers, the king of France had not
+more about him than sixty men, every one included. Sir John of Hainault,
+who was of the number, had once remounted the king; for his horse had
+been killed under him by an arrow; he said to the king, “Sir, retreat
+whilst you have an opportunity, and do not expose yourself so simply; if
+you have lost this battle, another time you will be the conqueror.” After
+he had said this, he took the bridle of the king’s horse, and led him off
+by force; for he had before entreated of him to retire. The king rode
+on until he came to the castle of La Broyes, where he found the gates
+shut, for it was very dark. The king ordered the governor of it to be
+summoned; he came upon the battlements, and asked who it was that called
+at such an hour? The king answered, “Open, open, governor; it is the
+fortune of France.” The governor, hearing the king’s voice, immediately
+descended, opened the gate, and let down the bridge. The king and his
+company entered the castle; but he had with him only five barons, Sir
+John of Hainault, the lord Charles of Montmorency, the lord of Beaujeu,
+the lord of Aubigny, and the lord of Montfort. The king would not bury
+himself in such a place as that, but, having taken some refreshments,
+set out again with his attendants about midnight, and rode on, under the
+direction of guides who were well acquainted with the country, until,
+about daybreak, he came to Amiens, where he halted. This Saturday the
+English never quitted their ranks in pursuit of anyone, but remained on
+the field, guarding their position, and defending themselves against all
+who attacked them.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF A FRENCH TOWER OF THE THIRTEENTH OR FOURTEENTH
+CENTURY]
+
+The battle was ended at the hour of vespers. When, on this Saturday
+night, the English heard no more hooting or shouting, nor crying out to
+particular lords or their banners, they looked upon the field as their
+own, and their enemies as beaten. They made great fires, and lighted
+torches because of the obscurity of the night. King Edward then came down
+from his post, who all that day had not put on his helmet, and, with his
+whole battalion, advanced to the prince of Wales, whom he embraced in his
+arms and kissed, and said, “Sweet son, God give you good perseverance:
+you are my son, for most loyally have you acquitted yourself this day:
+you are worthy to be a sovereign.” The prince bowed down very low, and
+humbled himself, giving all honour to the king his father. The English,
+during the night, made frequent thanksgivings to the Lord, for the happy
+issue of the day, and without rioting; for the king had forbidden all
+riot or noise. On the Sunday morning, there was so great a fog that
+one could scarcely see the distance of half an acre. The king ordered
+a detachment from the army, under the command of the two marshals,
+consisting of about five hundred lances and two thousand archers, to
+make an excursion, and see if there were any bodies of French collected
+together. The quota of troops, from Rouen and Beauvais, had, this Sunday
+morning, left Abbeville and St. Ricquier in Ponthieu, to join the French
+army, and were ignorant of the defeat of the preceding evening: they met
+this detachment, and, thinking they must be French, hastened to join them.
+
+As soon as the English found who they were, they fell upon them; and
+there was a sharp engagement; but the French soon turned their backs,
+and fled in great disorder. There were slain in this flight in the open
+fields, under hedges and bushes, upwards of seven thousand; and had it
+been clear weather, not one soul would have escaped.
+
+A little time afterwards, this same party fell in with the archbishop
+of Rouen and the great prior of France, who were also ignorant of the
+discomfiture of the French; for they had been informed that the king was
+not to fight before Sunday. Here began a fresh battle, for those two
+lords were well attended by good men-at-arms; however, they could not
+withstand the English, but were almost all slain, with the two chiefs
+who commanded them, very few escaping. In the course of the morning, the
+English found many Frenchmen who had lost their road on the Saturday, and
+had lain in the open fields, not knowing what was become of the king, or
+their own leaders. The English put to the sword all they met[21]: and
+it has been assured to me for fact, that of foot-soldiers sent from the
+cities, towns, and municipalities, there were slain, this Sunday morning,
+four times as many as in the battle of the Saturday.[e]
+
+
+MICHELET ON THE RESULTS OF CRÉCY
+
+The battle of Crécy was not merely a battle; the event involved a great
+social revolution. The whole chivalry of the most chivalrous nation was
+exterminated by a small band of foot-soldiers. A new system of tactics
+came forth from a new state of society; it was not a work of genius or
+reflection. Edward III employed foot-soldiers for want of horse. The
+issue revealed a fact of which no one dreamed till then; namely, the
+military inefficiency of that feudal world which had thought itself
+the only military world. The private wars of the barons, and of canton
+against canton, in the primitive isolation of the Middle Ages, had not
+disclosed this truth; for then gentlemen were defeated only by gentlemen.
+Two centuries of defeats, during the Crusades, had not damaged their
+reputation. All Christendom was interested in disguising the successes
+of the misbelievers. Besides, these wars were waged so far away, that
+there was always some means of excusing every disaster: the heroism of a
+Godefroy and a Richard redeemed all the rest. In the thirteenth century,
+when the feudal banners were habituated to follow the king’s, when out
+of so many seigniorial courts was formed a single one, brilliant beyond
+all the fictions of the romances, the nobles, diminished in power,
+increased in pride; humbled in their own person, they felt themselves
+exalted in their king. They valued themselves more or less in proportion
+as they shared in the galas of royalty.
+
+In excuse for the disaster of Courtrai, the nobles pleaded their own
+hare-brained heroism, and the Flemish ditch. Two easy massacres at
+Mons-en-Pévêlle and Cassel retrieved their reputation. For several years
+they railed at the king, who forbade them to vanquish. An opportunity
+was afforded them at Crécy; the whole chivalry of the kingdom was
+there assembled; every banner flaunted in the wind, with all those
+haughty blazons, lions, eagles, castles, besants of the Crusades, and
+all the arrogant symbolism of heraldry. Opposed to this gallant array,
+excepting four thousand men-at-arms, all the rest were the barefooted
+English commons, the rude mountaineers of Wales, and the swineherds of
+Ireland, blind and savage races, that knew neither French, nor English,
+nor chivalry. They aimed none the worse for this at noble banners;
+they killed but so much the more: there was no common tongue in which
+to parley. The Welshman or Irishman did not understand the noble baron
+prostrate beneath him, who offered to make him rich, and he made answer
+only with the knife.
+
+From that day forth there was many an unbeliever in the religion of
+nobility. Armorial symbolism lost all its effect. Man began to doubt that
+those lions could bite, or those silken dragons vomit forth fire and
+flames. The cow of Switzerland and of Wales seemed good armorial bearings
+too.
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF CALAIS
+
+This huge disaster only led the way to a greater one. Edward laid siege
+to Calais, and set himself down before it in fixed quarters for life or
+death. After the sacrifices he had made for this expedition he could
+not show his face to the commons until he should have accomplished his
+enterprise. Round the town he built a second town with streets, and
+wooden houses solidly and snugly constructed, to serve for residence
+through summer and winter.
+
+The Englishman, established in good quarters, and with abundant supplies,
+let those within and without the town do what they had a mind. He did
+not even grant them battle, but preferred starving them out. Five
+hundred persons, men, women, and children, expelled from the town by
+the governor, died of cold and hunger between the town and the camp.
+Such, at least, is the statement of the English historian Knighton.[i]
+Froissart[e] says, on the contrary, that he not only let them pass
+through his army, but also gave them an abundant repast.
+
+Edward had taken root before Calais, nor was the pope’s mediation capable
+of forcing him from thence. News was brought him that the Scotch were
+about to invade England. He never stirred. His perseverance was rewarded,
+for he soon learned that his troops, encouraged by his queen, had taken
+the king of Scotland prisoner. The next year Charles of Blois was
+likewise taken in besieging La Roche de Rien. Edward had but to fold his
+arms and leave fortune to work for him.
+
+It was matter of most urgent necessity for the king of France to succour
+Calais; but so great was his penury, so inert and embarrassed was
+that feudal monarchy, that it was not until the siege had lasted ten
+months that he was able to put himself in motion, when the English
+were fortified and intrenched behind palisades and deep ditches. Having
+scraped together some money by a debasement of the coinage, the gabelle,
+the ecclesiastical tithes, and the confiscation of the property of the
+Lombards, he at last began his march with a huge army like that which had
+been beaten at Crécy. He had no way of reaching Calais except through
+marshes or over sand-hills. To take the former course would have been
+certain destruction, for all the passes were intersected and guarded. The
+men of Tournay, however, gallantly carried a castle by assault, without
+machines and by strength of hand alone.
+
+[Sidenote: [1346-1347 A.D.]]
+
+The downs on the coast of Boulogne were under the fire of the English
+fleet. Those about Gravelines were kept by the Flemings whom the king
+could not suborn. He offered them heaps of gold, and the surrender of
+Lille, Béthune, and Douai; he would enrich their burgomasters, and make
+knights and lords of their young men. Nothing could tempt them; they
+were too much afraid of the return of their count, who, after a false
+reconciliation, had again escaped out of their hands. Philip could do
+nothing. He negotiated, he challenged; Edward remained unmoved.[22]
+
+Horrible was the despair in the famished town when they saw all those
+banners of France, all that great army marching away and leaving them
+to their fate. Nothing remained for the people of Calais but to give
+themselves up to the enemy if he would condescend to accept their
+surrender. It was probable enough that the king of England, who had
+passed such a tedious time before Calais, who had sat down a whole year
+there, and spent in one campaign the enormous sum for those days of
+nearly £400,000 sterling, would give himself the satisfaction of putting
+the inhabitants to the sword, whereby he would certainly have gratified
+the English merchants. But Edward’s knights told him flatly that if
+he treated the besieged in that manner his own men would never again
+venture to shut themselves up in fortresses for fear of reprisal. He gave
+way, and condescended to admit the town to mercy, provided some of the
+principal townspeople came, according to custom, bareheaded and barefoot,
+with ropes round their necks, and presented the keys to him.
+
+There was danger for those who should first appear in the king’s
+presence. There were instantly found in that little town, depopulated
+as it was by famine, six volunteers to save the rest. Nevertheless,
+the queen and the knights had to intercede with Edward, to prevent his
+hanging those gallant fellows.[f]
+
+Thus did Calais fall into the hands of England a year after the battle
+of Crécy. Edward, according to Walsingham,[j] spent a month in the town,
+ordering and fortifying it. He sent all the knights captive to England,
+and expelled a certain number of the other French townsmen, replacing
+them by English. He induced thirty-six rich citizens of London, with
+their families, to settle there, with three hundred of lesser condition,
+bestowing upon them several privileges and advantages. He fixed at Calais
+the staple of tin, lead, and woollen cloth, and prohibited all persons
+from exporting or shipping these commodities to England, unless they
+took oath to unship them at Calais. Eustace of St. Pierre was amongst
+the French citizens who remained and recovered their property, on
+transferring their allegiance to the English king. His heirs afterwards
+forfeited the property by refusing this allegiance.
+
+
+SUSPENSION OF THE WAR (1347 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1347-1348 A.D.]]
+
+The papal legates seized this opportunity of renewing their efforts to
+bring about an accommodation between the monarchs. The capture of Calais,
+indeed, rendered terms of peace more difficult to arrange; but that
+event, with the campaign which preceded it, rendered a peace desirable
+on both sides. Edward consented, although Rymer contains many proofs of
+his intention to sail again to the continent and renew the war. The truce
+was at first concluded for ten months, but was extended from time to
+time, the monarchs being occupied with other cares. It was a cessation
+but from great expeditions and large armies, for partisans on both sides
+did not relax in their schemes to surprise and their efforts to hurt.
+Although Scotland was included in the truce, Douglas would not keep
+the peace; neither would French or English in Gascony. The _brigands_,
+as foot-soldiers were called, associated in bands of thirty or forty
+to pillage towns, surprise castles, and then sell them for large sums.
+King Philip did not disdain to purchase the castle of Combourne from the
+brigand Bacon, for 24,000 livres. This brigand, says Froissart, “was as
+well armed and mounted as any knight in the army, and in as great honour
+with the king.”
+
+The truce was not even observed between the now hostile towns of Calais
+and St. Omer. Geoffrey of Charny, who commanded for Philip in the
+latter place, hearing that Edward had intrusted the command in Calais
+to an Italian, Aimery di Pavia, made offers of many thousand florins,
+if he would betray the town. Pavia pretended to consent, but warned
+Edward, who came with his son, the Black Prince, and a body of archers
+and men-at-arms. Pavia, by the king’s order, allowed a division of the
+French to pass the bridge and enter the fortifications, where they were
+instantly surrounded and taken prisoners. And then Edward and his son
+attacked the French under Charny, routing, slaying, and capturing the
+greater number. The king himself in the fray had a personal encounter
+with Eustace de Ribeaumont, whom he compelled to surrender, and to whom
+he afterwards presented a chaplet adorned with pearls, as a token of
+friendship and admiration.
+
+In Brittany the lieutenants of King Philip were not more successful than
+at Calais. Charles of Blois himself had set the truce at naught by an
+attack upon the castle La Roche de Rien. Whilst thus engaged, he was come
+upon unawares by the forces of the De Montfort party, his army routed,
+himself severely wounded, and taken prisoner (1347). From Brittany he was
+sent to England.
+
+A more general renewal of the war was rendered impossible by the eruption
+of the plague, which in the summer of 1348 carried off large numbers,
+first in the south of France,[23] from whence it extended to Paris and
+the towns of the north. Tumours under the arms and in the groin were
+the peculiarities of the disease, which almost always proved fatal. Out
+of twenty persons in a village, says a chronicler, not two remained.
+The towns of the south were especially depopulated, such as Marbonne,
+Montpellier, and Avignon. The Laura of Petrarch was amongst the victims.
+Eight hundred died each day in Paris, where the loss could not have been
+less than one hundred thousand. Amongst the consequences of the epidemic
+are mentioned a great scarcity of provisions and a complete suspense of
+education from the lack of teachers.
+
+
+TERRITORIAL ACQUISITION
+
+[Sidenote: [1343-1348 A.D.]]
+
+Whilst France was thus ravaged by pestilence and humiliated by defeat,
+Philip succeeded in annexing to the monarchy the important province of
+Dauphiné, which lay between its possessions of Burgundy and Provence, and
+gave France the entire region westward of the Alps. The two contiguous
+principalities and dynasties of Savoy and of Dauphiné had started up and
+grown together in continued rivalry. Although the Savoy princes were
+defeated in one great battle they were still more than a match for the
+dauphins, as the princes who kept their court at Vienne were called from
+the arms they had assumed. The dauphin had recourse to the aid of the
+king of France; and, by degrees, the protection which these afforded grew
+into suzerainty. Humbert, the last dauphin, was a strange and capricious
+character; he had the misfortune to have let fall from a window of his
+castle his only son, the child being dashed to pieces as he fell. This
+misfortune disturbed the reason of the prince, who determined to proceed
+to the Holy Land and sell or mortgage his possessions in order to raise
+funds for the purpose. He began by selling lands, which he possessed in
+Normandy, to John, duke of this province. At last the dauphin consented
+to sell the reversion of the principality. He agreed to appoint the
+second son of Philip of Valois, Philip of Orleans, as his future heir, in
+the event of his having no children.
+
+This treaty, so advantageous to France, was concluded in 1343, and
+Humbert took his departure for Palestine. None ever expected to see the
+return of so witless a prince. The dauphin, however, did return, not only
+to resume the government of his paternal dominion, but to regret the
+reckless manner in which he had alienated the independence of Dauphiné.
+He began to seek to extricate himself from his engagements. Edward III
+tried to induce the emperor of Germany to confer upon Humbert the title
+of king; but, surrounded by the power and the emissaries of France,
+the dauphin was not able to shake off his dependency. He was finally
+(1349) induced to transfer his adoption to Charles, son of John, duke
+of Normandy, heir to the French throne. This was the future Charles V.
+Having accomplished this act, Humbert withdrew to a convent, whilst young
+Charles assumed the title of dauphin, which was afterwards borne by the
+heir to the throne, and the possession of that rich province.[b]
+
+The money spent in the purchase of Dauphiné was at least well spent
+for France. A few days after the definite treaty with Humbert, Philip
+made another useful acquisition: he bought the lordship of Montpellier
+from the last king of Majorca, James II. This prince, despoiled of the
+Balearic Isles, Roussillon, and Cerdagne, by his cousin, the king of
+Aragon, sold Montpellier in order to raise an army with which to recover
+his realm. Don James was beaten and killed; Montpellier remained to
+France.[d]
+
+The plague of this year had been peculiarly fatal to princesses. The
+queen of France, Joan of Burgundy, the duchess of Normandy, wife of
+Prince John and daughter of the king of Bohemia, the queen of Navarre,
+daughter of Louis Hutin, perished under its influence. But no sooner
+had the pestilence disappeared, than marriage and its accompanying
+festivities became the order of the day. “The world,” says the
+chronicler, “was renewed, but, unfortunately, not bettered; the enemies
+of France and of the church were no fewer, nor less powerful.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1348-1350 A.D.]]
+
+King Philip espoused a young wife, daughter of the queen of Navarre, just
+deceased. This princess, Blanche by name, had been destined to the duke
+of Normandy; but the king, his father, found her beautiful, and married
+her himself. The duke of Normandy married a duchess of Burgundy, and the
+dauphin, Charles, espoused a daughter of the duke of Bourbon. Thus were
+celebrated the marriages of three generations of princes.
+
+Philip of Valois did not long survive his marriage with Blanche. He fell
+ill, and expired at Nogent in August, 1350. The continuator of Nangis[c]
+relates that he called his sons, the duke of Normandy, and Philip of
+Orleans, afterwards of Valois, to his bedside, and pointed out to them
+the validity of his right to the crown, and the necessity of defending it
+strenuously, and without any concession, against Edward of England, with
+whom the truce was about to expire.
+
+Philip of Valois was the first prince of truly chivalrous spirit that
+ascended the throne of France. Unfortunately for him, he succeeded at a
+period when chivalry was insufficient either to illustrate the warrior
+or achieve great results in war. Unfortunately, too, he derived from his
+predecessors those unscrupulous habits of wreaking vengeance and spilling
+blood, which they were taught to consider their sovereign right, as if
+royal power and descent cancelled every crime, and consecrated even the
+basest treachery and felony. French kings are lauded by their countrymen
+for having considered themselves above feudalism. Feudalism, however, had
+its laws of honour and its sense of right; with these, unfortunately,
+French kings too soon and too completely dispensed.[b]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[16] [Charles intrusted the siege to Louis of Spain, a descendant of
+Ferdinand de la Cerda--eldest son of Alfonso the Learned. Ferdinand’s
+sons had been set aside in favour of their uncle. Some of this family
+took up their residence in France. This Louis de la Cerda was Ferdinand’s
+grandson. In 1341 he received the title of “Admiral of France.”]
+
+[17] Lord Berners reads, “She caused damoselles and other women _to
+cut shorte their kyrtels_,” instead of “to unpave the streets,” as Mr.
+Johnes translates it. The words in D. Sauvage’s edition are “_dépecer
+les chaussées_,” to tear up the causeways, but when we consider that the
+streets of cities were very rarely paved at this period, Lord Berners’
+version appears the more probable, and may be reconciled to the text if
+we read “_chausses_” for “_chaussées_,” which is not unlikely to be an
+error in transcribing.
+
+[18] [Among the captures at Caen, was a document dated 1338, wherein
+the Normans offered Philip to reconquer England at their own cost, on
+condition he would reportion it among them after the fashion of William
+the Conqueror. It was used with good effect in rousing English spirit and
+continuing the wars. Some authorities regard it as a forgery.]
+
+[19] [Prince Edward of Wales--the famous “Black Prince.” He was but
+thirteen years old and only nominally in command of the first line under
+the guardianship of the earl of Warwick and Godfrey d’Harcourt.]
+
+[20] [His blindness was supposed to have been caused by poison, which was
+alleged to have been given to him when engaged in the wars of Italy.]
+
+[21] [According to Froissart the English reconnoitring party slaughtered
+7,000 in the fog. He declares that more perished on this Sunday than on
+the day of battle. The clerks sent by Edward to tally the dead reported
+11 princes, 80 bannerets, 1,200 simple knights, and above 30,000 common
+men.]
+
+[22] Edward announces in a letter to the archbishop of York that he had
+accepted the challenge, and that the fight did not take place, because
+Philip marched off precipitately before the day, after having set fire to
+his camp.
+
+[23] [It had spread to France from Italy where its ravages were no less
+appalling. An extended notice of it is given in our history of Italy,
+Volume IX, where Boccaccio’s vivid description of its terrors may be
+found.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1350-1380 A.D.]]
+
+The new king John was between thirty-one and thirty-two years of age. It
+was long since a king of France had ascended the throne in such critical
+circumstances. All the internal maladies which, ever since the days of
+Philip the Fair, had been undermining the constitution of the state
+had burst out at the first shock of external violence. The weakness
+of this monarchy, arbitrary without order, fiscal without finances,
+military without an army, which had failed to create for itself any other
+instrument or any other support than a body of legists; the fragility of
+this colossus with feet of clay was now revealed both to the foreigner
+and to France herself. A country desolated by plague, impoverished by
+a disastrous war and by a government more ruinous than plague and war,
+where the lowest depths of society were stirred by those dull mutterings
+which announce the distant tempest; a royalty despoiled, by deserved
+misfortunes, of the prestige of birth and grandeur which had survived
+its popularity; finally a war which set at stake not the position of
+some frontier but the existence of the dynasty and the independence of
+the nation: such was the inheritance which the first of the Valois had
+bequeathed to his son.[b]
+
+King John inaugurated his reign by debasing the coinage to meet the
+expenses of the coronation which was celebrated at Rheims, on the 26th of
+September, 1350, with all the accustomed splendour. The brilliant train
+of princes who accompanied him drew upon themselves not only the glances
+but the hopes of the entire population.
+
+Treachery, however, was on all sides. Already Philip of Valois had
+attempted to deal with it outside the regular forms of judicial
+procedure; the newly made king followed in his footsteps. Raoul, count
+of Eu and of Guines, constable of France, obtained of Edward III, whose
+prisoner he was, liberty on parole, and returned to Paris to present
+himself at court. John caused him to be arrested and confined in the
+Louvre. A few days afterwards the constable was beheaded, and his
+property given to John of Artois, who assumed the title of count of Eu.
+
+[Sidenote: [1350-1352 A.D.]]
+
+The office of constable was conferred upon a certain De la Cerda, Charles
+of Spain, brother of that Louis of Spain who had upheld the party of
+Blois in Brittany. The new constable, being the personal favourite of the
+king, found many rivals at court, and thus arose contentions that were to
+be the source of further troubles. For the purpose of anticipating acts
+of treason and of strengthening the attachment and devotion to himself
+of the most powerful nobles, John created a new order of chivalry; or,
+as Froissart[g] says, “A fine company, high and noble, after the manner
+of the Round Table which existed in the time of King Artus [Arthur].”
+He also had another model, the order of the Garter, recently created
+by Edward III. Thus was instituted the order of the Star, which had
+for emblem a star in gold, silver, gilt, or pearls, and which the king
+bestowed on the three hundred knights who had proved themselves “the most
+valiant at arms and the most useful to the kingdom.” He imposed upon them
+an oath that they would never flee before the enemy to a distance of over
+four arpents. On the first occasion the king designated the recipients
+of the order himself, but later the choice was decided by the majority
+of the members. This was the first time that a court order of chivalry
+had been created in France. The new institution was destined to be of
+but short duration, however, as its dissolution immediately followed the
+captivity of its founder.
+
+Preparations were begun for a renewal of the war with England, and in
+expectation of this event John displayed great activity. Financial
+aid, which was to be a portion of the profits on the sale of beverages
+and merchandise, was voted to him by the provinces of Vermandois and
+Normandy, the city of Paris, and the bailiwick of Amiens, the assemblies
+stipulating in exchange the confirmation of certain privileges and the
+suppression of various abuses; among others the right of lodgment and of
+_prise en vertu_ by which the king caused his expenses and those of his
+household to be defrayed by anyone with whom he chose to lodge.
+
+We can form some idea of the deplorable state of the finances from the
+fact that during the course of the year 1351 John issued no less than
+eighteen ordinances altering monetary values, although neither the help
+of such expedients nor the subsidies voted by the provinces availed
+to bring about an equilibrium between receipts and expenditures. The
+treasury continued, as in the preceding reign, to pay annually only a
+part of the officers’ wages and of the interest on the debt. There were
+also ordinances regulating the order in which the public expenses were to
+be met, just as to-day, in cases of bankruptcy, the succession in which
+creditors are to be paid is determined by law. In the case of certain
+outlays the government was extremely tardy in making payment, taking
+for its model the nobility, to the members of which great latitude was
+allowed. “Let no one,” said King John, “wonder or be ill-pleased, for we
+take account of the respites and delays accorded to the nobles in the
+payment of their debts, and it would not be seemly that we should be in a
+worse condition than they.”
+
+The truces, although renewed from year to year, were imperfectly kept;
+hostilities continued to break out from time to time at different
+points, and there was not a campaign during which special engagements
+did not take place between parties of English or French knights. There
+were frequent skirmishes during 1351 in the neighbourhood of St. Jean
+d’Angély, and in 1352 between Guines and St. Omer. The war in Brittany
+had been kept up in desultory fashion since the capture of Charles of
+Blois in 1347, when his wife, Joan de Penthièvre, took up the cause.
+The most celebrated of these minor combats was the _combat des trente_,
+fought in Brittany, August 1352, on the moor of Mi-Voie, between Josselin
+and Ploërmel.[c]
+
+[Sidenote: [1352-1354 A.D.]]
+
+Robert de Beaumanoir, governor of the castle of Josselin, challenged
+the English captain Richard Bamborough who commanded at Ploërmel. They
+met on the lands of Josselin each with twenty-nine companions. The
+sixty champions fought on foot with short swords. “Such a combat,” says
+Froissart, “had not been recorded for over a hundred years.” It did not
+cease until all the combatants were either killed or badly wounded--four
+French and nine English, Bamborough among them, lay dead on the field.
+The rest of the English gave themselves up to the French. But such
+contests did not help matters, and so the war dragged on.[a]
+
+
+TROUBLE WITH CHARLES OF NAVARRE
+
+[Illustration: JOHN THE GOOD
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+To the exterior dangers with which France was menaced was now added the
+calamity of civil war. The cause for this fresh trouble was to be found
+in the pretensions held by the king of Navarre, and the jealousy which
+he conceived against the new constable, Charles of Spain. This king of
+Navarre was Charles the Bad, so named for the rigour with which he had
+put down a sedition in Pamplona. A prince of the royal house of France
+on the side of his father, Philip of Évreux, he succeeded in 1349 not
+only to the kingdom of the Pyrenees, but to the county of Évreux, and
+the possession of several fiefs in Normandy. He was young, ambitious,
+enterprising, as were also his two younger brothers, Philip and Louis;
+and to attach him more securely to his interests, John betrothed to him
+one of his daughters, then a child, to whom he promised as marriage
+portion an income raised from the counties of Angoulême and Mortain.
+These counties having been ravaged by the English, Charles of Navarre
+demanded another dowry, and at the same time claimed indemnity for
+Champagne and Brie, former possessions of his mother which had been
+ceded to the crown during the preceding reign, but by treaty of which
+all the clauses had not been put regularly in execution. John refused to
+acknowledge these claims, or at any rate was in no hurry to satisfy them,
+and gave Angoulême and Mortain to Charles of Spain.
+
+The king of Navarre laid all the blame for this real or pretended breach
+of faith to the constable, and the two held a spirited altercation
+together in the presence of King John. With the king of Navarre was his
+brother Philip of Navarre, count of Longueville, who on being given the
+lie by the constable swore to be revenged. On leaving the scene of the
+quarrel he defied the constable and warned him to be on his guard against
+the infantes of Navarre. Charles of Spain paid so little heed to these
+menaces that he betook himself, insufficiently attended, to Laigle, the
+latest evidence of the royal favour, which was situated not six leagues
+from Évreux, where dwelt his enemies. As soon as the count of Longueville
+learned of this move he left his home at night, accompanied by a troop of
+men-at-arms, and entering the hôtel of the constable, murdered the latter
+in his bed (1354).
+
+[Sidenote: [1354-1355 A.D.]]
+
+The infantes of Navarre wrote letters of self-justification to several
+cities of France, and to the council of the king. At the same time they
+stocked their castles with supplies, assembled all their nobles, and
+opened up relations with the English, who were only too pleased to have a
+foothold thus established for them in Normandy. John, determined not to
+leave unpunished an act of personal vengeance that infringed seriously
+upon his own authority, marched in person against Évreux, and sent orders
+to the count d’Armagnac, his representative in Toulouse, to occupy
+Navarre with the whole strength of the southern troops.
+
+This civil war, breaking forth so unexpectedly, was certain to renew the
+war with England, since it offered that country an unexampled opportunity
+to re-enter the lists. In fear of this event, the princes and princesses
+of the house of France, aided by the legate cardinal of Boulogne, offered
+their mediation and succeeded in bringing about an arrangement at Nantes,
+the 22nd of February, 1354. Payment of all that was due him, and the
+satisfaction of his legitimate claims were assured the king of Navarre,
+on condition that he should so far humiliate himself as to ask the king’s
+pardon in open parliament. This he consented to do, but demanded that
+certain hostages be sent him. “And in the presence of all he asked pardon
+of the king for the deed wrought upon the said constable, for he had had
+just and sufficient cause thereto, all of which he was ready to reveal
+to the king then or at any time. Furthermore he declared and swore that
+he had not committed the act out of contempt for the king nor for the
+office of constable, and that nothing would afflict him so sorely as to
+be in the evil graces of the king.” John accepted the excuse and took the
+offender back into favour.
+
+This understanding retarded further hostilities, but only for a little
+time. John, who had been unaware of the secret relations entered into
+with the English, soon learned of them; whereupon Charles the Bad,
+fearing for his own safety, retired to Avignon, where he besought
+protection of the pope. In the month of November John entered Normandy,
+took possession of and sequestrated the estates of the king of Navarre,
+and commanded the officers who were in charge of the various castles
+to deliver them up to him. Six of the defenders refused to obey, among
+others those in charge of the castles of Cherbourg and Évreux.
+
+The court of Avignon had not ceased its efforts to negotiate a treaty
+between England and France, and as it was necessary that this treaty
+should be a final one the king of Navarre must be included in its terms;
+hence the papal protection had not been refused him in his need. The
+negotiations were carried on actively during the winter of 1354-1355, but
+fell through like all preceding ones, and in the spring came definitely
+to an end. Edward demanded that his full sovereignty should be recognised
+over Guienne and Ponthieu, which provinces should be separated from the
+French crown. He also refused to continue to pay homage to France, and
+tried to stipulate for a semi-independence for Brittany. John refused
+to consider propositions so injurious, and in a legitimate spirit of
+national pride resolved to try once more the fortunes of war.
+
+On all sides preparations for war were being carried on. The king of
+Navarre, having passed through Pamplona and English Guienne, embarked
+in July, 1355, at Cherbourg, which port it was his intention to open to
+Edward III. The English sovereign manned a fleet for the purpose of
+descending upon the north coast of France; but contrary winds held him
+for a long time in the Channel, in sight of Jersey, and finally obliged
+him to return to the harbour of Plymouth.
+
+In spite of this mischance the English remained full of ardour, and built
+great hopes upon the assistance of the Navarrese. John’s counsellors
+represented to him that he could not with safety allow his enemies
+to retain allies of such energy and power, and that at any cost the
+interests of Charles the Bad must be separated from those of Edward III.
+With great repugnance, therefore, the king consented to grant certain
+concessions to the king of Navarre, who joyfully accepted them. A second
+treaty was signed at Valognes, by the terms of which Charles the Bad was
+reinstated in his French domains on consideration that he should make
+formal apology for having allied himself with the enemies of the kingdom
+(September 10th, 1355). He hastened to fulfil his promise, and for the
+second time came to the Louvre to ask public pardon of the king. His
+brother Philip, count of Longueville, could not be induced to follow his
+example, but remained true to the English side.
+
+By depriving the English of the Navarrese alliance King John robbed
+them of their chief support, and obliged them to change their plan of
+campaign. Edward III landed at Calais, and in October made several
+incursions into Artois; but John marched against him in person, and
+prevented him from crossing the French frontier, thus paralysing all his
+efforts.
+
+The English were more successful in the south, where they had sent a
+large army headed by the prince of Wales and the celebrated John Chandos.
+This army made a rapid and fruitful passage through Languedoc--pillaging
+Castelnaudary, Carcassonne, and a number of towns and castles--as far as
+the very gates of Montpellier without meeting with the least resistance.
+The cities were all entered, and the whole district, one of the richest
+in France, laid waste as Normandy had been in 1346. The English returned
+with five thousand prisoners and a thousand wagons laden with silver,
+objects of worth and merchandise, particularly cloths and velvets taken
+from Narbonne and Limoux. In order to transport safely all this booty to
+Guienne it was necessary to cross the Garonne at a distance of only three
+leagues from Toulouse. The count d’Armagnac, commander of Languedoc, was
+shut up in this town with forces more considerable than those of the
+English; he refused, however, to sally forth and arrest them as they
+passed by, in spite of the orders which had been brought to him by the
+new constable James de Bourbon, successor to Charles of Spain.
+
+To meet the needs of the war, and to provide himself with a still greater
+force for the coming campaign, John resorted to all sorts of financial
+expedients. He ordered his treasurers to adjourn all payments out of the
+public funds, be they for what purpose they might; he made treaties for
+subsidies with several provinces, Auvergne, Normandy, Maine, and Anjou,
+and lastly convened the states-general at Paris.[c]
+
+
+THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1355 A.D.
+
+The estates of the north, or of the Languedoïl, convoked on the 30th of
+November, showed no tractable temper. It was necessary to promise them
+the abolition of that direct robbery called the right of seizure, and
+of the indirect one which was practised through the coinage. The king
+declared that the new impost should extend to all persons, and that it
+should be paid by himself, the queen, and the princes. These fair words
+did not reassure the estates. They put no trust in the royal word, or in
+the royal tax-gatherers. They required that the money should be received
+by themselves, through collectors chosen by them; that accounts should be
+laid before them, and that they should meet again on the 1st of March,
+and again, after the lapse of a year, on St. Andrew’s day.
+
+[Sidenote: [1355-1356 A.D.]]
+
+To vote and receive taxes is to reign. No one in those days was aware of
+the full import of this bold demand of the estates, probably not even
+Étienne Marcel, the famous provost of the merchants, whom we see at the
+head of the deputies of the towns. The assembly purchased this royalty by
+the enormous concession of 6,000,000 livres parisis for the pay of thirty
+thousand men-at-arms. This money was to be raised by two imposts, on salt
+and on sales--bad imposts, no doubt, and bearing heavily on the poor; but
+what other could be devised in so pressing an emergency, when the whole
+south was at the enemy’s mercy?
+
+Normandy, Artois, and Picardy sent no deputies to these estates. The
+Normans were encouraged by the king of Navarre, the count d’Harcourt,
+and others, who declared that the gabelle should not be levied on their
+lands: that there should not be found a man so bold on the part of the
+king of France, who should enforce it, nor sergeant who should levy a
+fine, but should pay for it with his body. The estates gave way. They
+suppressed the two imposts, and substituted for them a tax on income:
+five per cent. on the poorest classes, four per cent. on middling
+fortunes, and two per cent. on the rich. The more one had the less he
+paid. The king, bitterly offended by the resistance of the king of
+Navarre and his friends, said that he should never have perfect joy so
+long as they were alive. He set out from Orleans with some cavaliers,
+rode for thirty hours, and surprised them in the castle of Rouen, where
+they were at table, having been invited by the dauphin. He had D’Harcourt
+and three others beheaded; the king of Navarre was thrown into prison,
+and threatened with death (April 16th, 1356). A rumour was set afloat
+that they had urged the dauphin to escape to the emperor, and make war on
+the king, his father.[e]
+
+A third session of the states-general was held in Paris on the 8th of
+May, under the shadow of these tragic events, and new subsidies from the
+revenues were granted the king. John was particular to mislead the public
+as to the causes of the recent affair at Rouen, and it was everywhere
+given out that he had seized letters that furnished evidence of a
+conspiracy between the Navarrese and the king of England. Nevertheless
+the people suspected that the “real treason” of Charles of Navarre lay
+in his resistance to taxation, and this opinion joined to the current
+rumours as to the harsh treatment the captive had received, won him the
+compassion and the interest of the masses.
+
+The people as a whole regarded in the same manner the captivity of the
+Navarrese, the execution of D’Harcourt, and the vengeance which King
+John took upon the authors of a revolt at Arras, which occurred almost
+simultaneously with the arrest of Charles the Bad. On the 27th of April
+the marshal D’Audeneham had entered Arras without resistance and had
+seized those guilty of rebellion. Twenty of these were decapitated in the
+market-place.[b]
+
+King John, who had begun the campaign by seizing those strongholds of
+the king of Navarre in Normandy into which he might have introduced
+the English, at last advanced with a great army, as numerous as France
+ever lost. The whole country was covered with his runners; the English
+could no longer find means of subsistence. Neither of the two hostile
+forces knew its own position. John thought the English were before him,
+and was hastening to overtake them, whilst they were really behind him.
+The prince of Wales, no better informed, thought the French were in his
+rear. This was the second and not the last time the English entangled
+themselves blindly in the enemy’s country. Only a miracle could have
+saved them, and John’s blundering rashness was no less.
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF POITIERS (SEPTEMBER 18TH, 1356)
+
+[Sidenote: [1356 A.D.]]
+
+The army of the prince of Wales, partly English, partly Gascon, numbered
+2,000 men-at-arms, 4,000 archers, and 2,000 light troops, brigands hired
+in the south. John was at the head of the great feudal gathering of the
+ban and arrière-ban, making fully 50,000 men. There were John’s four
+sons, 26 dukes or counts, and 140 knights-banneret, with their banners
+displayed; a magnificent spectacle, but the army was none the better for
+all that.
+
+Two cardinal legates, one of whom was a Talleyrand, interfered to prevent
+the effusion of Christian blood. The prince of Wales offered to give up
+all he had taken, and to swear he would not serve for seven years to come
+against France. John refused the offer, as was natural; it would have
+been shameful to let those plunderers escape. He insisted that, at least,
+the prince of Wales should yield himself prisoner, with one hundred
+knights.
+
+The English had fortified themselves on the Coteau de Maupertuis, a
+steep hill near Poitiers, planted with vines, and flanked with hedges
+and thorny thickets. Their archers covered all the summit. There was no
+need of attacking them. No more was requisite than to keep them there;
+hunger and thirst would have quelled them in two days. But John thought
+it more chivalric to subdue his enemy by force of arms. There was but one
+narrow path by which access could be obtained to the English position.
+The king of France sent horsemen forward to the charge. The archers shot
+down clouds of arrows, wounded and scared the horses, and threw them in
+confusion one on the other. The English seized this moment to charge down
+from the hill, and presently all that great army was in disorder. Three
+sons of the king of France retired from the field, by their father’s
+command,[24] taking away with them an escort of eight hundred lances.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+Meanwhile, the king stood fast. He had employed horsemen to charge up the
+hill; and with equal good sense, he ordered those about him to dismount,
+and fight on foot against the English, who were coming upon them on
+horseback. John’s resistance was as injurious to his realm as the flight
+of his sons. His brethren of the order of the Star were, like himself,
+true to their vow, and did not retreat. “And they fought by troops and
+by companies, as they chanced to meet and fall in together.” But the
+multitude fled to Poitiers, which closed its gates. “So there was on the
+road and before the gate such a horrible spectacle of men slaughtered and
+trampled down as is wonderful to think of; and the French surrendered the
+moment they caught sight of an Englishman ever so far off.”
+
+Meanwhile, the field was still contested. “King John himself did wonders;
+he was armed with a battle-axe, with which he fought and defended
+himself. By his side was his youngest son, who well deserved the surname
+of the Bold, who guided his blind valour, crying out to him every moment:
+‘Look to your right, father! to your left!’ But the throng of assailants
+continually increased, all being eager to make so rich a capture. The
+English and Gascons poured in so fast on the king’s division that they
+broke through the ranks by force; and the French were so intermixed
+with their enemies that at times there were five men attacking one
+gentleman. There was much pressing at this time, through eagerness of
+taking the king; and those that were nearest to him, and knew him, cried
+out: ‘Surrender yourself, or you are a dead man.’ In that part of the
+field was a young knight from St. Omer, who was engaged by a salary in
+the service of the king of England; his name was Denys de Morbeyne,
+who for five years had attached himself to the English, on occasion of
+his having been banished in his younger days from France, for a murder
+committed in an affray at St. Omer. It fortunately happened for this
+knight that he was at the time near to the king of France, when the
+latter was so much pulled about; he, by dint of force--for he was very
+strong and robust--pushed through the crowd, and said to the king in good
+French: ‘Sir, sir, surrender yourself.’ The king, who found himself very
+disagreeably situated, turning to him, asked: ‘To whom shall I surrender
+myself--to whom? Where is my cousin, the prince of Wales? If I could see
+him, I would speak to him.’ ‘Sir,’ replied Sir Denys, ‘he is not here;
+but surrender yourself to me, and I will lead you to him.’ ‘Who are you?’
+said the king. ‘Sir, I am Denys de Morbeyne, a knight from Artois; but
+I serve the king of England, because I cannot belong to France, having
+forfeited all I possessed there.’ The king then gave him his right hand
+glove, and said: ‘I surrender myself to you.’ There was much crowding and
+pushing about, for everyone was eager to cry out: ‘I have taken him.’
+Neither the king nor his youngest son, Philip, was able to get forward
+and free himself from the throng.”
+
+The prince of Wales did honour to the unparalleled good fortune that had
+placed such a pledge in his hands. He took good care not to treat his
+captive otherwise than as a king; in his eyes that captive was the true
+king of France, and not John of Valois, as the English had been used to
+call him. It was of the last importance to the prince that John should
+be king in reality, so that the kingdom might seem itself taken captive
+in the person of its sovereign, and should ruin itself to ransom him. He
+waited on John at table, after the battle; and when he made his entry
+into London, he set him on a tall white horse (an emblem of suzerainty),
+whilst he himself followed on a little black hackney.
+
+The English were not less courteous to the other prisoners. They had
+twice as many of them as there were men to guard them, and dismissed
+the greater part of them on parole, pledging them to come at Christmas,
+and pay the enormous ransoms they set upon them. The prisoners were
+too good knights to fail. In this war between gentlemen, the worst that
+could happen to the beaten party was to go and take their part in the
+festivities of the victors, to hunt and joust in England, and enjoy the
+courtesy of the English; a noble war, doubtless, which crushed none but
+the villein.
+
+Great was the dismay in Paris when the fugitives from Poitiers, with the
+dauphin at their head, brought news that there was no longer a king or
+barons in France, but all were killed or taken.[25] The English, who had
+withdrawn for a moment to secure the captives, would, doubtless, speedily
+return. This time it might be expected that they would take, not Calais,
+but Paris and the realm.[e]
+
+
+THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1356-1357 A.D.
+
+[Sidenote: [1356-1357 A.D.]]
+
+The king a captive, the nobles prisoners or destroyed--the people alone
+remained to save France. This younger member, disinherited in the
+political family of the Middle Ages, took in hand the government of
+the realm, now falling to pieces through the incapacity of its elder
+brothers. It was not this one that had been vanquished at Crécy and
+Poitiers. These defeats, on the contrary, brought it forward, for it was
+evident that, scorned as it was by the nobility, at least it had not
+conducted itself worse, and perhaps even may have made a better show
+against the English archers than the knights. The people ruling--that
+was a novel and extraordinary thing. Nevertheless they were not, at
+least in their leaders, totally inexperienced in the conduct of affairs.
+Former progress had prepared them somewhat; the common people were in
+parliament, the church, and the universities; they had control of all
+commerce and had formed vast industrial corporations. The clergy and
+commerce (which was soon to become the aristocracy of the third estate)
+both furnished a leader to the new movement started after the battle of
+Poitiers--Robert Lecoq, bishop of Laon and president of the parliament,
+and Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris.
+
+Marcel’s first care at the news of the disaster was to finish the
+fortifications of the capital, to place cannon on them, and to barricade
+the streets. The dauphin Charles arrived ten days after the battle,
+but the people did not make much of this young prince. His conduct at
+Poitiers had been decidedly equivocal; he had been one of the first to
+flee. He took the title of lieutenant of the king of France and convoked
+the states-general at Paris for the Languedoïl, at Toulouse for the
+Languedoc (October 17th, 1356). The assembly at Paris had eight hundred
+members, of which four hundred came from the cities and towns; Marcel
+presided over the third estate and Robert Lecoq over the clergy. The
+nobles were few in number; their principal leader was John de Pecquigny,
+lord of Vermandois, and a friend of the king of Navarre. The three orders
+deliberated separately, but to bring unity into their actions nominated
+a mixed commission of eighty members. It formulated the wishes of the
+states-general and demanded for the reform of the kingdom the summons and
+trial, before judges nominated by the states-general, of the king’s chief
+officers of finance and justice, accused of having perverted and sold
+judgments; the deliverance of the king of Navarre; the establishment of a
+council of four prelates, twelve lords, and twelve bourgeois elected by
+the states-general, without which the dauphin could give no orders and
+which would control the entire government. On these terms they granted
+the dauphin one and a half tenths for one year of the revenues of the
+three orders. In truth, by their revolutionary changes the people placed
+themselves on the throne and undertook the burden of public affairs and
+the public welfare. The states-general of the Languedoc, less radical,
+voted a levy of fifteen thousand men with the necessary money to maintain
+them.
+
+The dauphin would not listen to an agreement with these conditions. He
+played skilfully with the deputies of the third estate, in persuading
+them to consult their constituents once more, while he himself would go
+to ask help of his uncle the emperor of Germany. Charles IV was then
+putting forward his famous “golden bull” in the Diet of Nuremberg.
+The dauphin appeared there. He had strong hopes that on his return
+he would find the deputies dispersed and discouraged. Far from that,
+the provincial councils had reassembled, approved the measures of the
+states-general, and the whole country declared itself in the same
+fashion (1357). On the 3rd of March the dauphin was obliged to call a
+general assembly at the palace. The bishop of Laon acted as spokesman.
+He demanded that the prince dismiss twenty-two of his councillors or
+servitors and authorise the formation of a council of thirty-six members
+elected by the states-general “to provide for the needs of the kingdom,
+and which everyone would be compelled to obey.” Commissioners at first
+had to be sent into all the provinces, but the states finally acquired
+the faculty of handling the government of its own creation by endowing
+itself with the power to meet twice a year without convocation. As to
+reforms, relating for the most part to finances and justice, the dauphin
+provided for them in the “grand ordinance of reformation.” By this
+memorable charter he promised to impose no taxes without the vote of
+the states-general, to divert no money from the treasury, and to leave
+the levy and expenditure of taxes to the states-general’s delegates, to
+make justice impartial and prompt, to sell judiciary offices no longer,
+and not to alter the coinage from a model which the provost of the
+merchants was to furnish. The right of seizure, forced loans, judgments
+by commissioners, and alienation of the crown domains were some of the
+abuses corrected by the ordinance which at the end declared the members
+of the states-general inviolable and authorised armed resistance to all
+illegal procedure.
+
+[Sidenote: [1357-1358 A.D.]]
+
+The popular government of 1357 unfortunately did not have in its bosom
+sufficient harmony, strength, and experience to maintain the important
+conquest the people had just made. Moreover its situation was one of
+the most difficult; its credit was shaken by King John, who from his
+prison forbade the states-general to assemble and the people to pay
+the taxes they themselves had voted. The rural committees were in the
+most deplorable state. Overburdened by taxes, by the heavy ransoms
+which their captive lords extracted by torture, the peasants could no
+longer cultivate a land that had moreover been ravaged in the war. They
+developed into vagabonds and preferred to become the accomplices rather
+than victims of the bands of discharged soldiers from every country,
+which the war had left upon French soil.[f]
+
+In the fourteenth century the name brigand was given to this licensed
+soldiery, nearly all of whom, as we are aware, fought on foot, and were,
+as a general rule, but slenderly equipped; they carried, as a part of
+their equipment, a small fine coat of mail, which took its name of
+brigantine from them. The pay of the mercenaries being stopped in time
+of truce or between the different expeditions, they turned to the daily
+practice of rapine and plunder for their means of subsistence, which
+brought them in more than their pay. A crowd of adventurers and loafers
+joined forces with them, among the number being many noblemen. As to the
+rest, the following passage from Froissart[g] sets forth vividly the
+methods by which the brigands carried on their terrible profession:
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+“And the poor brigands always succeeded in sacking and pillaging towns
+and castles, and got thence such wealth as was marvellous, and some of
+them became rich, especially those who had made themselves leaders and
+captains of other brigands; there were among them some who even had as
+much as forty thousand crowns. Indeed and in truth right marvellous were
+the things they did. When--and this happened very frequently--they espied
+a large town or a fine castle, distant a day’s journey or two, twenty or
+thirty brigands would band themselves together and travel night or day by
+secret ways, and just as day broke they would enter the town or castle
+they had descried and set fire to a house. The townspeople, fearing that
+an army of a thousand warriors had come to burn their town, escaped each
+as best he might, and the brigands sacked houses, coffers, and libraries,
+seizing whatsoever they could find and departing laden with booty.”
+
+In spite of such horrors no profession was more lucrative or held in
+greater honour in the fourteenth century than that of the brigand. Even
+royalty, whose duty it was to protect the peasants, showed itself eager
+to make advances to the brigands and to reward their strange exploits.
+Philip of Valois proposed to Croquart, the famous chief of the brigands
+settled in Brittany, to knight him, marry him well, and pay him an
+annual income of two thousand pounds, if he would place himself at his
+disposal. This same king, hearing of the extraordinary cleverness by
+which one Bacon, a brigand who harassed Languedoc, had surprised the
+castle of Chambon in the Limousin, wished to keep by his side so daring
+and crafty a captain; so he made him his sergeant-at-arms and loaded him
+with honours. Too often the kings did not even attempt to protect the
+unhappy victims of the brigands. On the contrary they helped to complete
+the ruin of the peasants by authorising the abuse of _le droit de prise_
+(the right of seizure), and above all by arbitrarily raising or lowering
+the money standard, according to whether the question was one of levying
+taxes or of paying debts.[h]
+
+
+THE DAUPHIN REPUDIATES THE _GRANDE ORDONNANCE_ (1358 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1358-1360 A.D.]]
+
+Under such existing conditions the dauphin believed himself powerful
+enough to declare that he would no longer tolerate trustees. February
+8th, 1358, he revoked the _grande ordonnance_, and thus destroyed the
+popular government. This was a complete rupture with the states-general
+and the resumption of absolute power by the crown.
+
+Against the dauphin the people called Charles of Navarre, who was dragged
+from his prison. This ambitious prince, skilful and eloquent, became the
+orator of the market-places, promising to defend the country and letting
+it be understood that he was not without some claim to the throne of
+France. The dauphin hoped to balance this new kind of influence with the
+same means. He went to the Pré-aux-Clercs; and Paris, as if by a magical
+transformation, suddenly beheld herself in the midst of the Middle Ages
+adorned with two forums. But the dauphin lost again, by his unfortunate
+alteration in the coinage, the sole means indeed of raising money without
+calling the states-general together. Marcel had armed the bourgeoisie at
+once and given them, as a rallying sign, caps part red and part blue. At
+the head of a company of this militia he made his way into the dauphin’s
+palace, and had the marshals of Champagne and Normandy, the two principal
+officials, put to death; with his own hand he placed the red and blue
+cap upon the prince’s head as a pledge of security and said to him, as
+the two bodies were thrown to the crowd, “I demand that you sanction the
+deaths of these traitors, for it is by the will of the people that this
+has been done”--of a small portion of the people, it might be added--the
+Parisian bourgeoisie (1358).
+
+Indeed, the further they went the more the revolution they undertook
+lost its general character. The provincial deputies separated from their
+constituents lost their enthusiasm, while the commune of Paris, never
+away from their own hearths, remained numerous, ardent, and popular. The
+states-general, jealous of the commune’s influence, permitted itself in
+part to be removed to Compiègne by the dauphin. The nobles gathered about
+the prince. He had seven thousand lances with whom he lived freely on the
+country between the Seine and the Marne, ravaging the whole land as far
+as Paris, which was suffering from famine. This maddened the peasantry of
+the Beauvoisis, of Brie, of Valois, Laon, and Soissons.[f]
+
+
+THE _JACQUERIE_ (1358 A.D.)
+
+It is quite unnecessary to lay stress upon the sufferings of the
+villeins here. The days were no more, as we have seen, when the lords of
+the manor, although they considered themselves of different clay from
+their serfs, defended them at the peril of their lives. Of the feudal
+institutions, nothing remained but the oppression. Ruined by the love of
+luxury, by gambling, by debauchery, by the necessity of paying a heavy
+ransom--preferring to run into debt rather than to impose privations
+upon themselves, and to wrest from those around them by means of blows,
+imprisonment, or the pillory the miserable savings they had laid by for
+bad times rather than to pay their debts, which would have prevented
+their contracting new ones--they used and abused the right to command so
+far as to make all testaments, all marrying, on their estates, dependent
+on their express permission. They even scoffed at their victims, giving
+them the name of “Jacques Bonhomme” in derision, on account of their
+awkwardness in carrying weapons, and of their patience in enduring all
+things. “Save a villain from hanging, he’ll cut your throat; show a
+villain the steel, and he kneels,” says a proverb of these times (_Oignez
+vilain, il vous poindra: poignez vilain, il vous oindra_).
+
+To these permanent, and in some respects regular evils, aggravated still
+more by the caprices, the exactions of the kings, or at least, of their
+officers, were added, to render them more intolerable, the accidental
+evils of life and war. A series of bad years had brought famine and the
+plague. The Navarrese of Philip of Longueville, the brigands of James
+Pipes, and other generals devastated all that the English had spared, and
+that a few only too uncommon inhabitants had not allowed to lie fallow.
+The Navarrese, the brigands, and the English inspired them with such
+terror that the unhappy villeins would leave their dwellings and fields,
+spend the nights on the islands or in boats moored in the middle of the
+river, and place one of their number in the church belfry in order that
+he might ring the tocsin, while they hid themselves in the bowels of the
+earth, in those subterranean places which were still to be found in the
+eighteenth century, along the Somme, from Péronne to its mouth.
+
+Thus the hardships which nature and warfare imposed upon those living in
+country places made them more sensitive to those which their masters, if
+better advised or more humane, might have spared them. Their original
+devotedness had disappeared, as had their protection, of which they were
+no longer the object, and given place to muttered imprecations, to a
+vague and far-away desire to shake off the yoke. The hatred increased
+every day, but it still resembled a fire smouldering beneath the ashes.
+In order that it should burst forth, change into violence and activity,
+it was only necessary that a new exigency, a lesser one perhaps than many
+others to which they were subject, but more startling to their simple
+good sense, should arise in some wise to place the weapons in their
+hands. The occasion for movement was the fifth article of the ordinance,
+issued at Compiègne, which enjoined all those whom it might concern to
+put the strongholds in a state of defence at their own cost and expense.
+They whom it concerned were the unfortunate peasants, who were thus
+forced to pay for out of their savings, and to rebuild with their own
+hands, those citadels which when restored would make the oppression more
+intolerable than ever. This it is that caused a contemporary to say that
+the rebellion began with a protest against injustice.[i]
+
+About a hundred of the peasants met at Clermont first, and raised the
+cry of “Death to gentlemen!” They elected a leader, called William Karl,
+or Callet, and rushed to the attack and destruction of the houses of the
+nobles. These hundreds soon swelled to thousands, and there was no excess
+of which they were not guilty: they slew the nobles themselves, with
+their wives and children, first treating the women with every indignity,
+their avowed purpose being to extinguish the race. They roasted a noble
+before the eyes of his family, and sought to make its members eat the
+flesh of the victim. Saracen or Christian, says Froissart,[g] never
+committed such iniquities.
+
+There remains a doubt as to how far the townsfolk may have excited their
+rustic brethren to this revolt; but it does not appear that any great
+town made common cause with them. They were repulsed from Compiègne,
+though they entered Senlis. Marcel endeavoured to make use of the Jacques
+in humbling the noblesse and destroying their strongholds, without the
+infamy of outraging women and slaying children. But whilst Marcel was
+politic enough to make this attempt, the king of Navarre could not
+but sympathise with the noblesse, and fly to their aid. The Jacques,
+knowing his liberal reputation, were inclined to negotiate with him,
+which enabled the king of Navarre to entice the chief and some of his
+officers to parley. While thus engaged, they were surprised, bound, and
+decapitated. This is not the last instance of a magnate betraying those
+who trusted, and massacring those who could have best supported him.
+Charles afterwards attacked the army of Jacques, and slew three thousand
+of them.
+
+The regent, after holding the estates of Champagne and Vermandois, and
+procuring their adhesion, took his principal military post at Meaux in
+order to straiten Paris. To this place not only did his troops repair,
+but the ladies of the court--the duchesses of Normandy and Orleans, as
+well as the wives of the noblesse--betook themselves to Meaux as to a
+place of safety. The market of this town, surrounded by walls and by
+water, had been rendered a fortress by the regent. The Jacques attacked
+the town, in concert with a few Parisians, and easily made themselves
+masters of all save the market. The count of Foix, and the captal De
+Buch, Gascon nobles, were returning from a campaign with the Teutonic
+knights of Prussia against the pagans, when they heard of the peril
+of the noble ladies at Meaux. Though the captal was a subject of King
+Edward, he nevertheless flew with De Foix to the rescue of the three
+hundred ladies menaced by the Jacques; and these were routed and driven
+into the Maine with great slaughter. The victors of Meaux then attacked
+Senlis; there the citizens and Jacques fought together, and made a most
+obstinate resistance. But the nobles, reinforced by knights and nobles
+from Brabant, Hainault, and the Gascon hordes, annihilated the peasantry,
+notwithstanding their numbers; and the insurrection of the Jacques was
+drowned in blood.[j]
+
+
+DEATH OF MARCEL
+
+The effects of the _Jacquerie_ reached Marcel; discord appeared in the
+commune. Obliged to seek outside help, the provost of the merchants
+called upon the king of Navarre and agreed to prepare the way for him
+to the throne of France. On the night of July 31st, 1358, as Marcel
+was changing the guard at the Porte St. Denis through which Charles of
+Navarre was to enter, he was massacred, together with those who were with
+him, by the alderman, John Maillart, who had discovered the plot.[26] The
+dauphin returned to Paris with an army and had Marcel’s chief companions
+decapitated or exiled.[f]
+
+It is necessary to dwell upon the memorable part played by Étienne
+Marcel and the municipality of Paris in the political and social crisis
+which followed the disaster of Poitiers and the captivity of King John.
+In the middle of this fourteenth century, so uncivilised and sombre, a
+man appeared who, by wonderful instinct, laid down and nearly succeeded
+in obtaining the adoption of the essential principles on which modern
+society is founded; that is, the government of the country by elected
+representatives, taxes voted by the representatives of the taxpayers, the
+abolition of privileges founded upon right of birth, the extension of
+political rights to all citizens, and the subordination of traditional
+sovereignty to that external sovereign known as the nation. Marcel was
+that man.
+
+Doubtless there are blots in Marcel’s life. His siding with the Jacques
+is to be reproached against him as well as his friendship with the king
+of Navarre, “the third aspirant in the midst of the rival ambitions of
+France and England.” But it was a question of putting down an absolute,
+unlimited power. If the aim is the entire remodelling of the organisation
+of society, when the end in view is the high ambition of snatching the
+direction of public affairs from the hands of an entire class, history
+shows that such objects have never been reached without bloodshed. When,
+four centuries later, the substitution of a representative government
+for a monarchy founded upon divine right caused so many heads to fall
+and entailed so much agony, is it to be wondered at that the revolution
+undertaken by Marcel should follow the same course and suffer the same
+fate? After all, if the bold provost shed the blood of his adversaries,
+he was playing a losing game, and staking his own life against the
+dominion of the nobility. Which is the more illustrious victim, the
+marshal or himself? Which executioner should be blamed? Marcel failed
+apparently, because the time was not yet ripe; he had, by a great bound
+into the future, put himself ahead of his epoch. But he threw an external
+lustre over the provosts of Paris, and as an eminent historian said, when
+he demanded that statues should be raised in memory of Marcel, “he is the
+greatest personage of the fourteenth century.”[k]
+
+
+PEACE NEGOTIATIONS; EDWARD IN FRANCE (1359 A.D.)
+
+The dauphin had returned to Paris, but the state of the kingdom seemed
+desperate. People, however, spoke of peace. Weary of the sumptuous
+hospitality he had received at Windsor, John had treated with the king
+of England. He had abandoned to him the shores of the Channel, that is
+to say Calais, Montreuil, Boulogne, Ponthieu, and Normandy; the whole of
+Aquitaine, which included Gascony, Bordelais, Agénois, Quercy, Périgord,
+the Limousin, Poitou, Saintonge, and Aunis; also Touraine and Anjou; and
+besides this four million gold crowns for the king’s personal ransom. It
+was the greatest and best part of France, including the entrances to all
+the rivers. When the treaty was brought to Paris the dauphin refused to
+execute it, and to strengthen himself for the contest with his father
+called, at Paris on the 19th of May, 1359, the semblance of an assembly
+of the three orders, which rejected the shameful terms and added that
+King John must stay in England until it pleased God to show him the way
+out.
+
+Five months after, October 28th, 1359, Edward landed at Calais with his
+four sons, the most powerful lords of his kingdom, six thousand coats of
+iron armour, six thousand carts loaded with ammunition, ovens, mills,
+forges, tents--everything necessary to live comfortably, even to falcons
+and hunting-packs, and skiffs of rough hides for fishing. “There was
+such a multitude of armed men that all the country was covered, and so
+richly armed and bedecked that it was a marvel and great joy to see
+their shining armour, waving banners, and arranged contests. And again
+there were five hundred pages with shovels and picks who went before the
+wagons and opened the way and cut the thorns and the bushes to make the
+transport easier.”
+
+The weather did not favour the expedition, for it rained incessantly. On
+the 30th of November, the English arrived before Rheims. John de Craon
+the archbishop shut the gates upon them and valiantly repulsed all their
+attacks. Edward had announced a long time before that he wished to be
+crowned there. He passed some weeks before its walls, unable to take
+it by storm, but hoping each day that he would be attacked and win a
+great battle as Crécy and Poitiers. Finally, nobody appearing, he turned
+back, going leisurely across country to Châlons, Bar-le-Duc, Troyes, and
+Tonnerre; the duke of Burgundy obtained from the pillage some two hundred
+thousand gold crowns. Then Edward marched straight towards Paris, and
+established himself about two leagues from the town at Bourg-la-Reine.
+The English heralds approached to offer battle to the dauphin, who
+refused it. A knight of the enemy, Sir Walter Manny, advanced to the very
+ramparts, seeking for single combat, but Charles expressly forbade his
+warriors to go outside the barriers. He wanted none of this war as the
+nobles were conducting it at present.
+
+And so the citizens shut up in their towns and the nobles in their
+castles let pass the storm which could not reach them behind their walls.
+Everything fell upon the peasants, who dared not even defend themselves.
+But misery finally gave them courage and despair brought them strength.
+They came to dare to look in the face the iron-sheathed men before whom
+they used to tremble, and at several points the foreign aggressor began
+to meet with local popular resistance, more dangerous for him than the
+great battles of the feudal princes. Edward himself wearied of this inert
+but invincible resistance. It was said that the English king and his
+followers making their way, weary and discouraged across the plains of
+Beauce, encountered a terrific storm which seemed a warning from heaven,
+and that the king made a vow before Notre Dame de Chartres, to do all he
+could to re-establish peace between the two nations. The king’s heart had
+not been turned suddenly by the storm; it was the fatigues of a war that
+was bringing no glory, for there were no battles and no booty, because
+everything had been captured or hidden in the fortresses.
+
+
+_The Story of Le Grand Ferré_
+
+One of the most curious incidents of this popular resistance is thus
+described by a chronicler of the age, the continuator of Nangis, in
+language not without charm in spite of many Latin barbarisms.[l]
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH PAGE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+There was one strong enough place, in a little Longueil village, close to
+Compiègne. The inhabitants, seeing they would be in great peril if the
+enemy should take possession of it, demanded of their ruling lord, and of
+the abbé of St. Corneille whose serfs they were, permission to fortify
+their village. After having obtained this, they collected provisions and
+arms, chose for captain a fine strong man named Guillaume des Alouettes
+from among themselves, and swore to defend their town with their
+last breath. When this was done and became known, many hastened from
+neighbouring villages for protection. The captain had for servant a man
+as brave as he was tall and strong, known as “Le Grand Ferré” (_Magnus
+Ferratus_). In spite of his huge size and strength Le Grand Ferré had a
+very poor opinion of himself, and the captain could do with him what he
+liked.
+
+There were about two hundred of them, all labourers and accustomed to
+gain a scanty livelihood with their hands. The English, who occupied
+a strong position near Creil, on learning of these preparations for
+defence, were filled with scorn for such wretched people. “Let us drive
+the villagers out,” they said, “the place is good and strong and we
+will occupy it.” And they prepared to do as they said. Two hundred
+English marched thither. Watch was not well kept; even the gates were
+open, and the enemy entered boisterously. At the noise they made those
+in the houses rushed to the windows, and seeing so many armed men were
+overcome by fright. The captain finally appeared with some of his men,
+and began to strike the English bravely, but was soon surrounded and
+mortally wounded. At this misfortune the others including Le Grand Ferré
+said among themselves, “Let us go down and sell our lives dearly, for we
+may expect no mercy.” So they collected together and suddenly appearing
+from different directions threw themselves with redoubled blows upon the
+English; they struck as if threshing wheat on the barn floor. Arms were
+raised and lowered and at each blow an Englishman fell.
+
+When Le Grand Ferré reached the side of his dying captain, his grief
+overcame him and he threw himself furiously upon the enemy. As he was
+head and shoulders above his companions they could see him wielding his
+axe, striking and redoubling his blows, none of which missed a victim.
+Helmets were broken, skulls split, and arms cut off. In a short time
+there was a clear space around him, for he had killed eighteen and
+wounded many more. His encouraged comrades did marvels, and the English
+quit the affair and took to flight. Some jumped into the moat and were
+drowned, others flung themselves against the gates; but blows rained upon
+them thick and fast. Le Grand Ferré, reaching the middle of the street
+where the enemy had planted its standard, killed the bearer, and seizing
+the flag told one of his own men to go and throw it into the moat. The
+man however pointed with terror to the still thick mass of English.
+“Follow me,” called out Le Grand Ferré, and seizing his great axe in both
+hands he struck right and left, till he made a path to the moat where the
+others threw the enemy’s ensign into the mud. Le Grand Ferré stopped a
+moment for breath, but returned at once to what remained of the English.
+Only a very few of those who came to perform this deed escaped, thanks to
+God and Le Grand Ferré, who killed that day more than forty of them.
+
+The English were very angry and disturbed to see so many of their brave
+soldiers perish at the hands of these peasants. The next day they
+returned in greater numbers, but the people of Longueil no longer feared
+them. They went forth to meet the enemy, Le Grand Ferré at their head.
+And when the enemy saw him and felt the weight of his arm and his iron
+axe, they wished they had never come that way. They could not get back so
+fast that many were not mortally wounded, killed, or taken prisoners, and
+among these were some men of high lineage. If the folk of Longueil had
+consented to ransom them as the nobles do among themselves, they would
+have been very rich. But they would not hear of this and killed their
+captives, saying that in this way the enemy would do no more harm.
+
+In this last struggle the fighting was very hard and Le Grand Ferré
+became much exhausted. He drank quantities of cold water and was almost
+immediately seized with a fever. He managed to get back to the village
+to his cottage and went to bed, but keeping close to him his good axe,
+an iron axe so heavy that a man of ordinary strength could scarcely lift
+it from the ground with both hands. The English learned with joy that Le
+Grand Ferré was ill, and without giving him time to recover despatched
+twelve soldiers with orders to kill him. His wife saw them from afar and
+cried to him, “Oh, my poor Ferré, here come the English, what will you
+do?” He forgot his illness, and got up quietly. Taking his heavy axe he
+strode into his yard. When they entered, “Ah, brigands,” he cried, “you
+come to take me in my bed, but you don’t know me.” He placed his back to
+the wall so as not to be surrounded, and swinging his axe brought his
+assailants face to face with death. Of the twelve he killed five and
+put the rest to flight. Le Grand Ferré returned to his bed, but he had
+again overheated himself in dealing so many blows and drank more cold
+water. The violence of the fever redoubled, and a few days later, having
+received the sacraments, he passed away. Le Grand Ferré was buried in
+the village cemetery. All his companions, the whole countryside in fact,
+mourned his loss; for with him alive the English would never have dared
+approach.[d]
+
+One feels, in the wealth of detail into which the chronicler enters, the
+sympathy of the old monk for the poor peasants. In the depths of the
+monasteries were narrated their valiant deeds against the pillagers of
+churches; these are told much more frequently in village companies. The
+tales spread slowly but went far. Little by little the foundations of
+hatred for the foreigner were laid in the hearts of the people, and a
+love of country whose fiercest outburst is found in Joan of Arc.
+
+
+THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY (1360 A.D.)
+
+The dauphin was still more anxious to send the English home because
+“France was in its last throes, and for so little as its woes might last
+it might perish.” A conference was opened at Bretigny, near Chartres, the
+1st of May, 1360. The English negotiators demanded in the first place the
+whole crown of France; then they limited themselves to what had belonged
+to the Plantagenets; finally Edward III contented himself with the duchy
+of Aquitaine and all its dependencies (Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis,
+Agénois, Périgord, the Limousin, Quercy, Rouergue, and Angoumois), ceded
+in independent sovereignty, and Calais with the counties of Ponthieu and
+Guines, also the viscounty of Montreuil. Thus ended the first period of
+the Hundred Years’ War. The king’s ransom was fixed at three million gold
+crowns;[27] in guarantee for which sum John had to leave in Edward’s
+hands a certain number of hostages taken from the highest nobles and
+richest bourgeoisie of the land. Edward carried them with him across
+Normandy, which he harassed once more, in order to embark at Honfleur,
+the Havre of that day. The provinces promised to the king of England were
+given up, despite the protests against this pretended restitution by the
+great majority who said, with the inhabitants of La Rochelle, “We will
+acknowledge the English with our lips, but never with our hearts.” For a
+whole year they refused to open their gates to the English.
+
+At Abbeville things went still better. When the patriotic citizens saw
+in their streets the soldiers who for fifteen years had trampled France
+under foot, they were unable to restrain themselves; secret meetings
+were held; then a riot broke out which was quickly suppressed, but not
+before a rich citizen, Ringois, was captured. The English commandant
+used, however, moderation and offered Ringois his liberty on sole
+condition that he would take the oath of allegiance to Edward III.
+Ringois refused. They took him to Dover, threatening him this time with
+death if he were obstinate, but he persisted. They brought him even to
+the platform of the fortress and showed him the furthermost parapet with
+the sea beating furiously at its feet; if he said one word he would be
+saved. He still refused and the guard threw him off.
+
+There still remained to find the money for the first payment of the
+ransom, and it was obtained by a shameful expedient. “The king of
+France,” says Matteo Villani[q] the historian, “sold his flesh and
+blood.” For 600,000 florins he bestowed his daughter Isabella, then only
+eleven years of age, on Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the son of the fiercest
+tyrant in Italy, who hunted men in the streets of his capital and threw
+them living into the flames. Thanks to this money the king left Calais on
+the 25th of October, 1360.
+
+
+THE LAST YEARS OF KING JOHN (1360-1364 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1360-1364 A.D.]]
+
+The 5th of December following we find an ordinance by which John
+announces, in spite of the great compassion he has for his people, the
+levy of a new tax on all merchandise sold or exported, on salt and on
+wine, in return for which he promises henceforth good and loyal justice
+to all, to put nothing but undebased coin into circulation, and to
+abolish the right of seizure and other abuses that fell so heavily upon
+the poor people. These promises did not deceive any more than the taxes
+profited them. What could be produced in a country ceaselessly ravaged by
+large forces and desolated by frequent appearances of the black death? It
+became necessary to fall back on other resources--loans, the revocation
+of all donations made by kings since Philip the Fair, and giving the
+Jews considerable privileges in matters of finance. With the money thus
+procured what did the king do? Did he use it to break up those bands of
+brigands, marauders, and _tard venues_ that had just (1362) captured and
+killed the constable James de Bourbon at Brignais near Lyons? He made
+little journeys at great expense, travelling from town to town to take
+possession of the rich heritage of the Capetian house of Burgundy, which
+the death of Philip de Rouvre had recently placed in his hands. From
+there he journeyed down to Avignon where he spent six months in feasting,
+and planning a marriage with the famous queen Joanna of Naples. The pope,
+who had already been twice ransomed from the great companies, made John
+a proposition capable of appealing to his adventurous imagination--to
+form all these warrior bands into a crusade, which would rid France of
+them, and at the same time win glory for himself. It is not impossible
+that John would have embarked on this rash enterprise had he not learned
+that one of his sons, the duke of Anjou, had escaped from the English,
+by whom he was held in hostage. John felt for his son to do a thing
+like this was a slight on royal honour, and resolved to go himself to
+replace the fugitive. He thus escaped in a chivalrous manner from his
+embarrassing position and the sight of France’s misery. A part of the
+winter was spent in London, “in great rejoicings and recreations,” says
+Froissart,[g] “in dinners, suppers, and other fashions.” These fêtes and
+great repasts killed him; he died in London, April 8th, 1364, at the age
+of forty-four.[l]
+
+Towards the end of 1361 the young duke Philip de Rouvre of Burgundy
+expired, leaving no issue; his marriage with the young heiress of
+Flanders not having been consummated. The duke possessed not only
+Burgundy, but Franche-Comté, Champagne, Artois, and Boulogne. An
+ancestor of Duke Philip had three daughters, to whom the succession now
+reverted. The eldest had been Marguerite, the unfortunate queen of Louis
+Hutin, whose daughter, married to the king of Navarre, had conveyed
+to the representative of that family the best right to the Burgundian
+succession. King John, descended from the second sister, would admit no
+right to the king of Navarre, nor yet to the count of Bar, descended from
+the third sister. He pleaded that he was nearer of kin than Charles of
+Navarre to the duke just deceased; and thus made use of the same claim
+to Burgundy that Edward III had done to France. John hastened to Dijon
+and installed himself there as duke, taking a solemn oath to respect
+all the privileges and rights of the duchy. Artois and Franche-Comté
+returned to the duchess-dowager of Flanders. John had no intention of
+uniting Burgundy to the crown, which he well knew would displease the
+Burgundians, accustomed from time immemorial to their native dukes
+and provincial independence. He therefore, in 1363, gave the duchy of
+Burgundy to his youngest son, Philip, who had been constantly by his side
+during the battle of Poitiers and his subsequent captivity. King John,
+indeed, assigned this reason for the gift. It was fully acquiesced in
+by John’s successor; and thus was founded that brilliant house of the
+dukes of Burgundy of the second race, which reigned from the Schelde
+to the Alps, and overshadowed and endangered the monarchy of France
+itself.[28][j]
+
+
+CHARLES THE WISE (1364-1380 A.D.)
+
+Charles V was seven-and-twenty when he began to reign, and if he had
+followed the example of his father, he would have played the part of
+feudal king and fighting cavalier, as that for which he was ordained. But
+the young monarch saw that France had need of other defenders than feudal
+kings and fighting cavaliers. It needed a clear eye and a steady hand--a
+man at the helm, not a gilt figure at the prow; for never was there a
+time when the vessel of the state seemed in such danger. There was a
+whole people to feed and satisfy--rebellious vassals to reclaim--an open
+foe to guard against--riotous bands in the very heart of the kingdom to
+be discomfited; and for all this he had an empty treasury, a discontented
+parliament, ambitious communes, and a disunited nobility. But the French
+heart of courage and chivalrous spirit of loyalty was still entire.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES V]
+
+Charles was weak in body, and over him hung the sentence of death passed
+on him by the physicians in his youth. Charles the Bad, it was said, in
+return for his arrest at Rouen, had poisoned the dauphin’s food.[29] The
+prince escaped destruction by the opening of a perpetual wound in his
+left arm. “Whenever the sore heals over,” the doctors said, “the dauphin
+must die.” This issue was probably only a sign of a feeble constitution,
+but it silenced the sneers of his enemies, who were not accustomed to see
+a king except in armour; it doubled the respect of the few discerning
+potentates of the time, who began to perceive that a cabinet might be
+quite as great a scene of glory as a field of battle. Edward III said he
+was never so resisted in open fight, as by the calm, sagacious councillor
+who had never drawn a sword. Before the first year was over all men
+perceived that things were greatly changed. There were no tournaments at
+the Louvre--no feasts at the palace. The king lived like an anchorite,
+except on state occasions, when he outshone the magnificence of oriental
+princes; and paid his men-at-arms their wages, and granted privileges
+to the trading towns, and did not increase a single tax! People must
+have grown ashamed of sustaining the cause of Charles the Bad against so
+true a Frenchman and gracious a king as Charles the Wise; yet the war
+continued.[n]
+
+Charles V at first made use of the help of his brothers, committing to
+their hands the provinces most remote from the centre, Languedoc to the
+duke of Anjou, and Burgundy to Philip the Bold. He himself attended only
+to the centre; but he needed an arm--a sword. There was then hardly
+any military spirit except among the Bretons and the Gascons. The king
+attached to him a brave Breton of Dinan, the sieur Du Guesclin, whom he
+had himself seen at the siege of Melun, and who had been fighting for
+France for some years.[e]
+
+
+_Early Exploits of Bertrand du Guesclin_
+
+The childhood of Bertrand du Guesclin offers some striking peculiarities.
+His ugliness, his deformity, and his rough, wild bearing had won for him
+the dislike of his family; the harsh treatment he endured only served to
+embitter his character. Armed with a stick, which he invariably carried,
+young Bertrand was a great trouble to his mother, and the terror of all
+the children in the neighbourhood. He could not be taught to read. “He
+knew nothing of letters,” says a chronicle, “and no masters could ever be
+found from whom he was willing to learn; but he always wanted to strike
+and beat them.”
+
+One fine day, being then about sixteen or seventeen years of age,
+Bertrand escaped from his father’s house, which to his youthful ardour
+felt like a prison, and went off in triumph to Rennes to wrestle with a
+young Breton, already made proud by having overcome twelve adversaries;
+and soon afterwards Rennes beheld him again victorious in a solemn
+tournament, and from that time everyone who knew him, even his parents,
+understood that Bertrand had a great future before him. The war between
+Charles of Blois and John de Montfort, the two claimants of the duchy of
+Brittany, afforded Bertrand a favourable opportunity for distinguishing
+himself; he took the side of Charles of Blois, whose cause appeared
+to him more French than that of his rival, and the walls of Vannes,
+Fougeray, and Rennes were in turns witnesses of his extraordinary
+valour. Charles of Blois, to show his gratitude, presented him with
+the valuable domain of La Roche d’Airien or De Rien. In 1359 Bertrand
+compelled the duke of Lancaster to raise the siege of Dinan. His
+battle-cry was, “Notre Dame, Guesclin. Guesclin!” When in battle, this
+name rang in the ears of the English; it had the effect of a clap of
+thunder, and even the bravest trembled before such an enemy. The most
+careful and complete investigations have not enabled the learned to state
+the precise date when Bertrand entered the service of the king of France;
+it is not certain whether it was to King John or to the dauphin that he
+first offered the support of his valour. But at least we know that in
+1361 he was already in the royal pay, and that he was in command of a
+company of men-at-arms and archers; this fact is proved by a discharge
+signed at Paris by Du Guesclin, and preserved amongst the registers of
+the court of exchequer.
+
+[Illustration: BERTRAND DU GEUSCLIN]
+
+Some authors say that the governorship of Pontorson was given to Du
+Guesclin as a mark of special favour. Whilst fighting for the glory
+of the lilies of France, the Breton warrior by no means forgot the
+interests of Charles of Blois, his natural sovereign; thus, after driving
+the English out of Normandy, he marched to the siege of Bécherel and
+routed De Montfort’s troops. It must have been about this time that his
+marriage took place with Tiphaine or Thiéphaine Raguenel, a rich heiress
+who, if we are to believe the traditions of the fourteenth century,
+foretold future events. The date of this marriage is one of the points of
+uncertainty in the history of Bertrand.[o]
+
+The new king’s first care was to recover the mastery of the course of the
+Seine. Mantes and Meulan belonged to the king of Navarre; Boucicault and
+Du Guesclin got possession of them by an act of signal perfidy. The two
+towns had paid the penalty of all the mischief the Navarrese had done to
+the Parisians. The citizens had the satisfaction of seeing twenty-eight
+of them hanged in Paris.
+
+The Navarrese, reinforced by English and Gascons under the captal De
+Buch, desired to avenge themselves, and do something to hinder the king
+from going to Rheims. Du Guesclin soon advanced with a considerable
+body, of French, Bretons, and also Gascons. The captal retreated towards
+Évreux, and halted at Cocherel, on an eminence; but Du Guesclin had the
+address to deprive him of the advantage of the ground. He sounded a
+retreat and made a feint of running away. The captal could not hinder his
+Englishmen from descending to pursue; they were too proud to hearken to
+a Gascon general, though a great lord and of the house of Foix. He was,
+therefore, constrained to obey his soldiers and accompany them into
+the plain. Thereupon Du Guesclin wheeled round. The Gascons whom he had
+with him appointed thirty of their number to carry off the captal from
+the midst of his men. The other Navarrese leaders were killed and the
+battle was won. Won on the 16th of May (1364), it was known at Rheims on
+the 18th, the coronation day--a fine omen for the new royalty. Charles V
+gave Du Guesclin such a reward as never king before him had bestowed: an
+establishment on the footing of a prince, the county of Longueville, the
+patrimony of the king of Navarre’s brother. At the same time he beheaded
+the sire de Saquenville, one of the chief advisers of the Navarrese.
+He dealt no better with the French who were found in the ranks of the
+companies. Men began to bethink them that brigandage was a crime.
+
+
+_End of the Breton War: Battle of Auray (1364 A.D.)_
+
+The war in Brittany ended in the same year. The king of France lent
+Charles of Blois Du Guesclin and one thousand lances. The prince of Wales
+sent De Montfort John Chandos,--the only rival in Europe to the fame
+of Du Guesclin as general and knight,--two hundred lances, and as many
+archers; and with these were joined several English knights. Montfort
+and the English were posted on a height, like the prince of Wales at
+Poitiers. Charles of Blois did not care for that. That devout prince,
+who believed in miracles, and who himself performed them, had refused at
+the siege of Quimper to retreat before a flood. “If it is God’s will,”
+he said, “the tide will do us no harm.” He made no more account of the
+mountain at Auray than of the flood at Quimper. Charles of Blois had
+the greater strength; many Bretons, even, of La Bretagne-Bretonnante
+joined him, out of hatred doubtless to the English. Du Guesclin disposed
+the army in an admirable manner. “Each man-at-arms,” says Froissart,[g]
+“carried his lance straight before him, projecting five feet, and had a
+small, hard, and well-sharpened axe, with a small handle. And thus they
+advanced in most handsome array. They rode so close that you could not
+have thrown a tennis ball among them, but it would have fallen on the
+points of the lances.” John Chandos gazed long on the French order of
+battle, “the which he praised mightily within himself.” He could not
+conceal his sentiments, but said, “So help me God as it is true that
+there is here flower of chivalry, great sense, and good arrangement.”
+Chandos had set apart a reserve to support each corps that wavered. It
+was not without difficulty he prevailed on one of his knights to remain
+in the rear and command that reserve; prayers, and almost tears were
+necessary to overcome the feudal prejudice that made the front rank be
+regarded as the only post of honour. Du Guesclin could not have effected
+the same thing in the other army.
+
+[Sidenote: [1364-1366 A.D.]]
+
+The two adverse claimants fought at the head of their respective forces.
+The Bretons were weary of this war, and wished to see it ended by the
+death of the one or the other. Chandos’ reserve gave him the advantage
+over Du Guesclin, who was unhorsed and taken prisoner. The whole brunt
+of the battle then fell on Charles of Blois; his banner was pulled down
+and himself slain. The greatest lords of Brittany obstinately held out,
+and were likewise slain (September 29th, 1364). When the English came,
+with great exultation, and showed De Montfort his enemy whom they had
+killed, the voice of French blood, or perhaps of kindred, awoke within
+him, and tears started from his eyes. A haircloth was found under the
+dead man’s cuirass. His piety and his good qualities recurred to memory.
+He had recommenced the war only in deference to his wife, whose patrimony
+Brittany was. This saint was also a man. He made verses and composed
+_lais_ in the intervals between his battles. He had been a lover, too;
+a bastard of his was killed by his side, endeavouring to avenge him. De
+Montfort got possession of all the strongest places in the country in a
+few days. The children of Charles of Blois were prisoners in England. The
+king of France, who carried no passion into the trade of war, made terms
+with the victor, and induced the widow of Charles of Blois to content
+herself with the county of Penthièvre, the viscounty of Limoges, and an
+income of 10,000 livres. The king did wisely. The essential thing was to
+hinder Brittany from doing homage to the English sovereign. There was
+every probability that, sooner or later, it would become weary of the
+protégé of England.[e] Peace was concluded on these terms at Guérande in
+1365, and Du Guesclin was restored to liberty.
+
+Peace also was concluded with Charles of Navarre, who was glad to accept
+the city of Montpellier in exchange for the places he had lost upon the
+Seine, and a period of rest was promised to the distracted land.
+
+
+_Du Guesclin Leads the Free Companies into Castile (1366 A.D.)_
+
+But the rest was impossible with so many conflicting interests to
+arrange, and such a spirit of unrule diffused by the recent struggles.
+Charles the Wise looked back with fond regret to the time of the
+Crusades, and meditated an exportation of the thousands of armed men of
+all surrounding countries to the East. But the Brabanters, English, and
+Saxons were very well satisfied with their present position, and had
+no desire to distinguish themselves against the enemies of the faith,
+when they could live so comfortably on the fat of abbey-lands, and
+occasionally put a bishop to ransom at home. The example of Montferrat,
+who had saved the pope at Avignon by leading the free lances of the south
+against the wealth of Milan, occurred also to the anxious thoughts of
+the king; and just at the moment when he was in greatest distress, a
+circumstance occurred in Spain which gave him the wished-for opportunity.
+Pedro, known in general history as the Cruel, but recognised in Spanish
+annals as the Great Justiciar, had offended a great proportion of his
+subjects by his relentless executions and harsh behaviour. He had
+poisoned his wife, a princess of Bourbon, at the instigation of his
+favourite Maria de Padilla, and threatened death to the surviving natural
+children of his father. Of these, Don Henry of Trastamara was the most
+popular and the best; he fled to France, and implored the aid of Charles
+against the murderous husband and unpitying brother. Du Guesclin saw the
+opening. “Sir,” he said, “the free lances are anxious for work, and will
+gather from all parts if I hoist my banner. Better neighbours will they
+be on the other side of the Pyrenees than on this.”
+
+Charles adopted the party of the banished brother, and preparations
+were instantly made. Du Guesclin himself had begun as a leader of free
+lances, and knew their ways. Thirty thousand of them joined him in an
+incredibly short space of time, and he marched southward down the Rhone.
+The pope was as much alarmed as his predecessor had been, and sent out
+to know the object of their approach to Avignon. Bertrand answered with
+a grim smile, “We are thirty thousand poor Christian pilgrims bound on a
+crusade against the Saracens of Granada, and we want the holy father’s
+absolution, and also 200,000 livres.” “Touching the absolution, my son,”
+replied the nuncio, “you shall have it without fail; but with regard to
+the money, that is a different thing.” “Sir,” replied the knight, “there
+be many here who reck not of absolution, but many who desire the money,
+for we make them prudent men in spite of themselves.” Their prudence
+was rewarded with both the absolution and coin to the amount of 200,000
+livres. They made a detour and Avignon was saved. When they reached
+Toulouse, the object of the expedition was for the first time declared to
+them. Plunder and battle was all they required, and a deluge of cruelty,
+courage, and destructiveness poured down on devoted Spain. Pedro was
+expelled from the throne, and fled to Portugal. Henry was crowned at
+Burgos with Du Guesclin at his side, and was joyously received in the
+other cities of Castile.
+
+[Sidenote: [1366-1368 A.D.]]
+
+Both nations now seemed ready for repose, and the triumph of having
+restored an exile and created a king was added to the other glories of
+the French monarch. But the Black Prince held his court at Bordeaux.
+Shortly after his marriage, in 1361, he was created duke of Aquitaine
+and had been living in his dominions since 1363. Feasts and tournaments
+were celebrated according to the strictest rules of chivalry, and
+noble ladies listened to the songs of troubadours, and the picturesque
+narratives of Froissart, and the adventures of fabulous warriors, as
+their predecessors were said to have done in the days of Charlemagne
+and Arthur. Suddenly the dethroned and powerless Pedro threw himself at
+the feet of the master of the lists; and half the stories of kingdoms
+lost and won by the irresistible sword of a single champion immediately
+rushed to their minds. All the blood of knighthood was on fire at the
+insolence of a people who had rebelled against their anointed lord, and
+Edward of Wales, as became a knight and man of honour, vowed to restore
+his suppliant to the throne. Crécy was renewed over again in the great
+field of Navarrete in 1367. Du Guesclin himself fell into the enemy’s
+hands, and all the work of the free lances was utterly undone. Pedro was
+king and justiciary in one, and let loose his royal vengeance on all
+the land. Murders, executions, confiscations threw the whole kingdom
+into despair, and the English bitterly repented of their interference in
+behalf of so unchivalrous, unpitying a tyrant. The dreadful heats of the
+south came to the support of Henry. The English died of fever and excess,
+and discipline became relaxed. The reinstated king declined to pay the
+stipulated rewards; mutiny broke out among the discontented conquerors;
+and in the scorching summer, and amid these disturbances, the health of
+the Black Prince began to fail.
+
+Meantime, Charles the Wise endeared himself to his subjects by
+diminishing their burdens, by encouraging agriculture, and giving greater
+influence to the parliaments he convoked. The contrast was great and
+striking. Conquest in the field was of no avail against the steady
+advance of a popularity so justly founded and nobly sustained, as now
+grew on the vanquished side. The free lances, who had joined the prince,
+if not paid by the treasuries of Pedro, must be satisfied by the wealth
+of their employer. Edward returned to Bordeaux with barren laurels, and
+an empty exchequer. He laid fresh burdens on his unhappy subjects in
+Aquitaine, to pay for the expenses incurred in Castile, and when the
+population of that trampled province compared their position with that
+of their neighbours under the crown, dissatisfaction took a wider range,
+and they complained of their rulers, not only as oppressors, but as
+foreigners. The English, indeed, even when the languages were the same,
+never became acclimated in France, and now there was added the great
+distinction of a different tongue; for the Norman portion of the English
+people had now become so small that English at this time was declared to
+be the language of law, as it had long been of religion and commerce.
+Anglo-Saxon bowmen, who never spoke a word of French, served in the
+ranks of the Black Prince, and, of course, offended the nations by their
+brutal contempt for everything they did not understand. The prince,
+therefore, in the midst of failing health and military disappointment,
+perceived that his countrymen were not the masters of the land he
+claimed, but were only forcibly encamped on it.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, END OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+[Sidenote: [1368-1369 A.D.]]
+
+From England no help was to be had. The king was old, and had fallen into
+the hands of a designing favourite, Alice Perrers, and her accomplices,
+who ruled him at their will. And nothing was wanting to the French
+monarch in these favourable circumstances, but warriors who could carry
+his plans into effect. Du Guesclin was a prisoner at Bordeaux, and all
+the wiser spirits in the court advised the prince on no account to let
+so dangerous an enemy go. But Edward was made of penetrable stuff; and
+on one occasion when they were in familiar conversation, he said, if
+the captive could collect a hundred thousand francs, he should be set
+at large--a vast sum in those days; but the sight of Du Guesclin, sword
+in hand, and released from bondage, was worth forty times the amount to
+the French king. The money was sent at once, and Du Guesclin lost no
+time in showing his arm was as strong and his heart as brave as ever. A
+rapid incursion into Spain and the battle of Montiel (March 14th, 1369)
+established Henry of Trastamara once more upon the throne, and freed him
+from the rivalry of Pedro, by the death of that ferocious tyrant. He was
+stabbed to the heart by his infuriated brother, after a personal struggle
+which lasted a long time. Henry was now undisturbed, and attributed his
+prosperity to the favour of the French king. He put the Castilian navy at
+the service of France.
+
+
+_The Peace of Bretigny is Broken (1368-1369 A.D.)_
+
+Charles was not slow in seeing the advantage of his position.
+Strengthened by the gratitude of his new ally, and the general favour
+of all his subjects, he spoke in a tone of defiance and majesty to the
+English prince, which sounded strange in his ears within twelve years
+of the battle of Poitiers. He summoned the prince of Wales to appear
+before his court of peers, as one of the feudatories of the realm, to
+answer for high crimes and misdemeanours. Edward answered, with much
+submission, that he would not fail to obey the summons, but would bring
+sixty thousand men along with him--helmet on head and spear in rest.
+Charles knew too well that this was but a vain boast, for the warrior was
+now too feeble to ride, and advanced in the exorbitance of his claims.
+Edward of England took up the game of brag on behalf of his son, and
+retorted from Windsor by reasserting his claim to the French throne, and
+calling himself, in formal documents, king of England and France once
+more. War was openly declared, and Charles summoned his states in Paris
+(May 9th, 1369). Never was meeting so unanimous and so sedately firm.
+Taxes were voted, forces were raised, and defiance was hurled against
+the English both in their island fastness and the lands they usurped in
+France. The court of peers, consulted in its turn, declared that King
+Edward and his, not having appeared in answer to these summons, the duchy
+of Aquitaine and other English holdings in France should be and were
+confiscated. Every village, in imitation of the enemy they had learned
+to fear, had butts for practice of the bow; games of manly exertion
+were encouraged; freedom was extended to the serfs, and the municipal
+towns were enriched with further privileges. Du Guesclin returned from
+the Spanish triumph, and visited the king. The feeling in favour of
+illustrious birth was then so strong that, though Charles had bestowed
+the highest commands on the Breton soldier, they were offices which gave
+him only a temporary superiority over the forces employed, and implied
+no permanent pre-eminence when peace should be restored. But on this
+occasion a stately assemblage was called. All the princes of the blood,
+nobles of highest rank, chancellors, judges, warriors, were assembled
+in the great hôtel St. Pol, and Charles gave his sword to Du Guesclin,
+and said: “Du Guesclin, take my sword, and use it against my enemies.
+Henceforth you are constable of France.” This was the highest dignity a
+subject could hold, and Bertrand excused himself on account of his humble
+extraction; but Charles persisted, and the Montmorencys, and De Coucys,
+and Courtenays, and Bourbons, thought the sword could not be in better
+wielding, and did obeisance to Sir Bertrand du Guesclin, who was now the
+foremost man in all the land.[n]
+
+
+_The English Invasion (1369-1370 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1369-1370 A.D.]]
+
+The English immediately landed at Calais, while the Black Prince prepared
+another attack upon the south. A French army marched to meet them, but
+refused to engage them and retreated as they advanced. The towns were
+well fortified, and none was taken; the expedition was confined to
+useless devastation of the surrounding country.
+
+In 1370 they returned and the same programme was repeated. The order to
+refrain from combat was so rigorously observed that at Noyon, when one of
+the enemy’s cavalry climbed the ramparts crying out: “My lords, I have
+come to call on you; since you do not condescend to come out of your
+shell, I will come in!” he was allowed to depart safe and sound. Before
+Rheims, before Paris, the English encountered the same stolidity. From
+his refuge at St. Pol, where he had shut himself up, the king could watch
+the burning of the villages. But the brave Clisson himself exclaimed:
+
+“Sire, you have no need to pit your own men against these furies; let
+them wear themselves out. They will not deprive you of your heritage with
+all these rubbish-heaps.”
+
+“Never was a king of France less given to war,” said Edward III; “never
+was one who kept me so busy!” Charles V, in fact, feeble and ailing,
+never held a lance; he was vastly more fond of books. He had the most
+valuable library of the day, 910 volumes carefully guarded behind iron
+bars in a tower of the Louvre. He read the Bible through once every
+year. He corresponded with the pope and sent him presents; and again, to
+quote Froissart,[g] “my lord the king piously marched barefoot in the
+procession, and madame the queen also.” So good a friend of the pope, so
+pious a sovereign, merited the alliance of every bishop of the realm;
+and in fact the majority opened to him the gates of their capitals; even
+those upon whom the English most depended, as the bishop of Limoges,
+comrade of the prince of Wales, turned French.
+
+This last act of treachery exasperated the English. The Black Prince
+swore by the soul of his father that he would enter into no other
+undertaking until he had made Limoges and the other traitors pay dearly
+for their treason. Having arrived before the city, he had part of the
+wall torn down, and his soldiers plunged through the breach into the
+streets. The prince had himself carried in in his litter.
+
+“That was a sad scene,” writes Froissart,[g] “where men, women, and
+children flung themselves at his feet, crying, ‘Mercy, gentle prince.’
+But he was too inflamed with excitement to attend. Their pleading went
+unheard, and all were put to the sword. Never a heart so hard but would
+have wept to have stood in that city of Limoges and witnessed so great
+slaughter; more than three thousand men, women, and children lost their
+heads that day. And may God receive their souls, for martyrs they truly
+were.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1370-1380 A.D.]]
+
+The English grew somewhat calmer at last through their interest in
+a new spectacle: three French cavaliers, with backs to an old wall,
+contended as if in the lists against the duke of Lancaster and the earls
+of Cambridge and Pembroke. The prince of Wales stopped his chariot near
+by, the better to look on; and he allowed the three cavaliers to be
+recommended to mercy. The bishop, the principal author of the treason,
+he also spared. This unfortunate exploit was the Black Prince’s last
+adventure; he languished for a few years, and returned to die in England
+(1376).
+
+The English possessed an excellent infantry, archers whose darts pierced
+the best-made cuirasses, and men-at-arms almost worth a regular cavalry
+by their remarkable discipline and their habituation to concerted
+movement. To these Charles could oppose only an immense throng of nobles
+who, though they might be very brave, were also totally undisciplined.
+The part of wisdom, therefore, was to avoid encounter with large bodies;
+but in the intervals between expeditions he allowed his men to indulge in
+skirmishes. Thus Du Guesclin fought at Pont-Valain with Robert Knolles,
+a redoubtable English partisan (1370), and another corps near Chizey in
+Poitou (1373). Chandos had been killed during the first campaign. Another
+leader of great renown, the captal De Buch, was taken in 1372, near
+Soubise. The French were not always beaten back.
+
+Meanwhile the king had his own battles to fight, and his victories are
+inscribed intact in the _Recueil des Ordonnances_. Under date of 1370 we
+read: “February, 1370, letters according the inhabitants of Rodez the
+right to trade with the entire kingdom free of duty on imports.--March,
+1370, letters to the effect that the inhabitants of Figeac, now on land
+declaring allegiance to Edward, son of the king of England, will not
+have their goods confiscated if they return to French soil; ordinance
+setting forth privileges accorded the city of Montauban.--April, 1370,
+ordinance setting forth privileges accorded the city of Verfeil.--May,
+1370, letters exempting the city of Milhaud from imposts during twenty
+years, and ordinance of privileges accorded the city of Tulle.--June,
+1370, ordinance containing privileges accorded the inhabitants of the
+county of Tartas, the cities of Dorat and Puy-Mirol.--July, 1370,
+ordinances containing privileges accorded the cities of Cahors, Castres,
+Puy-la-Roque, Sarlat, Montégrier, and Salvetat.”
+
+These were Charles V’s implements of war. Among those cities whose doors
+the royal ordinances failed to open prowled his captains with their
+stratagems of war, cajoling and negotiating. Du Guesclin treated in
+secret with the inhabitants of Poitiers, who like those of many other
+towns had remained French at heart, and they allowed him to enter with
+three hundred lances within their walls (1372). Charles at once granted
+titles to all those who afterwards exercised the functions of mayor or
+alderman in that city.
+
+Philip Mansel with one hundred English held La Rochelle. One day while
+dining with the mayor, John Caudourier, he received a letter from the
+king of England. The governor, recognising the royal seal, but being in
+his quality of gentleman unable to read, requested his host to read it
+for him. The mayor read out a message composed by himself to the effect
+that on the following day, August 15th, 1372, the citizens and the
+garrison should pass in review before the square. As soon as Mansel had
+drawn his men from the château, a troop placed in ambush by the mayor
+occupied the citadel. Du Guesclin was there with two hundred lances,
+ready to take possession in the name of France. Some weeks previously the
+Castilian fleet had destroyed an English fleet before La Rochelle.
+
+Nevertheless the confident enemy tried again in 1373. Landing at Calais
+with thirty thousand men, the duke of Lancaster set forth to conquer
+France: he only crossed it. The journey was prosperous as long as it
+lay through the rich provinces of the north; but in the poor and meagre
+central districts deprivation and illness were encountered. At Auvergne
+not a horse remained; at Bordeaux only six thousand men were left: the
+cavaliers as well as foot soldiers had to beg their bread from door to
+door.
+
+The English, disgusted with such warfare, remained away the following
+year; and the year after that they demanded a truce, which lasted up to
+the death of Edward III in 1377. Charles then broke the truce and struck
+a blow. He fitted out five armies and conquered all Guienne, while a
+Castilian fleet manned by French troops ravaged the English counties of
+Kent and Sussex. In 1380 there remained to the enemy only five French
+towns--Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais. At the same time
+Charles the Bad was overwhelmed and saved his Pyrenean kingdom only by
+the ceding of twenty places as a pledge of peace (1379).
+
+
+LAST YEARS OF CHARLES V AND OF DU GUESCLIN
+
+The king of France attempted in Brittany what had served him so well in
+Guienne. June 20th, 1378, he summoned the duke John IV to appear before
+the court of nobles; the duke not appearing, his fief was declared
+forfeit to the crown. The Gascons gave themselves up to France. The
+Bretons would not hear of the alliance. Barons, knights, and esquires
+signed at Rennes, April 26th, 1379, an act of confederation that the
+citizens themselves subscribed.
+
+John IV, although expelled from the country, was recalled. All the
+Bretons in the service of the king--and there was a great number of
+them--abandoned him; even those who had previously promised to second his
+projects turned against him. The old Du Guesclin sent him the constable’s
+sword; and on March 1st, 1380, a treaty of alliance was signed at
+Westminster between England and Brittany. Again an English army landed at
+Calais under the earl of Buckingham, and again it journeyed with impunity
+across the north of France. It had not reached Brittany when Charles V
+died at Vincennes, September 16th, 1380.[l]
+
+Many things had conduced to weaken the health of the too thoughtful
+king. Dissensions among his brothers renewed in Paris the scenes of
+falsehood and partisanship which were going on in London. The influence
+he possessed over Europe as long as the pope resided in Avignon was taken
+from him, first by the removal of Gregory XI to Rome; and, in a short
+time after that, the usefulness of the papal chair in his schemes of
+advancement was altogether destroyed by the schism which broke out at the
+election of the next pope.
+
+France accepted the Frenchman, Clement VII, who resided at Avignon as
+his predecessor had done; and half the rest of Christendom, including
+England, adhered to his Italian rival. This is the commencement of the
+great schism which afforded such vantage-ground, not only to the enemies
+of priestcraft but of Christianity itself. Charles felt the blow equally
+as Christian and king. While mourning this unhappy event, his grief was
+increased by the fall of the constable. Bertrand was besieging one of
+the strong castles in Auvergne which was rebellious against the royal
+authority and strengthened with an English garrison. The commander
+had agreed to surrender if not relieved within a certain time. Fever,
+pain, and anxiety laid Du Guesclin low; and when the appointed day came
+he was lying on his bier, and preparations were making to carry him
+to the grave. The governor, true to his word, hauled down the flag of
+independence, and marched out with all his men, head bare and sword
+drawn, and laid the keys of the fortress on the hero’s coffin. So died
+the best soldier and truest gentleman of France. His last words to his
+comrades who bent over his couch were these: “Remember that whenever you
+are at war, the churchmen, the women, the children, and the poor are not
+your enemies.”[n]
+
+The modern editors of the works of the sieur Le Fevre give the following
+exaggerated estimate of Du Guesclin’s merits:
+
+“Bertrand was the man selected by providence as the instrument by which
+France was to be saved. Such a man deserved to take his place beside the
+kings among the tombs of St. Denis. He has been compared to Turenne;
+both brave and generous, they were like fathers to the men fighting
+under them; and when they were in want, Turenne sold his silver service
+for the benefit of his troops, as Bertrand sold his lands; there is
+some resemblance between these two characters, and the parallel might
+truthfully be carried further. But in reviewing the history of the
+Middle Ages, we find two heroes who much more strongly resemble Du
+Guesclin--Tancred and Richard Cœur de Lion. Examine carefully these
+three men, Tancred, Richard, and Du Guesclin, and you will find the
+same courage, the same boldness, the same rashness, the same contempt
+for danger, the same self-abnegation in victory; you will see three men
+who, on the battle-field, kill men as easily as an autumn wind blows
+down the leaves from the trees, and who, on their return to their tents,
+are as mild and docile as children; for them there is no intoxication
+in triumph, they show no pride in the hour of victory; their brows are
+humble, and you would think them unconscious of their own greatness.
+Bertrand du Guesclin swore ‘by God who suffered on the cross and rose
+again the third day’; Tancred and Richard swore by the Holy Sepulchre,
+and trusting in the justice of their cause, the three knights would rush
+on the enemy with as much confidence as if God himself were speaking to
+them and urging them on. Does not the disinterestedness of Du Guesclin
+remind one of Tancred? How many knights were fed and paid by them--how
+many times they took off their own cloaks to conceal the poverty of some
+needy nobleman! Du Guesclin has all the characteristics of a hero of the
+Crusades; he would figure worthily in the Christian _Iliad_ of the poet
+of Sorrento.”[o]
+
+The entire secret of Charles’ success was reliance on his people; and
+perhaps the most valuable portion of this reliance was in the fact that
+in the word “people” he included the whole population of France. This
+great word was not limited, in his interpretation of it, to the taxpaying
+inhabitants of the towns or free labourers on the farms. The very serfs
+on the soil were fellow-countrymen of the great successor of St. Louis.
+His laws had reference as often to the interests of the lowest of his
+subjects as to the rights of the richest cities. He was the first and
+the last to put arms into the hands of the whole nation. Each man had
+his bow and quiver of arrows, his short sword or iron-pointed staff.
+He was openly practised in the use of them, and was taught that it
+was dishonourable for a Frenchman to be unable to defend his wife and
+children with his own hands. The experiment was so successful against
+even such generals as Chandos and the Black Prince, that it might be
+expected to continue one of the standing institutions of the kingdom. But
+these feelings of self-respect were only useful against a foreign enemy,
+and might be dangerous against a domestic master. So, ere many years
+elapsed, the system was abolished; the butts were destroyed, the bows
+and swords withdrawn, for fear the “small people” should find themselves
+too powerful; and the result was--as we shall see--Henry V of England
+and the battle of Agincourt. It was not more in the formation of new
+establishments that Charles showed his wisdom than in the purification
+and improvement of the old. The legalism so strongly encouraged by
+Philip the Fair, as a preservative against the power of the nobles, had
+now become an oppression to the people. The civil servants of the crown
+absorbed a vast portion of the taxes they were employed to raise, and
+the paid offices about the provincial courts and local parliaments were
+innumerable. He diminished them both in number and amount of salary, and
+tried to save his subjects from the intricacies of technical pleadings,
+as almost an equal evil with the violence of lawless force. The only
+people, indeed, he could not bring within the rules of mercy and justice
+were the lords and gentlemen, who were the ornaments of chivalry and the
+strength of his armies. Feudalism, in fact, was dissolving, and chivalry,
+which was its poetic ideal, could not stand the trial of actual war.
+Knights were still mere gladiators--sometimes more for show than action;
+and gentlemen, in our sense of the word, were not yet in existence.[n]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[24] [The continuator of Nangis[d] is responsible for this statement.]
+
+[25] [The French left 11,000 dead on the field of battle. The English
+loss was but 2,500, and they made prisoners of 13 counts, 1 archbishop,
+70 barons, and 2,000 armed men, not counting persons of less importance.]
+
+[26] [Maillart entered into communication with two leaders of the
+dauphin’s party, Pépin des Essarts and John de Charny. All three with
+their men “came properly armed, a little before midnight, to the porte
+St. Denis, where they found the provost of the merchants with the keys
+of the gate in his hand. Upon this, John Maillart said to him, calling
+him by his name, ‘Étienne, what do you do here at this time of night?’
+The provost replied, ‘John, why do you ask it? I am here to take care
+of, and to guard the city, of which I have the government.’ ‘By God,’
+answered John, ‘things shall not go on so: you are not here at this hour
+for any good, which I will now show you,’ addressing himself to those
+near him; ‘for see how he has got the keys of the gate in his hand, to
+betray the city.’ The provost said, ‘John, you lie.’ John replied, ‘It is
+you, Étienne, who lie’; and rushing on him, cried to his people, ‘Kill
+them, kill them: now strike home, for they are all traitors.’ There was
+a very great bustle; and the provost would gladly have escaped, but John
+struck him such a blow with his axe on the head, that he felled him to
+the ground, although he was his comrade, and never left him until he had
+killed him. Six others, who were present, were also killed; the remainder
+were carried to prison. They then put themselves in motion, and awakened
+everyone in the different streets of Paris.”[g]]
+
+[27] [According to Leber,[m] the king’s ransom would equal 247,500,000
+modern francs; and he adds: “This sum, enormous as it is, cannot equal
+the total of the single ransoms that went out of the country during this
+reign.”]
+
+[28] [This famous house consisted of but four dukes: Philip the Bold,
+1363; John the Fearless, 1404; Philip the Good, 1419; and Charles the
+Bold (_le téméraire_), 1467-1477.]
+
+[29] [This story is related by Froissart[g], but, as Martin[b] says, “the
+fact is more than doubtful.” Charles’ biographer, Christine de Pisan,[p]
+is unable to give the cause of the king’s constitutional weakness.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE BETRAYAL OF THE KINGDOM
+
+    Fourteenth century France was the prey of Anarchy, of Civil
+    War, of Foreign Invasion. When one considers the unhappy reigns
+    of Philip of Valois and of John, the captivity of the king, the
+    occupation of France by the English, the insanity of Charles
+    VI, and the crimes of Isabella of Bavaria, one can explain why
+    two centuries separated the literary epoch of France from that
+    of Italy.--VILLEMAIN.[t]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1380-1422 A.D.]]
+
+Charles V was but forty-three years of age when he died. His death was
+a great misfortune for the country, for his eldest son was only twelve
+years old, and intrusted to the care of his three uncles, the dukes of
+Anjou, Burgundy, and Berri, grasping men, each solely preoccupied with
+one subject--the first with the kingdom of Naples where Queen Joanna had
+proclaimed him her successor, the second with the great fief of Flanders
+which he would in time inherit, the third with his pleasures and his
+wealth. The young king, who came to the throne as Charles VI, and who,
+owing to his tender years, was quite at the mercy of his relatives, had,
+on his mother’s side, a fourth uncle, the duke de Bourbon, an excellent
+prince but wholly without influence; and a brother, the duke of Orleans.
+
+During the late king’s last moments, his eldest brother, the duke of
+Anjou, who by virtue of his title would assume the regency, kept himself
+hidden in an adjacent chamber. Scarcely had Charles drawn his last breath
+than the duke seized the crown jewels, and by threatening the treasurer,
+Savoisy, with death, got hold of a number of gold and silver ingots
+which had been sealed up in the walls of the castle of Melun by masons
+who had immediately been got rid of. The year before, while governor
+of Languedoc, he had caused an insurrection by his rapacious acts, and
+in Montpellier alone condemned two hundred citizens to the stake, two
+hundred to the gallows, two hundred to the block, eighteen hundred to the
+loss of their property, and the rest of the town to a fine of 600,000
+francs. The king modified these atrocious sentences and recalled the
+duke. Unfortunately the power of regency belonged to this prince. His
+brothers, like himself, filled their pockets; Burgundy allotted himself
+the government of Normandy and Picardy; Berri, who had already had Berri,
+Auvergne, and Poitou in appanage, took Languedoc and Aquitaine. Thus a
+third of the realm became a field for his rapacity.
+
+[Sidenote: [1380-1382 A.D.]]
+
+A new reign always brings a moment of hope. The abolition of certain
+taxes was demanded, and the duke promised to suppress all those which had
+been instituted since Philip the Fair. He might as well have promised to
+renounce the government of France; the regent did not know how to keep
+his word. One day a mounted crier appeared in the public square, and
+announced that the king’s silver plate had been stolen, promising a large
+reward to whoever recovered it. When a crowd had gathered to discuss
+the news, he cried that the next day a new tax would be levied on all
+merchandise sold, and galloped away at full speed.
+
+The next day, in truth, which was the first of March, 1382, tax-gatherers
+appeared in the market-place and demanded a tax on a bit of cress which
+had just been sold by an old woman. A furious riot at once broke out. The
+rebels rushed to the Hôtel-de-Ville and the arsenal, and armed themselves
+with new mallets that had been stored up there in view of an attack from
+the English. These _maillotins_ were, for the moment, masters of the
+situation; then, as in all popular riots of this time, fury gave way to
+terror and discouragement. The princes, who took the matter in hand,
+executed in secret the most seditious and imposed on others the most
+ruinous fines, with the proceeds of which the duke of Anjou departed for
+Italy. But the new tax was withdrawn and the leaders of the riot were
+punished secretly. The Parisian rising had meantime spread to Rouen,
+Rheims, Châlons, Troyes, and Orleans, where it formed the nucleus of two
+other revolutionary movements--one in the north in Flanders, the other in
+the south in Languedoc.
+
+The duke of Berri had scarcely appeared in his province of Languedoc
+when trouble broke out. The pope interfered and put an end to it, but
+the pope could not stop the executions and cruelties of the governing
+prince. The peasants despoiled of everything by the soldiers commenced a
+sort of _jacquerie_ (peasant revolt). They took refuge in the mountains,
+especially on the slopes of the Cévennes and thence, organised into armed
+bands, rushed down upon the nobles and wealthy inhabitants, giving no
+quarter to those whose hands were not callous with toil. They were called
+the _tuchins_. Affairs in Flanders were still more serious.
+
+
+WAR IN FLANDERS: BATTLE OF ROOSEBEKE (1382 A.D.)
+
+The Flemings had rebelled, in the preceding reign, against their French
+count who amused himself with violating the municipal franchises of
+the country. Peter Dubois and Philip van Artevelde, son of the famous
+brewer, had led with success the insurrection of the “chaperons
+blancs” (white-caps), and at the battle of Bruges (May 3rd, 1382) had
+overturned the last hopes of Count Louis. Philip van Artevelde pushed the
+insurrection with the same boldness and in the same manner as his father.
+Plenipotentiaries from Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges were sent to Richard
+II of England, offering to recognise him as king of France if he would
+come to their aid. For a quarter of a century the breath of revolt had
+been blowing over the middle classes throughout Europe--the enterprise
+of Rienzi at Rome, Wat Tyler in England, then Étienne Marcel and now
+the “Jacques,” the “maillotins,” the “tuchins,” and the “white-caps”!
+Insurrection, smothered in one place, broke out afresh in another, and it
+was to be feared, as Froissart[c] says, “that all nobility and refinement
+would be dead and lost in France as well as in many other countries.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1382-1383 A.D.]]
+
+One day while the dukes of Burgundy and Berri were discussing together
+the dangers of the situation and the necessity for intervention in
+Flanders, and of striking at the roots of the spirit of revolt and
+liberty, the young king entered, with a hawk on his fist. “Well, my
+dear uncles,” said he, “and what are you talking about in such solemn
+council?” “Ah, monseigneur,” replied Berri, “here is my brother of
+Burgundy who complains of the people in Flanders where the wretches have
+turned their lord and nobles out of their heritage. They have a leader
+who calls himself Artevelde, a true Englishman for courage, who has
+besieged a crowd of nobles in Oudenarde, and swears he will never leave
+and will have his will with those in the town unless your power relieve
+them.” “By my faith,” rejoined the king, “I have a great desire to help
+them. For God’s sake, let us go there. I want nothing more than to arm
+myself, for I have never yet been armed, and if I wish to reign with
+power and honour, must I not learn the use of arms?” And he was anxious
+to set out that day or the next.
+
+A great army was soon ready. At its approach all the Flemish towns made
+submission and the people of Ghent had now no resource but to win a
+great battle by throwing themselves upon the enemy with the impetuosity
+of the boar, as they had done at Bruges and as they now tried to do at
+Roosebeke, November 27th, 1382. They were tied one to the other, so as to
+make it impossible to retreat, and advanced in a single battalion. This
+manœuvre had been successful at Bruges against a much smaller number.
+But this time the wings of the great French army folded upon them, and,
+assailed on its side, the battalion was helpless. The lances of the
+cavalry carried much farther than the short Flemish spears, and the
+latter could not reach the enemy which was attacking them. Disorder soon
+reigned supreme in the little cohort surrounded on all sides.
+
+“The men-at-arms,” says Froissart,[c] “knocked down the Flemings with all
+their might. They had well-sharpened battle-axes, with which they cut
+through helmets and disbrained heads; others gave such blows with leaden
+maces that nothing could withstand them. Scarcely were the Flemings
+overthrown when pillagers advanced, who, mixing with the men-at-arms,
+made use of the large knives they carried, and finished slaying whoever
+fell into their hands, without more mercy than if they had been so many
+dogs. There was a large and high mound of the Flemings who were slain;
+and never was there so little blood spilt at so great a battle where
+such numbers were killed.” Twenty-six thousand dead remained upon the
+field and among them the whole battalion of Ghent, including Artevelde.
+Flanders was not laid low by this defeat, for Ghent held out for two
+years more. But the nobles had avenged the shame of their defeat at
+Courtrai; and to efface even the memory of it, on leaving the town which
+had lodged them for a fortnight but where they had found, hanging in the
+churches, the golden spurs of the knights killed in 1302, they gave it to
+the flames after ransacking it. On his own account the duke of Burgundy
+took down from the cathedral a magnificent clock with figures which he
+removed to Dijon and set up in the south transept of the church of Notre
+Dame. It is still there.
+
+
+INSURRECTIONS IN PARIS AND ROUEN
+
+The Paris riots, quite as much as the rising at Ghent, had been put down
+at Roosebeke. The Parisians realised that nothing more would be tolerated
+from them, but hoped nevertheless by showing their strength that nothing
+would be attempted. So they set out to meet the king to the number of
+twenty thousand armed men, who drew up in line of battle beneath the
+heights of Montmartre. At this sight the nobles said to themselves: “Look
+at the fine rabble and its insolence. Why didn’t they come with our army
+to serve the king in Flanders? They kept well out of it, and instead
+of ringing the bells to celebrate our victories, they dare to show
+themselves in arms before their lord.”
+
+Heralds came forward who asked the Parisians: “Where are your leaders?
+Which of you are captains?” The Parisians replied, “We have none other
+than the king and his nobles.” The heralds then demanded whether the
+constable and four barons would be allowed to enter in safety. “Ah, you
+laugh at us,” returned the Parisians; “go, tell them that we are ready
+to receive their commands.” The constable then confronted them. “Well,
+men of Paris,” he said, “who has made you come out thus from the city?
+You look as though you would fight your lord the king.” “My lord,” they
+replied, “we have no such wish and we never had; we only wish to show
+the king the power of his fair city of Paris. He is very young and does
+not know what we could do for him should he ever need us.” “Well said,”
+retorted the constable, “but the king for this once does not wish to see
+you thus. If you would that he enters your city, go back to your homes
+and lay aside your arms.” They obeyed (1383).
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES VI
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+The next day the king arrived. The gates were all wide open; but he
+wished to enter through a breach and had a section knocked out. Then he
+made his way through the streets, helmeted, lance in hand, with the most
+terrible air his young person could assume. Executions began at once;
+first those of the city’s liberties. They took away its franchises, its
+elective magistrates, provost, aldermen, clerk, syndic, centurions, and
+tithing-men; they suppressed the people’s masterships, corporations,
+and brotherhoods; they deprived them of their arms and of the chains
+that made the streets safe. Then followed executions of persons; they
+arrested, made summary investigation, and finished by killing. Three
+hundred of the richest bourgeoisie were drowned, hanged, or decapitated
+with scarcely a form of trial. Noteworthy were the deaths of Nicholas
+le Flamand, one of those who followed Étienne Marcel the day of the
+slaying of the two marshals, twenty-six years before, and of John
+Desmarets, _avocat-général_ in the parliament, one of the negotiators
+of the Peace of Bretigny, and who was worn out in vain efforts between
+the two parties. His trial was iniquitous and his death touching. “When
+Desmarets,” says the monk of St. Denis,[d] “arrived at the place of
+execution, ‘Ask mercy of the king, Master John,’ the people cried, ‘that
+he may forgive your crimes.’ The old man turned to them and replied,
+‘Loyally and well did I serve King Philip his great-grandfather, King
+John, and King Charles, his father; never had these kings anything to
+reproach me with; and this one would reproach me neither, had he the age
+and knowledge of a grown man. I do not believe him responsible in the
+least for this judgment. I have done nothing to ask mercy of him. It is
+God alone from whom I must ask it and I pray him to pardon my sins.’”
+
+[Sidenote: [1383-1388 A.D.]]
+
+The bourgeoisie were brought together and read a long list of their
+misdeeds, with the punishments they deserved. At the moment when terror
+was at its height the two uncles of the king threw themselves at his feet
+and begged for pity. He let himself be influenced, and announced through
+his chancellor that he would change the punishments into fines. “This
+was,” says Mézeray,[e] “the true reason for this _coup de théâtre_!”
+Paris did not get off on less than 400,000 francs, worth to-day about
+20,000,000; at Rouen, Rheims, Troyes, Châlons, Orleans, Sens, in Auvergne
+and Languedoc, the same proceedings took place, especially the enormous
+fines. “And this all went,” says Froissart,[c] “to the profit of the
+duke of Berri and the duke of Burgundy, for the young king was in their
+power!” This blow fell upon the bourgeoisie more disastrously than that
+of 1359, because the government was then in the hands of an intelligent
+man who checked the feudal reaction; in 1383 the princes gave themselves
+a free hand. The upper middle class was decimated and ruined; and when,
+after thirty years, public grievances caused them to essay another
+revolution, they were in no condition to assume its control and left it
+to violent men, who drenched Paris with blood.
+
+In 1384 the count of Flanders died and the duke of Burgundy, his
+son-in-law, inherited his vast dominions. In 1369 Charles V, in order
+to facilitate the marriage of his brother the duke of Burgundy with
+the heiress of the county of Flanders, had abandoned French Flanders
+to him. But at the same time the king exacted an agreement from his
+brother, that the donation would be restored on the death of the latter’s
+father-in-law, Louis de Mâle. But the count of Flanders survived the
+king, and Philip the Bold easily obtained from Charles VI the remission
+of his promise. Henceforth the house of Burgundy will turn all its
+affection towards these rich provinces, and as it finds means for
+aggrandisement in this direction at the expense of the petty German
+princes, it will forget little by little both the stock from which it
+came, and the France which began its greatness.
+
+The following year was employed in immense preparations for an invasion
+of England. They collected, says Froissart, enough ships to make a bridge
+from Calais to Dover; there were fourteen hundred of them. They built a
+whole town of wood, which could be taken apart, piece by piece, in order
+to take an entrenched camp with them. But they let the proper moment for
+crossing over pass, and the project had to be given up, but not until
+enormous sums had been squandered. Another expedition against the duke
+of Gelderland who, for the price of a pension of £400 from England, bade
+defiance to the king of France, cost still more, and came to nothing
+(1388).
+
+
+THE KING ASSUMES THE RULE (1388 A.D.)
+
+The voice of public opinion was still very feeble, but it could be
+heard. On the return from the sad war in Germany, the king called a
+general council in the hall of the palace of the archbishop of Rheims,
+and demanded of those present, in virtue of the obedience they owed
+him, their advice on the conduct of public affairs. Peter de Montaigu,
+cardinal of Laon, took the floor, and praising the king’s good qualities,
+exhorted him to begin the exercise of his absolute power by taking under
+his own control and direction the ministry of war and his own household,
+taking counsel from no one. Others supported the cardinal’s advice;
+Charles declared himself determined to follow it and thanked his uncles
+for the good offices they had rendered him. The king had scarcely left
+Rheims when the cardinal of Laon died by poison.
+
+[Sidenote: [1388-1389 A.D.]]
+
+The former counsellors of Charles V, the “small fry,” the _marmousets_
+as the great lords dubbed them in disdain, Olivier de Clisson, Bureau de
+la Rivière, Le Bègue de Vilaines, John de Novian, and John de Montaigu,
+reassumed, as ministers of state, the direction of affairs. The new
+administration was wise and economical, and stood for internal order and
+foreign peace, but through it the king only became the more prodigal;
+having no longer the pleasures and distractions of war, those of the
+fête and tourney became necessary to him, and these diversions now never
+ceased.[b]
+
+Prodigious sums were needed for the “incomparable” fêtes in which Charles
+VI gloried, and which attracted to Paris the flower of the knights and
+noble ladies of all Christendom. This vast concourse of strangers,
+the stir, the joyful tumult, the dazzling shows intoxicated the young
+nobility and even the people of Paris; the Parisians had their share of
+the rain of gold and recovered in one way what was taken from them in
+another. In the first days of May, 1389, the most magnificent tournament
+which had ever been seen was held at St. Denis on the occasion of the
+knighting of the two sons of the late duke Louis of Anjou, the eldest of
+whom, Louis II, duke of Anjou and count of Provence, was preparing to
+set out to assert his claims to the kingdom of Naples against the heir
+of Charles of Durazzo. Charles VI had endeavoured to realise the most
+brilliant descriptions of the romances and to present to the feudal world
+a complete type of chivalric splendours. The ceremonial of initiation
+to the “holy order of chivalry,” which had almost fallen into disuse
+since the adoption of the custom of conferring the order on the field of
+battle, was reproduced with scrupulous exactness.
+
+In a neighbouring field the lists had been prepared, surrounded with
+wooden galleries for the ladies; and in the great court of the abbey
+a banquet hall had been constructed 192 feet long by 36 wide and hung
+throughout with tapestries of silk and gold. The first day of the
+tournament twenty-two knights in green and gold armour were conducted
+into the lists to the sound of music, by twenty-two fair ladies similarly
+attired and mounted on elegant palfreys; each gave her knight a ribbon of
+her own colours. The contests lasted all day; then the company proceeded
+from the enclosure to the festival hall and after the supper the ladies
+awarded the prize to the two who had done the best. The rest of the
+night was passed in dances and _caroles_[30] and in “pastimes” of a less
+innocent kind. The fête lasted three days and three nights--nights of
+orgy and delirium which rendered the venerable cloisters of St. Denis
+the witnesses of many voluptuous mysteries and which must have strangely
+scandalised the chaste shade of St. Louis in the depths of its tomb.
+
+The jousts and balls were succeeded by a ceremony of a sterner character
+but equally sumptuous: the young king loved to vary his emotions and his
+shows. He had been seized with “a great love” for the memory of Bertrand
+du Guesclin, a feeling which was shared by the whole nation: although
+nine years had passed since the death of that great captain, and though
+Charles V had honoured him with a splendid funeral, Charles VI insisted
+on recelebrating the obsequies of Messire Bertrand in presence of all the
+French and foreign nobility whom the tournament had brought together.
+
+The fêtes of St. Denis had not satiated Charles VI; he remembered that
+the queen his wife had not yet been crowned: this was a fine occasion to
+indulge in fresh magnificences. He resolved to have Isabella anointed at
+Paris, and to compensate himself for the paucity of ceremonial which had
+been accorded to the queen’s first entry into the capital. He notified
+his intention “to those of Paris,” in order that they might be prepared,
+and charged the old queen, Blanche of Navarre, widow of Philip of Valois,
+to arrange the ceremony. Accordingly Blanche ordered the _Chronicles of
+St. Denis_ to be examined for everything which they reported concerning
+the anointing of queens in olden times. Froissart[c] and the monk of
+St. Denis[d] have vied with one another in describing the queen’s
+procession which arrived before St. Denis the 22nd of August, 1389,
+with all the princesses, some in painted and gilded litters, others on
+palfreys marvellously caparisoned. The king’s uncles, who sought every
+opportunity to approach the supreme power, had presented themselves at
+court with their families; the dukes and all the great nobles escorted
+the litters which entered Paris to the sound of a thousand instruments
+and between two rows of horsemen clad, some in scarlet silk, others
+in green silk: they were on the one side the members of the king’s
+household, on the other twelve hundred citizens of Paris led by the
+provost of the merchants. Across the whole of the rue St. Denis and the
+Grand Font (the Pont au Change) were hung draperies of silk, camlet, and
+cendal (taffetas), which “shut out the sky”; all the houses were hung
+with silks and tapestries of a high warp and the windows were crowded
+with women adorned with dresses of brilliant materials and with gold
+necklaces. Fountains of milk and perfumed wine flowed at the street
+corners, and beautiful young girls offered the passers-by to drink from
+golden goblets. At the Porte St. Denis, at the _moûtier_ (monastery)
+of the Trinity, at the second Porte St. Denis or Painters’ Gate (Porte
+aux Peintres), at the church of St. Jacques de l’Hôpital, at the Grand
+Châtelet, platforms, wooden castles, and richly ornamented theatres had
+been erected; one represented God in his paradise and the starry heavens
+filled with angels who sang “very melodiously” and congratulated in rhyme
+“the lady enclosed amongst _fleurs-de-lis_”; another “showed” the king of
+France and his twelve peers, King Richard Cœur de Lion, and King Saladin
+with his Saracens. A rope had been stretched from one of the towers of
+Notre Dame to the Pont au Change: as the queen passed the bridge a man
+dressed as an angel, seated on this rope, descended from the towers of
+Notre Dame, passed through an opening in the awning which covered the
+bridge, placed “a beautiful wreath” on the queen’s head, and “was drawn
+up again through the said opening as if he were returning to heaven.”
+
+The procession presented itself before Notre Dame, whence it returned
+to the Palais, and the next day the queen was anointed and crowned in
+the Sainte-Chapelle, by the archbishop of Rouen. The descriptions of the
+banquets which took place at the “marble table” in the great hall of
+the Palais, and of the jousts at the Hôtel St. Pol are to be found in
+Froissart.[c] The king had adopted a golden sun with rays as his device:
+he was one of the victors in the jousts. The rich presents of the city of
+Paris to the queen and the duchess of Touraine, the king’s sister-in-law,
+contributed to pay for the gaiety of the court; the Parisians offered the
+princesses gold and silver plate to the value of sixty thousand crowns:
+they doubtless calculated on being repaid for this munificence by a large
+diminution of the taxes; but their expectation was cruelly deceived. The
+king left Paris a few days later, and as a farewell to his people left an
+increase of the gabelle and an ordinance which prohibited, under pain of
+death, the use of silver coins of twelve and four deniers which had been
+in circulation since the reign of the late king.[f]
+
+
+HATRED OF THE NOBLES FOR THE MINISTRY (1389-1392 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1389-1392 A.D.]]
+
+The ministry attempted to combat this state of affairs or at least to
+extenuate its disastrous effects. It economised in state expenditure to
+make up for the king’s extravagance, and the state was the gainer by the
+arrangement.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES VI]
+
+The ministers gave Paris back its provost and conferred upon the
+bourgeoisie the right to acquire fiefs, as though they were nobles, and
+deprived the duke of Berri of his government in Languedoc, where four
+hundred thousand inhabitants had fled into Aragon. Not being able to
+inflict further punishment on Berri, they caused his treasurer Bétisac
+to be put to death. This Bétisac had merited the hate of all by his
+exactions. But they did not dare condemn him as an embezzler, since the
+duke of Berri had authorised all his acts and it was on the duke himself
+that the complaints of the people should have fallen. So they laid a trap
+for Bétisac, by advising him to declare heretical opinions, for which he
+would be summoned to ecclesiastical jurisdiction which would exculpate
+him. The accused man followed this advice and they burned him for a
+heretic instead of hanging him for a thief.
+
+The “small fry” ruled the kingdom for four years. Four years in which
+the king’s uncles and the great nobles had to keep their hands off the
+management of affairs, and longed for an opportunity to get back into
+power. Finally an Angevin nobleman, Peter de Craon, mortal enemy of the
+leader of the marmousets, the constable Olivier de Clisson, placed his
+personal hatred at the service of the aristocracy’s political resentment.
+
+On June 13th, 1392, at the close of a fête given at the Hôtel St. Pol,
+the constable lingered a little to take leave of the king and the duke
+of Orleans, and then with eight attendants, two carrying torches, made
+his way towards the rue Ste. Catherine. Here Peter de Craon was waiting
+for him, with forty mounted brigands, scarcely a half dozen of whom knew
+what was expected of them. When Clisson appeared, Craon’s men threw
+themselves on his attendants and extinguished their torches. Clisson
+at first thought it a joke of the duke of Orleans, whom he supposed to
+have followed him. “My lord,” he said, “you are young, we must pardon
+you. These are the pranks of youth.” But Peter de Craon cried, “Die,
+die, Clisson; here you shall die.” “Who art thou,” asked Clisson, “who
+speakest such words?” “I am Peter de Craon, your enemy. You have many
+times provoked me, and shall here pay for it. Forward,” he called to
+his men, “I have him whom I wanted and will have.” The constable tried
+to defend himself but was soon wounded and thrown from his horse. In
+falling, his head came against the unlatched door of a bake-shop, which
+gave way. This saved him. The assassins thought him dead; they had,
+moreover, recognised the constable, and fearful of having attacked so
+powerful a personage, they fled with Craon to his castle of Sablé in
+Maine.
+
+The news of the outrage was brought to the king as he was preparing for
+bed. He called his guard, had torches lighted and went to the bake-shop
+where Clisson was beginning to recover consciousness. “Constable,”
+said the king, “how do you feel?” “Weak and poorly, sire.” “And who
+brought you to this pass?” “Peter de Craon, sire, and his accomplices,
+treacherously and with no warning.” “Constable, nothing will be paid more
+dearly or amends made for than this thing.”
+
+Peter de Craon, who no longer felt himself safe in the castle of Sablé,
+sought refuge with the duke of Burgundy, who, called upon to deliver
+up the rascal, caused him to be hid and replied that he knew nothing
+whatever of him. Charles immediately collected an army, swearing to take
+no rest until he had punished this rebellion. The dukes of Burgundy and
+Berri endeavoured to block this enterprise. Their hatred towards Clisson
+had grown since they learned he possessed great wealth. The constable,
+believing himself about to die, had made his will, and besides his fiefs
+and heritage he had disposed of 1,700,000 francs’ worth of personal
+property. But the king paid no heed to the delays and bad will of his
+uncles and to the fears which his physicians expressed for his health. He
+led his army as far as Le Mans.
+
+
+THE KING GOES MAD: THE PRINCES RETURN TO POWER (1392 A.D.)
+
+It was the middle of summer, during the prolonged August heat. As the
+king was crossing the forest, a man dressed all in white seized his
+bridle and cried, “Stop, noble king, go no further, thou art betrayed.”
+This sudden apparition startled the king greatly; a little farther on the
+page who carried the royal lance nodded in the saddle. The lance fell
+and struck a shield a resounding blow. At the sound of arms the king
+trembled, drew his sword and cried, “Quick, quick, upon the traitors!”
+He thrust his naked sword at his brother the duke of Orleans, who barely
+avoided it. One of his knights finally had to seize him from behind. They
+disarmed him. He no longer knew anyone.
+
+The king was mad. Some said it was sorcery, but the king himself was to
+blame. Possessor at twelve years of age of that unlimited power which is
+often the undoing of the strongest characters, he was at twenty-four worn
+out with every pleasure and emotion in the range of human experience from
+debauch to battle-field. His constitution was ruined, his mind shaken; a
+violent shock had deranged everything.
+
+When it was hinted that the king was the victim of poison or sorcery,
+“No,” exclaimed the duke of Berri, “he is neither poisoned nor bewitched,
+except by bad advice.” These words sealed the fate of the marmousets. A
+few days later Clisson demanded of the duke of Burgundy the pay of the
+knights who had accompanied the king on his last expedition. The duke
+looked him through and through, and said, “Clisson, you need not trouble
+yourself about the affairs of the kingdom, for without your help it
+will be well governed. It was an evil day for the realm when you first
+meddled with it. How the devil have you got so much money, that you were
+recently able to will away 1,700,000 francs? Neither his majesty, my
+brother Berri, nor I with all our present power have been able to acquire
+so much. Leave my presence and let me never see you again, for were it
+not for my honour I would put your other eye out.” Clisson hastened to
+the safety of his castle in Brittany, while parliament declared him
+guilty of extortion, and banished him from the country, imposing a fine
+of 100,000 silver marks. The sire de Montaigu, warned by this experience,
+sought refuge at Avignon. Bureau de la Rivière, the sire de Novian, and
+Le Bègue de Vilaines were arrested and imprisoned in the Château St.
+Antoine (the Bastille).
+
+[Sidenote: [1392-1396 A.D.]]
+
+The king’s uncles came again into full possession of the government: what
+would they do? They signed a twenty-eight years’ truce with England in
+1395 and gave King Richard II the infant princess Isabella, Charles VI’s
+daughter, in marriage. But four years later (1399) the English deposed
+and afterwards, it is said, strangled their king, and this valuable
+alliance was broken.[b]
+
+The signing of the truce of 1395 was a real assurance of peace in France,
+even in Brittany, where Clisson, banished to his fiefs, had armed his
+vassals at once and attacked John de Montfort. But the duke of Burgundy
+appeared in person at Ancenis, mediated between the two parties, and made
+them in January, 1395, sign a reciprocal promise to lay down their arms.
+Shortly after this John IV attended the meeting of Charles VI and Richard
+II at Guines (where the truce was arranged) and obtained from the English
+the restitution of Brest which had only been pledged to them.
+
+With peace thus restored France was now able to occupy herself more
+particularly with the great questions then agitating all Europe: that
+of the papal schism of which all Christendom was longing for the end,
+and that of the crusade--or rather the barrier which it was felt must
+be raised against the conquests of the Ottoman Turks in the European
+provinces of the Greek empire.[g]
+
+Forty years before the Ottoman Turks had crossed the Bosporus, taken
+Adrianople and a portion of the Danube valley. Now they were threatening
+Hungary. A crusade was therefore resolved upon, and put under the
+direction of a young man of twenty-four, John, count of Nevers, who
+later became the famous duke of Burgundy (John the Fearless). Young and
+old, equally short-sighted, gaily descended the Danube, taking the whole
+matter as a pleasure excursion. When they arrived at Nicopolis, King
+Sigismund of Hungary advised them to meet the advance troops of the enemy
+with his Hungarian foot-soldiers and light cavalry, and to reserve the
+knights for the real Ottoman army which would appear afterwards. But no
+one was willing to forego the honour of striking the first blow. So all
+opposed themselves to the advance-guard, threw themselves upon the first
+enemy who appeared, and arrived exhausted and in disorder at the top of
+a hill where they were received by the redoubtable janissaries which
+Amura had just organised, and who made short work of the breathless,
+disordered troops. It was said that Bajazet put ten thousand captives[31]
+to death in his own presence, saving only from the massacre the count of
+Nevers and twenty-four nobles whom he ransomed (1396).[b] Consternation
+was universal throughout France, especially in Burgundy. Duke Philip
+strangely abused the obligations of feudalism which compelled vassals
+to ransom a captive lord or his son and raised as much from his vassals
+as from the royal treasury, more than double the 200,000 ducats which
+Bajazet demanded for the freedom of his captives.[f]
+
+
+DOMESTIC TROUBLES AND SCANDALS
+
+[Sidenote: [1396-1407 A.D.]]
+
+The government of the aristocracy was not fortunate: its acts were
+discrediting it abroad; its quarrels were weakening it at home.
+
+Isabella of Bavaria was but fifteen years old when she came from Germany
+to wed Charles VI. Without parents, without a guide in the midst of a
+corrupted court, she learned its morals quicker than she learned its
+tongue, and she lived solely for luxury and pleasure. Years did not
+render her conduct more circumspect, or her thoughts more serious. From
+pleasure she descended to debauchery. Charged after the king’s affliction
+with the keeping of his person, she used the authority obtained through
+the melancholy situation of her husband to satisfy her passions, her
+vices, and her vengeances. It will soon be seen how fatal this foreign
+queen was to France.
+
+The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, kept the sovereign authority until
+his death in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, wished to receive, with
+his heritage, his father’s influence in the government, but the duke of
+Orleans, the king’s brother, all powerful with the queen--master, through
+her, of the king and the dauphin; chief of the nobility, and brilliant
+knight himself--had no intention of renouncing the power to anyone. So
+there soon sprang up, between John the Fearless and Orleans, a rivalry
+that threatened to become civil war right in the midst of Paris. Each
+collected his arms and fortified his palace; they were about to fight
+when the aged duke of Berri interposed. He brought Burgundy to the
+bedside of Orleans who was lying ill and made the two men embrace and
+talk and take food together. This reconciliation took place November the
+20th, 1407; on the 23rd Louis of Orleans fell, assassinated by John the
+Fearless.
+
+For more than four months, the duke had been planning this murder. He had
+bought, in the city, a house for the ostensible purpose of storing wine,
+corn, and other provisions, but really concealed in it seventeen hired
+assassins. This house, situated in the rue Vieille du Temple, near the
+Porte Barbette, lay in the path of the duke of Orleans while returning
+from the king’s residence to his own palace. Wednesday, the 23rd of
+November, at eight in the evening, the duke of Orleans left the Hôtel
+Montaigu on muleback. The night was very dark, and he was accompanied
+only by two equerries mounted on one horse and four foot attendants
+carrying torches. Although it was not late, all the shops were closed.
+The duke, keeping a little behind his people, was singing softly to
+himself and toying with his glove when suddenly the assassins, concealed
+by the corner of a house, rushed upon him crying, “Die! Die!”
+
+“I am the duke of Orleans,” the duke shouted. “Then we want you,” they
+replied, striking him. A page tried to cover the prince with his body
+and was killed. A woman who witnessed the affair from a window screamed
+murder. One of the assassins called to her, “Shut up, wretch.” Then by
+the light of the torches she saw come out of the duke of Burgundy’s
+recently bought house, a large man with a red hat over his eyes, who,
+with a lantern, looked to see that there had been no slip as in the case
+of the constable De Clisson. But this time the murderers had well earned
+their wage. The body was literally hacked to pieces; the right arm was
+cut in two, the severed left wrist was thrown to one side, the skull
+split from ear to ear, and the brains scattered on the pavement. At this
+the man in the red hat said to the others, “Put out your lights and let
+us go, he is dead.” They put their torches back into the house they had
+occupied, strewed caltrops behind them to prevent pursuit, and retired to
+the Hôtel d’Artois in the rue Mauconseil.
+
+[Sidenote: [1407-1409 A.D.]]
+
+The next day John the Fearless went, like all the princes, to see
+the corpse, and sprinkled it with holy water, at the church of the
+Blancs-Manteaux. “Never,” he said, at sight of the dead, “has so foul a
+murder been committed in this realm.” He wept at the funeral and held a
+corner of the pall. Some days later, however, when the provost of Paris
+announced in the council that he would make every effort to find the
+assassins if they would give him permission to search the palaces of the
+princes, John the Fearless became confused and grew pale. Then it was
+he drew aside the duke of Berri and the king of Sicily, “I did it,” he
+whispered, “the devil tempted me.” This state of mind soon passed, and
+the duke of Burgundy resolved to admit and justify his crime. In fact
+the next day he boldly appeared at the council of the princes, but his
+uncle Berri met him at the door and said, “My good nephew, don’t come in
+this time. I don’t want you here.” The thought came to the guilty man
+that perhaps they were going to arrest him, and he fled at once to his
+possessions in Flanders. From there he proclaimed, preached, and wrote to
+the world that he had but forestalled an ambush of the duke of Orleans. A
+Franciscan monk, the learned John Petit, was the following year charged
+with the proof in twelve arguments, in honour of the twelve Apostles,
+that if the duke was killed it was for the glory of God, since he was a
+heretic; for the good of the king, since he wished to usurp the throne,
+and for the public welfare, since the state was rid of a tyrant.
+
+To this strange apology for the murder, from the pen of a monk, Burgundy
+added a bloody victory.[b] An insurrection of the people of Liège against
+their bishop, a creature of the duke, called the latter from Paris. His
+influence had caused John, a younger brother of the house of Bavaria, to
+be elected bishop; John took deacon’s orders to entitle him to assume
+the episcopal sovereignty, but he refused to be priested, preferring the
+helmet to the mitre. The Liègeois were discontented at having a profane
+knight in lieu of a bishop; they entreated and petitioned John to take
+upon him the sacerdotal character. He laughed at them. They rebelled and
+drove him out. Such was the crime of the Liègeois. The duke of Burgundy
+marched against them; a battle was fought at Hasbain, in which the
+burgesses of Liège were as unfortunate as those of Ghent had been at
+Roosebeke. It is said that twenty-six thousand dead were counted on the
+field of battle.[h]
+
+This was the best argument in Burgundy’s defence; he returned to Paris
+promising the people an immediate abolition of taxes, and extracted from
+the king a letter of forgiveness, in which Charles VI declared that he
+cherished no resentment towards the author of his brother’s death (Peace
+of Chartres, March, 1409).
+
+The duchess of Orleans, the beautiful and gentle Valentine Visconti, was
+at least spared this last shame. The death of her husband killed her. She
+had taken for her motto, “_Rien ne m’est plus; plus ne m’est rien_,” and
+“died in 1408” [says Juvénal des Ursins[i]] “in anger and grief.”
+
+The duke of Orleans was not worth much regret. His administration had
+been as deplorable as his morals. He had declared war on England, and
+had not carried it out, and had used this pretext for an increase of
+taxes which he himself had appropriated. Burgundy had bitterly opposed
+this new burden, and to appease the people, and especially to lay his
+own hand on the rich spoil, he now sent the superintendent of finances
+to the scaffold (1408). Then he restored the Parisians their ancient
+free constitution, the rights to elect their provost and to organise a
+citizen militia under elective leaders, and even to hold noble fiefs with
+the privileges thereto attached. Besides this he was extremely popular,
+which state of affairs he increased by showing citizens, even the least
+important, such consideration as they had never before known. These were
+the market people who formed, in Paris, the strength of the Burgundian
+party. Feudalism never forgave John the Fearless for having sought
+such support, no more than it did for having compromised seignorial
+inviolability by slaying a prince of the blood, the king’s brother. A
+considerable faction of the nobility turned against him. The avengers of
+Orleans ranged themselves under the banner of the father-in-law of one
+of his sons, the count d’Armagnac, who gave the party its name (1410).
+Thus, with the king mad, the queen ignored and incapable, the dauphin
+threatened by his excesses with his father’s end, the first prince of
+the blood stained with an infamous murder, there was no government--only
+armed factions, and war at home and abroad. Such was the state of France;
+nothing but disaster could come of it.
+
+
+CIVIL WAR
+
+[Illustration: SHIELD USED IN THE FIRST PART OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+From 1410 to 1412 the two factions attacked each other twice, and twice
+came to a settlement (Peace of Bicêtre, November, 1410; Peace of Bourges,
+July, 1412). Both sides made advances to the English to win over the
+country’s enemy.[b] The Gascon soldiers, preferring a plundering life in
+the midst of France to their own rude and poor homes, were constant to
+their banners. The duke of Burgundy, on the other hand, could not get
+his Flemings to quit their families and crafts for more than forty days;
+he was therefore obliged to call in the English. Henry IV sent a body of
+archers to his aid, with whom he drove his enemies from the north of the
+capital (February, 1410). In May we find Henry in league with the Orleans
+party, who were to restore to the English, in recompense, all their
+ancient possessions in France. The emissary who bore this treaty was
+seized at Boulogne; its contents were made public, and great odium was in
+consequence excited against the Armagnacs. The hapless monarch, Charles,
+recovering for a moment from his frenzy, joined in this indignation; he
+called an army, displayed the oriflamme, and marched with the Burgundians
+to besiege Bourges. The campaign, as usual, ended without an action, in
+a kind of treaty. Both parties felt the thirst of pillage and of blood;
+both wanted the courage to decide their differences in a general combat.
+No period of history manifests such an utter want of talent; no prowess
+was shown except in tournaments; no statesmanship save in the planning
+of a murder. Although the passions of men possessed of power and means
+were excited to the utmost, yet not a decisive blow was struck in policy
+or in arms. The fortune of the struggling parties was left to events--to
+chance. Success and reverse, the former at least, if not both, unearned,
+alternately ensued; conquerors and conquered pursued and fled, rolling
+like destructive waves over the necks of a prostrate and ruined people.
+Civil wars in general, destructive as they are of peace and prosperity,
+beget at least the virtue of courage; yet it was not so in France. The
+peasantry were crushed and trodden down; the nobles and knights feared
+to trust them with arms. The Bretons and the Gascons, natives of distant
+provinces, were the only foot-soldiers, the sole infantry of France at
+this time; and a handful of English sufficed in these quarrels to give
+the advantage to either party.[h]
+
+[Sidenote: [1410-1413 A.D.]]
+
+In this condition of affairs there was much to recall the worst days
+of king John, and to better them the bourgeoisie took the initiative,
+parliament, as in 1356, holding back. The University of Paris was very
+proud of having recently accomplished the deposition of two anti-popes,
+the election of Alexander V, a former doctor of the Sorbonne, and the
+convocation of a general council for the consideration of reforms within
+the church; and the bourgeoisie thought it could pacify the state as
+it hoped to have pacified Christianity. It obtained from Charles VI,
+in one of his lucid moments, a decree ordering all the princes back to
+their provinces and forbidding them to leave. But in a few months the
+war recommenced. The Armagnacs committed a thousand atrocities, telling
+their victims to seek vengeance from the “poor mad king.” The body of
+citizens asked, in the king’s council, that the defence of Paris might
+be committed to a friend of Burgundy’s, the count of Saint-Pol, and the
+latter, not very sure of the upper middle classes, wished to overcome
+them by means of the populace. He took refuge in the great and rich
+corporation of the butchers which he authorised to raise five hundred men
+for the municipal defence. The butchers armed their servants and all the
+men employed about the slaughter-houses. This violent mob, accustomed to
+the sight of blood and killing, and who made a slaughterer named Caboche
+their chief, let themselves be led for a time by their masters and the
+learned men of the University of Paris. Then Paris presented the most
+singular and terrible spectacle. One day the mob presented itself at the
+dauphin’s palace, forced him to appear on a balcony and through their
+spokesman, the old surgeon, John de Troyes, made him listen to their
+demands. He must send away his evil companions; lead a more regular life
+in every way; and take care of his health, and of his soul. The butchers
+charged themselves with superintending this change of morals which would
+bring with it, according to their ideas, the reformation of the kingdom.
+They set a watch around the Hôtel St. Pol for the safety of the king
+and monseigneur the duke of Guienne, and if they heard the sound of
+instruments and dancing in the night they entered boldly to put a stop to
+it, and preserve decency and order. But these rough and violent natures
+were not always content with words. If they had compassion on “that good
+fellow, the dauphin,” they broke out against those who were corrupting
+him and removed them violently from the palace and dragged them before
+the parliament for justice, even sometimes administering it on the way to
+those who had displeased them the most.
+
+However, the able members of the party drew up, for the repression of
+abuses, the ordinance of 1413, known as the Cabochian ordinance, whose
+application would have been successful, if in making elections universal
+it had not made its administration impossible (May 25th). “But,” says
+Augustin Thierry, “men were found to conceive that great reform charter,
+joint work of the citizens and the university, while none could be found
+to execute and maintain it. Wise men and those accustomed to affairs
+had at this time neither will power nor political energy. They kept
+themselves apart, and all action rested upon fanatics and the unruly
+who precipitated, through their intolerable excesses, a reaction which
+brought about their fall and put a stop to all reform.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1413-1415 A.D.]]
+
+What the bourgeoisie respected, the mob outraged. It proscribed not
+only vice and immorality, but wealth, and mingled pillage and murder
+with its reforms; it disgraced finally those who had employed it and
+who, blushing at the association, now preferred the Armagnacs to the
+Cabochians. Called upon by all men of moderation the Armagnacs put a stop
+to the mob’s excesses, but at the same time overthrew the reform measures
+of the bourgeoisie (September 5th, 1413). John the Fearless fled again
+to his Flemish provinces.[b] Charles VI marched in person against him
+at the head of the Armagnacs, besieged and took Soissons, of which the
+inhabitants of every age and sex were inhumanly massacred. Arras was next
+invested,[32] but the Armagnacs becoming disgusted at the tediousness
+of the siege, as the Burgundians had been the previous year at that of
+Bourges, an accommodation ensued, the duke of Burgundy making verbal
+submissions, and promising never to show himself in Paris again. (Treaty
+of Arras, September, 1414.)
+
+
+HENRY V INVADES FRANCE--A FRENCH VIEW
+
+[Sidenote: [1415 A.D.]]
+
+Whilst France was thus occupied and torn by civil contests, Henry V had
+succeeded, in 1413, to the throne of England.[h] He now judged the time
+come to interfere in the French mêlée. He stood, moreover, in need of a
+foreign war to settle himself on the throne his father had usurped. Since
+the great campaigns of the preceding century, the idea of a war with
+France had ever been popular in England. Therefore, when Henry proposed
+a serious expedition, he obtained easily from parliament six thousand
+men-at-arms and twenty-four thousand archers, with whom he debarked at
+Harfleur on the 14th of August, 1415. After a heroic defence which lasted
+a whole month, Harfleur, unsuccoured, was compelled to give up. But Henry
+V had lost fifteen thousand men (two thousand men-at-arms, thirteen
+thousand archers)--the half of his army. Too feeble now for any great
+undertaking, he resolved to march across country to Calais, and to throw
+the French knighthood a new and insolent defiance.
+
+The English left Harfleur on the 8th of October, traversing the Pays de
+Caux, not without some resistance, although they took nothing but food
+and wine from the towns for fear of arousing the inhabitants. On the 13th
+they arrived at Abbeville intending to cross the Somme there, but they
+found the ford at Blanquetaque so well defended this time that they were
+obliged to ascend the stream as far as Amiens.
+
+Near Nesle a peasant pointed out a ford that could be reached across a
+marsh. It was a difficult and dangerous passage; they would be lost if
+attacked. But the French army was still far away. Besides, the nobles
+would not have wished a combat in this swamp; they were seeking a fine
+battle in open field and to this end asked king Henry for a day and place
+for a fight. To which the Englishman replied that it was not necessary to
+name either day or place, since every day would find him on the field.
+
+In spite of this answer, they feared, in the French army, that the
+enemy would escape; and to make sure they should not, the princes took
+up a position between the villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt [French
+Azincourt], where the English must necessarily pass, on a narrow plain,
+newly ploughed and all sodden with rain.[b]
+
+On Thursday, the 24th of October, the English having passed Blangy
+learned that the French were close at hand, and thought they were about
+to attack them. The men-at-arms dismounted from horseback, and all of
+them kneeling down, and lifting up their hands to heaven, prayed to God
+to take them into his keeping. Nothing, however, took place as yet, the
+constable not having reached the French army. The English proceeded to
+quarter themselves at Maisoncelle, still nearer to Agincourt. Henry V
+disencumbered himself of his prisoners, saying to them, “If your masters
+survive, you will present yourself again at Calais.”
+
+At last, they discovered the huge French army, its fires and its banners.
+There were, according to the estimate of the eye-witness, Lefebvre de St.
+Rémy,[j] fourteen thousand men-at-arms, in all perhaps fifty thousand
+men; thrice the number of the English. The latter had eleven or twelve
+thousand men remaining of the fifteen thousand that had marched from
+Harfleur, ten thousand of them at least being archers.
+
+The Welshman, David Gam, the first who brought word to the king of the
+enemy’s presence, being asked how many men the French might have, is said
+to have replied, “Enough to be killed, enough to be taken prisoners,
+enough to fly.” An Englishman, Sir Walter Hungerford, could not forbear
+from observing that it would not have been amiss to have brought ten
+thousand more stout archers; there were as many in England who would have
+desired no better. But the king replied peremptorily, “Now in our Lord’s
+name, I would not have one man more. The number we have is that which he
+has willed; these folks place their confidence in their multitude, and I
+in him who so often gave victory to Judas Maccabæus.”
+
+The English having still a night at their disposal, employed it usefully
+in making their preparations, and providing as well as possible for both
+body and soul. First, they rolled up the banners for fear of the rain,
+and took off and folded up the handsome coats of arms they had put on for
+the fight. Then in order to pass the cold October night in comfort, they
+opened their baggage and laid straw under them, which they procured from
+the neighbouring villages. The men-at-arms fitted the rivets of their
+armour, the archers applied fresh strings to their bows. They had for
+several days employed themselves in cutting and sharpening the stakes
+which they usually planted before them to stop the advance of cavalry.
+Amidst all their preparations for victory, these brave men did not forget
+their souls’ weal, but set their accounts in order with God and their
+consciences. They confessed hastily, those at least whom the priests
+could attend, and all this was done without noise, in whispers. The king
+had commanded silence, under penalty of forfeiture of their horses for
+the gentlemen, and of loss of the right ear for those of lower degree.
+
+It was otherwise on the French side, where the time was spent in
+making knights. In every direction there were great fires which showed
+everything to the enemy; a confused din of people shouting and calling to
+each other; a bustling mob of valets and pages. Many gentlemen passed the
+night on horseback in their heavy armour, no doubt to avoid soiling it in
+the deep mud, which with the cold rain chilled them to the bones.
+
+
+MICHELET’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (OCTOBER 25TH, 1415)
+
+On the morning of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian’s day, October 25th,
+1415, the king of England heard three masses, bareheaded, but otherwise
+in full armour. “For it was his custom,” says John de Vaurin,[k] “to
+hear three masses each day, one after the other.” He then put on a
+magnificent helmet with an imperial gold crown. He rode without spurs
+on a gray palfrey, and made his men advance over a field of green corn,
+where the ground was less spoiled by the rain, the whole army forming
+one body, with the few lances he had in the centre, flanked by bodies
+of archers. He then rode slowly along the line, speaking a few brief
+sentences: “You have a good cause; I am come but to demand my right.
+Remember that you belong to old England; that your kindred, your wives
+and children are awaiting you there; see that you return to them with
+good cheer. The kings of England have always fared well in France. Look
+to the honour of the crown; look to yourselves. The French say they will
+cut off three fingers from each archer’s hand.”
+
+[Illustration: MAP ILLUSTRATING THE MARCH OF HENRY V AND THE BATTLE OF
+AGINCOURT
+
+(The dotted line indicates a doubtful part of the route.)]
+
+The ground was in so bad a condition that no one was disposed to attack.
+The king of England parleyed with the French, offering to renounce the
+title of king of France, and to surrender back Harfleur, provided he were
+given Guienne, with some few convenient additions, Ponthieu, a daughter
+of the king, and 800,000 crowns. While this parleying between the two
+armies was going on the English archers were securing their stakes.
+
+The two armies formed a strange mutual contrast. On the French side were
+three enormous squadrons, like so many forests of lances, following
+each other in lengthened file through the narrow plain; at their head
+the constable, the princes, the dukes of Orleans, Bar, and Alençon, the
+counts of Nevers, Eu, Richemont, and Vendôme, a multitude of lords, a
+dazzling iris of enamelled armour, escutcheons, banners, the horses
+fantastically disguised in steel and gold. The French, too, had archers,
+men of the commonalty; but where were they to be placed? Every post was
+numbered, and no one would give up his own; these men would have been
+a blot upon so noble an assemblage. There were cannon, but it does not
+appear that they were made use of; probably there was no place for them
+either.
+
+The English army did not look handsome. The archers had no armour, often
+no shoes; for headpieces they had sorry caps of boiled leather, or even
+of willow with a crosspiece of iron; the axes and hatchets stuck in their
+belts gave them the appearance of carpenters. Many of these good workmen
+had taken off their breeches, in order to be at their ease and to work
+the better. It is a strange, incredible, and yet certain fact, that the
+French army really could not stir either to fight or to fly. The rear
+alone escaped.
+
+At the decisive moment, when old Thomas of Erpingham, having drawn up the
+English army, threw his truncheon into the air, crying out, “Now strike!”
+and when the English had replied with a shout from ten thousand throats,
+the French army, to their great astonishment, still remained motionless.
+Horses and riders, all appeared enchanted, or dead in their steel cases.
+The fact was that the big war horses, loaded with their heavy riders
+and their steel caparisons, had sunk deep in the stiff soil, had become
+firmly fixed there, and only struggled out to advance slowly a few
+paces. Such is the acknowledgment of the English chroniclers; a modest
+acknowledgment, which does honour to their probity.
+
+Lefebvre,[j] John de Vaurin[k] and Walsingham[m] expressly say that the
+field was nothing but viscid mud. “The place was soft and cut up by the
+horses, so that it was with great difficulty they could drag their feet
+out of the ground. The French were so loaded with harness that they
+could not advance. They had long and very weighty coats of mail, hanging
+below the knees; below these they had leg harness, and above them plate
+harness, and, moreover, helmets of proof. They were so much crowded
+together that they could not lift their arms to strike an enemy, except
+some of them in the front.”
+
+Another historian of the English side, Titus Livy,[l] informs us that
+the French were drawn up thirty-two deep, whilst the English were ranged
+in but four ranks. This enormous depth of the French served no purpose;
+their thirty-two ranks consisted wholly, or almost so, of cavalry; the
+majority of whom, far from being able to act, did not even see the
+engagement; whereas every man of the English was efficient. Of the fifty
+thousand French, two or three thousand only could fight against the
+eleven thousand English, or at least might have done so if their horses
+could have extricated themselves from the mud.
+
+To rouse those inert masses, the English archers discharged volleys of
+ten thousand arrows with extreme rapidity and pertinacity at their faces.
+The iron-clad horsemen stooped their heads, otherwise the arrows would
+have entered through their visors. Then, from the two wings of Tramecourt
+and Agincourt, two French squadrons began with much spurring to execute
+a clumsy charge, led by two excellent men-at-arms, Messire Clignet de
+Brabant and Messire William de Saveuse. The first squadron, advancing
+from Tramecourt, was unexpectedly taken in flank by a body of archers
+concealed in the woods; neither squadron reached the enemy.
+
+Of twelve hundred men who began this charge, there remained not more
+than 120 when they came up with the English palisades. Most of them had
+fallen in the mud by the way, men and horses. Would to God that all had
+so fallen; but the others, whose horses were wounded, could no longer
+control the frantic animals, which rushed desperately back on the French
+ranks. The vanguard, far from being able to open and let them pass, was,
+as we have seen, so closely packed together that not a man could move. We
+may imagine the frightful accidents that took place in that dense mass,
+the horses wild with terror, backing and smothering each other, flinging
+off their riders, or crushing them under their armour as the iron masses
+clashed together. Then came the English to complete the havoc. Coming
+out from their line of stakes, and throwing down their bows and arrows,
+they advanced quite at their ease with axes, hatchets, heavy swords, and
+leaded clubs, to demolish that confused mountain of men and horses. In
+process of time they succeeded in clearing away the vanguard, and made
+their way, with the king at their head, to the second line of battle.
+
+It was perhaps at this moment that eighteen French gentlemen made a dash
+at the king of England. They had made a vow, it was said, to die or bring
+down his crown; one of them struck off a point from it; all perished in
+the attempt. This _on dit_ is not enough for the historians, who further
+adorn the tale, and convert it into a Homeric scene, in which the king
+fights over the body of his wounded brother, like Achilles over that
+of Patroclus. Then it is the duke of Alençon, commander of the French
+army, who kills the duke of York and cleaves the king’s crown. Being
+speedily surrounded, he yields; Henry holds out his hand to him; but he
+was already slain.[33] What is more certain is that the duke of Brabant
+arrived in haste at the second stage of the engagement. He was the duke
+of Burgundy’s own brother, and seems to have sought the field to clear
+the honour of his family. He arrived very late, but time enough to die.
+The brave prince had left all his men behind him, and had not even put
+on his coat of arms: instead of which he took his banner, made a hole in
+it, passed his head through it, and charged the English, who slew him
+instantly.
+
+There remained but the rearguard, which soon dispersed. A great number of
+cavaliers, dismounted, but raised up again by their servants, had made
+their way out of the throng of battle and surrendered to the English. At
+this moment, word was brought the king that a French corps was pillaging
+his baggage; and at the same time he saw some Bretons or Gascons in the
+French rear, that seemed about to return to the charge against him. He
+was alarmed for the moment, especially as he saw his men embarrassed
+with so many prisoners, and instantly ordered every man to kill his
+captive. Not one obeyed; those soldiers without shoes or breeches, who
+held the greatest lords of France in their hands, and thought they had
+made their fortunes, were now ordered to ruin themselves. As they refused
+to comply, the king appointed two hundred men to act as executioners.
+“It was a sad spectacle,” says Lefebvre,[j] “to see those poor disarmed
+wretches, who had just received promise of quarter, slaughtered in cold
+blood, cut and hewed, head and face!” The alarm was groundless. It was
+only some pillagers of the neighbourhood, people of Agincourt, who, in
+spite of their master, the duke of Burgundy, had taken advantage of the
+opportunity. The battle being ended, the archers made haste to strip the
+slain, whilst they were yet warm. Many were dragged forth alive from
+beneath the corpses; among others, the duke of Orleans. Next day the
+victor, on his departure, killed, or made prisoners, all that remained
+alive.[34] “It was a piteous sight to see the great nobles who had there
+been slain, and who were already stark naked, like those who were born
+of men of no account.” An English priest was not less affected by the
+spectacle. “If this sight,” he says, “excited pity and compunction in us,
+who were strangers, and but passed through the country, how great was
+the sorrow for the native inhabitants. Oh, may the French nation come to
+peace and union with the English, and depart from its iniquities and its
+evil ways!” Sternness then prevails over compassion, and he subjoins:
+“Meanwhile, let his grief be turned upon his head.”
+
+The English lost 1,600 men; the French 10,000, almost all gentlemen,
+120 lords having banners. The list fills six large pages in Monstrelet,
+beginning with seven princes (Brabant, Nevers, D’Albret, Alençon, the
+three De Bar); then come lords without number, Dampierre, Vaudemont,
+Marle, Roussy, Salm, Dammartin, etc., the bailiffs of Vermandois, Mâcon,
+Sens, Senlis, Caen, and Meaux, and Montaigu, the brave archbishop of
+Sens, who fought like a lion.[35]
+
+The duke of Burgundy’s son bestowed the charity of a grave on all the
+dead that lay naked on the field of battle. Twenty-five square rods of
+ground were measured out, and in that huge pit were laid all the bodies
+that had not been carried away, fifty-eight hundred men by the tale. The
+ground was consecrated, and a thick thorn hedge was planted round it, for
+fear of the wolves. There were but fifteen hundred prisoners, including
+the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the counts d’Eu, de Vendôme, and de
+Richelieu, the marshal de Boucicaut, Messire James d’Harcourt, Messire
+John de Craon, etc.[p]
+
+
+MASSACRE OF THE ARMAGNACS IN PARIS (1418 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1415-1418 A.D.]]
+
+With this rich capture, Henry hastened to re-embark at Calais. His
+army, reduced to ten thousand men, was unable to consider any further
+enterprise. The duke of Burgundy had taken no part whatever in the battle
+of Agincourt;[36] it was his enemies that brought about that shameful
+defeat. If he had made haste, he might have entered Paris as its master.
+D’Armagnac, the new constable and successor of D’Albret, showed more
+promptitude; he took possession of the capital, of the king and the
+dauphin his son, who was still a minor; that is to say, of the entire
+government. To recall a little popularity to the side of the party he
+showed a praiseworthy activity, borrowing ships from the Genoese, raising
+troops in France, and besieging Harfleur (1416). But funds were lacking
+and he fell back on the great resource of the times, debasement of money
+and false loans.
+
+John the Fearless was always the patron of the poor. Paris murmured, and
+John the Fearless, to increase the fermentation, prevented the arrival of
+provisions in the city. He succeeded in carrying off Queen Isabella from
+Tours and having her declared regent. He forbade the cities, in his name,
+to pay the taxes imposed by D’Armagnac, and he entered into negotiations
+with the English (1417).
+
+The latter had now returned. Henry V had taken Caen (1417), and like
+a conqueror who is sure of himself had divided his army into four
+divisions, the more quickly to accomplish his purpose. What, in fact, did
+he have to fear? The dukes of Brittany, Anjou, and Burgundy had signed
+treaties of neutrality with him. D’Armagnac could do nothing, for he was
+reduced to “borrowing from the saints,” in melting their shrines, with
+the people of his party fast abandoning him because they were not paid
+enough; it was necessary to protect Paris with the Parisians who hated
+and betrayed him.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH CROSSBOW-MAN, BEGINNING OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+One Perrinet Leclerc, iron merchant on the Petit Pont, had charge of the
+small gate at St. Germain. “His son,” says Monstrelet, “and some reckless
+young companions, who formerly had been punished for their escapades,”
+plotted to deliver the city over to the Burgundians. On the night of
+May 29th, 1418, Perrinet entered his father’s chamber while the old man
+slept and stole the keys from under the pillow. The sire de l’Isle-Adam
+informed in advance, was on the other side of the moat. He entered with
+eight hundred men, and the former partisans of the faction, the butchers,
+the slaughterers--all the people of the market flocked around him. Some
+Armagnacs tried to escape, taking the dauphin with them; but the greater
+part including the constable were thrown into prison, where their lives
+were soon in peril. The mob, which in 1413 had made its first appearance,
+reappeared on the scene in 1418 exasperated and furious with misery and
+uneasiness. Provisions failed and Paris was threatened with famine at
+the same time that ugly rumours circulated in the crowd; the Armagnacs
+were coming to assail such a gate, such a faubourg; the English, another.
+The cause of these misfortunes, they cried on every side, were those
+Armagnacs they had in their keeping. Vengeance must be had upon them and
+an end put to their schemes.
+
+Sunday the 12th of June, 1418, the mob got under way and rushed to the
+prisons, Hôtel-de-Ville, Temple, St. Éloi, St. Magloire, St. Martin, and
+the Grand and Petit Châtelet, to murder indiscriminately everyone they
+found there. Armagnacs or not, by Monday morning sixteen hundred people
+had perished, killed in the prisons and streets. Their bodies were left
+there and “bad children played with them and dragged them about.” With
+that of the constable they amused themselves by raising a large strip of
+skin “to represent the white scarf of Armagnac.”
+
+
+THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY MASTER OF PARIS (1418 A.D.)
+
+These dreadful occurrences had just taken place when John the Fearless
+returned with the queen to Paris, amidst the enthusiastic acclaims of the
+crowd, who believed he brought peace and abundance with him. Vain hope!
+Neither one nor the other was to come from the duke of Burgundy, but on
+the contrary to all preceding misfortunes there was added an epidemic
+which carried off in Paris and its environs fifty thousand persons. Again
+the fury of the mob became uncontrollable and wrought its vengeance on
+the wretched beings that had been overlooked in the prisons or sent there
+since June. The 31st of August an immense assemblage formed itself under
+the orders of the hangman Capeluche, and set out for the prisons. The
+duke of Burgundy hastened after them imploringly, and even went so far as
+to press the hand of Capeluche, but in vain. A new massacre took place.
+Some days after the duke sent the bloodthirsty mob after some Armagnacs,
+shut up, as he said, in Montlhéry, and as soon as they were gone he shut
+the gates of Paris behind them and had Capeluche beheaded.[b]
+
+In becoming master of Paris, the duke of Burgundy had succeeded to all
+the embarrassments of the constable D’Armagnac. He had now in his turn to
+rule the great city, victual and maintain it, which could only be done by
+keeping the Armagnacs and the English at a distance--that is to say, by
+making war, re-establishing the taxes he had suppressed, and losing his
+popularity.
+
+The equivocal part he had so long played, accusing others of treachery,
+while he himself was betraying his country, was now to come to a close.
+As the English were ascending the Seine and menacing Paris, he had no
+alternative but to forego his hold on the capital, or to give them
+battle. But by his eternal tergiversation and duplicity, he had enervated
+his own party, and was now powerless alike for peace or war.
+
+The people of Rouen and Paris, who had chosen him for their leader, were
+Burgundians, indeed, and foes to the Armagnacs, but still more foes to
+the English. They were astonished, in their simplicity, to see that their
+good duke did nothing against the enemy of the kingdom. His warmest
+partisans began to say, as the Bourgeois de Paris[q] relates, that “he
+was, in all his proceedings, the slowest man that could be found.” The
+Armagnacs possessed the whole centre, Sens, Moret, Crécy, Compiègne,
+Montlhéry, a girdle of towns round Paris, Meaux, and Melun; that is to
+say, Marne and Haute Seine. The duke sent to Rouen all the forces he
+could spare without leaving Paris unprotected, namely, four thousand
+horse.
+
+It had long been foreseen that Rouen would be invested. Henry V had
+approached it with extreme slowness. Not content with having two great
+English colonies in his rear, Harfleur and Caen, he had completed the
+conquest of lower Normandy by the capture of Falaise, Vire, St. Lô,
+Constance, and Évreux. He kept possession of the Seine, not only by
+Harfleur, but also by Pont de l’Arche. He had already re-established
+some degree of order, reassured the clergy, and invited the absentees to
+return, promising them support in case of their compliance, and declaring
+that otherwise he would dispose of their lands or their benefices. He
+reopened the exchequer and the other tribunals, and appointed his grand
+treasurer of Normandy supreme president over them. He reduced the tax on
+salt to almost nothing, “in honour,” says Rymer,[r] “of the Holy Virgin.”
+
+
+SIEGE OF ROUEN (1418-1419 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1418-1419 A.D.]]
+
+There were in Rouen fifteen thousand foot-soldiers and four thousand
+horse, in all, perhaps, sixty thousand souls--a whole people to feed.
+Henry, knowing he had nothing to fear, either from the dispersed
+Armagnacs, or from the duke of Burgundy, who had just besought of him
+another truce for Flanders, did not hesitate to divide his army into
+eight or nine bodies, so as to embrace the vast compass of Rouen. These
+bodies communicated with each other by means of trenches, which protected
+them from shot; whilst in the direction of the open country they were
+defended from a surprise by deep ditches set with thorns. He was prepared
+for an obstinate resistance, but his anticipation was surpassed. There
+was a strong Cabochian leaven in Rouen. Alain Blanchard, the chief of the
+arblast men, and the other Rouennese leaders, seem to have been connected
+with the Carmelite Pavilly, the Parisian orator of 1413. The Pavilly of
+Rouen was the canon Delivet. These men defended Rouen for seven months.
+
+The king of England, thinking to terrify the inhabitants, had gibbets
+erected all round the town, and hanged the prisoners on them. He barred
+the Seine, too, with a wooden bridge, chains, and barges, so that nothing
+could pass. The Rouennese seemed reduced to extremities at an early
+period of the siege, and yet they held out six months longer; it was a
+miracle. They ate up the horses, dogs, and cats. When these were gone,
+those who could anywhere find a morsel of food, however filthy, took good
+care not to let it be seen; a thousand greedy wretches would otherwise
+have seized upon it. The most horrible necessity that befell the town
+was that of expelling all who could not fight, twelve thousand old men,
+women, and children. The piteous crowd presented themselves before the
+English intrenchments, and were received at the sword’s point. Repulsed
+alike by their friends and their enemies, they remained between the camp
+and the town, in the ditch, without any other food than the weeds they
+plucked. There they passed the whole winter, with nothing between them
+and the sky.
+
+Meanwhile, the duke of Burgundy was beginning to put himself in motion.
+First, he went to Paris from St. Denis, where he made the king go through
+the solemn mockery of displaying the oriflamme, to remain a long while at
+Pontoise, and again a long while at Beauvais. There he received another
+message from Rouen by a man who had risked his life to convey it. It was
+the voice of an expiring town, and said merely that fifty thousand men
+had died of famine in Rouen and its environs. The duke of Burgundy was
+touched by this sad tale, and promised succour; then having got rid of
+the messenger, and feeling assured that he should hear no more of Rouen,
+he turned his back on Normandy, and took the king to Provins.
+
+A surrender was then inevitable; but the king of England, desirous of
+making an example on account of so long a resistance, wished to have
+the inhabitants at his mercy. The Rouennese, who well knew what was the
+mercy of Henry V, resolved to undermine a wall, and to pass out that way
+by night with arms in their hands, trusting in God’s grace. The king and
+the bishops reconsidered the matter, and the archbishop of Canterbury
+personally offered the besieged the following terms of capitulation:
+(1) their lives to be spared, five men excepted (those of the five who
+were rich, or churchmen, got themselves out of the difficulty, and Alain
+Blanchard paid for all; the English were bent on an execution, in order
+to ratify the principle that the resistance had been rebellion against
+the lawful king); (2) for the same reason, Henry insured to the town all
+the privileges which the kings of France, his ancestors, had granted to
+it, “before the usurpation of Philip of Valois”; (3) it had to pay a
+tremendous fine--300,000 gold crowns--one-half before the end of January
+(it was already the 19th of that month), the other half in February,
+1419. To squeeze all that from a depopulated, ruined town was no easy
+matter.
+
+
+HENRY AND JOHN THE FEARLESS (1419 A.D.)
+
+The king of England being occupied with the task of organising the
+country he had conquered, granted a truce to the two French parties, the
+Burgundians and the Armagnacs. He felt it necessary to refit his army;
+and, above all, to collect money and discharge his debts to the bishops,
+who had lent him funds for his long expedition.
+
+Henry was so far from apprehending danger from the dauphin, that he
+was not afraid to displease the duke of Burgundy. The latter sought an
+interview with him, and proposed to him a marriage with a daughter of
+Charles VI, with Guienne and Normandy for a dower; but Henry required
+also Brittany as a dependence of Normandy, besides Maine, Anjou, and
+Touraine.
+
+But the duke of Burgundy had about him persons who besought him to treat
+with them. They were followers of the dauphin, Barbazan, and Tannegui
+Duchâtel, the commanders of his troops. It was full time France should
+become self-reconciled, when her ruin was so imminent. The parliament of
+Paris, and that of Poitiers, laboured equally to that end; so, too, did
+the queen, who talked, wept, and found means to move his hardened soul.
+
+On the 11th of July was beheld, at the bridge of Pouilly, this singular
+spectacle: the duke of Burgundy surrounded by the old servants of the
+duke of Orleans, and by the brothers and kinsmen of the Agincourt
+prisoners, and of the victims butchered in Paris. Of his own accord he
+knelt before the dauphin. A treaty of amity and mutual aid was signed
+and submitted to by both parties. But on the 29th of July, less than
+three weeks after the signing of the treaty, the Burgundian garrison of
+Pontoise, near Paris, suffered themselves to be surprised by the English;
+the inhabitants fled to Paris, which they filled with consternation, and
+this augmented when, on the 30th, the duke of Burgundy, carrying away
+the king from Paris to Troyes, passed beneath the walls of the capital,
+without making any other provision for the defence of the distracted
+Parisians than naming his nephew, a boy of fifteen, captain of the town.
+
+[Sidenote: [1419-1420 A.D.]]
+
+Seeing all this, the dauphin’s followers believed, rightly or wrongly,
+that the duke had a secret understanding with the English, and his
+servants told him, it is alleged, that he would perish in an interview
+which the dauphin sought with him. The dauphin’s people had set about
+erecting on the bridge of Montereau the gallery in which it was to take
+place; a long, tortuous wooden gallery, without any barrier in the
+middle, contrary to the custom always observed in that suspicious age.
+In spite of all this he persisted in his resolution to meet the dauphin;
+such was the wish of Dame de Giac, who never quitted him.
+
+As the duke did not come in time, Tannegui Duchâtel went to fetch him.
+The duke hesitated no longer, but slapped him on the shoulder, saying:
+“Here is the man I trust in.” Duchâtel made him hasten his pace, for the
+dauphin, he said, was waiting. In this way he separated him from his
+suite, so that he entered the gallery along with none but the sire de
+Noailles, brother of the captal de Buch, who was in the service of the
+English, and had just taken Pontoise. Neither of them came out alive
+(September 10th, 1419).
+
+The altercation which took place is variously related. Tannegui Duchâtel,
+however, averred that he had not struck the duke. Others boasted that
+they had done so. One of them, Le Bouteiller, said: “I said to the duke
+of Burgundy: ‘Thou didst cut off the hand of the duke of Orleans, my
+master; I am going to cut off thine.’” However little worthy of regret
+was the duke of Burgundy, his death did the dauphin immense mischief.
+John the Fearless and his party had both fallen very low, and in a little
+time there would have been no more avowed Burgundians. Everyone was
+beginning to despise and hate him; but from the moment he was killed all
+were again Burgundians.
+
+
+THE TREATY OF TROYES (1420 A.D.)
+
+We must not suppose that Paris easily admitted the foreigner, but extreme
+lassitude and inexpressible suffering made everyone only too happy to
+find a pretext for a settlement with Henry. Each man exaggerated to
+himself his feelings of pity and indignation. The shame of calling in
+the stranger was veiled by a fair show of just vengeance; but the real
+fact was that Paris yielded, because it was perishing of hunger. The
+queen yielded, because, after all, if her son was not to be king, her
+daughter, at least, would be queen. The duke of Burgundy’s son, Philip
+the Good, was the only person who acted sincerely; he had his father’s
+death to avenge. But he, too, doubtless, thought to find his advantage in
+the new order of things; the Burgundy branch would thrive by the ruin of
+the elder branch, by placing on the throne a stranger, who would never
+have more than one foot on the continent, and who, if he were wise, would
+govern France through the duke of Burgundy.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH MAN-AT-ARMS, BEGINNING OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+Paris then left the Burgundians, who again possessed full authority in
+the town, to do as they thought fit. Young Saint-Pol, nephew to the duke
+of Burgundy, and captain of Paris, was sent, in November, to the king of
+England, with Maître Eustace Aloy, “in the name of the city, the clergy,
+and the commune.” He received them extremely well, declaring that he
+desired nothing but the independent possession of what he had conquered,
+and the hand of the princess Catherine; and he said graciously: “Am I not
+myself of the blood royal of France? If I become the king’s son-in-law,
+I will defend him against all men living.” He obtained more than he
+demanded. His ambassadors, encouraged by the inclinations of the new duke
+of Burgundy, asserted their master’s right to the crown of France, and
+that right the duke acknowledged. The king of England had spent three
+years in conquering Normandy; the death of John the Fearless seemed to
+give him France in one day.
+
+The treaty concluded at Troyes, May 20th, 1420, in the name of Charles
+VI, secured to the king of England the hand of the daughter of the
+king of France, and the reversion of the kingdom: “It is agreed that
+immediately after our decease the crown and realm of France shall remain
+and be perpetually to our said son King Henry and his heirs. The faculty
+and exercise of governing and ordering the public affairs of the said
+realm shall be and remain, during our life, to our said son King Henry,
+with the counsel of the nobles and sages of the said realm. During our
+life the letters pertaining to matters of justice shall be written
+and shall proceed under our name and seal; nevertheless, for as much
+as extraordinary cases may occur, it shall be competent to our son to
+write his letters to our subjects, wherein he shall order, prohibit, and
+command, on our behalf, and on his own, as regent.” After this, was not
+the subsequent article a mockery? “All conquests which shall be made by
+our said son king, over the disobedient, shall be and shall be made to
+our profit.”
+
+This monstrous treaty concluded worthily with these lines, in which the
+king proclaimed the dishonour of his family, the father proscribed his
+son: “Considering the enormous crimes and misdemeanours perpetrated upon
+the said realm of France by Charles, styling himself (_soi-disant_)
+dauphin of Viennois, it is agreed that we, our said son the king, and
+also our very dear son Philip, duke of Burgundy, will in no wise treat
+concerning peace or concord with the said Charles, nor will we treat by
+ourselves or others, except with the consent and counsel of all and each
+of us three, and of the three estates of the two realms aforesaid.”
+
+The mother received prompt payment for the shameful phrase, _soi-disant
+dauphin_. Isabella immediately had 2,000 francs a month assigned to her,
+payable out of the mint at Troyes. For this price she denied her son, and
+gave up her daughter. The English took from the king of France, at one
+stroke, both his kingdom and his child. The poor girl was forced to wed a
+master, and brought him for dower her brother’s ruin.[p]
+
+
+HENRY’S STRUGGLE WITH THE DAUPHIN (1420-1422 A.D.)
+
+Such was the tenor of the Treaty of Troyes, so glorious to Henry, yet
+so impracticable of accomplishment, that it must be doubted whether
+there was any sincerity in the French signers of it. To be avenged
+of the dauphin, and to crush him by the assistance of England, was
+evidently the foremost thought, the first desire. But it is scarcely
+credible that the duke of Burgundy looked forward to continuing, after
+the accomplishment of his vengeance, the faithful vassal of the house of
+Lancaster. The arrangement of one king governing the two countries was
+plainly impracticable. And that Henry himself could have entertained it
+only shows how the most vigorous intellects may allow their perspicacity
+and sense to be clouded by success and superstition. He was well aware
+that his new position could only be preserved by force of arms. On the
+occasion of his marriage with the princess Catherine, which took place
+on June 2nd, the knights of both countries were for celebrating the
+event by a tournament. But he forbade the rival combat, and told those
+who proposed it to join him in the siege of Sens, where they might
+exercise their prowess against the Armagnacs. Sens made but a trifling
+resistance.[h] Next, this implacable hunter of men hurried to Montereau,
+and not being able to reduce the castle, he had his prisoners hanged by
+the ditch sides.
+
+With all his impetuosity he was forced to have patience before Melun,
+where the brave Barbazan detained him many months. The king of England,
+employing all the means of which he could avail himself, took Charles VI
+and the two queens to the siege, presenting himself as the son-in-law of
+the king of France, speaking in his father-in-law’s name, and using his
+wife as a bait and a snare. All these clever devices were ineffectual.
+The besieged resisted valiantly; obstinate conflicts took place round the
+walls, and beneath them, in the mines and countermines, and Henry did
+not spare his own person. At last, however, provisions failed, and the
+garrison were constrained to surrender. Henry, according to his custom,
+accepted the capitulation, and put to death several citizens, all the
+Scotchmen who were in the place, and even two monks.
+
+During the siege he had got the Burgundians to deliver up to him Paris
+and the four fortresses, Vincennes, the Bastille, the Louvre, and the
+Tour de Nesle. He made his entry in December, riding between the king
+of France and the duke of Burgundy. The latter was dressed in mourning,
+in token of grief and vengeance, perhaps also from a feeling of shame
+for the unworthy part he played in thus introducing the foreigner. The
+king of England was accompanied by his brothers, the dukes of Clarence
+and Bedford, the duke of Exeter, the earl of Warwick, and all his lords.
+The king of England was well received in Paris. He entered into formal
+possession as regent of France, by assembling the estates on the 6th of
+December, 1420, and making them sanction the Treaty of Troyes.
+
+[Sidenote: [1420-1421 A.D.]]
+
+That the son-in-law might be sure of inheriting, it was necessary that
+the son should be proscribed. The duke of Burgundy and his mother
+presented themselves before the king of France, sitting as judge in the
+Hôtel St. Pol, to make “great plaint and clamour of the piteous death of
+the late duke John of Burgundy.” The king of England was seated on the
+same bench as the king of France. Messire Nicholas Raulin demanded in
+the name of the duke of Burgundy and his mother that Charles, styling
+himself dauphin, Tannegui Duchâtel, and all the murderers of the duke of
+Burgundy, should be carted through the streets, with torches in their
+hands, to make _amende honorable_. The king’s advocate spoke to the same
+effect, and the university supported the demand. The king authorised
+the prosecution, and Charles was cried and cited at the Marble Table,
+to appear within three days before the parliament. He did not put in an
+appearance and was condemned by default, sentenced to banishment, and
+stripped of all right to the crown of France (January 3rd, 1421).
+
+The cumbrous and devouring army which Henry brought with him was but too
+necessary to him. His brother Clarence was defeated and killed, with
+two or three thousand English, in Anjou (battle of Baugé, March 23rd,
+1421). In the north even the count d’Harcourt had taken up arms against
+the English, and was overrunning Picardy. Saintrailles and La Hire were
+advancing by forced marches to combine with him. All the men of family
+were gradually going over to the side of Charles VII, to the party that
+made bold expeditions and adventurous forays. The peasants, it is true,
+who were the sufferers by these pillaging exploits, would in the long run
+declare for a master who could and would protect them.
+
+The ferocity of the old Armagnac marauders was of service to Henry’s
+cause. He did a popular thing in besieging Meaux, the captain of which
+town, the bastard De Vaurus, a sort of ogre, had filled the country
+round with indescribable terror. But as the bastard and his men expected
+no mercy, they defended themselves with desperate determination. They
+detained the English the whole winter, eight long months, before Meaux,
+till cold, want, and pestilence consumed that fine army. The siege began
+on the 6th of October, and on the 18th of December, Henry, who already
+saw his forces diminishing, wrote urgently for fresh soldiers to Germany
+and Portugal. Englishmen were probably more costly to him than those
+foreigners. To induce the German mercenaries to take service with him
+rather than with the dauphin, he caused them to be told, among other
+things, that he would pay them in better coin.
+
+He could not reckon on the duke of Burgundy. That prince appeared for a
+short while at the siege of Meaux, but soon withdrew, under pretence of
+going into Burgundy, and obliging the towns in his duchy to accept the
+Treaty of Troyes. Henry had good reason to believe that the duke himself
+had secretly instigated their resistance to a treaty which annulled the
+contingent rights of the house of Burgundy to the crown, as well as those
+of the dauphin, the duke of Orleans, and all the French princes. And why
+had young Philip made such a sacrifice to the friendship of the English?
+Because he thought he needed their aid to avenge his father and beat
+his enemy. But it was much rather they who had need of him. Fortune had
+forsaken them. Whilst the duke of Clarence was getting himself beaten in
+Anjou, the duke of Burgundy had been brilliantly successful in Picardy,
+where he had come up with the dauphin’s partisans, Saintrailles and
+Gamaches, before they could form a junction with d’Harcourt, and had
+defeated and made them prisoners.
+
+[Sidenote: [1421-1422 A.D.]]
+
+During that interminable siege of Meaux, whilst Henry was seeing his fine
+army dissolving away around him, word was brought him that the queen
+had been delivered of a boy at Windsor Castle. He evinced no joy, and
+comparing his own destiny with that of the child, he said, with prophetic
+sadness: “Henry of Monmouth will have had a short reign and will have
+conquered much; Henry of Windsor will reign long and will lose all. God’s
+will be done!”
+
+Henry was still young, but he had toiled much in this world, his time for
+rest was come; he had never had any since his birth. He was attacked,
+after his winter campaign, with an acute irritation of the bowels, a
+malady very common in those days. Being warned by the physicians that his
+end was at hand, he commended his son to his brothers, and gave them two
+wise counsels; first, to conciliate the duke of Burgundy, and secondly,
+in any treaty that might be made, to manage always so as to keep Normandy.
+
+He died at Vincennes on the 31st of August, 1422; Charles VI followed him
+on the 21st of October. The people of Paris shed tears for their poor mad
+king as freely as the English for their victorious Henry V. “The whole
+people,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[q] “were in the streets weeping
+and crying, as if each had lost the friend he most loved. Truly, their
+lamentations were like those of the prophet, ‘_Quomodô sedet sola civitas
+plena populo!_’ The petty folk of Paris cried, ‘Oh, most dear prince,
+never shall we have one so good! Never shall we see thee more! Cursed be
+death! We shall never have aught but war since thou hast left us. Thou
+art gone to rest; we remain in tribulation and sorrow.’”
+
+Charles VI was carried to St. Denis, “poorly accompanied for a king of
+France. There were only his chamberlain, his chancellor, his confessor,
+and some subordinate officers.” One prince only attended the funeral, and
+that was the duke of Bedford. When the corpse was lowered into the grave,
+the ushers-at-arms broke their wands and threw them into the grave, and
+reversed their maces. Then Berri, king-at-arms of France, cried out,
+over the grave, “May it please God to have mercy on the soul of the very
+high and very excellent prince Charles, king of France, sixth of the
+name, our natural and sovereign lord.”[p] And then he added, “God grant
+long life to Henry, by the grace of God, king of France and of England,
+our sovereign lord.” About the same time at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, in Berri,
+some French knights unfurled the royal banner, crying, “Long live King
+Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God, king of France.”[b]
+
+
+WOES OF THE PEOPLE--THE _DANSE MACABRE_
+
+[Sidenote: [1418-1424 A.D.]]
+
+After having spoken of the death of the king, we must mention that of the
+people. From 1418 to 1422, the depopulation was frightful. The history
+of those dismal years runs in a murderous circle; war leads to famine,
+famine to pestilence, and pestilence again brings round famine. It is
+like that night of the Exodus, in which the angel passes and repasses,
+touching each house with the sword.
+
+When men have come to that pass they weep no more; there is an end to
+tears, or there mingle even with tears gleams of hellish joy and savage
+laughter. It was the most tragical characteristic of the times that
+in the gloomiest moments there were alternations of frantic gaiety.
+The beginning of that long series of evils, “of that woeful dance,”
+as the Bourgeois de Paris[q] says, was the madness of Charles VI, and
+contemporaneously therewith the too famous masquerade of the satyrs, the
+piously burlesque mysteries, and the _basoche_ farces.[37]
+
+The year in which the duke of Orleans was murdered was distinguished
+by the organisation of the corporation of minstrels. That corporation,
+quite indispensable of course in so joyous a period, became important and
+respected. Treaties of peace were cried through the streets with a mighty
+strumming of violins; hardly any six months passed in which a peace was
+not cried and sung. The eldest son of Charles VI, the first dauphin, was
+an indefatigable player on the harp and the spinet. He had a great staff
+of musicians; and in addition to these, he used to call in the aid of
+the choir-boys of Notre Dame. He sang, danced, and “balled” (_balait_),
+night and day, and that even in the year of the Cabochians, whilst they
+were killing his friends. He killed himself, too, by dint of singing and
+dancing.
+
+It seems an ascertained fact that in the fourteenth century dancing
+became involuntary and maniacal in many countries. The violent
+processions of the Flagellants set the first example. The great
+epidemics, and the terrible and lasting shock they gave to the nerves of
+the survivors, easily gave occasion to St. Vitus’ dance. These phenomena
+are, as we know, contagious. The spectacle of the convulsions acted
+with so much the more force, as there was nothing in men’s souls but
+convulsion and vertigo; and then the sick and the hale danced together
+promiscuously. They would catch each other violently by the hand, in
+the streets and the churches, and foot it round in a ring. Many a one
+who at first laughed at this sight, or looked on coldly, became at last
+bewildered, his head reeled, and he, too, reeled and danced with the
+rest. The rings went on multiplying, interlacing; they became bigger and
+bigger, more and more heady, fast, and furious, as though they were huge
+coiling reptiles, that momently swelled to view. There was no stopping
+the monster, but its joints might be lopped; the electric chain was
+broken by one falling with feet and fists on some one of the dancers. The
+rude dissonance interrupting the harmony, they found themselves free,
+otherwise they would have gone on reeling until utterly exhausted, and
+have danced themselves to death.
+
+This phenomenon of the fourteenth century does not occur again in the
+fifteenth; but in the latter we find, in England, France, and Germany, a
+strange amusement, which reminds us of those great popular dances of the
+sick and dying. It was called the dance of the dead, or _danse macabre_.
+It was a great favourite with the English, who introduced it into France.
+
+The spectacle of the dance of the dead was enacted in Paris in 1424, in
+the cemetery of the Innocents. That narrow space in which the enormous
+city for so many ages accumulated the remains of almost all its
+inhabitants had been at first both a cemetery and a laystall, haunted at
+night by robbers, and in the evening by wantons, who plied their trade
+among the tombs. Philip Augustus enclosed it with walls, and to purify
+it dedicated it to St. Innocent, a child crucified by the Jews. In the
+fourteenth century the churches were already very full, and it became
+the fashion among the good citizens to bury their dead in the cemetery.
+Such was the suitable theatre of the _danse macabre_. It was begun in
+September, 1424, when the heat had diminished, and the first rain had
+rendered the smell of the place less offensive. The performances lasted
+many months.
+
+Whatever disgust both the place and the spectacle might inspire, it was
+matter suggestive of much thought to see in that fatal period, in a town
+so frequently and so cruelly visited by death, the hungry, sickly, scarce
+living multitude, merrily making death itself a matter of spectacle,
+attending with insatiable avidity to its moralising buffooneries, and
+enjoying them so heartily as to tread heedlessly upon the bones of their
+fathers, and on the gaping graves they were themselves about to fill.[p]
+
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
+
+[Sidenote: [1414-1424 A.D.]]
+
+A very different phase of life which demands at least a passing notice
+is that which clustered about the wonderful University of Paris.[a] As
+early as the thirteenth century, the university shone in all its glory.
+Born in the shadow of the cloister of the bishopric, and primarily
+confounded with the ancient cathedral college of the town, it had
+obtained, little by little, immunities and privileges by favour of
+which it had grown and had reached a point where it was dependent upon
+no one but the court of Rome. Among the popes who conferred the most
+important privileges may be cited Alexander III, Innocent III, and his
+successor Honorius III, all promoters of the progress of knowledge, all
+jealously seeking to retain for the church that superiority of studies
+and learning to which its power was bound. The University of Paris rose
+rapidly above the universities of Italy, the only ones with which it was
+then in serious rivalry. It became the most important ecclesiastical
+and scientific college of Europe, the school whence the high clergy of
+France was recruited, as well as that of a large part of Christianity.
+It belonged to the church by its creation, by its studies in which
+theology predominated, and by its object, which was to prepare the
+learned candidates for the obtention of livings. For all its rights it
+depended on the holy see, which subjected it to visits and regulations.
+Meanwhile it formed in the bosom of the church itself a vast corporation
+(_universitas_), governing itself by its own laws with an extended
+liberty.
+
+It was divided into four faculties: arts or philosophy which comprised
+nearly all the known sciences; theology; decree or canonical law; and
+medicine. The faculty of arts had a particular celebrity; it is to it
+that the capital of France owes its appellation of the Modern Athens.
+The faculty of theology was not less celebrated after the lectures
+of Roscellinus and Abelard. That of law was incomplete, since civil
+law, which restored to honour the work of the great Italian jurists,
+was taught in Paris only subsidiarily. It even ceased to exist at the
+beginning of the year 1220, although the laws of Justinian had found
+able interpreters in France as well as in Italy. The decree of the
+pope, Honorius III, to suppress its instruction in Paris, had probably
+its entire concentration in the college of Boulogne for an object. In
+any case, that suppression was only for a time, and a little later
+at Orleans a special university was founded, called the University of
+Law. As to the study and profession of medicine, it is well known that
+in the Middle Ages it was a prerogative of the religious orders almost
+exclusively.
+
+Each faculty held special assemblies, in which the masters and graduates
+had deliberative voice. The four faculties met once a year to elect their
+rector, the formulæ of which elections, determined with infinite care,
+in order to guarantee liberty of vote and prevent intrigue, presented a
+great analogy to the election of a pope. Thus the University of Paris
+possessed a liberal government, with a regular hierarchy, where degrees
+conferred powers, and where superior intelligence ruled.
+
+The pope gave it its highest protection. He made the rules of study,
+intervened in disputes with the civil authorities. The principal
+ecclesiastical privilege of the University of Paris was that of being
+dependent on no bishop, and having its own jurisdiction. Its members
+could not be excommunicated except by the court of Rome.[g]
+
+It is one of the strangest contrasts of history that while France was
+at the lowest ebb of its national history, the University of Paris was
+attempting to carry out one of the greatest revolutions in the history of
+Europe. The conciliar movement in the church, which produced such great
+international gatherings as the councils of Constance and of Bâle, and
+which aimed to limit papal absolutism by something like a parliamentary
+system, was due to the work of men like Jean Gerson, chancellor of the
+University of Paris, and Pierre D’Ailly, scholar and prelate. It was
+universally admitted that abuses had crept into the administration of the
+church. There was evidently something wrong when, while Frenchmen were
+perishing from famine, and France was on the verge of ruin, the papal
+court at Avignon luxuriated on a revenue that was more than royal, and a
+pope (John XXII) could accumulate a treasure of eighteen millions of gold
+florins, and jewels and vestments estimated at seven millions more.
+
+But the evils which date from the residence at Avignon were increased
+twofold during the schism. All Christendom was in doubt how this would
+end. For the civil war in the church had divided the countries under
+rival obediences. France, Scotland, and Spain adhered to the pope at
+Avignon; and England, Germany, and Italy obeyed the Italian pope.
+
+At first they tried to induce the rivals to resign; and Pedro de Luna,
+who was elected pope at Avignon as Benedict XIII, won the high office
+by declaring that he would resign as easily as take off his hat. But
+the wily prelate, after his election, declared that no earthly power
+could dethrone him, and for more than a decade defied the attempts of
+reformers to achieve union. It was then that in the University of Paris
+the theologians began agitation for a universal council, as supreme over
+the pope. It is said that a German doctor began the movement, but the
+credit has gone to France. First at Pisa and then at Constance, the great
+parliaments of the church took in hand the reformation.
+
+In the later council (1414-1418) union was achieved by the deposition of
+opposing popes and the election of Martin V (see volume on The Papacy),
+but the decree _Frequens_ which demanded regular meeting of councils in
+the future, was gradually lost sight of in the following pontificates,
+and the great experiment of a constitutional church was a failure. That
+such an attempt should be made while France was in the throes of this
+great Hundred Years’ War, and that mostly by Frenchmen, shows that
+alongside of the story of carnage, crime, and superstition, there were
+signs of intellectual life and earnest effort of reformers, which are
+suggestive in the age of Wycliffe and Huss.
+
+A strange page of history is opened here. Sigismund, emperor of Germany,
+who presided at the council of Constance, was anxious to play a great
+part in the world’s affairs. He took advantage of the great international
+assemblage in his dominions to attempt to put himself at the head of a
+European confederacy to fight the Turks, who were advancing along the
+Danube.
+
+To accomplish this he made a journey into France and England to try to
+prevent the war. His visit took place just before the fatal invasion of
+Henry V which brought the victory of Agincourt.[38] To raise the money
+for that journey Sigismund made over the mark of Brandenburg to Frederick
+of Hohenzollern, burggraf of Nuremberg, and thus founded the power of the
+Hohenzollern.
+
+Henry V, was willing to accede to Sigismund’s plans, but although he even
+offered the succession of Hungary as a bribe, the court of France refused
+to make the peace he desired, and Sigismund’s great effort at European
+concord resulted in only one thing--the foundation of the great dynasty
+which rules in Germany to-day. France and England went their own way,
+bringing mutual disaster for another generation.[a]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[30] [This old French word denoted either a song or a particular kind of
+dance.]
+
+[31] Doubtless a monkish exaggeration.
+
+[32] [At the siege of Arras the harquebus was used for the first time.]
+
+[33] This embellishment is of Monstrelet’s[n] contrivance. He places it
+apart from the account of the battle after the long list of the killed.
+Lefebvre, an eye-witness, could not make up his mind to copy Monstrelet
+in this place.
+
+[34] Lefebvre[j] and Monstrelet[n] are the authorities for this
+statement. De Barante[o] says without naming his source, “Henry V
+put a stop to the carnage and caused the wounded to receive relief.”
+[Tyler,[s] after reviewing the evidence, declares that “Henry did not
+stain his victory by any act of cruelty. His character comes out of the
+investigation untarnished by a suspicion of his having wantonly shed the
+blood of a single fellow-creature.”]
+
+[35] [For other views of the battle of Agincourt see our history of
+England.]
+
+[36] [But neither for that matter had, in person, the count d’Armagnac.
+The princes had refused the aid of any civic corps, and as Burgundy
+could command but the town folk of Flanders and Picardy, his offers
+of help were rejected. The responsibility of the battle lay therefore
+entirely with the Armagnacs; but, as Crowe[h] says, “to the honour of the
+Burgundian party, more of its princes, than of the Armagnacs, fell on the
+field of Agincourt.”]
+
+[37] [In 1402 letters-patent were issued by the king permitting the
+bourgeois of Paris to constitute themselves into a religious fraternity
+for the representation of the “Mystery of the Passion.” This is the
+origin of the modern tragic theatre. The “morality plays,” or comedies,
+were created by the clerks of the _basoche_--the corporation formed by
+the clerks of the _procureurs_ of the parliament of Paris. This body
+exercised extensive jurisdiction over its members--its head bore the
+title of “king.” In the reign of Charles VI playing-cards were perfected,
+and about 1420 Jan van Eyck, called Jean of Bruges, discovered a drying
+oil, which has caused him to be regarded as the inventor of oil painting.
+Hitherto men had used distemper, fresco, gum, paste, or white of egg.[b]]
+
+[38] [It was Sigismund’s grandfather, the blind King John of Bohemia,
+whose death at Crécy gave the famous motto, _Ich dien_, to the prince of
+Wales.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE RESCUE OF THE REALM
+
+    No longer on St. Denis will we cry,
+    But Joan la Pucelle shall be France’s saint.
+
+                                  --SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1422-1427 A.D.]]
+
+The king proclaimed at St. Denis was an infant of ten months, grandson,
+on his mother’s side, of Charles VI. His two uncles ruled in his
+name,--one the duke of Bedford in France; the other the duke of
+Gloucester in England. This child was recognised as sovereign of the
+kingdom of France by parliament, by the university, by the first prince
+of the blood, Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and by the dowager
+queen, Isabella of Bavaria. Paris, Île-de-France, Picardy, Artois,
+Flanders, Champagne, and Normandy--that is to say, almost all the country
+north of the Loire--and Guienne, south of that river, obeyed him.
+
+The king proclaimed in Berri, sole surviving son of Charles VI, was a
+youth of nineteen years, graceful bearing, but weak in body, pale of
+figure, of small courage, and ever in fear of violent death; and besides,
+adds Chastelain,[d] “a good Latinist, a fine _raconteur_, and most wise
+in council.” Such indeed he was later on; but for the present and for
+many years to come he showed spirit only for his own pleasures and a
+sort of dull apathy in matters of state and in the face of peril. His
+authority was recognised only in Touraine, Orleans, Berri, Bourbonnais,
+Auvergne, Languedoc, Dauphiné, and Lyonnais. Indifferent to disaster,
+he was resigned to hearing himself called derisively “the king of
+Bourges.” To Poitiers he transported his council, his parliament, and
+his university. But Bourges and Poitiers were still great towns in his
+eyes; he dragged his little court from castle to castle, completely
+submissive to the sire de Giac, to Le Camus de Beaulieu, to the sire de
+la Trémouille, and willingly enduring the all-powerful influence of his
+mother-in-law Yolande of Anjou.[b]
+
+The young king, brought up by the Armagnacs, found in them his chief
+support, and so shared their unpopularity. These Gascons were the most
+veteran soldiers in France, but the greatest and most cruel plunderers.
+The hatred they inspired in the north would have been sufficient to
+create there a Burgundian and English party. The brigands of the south
+seemed more of foreigners than the foreigners.
+
+Charles VII next made trial of the foreigners themselves, of those who
+had gained experience in the English wars. He called the Scotch to his
+aid. These were the most mortal enemies of England, and their hatred
+might be relied on as much as their courage. The greatest hopes were
+built on these auxiliaries. A Scotchman was made constable of France;
+another, count of Touraine. Notwithstanding, however, their incontestable
+bravery, they had often been beaten in England. They were not only beaten
+in France, at Crevant and Verneuil (1423, 1424), but destroyed: the
+English took care that none of them escaped. It was asserted that the
+Gascons, out of jealousy against the Scotch, had not supported them.
+
+The English narrowly escaped giving Charles VII an ally far more useful
+and important than the Scotch--the duke of Burgundy. So little concert
+was there between the two brothers, that at the selfsame time Bedford
+married the duke of Burgundy’s sister, and Gloucester was commencing war
+against him. A word as to this romantic story.
+
+The duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, never thought himself secure of
+his Flanders until he should have flanked it with Holland and Hainault.
+These two counties had fallen into the hands of a girl, the countess
+Jacqueline, widow of the dauphin John. The duke of Burgundy married her
+to a cousin of his own, a sickly boy. Jacqueline, who was a handsome
+young woman, did not resign herself to so irksome a fate, but left her
+sorry mate, nimbly crossed the Straits, and herself proposed marriage to
+the duke of Gloucester. Gloucester committed the folly of accepting the
+proposal (1423). He espoused Jacqueline’s cause, thus beginning against
+the duke of Burgundy, the indispensable ally of England, a war which, for
+the latter, was a question of actual existence, a war without treaty, in
+which the sovereign of Flanders would risk his last man. The incensed
+duke of Burgundy concluded a secret alliance with the duke of Brittany,
+and then he made pecuniary demands on Bedford. What could Bedford do? He
+had no money; instead of it, he offered an inestimable possession worth
+more than any sum of money--his whole barrier on the north (September,
+1423). The bands of Charles VII came and lodged themselves in the very
+heart of English France, in Normandy; a pitched battle was fought before
+they could be expelled. It took place on the 17th of August, 1424, at
+Verneuil. In June, Bedford had regained the good will of the duke of
+Burgundy by an enormous concession, having pledged his eastern frontier
+to him, Bar-sur-Seine, Auxerre, and Mâcon.
+
+All northern France was greatly in danger of thus falling bit by bit into
+the duke of Burgundy’s hand; but suddenly the wind shifted. The sapient
+Gloucester, in the midst of this war begun for Jacqueline, forgets that
+he has married her, forgets that at that very moment she is besieged
+in Bergues, and weds another, a fair English woman. This new folly had
+the effect of an act of wisdom. The duke of Burgundy consented to be
+reconciled to the English, and made a show of believing all Bedford told
+him; the essential thing for him was to be able to despoil Jacqueline,
+and occupy Hainault, Holland, and afterwards Brabant, the succession to
+which could not but soon be opened.
+
+Charles VII, therefore, derived little advantage from this event which
+seemed likely to be so profitable to him. The only benefit that accrued
+to him from it was that the count de Foix, governor of Languedoc,
+comprehended that the duke of Burgundy would sooner or later turn
+against the English, and declared that his conscience obliged him
+to recognise Charles VII as legitimate king. He placed Languedoc in
+subjection to him, with the clear understanding that the king should draw
+from it neither money nor troops, and should not in any wise interfere
+with the little royalty which the count de Foix had contrived for himself
+in that province. The friendship of the houses of Anjou and Lorraine
+seemed to promise more direct advantage to the party of Charles VII. The
+head of the house of Anjou was then a woman, Queen Yolande, relict of
+Louis II, duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and pretender to the throne
+of Naples; she was the daughter of the king of Aragon, by a lady of
+Lorraine, of the house of Bar. The English having committed the egregious
+mistake of troubling the houses of Anjou and Aragon, as regarded their
+pretensions to the throne of Naples, Yolande formed against them an
+alliance of Anjou and Lorraine with Charles VII. She married her daughter
+to the young king, and her son René to the only daughter of the duke of
+Lorraine. Yolande was of service to her son-in-law. By her sage counsels
+she removed the old Armagnacs from about him; she had the address to win
+the Bretons back to him, and caused the constable’s sword to be conferred
+on the count of Richemont, brother of the duke of Brittany.
+
+Charles VII, combining together the Bretons, Gascons, and Dauphinois,
+had thenceforth the real military strength of France on his side. Spain
+sent him Aragonese, Italy Lombards. But the war sped feebly for all
+that; money was wanting, and union still more so. The king’s favourites
+frustrated Richemont’s first enterprises; not, indeed, with impunity, for
+the stern Breton put to death two of them within six months, without form
+of trial. Since a favourite was necessary to the king, he gave him one of
+his own choosing, young La Trémouille, and the first use the latter made
+of his ascendency was to dismiss Richemont. The king, strange to say,
+forbade his constable to fight for him; the king’s men and Richemont’s
+were on the point of drawing their swords against each other. Thus
+Charles VII found his cause less advanced than ever.[c]
+
+Meanwhile the towns were resisting the foreign domination. La
+Ferté-Bernard underwent in 1422 a four months’ siege and only yielded
+to the earl of Salisbury in the last extremity. In 1427 the English, in
+order to get closer to the Loire, sent three thousand men-at-arms to
+besiege Montargis on the Loing. The town had only a small garrison under
+the brave La Faille, but the inhabitants supported him well.[b]
+
+
+MONSTRELET DESCRIBES THE SIEGE OF MONTARGIS (1427 A.D.)
+
+Shortly after their arrival the English built some bridges and passages
+over the river. This being done, they began to approach the town and
+fortress of Montargis, and attacked and destroyed several engines of war.
+But despite this, the besieged defended themselves valiantly, and kept
+the besiegers thus employed for the space of about two months. During
+this time tidings were carried to King Charles of France, which informed
+him that, if he did not shortly send succour to the besieged, they must
+needs yield to their adversaries. This news came to the knowledge of
+King Charles, and it is said that king summoned a council, where it
+was concluded and determined to send help to Montargis, or, at least,
+to reinforce it with men and provisions. The charge of the relief was
+bestowed upon the bastard John of Orleans and Étienne de Vignolles, known
+as La Hire.
+
+[Sidenote: [1427-1428 A.D.]]
+
+They, with about sixteen hundred fighting men and skilful soldiers, took
+the road with much display, with the intention of victualling the said
+town of Montargis, and raising the siege. When they had come within half
+a league, as secretly as they could, they took counsel together and
+determined to make an attack upon some of the camps of the English, on
+both sides of the town. They had with them some of the garrison of the
+said town of Montargis who would direct them. They attacked the camps of
+the English with much violence (which attack the English had not guarded
+against), crying, “Montjoie St. Denis!” and began to fire a number of
+the camps, and killed and captured several of the English. Such was the
+spirit they put into their work, that the camp of Sir John de la Pole
+was overthrown in a short space of time; but the same lord and about
+eight others escaped in a small boat. The water was so high at that time
+that the bridges the English had made were covered, so that when they
+attempted to escape they fell beside these bridges and were drowned.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES VII
+
+(From an old French engraving)]
+
+Whilst this was going on, the bastard of Orleans was on the other side
+of the town, attacking on foot the camp of Henry Basset, and there being
+much to do, the others, when they had overthrown the first camp, came to
+his assistance. The English, perceiving that the victory was not to them,
+began to retreat to the camp of the earl of Warwick, and crossed a bridge
+so hastily and in such numbers that the bridge gave way beneath them, and
+there perished miserably very many; for besides this the inhabitants of
+Montargis, who had sallied forth boldly to the help of their own people,
+slaughtered and captured many, and did not spare them.
+
+Meanwhile, the earl of Warwick assembled his men as quickly as he could.
+But when he learned the great loss and pitiable defeat of his host,
+of which from a thousand to fifteen hundred men were either killed or
+captured, he departed and went his way, with the remainder of his men
+of which the greater number were on foot. They retreated to the castle
+of Landou in Nemours, and to other places under their suzerainty.[e]
+This was the first time that the bastard of Orleans was intrusted with a
+command of any importance, and he did not fail to justify his brilliant
+début.[f]
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS (1428-1429 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1428-1429 A.D.]]
+
+The following year (1428) Bedford resolved to push military operations
+vigorously and to force the barrier of the Loire. In the month of June
+the earl of Salisbury debarked at Calais with six thousand of the best
+soldiers England ever had in France; Bedford joined him there with four
+thousand men drawn from garrisons in Normandy, and their army took
+Jargeau, Janville, Meung-sur-Loire, Thoury, Beaugency, Marchenoir, and La
+Ferté-Hubert, thus approaching Orleans step by step.
+
+Orleans was the gate to Berri, the Bourbonnais and Poitou. This taken,
+the “king of Bourges” would become the king of Dauphiné and Languedoc.
+October 12th, 1428, the English appeared before its ramparts and at
+once formed around the place a series of bastilles, each of which was
+commanded by one of the first lords of England--by William de la Pole,
+earl of Suffolk; the “English Achilles,” Lord Talbot; and William
+Glasdale, who had sworn to kill everyone in Orleans. Salisbury was
+commander-in-chief. The Orléanais, who had been expecting the siege, had
+fortified the heart of their town by burning the suburbs. Their captain
+was the sire de Gaucourt whom the English had held captive for thirteen
+years, because he had persisted in defending Harfleur against them. The
+garrison did not number more than five hundred at the most, but they
+were all hardened warriors. Moreover, the bourgeois were looking out for
+themselves. They had formed thirty-four companies--and each undertook the
+defence of one of the thirty-four towers of the wall.
+
+Artillery was beginning to play a great rôle in battles and sieges. That
+of the besiegers was badly handled, and the bourgeois laughed at the
+unskilful English cannoneers who threw eighty-pound balls into the town
+and killed no one.[39] The Orléanais artillery was very different. It was
+composed of seventy pieces, aimed by twelve master cannoneers, expert at
+firing. Each cannon had its name and its own particular duty. The good
+cannon _Riflard_ (Clean Sweep) killed its man at every shot.[b] Another
+one, too, was the celebrated culverin of a skilful Lorrainian cannoneer,
+Maître Jean; the two, man and culverin, made the finest hits. The English
+came at last to know this Maître Jean; he never ceased killing them
+except to make game of them: from time to time he would drop down and
+pretend to be dead; his body was carried off into the town; the English
+were in ecstasy when--behold! back he would come, alive and merry, and
+fire upon them worse than ever.[c]
+
+But the luckiest shot of all was fired by a child [according to Grafton,
+the son of a gunner who had gone to dinner]. This schoolboy came across a
+fully loaded piece on the rampart. He lit the fuse and ran away. The ball
+went straight into the face of the earl of Salisbury, who was standing on
+one of the bastilles and to whom, at that very instant, William Glasdale
+was saying, “My lord, behold your town.”
+
+The English commander was dead; and the next day the bastard of Orleans,
+the handsome, brave Dunois, entered the town with the best knights of
+the time--La Hire, Saintrailles, Marshal de Broussac, and six or seven
+hundred soldiers. Others followed until little by little seven thousand
+were gathered in Orleans.[b]
+
+
+_The “Battle of the Herrings” (1429 A.D.)_
+
+The siege continued with various success to the 12th of February, 1429,
+with sundry episodes in the way of sorties, feigned attacks, conflicts
+about provision entering the town, and even duels, to amuse the two
+parties and try their respective mettle. They went on slowly completing
+their fortifications, and it was to be foreseen that the town would be at
+last almost entirely shut in.
+
+However careless the king might appear about saving the appenage of
+the duke of Orleans, it was clear that, once that city had fallen,
+the English would advance unhindered into Poitou, Berri, and the
+Bourbonnais, would live at the expense of those provinces, and ruin
+the south after having ruined the north. The duke de Bourbon sent his
+eldest son, the count de Clermont, under whom some Scotch forces and
+some lords of Touraine, Poitou, and Auvergne were to succour Orleans,
+cast provisions into it, and even hinder the arrival of provisions in
+the English camp. The duke of Bedford sent a supply from Paris under
+the conduct of the brave Sir John Fastolf; and he had availed himself
+of the old Cabochian enmity of Paris to Orleans, to add to his English
+detachment a considerable number of Parisian arblast men, and the
+provost of Paris himself. They took with them three hundred wagon-loads
+of provisions, particularly herrings, an article indispensable in Lent.
+Troops and wagons all marched in narrow file, and nothing could have been
+easier than to break their line and destroy them. The Gascon La Hire,
+who was in advance of the French, burned with impatience to fall upon
+them, but received express orders not to do so, from the prince, who was
+advancing slowly with the main body of his force.
+
+Meanwhile, the English had taken the alarm, and Fastolf had drawn his
+men together under cover of the wagons and a line of sharp stakes which
+these provident English always carried with them. The English archers
+were posted on the right, the Parisian arblast men on the left. In spite
+of all the count de Clermont could say, his men were carried away by
+their impetuous rancour; the Scotch leaped from their saddles to fight
+the English on foot, and the Armagnac Gascons rushed upon their old
+enemies the Parisians; but the latter stood their ground. The Scotch and
+Gascons having thus broken their ranks, the English issued from behind
+their temporary ramparts, pursued them, and killed three or four hundred.
+The count de Clermont remained immovable. La Hire was so furious that he
+turned back upon the English who dispersed in the pursuit, and killed
+some of them. The count’s party had to return to Orleans after this
+unlucky engagement, to which the Orléanais, always satirical, gave the
+name of the “battle of the Herrings”; in fact, the balls had burst the
+barrels; and the field was strewn with herrings more than with the slain.
+
+Slight as was this check, it discouraged everyone. The most knowing
+hastened to quit a town that seemed lost. The young count de Clermont had
+the weakness to withdraw with his two thousand men; the admiral and the
+chancellor of France thought it would be a sad thing if the king’s great
+officers should be taken by the English, and they too departed. As the
+men-at-arms no longer hoped for human aid, and the priests did not reckon
+very confidently on divine succour, the archbishop of Rheims took himself
+off, and even the bishop of Orleans left his flock to defend themselves
+as they could.
+
+They all went away on the 18th of February, assuring the citizens that
+they would soon return in strength. Nothing could stay them. The bastard
+of Orleans, who with equal skill and valour defended the appenage of his
+house, had in vain been telling them since the 12th that a miraculous
+succour should be looked for, that a daughter of God, who promised to
+save the town, was coming from the marches of Lorraine. The archbishop,
+an ex-secretary of the pope, and an old diplomatist, paid little heed to
+this talk about miracles. Dunois himself did not reckon so exclusively on
+aid from on high as to neglect employing a very human and very politic
+means against the English. He sent Saintrailles to the duke of Burgundy,
+to beg him, as a relative of the duke of Orleans, to take the latter’s
+town into his keeping. He was now asked to accept the grand and important
+possession of the centre of France, and he did not refuse the offer. He
+went straight to Paris, and told the affair to Bedford, who answered
+dryly that he had not toiled for the duke of Burgundy’s behoof. The
+latter, much offended, recalled all the troops he had at the siege of
+Orleans.
+
+Supplies arriving with difficulty, discontent began in the town; many
+no doubt were of opinion that the town had made quite enough sacrifices
+for the sake of its lord, and that it was better Orleans should become
+English than cease to be. Things did not stop there. It was discovered
+that a hole had been made in the wall of the town; treachery was
+manifestly at work. Besides all this, Dunois could expect no help from
+Charles VII. The estates, assembled in 1428, had voted money and summoned
+the tenants of fiefs to fulfil their feudal duties. Neither money nor men
+had arrived.
+
+We are not well acquainted with the intrigues that divided the little
+court of Charles. The divisions in it had naturally augmented in this
+its extreme distress. The old Armagnac advisers, whom Richemont and the
+king’s mother-in-law had for a while removed, were in the way to regain
+their credit. That southern party would have been well pleased to have a
+king of the south holding his court at Grenoble. The duchess of Anjou,
+the king’s mother-in-law, on the contrary, could not preserve Anjou if
+the English definitively passed the Loire. So far there was a community
+of interests between her and the house of Orleans. But the house of
+Anjou had so many other interests, so various and divergent, that she
+thought it expedient always to keep on fair terms with the English, and
+to negotiate perpetually. When the defence of Orleans appeared to be
+desperate (May, 1429), the old cardinal De Bar hastened to treat with
+Bedford, in the name of his nephew, René of Anjou, lest he should lose
+the inheritance of Lorraine, calculating that René could disavow his
+proceedings, should the affairs of Charles VII at any future time assume
+another aspect.
+
+The impending ruin of Orleans had frightened the other towns of the
+Loire. The nearest, Angers, Tours, and Bourges, sent provisions to
+the besieged; Poitiers and La Rochelle, money; then, when the alarm
+increased, the Bourbonnais, Auvergne, and even Languedoc sent the
+Orléanais saltpetre, sulphur, and steel. Gradually all France became
+interested in the fate of one town, and moved with sympathy for the
+brave resistance of the men of Orleans and their fidelity to their lord.
+Orleans was pitied; so too was its duke. The captive Charles of Orleans
+could not defend his town.[40]
+
+The English had one thing in their favour, namely, that their young king,
+Henry VI, was certainly a Frenchman by the mother’s side, and grandson
+of Charles VI, whom he resembled but too much as regarded the weakness
+of his mind. The legitimacy of Charles VII, on the other hand, was very
+doubtful; he was born in 1403, in the high tide of his mother’s intimacy
+with the duke of Orleans; and she herself had acquiesced in the acts
+in which he was called _soi-disant_ dauphin. Henry VI had not yet been
+crowned at Rheims, but neither had Charles VII. The people in those days
+recognised a king but by two things, royal birth and the crown placed
+on his head with the church’s solemn sanction. Charles VII was not king
+according to religion, nor was he sure that he was so according to
+nature. This question, of no moment for politicians of that class who
+decide after their own interests, was everything for the people, who are
+willing to obey only the right. A woman had obscured this great question
+of right, and by a woman it was cleared up. This second woman bore the
+name Jeanne Darc. She was soon to be famous as the Maid of Orleans.
+
+
+THE MAID OF ORLEANS (_LA PUCELLE_) (1429 A.D.)
+
+The originality of the Maid of Orleans, and what determined her success,
+was not so much her valour or her visions as her good sense. Through all
+her enthusiasm, this daughter of the people saw the question clearly, and
+was able to solve it. She cut the knot which the politic and the men of
+little faith could not untie. She declared, in God’s name, that Charles
+VII was the true heir, and she set him at ease as to his legitimacy, of
+which he himself had doubts. That legitimacy she sanctified, taking her
+king straight to Rheims, and gaining over the English, by the celerity of
+her movements, the decisive advantage of the coronation.
+
+It was at Domrémy, just between Lorraine of the Vosges and that of the
+plain, between Lorraine and Champagne, that the beautiful and brave girl
+was born, who was to wield the sword of France so well.
+
+Joan or Jeanne was the third daughter of a peasant, Jacques Darc,[41]
+and of Isabella of Romée. She had two godmothers, one of whom was named
+Jeanne, the other Sibylle. The eldest son having been named James
+(Jacques), another Peter (Pierre), the pious parents gave one of their
+daughters the more exalted name of St. John (Jean). Whilst the other
+children accompanied their father in his field work or tended cattle,
+the mother kept Joan at home for sewing or spinning. She did not learn
+to read or write, but she knew all her mother could teach her of sacred
+things. She acquired religion, not as a lesson or a ceremony, but in the
+homely popular form of a winter night’s tale, as the simple faith of a
+mother.
+
+Everybody knew her charity and her piety. They saw clearly she was the
+best girl in the village. What they did not know was that in her the life
+from above always absorbed the other life, and suppressed all vulgar
+development. Hers was the divine gift to remain a child in soul and
+body. She grew up, became strong and comely, but never knew the physical
+miseries of her sex. They were spared her, to the advantage of her mental
+growth and religious inspiration.
+
+Joan had her share in the romantic adventures of those restless times.
+She saw poor fugitives arrive in the hamlet, and the kind-hearted girl
+assisted towards their reception, gave up her bed to them, and lay down
+in the hayloft. Her kindred, too, were once obliged to save themselves
+by flight. Then, when the inundation of brigands had passed off, the
+family returned and found the village sacked, the house devastated, and
+the church burned down. Thus she knew what war meant. She understood that
+anti-Christian state of things, and abhorred that reign of the devil, in
+which every man died in mortal sin. If, as everyone said, the ruin of the
+kingdom was the work of a woman, an unnatural mother, it might be that
+its salvation should proceed from a girl. This very fact was foretold
+in one of Merlin’s prophecies, a prophecy which, variously enriched and
+modified in the several provinces, had become thoroughly Lorrainian in
+the country of Joan of Arc. It was a girl of the marches of Lorraine
+that was to save the realm. The prophecy had probably received this
+embellishment, in consequence of the recent marriage of René of Anjou
+with the heiress of the duchy of Lorraine, which was in reality a very
+fortunate event for France.
+
+One summer’s day, a fast day, Joan, being in the garden at noon with her
+father, close by the church, saw a dazzling light in that direction, and
+heard a voice saying, “Be a good child, Joan, and go often to church.”
+The poor girl was greatly frightened. Another time she again heard the
+voice and saw the light; but now she discerned it in noble figures,
+one of which had wings and seemed a sage counsellor. He said to her,
+“Joan, go to the aid of the king of France, and thou wilt restore him
+to his kingdom.” She answered, trembling all over, “My Lord, I am but a
+poor girl; I cannot ride the war-horse, or lead men-at-arms.” The voice
+replied: “Thou shalt go to M. de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and
+he will take thee before the king. St. Catherine and St. Margaret will be
+with thee to help thee.” She remained stupefied and in tears, as if she
+had already beheld her whole future destiny.
+
+The sage counsellor was none other than St. Michael, the stern archangel
+of judgment and battle. He returned again, cheered her courage, “and
+related to her the pity there was in the realm of France.” Then came the
+white figures of female saints, surrounded with innumerable lights, their
+heads adorned with rich crowns, their voices sweet and melting even to
+tears. But Joan wept above all when the saints and angels left her. “I
+should have been very glad,” she said, “if the angels had taken me away
+with them.” Joan has told us nothing of the first inward conflict she
+sustained; but it is evident it took place, and endured a long while,
+since five years elapsed between her first vision and her departure from
+the home of her parents.
+
+She encountered not only resistance but temptation in her own family.
+They tried to marry her, in the hope of bringing her back to a more
+rational way of thinking. A young man of the village alleged that she
+had promised him marriage when she was still a child; and as she denied
+the fact, he cited her before the ecclesiastical judge at Toul. It was
+supposed she would make no defence, but would submit to be cast by the
+court and married; but to everyone’s great astonishment, she went to
+Toul, appeared in court, and spoke--she who had always held her peace.
+
+To enable her to escape from the control of her family, it was necessary
+she should find in her family itself someone to believe her; this was
+a most difficult problem. Failing to persuade her father, she made a
+convert of her uncle, who took her away with him, under the pretext of
+her nursing his wife in her lying-in. She prevailed on him to go to the
+sire de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and ask his support for
+her; but the man of war gave the peasant a very bad reception, and told
+him the only thing to be done was “to slap her well,” and take her home
+to her father. She was not cast down by the rebuff, but determined to
+depart, and her uncle was constrained to accompany her. The decisive
+moment was come; she quitted her family and her native village forever;
+she embraced her friends, especially her dear little friend Mengette,
+whom she commended to God’s keeping; but as for Haumette, the friend she
+loved above all others, she preferred to depart without seeing her.
+
+She arrived then in the town of Vaucouleurs, dressed in her clumsy red
+peasant garments, and went along with her uncle to lodge with the wife
+of a wheelwright who took a liking to her. She had herself taken into
+Baudricourt’s presence, and said to him boldly that “she came to him
+on the part of our Lord to bid him tell the dauphin to keep his ground
+steadily, and not give battle to his enemies; for our Lord would grant
+him succour in mid-Lent. The kingdom did not belong to the dauphin but to
+our Lord; nevertheless, it was our Lord’s will that the dauphin should
+become king, and that he should hold the kingdom in trust.” She went on
+to say that, in spite of the dauphin’s enemies, he would be king, and
+she would take him to be crowned. The captain was amazed, and suspecting
+there was some deviltry at work, he consulted the parish priest, who
+apparently entertained the same doubts. Joan had not spoken of her
+visions to any churchman. The priest, therefore, accompanied the captain
+to the wheelwright’s house with his stole on, and adjured Joan to depart
+if she was sent by the evil spirit.
+
+But the people did not doubt; their admiration was extreme; persons
+flocked from all parts to see her. It appears that Baudricourt sent
+to ask leave of the king. Meanwhile, he conducted Joan to the duke of
+Lorraine, who was ill and wished to consult her. He got nothing from her
+but advice to appease God’s anger by becoming reconciled with his wife.
+He gave her encouragement notwithstanding. On her return to Vaucouleurs,
+she found a messenger from the king, who brought the permission she
+desired. The disaster of the battle of the Herrings disposed the king to
+accept every means of which he could avail himself. Joan had predicted
+the battle on the very day when it took place. The people of Vaucouleurs,
+entertaining no doubt of her mission, clubbed together to buy her a
+horse. The captain gave her only a sword.
+
+It was a rough and very perilous journey she was about to make. The whole
+country was overrun by armed bands belonging to either party. There was
+now neither road nor bridge; the rivers were swollen; it was the month of
+February, 1429.
+
+
+_Joan at the Court_
+
+The court of Charles VII was far from being unanimous in the Maid’s
+favour. That inspired girl, just come from Lorraine, and patronised by
+the duke of Lorraine, could not fail to strengthen with the king the
+party of the queen and her mother, the Lorraine and Anjou party. An
+ambush was laid for Joan at some distance from Chinon, and she escaped
+from it only by miracle.
+
+So strong was the opposition against her that, after she was actually
+arrived, the council continued for two days to discuss the question
+whether or not the king should see her. Her enemies thought to postpone
+the matter indefinitely, by having it decided that inquiries should be
+made respecting her in her native place. Fortunately, she had friends
+also--the two queens, no doubt, and above all, the duke of Alençon, who,
+having recently come out of the hands of the English, was very impatient
+to carry the war into the north, and recover his duchy. The inhabitants
+of Orleans, to whom Dunois had been promising this marvellous aid since
+the 12th of February, sent to the king and claimed the Maid’s presence.
+
+The king received her at last, surrounded with the greatest pomp; which,
+in all probability, was adopted with the hope of disconcerting her.
+She presented herself humbly “as a poor shepherd wench,” distinguished
+the king at the first glance from the crowd of lords among whom he had
+purposely mingled; and though he insisted, at first, he was not the king,
+she embraced his knees. But as he was not yet crowned, she styled him
+only dauphin: “Gentle dauphin,” she said, “my name is Jehanne la Pucelle.
+The King of heaven sends you word by me that you shall be anointed and
+crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the King of
+heaven, who is King of France.”
+
+[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS]
+
+The archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France, and president of the
+king’s council, summoned doctors and professors of theology, some of them
+priests, others monks, and ordered them to examine the Maid. The doctors
+being introduced and seated in a hall, Joan sat down on the end of the
+bench, and replied to their questions. She recounted the apparitions and
+the words of the angels, with dignified simplicity. A Dominican met her
+with a single objection, but it was one of weight: “Jehanne, thou sayest
+it is God’s will to deliver the people of France; if such is his will he
+has no need of men-at-arms.” The observation did not confound her. “Ah!
+_mon Dieu_,” said she, “the men-at-arms will do battle, and God will give
+the victory.” Another person was not so easily satisfied. This was Friar
+Séguin, a Limousin, professor of theology in the university of Poitiers,
+“a very sour man,” says the chronicle. He asked her, in his Limousin
+French, “What language did the celestial voice speak?” Joan answered with
+rather too much sharpness, “A better one than yours.” “Dost thou believe
+in God?” said the enraged doctor; “well then, God will not have us put
+faith in thy words unless thou show a sign.” She answered, “I am not come
+to Poitiers to perform signs or miracles; my sign shall be to raise the
+siege of Orleans. Let me have men-at-arms, few or many, and I will go.”
+
+The question of her inspiration was made to depend on the test of her
+virginity. The duchess of Anjou, the king’s mother-in-law, accomplished
+the ridiculous examination, with the aid of some ladies, to the honour
+of the Maid. Some Franciscans who had been sent to her native place to
+collect information, brought back the most satisfactory accounts. There
+was no more time to be lost. Orleans was crying out for help; Dunois
+was sending message upon message. The Maid was equipped, and a sort of
+establishment was formed for her. First of all they gave her for squire
+John Daulon, a brave knight of mature years, who belonged to the count
+de Dunois, and was the most respectable among his followers. She had
+also a noble page, two heralds-at-arms, a seneschal, and two valets; her
+brother, Pierre Darc, had also joined her suite. John Pasquerel, a friar,
+hermit of the order of St. Augustin, was assigned her for confessor.
+
+
+_The Deliverance of Orleans (1429 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1429 A.D.]]
+
+When we read the list of the captains who threw themselves into Orleans
+with Joan of Arc--La Hire, Saintrailles, Gaucourt, Culan, Coaraze,
+Armagnac; when we see that, independently of the Bretons under Marshal de
+Retz, and Marshal de St. Sévère’s Gascons, Florent d’Illiers, captain of
+Châteaudun, had brought all the nobles of the vicinity to take part in
+this short expedition, the deliverance of Orleans seems less miraculous.
+One thing, however, was by all means wanting to enable these great
+forces to act with advantage, an essential, indispensable thing--unity
+of action. Dunois might have created this, had no more been requisite
+to that end than address and intelligence; but this was not enough. An
+authority was requisite, one surpassing that of the crown; the king’s
+captains were not habituated to obey the king.
+
+War had changed men into wild beasts, and these beasts required to be
+turned again to men, Christians, docile subjects. A great and difficult
+change! Some of these Armagnac captains were perhaps the most furious
+men that ever existed. It was a ludicrous and touching thing to see the
+sudden conversion of the old Armagnac brigands. They did not stop short
+halfway in their amendment. La Hire no longer ventured to utter an oath;
+but the Maid, compassionating the violence he did himself, allowed him to
+swear, “by his staff.” The devils had all at once been transformed into
+little saints.
+
+She had begun by insisting that they should renounce their wanton women,
+and should confess. Then in the course of her march along the Loire, she
+had an altar erected in the open air, at which she took the communion,
+and so did they. The first night they bivouacked, she lay down in full
+armour, as there were no women about her; but she was not yet habituated
+to such hardships, and she was ill in consequence. As for danger, she
+knew not what it meant. She wanted to cross over to the north side of
+the river, and march along the English bank and between the bastilles of
+the invaders, who, she asserted, would not stir. Her followers would not
+listen to her advice, but marched along the left bank, so as to pass two
+leagues above Orleans. Dunois came out to meet her: “I bring you,” she
+said, “the best succour ever sent to anyone, the succour of the King of
+heaven. It comes not from me, but from God himself, who, at the entreaty
+of St. Louis and St. Charlemagne, has had pity on the town of Orleans,
+and will not suffer that the enemy should have both the duke’s body and
+his town at once.”
+
+She entered the city slowly at eight in the evening (April 29th), the
+crowd scarcely allowing her to advance. Everyone strove eagerly to touch
+at least her horse. They gazed on her “as if they saw God.” Talking
+gently to the people all the while, she proceeded to the church, and then
+to the houses of the duke of Orleans’ treasurer, an honourable man, whose
+wife and daughter gave her welcome. She slept with Charlotte, one of the
+daughters.
+
+She had entered the town along with the provisions, but the army marched
+down-stream again, to cross at Blois. She would, nevertheless, have had
+an immediate attack made on the English bastilles; but as she could not
+effect this, she sent a second peremptory message to those on the north
+side, and then proceeded to repeat her summons to those on the south.
+Glasdale, the captain, abused her in the coarsest terms, calling her
+cow-girl and ribald. In their hearts they believed her to be a witch, and
+were greatly afraid of her. They kept her herald, and were thinking of
+burning him, in hopes that this would, perhaps, break the charm.
+
+The army not arriving, Dunois ventured forth in search of it. The
+archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of Charles VII, had detained the little
+army at Blois. The old politician was far from conceiving the existence
+of such an irresistible enthusiasm, or perhaps he feared it. It was,
+therefore, much against his will that he came to Orleans. The maid went
+out to meet him, with the people and the priests singing hymns. The
+procession passed and repassed before the English bastilles; and the army
+entered the town, protected by some priests and a girl (May 4th, 1429).
+
+Joan, who, in the midst of her enthusiasm and her inspiration, had much
+shrewdness of apprehension, very clearly discerned the hostile temper of
+the new comers. She was right in surmising that there was a design to act
+without her. As she lay by Charlotte’s side, she suddenly started up,
+exclaiming, “My God! the blood of our people is running on the ground.
+It was ill done! Why was I not wakened? Quick! my arms, my horse!” She
+was armed in a moment, galloped off at full speed, and met men already
+wounded, whom they were carrying back from the field. The fugitives faced
+round on her arrival. Dunois, who had also not been called, arrived on
+the ground at the same time. The bastille (one of those on the north
+side) was attacked again. Talbot strove to succour it; but fresh forces
+issued from Orleans; the Maid put herself at their head, and Talbot
+withdrew his men. The bastille was carried. This was her first victory,
+the first time she looked on a field of slaughter. She sought confession
+for herself and her followers; and declared that she would take the
+communion on the morrow, being the feast of the Ascension, and pass the
+day in prayer.
+
+Advantage was taken of this resolution to hold a council without her,
+wherein it was determined that this time the besiegers should cross the
+Loire and attack St. Jean le Blanc, the bastille which most impeded the
+introduction of provisions into the town, and that a false attack should
+be made at the same time on the other side. The English then did what
+they ought to have done before. They concentrated their strength. With
+their own hands burning the bastille which was to have been attacked,
+they retired upon the other two on the south side, the Augustins and the
+Tournelles. The former was instantly attacked and carried, the success in
+this instance again being partly due to the Maid. The French were seized
+for a while with a panic, and rushed back towards the floating bridge;
+but the Maid and La Hire disentangled themselves from the throng, threw
+themselves into boats, and took the English in flank.
+
+There remained the Tournelles. The victors passed the night before it;
+but they obliged the Maid, who had eaten nothing all day (it was Friday),
+to recross the Loire. Meanwhile the council had assembled. The Maid was
+told in the evening that it had been unanimously resolved that, since the
+town was now fully victualled, they should wait for a fresh reinforcement
+to attack the Tournelles. It is difficult to believe that such could
+have been the real intention of the leaders, for delay was extremely
+dangerous, since the English might at any moment be succoured by Fastolf.
+Probably the intention was to deceive the Maid and deprive her of the
+honour of the triumph she had so powerfully contributed towards securing.
+She disappointed them.
+
+In the morning she rode to the Burgundy gate with a multitude of
+men-at-arms and citizens; but the sire de Gaucourt, grand-master of
+the king’s household, kept it shut. The crowd opened the gate, and
+forced another near it. The sun was rising on the Loire when the whole
+concourse threw themselves into the boats. On arriving, however, at the
+Tournelles, they felt that they wanted artillery, and they sent for some
+to the town. At last they attacked the outward rampart which protected
+the bastille. The English defended themselves valiantly. The Maid,
+perceiving that the assailants were beginning to show signs of weakness,
+jumped into the ditch, seized a ladder, and was in the act of applying it
+to the wall, when an arrow struck her between the neck and the shoulder.
+The English sallied out to seize her, but she was carried off by her
+own party. She only allowed a little oil to be poured on the wound, and
+confessed.
+
+Meanwhile no progress was made, and night was at hand. Dunois himself
+gave orders to sound a retreat. A Basque had taken out of the hands of
+the Maid’s squire that standard of hers which struck such dismay into the
+enemy. “When the standard touches the wall,” said she, “you will be able
+to enter.” “It is touching it.” “In then! all is your own.” And just as
+she had predicted, the assailants in a frenzy of enthusiasm climbed the
+wall “as though by one step.” The English were at this moment attacked on
+two sides at once.
+
+Meanwhile the men of Orleans, who watched the fight from the other side
+of the Loire, could contain themselves no longer. They threw open their
+gates and rushed to the bridge, but there was an arch broken; they pushed
+a rickety plank across the opening, and a knight of St. John ventured
+to pass over the frail spar in full armour. The bridge was hastily
+repaired, and the whole multitude hurried to the other side. The English,
+seeing such a human sea rushing upon them, thought the whole world had
+come together against them. Their senses grew bewildered; some of them
+beheld St. Aignan, the patron of the town, others the archangel Michael.
+Glasdale endeavoured to retreat from the rampart to the bastille, across
+a small bridge; but it was shattered by a shot, and the Englishman fell
+into the water and was drowned, before the eyes of the maid he had so
+vilified. There were five hundred men in the bastille, all of whom were
+put to the sword.
+
+Not one Englishman remained south of the Loire. Next day, Sunday,
+the besiegers on the northern side abandoned their bastilles, their
+artillery, their prisoners, and their wounded comrades. Talbot and
+Suffolk conducted the retreat steadily and in good order. The Maid would
+not allow them to be pursued, since they retired of their own accord; but
+before they withdrew out of sight of the town, she had an altar erected
+on a plain, at which mass was celebrated, and the people returned thanks
+to God in the presence of the enemy (Sunday, May 8th). The effect of the
+deliverance of Orleans was prodigious; everyone beheld in it the agency
+of supernatural power. Many attributed it to the devil, but the majority
+to God; it began to be generally believed that Charles had right on his
+side.[c]
+
+
+_Joan of Arc leads the King to Rheims_
+
+However discomfited and paralysed by the panic of their soldiers, as
+well as by the great diminution of their numbers in the siege, the
+English generals would not retreat from the Loire, but withdrew, Suffolk
+to Jargeau, up the stream of the river, Talbot to Meung, lower down
+its current. They were unmolested for a month. The French were lost in
+jubilation. Joan left Orleans on the 13th of May, and hurried back to the
+court at Tours to press the king for an army to proceed to Rheims.[g]
+
+To be crowned at Rheims would have been a decisive victory for Charles
+over his young competitor Henry VI. It would have made him a real king
+of France. But once again the politicians believed themselves the wiser,
+and the coronation was not to be thought of until the English were driven
+from the Loire.[b]
+
+Early in June, however, Joan was able to muster eight thousand
+combatants, of whom twelve hundred were knights, most of them townsmen of
+Orleans.[g] Suffolk, who had thrown himself into Jargeau, was besieged
+and the place stormed. Beaugency, too, was taken before Lord Talbot could
+receive the succours which Sir John Fastolf was bringing him from the
+regent. The constable De Richemont, who had long kept aloof within his
+own estates, came, in spite of the king and the Maid, to lend his aid to
+the victorious army.
+
+A battle was imminent; Richemont came to share the honour it might
+afford. Talbot and Fastolf had formed a junction of their forces; but
+it is a curious fact, illustrative both of the condition of the country
+and of the fortuitous character of the war, that no one knew where to
+find the English army in the wilderness of La Beauce, which was then
+covered with coppices and thickets, until they were discovered by a stag,
+which, being pursued by the French vanguard, rushed into the ranks of the
+English.
+
+The latter were on their march, and had not set up their defensive line
+of stakes as usual. Talbot alone was for fighting, furious as he was,
+since the defeat at Orleans, at having shown his back to the French.
+Fastolf, on the contrary, who had gained the battle of the Herrings,
+had no need of an engagement to retrieve his reputation, and said, like
+a sensible man, that with a disheartened army it was better to remain
+on the defensive. The French men-at-arms did not wait for the end of
+the discussion, but charged headlong, and met with no great resistance.
+Talbot fought with desperate obstinacy, hoping perhaps to be killed,
+and succeeded only in getting himself made prisoner. The pursuit was
+murderous; the bodies of two thousand English were strewed over the plain.
+
+After this battle of Patay (28th or 29th of June), it was now or never
+the time to venture on the expedition to Rheims. The politicians wanted
+to remain still on the Loire, and make sure of Cosne and La Charité. This
+time they talked in vain; no timid counsels could now be listened to.
+Every day brought people flocking in from all the provinces, attracted by
+the fame of the Maid’s miracles, and believing only in her, and in her
+purpose forthwith to convey the king to Rheims. There was an irresistible
+outburst of the pilgrim and crusading spirit. The indolent young king
+himself at last yielded to the popular flood, and suffered himself to
+be borne along by that vast tide that set in towards the north; and off
+they started all together, willingly or perforce--the king, courtiers,
+the politic and the enthusiastic, the madmen and the sages. They were
+twelve thousand when they began their march, but their numbers augmented
+continually as they advanced; every hour brought them additional
+strength; and those who had no armour followed the holy expedition in
+plain doublets, as archers or sword-and-buckler men, even though they
+were of gentle blood.
+
+The army marched from Gien on the 28th of June without attempting to
+enter it, that town being in the hands of the duke of Burgundy, whom
+there were reasons for treating with favour. Troyes had a mixed garrison
+of Burgundians and English, who ventured to make a sortie on the first
+appearance of the royal army. There seemed small chance of storming a
+large town so well guarded, and that too without artillery. There was
+only one old Armagnac councillor, the president Mâcon, who was of a
+contrary opinion, well knowing that in such an enterprise prudence was
+on the side of enthusiasm, and that men must not reason in a popular
+crusade. “When the king undertook this march,” said he, “he did so not by
+reason of the great armed force or the abundance of money he possessed,
+nor because the achievement seemed to him possible; he undertook it
+because Joan told him to advance and be crowned at Rheims, and that
+he would encounter little resistance by the way, such being the good
+pleasure of God.” The Maid then presented herself at the door of the
+council-room, and assured them they would be able to enter the town in
+three days. “We would willingly wait six,” said the chancellor, “if we
+were sure what you say is true.” “Six? You shall enter to-morrow!”
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, TIME OF JOAN OF ARC]
+
+She seized her standard; the whole army followed her to the ditch, and
+they threw into it all they could lay their hands on, fagots, doors,
+tables, rafters, with such rapidity that the townspeople thought the
+ditches would very soon disappear altogether. The English began to be
+dazzled and bewildered as at Orleans, and fancied they saw a cloud of
+white butterflies fluttering round the magic standard. The citizens on
+their part were in great dread, recollecting that it was in Troyes the
+treaty had been concluded which disinherited Charles VII, and fearing
+that an example would be made of their town. Already they were taking
+refuge in the churches, and crying out that the town must surrender. The
+fighting men, who desired nothing better, parleyed and obtained leave to
+depart with what they had.
+
+What they had was chiefly prisoners, Frenchmen. Charles VII’s
+councillors, who had drawn up the capitulation, had stipulated nothing
+with respect to those unfortunate persons. The Maid alone thought of
+them. When the English marched out with their prisoners in irons, she
+stood at the gates and cried out, “In God’s name, they shall not carry
+them off!” She stopped them, in fact, and the king paid their ransom.[c]
+
+Charles simply passed through Troyes, neither did he stop at Châlons,
+which opened its gates with alacrity; and, on July 13th, he arrived
+before Rheims. Two Burgundian nobles, the sires of Châtillon and of
+Saveuse, were in command, but they had no men. They assembled the
+townsmen, and asked them to hold out for six weeks only; at the end of
+that time they guaranteed that the dukes of Burgundy and of Bedford would
+arrive with so powerful an army that it would easily raise the siege.
+The townsfolk refused to run the risk, persuaded the two captains to
+retire, and sent a deputation to the chancellor of France who was at the
+same time archbishop of Rheims, begging him to enter his episcopal town.
+On July 17th Charles was at last crowned in accordance with the usual
+ritual, anointed with oil from the holy ampulla of Saint-Rémy and lifted
+up to his seat by the ecclesiastical peers.
+
+
+_Joan defeated at Paris (1429 A.D.)_
+
+Joan had done the two great things which her ‘voices’ told her to do:
+she had delivered Orleans, and had caused the king to be crowned; she
+now wished to return to her village. “On her entrance into Rheims,” says
+the _Chronique de la Pucelle_[h] “seeing how all the poor people of the
+country cried ‘Noel!’ and wept from joy and gladness, and how they came
+to the king singing _Te Deum laudamus_ without response or anthem, she
+said to the chancellor of France and to Dunois: ‘In God’s name this is a
+good and pious people, and when it shall be my time to die, I should like
+it to be in this country.’
+
+“Then the said count Dunois asked her: ‘Joan, do you know when you will
+die and in what place?’ She answered that that was as God willed; and
+said moreover to the said lord: ‘I have fulfilled what my Lord commanded
+me, and I wish that he would send me back to my father and mother to keep
+their sheep and cattle.’”
+
+But her rôle was not ended, for the English still held a large part
+of the kingdom. Joan, with the same firmness which had made her go to
+Orleans and to Rheims, asked to be allowed to march to Paris. The king’s
+counsellors could not accustom themselves to these heroic deeds of daring
+which, at certain moments, are more estimable than prudence; they decided
+first to take the small towns on the road to Paris. These opened their
+gates of their own free will. The royal army entered Laon, Soissons,
+Coulommiers, Provins, Senlis, and St. Denis without trouble. But when
+they came to Paris the opportunity had passed.[b] Bedford had sent for
+the duke of Burgundy to secure Paris, and he came at the invitation,
+but almost alone; all the use the regent could make of him was to have
+him figure in an assembly of notables, where he harangued, and repeated
+once more the lamentable history of his father’s death. This being done,
+he took himself off, leaving Bedford, by way of aid, only some Picard
+men-at-arms; and even for this slight assistance, he required to have the
+town of Meux given to him in pledge.
+
+There was no hope save in Beaufort. That priest was king in England. His
+nephew, Gloucester, the protector, had ruined himself by his own follies.
+In order to uplift the cardinal’s power to the highest pitch, it was
+necessary that Bedford should be brought as low in France as Gloucester
+was in England; that he should be reduced to such exigency as to call for
+Beaufort’s presence, and that the latter should come at the head of an
+army to crown Henry VI. That army Beaufort had in readiness. With it he
+was to secure Paris, convey young Henry thither, and crown him.
+
+It was not until July 25th, nine days after Charles VII had been duly
+anointed and crowned, that the cardinal entered Paris with his army.
+Bedford did not lose a moment, but set out with these troops to observe
+Charles VII. Twice they were in presence of each other, and some
+skirmishes took place. Bedford, fearing for Normandy, kept watch over it,
+and during this time the king marched against Paris (August). This was
+contrary to the wish of the Maid, whose voices told her not to advance
+beyond St. Denis.
+
+It was an imprudent enterprise; the French nevertheless carried a
+rampart. The Maid went down into the first ditch, and crossed the
+shelving bank between it and the second, and found the latter full of
+water, up to the foot of the wall. Heedless of the arrows, that fell like
+hail about her, she shouted to her men to bring fascines, and meanwhile
+sounded the depth of the water with her lance. She was almost alone,
+a mark for every arrow, and one passed through her thigh. She strove
+to bear up against the pain, and remained on the spot to encourage the
+troops to mount to the assault. At last, having lost much blood, she
+retired to the cover of the outer ditch, and it was not until ten or
+eleven at night she could be prevailed on to return to her quarters. She
+seemed to feel that this decisive check under the very walls of Paris
+would ruin her beyond recovery.
+
+[Sidenote: [1429-1430 A.D.]]
+
+Fifteen hundred men were wounded in this attack, which she was wrongfully
+accused of having advised. She was now vilified by her own party as well
+as by the enemy. She had not scrupled to make the attack on the day of
+our Lady’s Nativity (September 8th), to the great scandal of the pious
+town of Paris. The court of Charles VII was still more shocked at this
+irreverent deed. The libertines, the politic ones, the blind worshippers
+of the letter and sworn foes to the spirit, all declared bravely against
+the spirit the moment it showed signs of weakness. Negotiations were
+resolved on, contrary to the Maid’s advice, at the instigation of the
+archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France, who had never been cordially
+in her favour. He proceeded to St. Denis, to ask for a truce; perhaps he
+had secret hopes of prevailing with the duke of Burgundy, who was then in
+Paris.
+
+Regarded with ill will, and badly supported, the Maid carried on the
+sieges of St. Pierre le Moûtier and La Charité during the winter. Though
+almost abandoned before the former, she nevertheless stormed and took it.
+The siege of La Charité proceeded slowly and languidly; a panic broke out
+among the besiegers, and they dispersed.
+
+
+_Capture of Joan of Arc (1430 A.D.)_
+
+Meanwhile the English had induced the duke of Burgundy to give them
+effectual aid. The weaker they were, the more hope he had of being able
+to retain the strongholds he might take in Picardy. The English, who
+had just lost Louviers, offered him his own terms, and he, the richest
+prince in Christendom, no longer hesitated to stake men and money in a
+war, the profit of which he hoped to appropriate. A bribe to the governor
+put him in possession of Soissons. Then he laid siege to Compiègne, the
+governor of which was also a man of very questionable integrity; but
+the inhabitants were too strongly committed to the cause of Charles
+VII to let their town be given up. The Maid threw herself into it, and
+on the very same day made a sortie in which she nearly surprised the
+besiegers. But the latter rallied in a moment, and pressed hotly upon the
+besieged, up to the rampart and the bridge. The Maid, having remained
+in the rear to cover the retreat, was not able to get within the walls
+in time--whether it was that the bridge was blocked up by the crowd, or
+that the gates were already closed. Being identified by her costume, she
+was soon surrounded, seized, and dragged from her horse. Her capturer,
+a Picard archer, brought her to his master, the bastard of Wandomme,
+who sold her to John of Ligny, who belonged to the illustrious house of
+Luxemburg and was the duke of Burgundy’s vassal.[c]
+
+Now this John of Luxemburg had need of the duke of Burgundy in order to
+inherit peacefully the domains of Ligny and St. Pol, to the detriment of
+his elder brother. The duke of Burgundy, in order not to be disturbed
+when seizing Brabant, Brussels, and Louvain, in spite of the rights of
+his aunt Margaret, needed the assistance of the English. The English
+were inclined to allow anything provided Joan of Arc was given up to
+them.[b] It was absolutely necessary to get her out of the hands of the
+Burgundians. She had been taken on the 23rd of May; on the 26th a message
+was sent from Rouen in the name of the vicar of the Inquisition summoning
+John of Ligny to give up the woman, she being suspected of witchcraft.[c]
+A violent tempered man, a Burgundian, who was willing to do anything in
+the hope of obtaining the archbishopric of Rouen, Pierre Cauchon, bishop
+of Beauvais, undertook to prove it by a trial in due form.[b]
+
+[Sidenote: [1430-1431 A.D.]]
+
+The university stepped forward, and wrote to the duke of Burgundy and to
+John of Ligny (July 14th). Cauchon, in his exceeding zeal making himself
+the agent and courier of the English, carried the letter with his own
+hands to the two dukes. At the same time he summoned them as a bishop to
+deliver over to him a prisoner over whom he had jurisdiction. In this
+strange proceeding, we find him pass from the part of a judge to that
+of a negotiator, and make offers of money; though the woman in question
+cannot be considered a prisoner of war, the king of England will give
+John of Ligny and the bastard of Wandomme 200 or 300 livres’ yearly rent,
+and a sum of 6,000 livres to those in whose keeping she is. Towards the
+end of the letter he advances as far as 10,000 livres, “as much,” he
+says, “as would be given for a king or a prince according to the custom
+of France.”
+
+Thus on all sides that world of interest and covetousness was opposed
+to the Maid, or at least indifferent as to her fate. The good Charles
+VII did nothing for her, the good Duke Philip gave her up to her mortal
+foes. It was in vain John of Ligny’s wife threw herself at his feet,
+and implored him not to dishonour himself.[42] He was not free; he had
+already received English money, and he gave up Joan, not directly indeed
+to the English, but to the duke of Burgundy, who took her to Arras, and
+then to the keep of Crotoy.
+
+Compiègne was delivered on the 1st of November. The duke of Burgundy had
+advanced as far as Noyon, as though it were to meet the disgraceful blow
+more nearly and in person. He was again defeated shortly afterwards at
+Germigny (November 20th). At Péronne Saintrailles offered him battle, but
+he durst not accept it. These humiliations no doubt confirmed the duke in
+his alliance with the English, and fixed his determination to give up the
+Maid to them.
+
+At the moment when the English had the Maid at last in their hands,[43]
+and could begin her trial, their affairs were in a very bad condition.
+Far from having recovered Louviers, they had lost Château Gaillard; La
+Hire, who took it by escalade, found Barbazan a prisoner there, and let
+loose that redoubtable captain. The towns were going over of their own
+accord to the side of Charles VII, and the citizens were driving out the
+English. The men of Melun, so close to Paris, ejected their garrison.
+
+The rapid downhill course of English affairs was only to be checked by
+some strong machinery, and such had Beaufort ready in the trial and the
+coronation of Henry VI. The latter entered Paris on the 2nd of December.
+The university had been made to write on the 21st of November to Cauchon,
+accusing him of tardiness, and requesting the king to begin the trial.
+Cauchon was in no hurry, thinking it hard, apparently, to begin the
+work, whilst the payment was as yet uncertain. It was not until a month
+later that he obtained authority from the chapter of Rouen to proceed in
+that diocese. He opened the proceedings at Rouen, on the 9th of January,
+1431.[c]
+
+
+_Trial of Joan of Arc_
+
+[Sidenote: [1431 A.D.]]
+
+He based the accusation on the four following points: infringement of
+the laws of the church, by making use of magic practices; by taking up
+arms, contrary to her parents’ wishes; by wearing clothes which were not
+those of her sex; and lastly, by announcing revelations which were not
+sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority. Thus a poor girl of nineteen was
+alone, without protection against judges who were sold to her enemies,
+who arbitrarily suppressed every proof of her innocence, who prevented
+her appealing to the pope or to the council, who sought to embarrass her
+by absurd and misleading questions or by extremely delicate ones, and who
+were often disconcerted by her heroic replies.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME OF A FRENCH PEASANT, AT THE TIME OF JOAN OF ARC]
+
+The maid was finally brought before her judges on the 21st of February.
+“Joan,” they asked her, “do you believe you have found salvation?” “If
+I have not, may God grant it me; if I have, may God preserve me in it!”
+“Did you not say that standards made by the soldiers in imitation of
+yours would bring them good luck?” “No; I only said, ‘advance boldly
+among the English,’ and I advanced also.” But she declared that she had
+never killed anyone. “Why was her standard carried to the church at
+Rheims at the coronation, more than those of the other captains?” “It had
+borne the burden, it was only just that it should receive the honour.”
+“What was the idea of those people who kissed your hands, your feet,
+your clothes?” “The poor people came to me gladly, because I did them no
+ill; I supported them and defended them to the best of my power.” “Do
+you think you were right to leave without permission from your mother
+and father? Ought one not to honour one’s father and mother?” “They have
+forgiven me.” “Did you not think you were sinning in acting in this
+manner?” “God commanded it; if I had had one hundred fathers and one
+hundred mothers I should have gone.” “Do you think your king did right
+in killing or having killed Monseigneur of Burgundy?” “It was a great
+pity for the kingdom of France. But, whatever may have been between
+them, God sent me to help the king of France.” “Do St. Catherine and St.
+Margaret hate the English?” “They love what our Lord loves, and hate what
+he hates.” “Does God hate the English?” “I know nothing of the love or
+hatred which God has for the English; but I know well that they will be
+driven from France, except those who perish here.” “Is it not a mortal
+sin to admit a man to ransom and then put him to death?” “I have not done
+so.”
+
+The judges laid stress on the man’s clothing which Joan had assumed
+contrary to the laws of the church, which she was still wearing, and
+which she would not relinquish. The wretches affected not to understand
+what the poor girl did not dare to tell them--that in camp, even in
+prison, this dress had been, and still was, her protection.[b]
+
+
+_The Twelve Articles_
+
+Between the 2nd and 4th of April the judges, on the advice of the members
+of the university, caused the seventy points of accusation brought
+forward by the prosecutor to be summed up in twelve articles. There
+were two doctors of Paris, Nicholas Midi and Jacques de Touraine, who
+worked on this--one on the plan, the other on the final form. The twelve
+articles reviewed the trial in a spirit very hostile to Joan, while it
+eliminated the prosecutor’s accusation of impostures and brutalities. On
+the 12th of April twenty-two doctors and licentiates deliberated together
+on the twelve articles. They left the question hanging between a matter
+of human invention and an inspiration of Satan.[f]
+
+We give herewith these twelve articles and follow them with the findings
+of the faculty, as they are given in the report of the trial, edited by
+M. Quicherat.[i]
+
+I. And in the first place, a certain woman states and affirms that,
+when she was thirteen years of age or thereabouts, she herself saw,
+with her own corporeal eyes, St. Michael consoling her, and sometimes
+St. Gabriel appearing in bodily form; sometimes, also, she saw a great
+multitude of angels: and afterwards, SS. Catherine and Margaret showed
+themselves visible in bodily form to the same woman, and she also sees
+them daily and hears their voices, and has embraced them at times, and
+kissed them, touching them sensibly and corporeally. She truly saw the
+heads of the said angels and saints, but concerning their other parts or
+their garments she was unwilling to say anything. And that the aforesaid
+SS. Catherine and Margaret sometimes spoke to her at a certain spring
+near a large tree, commonly called “the fairies’ tree,”[44] concerning
+which spring and tree there was a common report that the “fates of the
+ladies” frequent there, and that many fever-stricken persons go to the
+said spring and tree for the sake of recovering health, although they are
+situated in a profane place. These she frequently worshipped there and
+elsewhere and paid them reverence.
+
+She says, moreover, that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret appear
+and show themselves to her crowned with very beautiful and costly crowns,
+and from the aforesaid time and ofttimes subsequently spoke to the
+same woman concerning the command of God, that it behoved her to go to
+a certain secular prince promising that by the help of the same woman
+and by her labours the said prince would recover by force of arms great
+temporal dominion and worldly honour, would obtain victory over his
+enemies, and that the same prince would receive the said woman and would
+bestow on her arms together with an army of soldiers for the carrying out
+of what was promised. Furthermore, the said SS. Catherine and Margaret
+instructed the same woman concerning the command of God, that she should
+assume and wear male attire, which she has worn and still wears in
+persevering obedience to this kind of command insomuch that the woman
+herself has said that she would rather die than abandon this kind of
+dress, saying this simply at different times, and occasionally “unless it
+were the command of God.” She even chose rather not to be present at the
+offices of mass and to go without the holy communion of the Eucharist at
+times ordained by the church for receiving the sacrament, than to resume
+female and put off male attire. They were also protectors of the said
+woman in this matter that, without the knowledge and against the will of
+her parents, when she was seventeen years of age or thereabouts, she left
+her father’s house and associated with a number of soldiers, frequenting
+with them by day and by night, never or rarely having another woman with
+her. And many other things did the said saints tell and teach the same
+woman, by reason of which she says that she has been sent by the God of
+heaven and by the victorious church of the saints now enjoying beatitude
+to whom she commits all her good deeds.
+
+She declines, however, and refuses to submit her deeds and words to the
+church militant, having been ofttimes required and admonished concerning
+this; saying that it is impossible for the same woman to act contrary to
+those things which she affirmed in her process, that she had acted by the
+command of God, nor would she render account concerning these things to
+the conclusion or judgment of anyone living, but only to the judgment of
+God; and that they revealed to the same woman that she herself will be
+saved in the glory of the blessed ones and she would attain the salvation
+of her soul if she should keep her virginity, which she vowed to them on
+the first occasion when she saw and heard them. By the occasion of which
+revelation she asserts that she is as certain of her own salvation in the
+kingdom of heaven as if it were already a present fact.
+
+II. Further, the said woman declares that the sign which the prince
+had to whom she was sent, and by which he was influenced to believe
+her concerning her revelations and to receive her for the purpose
+of carrying on war, was that St. Michael came to the same prince
+accompanied by a multitude of angels of whom some had crowns and others
+had wings, with whom were SS. Catherine and Margaret. This angel and
+the woman were walking above the earth along a way like unto steps and
+an arch stretching a great way, other angels and the aforesaid saints
+accompanying them; and a certain angel delivered to the same prince a
+very costly crown of purest gold and the said angel bowed himself before
+the said prince showing him reverence. On one occasion she said that,
+when her prince had the sign given him, she herself thought that he was
+then alone although several others were near enough at hand; and on
+another occasion that, as she believes, one archbishop received that sign
+of a crown and delivered it to the aforesaid prince, several temporal
+lords being present, witnessing it.
+
+III. Further, the aforesaid woman knew and was assured that he who visits
+her is St. Michael, by the good advice, comfort, and good doctrine which
+the aforesaid St. Michael gave and made for the same woman; and in that
+he named himself, saying that he himself was Michael. And similarly she
+knows St. Catherine and St. Margaret distinctly from each other through
+this--that they name themselves and salute her. On account of which
+things, concerning the appearance of St. Michael to her, she believes
+that he is St. Michael himself, and she believes that the words and deeds
+of that Michael are true and good as firmly as she believes that our Lord
+Jesus suffered and died for our redemption.
+
+IV. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that she herself is
+certain concerning certain future things that are wholly coming to
+pass, and will happen, just as she is certain about those things which
+she indeed sees done before her; and boasts that she has and has had
+information concerning certain hidden things by means of revelations
+as far as the meaning of the word extends through the voices of St.
+Catherine and St. Margaret--namely, that she will be liberated from
+prison and that the French will do a fairer deed in her company than
+was ever done for the whole of Christianity; that, furthermore, she has
+recognised by means of revelation, as she says, some men whom she had
+never seen before without anyone pointing them out to her, and that she
+has revealed and discovered a certain sword which was hidden in the earth.
+
+V. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that according to the
+command of God and that which is well pleasing to him she has assumed
+and worn and continually wears and clothes herself with a dress after
+the fashion of a man. And further, she declares that from the time that
+she held it to be the command of God to take male dress, it behoved her
+to get a short tunic, a hood, a jerkin, breeches, and boots with many
+tags, the hair of her head being cut off round over the tops of her
+ears, leaving nothing upon her body which represented or pointed out
+the feminine sex beyond those things which nature conferred on the same
+woman for the distinction of the feminine sex. And that she ofttimes
+received the Eucharist when wearing the aforesaid dress. She neither has
+wished nor does she wish to resume feminine attire. Having been ofttimes
+lovingly questioned and admonished about this, she has said that she
+would rather die than leave off male attire, sometimes simply saying so,
+and sometimes, “unless it were by God’s command.” And that if she were in
+male attire among those for whose sake she at other times armed herself
+and did as she used to do before her capture and detention, this would
+be one of the greatest benefits which could happen for the whole kingdom
+of France; adding that for nothing in the world would she take an oath
+of not wearing male attire and not arming herself, and in all aforesaid
+she declares that she has done and does do well in obeying God and his
+commands.
+
+VI. Further, the said woman confesses and asserts that she has caused to
+be written many letters in some of which on the one hand these names,
+Jesus Maria, were added together with the sign of the cross, and at times
+she superadded a cross, and then she was unwilling that that should be
+done which she ordered to be done in her letters. In other letters, on
+the other hand, she caused to be written that she herself would have
+those put to death who were not obedient to her letters or her counsels
+and that “it will immediately be seen who has the greater authority from
+the God of heaven”; and she frequently declares that she has done nothing
+except by the revelation and commandment of God.
+
+VII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that when she was
+seventeen years of age or thereabouts, she went of her own accord and
+by revelation according as she says to a certain esquire whom she had
+never seen, before leaving her father’s house against the wish of her
+parents; who, as soon as they were aware of her departure, were almost
+out of their mind. The said woman requested indeed this esquire that
+he should lead her or cause her to be led to the prince of whom it has
+been before spoken. And then the said gentleman, a captain, delivered
+to the said woman a man’s dress together with a sword at the request of
+the woman herself, and deputed and ordered one soldier, one esquire, and
+four serving men to conduct her; who when they had come to the aforesaid
+prince the said woman said to the same prince that she herself wished to
+head the war against his enemies, promising that she would place him in
+great power and would overcome his enemies; and that she had been sent
+for this purpose by the God of heaven, saying that in the aforesaid she
+did well by the command of God and by revelation.
+
+VIII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that she, no one
+forcing or compelling her, threw herself down from a certain very lofty
+tower, preferring rather to die than to be delivered into the hands
+of her enemies, or than to live after the destruction of the city of
+Compendium (Compiègne); she declares too that she could not avoid this
+kind of fall and yet that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret
+prevented her from casting herself down, to offend whom she declares is
+a great sin. Yet she knows well that this kind of sin has been forgiven
+her after she has made confession of it. And concerning this she declares
+that she has had a revelation.
+
+IX. Further, the said woman declares that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and
+Margaret promised her that they themselves would lead her into paradise
+if she kept well the virginity which she vowed to them both in body and
+in soul. And concerning this she declares she is as certain as if she
+were already in the glory of the blessed ones. Nor does she think she has
+committed works of mortal sin; for if she were in mortal sin, it seems to
+her that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret would not visit her as
+they daily do visit her.
+
+X. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that God loves certain
+men determined and named hitherto travellers, and loves them more than
+he does the same woman. And she knows this through the revelation of
+the SS. Catherine and Margaret who speak to her frequently in French,
+and not in English, since they are not on their side. And since she has
+known by revelation that their voices were on behalf of the prince above
+mentioned, she has not loved the Burgundians.
+
+XI. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that she has ofttimes
+shown reverence to the aforesaid voices and spirits whom she calls
+Michael, Gabriel, Catherine, and Margaret, by uncovering the head,
+bending her knee, kissing the earth over which they walked, and by
+vowing to them virginity and at times by embracing and kissing the same
+Catherine and Margaret; and that she has touched them corporeally and
+sensibly, and has besought of them counsel and help by invoking them
+at times, although they frequently visit her when not invoked, and she
+acquiesces in and obeys their counsels and commands and has acquiesced
+from the beginning without seeking advice from anyone, for example, from
+father or mother, curate, or prelate, or any other ecclesiastic. And
+nevertheless she firmly believes that the voices and revelations which
+she has had through male and female saints of this sort come from God
+and by his ordering, and she believes this as firmly as she believes the
+Christian faith and that our Lord Jesus Christ suffered death for us;
+adding that if an evil spirit appeared to her, who pretended that he was
+St. Michael, she would know well how to distinguish whether he were St.
+Michael or not. The same woman also declares that at her own request, no
+other person compelling or requiring it of her, she swore to the SS.
+Catherine and Margaret, who appeared to her, that she would not reveal
+the sign of the crown which was to be given to the prince to whom she was
+sent. And in conclusion she said that “unless she had license to reveal
+it.”
+
+XII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that if the church
+should wish that she should do anything contrary to the command which she
+declares has been given her by God she would not do that for anything,
+affirming that she knows well that those things which are contained in
+her process come by the commandment of God, and that it were impossible
+for her to do anything contrary to them. Nor was she willing to refer,
+concerning these things, to the judgment of the church militant or to
+any man in the world, but to one Lord God alone, whose commands she
+will always do; especially as to the subject-matter of the revelations
+and those things which she declares she has done by revelation. And she
+declares that she has not made this answer and other answers of herself
+alone, but she has made and given these answers by command of the voices
+and revelations made to her; although the article of faith, “one holy
+Catholic church,” was ofttimes explained to the said woman by judges and
+others there present, explaining to her that every faithful pilgrim is
+bound to obey and to submit his deeds and words to the church militant,
+especially in the matter of faith and that which touches holy doctrine
+and ecclesiastical sanctions.
+
+
+_The Findings of the Faculty_
+
+I. And in the first place as to the first article, the faculty declares
+by means of doctrine that the manner and matter of the revelations, the
+quality of the person and place, together with other circumstances,
+having been finally considered, they are either fictitious lies,
+seductive and pernicious, or the aforesaid apparitions and revelations
+are superstitions, proceeding from malignant and diabolical spirits,
+Belial, Satan, and Behemoth.
+
+II. Further, as to the second article, that that which it contains
+does not seem true; yea, the latter is a presumptuous lie, seductive,
+pernicious, fictitious, and derogatory to the dignity of angels.
+
+III. Further, as to the third article, that the signs contained in it are
+not sufficient and the said woman believes lightly and asserts easily.
+Furthermore in the statement which she makes she believes wrongly, and
+errs in the faith.
+
+IV. Further, as to the fourth article, that in it is contained a
+superstition, a soothsaying and presumptuous assertion, together with
+empty boasting.
+
+V. Further, as to the fifth article, that the said woman is blasphemous
+towards God and a despiser of God in his sacraments; a prevaricator of
+divine law and holy doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanctions; of evil
+wisdom, she errs from the faith and is an empty boaster, and is to be
+held suspected of idolatry and the curse of herself and of her garments
+by imitating the custom of the Gentiles.
+
+VI. Further, as to the sixth article, that the said woman is a traitress,
+crafty, cruel, and thirsting after the shedding of human blood, seditious
+and provoking to tyranny; a blasphemer of God in his commands and
+revelations.
+
+VII. Further, as to the seventh article, that the said woman is undutiful
+to her parents, a prevaricator of the precept concerning honouring
+parents; scandalous, blasphemous towards God, and errs in the faith and
+makes a rash and presumptuous promise.
+
+VIII. Further, that in the eighth article is contained weakness of mind
+tending to despair, that is to say, to suicide and to presumptuous and
+rash assertion concerning the pardon of sin held out; and that the said
+woman has an evil opinion of the freedom of human judgment.
+
+IX. Further, that in the ninth article is contained a presumptuous and
+rash assertion and a pernicious lie, and she contradicts herself in the
+preceding article and has an ill knowledge of the faith.
+
+X. Further, that in the tenth article is contained a presumptuous and
+rash assertion, superstitious divination, blasphemy against SS. Catherine
+and Margaret, and transgression of the precept concerning the love of
+your neighbour.
+
+XI. Further, as to the eleventh article, that the said woman, supposing
+that she had the revelations and apparitions of which she boasts with
+certain beings according to the first article, is an idolatress, an
+invoker of demons, and errs in the faith, asserts rashly, and has made an
+unlawful oath.
+
+XII. Further, as to the twelfth article, that the said woman is a
+schismatic, having an evil opinion of the unity and authority of the
+church; an apostate and hitherto errs obstinately in the faith.
+
+Here follows a deliberation and determination by manner of doctrine
+of the Venerable Faculty of degrees in the University of Paris upon
+the twelve articles concerning the words and deeds of Joan, commonly
+called La Pucelle, above annotated and described; which deliberation and
+determination the said faculty submits to the order and judgment of the
+great pontiff of the holy apostolic seat and of the holy general council.
+If the said woman being of right mind obstinately affirm the propositions
+declared in the above written twelve articles and in performance abide
+by the deeds contained in the same, it seems to the faculty of degrees,
+having diligently examined the aforesaid propositions, speaking in love
+by manner of council or doctrine:
+
+I. That the said woman has become schismatic, since schism is unlawful
+division, through her disobedience from the unity of the church, and
+separates herself from the obedience of the church militant, in that she
+says, etc.
+
+II. Further, that the woman herself errs in the faith: contradicts the
+article of faith contained in the lesser symbol “one holy Catholic
+church”; and, as says St. Jerome, by contradicting this article she
+acknowledges herself not only unskilful, malevolent, and uncatholic, but
+heretical.
+
+III. Further, that the woman herself is also even apostate, both because
+with an evil purpose she caused to be cut off from her the hair which God
+gave her for a covering; and also because, for the same purpose having
+given up female dress, she imitated the dress of men.
+
+IV. Further, that the woman herself is a liar and a soothsayer when she
+says that she was sent by God and spoke with the angels and saints and
+did not make it known by the operation of a miracle or special witness
+of Scripture; as when the Lord wished to send Moses into Egypt to the
+children of Israel, in order that they might believe that he was sent
+by him he gave them a sign that he should turn his rod into a serpent
+and the serpent into a rod again; that John the Baptist also should
+reform them, he brought forward a special testimony of his mission from
+Scripture, saying: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness; make
+straight the way of the Lord, as saith the prophet Esaias.”
+
+V. Further, that the same woman, by her presumption of authority, and
+concerning right, errs in the faith both firstly, since she herself is
+anathema by canonical authority and has continued in the same state for
+a long time; and secondly, because she says she would rather not receive
+the body of Christ and not make her confession at the time appointed by
+the church than put off her male attire and resume the dress of women;
+she is therefore most vehemently suspected of heresy, and is to be
+diligently examined concerning the articles of faith.
+
+VI. Further, the same woman also errs in that she says that she is as
+certain that she will be led into paradise as if she were already in the
+glory of the blessed ones; since, in this journey, whether the traveller
+be worthy of praise or tribulation is unknown but is recognised by the
+supreme Judge alone. Wherefore, if the aforesaid woman be charitably
+exhorted and duly admonished by a competent judge to return of her own
+will to the unity of the Catholic faith and publicly to abjure her errors
+at the will of the aforesaid judge, and be unwilling to show suitable
+satisfaction, she is to be abandoned to the power of the secular judge
+under obligation to receive vengeance in proportion to the quality of her
+crime.[i]
+
+
+_The Sentence and its Execution_
+
+Her condemnation was decided beforehand; but they wanted to obtain from
+her some words implicating Charles VII, and they employed all means for
+this purpose; they sent for the executioner to come to the prison; then
+they said that all was ready for the torture. She was very ill during
+holy week. Threats had little effect on this heroic mind; they resorted
+to promises, to the most pernicious for her--that of being taken from the
+hands of her English gaolers and given over to men of the church. She
+yielded, and signed the recantation which was presented to her, without
+even knowing what it contained: and then, out of mercy and moderation,
+she was only condemned to spend the rest of her days in prison, on the
+bread of affliction and water of sorrow, to weep over her sins.[b]
+
+She was admitted by the ecclesiastical judge to do penance, nowhere else
+of course than in the church prisons. The ecclesiastical _in pace_, hard
+as it was, would at least take her out of the hands of the English,
+protect her from their insults, and save her honour. What were her
+surprise and horror when the bishop said coldly, “Take her back to the
+place whence you brought her!”
+
+Nothing was done; thus deceived, she could not fail to retract her
+retraction. But even had she been willing to persist in it, the rage of
+the English would not have allowed her. They had come to St. Ouen, where
+the sentence had been delivered, in hopes at last to burn the witch;
+they waited in breathless expectation; and were they now to be sent off
+in this way, with nothing for their pains but a scrap of parchment, a
+signature, and a grimace? At the moment when the bishop suspended the
+reading of the sentence, stones flew about the platforms without respect
+for the cardinal. The doctors were in danger of their lives when they set
+foot on the ground; bare swords were everywhere pointed at their throats;
+the most moderate of the English confined themselves to insulting words:
+“Priest, you do not earn the king’s money.” The trembling doctors,
+shuffling away as fast as they could, said, “Be not uneasy, we shall
+surely catch her again.” It was not merely the common soldiers, the
+English mob, that showed this thirst for blood. The respectable people
+and the lords were not less rancorous. The king’s man and his tutor, Lord
+Warwick, said, like the soldiers, “The king fares badly; the girl will
+not be burned” (May 23rd, 1431).
+
+The poor girl, exposed to such danger, had hitherto possessed no other
+defence than her male attire; but strange to say, no one had ever chosen
+to understand why she wore it. Her friends and her enemies were alike
+shocked at her doing so. In the beginning she had been obliged to explain
+herself to the women of Poitiers. After her capture, when she was in the
+custody of the ladies of Luxemburg,[45] those good dames begged her to
+dress as became a decent girl. If the women understood nothing of this
+female question, how much less did the priests! They quoted the text of
+a council of the fourth century, which anathematises this exchange of
+garments. They did not perceive that this prohibition applied especially
+to an epoch which had scarcely emerged from pagan impurity.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, TIME OF JOAN OF ARC]
+
+On Friday and Saturday the unfortunate prisoner, deprived of her male
+attire, had much to fear. According to the statement of her confessor,
+to whom she revealed the fact, an Englishman, not a soldier, but a
+gentleman, a lord, bravely undertook to violate a chained girl and,
+failing in the attempt, loaded her with blows.
+
+“When the morning of Trinity Sunday was come, and it was time for her to
+rise (as she has related to him who speaks) she said to the English, her
+guards, ‘Un-iron me that I may rise.’ One of them took off the woman’s
+garments that were on her, emptied the bag in which was the male dress,
+and said to her, ‘Get up.’ ‘Sirs,’ said she, ‘you know it is forbidden
+me; certainly I will not take it.’ This dispute lasted until noon, and
+at last, by reason of bodily necessity, she was obliged to go out and
+take that dress. On her return, they would not give her any other,
+notwithstanding all her supplications.”
+
+In reality, it was not for the interest of the English that she should
+resume the garb of a man, and thus annul the retractation so laboriously
+obtained; but at that moment their rage knew no bounds. Saintrailles had
+just made a bold attempt on Rouen. It would have been a fine exploit
+to seize the judges on their bench, and carry off Beaufort and Bedford
+to Poitiers. The latter had another narrow escape of being captured on
+his return between Rouen and Paris. There was no safety for the English
+so long as that infernal girl lived, who was doubtless continuing her
+diabolical arts in prison. It was necessary she should die.
+
+The assessors being instantly sent for to the castle to see the change
+of dress, found in the courtyard some hundred English, who stopped their
+way. Thinking that if these doctors entered, they might spoil all, they
+brandished axes and swords in their faces, and drove them out, calling
+them Armagnac traitors. Cauchon, getting in with great difficulty,
+assumed a gay air to please Warwick, and said, laughing, “She is
+caught.” On Monday he returned with the inquisitor and eight assessors
+to interrogate the Maid, and ask her why she had resumed that garb. She
+offered no excuse, but bravely accepting her danger said that this dress
+suited her better so long as she should be guarded by men; that moreover,
+word had not been kept with her. Her saints had said to her that it was
+great pity to have abjured to save her life. At the same time she did not
+refuse to put on female garments again. “Let me be consigned to a mild
+and safe prison,” she said, “I will be good and do all the church shall
+desire.”
+
+On Tuesday the judges got together, at the archiepiscopal palace, some
+sort of an assemblage of assessors, some of whom had been present only
+at the first sittings, and the rest at none; they were men of every
+kind--priests, lawyers, and three were even physicians. The judges
+reported to them what had taken place, and asked their opinions. The
+opinion they gave, very different from what was expected, was that
+the prisoner ought to be brought again into court and have her act
+of abjuration read again to her. It is doubtful that this was within
+the power of the judges. Judge or judgment was in fact no longer a
+thing possible amidst naked swords and raging soldiers. Bloodshed was
+inevitable; the judges perhaps were not far from seeing their own spilt.
+They drew up a hasty citation to be served the next morning at eight; her
+next appearance was only to be for the purpose of being burned.
+
+In the morning, Cauchon sent her a confessor, Brother Martin l’Advenu,
+“to announce death to her and induce her to penitence. And when he
+announced to the poor girl the death she was to die that day, she began
+to cry out woefully, sinking with faintness, and tearing her hair. ‘Alas!
+am I to be treated so horribly and cruelly, and must my body, whole and
+entire, which was never corrupted, be now consumed and reduced to ashes?
+Oh! oh! I would rather be beheaded seven times than be thus burned! Oh! I
+appeal to God, the great Judge of the wrongs and grievances they do me!’”
+
+At nine she was dressed in women’s clothes and placed on a car, with
+Friar Martin l’Advenu on one side of her, and the _huissier_ Massieu
+on the other. Isambart, the Augustine monk, who had already displayed
+so much charity and courage, would not quit her. The Maid had never
+despaired until now. Even whilst saying, as she did at times, “the
+English will put me to death,” she did not in reality believe it. She
+did not imagine she could ever be forsaken. She had faith in her king,
+and in the good people of France. She had said expressly, “There will
+be in the prison or at the condemnation some tumult by which I shall
+be delivered--delivered with great victory!” But though the king and
+the people should fail her, she had another aid, far more potent and
+sure--that of her friends on high, the good and precious saints. What
+then were her thoughts when she saw that she was really to die--when,
+mounted on the cart, she passed along through the trembling crowd,
+guarded by eight hundred Englishmen armed with lances and swords? She
+wept and bewailed her fate, but never accused either her king or her
+saints. But one phrase escaped her lips, “O Rouen, Rouen, must I die
+here!”
+
+The end of this dismal journey was the Vieux Marché, the fish market.
+Three platforms had been erected there. On one was the episcopal and
+royal chair, the throne of the cardinal of England, surrounded by the
+seats of his prelates; the other was destined for the performers in
+this melancholy drama, the preacher, the judges, and the bailiff, and
+lastly the culprit. Some way off from these was seen a great platform in
+plaster filled and heaped with wood; materials had not been spared upon
+the pile: it struck terror by its height. This was done not merely for
+the purpose of rendering the execution more solemn; there was another
+intention--namely, that the great height of the pile should make it
+inaccessible to the executioner except from below, where he was to
+light it, and thus prevent him from abridging the sufferer’s agony and
+despatching her, as usual, before the flames reached her. There was no
+thought here of defrauding justice and giving a dead body to the fire; it
+was meant that she should be literally and truly burned alive, and that
+placed on the summit of that mound of wood she should be visible above
+the circle of lances and swords to every spectator on the ground. Burning
+slowly before the eyes of a gaping multitude there was reason to expect
+that she would at last yield to some weakness, and utter something that
+might be given out as a recantation; at the very least it was probable
+that some incoherent words would escape her, which might be interpreted
+as her judges desired; perhaps that in womanly terror and despair she
+would descend to ignoble prayers and cries for mercy.
+
+The hideous ceremony began with a sermon. Master Nicholas Midi, one of
+the lights of the University of Paris, preached from this edifying text:
+“When a member of the church is sick the whole church is sick.” That poor
+church could only be cured by cutting off a limb. He concluded with the
+formal phrase: “Joan, go in peace; the church can no longer defend thee.”
+
+Then the ecclesiastical judge, the bishop of Beauvais, benignly exhorted
+her to think of her soul and to recollect all her misdeeds, that she
+might be moved to contrition. The assessors had decided that it was
+incumbent in law to read her abjuration to her again; but the bishop did
+not do so, fearing that she would contradict and remonstrate. But the
+poor girl had no thought of thus battling with lawyers’ subtleties for
+her life; her mind was far differently engaged. Before even she had been
+exhorted to contrition she was on her knees invoking God, the Virgin, St.
+Michael, and St. Catherine, pardoning all and asking pardon, and saying
+to the by-standers, “Pray for me.” She particularly requested each of the
+priests to say a mass for her soul; and all this she did in a manner so
+pious, humble, and affecting, that the emotion spread from man to man,
+and none present could restrain their feelings; the bishop of Beauvais
+wept, the bishop of Boulogne sobbed, and at last the English themselves
+shed tears, and Beaufort as well as the rest.
+
+The judges soon recovered from their momentary fit of humanity, and the
+bishop of Beauvais, wiping his eyes, began to read the sentence. He
+recapitulated to the culprit all her crimes, schism, idolatry, invocation
+of fiends, and set forth how she had been admitted to repentance, and
+how, “seduced by the prince of lies, she had relapsed, O grief! as a dog
+returns to his vomit. Therefore we pronounce you a rotten member, and
+as such cut off from the church. We give you over to the secular power,
+entreating it at the same time to moderate its sentence, and to spare you
+the pain of death and mutilation of your limbs.”[46]
+
+Thus abandoned by the church she cast herself in full confidence on
+God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman handed her a wooden cross
+which he had made out of a stick; she received it not the less piously,
+kissed it, and put that rough emblem of salvation under her clothes next
+her skin. But she would rather have had the church cross to keep before
+her eyes until death. The good _huissier_ Massieu and Brother Isambart
+exerted themselves to fulfil her wishes, and the cross was brought her
+from the parish of St. Sauveur. While she was embracing it, and Isambart
+was exhorting her, the English began to think the business very tedious;
+it was noon at least; the soldiers grumbled, and the captains called out,
+“Holla, priest! are you going to keep us here to dinner?” Then losing
+patience and not waiting for the order of the bailiff, though he alone
+had authority to send her to death, they sent up two sergeants to take
+her out of the hands of the priests. She was seized at the foot of the
+tribunal by the soldiers, who dragged her to the executioner, and said to
+him, “Do thy office.” This fury of the soldiery excited horror; many of
+the by-standers, and even of the judges, rushed from the ground to avoid
+seeing any more of it.
+
+When she was on the ground among those English who laid hands on her,
+nature gave way and the flesh was troubled. Again she cried, “O Rouen,
+thou art then to be my last abode!” She said no more and sinned not with
+her lips, even in that awful moment. She accused not her king or her
+saints. But when she was on the top of the pile, and saw that great town
+and that motionless and silent multitude, she could not help saying, “Ah,
+Rouen, Rouen, I fear me much thou wilt have to suffer for my death!”
+Wonderful gentleness of soul! she who had saved the people, and whom the
+people forsook, expressed but compassion for them in her dying moments.
+
+She was bound beneath the infamous inscription, and on her head was
+placed a mitre, on which was written: “Heretic, relapsed, apostate,
+idolator.” Then the executioner applied the fire. She saw it from above
+and shrieked. The monk who was exhorting her did not pay attention to the
+flames; and she, forgetting herself, became alarmed for him and made him
+go down. What plainly proves that until then she had retracted nothing
+expressly is that the wretched Cauchon was obliged (doubtless by the
+imperious Satanic will of him that presided) to approach the foot of the
+pile, obliged to look his victim in the face, and try to elicit something
+from her. She repeated to him mildly what she had already said: “Bishop,
+I die by you. Had you placed me in the church prisons this would not
+have happened.” Of course it had been expected that, thinking herself
+abandoned by her king, she would at last accuse him and speak against
+him; but she defended him still: “Whether I have done well or done ill,
+my king is in no wise implicated therein: it was not he who advised me.”
+
+Meanwhile, the flames were ascending. At the moment they reached her the
+poor creature started and called out for holy water; this apparently was
+a cry of terror. But immediately collecting herself she uttered no names
+but those of God, her angels, and her saints. She testified her faith in
+them: “Yes, my voices were of God; my voices have not deceived me!” That
+grand expression of hers is attested by the compulsory and sworn witness
+of her death, the Dominican who ascended the pile with her, whom she sent
+down from that dangerous post, but who continued speaking with her from
+below, listened to her words, and held up the cross to her sight.
+
+We have yet another witness of this holy death, a witness of very grave
+character, who was himself doubtless a saint. This man, whose name
+history ought to preserve, was the Augustine monk already mentioned,
+Brother Isambart de la Pierre. He was near perishing in the course of
+the prosecution for having given counsel to the Maid, and yet though so
+conspicuously obnoxious to the English, he voluntarily ascended the cart
+with her, procured her the parish cross, and stood by her in the midst of
+the furious crowd, both on the platform and at the stake. Twenty years
+after the event the two venerable men, humble monks, devoted to poverty
+and with nothing to gain or to fear in this world, depose as follows: “We
+heard her in the fire invoking her saints and her archangel; she repeated
+the Saviour’s name. At last, dropping her head, she cried aloud, ‘Jesus.’”
+
+“Ten thousand men wept.” Some English alone laughed or tried to laugh.
+One of the most violent among them had sworn to fling a fagot on the
+pile; she was expiring at the moment he deposited it, and he was taken
+ill. His comrades carried him off to a tavern to revive his spirits
+with drink, but he could not recover his equanimity. “I saw,” he cried
+distractedly, “I saw a dove escape from her mouth with her last sigh.”
+Others had read in the flames the word Jesus which she repeated. The
+executioner went that evening in utter dismay to Brother Isambart, and
+confessed, but could not believe that God would ever forgive him. One of
+the king of England’s secretaries said openly as he returned from the
+horrid scene, “We are undone; we have burned a saint!”[c]
+
+
+THE REHABILITATION OF JOAN OF ARC (1456 A.D.)
+
+For a long time the people refused to believe in Joan’s death.[47] The
+memory of her who had been both the heroine and victim of patriotic and
+national sentiment became more and more popular, and several years after
+the English had been driven from France and her predictions accomplished,
+there arose a desire that her memory should be avenged.
+
+When Charles VII entered Rouen in 1450 he had ordered the revision of
+the trial. Cardinal Estouteville, archbishop of Rouen and papal legate,
+began investigation in the name of the church. But for political reasons,
+and so as not to irritate the English, it was judged better to have the
+request for rehabilitation come from Joan’s own family, as a private
+matter. Two doctors designated by the court of Rome examined the request,
+declared it founded on the most serious motives, and concluded if the
+church must hesitate to pronounce on Joan’s visions, it could not charge
+them with crime. Upon these conclusions Pope Calixtus III appointed three
+prelates and an inquisitor to form a court of revision over which the
+archbishop of Rheims presided.
+
+The new judges began their labour. All the witnesses still living who
+had known Joan appeared before them. Military leaders who had fought
+with her--as Alençon and Dunois--gave testimony to her memory. Three
+clerks who had exercised their office at the trial in Rouen furnished
+proof of irregularities that had been committed. No defender of the
+former proceedings appeared. Thereupon the court, giving the most
+simple explanation of all that had determined the former judges, found
+a hundred and one reasons for nullity. In consequence the new judges
+quashed, in 1456, the decree of their predecessors--as stained with
+illegality, fraud, violence, and manifest partiality. They declared
+the twelve articles of the condemnation false, calumnious, and full of
+fraud--while recognising that the manner in which they had been drawn up
+might easily have deceived the good faith of those that acted upon them.
+They declared the trial iniquitous--that Joan had been judged by her
+enemies. The church thus restored that which an ecclesiastical tribunal
+had struck down. The sentence of rehabilitation was published in every
+town of France; Orleans raised on a bridge over the Loire a statue to her
+liberator. Rouen held expiation processions in honour of her victim.[k]
+
+
+A BRITISH ESTIMATE OF JOAN’S SERVICES
+
+Those writers who consider Joan of Arc not merely as a female Mohammed,
+but as a heaven-sent saviour, do not enhance the virtue or the beauty of
+her own natural character, whilst they exaggerate the depression, and
+derogate from the martial spirit of the French, by representing them as
+only to be saved at the time by an avatar. It does not appear that France
+was in such imminent danger, or was likely to be conquered, even had
+Orleans fallen by a handful of English, very unequal to the subjugation
+of the country.
+
+If the starting up a great prince or warrior, like Henry V, on the
+throne of England had brought disaster upon France, his premature death,
+with the consequent abstraction of English aid and English vigour from
+the duke of Bedford, was a greater blow to English ascendency than any
+supposed mission of Joan of Arc. If the French were defeated at Agincourt
+and Verneuil, this was mainly owing to the yeoman middle classes, which
+formed the strength of the English army, whilst a similar class in France
+was kept out of the ranks of the national defence. But the sieges of
+Rouen and of Orleans had restored to the French peasant and the French
+townsman the right and the habit of wielding a sword by the side of the
+gentleman. What Joan of Arc did was to restore their confidence; this was
+her good fortune or her mission. The disinherited and degraded middle
+and lower classes rose to defend and save the monarchy, which counts and
+barons had allowed to fall with themselves into the mire. This was the
+revolution, this the new spirit that saved France from the English, and
+not the trumped-up miracle of La Pucelle. It was the red right arm of
+French manhood which did that act, and not the prophecies of Merlin, the
+visions of saints, or the embroidered banner of the virgin of Domrémy.[g]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[39] [It was positively asserted that a ball had taken off a man’s shoe
+without hurting his foot.]
+
+[40] [The duke of Orleans had been a captive in England since the battle
+of Agincourt.]
+
+[41] [The family name was Darc, and the name of the Maid of Orleans was
+therefore, properly, Jeanne Darc, not Jeanne d’Arc as commonly written;
+but the latter has the sanction of general usage.]
+
+[42] [His aunt, the saintly Joan of Luxemburg, was also most energetic in
+her efforts to have Joan released.]
+
+[43] [The count of Ligny received the money before October. The duke of
+Burgundy handed Joan over to the English on the 21st of November.]
+
+[44] [From the door of her father’s dwelling she looked on an old oak
+wood. The fairies haunted that wood; their favourite spot was a certain
+spring near a great ash called the “fairies’ tree.” The children used to
+hang garlands on it and sing to it. These somewhile ladies and mistresses
+of the forest could no longer, it was said, assemble at the spring; they
+had been excluded from it for their sins. The church, however, always
+retained a jealous fear of the old local divinities, and the curé used to
+go once every year, and read a mass at the spring, in order to drive them
+away.[c]]
+
+[45] [The mother and aunt of the count of Ligny, who took a tender
+interest in the Maid while she was in his keeping.]
+
+[46] [The regular formula for the sentence of giving over a heretic to
+the secular arm.]
+
+[47] [In 1436 rumour spread through France that it was not La Pucelle
+that the English had burned at Rouen. In fact, a woman whose resemblance
+to Joan was astonishing had presented herself to her two brothers and was
+acknowledged by them. In 1438 and 1439 this “false Joan” headed a body
+of armed men and was enthusiastically received by the people of Orleans.
+Brought before the king, she admitted the imposture, was imprisoned,
+afterwards released and came, according to report, to a bad and shameful
+end.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. “THE CONVALESCENCE OF FRANCE”
+
+    Confused as was the long period of the last years of Charles
+    VII, it may nevertheless be thus summarily defined--the
+    convalescence of France. France recovered and England fell
+    ill.--MICHELET.[b]
+
+
+The sorceress, the she-devil, was burned; the charm was doubtless
+broken, the spell removed; there was nothing now to prevent the English
+from conquering the kingdom of France. Nevertheless, before they should
+recover the power in fact they deemed it right to have the power in law
+on their side--to legitimise the young Henry VI by having him crowned.
+The coronation to which Charles VII had been led by an agent of the devil
+being, by that means itself, null and void, they wished to have for their
+little prince a coronation perfectly orthodox and irreprehensible.
+
+[Sidenote: [1431-1432 A.D.]]
+
+The ceremony took place the 17th of December, 1431; not at Rheims, which
+the English no longer held, but at Paris. An English prelate, Beaufort,
+the cardinal-bishop of Winchester, officiated, to the great discontent
+of the bishop of Paris; for assistants there were English lords, not a
+single French prince. There was no liberation of prisoners, no reduction
+of taxes, no largesse to the people. “A bourgeois marrying off his
+daughter,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[i] “would have done better.”[c]
+The child king was found to have little intelligence or grace, and the
+day after Christmas he was taken from Paris to Rouen, and thence to
+England.[d]
+
+Paris was far from prosperous under foreign domination. Public officials
+were ill paid. The university was no longer recruited, except from the
+English and Burgundian provinces. It lost its pupils; it lost still more
+when, a month after his arrival, Bedford established schools of civil
+and canon law at Caen, in the midst of the English provinces. Charles
+responded by creating, in his turn, a university at Poitiers, and by
+according new privileges to the schools of Angers.[e]
+
+It was now that period when the feeble bond that still united the duke of
+Burgundy to the English began to give way. His sister, Bedford’s wife,
+died in November, 1432. The duke of Burgundy had never had much reason to
+like the English, nor had he more to fear them. Their war in France was
+becoming ridiculous.[b]
+
+The marshal De Boussac, as the result of a conspiracy, was almost able to
+seize Rouen. His advance guard was already in the castle when his bands
+began to quarrel over the division of the booty, and the English drove
+them off. Dunois was more successful at Chartres; he had an understanding
+with a preacher of renown. The latter announced that he would preach
+every day in a certain church; the entire English garrison assisted
+devoutly at the sermon while the French took the town. The English,
+from whom so important a place had been taken, were not even able to
+capture a hamlet. A certain French captain, John Foucauld by name, was
+stationed at Lagny and greatly harassed the neighbourhood of Paris. The
+duke of Bedford and the earl of Warwick went to besiege the place. They
+soon made a breach in the wall, but when they saw the besieged bravely
+awaiting them, they returned to Paris, where they arrived on Easter eve,
+“apparently to confess,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[i] maliciously,
+in his journal. Meanwhile several soldiers of fortune in the service of
+the king of France had seized St. Valéry, Gerberoy, St. Denis, and other
+places (1432).[c]
+
+The Parisians, delighted at this retreat of Bedford from Lagny, made
+themselves no less merry on the subject of his second marriage. At
+fifty years of age he wedded a girl of seventeen, “sprightly, fair, and
+gracious,” a daughter of the count of Saint-Pol, one of the duke of
+Burgundy’s vassals, and that abruptly and furtively without saying a word
+to his brother-in-law. The duke would not have consented to the match.
+The Saint-Pols, raised by him for the purpose of guarding his frontier,
+were beginning to play that double game which was to be their ruin;
+they were giving the English a footing in the dominions of the duke of
+Burgundy.
+
+Beaufort saw more clearly that if the alliance with Burgundy were broken
+off, the war would change its aspect; that it would become far more
+costly, and that the church would infallibly have to bear the expense.
+A beginning had been made with the church of France, from which it was
+sought to wrest all the pious donations it had received for sixty years.
+In this state of anxiety, he exerted himself strongly for peace, and
+had it arranged that a conference should take place between Bedford and
+Philip the Good. He succeeded in making the two dukes advance towards
+each other as far as St. Omer. But this was all; once in the town,
+neither of them would take the first step. Though Bedford ought to have
+seen clearly that France was lost for the English if he did not bring
+back the duke of Burgundy to their party, he remained peremptory on the
+point of etiquette; as the king’s representative, he awaited the visit of
+the king’s vassal, who never moved. The rupture was definitive.
+
+France, on the contrary, was gradually becoming reunited, a result
+brought about chiefly by the efforts of the house of Anjou. The old
+queen, Yolande of Anjou, the king’s mother-in-law, brought him back
+the Bretons; and in concert with the constable Richemont, the duke of
+Brittany’s brother, she dismissed the favourite, La Trémouille.[48]
+
+It was more difficult to allure the duke of Burgundy, who was supporting
+the pretender Vaudemont, in Lorraine, against René of Anjou, Yolande’s
+son.[49] That prince, who has remained in the memory of the Angevins and
+Provençals by the name of “the good king René,” possessed all the amiable
+qualities of old chivalric France; and with them, too, its imprudence
+and levity. He suffered himself to be beaten and taken prisoner at
+Bulgnéville, by the Burgundians (July, 1431). The duke of Burgundy
+restored him to liberty, under security.[b]
+
+Philip the Good might well have congratulated himself on a victory which
+clipped the wings of the royalists in Lorraine, but he made no use of
+it, and now showed himself disposed for pacific measures. In September,
+1431, at the very moment that the royalist captains were preparing to
+invade Charolais and Burgundy, he signed at Chinon a two years’ truce
+with Charles VII for his frontiers of Réthelois, Picardy, Burgundy, and
+Charolais.[e] The English had no good reason for their complaints of
+Philip’s loyalty in this; if he had concluded a separate truce for his
+own states, he did not treat for peace on their behalf or without them.
+The English ambassadors were called to take part in all negotiations; but
+it was very evident, at the conferences of Auxerre (July, 1432) and those
+held in the village of Simport (now Seineport) in March, 1433, that while
+peace was now almost an easy matter between Charles VII and Philip on
+account of the great concessions to which the king resigned himself, it
+was next to impossible between Charles VII and Henry VI.[f]
+
+The princes were becoming friends, and there was nothing to hinder
+the people from doing likewise, if they had the will. Paris, governed
+by Cauchon and other bishops, tried to get rid of them and expel the
+English. Normandy, even, that little French England, at last grew weary
+of a war of which it was made to bear the whole burden. A vast rising
+took place, in 1434, among the rural population of Lower Normandy; the
+leader was a peasant named Quatrepieds; but there were knights also
+engaged in the affair, which was not a mere Jacquerie. The English could
+not fail soon to lose the province.
+
+
+THE TREATY OF ARRAS (1435 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1435 A.D.]]
+
+They seemed themselves to look on their prospects as desperate.
+Bedford abandoned Paris. The poor town, smitten by turns with famine
+and pestilence, was too hideous an abode. The duke of Burgundy,
+nevertheless, ventured to visit it with his wife and son, on his way
+to the great assembly at Arras, where the terms of a treaty of peace
+were to be arranged. The Parisians welcomed him, and implored his aid,
+as though he had been an angel from God. The assembly in question was
+one of all Christendom, including ambassadors from the council, the
+pope, the emperor, the sovereigns of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Naples,
+Milan, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark. All the French princes,
+and all those of the Low Countries, attended in person or by deputy;
+so did the University of Paris, and a number of good towns. All these
+personages being assembled, England herself arrived, in the person of the
+cardinal-bishop of Winchester. The conferences opened August 5th, 1435,
+in the chapel of St. Waast.
+
+The first question to be considered was the possibility of an
+accommodation between Charles VII and Henry VI. But how was it to be
+effected? Each of them claimed the crown. Charles VII offered Aquitaine,
+and even Normandy, which was still in the hands of the English. The
+latter required that each party should retain what it then had, with
+the exception of mutual exchanges for the purpose of rendering the
+possessions of each more compact.
+
+Nothing could be made of the English, and they were allowed to depart
+from Arras. Everyone turned towards the duke of Burgundy, beseeching him
+to have pity on the realm and on Christendom, which suffered so much from
+these long wars. But he could not make up his mind; his conscience and
+his knightly honour were engaged, he said; he had given his signature;
+besides, was he not bound to take vengeance for his father’s murder? The
+pope’s legates told him he might make light of such scruples, for they
+had power to release him from his oaths. But this did not yet satisfy
+him. Ecclesiastical law not seeming sufficient, recourse was had to civil
+law, and a fine case was drawn up, in which, to leave the minds of the
+jurisconsults the more free, the parties were designated by the names
+of Darius and Ahasuerus. The English and the French doctors gave such
+opinions as might have been expected of them respectively; but those of
+Bologna, whom the legates brought forward, declared, in conformity with
+the French lawyers, that Charles VI had no power to conclude the Treaty
+of Troyes.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN, FIRST PART OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+[Sidenote: [1435-1436 A.D.]]
+
+The duke of Burgundy allowed the suppliants to argue and implore. But, in
+reality, the desired change had already taken place in him; he was weary
+of the English. The Flemings, who had so often forced their counts to
+remain united with England, were becoming hostile to that nation; they
+suffered from the forays of the garrison of Calais, and were maltreated
+when they went to that great wool market. England was then becoming a
+rival and enemy of Flanders; had she been friendly to that country, her
+friendship would henceforth have availed little. The duke of Burgundy
+had gained the barrier of the Somme, through the English alliance, and
+rounded and completed his Burgundy; but their alliance could no longer
+guarantee him the possession of his new acquisitions. Divided as they
+were, it was with difficulty they could defend themselves. Bedford alone
+could maintain some sort of balance between Winchester and Gloucester;
+but he died, at Rouen in September, 1435, and his decease was a further
+alleviation to the conscience of the duke of Burgundy. Thenceforth the
+treaties concluded with Bedford, as regent of France, appeared to him
+less sacred; such was the strictly literal mode of viewing things in the
+Middle Ages; he deemed himself bound during the lifetime of him to whom
+he had given his signature.
+
+The duke of Burgundy’s two brothers-in-law, the duke de Bourbon and the
+constable De Richemont, contributed not a little to fix his wavering
+purposes. They plied him so hard that he vouchsafed at last to yield
+to their entreaties and grant mercy. The Treaty of Arras cannot be
+characterised by any other phrase. The king asked pardon of the duke for
+the murder of John the Fearless, and the duke did not pay him homage;
+thereby he became himself king, as it were. He retained for himself
+and his heirs all he had acquired: on the one side Péronne and all the
+fortresses on the Somme, on the other Auxerre and Mâcon.
+
+The explanations and reparations for the death of Duke John were very
+humiliating. The king was to say, or have it said, that at that time
+he was very young, had as yet little knowledge, and had not been
+sufficiently advised to see duly into the matter, but that at present
+he was about to use all diligence in searching out the guilty parties.
+He was to found a chapel in the church at Montereau, and a convent for
+twelve Carthusians; and to erect, moreover, on the bridge where the act
+had been perpetrated, a stone cross, which was to be kept in repair at
+the king’s expense. The ceremony of forgiveness took place in the church
+of St. Waast. The dean of Paris, Jean Tudert, threw himself at the feet
+of Duke Philip, and cried him mercy, on the king’s part, for the murder
+of John the Fearless. The duke appeared moved, raised and embraced him,
+and told him there should never be war between King Charles and himself.
+The duke de Bourbon and the constable then swore a peace, as did the
+French and Burgundian ambassadors and lords.
+
+[Sidenote: [1436-1438 A.D.]]
+
+But the reconciliation would not have been complete if the duke
+of Burgundy had not concluded a definitive arrangement with the
+brother-in-law of Charles VII, René of Anjou. René, not having been able
+to adhere to the terms of the first treaty, had preferred returning
+to prison. Philip the Good released him and gave him back part of his
+ransom money, in consideration of the marriage of his niece, Mary de
+Bourbon, with René’s son. Thus were the houses of Burgundy, Bourbon, and
+Anjou united with each other and with the king. That of Brittany still
+vacillated; the duke did not declare himself; he found great profit
+in the war; it was said that thirty thousand Normans had taken refuge
+in Brittany. But whether the duke was English or French, his brother
+Richemont was constable of France: the Bretons followed him cheerfully;
+the Breton bands were the main force of Charles VII, and were called the
+_bons corps_.
+
+
+THE FRENCH RETURN TO PARIS (1436-1437 A.D.)
+
+This self-reconciliation of France drove the English distracted; their
+wrath blinded them, and they plunged as it were wilfully into their ill
+fortune. The duke of Burgundy wished to keep some terms with them, and
+offered them his mediation; but they rejected it, and plundered and
+killed the Flemish merchants in London. Flanders becoming incensed in
+its turn, the duke seized the opportunity to lead the communes to the
+siege of Calais.[b] For this he collected a large army in 1436, the
+Flemings, especially the Ghenters, answering his call to the number of
+forty thousand, and promising not merely to second his enterprise, but to
+accomplish it themselves. They found the task, however, so much beyond
+their power, that they grew disheartened, accused the Burgundians of
+betraying them, and marched off leaving the duke to extricate himself
+with his other forces as best he could.[g]
+
+The Burgundian party turned round like the duke; those of Paris, of the
+_halles_ even, the Burgundian quarter _par excellence_, called in the
+king’s forces and his constable, and installed them in the town. The
+English, who had still fifteen hundred men-at-arms there, and at first
+made a show of resisting, shut themselves pitiably in the Bastille,
+and then, apprehensive of famine, obtained leave to embark and descend
+the river to Rouen. The people, who had been harshly governed by three
+bishops on behalf of the English, pursued them with hootings, and
+shouted, “Fox! fox!” after the bishop of Thérouanne, the chancellor of
+the English. The Parisians were loath to let them off so cheaply, for
+they calculated that the ransom of so many rich nobles would bring in at
+least 200,000 livres; but it would have been necessary to besiege the
+Bastille, and the constable himself was at his shifts, money failing him.
+The king had only 1,000 livres to give him for the purpose of retaking
+Paris (1436).[b]
+
+At length, in November, 1437, Charles made his solemn entrance into
+his capital, from which he had been an exile nearly twenty years. The
+constable rode on the monarch’s right hand, the count de Vendôme on his
+left, and the royal cavalcade was met at the Porte St. Denis by “the
+seven virtues and the seven mortal sins, well clad, mounted upon various
+beasts.” Charles had previously reunited the parliament of Poitiers to
+that of Paris, and the new judges and councillors returned to take their
+seats, and thus restore Paris to the rank of judicial capital of the
+_languedoïl_.[g]
+
+
+THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION (1438 A.D.)
+
+In that vast and multitudinous wretchedness, amid so many ruins, two
+things were still standing--the nobility and the church. The nobility had
+served the king against the English, gratuitously served a beggared king;
+it had consumed much of its own wealth, at the same time that it devoured
+the people’s substance, and it looked for compensation. The church, on
+its part, represented itself as very poor and afflicted; but there was
+this notable difference, that its poverty consisted in the suspension
+of its revenues--in general the capital remained. The king, indebted
+to the nobility, could discharge his obligations only at the church’s
+expense, either by forcing it to pay for him, which seemed difficult and
+dangerous, or rather by gently and indirectly, for the sake ostensibly
+of the ecclesiastical liberties, re-establishing the elections in which
+the lords had the paramount influence, and thus enabling them to dispose
+of benefices. These were often bestowed by the pope on the partisans
+of England; Charles VII had no inducement to respect his claims. He
+adopted in his _pragmatique_ of Bourges (July 7th, 1438) the decrees of
+the council of Bâle, which re-established elections, and recognised the
+rights of the noble patrons of churches to present to benefices. These
+patrons, descendants of the pious founders or protectors, regarded the
+churches as portions severed from their fiefs, and desired nothing better
+than to protect them still, that is to say, to put their own men into
+them, by causing them to be elected by the monks or canons.
+
+What delighted France in its then extreme poverty was that the
+_pragmatique_ would stop the outgoing of money from the kingdom. The
+absence of gold was acutely felt. Under Charles VII it was really
+necessary as an instrument of war and a means of rapid action. The
+bankers were turning their speculations in that direction; previously
+occupied with the exchange of Rome and the transmission of the
+ecclesiastic tithes, they were about to draw on the English that bill of
+exchange which was paid with Normandy.
+
+One thing, however, was to be feared, namely, that a church so completely
+closed against papal influence might become not national but purely
+seigniorial. It was not the king or the state that would inherit what the
+pope lost, but the lords and the nobles. At a period when organisation
+was still so feeble, it was not very practicable to act with effect from
+a distance; now at every election the lord was on the spot to present or
+recommend, and the chapters obsequiously elected his nominee; the king
+was very far away. It was a question whether the nobility were worthy
+of being intrusted with the chief active part in the affairs of the
+church--whether the lords on whom really devolved the choice of pastors
+and the responsibility for the salvation of souls were themselves the
+pure souls whom the Holy Spirit would enlighten in so delicate a matter.
+
+
+THE ATROCIOUS CRIMES OF THE BARONS
+
+[Sidenote: [1435-1440 A.D.]]
+
+In his fief the baron of the twelfth century, haughty and stern as he
+might be, had yet a rule of conduct which, though unwritten, seemed but
+the more inviolable. This rule was “usage,” custom. In his most violent
+proceedings he saw himself accosted by his men, who said respectfully to
+him: “Messire, it is not the ‘usage’ of the good people here.” The fear
+of God and respect for usage, those two bridles of the feudal times, were
+broken in the fifteenth century. The lord was no longer a resident on his
+estate, and knew neither his people nor their customs. If he returns,
+it is with soldiers to raise money abruptly; he falls on the country
+occasionally like storm and hail, everyone hides at his approach, and the
+whole district is seized with a panic.
+
+This lord, though bearing his father’s seigniorial name, was not the
+more a lord for all that; he was commonly a rough captain, a barbarian,
+scarcely a Christian. Often he was a leader of _houspilleurs_,
+_tondeurs_, or _écorcheurs_, like the bastard de Bourbon, the bastard of
+Vaurus, a Chabannes, or a La Hire. _Écorcheurs_ (flayers) was their right
+name: ruining the ruined, taking away the shirt from him who had been
+left with nothing but a shirt to cover him; and if nothing remained but
+the skin, then stripping off the skin.
+
+It would be a mistake to suppose that it was only the captains of the
+_écorcheurs_, the bastards, the lords without lordship, that were so
+ferocious. The grandees and the princes had acquired a strange appetite
+for blood in these hideous wars. What shall we say when we see John of
+Ligny, of the house of Luxemburg, exercising his nephew, the count of
+Saint-Pol, a boy of fifteen, in massacring fugitives?
+
+They treated their relations just as they did their enemies; in fact,
+as regarded safety, the enemy was better off than the relation. It
+would seem as though there were no fathers, no brothers in those days.
+The count d’Harcourt keeps his father a prisoner all his life; the
+countess de Foix poisons her sister, the sire de Giac his wife; the
+duke of Brittany starves his brother to death, and that publicly--the
+horror-stricken passer-by heard his piteous voice imploring a morsel of
+bread for charity. One evening, on the 10th of January, Count Adolphus of
+Gelderland drags his old father out of bed, marches him five leagues on
+foot through the snow without hose, and throws him into a subterraneous
+dungeon (1440). The son, indeed, might have said in his own behalf that
+parricide was matter of usage in the family. But we find it likewise in
+most of the great houses of the time, in all those of the Low Countries,
+in those of Bar, Verdun, Armagnac, etc.
+
+
+_Gilles de Retz_
+
+[Sidenote: [1426-1440 A.D.]]
+
+People were well inured to these things, but one such that came to light
+stupefied all men with wonder and horror. The duke of Brittany being at
+Nantes, the bishop, who was his cousin and his chancellor, was emboldened
+by his presence to proceed against a great lord of the neighbourhood,
+regarded with singular awe, a Retz of the house of Laval, which was
+itself a branch of the Montforts, of the lineage of the dukes of
+Brittany. Such was the terror inspired by that name that it had silenced
+every tongue for fourteen years.
+
+The accusation was a strange one. An old woman called La Meffraie used
+to travel about the country and the heaths, and make up to the children
+who kept cattle or begged. Caressing and cajoling them, but all the while
+keeping her face half covered with a piece of black gauze, she used to
+entice them to the château of the sire de Retz, and they were never seen
+again. This Gilles de Retz was a very great lord, rich both in patrimony
+and by his marriage into the house of Thouars, besides which he had
+inherited the wealth of his maternal grandfather, John de Craon, lord of
+La Suze, Chantocé, and Ingrande.
+
+There was found in the tower of Chantocé a tunful of calcined children’s
+bones, the remains, it was calculated, of some forty victims. Similar
+discoveries were made in the château de la Suze, and in every other
+place where he had made his abode. Murder accompanied him wherever he
+went. The number of children slaughtered by this beast of extermination
+is estimated at 140. How slaughtered, and why? In the answer to this
+question lay something more horrible than death itself. They were
+offerings to the devil. He invoked the fiends Barron, Orient, Beelzebub,
+Satan, and Belial, praying them to grant him “gold, knowledge, and
+power.”[50]
+
+He was condemned to the flames and placed at the stake, but not burned.
+Out of deference for his powerful family and the nobility in general, he
+was strangled before the flames reached him. The body was not reduced to
+ashes. “Damsels of high condition,” says Jean Chartier,[h] went to the
+meadows of Nantes, where the execution had taken place, raised the body
+with their noble hands, and, with the aid of some nuns, gave it very
+honourable burial in the Carmelite church (1440).
+
+Barbarism had returned, only without what was good in it, simplicity and
+faith. Feudalism had come back, but without its traits of devotedness and
+fidelity, and its chivalry. These ghosts of buried feudalism appeared
+like damned souls bringing unknown crimes to earth from their infernal
+abode. It mattered not that the English withdrew; France still continued
+the work of self-extermination. The provinces of the north were becoming
+a desert; the waste heaths were spreading. In the centre, Beauce was
+becoming overrun with briers and thickets; two armies sought and could
+hardly find each other there. The towns in which the whole population of
+the rural districts sought refuge, absorbed that miserable multitude, and
+yet remained not the less desolate. A vast number of houses were empty,
+says the Bourgeois de Paris,[i] and many a door was closed to open no
+more. The poor took from those houses whatever they could for firing.
+Paris was burning Paris. We may judge of the other towns from this one,
+the most populous of all, the town in which the government had held its
+seat, and where resided those great corporations, the university and the
+parliament. Famine and wretchedness had made it a focus of disgusting
+contagious maladies, the nature of which was not very accurately
+discriminated, but which were called at random the plague. Charles VII
+had a glimpse of that hideous thing which was still called Paris, was
+struck with horror, and hurried away. The English did not try to return
+thither. The two parties withdrew as if by a common understanding. The
+wolves alone were voluntary visitors, entering at evening in search of
+carrion; for as they no longer found food in the fields, they were rabid
+with hunger, and attacked men. The contemporary historian, who no doubt
+exaggerates, alleges that in September, 1438, they devoured fourteen
+persons between Montmartre and the Porte St. Antoine.
+
+These terrible miseries are expressed, very feebly indeed, in the
+_Complaint of the poor Commonalty and the poor Labourers_. It is a medley
+of lamentations and threats; the starving wretches warn the church,
+the king, the burghers and merchants, and, above all, the lords, that
+“the fire is very near their hôtels.” They call the king to their aid.
+But what could Charles VII do--that king of Bourges, that weak and
+mean-looking personage,[51] how could they expect him to impose respect
+and obedience on so many audacious men? With what forces was he to put
+down the _écorcheurs_ of the rural districts, and the terrible petty
+kings of châteaux? They were his own captains;[52] it was with them and
+through them he was waging war against the English.
+
+
+CHARLES BEGINS THE WORK OF REFORM (1439 A.D.)
+
+On the 2nd of November, 1439, Charles VII ordained in the states of
+Orleans, and at their request: that henceforth the king alone shall
+nominate the captains; that the lords, as well as the royal captains,
+shall be responsible for the acts of their men; and that both alike must
+answer before the king’s functionaries, that is to say, that henceforth
+war shall be subjected to the control of justice. The barons shall no
+longer take anything beyond their seigniorial rights, under pretext of
+war. War becomes the king’s affair, and he undertakes, in consideration
+of 1,200,000 livres a year granted him by the states, to maintain fifteen
+hundred lances with six men to each. By and by we shall see him back this
+cavalry with a newly created infantry of the communes. Contraveners shall
+obtain no grace; should the king pardon, his servants should take no
+heed thereof. The ordinance subjoined a more direct and more efficacious
+threat: the spoils of the contraveners shall belong to whoever shall
+take them. This was a tremendous clause; it armed the peasant, and
+sounded, as it were, the tocsin in the village.
+
+What partially explains the boldness of the measure is that the
+self-styled royal captains, the pillagers and _écorcheurs_, had recently
+damaged their own strength. They had attempted an expedition to Bâle
+with the hopes of extorting ransom-money from the council, but instead
+of this they were themselves very roughly handled on their march by the
+peasants of Alsace; and then, seeing the Swiss ready to receive them,
+they returned with their tails between their legs. The king, who had
+taken Montereau, valiantly leading the assault in person (1437), took
+Meaux with his artillery (1439); then feeling himself in strength, he
+listened to the complaints made against the soldiery, and lent a gracious
+ear to the lamentations of his good subjects. Acts of justice were done
+with rapid despatch; the constable De Richemont, willingly exchanging his
+functions for those of provost-martial, hanged and drowned all along his
+route. His brother, the duke of Brittany, did not delay to strike that
+great blow, the sentencing and burning of Marshal de Retz. This first
+instance of justice done upon a lord was effected only in God’s name, and
+with the aid of the church; but it was, nevertheless, a warning to the
+nobility that their impunity was at an end.[b]
+
+The most important effect of the memorable meeting of the states-general
+of 1439 was to render further meetings of that body unnecessary. In
+effect, the king was given the exclusive right to raise troops and to
+levy taxes. This virtually amounted to the creation of a permanent army,
+and, by implications, to the imposition of a perpetual tax. So at least
+the king interpreted it. From then on the king, having no need of the
+authorisation of the estates for the imposition of taxes, took good pains
+to dispense with its services. In point of fact it assembled but once
+more during the remaining period of his reign.[p]
+
+Who were the intrepid advisers that urged the king upon this course of
+proceeding? Who were the servants that could have prompted him to these
+reforms, and procured for him the name given by contemporaries: Charles
+“the well served”?
+
+Along with the princes in the council of Charles VII, the count of Maine,
+the cadet of Brittany, and the bastard of Orleans, there were also petty
+nobles, the brave Saintrailles, and those wise and politic men, the
+Brézés, nobles, but men who were nothing without the king. We find in
+it two burghers, Jacques Cœur, the money-changer, and the master of the
+artillery, Jean Bureau, both very humble _roturier_ names. Bureau was a
+man of the robe, a master of the accounts. He threw down his pen, and by
+this remarkable transformation exemplified the truth that an able mind
+can apply itself to anything. Henry IV reformed the finances through a
+man of the sword; Charles VII waged war through a financier. Bureau was
+the first who made an able and scientific use of artillery.
+
+War needs money, and Jacques Cœur contrived to supply it. Whence came
+he? We are sorry to know so little of his early career. All we know is
+that in 1432 we find him engaged in commerce in Beirut in Syria; sometime
+afterwards we see him at Bourges in the capacity of money-changer to
+the king. This great trader had always one foot in the East, and one in
+France. Here, he made his son archbishop of Bourges; yonder, he married
+his nieces or other female relations to the masters of his galleys. On
+the one hand he was continuing his Egyptian traffic; on the other he was
+speculating on the maintenance of armies and the conquest of Normandy.
+
+Such were the able and humbly-born councillors of Charles VII. If it be
+asked who brought them about him, and what was the influence that made
+him yield to their advice, it will be found, if we are not mistaken,
+that it was a woman, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Anjou. We see her
+in possession of power from the beginning of this reign; it was she
+who caused the Maid to be received with favour; and it was with her on
+one occasion that the duke of Alençon arranged the preparations for a
+campaign. This influence, balanced by that of the favourite, seems to
+have been without a rival from the moment the old queen had given her
+son-in-law a mistress whom he loved for twenty years (1431-1450). This
+was Agnes Sorel.
+
+
+AGNES SOREL; THE _PRAGUERIE_ (1440 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1440 A.D.]]
+
+Agnes la Sorelle or Surelle--she assumed for arms a gold _sureau_ (elder
+tree)--was the daughter of a gownsman, Jean Soreau, but she was noble
+by the mother’s side. She was born in honest Touraine. The _naïveté_ of
+Agnes was early transplanted into a land of craft and policy, Lorraine.
+She was brought up with Isabella of Lorraine, with whom René of Anjou
+espoused that duchy. Isabella, the wife of a prisoner, waited on the king
+to beseech his aid, bringing her children with her and also her good
+friend from childhood, the demoiselle Agnes. The king’s mother-in-law,
+Yolande of Anjou, who stood also in the same relation to Isabella, was,
+like her, a woman of masculine mind; and they both agreed to attach
+Charles VII forever to the interests of the house of Anjou-Lorraine. The
+gentle creature was given him for his mistress, to the great satisfaction
+of the queen, who wished at any cost to remove La Trémouille and the
+other favourites.
+
+Everyone knows the little story how Agnes said one day to the king
+that, when very young, she had been informed by an astrologer that she
+was to be loved by one of the most valiant kings in the world: she had
+thought that this was Charles, but she now saw clearly it was the king of
+England, who took so many fine towns from him in defiance of his beard;
+therefore to the king of England she would go. Stung by these words, the
+king burst into tears, “and quitting his hunting and his gardens, he took
+the bit in his teeth,” and to such purpose, that he drove the English out
+of the kingdom.
+
+The pretty verses by Francis I[53] prove that this tradition was of
+earlier date than Brantôme.[l] Be this as it may, we have an equivalent
+testimony in favour of Agnes from a hostile pen, that of the nearly
+contemporary Burgundian chronicler, Olivier de la Marche.[m] “Certest
+Agnes was one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, and did in her
+quality much good to the realm.” And again: “She took pleasure in
+bringing under the king’s notice young soldiers and gentle companions, by
+whom the king was afterwards well served.”
+
+Charles VII thought wisdom charming when preached by such lips; old
+Yolande in all probability spoke through Agnes, and no doubt she had the
+principal part in all that was done. More politic than scrupulous, she
+had welcomed with equal readiness the two girls that came to her so _à
+propos_ from Lorraine, Joan of Arc and Agnes, the saint and the mistress,
+who both in their several ways were of service to the king and the realm.
+
+This council of women, _parvenus_, and _roturiers_, it must be confessed,
+did not command much reverence, or greatly tend to set off to advantage
+the unroyal figure of Charles VII. To sit as judge of the realm on the
+throne of St. Louis, and be like him the guardian of God’s Peace, he
+ought apparently to have surrounded himself with people of a different
+sort. The league of the three ladies, the dowager queen, the queen, and
+the mistress, was not edifying in anybody’s eyes. What was Richemont? An
+executioner. Jacques Cœur? A trader in Saracen lands. A Jean Bureau, a
+limb of the law, “an inkhorn,” had made himself a captain, was riding all
+over the kingdom with his cannon, and not a fortress could stand before
+him; was not that a shame for the men of the sword? The foxes had become
+lions. Thenceforth the knights were to account to the knights at law--the
+most noble lords and the high justiciars were to tremble before the
+underlings of justice!
+
+So much was this the tone of feeling prevalent among the nobles, not
+excepting those who were most immediately in contact with Charles VII,
+that even Dunois quitted the council after the famous ordinance. “The
+cool and tempered lord,” as Chartier[h] calls him, repented of having
+served his king too well. This bastard of Orleans had begun his fortunes
+by defending the town of Orleans, his brother’s appanage, in which
+service he had very adroitly employed the heroic simplicity of the Maid.
+After having grown great through the king, he wished to grow great
+against the king. The misfortune was that his brother the duke was still
+in England; but the ancient enemy of the house of Orleans, the duke of
+Burgundy (converted no doubt by Dunois), was labouring to get that future
+chief of the malcontents out of the hands of the English.
+
+The duke of Alençon threw himself headlong into the affair; the Bourbons
+and the Vendômes lent their hands to it. The ex-favourite, La Trémouille,
+whom Richemont had removed, readily engaged in it. The most eager of all
+were the leaders of the _écorcheurs_, the bastard de Bourbon, Chabannes,
+and Le Sanglier (“the wild boar”). In truth, the matter was one that most
+nearly concerned them; the lords had their honours and jurisdictional
+prerogatives to contend for; but as for them, they had their necks to
+save; the gallows stared them in the face.
+
+Nothing was now wanting but a leader. As the duke of Orleans could not be
+had, the malcontents took the dauphin, a mere child in point of age, but
+it was thought that a name would be sufficient. The supposed child, who
+was already Louis XI, had made his first efforts in arms, as he made his
+last, against the very party of the lords that chose him for their chief.
+At fourteen years of age he had been commissioned to pacify the marches
+of Brittany and Poitou. His first capture had been that of one of Marshal
+de Retz’s lieutenants; such a commencement did not promise the grandees a
+very trusty friend. Friend or not, he accepted their offers. This dauphin
+of France resembled Charles VII in no respect, but took rather after his
+grandmother, who was sprung from the houses of Bar and Aragon.
+
+The king was keeping his Easter at Poitiers, and was at dinner, when word
+was brought him that St. Maixent had been seized by the duke of Alençon
+and the sire de la Roche; whereupon Richemont said to him in Breton
+fashion, “Remember King Richard II, who shut himself up in a fortress
+and got taken.” The king thought the hint a good one, mounted his horse,
+and galloped with four hundred lances to St. Maixent. The burghers had
+been fighting four-and-twenty hours for their king, when he came to their
+relief. De la Roche’s men were decapitated or drowned, according to
+Richemont’s custom, but Alençon’s were let go. The small fortresses of
+Poitou did not hold out; Richemont carried them one by one. Dunois then
+began to reflect, and he calculated too that the first who should leave
+the rest would be allowed good terms. He came, was well received, and
+congratulated himself on the course he had adopted, when he saw the king
+stronger than he had supposed, with 4,800 cavaliers, and 2,000 archers
+at his back, without having been obliged to weaken the garrisons in the
+marches of Normandy.
+
+More than one of Dunois’ party thought as he did. Many an _écorcheur_ of
+the south took the king’s pay, and fought against the _écorcheurs_ of the
+north. Charles VII drove back the duke de Bourbon upon the Bourbonnais,
+securing the good will of the towns and châteaux by prohibiting all
+pillage. He assembled the states of Auvergne, and got them to declare
+loudly that the rebels were hostile to the king, only because he
+protected the poorer classes against the plunderers. The princes,
+abandoned by their followers, and obtaining no support from the duke of
+Burgundy, came in and made their submission; first Alençon, then the duke
+de Bourbon and the dauphin. As for La Trémouille and two others, the king
+would not receive them. The dauphin hesitated about accepting a pardon
+which was not extended to his friends, and said to the king, “I find
+then, my liege, that I must go back to them, for I have promised so.” The
+king replied coldly, “The gates are open for you, Louis, and if they are
+not wide enough, I will have sixteen or twenty fathoms of the wall pulled
+down for you.”
+
+This war, so well conducted, was not less wisely terminated. The duke
+de Bourbon was deprived of his possessions in central France (Corbeil,
+Vincennes, etc.) and the dauphin was dismissed from court, and assigned
+an establishment on the frontier, in Dauphiné. Thus he was isolated, and
+allotted his separate portion; there was no getting rid of him, except by
+giving him a little royalty, in advance of his hereditary expectations.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH NOBLEMAN, MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+This _praguerie_ of France (it was so called after the name of the great
+Bohemian _praguerie_), although it was so quickly ended, nevertheless
+produced some disastrous results. The military reform was postponed. The
+English were emboldened to attack Harfleur, which they took and retained.
+They released the duke of Orleans at the request of the duke of Burgundy
+(1440). When the ancient enemy of his house thus exerted himself to take
+him out of captivity, the king could not decently refuse likewise to
+guarantee the ransom-money, and aid in the deliverance of the dangerous
+prisoner. He proceeded straight on his return to the duke of Burgundy,
+who threw the chain of the Golden Fleece[54] over his neck, and gave him
+his niece in marriage. Against whom was formed this close union of two
+enemies, if not against the king? He took the hint.
+
+[Sidenote: [1440-1442 A.D.]]
+
+First of all, he obtained from the states a tenth to be levied on all the
+clergy of the realm. He recalled Tannegui du Châtel, the mortal enemy
+of the house of Burgundy. Then concentrating all his forces towards
+the north, he proceeded along the frontier, doing justice upon the
+Burgundian, Lorrainian, and other captains, who were desolating the land.
+Among those who made their submission, there was a man of turbulence, the
+most audacious of plunderers; audacious both from the strength his birth
+gave him, and because he was the common agent of the duke de Bourbon and
+the duke of Burgundy; this was the bastard de Bourbon. He did not get off
+so cheaply as he had expected. The king handed him over, Bourbon as he
+was, to the provost, who put him on his trial just like any other robber;
+and after being well and duly found guilty, he was put in a sack, and
+thrown into the river.
+
+Another lesson, not less instructive, was given. The young count of
+Saint-Pol, relying on the protection of the duke of Burgundy, dared to
+intercept some of the king’s cannon on the march, and carry them off; the
+king deprived him of two of his best fortresses; Saint-Pol hastened to
+the king and besought pardon, but he could obtain no favour, except by
+submitting to the decision of the parliament on the litigated question of
+the Ligny inheritance.
+
+
+EFFECTIVE PROGRESS AGAINST ENGLAND (1441-1444 A.D.)
+
+Meanwhile the English, all this time so near Paris, and so strongly
+established on the lower Seine, had advanced up the river and seized
+Pontoise. Lord Clifford, who had surprised that important and formidable
+post, kept possession of it in person. The inveterate obstinacy of the
+Cliffords acquired but too much notoriety in the wars of the Roses.
+Besides the English, there were in Pontoise numerous deserters, who knew
+they had no quarter to expect.
+
+Invincible pertinacity of purpose was displayed on both sides. The duke
+of York, regent of France, now came to the aid of Clifford, whom he was
+afterwards to put to death in the civil wars. He brought with him an army
+from Normandy, revictualled the place, and offered battle (June); Talbot
+was with him. The king let the English pass, fell back, and returned.
+Talbot also returned, and again threw provisions into the town (July).
+The duke of York once more marched his army back, but could not yet bring
+on an engagement. He was allowed to roam over the ruined Île-de-France
+as much as he pleased, and waste his strength in those useless
+evolutions. When they had exhausted and harassed themselves, in four
+times revictualling Pontoise, Charles VII seriously resumed the siege;
+Jean Bureau battered the walls with admirable activity; two murderous
+assaults were made, that lasted five hours; first a church, that served
+as a redoubt, was carried, and then the place itself (September 16th,
+1441). Thus men, who dared not meet the English in the plain, attacked
+and defeated them by storm.
+
+The recapture of Pontoise was a deliverance for Paris, and for the whole
+country around; cultivation could thenceforth recommence, the means of
+subsistence were secured. Yet the Parisians evinced no gratitude to the
+king; they felt but their present miseries and the burden of the taxes;
+these were beginning to affect the brotherhoods even, and the churches,
+which were loud in their complaints. There was no want of willingness
+on the part of the princes to take advantage of these discontents. The
+duke of Burgundy, without himself appearing, assembled them in his own
+home at Nevers (March, 1442). The duke of Orleans, with whom he did
+as he pleased, since he had delivered him, presided for him over the
+meeting, which consisted of the dukes de Bourbon and d’Alençon, the
+counts d’Angoulême, d’Étampes, and de Dunois. The king frankly sent his
+chancellor to this conclave which was held against him, and notified to
+them that he would readily hear what they had to say.
+
+[Sidenote: [1442-1443 A.D.]]
+
+Their demand and alleged grievances very plainly showed what were their
+secret views. The princes, therefore, in their love for the public
+welfare, and for the good people of France, set forth before the king the
+necessity of making peace. They called for the repression of the brigands.
+
+The king’s reply, which was sedulously made public, was overwhelming,
+and the more so as its tone was calm and moderate. He answers specially,
+respecting the taxes, that the aids had been consented to by the lords
+on whose property they had been levied; that as to the tallages, the
+king had “notified” them to the three estates, although in matters so
+urgent, when the enemy was in occupation of one portion of the kingdom,
+and was destroying the rest, he had a good right to levy tallages of his
+royal authority. “It is not necessary to that end,” he says, “to assemble
+the estates; it is but a burden for the poor people who have to pay the
+charges of those who attend. Many notable persons have requested that
+these convocations should cease.”
+
+The king, leaving the malcontents to waste time in their meeting at
+Nevers, was then performing a grand and useful journey all through
+his kingdom, from Picardy to Gascony, everywhere establishing peace,
+especially in the marches, in Poitou, Saintonge, and the Limousin.
+Strengthened in the north by the recovery of Pontoise, he went to make
+head against the English in the south. The count d’Albret, being hard
+pressed by them, had promised to surrender if the king did not come on
+the 23rd of June to “keep his day,” and await them on the _lande_ of
+Tartas. They liked the condition, not believing that he could arrive
+in time, much less that he would offer them battle. On the appointed
+day they saw the king of France and his army on the _lande_ (June 21st,
+1442). All these Gascons, who had imagined themselves far beyond the
+king’s reach in a world of their own, were beginning to feel that he was
+everywhere. They came and did homage, performed feudal service, and the
+king rendered justice to them.
+
+He did this conspicuously in an important case the following year (March,
+1443). The estates of Comminges supplicated Charles VII on behalf of
+the aged countess de Foix who had been imprisoned by her husband. He
+frightened the count de Foix, liberated the old countess, divided the
+usufruct of Comminges between the husband and wife, and adjudged the
+property to himself. This startling act of justice struck great awe into
+all those lords who had hitherto been so independent.
+
+This was not all. In order to remain always among them as judge, the
+king gave them a royal parliament, which was to reside in Toulouse. This
+judicial royalty of the south was altogether free of the parliament of
+Paris; it judged in accordance with the law of the country, the written
+law, and was not dependent on anyone, but was self-elected. Until such
+time as this great body could establish order and justice in Languedoc,
+Charles VII authorised the poor to take justice into their own hands, and
+hunt down the brigands and vagrant soldiers.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS XI AND CHARLES THE BOLD AT PÉRONNE]
+
+He could not remain long absent from the north. Dieppe, which had been
+recovered by a fortunate and bold stroke, was in danger of being lost
+again. A great fleet and an army were every moment expected from England;
+it was urgently necessary to anticipate their arrival. The dauphin got
+permission to undertake this service along with Dunois; many Picard and
+Norman gentlemen also volunteered. The Bastille was taken. The duke of
+Somerset, the English commander, returned to Rouen to rest from his toils
+and take up his winter quarters.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME OF A NOBLEWOMAN, MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+[Sidenote: [1443-1444 A.D.]]
+
+That winter, whilst Somerset was enjoying his victorious repose,
+the dauphin Louis was rapidly traversing the whole kingdom, to ruin
+and destroy the best friend of the English. The count d’Armagnac,
+dissatisfied by the way in which Comminges had been disposed of without
+giving him a share, had attempted to seize the whole country. He reckoned
+on the English, and particularly on the duke of Gloucester, who in fact
+wanted to marry Henry VI to a daughter of the count. The dauphin set out
+in winter, made his way over snows and swollen rivers, and found the game
+in its lair, everything that bore the name of Armagnac shut up in one
+place. Gloucester and the war party, though they had encouraged Armagnac,
+were unable to defend him. They had enough to do to defend themselves in
+England against the bishops, and the partisans of peace, Winchester and
+Suffolk, who had gained the upper hand.[b] Painful as it was to their
+pride they were obliged at conferences held at Arras, in 1444, to beg for
+a truce and the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, for their
+young king Henry VI, placing also a new enemy at their gates through the
+marriage of the dauphin Louis with Margaret of Scotland, daughter of
+James I.
+
+
+EXPEDITION TO SWITZERLAND AND LORRAINE
+
+Charles VII only granted that truce in order the better to complete
+the work of reform begun in 1439.[c] But there was a third people very
+embarrassing during the truce, the war-folk namely. What could be done
+was to induce them to go and rob elsewhere, to quit ruined France for
+thriving Germany, and make a pilgrimage to the council of Bâle, to
+the rich and saintly towns of the Rhine, and the fat ecclesiastical
+principalities.
+
+[Sidenote: [1444-1445 A.D.]]
+
+Just then the king received two applications for aid, the one from the
+emperor Frederick III against the Swiss, the other from René, duke
+of Lorraine, against the cities of the empire. The king was equally
+favourable to both proposals, and generously promised aid for and against
+the Germans.[b]
+
+Switzerland had founded and consolidated its independence of Austria and
+the empire in three battles--Morgarten, Sempach, and Näfels--in which
+a handful of peasants had heroically vanquished great feudal armies.
+The French nobility was always ready for positive warfare, but that of
+Germany showed itself more circumspect and the Austrian provinces were
+reduced to setting, by means of wretched intrigue, the Swiss cantons one
+against the other, and then if possible to intervene. This time Frederick
+III reckoned to make the Armagnacs of Charles VII intervene for him.
+
+
+_The Battle of Sankt Jakob (1444 A.D.)_
+
+Charles hastened to set in motion, in as orderly a fashion as possible,
+an army of 14,000 French and 8,000 English, Scotch, Brabanters,
+Spaniards, and Italians. The commander-in-chief was the former leader of
+the praguerie--the dauphin Louis. This terrible band turned the Jura in
+fairly good order, and entered Switzerland by crossing the little river
+Birse. The Swiss, who were then besieging Zurich, were able to send only
+2,000 men to meet the enemy. These brave fellows had expected only to
+skirmish and knew not with what force they had to deal. A messenger had
+come from Bâle to warn them of the numbers of the French, but they had
+killed him; and in the brutal pride their former successes had inspired,
+they threw themselves head-foremost on the first corps they met (1444).
+Their bravoura did not save them. After making a desperate resistance in
+a hospital and behind the dilapidated walls of a garden, their position
+was forced and they perished, every one. The dauphin had such respect
+for the brave men that fought so well that he went no further and made a
+treaty of alliance with the Swiss. As for the _écorcheurs_, they found
+nothing to take away from these poor mountaineers and many turned towards
+Alsace and Swabia.[c]
+
+The dauphin’s return, and the report of the check the Swiss had suffered,
+considerably advanced the affairs of Lorraine. The towns which sheltered
+themselves under the name of the empire saw that, if the emperor and
+the German nobility had called in the French to the heart of the German
+countries, to save Zurich, they would not come and fight the French on
+the marches of France. Toul and Verdun acknowledged the king as protector.
+
+Metz alone resisted. That great and aspiring town had others dependent
+on it, and was encompassed by from twenty-four to thirty forts. Épinal,
+however, had from the beginning seized the opportunity to emancipate
+itself, and had put itself into the king’s hands. The forts having
+afterwards surrendered, the Metz men made up their mind to negotiate.
+They represented to the king that “they were not of his realm or
+lordship, but that, in his wars with the duke of Burgundy and others,
+they had always received and comforted his men.” Thereupon, by order of
+the king, Master Jean Rabateau, president of the parliament, propounded
+many arguments to the contrary. The grand question of the limits of
+France and the empire could not be settled thus incidentally, and during
+a truce to the English war. The matter remained undecided. The king
+contented himself with drawing on the finances of the wealthy town of
+Metz.[b]
+
+
+MILITARY AND FINANCIAL REFORMS (1443-1448 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1443-1448 A.D.]]
+
+These two expeditions had disembarrassed the king of the most riotous
+among his adventurers, and broken in the rest to an elementary
+discipline; it was at last possible to put into execution the ordinance
+of Orleans. In 1445, the army was consolidated into fifteen companies
+of one hundred lances; to each lance six paid men were reckoned--a
+man-at-arms and his esquire, three archers and a _coutillier_, all
+mounted. By these were the cities garrisoned, the largest having only
+from twenty to thirty lances; in this way the inhabitants remained
+stronger than the soldiers, and in a position to check any disorder. The
+demand for positions in the army was so great that numerous old stagers
+followed the companies about that they might be ready to snap up the
+first vacancy. All the others were obliged to retire immediately to their
+homes without disturbing the peace, under penalty of being given up to
+justice as vagabonds. Such was the progress of order that they obeyed and
+at the end of the fifteen days nothing more was heard of them; as for
+those who had enlisted, they submitted to a rigorous discipline. Charles
+VII had thus at his disposition a picked troop of nine thousand horse.
+
+By another ordinance, that of April 28th, 1448, the king secured to
+France an advantage which she had hitherto furnished to foreigners--to
+the Genoese, at need--but had never herself possessed: a regular and
+permanent infantry. Each of the sixteen thousand parishes of the kingdom
+was obliged to furnish the king “a good comrade,” said the ordinance,
+“who has seen service.” He had to furnish at his own expense his
+_brigandine_, a light coat of armour of iron plates joined together; a
+short coat, light helmet, dagger, sword, crossbow, and quiver of arrows.
+He was obliged to drill on all feast days, and be ready to serve the king
+at any time he should be called upon to do so; he received in payment
+four francs a month when in service and exemption from all taxes and
+subsidies, excepting the _aide_ and the _gabelle_.
+
+The free archer did not become at once a model soldier; military genius
+was not developed in a day in a nation so long without arms. But while
+Villon depicts for us one of those archers dropping on his knees before
+a scarecrow, taking it for a gendarme, entreating pardon, and beginning
+to feel extremely ill, satiric poetry is not history; a century later, in
+1554, the same archers, incorporated in the provincial legions of Francis
+I, gained against the first army in the world--the Castilian veterans--a
+battle that had been once lost by the men-at-arms; still another century,
+and in 1643, changing their quivers for guns, they had developed into the
+foot-soldiers that fought at Rocroi.
+
+All these reforms were subordinate to that of the finances, set in
+motion in 1443 by Jacques Cœur. To establish a reciprocal control by
+the regulators of finances over one another; to oblige individual
+receivers to account to the receiver-general and the latter in his
+turn to the chamber of accounts; to force the king’s officers--the
+ministers of finance, the master of the horse, the treasurer of wars,
+and the commander of artillery--to render monthly accounts to the
+king in person--these were excellent and admirable reforms, thanks to
+which Charles VII found himself in a position to create in France an
+institution that the most powerful of his predecessors had been unable to
+establish--a military force dependent only on the king, and protecting
+him, instead of leaving him at the mercy of the barons’ evil humours,
+as had heretofore been the case. Since Charles V, the ordinary indirect
+taxes, such as that on salt, on merchandise, and on liquors, had been
+permanent. Since Charles VI, the land tax (the _taille_), for payment of
+the soldiers, had become permanent--that is, it continued to be levied
+without the vote of the estates. But the king gave guarantee for the
+proper administration of financial justice by declaring sovereign the
+_cour des aides_, which alone had the right to interpret ordinances
+pertaining to the taxes and was the last resort of all civil and criminal
+processes growing out of the administration of the finances.
+
+Though it was not yet possible, in the fifteenth century, to reduce all
+France to one uniform law, she was at least beginning to emerge from
+the arbitrary customs of a justice exercised, above all in the north
+of France, according to unwritten laws. Charles VII thought--and the
+thought is an honour to him--that it was essential that all the laws
+of a kingdom should be written and “agreed upon by the lawyers of each
+country,” and examined and authorised by the supreme court and by the
+parliament, so that it would not be possible to deviate from the text
+thus officially inscribed. To him was due this innovation.
+
+
+THE CLOSE OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR
+
+[Sidenote: [1448-1450 A.D.]]
+
+Having accomplished these reforms, Charles found himself sufficiently
+strong to finish with the English. A certain Francis de Surienne, an
+Aragonese adventurer in the service of the English, wishing to garrison
+one of the Norman villages possessed by the English, found himself
+repulsed on all sides. The soldiers, having received from Henry VI
+neither pay, provisions, nor munitions, were unwilling to share with
+this foreigner their already insufficient resources. The Aragonese,
+finding the doors of the allies closed to him, provided for the needs
+of his company after the fashion of the greater number of the military
+leaders: during the season of peace he fell upon Fougères, a rich city of
+Brittany, and gave it over to his men to plunder in lieu of their arrears
+of pay.
+
+Immediately the king of France and the duke of Brittany demanded
+of the English governor of Normandy reparation and an indemnity of
+1,600,000 crowns damages. They demanded an impossibility. The indemnity
+not arriving, the French set out to collect it for themselves at
+Pont-de-l’Arche, Gerberoy, Verneuil. Dunois entered the province with
+an efficient army which the Burgundians and Bretons joined voluntarily.
+Pont-Audemer, Lisieux, Mantes, Vernon, Évreux, Louviers, St. Lô,
+Coutances, and Valognes were taken or surrendered by the inhabitants
+without striking a blow.
+
+England was then beginning her Wars of the Roses, which during thirty
+years were to cover her with blood and ruins. The parliament, not as yet
+daring to take action against the king, fastened upon his minister, the
+duke of Suffolk, and troubled itself little about Normandy, since the
+reverses there were new and potent arguments against the accused. The
+governor, Somerset, instead of concentrating his forces, divided them
+into twenty garrisons, and sent ambassadors to open negotiations; but,
+knowing no better how to make treaties than how to make war, he forgot
+to invest them with authority. Order, proficiency--all that had hitherto
+contributed to their success was now on the side of the French: to the
+French Victory went over. On October 18th, 1449, they appeared beneath
+the walls of Rouen.
+
+In a moment all the inhabitants of Rouen were armed, but armed against
+the English, who took refuge in the citadel. Somerset was there, and
+the veteran Talbot, and numerous lords, officers, and soldiers; but it
+must be remembered that it would have been impossible to resist at once
+both the population and the French army. There was talk of a treaty, but
+on what conditions!--that, in addition to Rouen, Caudebec, Villequier,
+Lillebonne, Tancarville, Harfleur,--that is to say all the lower course
+of the Seine,--should be delivered up to the king of France; and that
+a hostage should be furnished in the person of the famous Talbot
+himself--the English Achilles.
+
+The governor of Honfleur refused to recognise this capitulation. The city
+was taken in the middle of winter (December, 1449); Harfleur met the
+same fate. The English, pushed to extremities, sent a knight of great
+renown, Thomas Kyriell, with 6,000 men. It was a last effort. Landing
+at Cherbourg, Kyriell sought to join the duke of Somerset at Bayeux, by
+way of the shore; the French followed, and on April 15th, 1450, near
+the village of Formigny, the constables of Richemont from one side, the
+count of Clermont from the other, vigorously attacked him. Kyriell’s
+soldiers fought bravely, but were defeated and left 4,000 on the field.
+This insignificant number sufficed to blot out from the minds of the
+French the 30,000 dead at Crécy, the 12,000 captive at Poitiers and at
+Agincourt. Vire, Bayeux, Avranches, Caen, Domfront, and Falaise fell into
+the hands of Charles.
+
+[Sidenote: [1450-1453 A.D.]]
+
+The numerous garrison of Cherbourg counted upon having nothing to fear,
+thanks to its own strength and above all to the neighbourhood of the sea.
+From this side it was taken. The French cannoneers established seven
+batteries in the sea itself; when the tide rose they left their cannon
+well anchored on the beach and protected by oiled skins; when the tide
+fell they returned to them. It was the English who, first of all, had
+turned against the French, at Crécy and Agincourt, this terrible arm of
+the artillery; the latter now manipulated it better than themselves.
+Cherbourg capitulated, and in a year the whole of Normandy was taken.
+Also the French army presented a novel spectacle: disciplined and
+obedient, it now lived on its pay and not by plunder.
+
+A month later, Dunois, Saintrailles, Chabannes, and the brothers Jean
+and Gaspard Bureau, who directed so advantageously the French artillery,
+marched with 20,000 men against Guienne. Bourg-sur-Gironde, Blaye,
+Castillon, Libourne, St. Émilion, offshoots from Bordeaux, which the
+English had loaded with privileges as they had that city, were easily
+taken. The inhabitants of Bordeaux, so well disposed to the England who
+bought their wines, attempted a sortie, fled upon catching sight of the
+enemy, and entered like the others into negotiations. The French granted
+nearly all that was asked of them. This was the 5th of June, 1451; the
+surrender was delayed until the 23rd. On that day, the herald of the
+city having cried with a loud voice for succour from the English for the
+people of Bordeaux, and no one replying, the gates were opened to the
+French.
+
+However mild the conquerors were, the great town soon regretted that
+English domination so far removed as to be scarcely felt. Now it had to
+pay taxes and furnish soldiers, the harbour was deserted, the shops were
+encumbered with unsold tuns. If an English army had appeared, no matter
+how weak, Bordeaux would have thrown herself into its arms. Such an army
+now appeared.
+
+The government of Henry VI, or, to speak more correctly, of Margaret of
+Anjou, had need of a great success abroad in order to establish itself at
+home. Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, now eighty years of age, was charged
+with bringing Guienne again under the English rule. The first steps were
+easy. The inhabitants of Bordeaux themselves introduced the English into
+their town, September 22nd, 1452; almost the whole province followed
+their example, and the king of France had to recommence his conquest.
+With the spring of 1453 his troops were marching into Guienne; on the
+14th of July they laid siege to Castillon.[c]
+
+
+_The Battle of Castillon (July 17th, 1453)_
+
+The royal army, the greater part of which, including the artillery under
+the Bureau brothers, was concentrated in the camp, nearly two thousand
+feet long by one thousand wide, occupied also an abbey, which was later
+on the priory of St. Florent, and which overlooked Castillon; on the
+plain of Mount Horable, near to the village of Capitourlans, were the
+Bretons of Count d’Étampes, to the number of 240 lances under the
+command of the knights of Hunaudaye and Montauban. The night of the 16th
+of July was passed in fortifying the camp, which was surrounded by deep
+trenches and defended by powerful artillery. Talbot on the morning of
+the 17th attacked the abbeys, defended by eight hundred free archers
+under the command of Jacques Rouhault and Pierre de Beauvau. The archers,
+terrified by the impetuosity of the English, who shouted the war-cry of
+their old leader, abandoned the abbey and retreated in the direction of
+the entrenched camp, followed by the enemy. On hearing of the approach
+of Talbot, Jacques de Chabannes left the camp and advanced at the head
+of two hundred lances. Aided by Rouhault and Beauvau, he protected the
+retreat of the archers. A very brief engagement took place; one hundred
+men were killed on either side. Rouhault, thrown from his horse, owed his
+safety only to the devotion of his archers, to whom he had sworn that he
+would live and die with them. Chabannes, surrounded at one moment, was
+delivered by his men.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH NOBLEWOMAN, EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+Finally it was possible to effect the retreat. Talbot rallied his men
+and regained the abbey. There, seizing the provisions abandoned by the
+French, he broke open the casks and distributed wine to his soldiers;
+it was still early in the day; the earl of Shrewsbury (Talbot) had mass
+performed by his chaplain. The holy sacrament was about to be celebrated,
+when news was brought that the French were abandoning their enclosure and
+fleeing. “Never,” he exclaimed, “will I hear mass till I shall, to-day,
+have overthrown the band of Frenchmen which is before me”; and he gave
+orders to advance. The English advanced uttering their war-cry, “Talbot,
+Talbot, St. George!” Mounted on a little nag, the old captain was dressed
+in a simple red velvet cassock. Vain attempts were made to stop him,
+he was told that it was a false rumour, and that it would be better to
+await quietly the onset of the enemy; he answered his standard-bearer,
+who gave him this advice, by insults, and drove him away, it was said,
+by a sword-cut across the face. On arriving at the palisade Talbot began
+to shout, “On foot, on foot, all!” His men-at-arms, supported by the
+archers, who arrived gradually and fell into rank, were received by a
+formidable discharge; three hundred catapults, howitzers, culverins,
+and ribaudequins, the firing of which was directed by the famous gunner
+Giribault, threw their projectiles, which slew a large number of victims.
+The English hesitated. Talbot brought them back, and formed them in
+testudo; sheltered behind their bucklers they attacked the entrenchments.
+Talbot succeeded in planting the banner of St. George on the summit of
+the trench. A terrible conflict took place; for more than an hour they
+fought hand to hand.
+
+Suddenly, from the neighbouring heights, the sires de Montauban and de la
+Hunaudaye descended with their Bretons, and took the enemy in the rear;
+this movement decided the issue of the combat. The English stopped to
+face this fresh body of troops. The terrible tempest of the artillery
+did not cease to rain down on them. Seizing the opportunity, the French
+dashed from the camp, some on foot, some on horse, and charged with fury.
+Talbot, though wounded, held out. A blow from a culverin struck him on
+the leg and threw him under his horse. The French archers surrounded him
+and pierced him with their arrows. His son, who had vainly endeavoured
+to persuade him to flee, died at his side, trying to protect him. The
+English, seeing the fall of their chief, fled in disorder. Some wished
+to regain their vessels or to cross the Dordogne at the ford of Rozan;
+the others took the road to St. Émilion. A body of about two thousand
+men under the leadership of the Gascon nobles fell back in good order
+on Castillon and succeeded in penetrating into the town. The French,
+tired, worn out, breathless, renounced the pursuit of the enemy; only
+the count de Penthièvre, with his troops, gave chase to the fugitives in
+the direction of St. Émilion. The English army was overwhelmed; thirty
+knights and four thousand soldiers perished; in the heat of the action
+they were killed without mercy. It is said that even in our day bones are
+found in the plain which was the scene of this sanguinary struggle. On
+the French side the loss was considerable; some of their leaders, Admiral
+de Bueil, Jacques de Chabannes, Pierre de Beauvau, were wounded, but not
+seriously. In spite of the reinforcements brought by the Gascon nobles,
+Castillon could not oppose a long resistance; the town capitulated July
+20th. From there the army marched immediately against St. Émilion and
+Libourne, which opened their gates.[n]
+
+Cadillac and Blanquefort followed suit. The royal army closed in around
+Bordeaux. The free archers overran the country; the ships loaned by
+La Rochelle and Brittany blocked the mouth of the Gironde. Bordeaux,
+threatened with famine, sent deputies to Charles VII. In their presence
+Jean Bureau made it a point to say to the king: “Sire, I have been
+reconnoitring for proper positions for our batteries; if such is your
+pleasure, I promise you on my life that in a few days I shall have
+demolished the town.” The envoys understood that this time they must
+accept what conditions the king would make. He stripped Bordeaux of her
+privileges, exacted a contribution of 100,000 crowns and ordered the
+banishment of twenty guilty citizens with the confiscation of their
+wealth; finally the construction of two citadels to guarantee the
+fidelity of the town in the future. The sire de l’Esparre, who had called
+in the English, promising a rising of all the nobility of the province,
+lost his head. On the 19th of October, 1453, Charles VII entered Bordeaux
+in triumph--the Hundred Years’ War was over. The English held nothing in
+France except Calais and two small neighbouring towns.[c]
+
+Thus after a century’s struggle was decided the impossibility of English
+monarchs holding France, under whatever pretensions or rights. The
+French had outgrown those times when the sovereignty over them could
+be transmitted to foreigners, or divided with them by the mere laws of
+feudal heritage or proprietorial descent. All that the ablest kings and
+bravest warriors of England could do was to hold their ground upon the
+continent. Any lack of talent, suspension of vigilance, or remissness of
+energy on their part restored military superiority to the French upon
+their own soil, and insured with this their independence.
+
+It was fortunate for both countries that such a decision had taken place,
+and that it should be final. The circumstances as well as the result of
+the war now rendered it so. The re-conquest of all the French provinces
+by Charles was not, like that of Philip Augustus or Philip the Fair, the
+work of trickery or deceit. It had been achieved in fair and stand-up
+fight, and, what was more remarkable, with forces on either side almost
+balanced in number. The French were not more numerous than the English at
+Formigny; and Talbot, when he fell at Castillon, led a greater army than
+that which defeated him. It was the French free archers, too, and peasant
+soldiers, who fought more than the knights on that field. Experience had
+taught the mistake of attempting to ride down the hardy sons of the soil
+by mounted gentry. English and French met on these last fields equal
+in courage and in strength. But as the French soldiers were now more
+carefully selected, disciplined, and organised, they were victorious over
+those of England, distracted as it was by civil war, sending forth armies
+as distracted as its government.[g]
+
+
+THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES VII
+
+[Sidenote: [1451-1456 A.D.]]
+
+About this time the services of the wise counsellor we have already
+mentioned--the great merchant and shipper, Jacques Cœur--were lost to
+the state. After the conviction of Jean de Xaincoings, receiver-general
+of the realm, for embezzlement in 1451, Jacques Cœur was accused of
+malversation in his office of treasurer of the crown. He was said to have
+heaped up incredible riches; and on some occasions he made a display of
+his wealth which in a great measure compensated for the evil proceedings,
+if such they were, by which he gained it. He furnished funds for fleets
+and armies out of his private stores, when they could not otherwise be
+had; and continued his sage advices to the king, inculcating economy
+and repose. Charles was still indolent and self-indulgent when no great
+national effort was to be made. He allowed the prosecution of his
+faithful servitor, accepted the sentence of death which was passed upon
+him, and only started up to the kindness and generosity of his character
+when he remembered his services, and granted him his life (1453). The
+rest of the treasurer’s story is very strange. Jacques Cœur escaped from
+prison and found refuge at Rome, was appointed admiral of the Italian
+fleets against the Saracens, trafficked in goods and money while sweeping
+the infidels from the sea, and died in the island of Chios, 1456, richer
+and more honoured than he had ever been in Paris. The king must have
+seen, when it was too late, that he had banished a financier whose advice
+on public affairs was cheaply paid for by the acquisition of private
+riches.[j]
+
+
+_Quarrels with Burgundy and with the Dauphin_
+
+[Sidenote: [1451-1453 A.D.]]
+
+The expulsion of the English from the continent, where they no longer
+held any town save Calais, left the king of France in the presence of his
+powerful rival, the duke of Burgundy, who reigned over dominions no less
+vast, and after a manner quite as independent.
+
+After the English had been driven from Normandy, Philip of Burgundy began
+to feel the hostility of Charles and of his court. Whenever his subjects,
+especially of towns, had cause of complaint against him, they appealed
+to the king of France and his parliament as suzerain. Ghent would
+not submit to the _gabelle_ (or salt tax) imposed by Philip, and the
+people appealed to the king of France, who pretended that the _gabelle_
+peculiarly belonged to the suzerain, and a French embassy soon arrived
+to arbitrate between the duke and the Ghenters. The duke altogether set
+aside the demand of _gabelle_, but insisted merely on the fact of the
+chiefs of trades and the demagogues having usurped the entire power in
+Ghent, even the administration and the election of magistrates. The
+French envoys took completely the duke’s view of the difference, and gave
+an award, obliging the people of Ghent to admit the ducal bailiffs to a
+share of authority, to pay a large fine, give up the rallying emblem of
+the white _chaperon_, and desist from holding the meetings of the united
+trades.
+
+In the following year, 1452, the French court returned to the charge
+and sent fresh ambassadors, not approving of the facility with which
+their predecessors had abandoned and condemned the democracy of Ghent.
+But at that time occurred the descent of Talbot on the Garonne, and
+the attention and efforts of Charles were necessarily turned in that
+direction. Duke Philip saw his opportunity. He must crush the rebellious
+towns ere Charles succeeded in expelling the English from Guienne. He
+raised a large army, brought it to Ghent, and captured several small
+places round it, cruelly hanging every prisoner. Treachery is reported to
+have been employed to induce the citizens to come forth to battle on the
+open plain. But 40,000 armed inhabitants of the Flemish capital, so often
+victorious in the field, scarcely needed any incentives to march to the
+relief of their towns and garrisons. Duke Philip was engaged in the siege
+of Gavre, from which the commander escaped to Ghent, craving succour, if
+the fortress was to be saved. The citizens accordingly mustered to the
+number of 30,000 and marched to attack the Burgundians. The encounter
+took place on the 23rd of July, 1453; it began by the cannon on both
+sides. The Ghenters were most of them slain, 20,000 being left on the
+field; and the duke, on beholding the heaps of slaughtered men, felt, for
+the first time, that these were his subjects, the sources of his wealth
+and the sinews of his strength.
+
+In the same year Muhammed II carried Constantinople by assault, and
+extinguished the Greek empire in the East. The catastrophe, alarming
+to Italy and Germany, might well have aroused the king of France.
+Charles VII was not the hero of a crusade; the sphere of his activity
+and ambition did not extend so far. Yet, when the duke of Burgundy,
+in a solemn festivity at Lille, made a public vow to lead his armies
+against the Turks, when all his noblesse became associated in the same
+vow, and when the pope and emperor joined in the enterprise, Charles
+was mortified; nor was his jealousy diminished when Philip, after this
+vow, set forth in person to visit the Swiss and the Germans, in order to
+negotiate alliances and aid in his great design.
+
+However wisely the councillors of King Charles had conducted his military
+operations, and his negotiations with England and with Burgundy, the
+spirit of their domestic administration was narrow in the extreme. The
+princes of the blood, however cautious and apparently submissive, looked
+with jealousy and anger upon those upstarts of the king’s court who so
+completely eclipsed and set them aside.
+
+The king and his council, therefore, looked upon the duke of Burgundy’s
+proposed crusade as merely a scheme for enhancing his importance, and
+placing himself at the head of the princes of Europe and of a formidable
+army, and they resolved to attack and crush those of his subjects whom
+he supposed to be associates and fellow-conspirators with Duke Philip.
+The principal of these was his son Louis, who lived independently, but
+not tranquilly, in Dauphiné, now warring, now intriguing with the duke
+of Savoy, and omitting no opportunity of gaining followers and procuring
+money.
+
+[Sidenote: [1453-1457 A.D.]]
+
+The first of the dauphin’s friends whom the court attacked was the count
+d’Armagnac, who afforded every pretext for Charles’ interference. He was
+living in incest, excommunicated by the pope, and guilty of many crimes.
+Unable to resist Charles’ lieutenants, Armagnac was soon reduced, his
+seventeen castles were taken, and he was driven across the Pyrenees. The
+court then resolved to make an example of the duke of Alençon. The prince
+was noted for his gallantry and independent spirit, which had won the
+admiration of Joan of Arc. He had been foremost as a partisan against
+the English, yet was an object of suspicion to Charles. Dunois was sent
+to arrest and bring him to the king’s presence, who accused him of
+conspiring to receive the English into his fortresses. According to some
+he made an indignant answer to the king; according to others he confessed
+his treason, and gave information of the designs of his confederates.
+
+By what was elicited from the duke of Alençon, the king’s suspicion and
+anger were increased against his son Louis, whom he resolved to leave
+no longer in possession of the revenues and government of Dauphiné,
+at least unless he submitted. In April, 1456, the king signified his
+intention of resuming the government of that province. The dauphin would
+not put himself in the power of the council, the members of which he
+believed capable of any crime. Nor would Charles receive his son into
+favour, except upon his complete submission. The march of an army, led
+by his declared enemy, Dammartin, alarmed Louis. He at first thought of
+resistance, but none of the nobles of Dauphiné or of his court would
+support him in resistance to his father. With a few followers Louis
+abruptly quitted Dauphiné, as Dammartin advanced into it, and hastened
+to St. Claude, in Franche-Comté. From thence he informed the king that
+he was determined to take part in his uncle the duke of Burgundy’s
+crusade against the Turks. He at the same time informed that potentate
+of his arrival. An answer of welcome speedily came, and Louis proceeded
+to Brussels. Here the duke embraced him so cordially and so long, as
+scarcely, so Chastelain[k] relates, to let his feet touch the earth. The
+dauphin was all in all for a few days; but a quarrel arising between the
+duke and his son, the latter was brought by his mother to Louis, who
+undertook to intercede for him, and remonstrate with his sire. This at
+once interrupted friendship and harmony. The duke saw in the dauphin one
+who might take his son’s part against him. Louis thus found it necessary
+to retire to the château of Gennape, near Brussels, where he lived on a
+monthly pension of 2,500 livres allowed him by the duke (1456-1457).
+
+
+_Death of Charles VII; the Influence of His Reign_
+
+[Sidenote: [1457-1461 A.D.]]
+
+This was the very result which Charles most dreaded, and which he most
+carefully should have avoided. But his council feared the reconciliation
+between father and son: and some of them meditated setting Louis
+aside altogether, and prolonging their own power by proclaiming his
+brother Charles, then but a boy. The king would not entertain a project
+necessarily so fatal to his family and his kingdom. As to Charles, his
+inward distrust became at last a malady, and almost an insanity. Yet
+his suspicions were not without grounds; for as his health and strength
+visibly declined, especially after the breaking of a boil in the mouth,
+the members of his court--even those who had been the bitterest enemies
+of the dauphin--addressed letters to that prince containing information
+as to the state of things, and assurances of their own attachment. Even
+the king’s new mistress, the dame de Villequier,[55] was amongst those
+who hastened to seek security in the worship of the rising sun.
+
+The desertion of his own ministers did not escape Charles, who reasoned
+that those who were so eager to abandon him in his decline might, without
+scruple, hasten his death. The dauphin is said to have caused some of the
+letters addressed to him to be placed within reach and view of the king.
+Charles’ terror was equal to his disgust. A captain told him that his
+physicians had been suborned to administer poison; one was instantly sent
+to prison, whilst the others fled. In his alarm, Charles refrained from
+taking sustenance altogether; and when the cause of his consequently weak
+state was discovered, and it was sought to administer food, his stomach
+refused to retain it. Thus did one of the most successful and triumphant
+among monarchs expire of mistrust--of hunger and inanition. Death levels
+all distinctions: Charles, the restorer of the French monarchy, died the
+death of a beggar (July 22nd, 1461).
+
+The character of Charles VII is perplexing to the historian; it affords
+subject of surprise that such great aims, which must have been wisely
+conceived and steadily pursued, should have been attained by a personage
+in many respects so weak. We are thus obliged to separate the private
+habits of the prince from the public life of the monarch. In the one
+Charles was indolent, self-indulgent, inconstant, and immoral; in
+the other, active, adventurous, persevering, and patriotic. He first
+introduced the important novelty of a royal council. Such, indeed, had
+existed under his predecessor, but it was an assemblage of magnates,
+not of ministers, the orators and inferior members being the followers
+or exponents of their chiefs’ opinions. Charles VII did nothing
+without consulting his council. This, perhaps, is the most remarkable
+characteristic of his rule. And it stands in strong contrast with the
+habits of his son and successor, who ruled altogether from his own
+judgment, and who with far greater talents and capacity committed the
+greatest blunders, and fell far short in all his aims, which his sire
+contrived to avoid or to accomplish, by merely mistrusting his own
+omniscience and not disdaining the counsels of others.
+
+The upper classes, their ideas, their spirit, and privileges, were no
+doubt undergoing in this century a great and remarkable change. This
+was the gradual metamorphosis from the feudal baron and knight into the
+courtly _seigneur_ and the modern gentleman. As their numbers greatly
+increased it became impossible for all to preserve the superiority in
+power and wealth which the ancient holders of fiefs had possessed. The
+younger brothers of the gentry were obliged to seek for public service
+and live upon pensions or pay, in military or other capacity. But they
+carefully preserved themselves from losing caste, by insisting that
+they alone should fill these numerous offices. Thus the originally
+restricted class of the nobility in France was spread into the wider
+caste of the _gentilhomme_, the power and pretensions of the whole being
+undiminished.[g]
+
+Most important of all, however, was the steady growth in power of the
+crown. We have seen that Charles VII practically dispensed with the aid
+of the states-general after 1439, and that in so doing he virtually
+established a standing army and a permanent tax.[a] In reality the taxes
+were already permanent, or nearly so, but they had been considered as
+extra revenue; now they became usual. Charles VII in suppressing the
+vote of the assembly followed the example of Charles V under identical
+circumstances, and thus rid himself of an obligation which was often only
+a useless formality, and often a hindrance and restraint.[e]
+
+A more fatal consequence of this usurpation on the part of the crown
+was that the nobility and clergy, remaining exempt from the tax on land
+which was only levied on the property of the _roturiers_, ended by
+taking no interest in the question. They abandoned the great principles
+supported at the estates of 1355 and 1356, to wit, that no tax could be
+levied save with the assent of the estates, and that the three orders
+should be subjected to the same taxes. Liberty established itself in
+England because the prelates, nobles, and towns remained closely united
+in their resistance to the encroachments of royalty, all accepting the
+same burdens and vindicating the same guarantees. In France the nobility
+and clergy deserted the common cause, handed over the third estate to
+the arbitrary authority of the crown, and sold the public liberties for
+a pecuniary advantage. From that moment it was an admitted formula that
+the clergy paid with their prayers, the nobility with their swords, the
+people with their money. The third estate, betrayed by the privileged
+orders, approached the king, applauded all the attacks made by the crown
+on the rights of the nobles and clergy, and energetically aided it to
+consummate the ruin of their power, until the moment that it found itself
+alone, face to face with the crown, and overthrew it. The defection of
+the clergy and the nobility was the first cause of the establishment of
+absolute power and of the Revolution which was accomplished 350 years
+later.[p]
+
+But little enough did Charles VII or his contemporaries concern
+themselves with such remote consequences of their deeds as are here
+ominously suggested; and, not to be ourselves blinded to the true
+historical relations of the times we are treating, let us seek again the
+atmosphere of the fifteenth century, and in leaving Charles VII take a
+parting glance at him through the eyes of a contemporary writer, whose
+quaint phrasing and peculiar smack of piety will remind us that our stage
+setting is still of the Middle Ages. That the phrases of the courtier
+are somewhat more flattering than strict justice demands need neither
+surprise nor concern us. “Charles VII,” says Henry Baude,[o] “was loved
+as much by his subjects as by foreign nations, who came often to him for
+advice in settling their disputes, and this because of the great justice
+that he observed. He was feared by the good and by the wicked: by the
+good, who were afraid to do evil lest it should come to his knowledge; by
+the wicked who were afraid of his justice. He was obeyed by his vassals
+and subjects, and well served by old, wise, and well-tutored servants,
+who knew his disposition to be such that he wished each to have his own.
+He died in old age [in reality he was but fifty-nine]; and after his
+death was in great solemnity, weeping, and lamentation honourably buried,
+and with great regret by men of all estates, in the church of St. Denis
+in France, with his ancestors. May God in his holy grace receive his soul
+into Paradise. Amen.”
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[48] [The fall of La Trémouille was due to a conspiracy aroused by his
+lethargy, through which the English in 1432 were able to regain Montargis
+and take several important towns. “M. de la Trémouille,” says De
+Brantôme;[l] “was so happy as to prove a faithful and worthy servant to
+three kings. He was an excellent and worthy captain, and for this reason
+he had the honour and happiness to be known as ‘the knight without fear
+and without reproach.’ Splendid title indeed for him who can keep it, and
+wear it to the end of his life!”]
+
+[49] [Vaudemont was the nephew and René the son-in-law of Duke Charles
+I who had just died. René was appointed heir by Charles’ will, but
+Vaudemont persisted in his pretensions, alleging Lorraine to be a
+masculine fief.]
+
+[50] [Just how much of truth there is in this tale of Gilles de Retz, it
+would be difficult to determine. The motive alleged for the crimes smacks
+of the familiar witchcraft stories. A perversion of a type well known to
+psychiatrists might offer a more plausible explanation, supposing the
+facts to be assured.]
+
+[51] [Henri Baude[o] has a different conception of the personality of
+the king. He says: “Charles was a man of handsome figure, tall, and of
+good temperament; of sanguine complexion; humble, gentle, gracious, and
+of pleasant temper, liberal and not prodigal. He was solitary, living
+soberly, loving joyously, frank, decorous, and humane. He loved ladies in
+all honesty, and held all women in honour. His amusements were chess and
+shooting with the crossbow, and he rose early. The day after he entered a
+town and the day before he left it he went to the principal church. His
+oath was ‘St. George! St. George!’ He took only two meals a day. He spoke
+and drank little. He had a courteous gravity, tempered familiarity, and
+effective diligence. His word was the word of a prince and kept as law.
+He thought continually of the affairs of his kingdom and the relief of
+his people. He heard three masses a day, that is to say, the high mass
+with music and two low masses, and said his prayers every day without
+fail. At meals he was alone at table, and few persons in his room; and
+his doctor was always there, and honest people and valets who spoke of
+gay subjects or told old stories in which he took delight.
+
+“Naught cared he for false wisdom. At the yearly feasts, a bishop or
+abbot was seated at the head of his table, he in the centre, and at the
+end of the table one of the nobles of royal blood. When the table was
+spread there was none so great that did not leave the room, and all was
+so well arranged that none presumed to remain. He loved all virtuous
+people; was true and certain in promise and in all his acts. When he knew
+a man of virtue he took him. He had in his house and in his service the
+children of the princes, great nobles, and barons of his kingdom. He had
+around him, his chamberlains and others, the most handsome persons of the
+kingdom.”]
+
+[52] Many of these captains of _écorcheurs_ have left lasting traces in
+the memory of the people. The Gascon La Hire has given his name to the
+knave of hearts. The Englishman, Matthew Gough, whom the chroniclers call
+Mathago, has remained, we believe, as a puppet and bugbear for children
+in certain provinces. The history of Gilles de Retz, greatly softened
+down, has furnished matter for a tale: he is the original of Blue Beard.
+
+[53]
+
+    More honour, gentle Agnes, thou hast won,
+    For that thy voice our France recoverèd,
+    Than could be achieved by cloister-prisoned nun,
+    Or holiest beadsman to the desert fled.
+
+[54] [The order of the Golden Fleece was instituted at Bruges in 1429,
+by the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, in honour of one of his
+mistresses, Marie de Cumbrugge, whose red tresses had been the object
+of many pleasantries. On the extinction of the Burgundian house the
+grand-mastership passed to the Habsburgs.]
+
+[55] [Agnes Sorel had died of dysentery on the 9th of February, 1450. The
+_dame de Beauté_, as she was called, had her enemies, the dauphin among
+them, and rumours that she had been poisoned were not long in spreading
+through the court. These were made use of later in many infamous
+machinations, even against Jacques Cœur.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI: THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROWN
+
+    Louis XI, that king more adroit than the most adroit courtier;
+    that old fox furnished with lion’s claws; powerful and shrewd,
+    served secretly as in the light, constantly sheltered by his
+    guards as by a shield, and accompanied by his executioners as
+    with a sword.--VICTOR HUGO.
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1461-1483 A.D.]]
+
+During fifteen years, the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI, had maintained
+a struggle against his father, which had commenced on account of Agnes
+Sorel and had been continued by mutual distrust. Throughout this struggle
+the dauphin had shown a most indomitable pride and the utmost tenacity,
+and in all this delicate and false situation he affected to act as the
+prince and as the prince who would one day be king. If he rebelled
+against the king it was against the king only, and not against the crown.
+Such at least is the attitude revealed by the tone of his letters.
+
+As soon as he succeeded to the throne, he hastened to leave his little
+court of Gennape and return to France. He asked the duke of Burgundy
+to lend him an escort of four thousand soldiers in case he should
+meet with opposition from his father’s councillors who might wish to
+impose their own conditions on him. However, on arriving at Avesnes,
+the nobility thronged around him to swear allegiance, and, finding his
+escort unnecessary, he sent it back to the duke. He repaired at once to
+Rheims to be crowned and at that place the throng became greater. This
+adulation, which always follows when a new prince succeeds one but little
+loved, made Louis believe that he would be popular. Perhaps his absence,
+his exile, which had been interpreted as a protest or a disgrace, had
+contributed to this apparent popularity. It was, at least, very ephemeral.
+
+Louis XI was thirty-eight years old when he ascended the throne, with
+his experience of governing and his virtues and vices equally matured
+by his exile. Like his father, he loved power and did not wish to share
+it. A contemporary, Chastelain,[b] called him “the universal spider,”
+because he never ceased weaving a web of which he was the centre,
+and the threads of which extended everywhere. Not only did he wish to
+decide everything himself, but he was loath to accept any advice, and
+the least opposition would make him obstinate. Like his father, also, he
+was observant, discreet, suspicious, esteeming men but little, rewarding
+them richly when he had need of their services and forgetting them the
+day after. He had in this respect the three faults that Chastelain[b]
+attributes to Charles VII--fickleness, diffidence, and envy. On the
+other hand he had a wonderful discernment in seeing the use that each
+person could be to him. Those who served him must serve him absolutely.
+Independence to him seemed conspiracy. Comines[c] says that he did
+not like to have serve him “the great ones who could surpass him.” He
+preferred to choose for his agents men of humble birth whom he took from
+the lowest of his household, knowing them to be more easy to control
+and capable of a more blind devotion. Reared in the school of Charles
+VII, he resembled him very much, in spite of the aversion he had shown
+toward him. He continued his reign and his policy. He employed the same
+means to maintain, or to extend the results already attained. If he had
+any advantage over him, it was the knowledge, which he had acquired by
+personal experience, of the opposition he would be obliged to combat.
+
+At the same time, to these hereditary traits he joined others. He was
+distinguished by a feverish activity, a perpetual restlessness, an
+irresistible taste for intriguing. He would complicate affairs on all
+sides, then meet the difficulties and make light of them. Chastelain[b]
+describes him as “scheming new thoughts day and night.” His government
+was very secret. He sought the shadowy ways, which makes it difficult
+for one to follow the thread of his diplomacy, the details of which
+necessarily escape us. He was educated, like most of the princes of his
+day. He was possessed of great keenness and vivacity--almost too much,
+as he very often allowed himself to be carried away by it. He had been
+surrounded, at Gennape, by a small court, vivacious and refined. He had a
+certain loftiness in his views, notwithstanding all that the historians
+have said of his littleness and his superstition. In his relations with
+the pope he showed a sense of nobility and justice. But these sentiments
+and qualities, which keep him from being regarded altogether as a bad
+man, had but little influence on his political conduct. His passion to
+rule, and to carry on secret intrigues, was so strong that it destroyed
+all scruples, if he had any. He knew no rule save his own will, no goal
+but success. He had no respect for established things, but followed the
+necessity of the moment. He sought to attach men to himself only by
+corruption, believing that the more corrupt they were the more useful
+they would prove; he was prodigal with money to gain tools in France and
+traitors in the neighbouring states. In fact the celebrated portrait
+of _The Prince_, for which he served as one of the models employed by
+Macchiavelli,[d] gives a just idea of the personal government, arbitrary
+and mysterious, which existed in the sixteenth century and which most
+fortunately is no longer possible, at least under the same conditions.
+
+He has received much praise for his ability. He hastened the progress
+of the unity, and the ruin of the great feudal houses. The crown
+acquired important provinces during his reign and he greatly augmented
+the power of France. These results are incontestable, but at the same
+time we must remember it was not he alone who brought them about; that
+these results had been preparing for a long time; that the twenty years
+of Charles VII had done much; that Louis XI had, in the beginning,
+compromised by his imprudence the conquests of the preceding reign and
+that his principal merit was to profit, in an incontestable manner, by
+favourable circumstances. If he has been regarded as a great statesman,
+it is because, meeting with reverses in the commencement of his reign,
+he in the end triumphed over his enemies who were less calculating and
+less prudent than himself. For it is the final success that sways the
+judgment of posterity, and even the judgment of contemporaries, as is
+shown by Philip de Comines,[c] that observer so profound, that spirit so
+penetrating and so cold.[e]
+
+
+RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH
+
+After his coronation Louis looked around the land he was now about to
+“bring into order,” and was alarmed at the condition of the national
+church. A national church it really deserved to be called; for, while
+confessing the superiority of Rome in antiquity and rank, it rested
+firmly on the decision of the Council of Bâle, and acknowledged a power
+superior to the holy see. It defended, also, freedom of election to
+vacant benefices, and refused the annates, or first year’s income of
+bishoprics and incumbencies, to the exchequer of the pope. Louis saw
+that the first advance against the citadel of civil liberty was a return
+to the obedience of Rome. He gave up at once all the franchises and
+exemptions wrung with such difficulty by the church of France. He placed
+it again, bound hand and foot, under the heel of the successors of St.
+Peter, and even gave advantages to the ecclesiastical ruler which he had
+never held before. In return for this, the faithful son of the church was
+sure of the pontiff’s support. Though he oppressed his subjects, deceived
+his friends, and murdered his enemies by treachery, he had shown a most
+religious regard for the interest of the papacy, and was honoured with
+the title, which his successors have retained, of “the most Christian
+king.” The least Christian monarch of his time, being elevated by popish
+gratitude to this lofty position, it was only left for the adulation of
+the courtiers to bestow upon him the title of “majesty,” which great
+word had not yet been applied to the person of the sovereigns of Europe;
+but Louis XI set the example of claiming the highest sounding and least
+deserved epithets, and cheated and grovelled through a long reign of
+trickery and meanness as his Majesty the Most Christian King. When the
+church was again governed by a foreign master, whom it was easy for the
+king to win over to his side, the next important step in the progress of
+his design was to render the people powerless. For this purpose he did
+away with the free-archers of the previous reign. No village was allowed
+its butts and shooting-grounds. The parish was relieved of the expense
+of finding an “archer good” for the interior defence of the country, and
+the spirit of emulation in warlike sports was discouraged. But the land
+was not to be left unprotected. So in addition to his Scottish allies,
+he took into his pay large bodies of Swiss mercenaries, whose valour had
+struck him with such admiration at the battle of Sankt Jakob near Bâle.
+
+He now more than doubled the taxes; and as, although saving and grasping
+from personal disposition, he was liberal and even generous from policy,
+he derived great support from the absence of a home-force of his own
+subjects, and the devoted adhesion of penniless mountaineers from the
+two poorest and most courageous populations in Christendom. We will
+only insert a word of surprise here with regard to the Swiss, that a
+people who are honoured throughout the world for the defence of their
+liberties at home, should be the scorn and shame of all generous minds
+by furnishing their strength and valour for the maintenance of the worst
+tyrannies abroad.
+
+
+THE WAR OF THE PUBLIC WEAL
+
+[Sidenote: [1465 A.D.]]
+
+The nobility saw the object of the king, and took arms to prevent the
+extinction of their order, and the diminution of their individual power.
+A cry is never wanting when people are determined to quarrel, and as the
+feudal chiefs could not, with any decency, state openly the reasons of
+their opposition, they placed it upon the two grounds of the sacrifice
+of French ecclesiastical liberty by the abrogation of the Pragmatic
+Sanction, and the intolerable weight of taxation which the new king
+had imposed. This, therefore, was called “the war of the public weal.”
+Princes and feudatories, and all who had a lingering regard for the grand
+old days of license and free quarters, took up the patriotic cause.
+Charles of France, the king’s brother, was the nominal chief, but the
+real head of this league was Charles the Bold [properly Le Téméraire or
+the Rash], at this time called count of Charolais, eldest son of the
+good Philip, duke of Burgundy. In the list besides him were read the
+names of Saint-Pol, Brittany, Lorraine, Alençon, Bourbon, Armagnac, and
+Dunois. In short, the two parties were perfectly aware of each other’s
+intentions, and met face to face. If the league succeeded, Louis’ life
+would have been short, and a regency was openly promised. If Louis was
+successful, farewell to the great nobility, its independent power and
+hereditary magnificence; it must sink into an ornament of the court, or
+be exterminated altogether. It was the life of one or the other which
+lay upon the scales; and though the swords were sharpest, and the cause
+apparently the freest on the side of the great vassals, the cunning, the
+policy, the perseverance were all on the side of the king. Suddenly the
+oppressors of the towns, and the harsh masters of country populations,
+affected a deep interest in the common weal. With haughty condescension
+they assumed the championship of the overburdened commons, and kept them
+at the same time from coming “between the wind and their nobility,” as
+if contact with them would have stained their coats of arms. But Louis,
+dressed in very undignified apparel, looking like a small shopkeeper,
+and affecting no airs of grandeur or superiority, entered into familiar
+talk with any well-to-do citizen he encountered, joked with him about
+his family, poked him under the ribs to give emphasis to his innuendoes,
+and strolled off to have a merry conversation with somebody else. Nobody
+could believe that so free-spoken a gentleman cared less for the common
+people than the prince of Charolais, who would have put a townsman to
+death if he stood in his way; and in a short time the people liked better
+to pay their taxes to a man who put them at their ease, than to owe their
+deliverance to a set of champions who despised them in their hearts and
+insulted them in their manners.
+
+
+_The Battle of Montlhéry and the Treaty of Conflans_
+
+Louis saw his advantage, and tried to gain his object by a battle
+with the confederates at Montlhéry, where neither party was decidedly
+victorious.[f]
+
+An account of this battle is given by Monstrelet.[q] His description,
+however, is criticised by his continuator,[p] who professes to draw
+on other authorities and whose brief account may be quoted. The later
+chronicler says: “At this battle which was fought on Tuesday the 6th day
+of July, in the year 1465, the king of France, coming with all haste
+from beyond Orleans to Paris, halted at early morn at Châtres, under
+Montlhéry, and that having taken scarcely any refreshment, and without
+waiting for his escort, which was, for its number, the handsomest body
+of cavalry ever raised in France, he so valiantly attacked the army of
+the count de Charolais and his Burgundians that he put to the rout the
+van division. Many of them were slain, and numbers taken prisoners. News
+of this was speedily carried to Paris, whence issued forth upward of
+thirty thousand persons, part of whom were well mounted. They fell in
+with parties of Burgundians who were flying, and made them prisoners;
+they defeated also those from the villages of Vanvres, Issi, Sevres, St.
+Cloud, Arcueil, Surennes, and others.
+
+“At this recounter, great booty was gained from the Burgundians, so that
+their loss was estimated at two hundred thousand crowns of gold. After
+the van had been thus thrown into confusion, the king, not satisfied
+with this success, but desirous to put an end to the war, without taking
+any refreshments or repose, attacked the main body of the enemy with
+his guards and about four hundred lances: but the Burgundians had then
+rallied, and advanced their artillery, under the command of the count
+de Saint-Pol, who did on that day the greatest service to the count de
+Charolais. The king was hard pressed in his turn, insomuch that at times
+he was in the utmost personal danger, for he had but few with him, was
+without artillery, and was always foremost in the heat of the battle; and
+considering how few his numbers were, he maintained the fight valiantly
+and with great prowess. It was the common report of the time, that if
+he had had five hundred more archers on foot, he would have reduced the
+Burgundians to such a state, that nothing more would have been heard of
+them in war for some time.
+
+“The count de Charolais, on this day, lost his whole guard,--and the king
+also lost the greater part of his. The count was twice made prisoner by
+the noble Geoffroy de Saint Belin and Gilbert de Grassy, but was rescued
+each time. Towards evening the Scots carried off the king, that he might
+take some refreshments; for he was tired and exhausted, having fought the
+whole of the day without eating or drinking, and led him away quietly and
+without noise, to the castle of Montlhéry. Several of the king’s army not
+having seen him thus led off the field, and missing him, thought he was
+either slain or taken, and took to flight. For this reason, the count du
+Maine, the lord admiral De Montaulban, the lord de la Barde, and other
+captains, with seven or eight hundred lances, abandoned the king in this
+state, and fled, without having struck a blow during the whole of the
+day. Hence it is notorious, that if all the royal army who were present
+at this battle had behaved as courageously as their king, they would have
+gained a lasting victory over the Burgundians; for the greater part of
+them were defeated, and put to flight. Many indeed were killed on the
+king’s side, as well as on that of the enemy; for after the battle was
+ended, there were found dead on the field three thousand six hundred,
+whose souls may God receive!
+
+“The king of France came to Paris, the 18th day of July, after the
+battle of Montlhéry, and supped that night at the hôtel of his
+lieutenant-general, Sir Charles de Melun,--where, according to the
+account of Robert Gaguin, a large company of great lords, damsels, and
+citizens’ wives supped with him, to whom he related all that had happened
+at Montlhéry. During the recital, he made use of such doleful expressions
+that the whole company wept and groaned at his melancholy account. He
+concluded by saying, that if it pleased God, he would soon return to
+attack his enemies, and either die or obtain vengeance on them, in the
+preservation of his rights. He, however, acted differently, having been
+better advised; but it must be observed, that some of his warriors
+behaved in a most cowardly manner,--for had they all fought with as much
+courage as the king, he would have gained a complete victory over his
+enemies.”[p]
+
+Continuing, the chronicler gives an extended account of the events of the
+ensuing months, during which the allies approached Paris and besieged
+the city. “The king,” he says, “finding that he had many enemies within
+his realm, considered on the means of procuring additional men-at-arms
+to those he had,--and it was calculated how many he could raise within
+Paris; for this purpose, it was ordered that an enrolment should be made
+of all capable of bearing arms, so that every tenth man might be selected
+to serve the king. This, however, did not take place,--for such numbers
+of men-at-arms now joined the king that there was no need of such a
+measure. The king was very much distressed to get money for the pay of
+these troops, and great sums were wanted; for those towns which had been
+assigned for the payment of a certain number of men-at-arms, being now in
+the possession of the rebellious princes, paid no taxes whatever to the
+crown, for they would not permit any to be collected in those districts.
+
+“On the 3rd of August, the king, having a singular desire to afford
+some comfort to the inhabitants of his good town of Paris, lowered the
+duties on all wines sold by retail within that town, from a fourth to
+an eighth; and ordained that all privileged persons should fully and
+freely exercise their privileges as they had done during the reign of his
+late father, the good Charles VII, whose soul may God pardon! He also
+ordered that every tax paid in the town, but those on provision, included
+in the six-revenue farms, which had been disposed of in the gross,
+should be abolished, namely, the duties on wood-yards, on the sales of
+cattle, on cloth sold by wholesale, on sea-fish and others; which was
+proclaimed that same day they were taken off, by sound of trumpets, in
+all the squares of the town, in the presence of Sir Denis Hesselin, the
+receiver of the taxes within the said town. On this being made public,
+the populace shouted for joy, sang carols in the streets, and at night
+made large bonfires.” Such deeds as this illustrate the diplomacy of a
+king who, whatever else he may have been, was assuredly a consummate
+politician. Meantime, as practical aids to defence, fires were lighted
+and a strict watch kept in Paris, and chains were fastened across the
+principal streets.
+
+The guard kept about Paris was evidently not very strict, for the
+king was able to go and come at will. There were occasional sallies,
+but these amounted to nothing more than skirmishes. On the second of
+September, after several parleys, commissioners were at length named by
+the king and the confederates to settle their differences. There were
+numerous meetings which came to no very definite issue, but meantime the
+statecraft of the king was preparing the way for the final issues.[a]
+
+[Sidenote: [1465-1467 A.D.]]
+
+A truce was proclaimed in the two camps on October 1st; from that day
+until the 30th, when the articles of peace were registered by the
+parliament and published, the king continued to show an almost boundless
+friendship and confidence in his attitude toward the princes and
+especially toward the count of Charolais. He furnished their camp with
+supplies, he received their soldiers at Paris, he was present without
+guards at their military reviews, abandoning himself to their care;
+finally he acceded to their demands, conditions which seemed to make him
+wholly dependent upon them.[56] Thirty-six commissioners were appointed
+by him to reform all the abuses in the kingdom, of which the princes
+had complained; the past was to be forgotten; no one could blame anyone
+else for what he had done during the war, and all the confiscations
+proclaimed by the tribunals were revoked. In exchange for Berri the king
+gave his brother the duchy of Normandy, with the homage of the duchies
+of Brittany and Alençon, as a hereditary title in the male line. To the
+count of Charolais he restored the cities on the Somme which he had so
+recently bought back, reserving for himself only the right to buy them
+back again, not from him but from his heirs, for the sum of 200,000
+gold crowns. He gave over to him, moreover, as a perpetual possession,
+Boulogne, Guines, Roye, Péronne, and Montdidier. To the duke of Calabria,
+regent of Lorraine, Mouzon, Ste. Menehould, Neufchâteau, he gave 100,000
+crowns in cash and the pay of five hundred lances for a month.
+
+To the duke of Brittany he granted the royal prerogative, which had been
+a subject of dispute between them, also a part of the aids; he ceded to
+him Étampes and Montfort and gave presents to his mistress, the same
+dame de Villequier who had formerly been mistress of Charles VII. To
+the duke de Bourbon he gave several seigniories in Auvergne, 100,000
+crowns in cash, and the pay of three hundred lances; to the duke de
+Nemours, the government of Paris and of the Île-de-France, together with
+a pension and the pay of two hundred lances; to the count d’Armagnac,
+the castellanies of Rouergue, which he had lost, a pension, and the pay
+of a hundred lances; to the count de Dunois, the restitution of his
+domain, a pension, and a company of gendarmes; to the sire d’Albret,
+various seigniories on his frontier. He gave back to the sire de Lohéac
+the office of marshal with two hundred lances; he made Tannegui du Châtel
+master of the horse; De Beuil was made admiral; the count of Saint-Pol
+constable. Finally he pardoned Antoine de Chabannes, count of Dammartin,
+gave back all his estates, and granted him a company of a hundred lances.
+Such were the principal clauses of the Treaty of Conflans, which was the
+most humiliating that rebel subjects ever extorted from a crown, and also
+the most degrading for the character of the allied princes, because they
+concluded a war which they had undertaken under the pretext of the public
+good, by sharing the spoils of the people as well as those of the king.[g]
+
+
+POLITICAL INTRIGUES
+
+Louis now commenced one of the games which must have given him as much
+enjoyment as if he had been playing a game of chess. How to move a
+castle to resist a knight, or a number of pawns to surround a bishop,
+how to keep Normandy in order by stirring up the enmity of Brittany,
+how to paralyse the motions of the young duke of Burgundy--for in 1467
+Charolais succeeded his father[57]--by inciting insurrections among the
+men of Liège--these were the problems worked out in the solitude of his
+own thoughts; for he boasted that he formed all his plans without the
+aid of others. The marshal De Brézé said, accordingly, that the horse
+the king rode was a much stronger animal than it looked, for it carried
+the whole council on its back. The results of the deliberations of this
+unanimous assemblage were soon visible in the vengeance which fell on
+the heads of the late confederacy. Charles of France, when all the
+others were getting lofty offices and rewards, had been presented with
+the dukedom of Normandy. The people of Rouen, who had at first taken
+part against the crown, received the first prince of the blood with
+acclamations, as a champion of their cause; and the king determined to
+show them they had chosen the wrong side. He raised an army, and hurried
+down to Caen; bought and bullied the duke of Brittany, whom he found in
+that town, out of his friendship with Charles; and then fell upon the
+capital of the duchy, as if it had been in open rebellion. His right-hand
+man on this, as on similar occasions, was the famous Tristan l’Hermite,
+the executioner. Tristan’s hands were soon full, for the king, with a
+vigorous impartiality which showed he was not a bigot to either side, cut
+off the heads of the aristocracy who had helped the princes, and threw
+hundreds of the commonalty, who had grumbled at his taxes, into the Seine.
+
+[Sidenote: [1467-1468 A.D.]]
+
+The church, which he had bought over by the sacrifice of the Pragmatic
+Sanction, and still kept in awe by threatening to restore it--as he had
+engaged to do by the treaty with the leaguers--was next to be taught
+that, however much he prized its friendship as a politician, its loftiest
+officers were the mere creatures of his breath. The system he pursued of
+excluding the higher orders from civil employments had been introduced
+into ecclesiastical affairs. Wherever the sharp eye of Louis detected
+a fitting instrument for his purpose in the person of a penniless
+adventurer, or townsman of the lowest rank, he was very soon invested
+with the necessary authority, and perverted justice in the character of
+president of a court, or vilified religion in the office of a bishop.
+The son of a small tradesman of the name of La Balue had early shown
+such amazing want of principle, combined with quickness of talent and
+audacious self-reliance, that he gained the notice of the king, then his
+confidence, then his friendship. The pope made great efforts to win over
+this ornament of the faith, who was now bishop of Évreux, and promised
+him the cardinal’s hat if he persuaded his master to enregister the
+suppression of the Pragmatic Sanction in the rolls of parliament; and in
+foolish reliance on the promises of La Balue, sent him the blushing sign
+of his dignity before the service was performed. La Balue relaxed in his
+endeavours, as his wages were already received, and gained additional
+favour with the king for ceasing to trouble him on the subject. The
+favour continued for a long time, but at last, when Louis, in reliance
+on his powers of persuasion, and the counsels of his friends, trusted
+himself again within the power of Charles of Burgundy, and hoped to win
+him over as he had done in the former interview which destroyed the
+league of the Public Weal, the advice given by the cardinal was found to
+lead to very dangerous results.[f]
+
+
+THE STRUGGLE WITH CHARLES THE BOLD
+
+This visit of Louis to the redoubtable Charles was one of the most famous
+incidents of his reign. Louis went with meagre attendance to Péronne,
+and placed himself entirely within the power of Charles. He of course
+had a safe conduct, but considering the morals of the time, this by no
+means insured him a safe return. His anomalous act has been variously
+criticised. On its face it seems foolhardy; yet rightly considered it
+speaks for the keen intelligence and practical political sagacity of
+the king quite as much as for his personal courage. The truth seems to
+be that Louis at this time felt that he could not trust his officers.
+Dammartin, his right-hand man, was, as we have seen, a soldier who had
+been in the employ of Louis’ father, and therefore at that earlier
+period had been in antagonism with Louis himself. His exact attitude of
+mind could not be known to the king, and the loyalty of various other
+officers was more than questionable. And to win battles loyal soldiers
+are absolutely necessary. On the other hand, in the field of diplomacy
+the king, acting as his own emissary, could feel sure of his results,
+in proportion as he felt confidence in his own powers. And he had every
+reason to trust his own sagacity. He knew himself more than a match for
+Charles in matters of intrigue, and in thus putting his antagonist upon
+his honour, and appearing to trust him, he doubtless felt that he paved
+the way most advantageously for his future movements. The visit did not
+turn out triumphantly, as we shall see, but its ill success was perhaps
+largely due to an incident beyond the king’s control. We may best gain
+an idea of the incidents of this famous visit through the narrative of
+the celebrated chronicler Comines, who at this time was in the employ of
+Burgundy and who afterwards became still more famous as the minister to
+Louis himself. Comines,[c] as Sismondi[g] says, considered history as a
+lesson in politics, not as a catalogue of events; but here he confines
+himself chiefly to the narrative, letting the story point its own
+moral.[a]
+
+
+_Comines describes the Visit to Péronne (1468 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1468 A.D.]]
+
+It was agreed [says Comines] that the king should come to Péronne.
+Thither he came, without any guard, more than the passport and parole
+of the duke of Burgundy; only he desired that the duke’s archers, under
+the command of the lord des Quedes (who was then in the duke’s service),
+might meet and conduct him; and so it was done, very few of his own train
+coming along with him. However, his majesty was attended by several
+persons of great quality and distinction, and among the rest by the
+duke de Bourbon, the cardinal his brother, and the count of Saint-Pol,
+constable of France, who had no hand in this interview, but was highly
+displeased at it; for he was now grown haughty, and disdained to pay that
+respect to the duke which he had formerly done; for which cause there was
+no love between them. Besides these, there came the cardinal Balue, the
+governor of Roussillon, and several others. When the king came near, the
+duke went out (very well attended) to meet him, conducted him into the
+town, and lodged him at the receiver’s, who had a fine house not far from
+the castle; for the lodgings in the castle were but small, and no way
+convenient.
+
+War between two great princes is easily begun, but very hard to be
+composed, by reason of the accidents and consequences which often follow;
+for many secret practices are used, and orders given out on both sides
+to make the greatest efforts possible against the enemy, which cannot
+be easily countermanded as evidently appears by these two princes,
+whose interview was so suddenly determined that, neither having time to
+notify it to their ministers in remote parts, they went on performing
+the commands which their respective masters had given them before. The
+duke of Burgundy had sent for his army out of Burgundy, in which at that
+time there was abundance of the nobility; and among the rest the count of
+Bresse, the bishop of Geneva, and the count of Romont, all three brothers
+of the house of Savoy (for between the Savoyards and Burgundians there
+was always a firm amity), and some Germans, who were borderers upon
+both their territories. And you must know that the king had formerly
+imprisoned the count of Bresse, upon the account of two gentlemen whom
+he had put to death in Savoy, so that there was no right understanding
+between him and the king.
+
+In this army there were likewise one Monsieur du Lau (who had been a
+favourite of the king’s, but upon some disgust had been kept afterwards a
+prisoner by him a long time, till at length he made his escape and fled
+into Burgundy), the lord d’Urfé, since master of the horse to the king
+of France, and the lord Poncet de Rivière; all which company arrived
+before Péronne as the king came into the town. Bresse and the last three
+entered the town with St. Andrew’s cross upon their clothes (supposing
+they should have been in time enough to have paid their respects to the
+duke of Burgundy, and to have attended him when he went out to receive
+the king), but they came a little too late; however, they went directly
+to the duke’s chamber to pay their duty, and in the name of the rest, the
+count of Bresse humbly besought his highness that himself and his three
+companies might have his protection (notwithstanding the king was in the
+town), according to the promise he was pleased to make them in Burgundy;
+and at the same time assured him they were at his service, when and
+against whomsoever he might command them. The duke returned them thanks,
+and promised them protection. The rest of this army, under the command
+of the marshal of Burgundy, encamped by the duke’s orders in the fields.
+The marshal had no more affection for the king than the above-mentioned
+gentlemen had; for the king had given him the government of Épinal in
+Lorraine, and taken it from him afterwards to give it to John, duke of
+Calabria. The king had notice presently of all these persons being in the
+town, and of the habits in which they arrived, which put him into a great
+consternation; so that he sent to the duke of Burgundy to desire he might
+be lodged in the castle, for he knew those gentlemen were his mortal
+enemies; the duke was extremely glad to hear it, appointed him his own
+lodgings, and sent to him to bid him fear nothing.
+
+But the king at his coming to Péronne had quite forgot his sending of
+two ambassadors to Liège to stir them up to a rebellion against the
+duke,[58] and they had managed the affair with such diligence that
+they had got together such a considerable number, that the Liègeois
+went privately to Tongres (where the bishop of Liège and the lord of
+Humbercourt were quartered with more than two thousand men) with a design
+to surprise them. The bishop, the lord of Humbercourt, and some of the
+bishop’s servants were taken, but the rest fled and left whatever they
+had behind them, as despairing to defend themselves. After which action
+the Liègeois marched back again to Liège, which is not far from Tongres;
+and the lord of Humbercourt made an agreement for his ransom with one
+Monsieur William de Ville, called by the French Le Sauvage, a knight,
+who, suspecting the Liègeois would kill him in their fury, suffered the
+lord of Humbercourt to escape, but was slain himself not long after. The
+people were exceedingly overjoyed at the taking of their bishop. There
+were also taken with him that day several canons of the church, whom the
+people equally hated, and killed five or six of them for their first
+repast; among the rest there was one Monsieur Robert, an intimate friend
+of the bishop’s, and a person I have often seen attending him armed at
+all points, for in Germany this is the custom of the prelates. They slew
+this Robert in the bishop’s presence, cut him into small pieces, and
+in sport threw them at one another’s heads. Before they had marched
+seven or eight leagues, which was their full journey, they killed about
+sixteen canons and other persons, the majority of whom were the bishop’s
+servants; but they released some of the Burgundians, for they had been
+privately informed that some overtures of peace had already been made,
+and they were forced to pretend that what they had done was only against
+their bishop, whom they brought prisoner along with them into their city.
+Those who fled (as I said before) gave the alarm to the whole country,
+and it was not long before the duke had the news of it.
+
+It was said by some that all of them were put to the sword; others
+affirmed the contrary (for in things of that nature, one messenger seldom
+comes alone); but there were some who had seen the habits of the canons
+who were slain, and supposing the bishop and the lord of Humbercourt had
+been of the number, they positively averred that all that had not escaped
+were killed, and that they had seen the king’s ambassadors among the
+Liègeois, and they mentioned their very names. All this being related to
+the duke, he gave credit to it immediately; and falling into a violent
+passion against the king, he charged him with a design of deluding him
+by coming thither; ordered the gates both of the town and castle to be
+suddenly shut up, and gave out, by way of pretence, that it was done for
+the discovery of a certain casket which was lost, and in which there were
+money and jewels to a very considerable value. When the king saw himself
+shut up in the castle, and guards posted at the gates, and especially
+when he found himself lodged near a certain tower, in which a count of
+Vermandois had caused his predecessor, one of the kings of France, to
+be put to death,[59] he was in great apprehension. I was at that time
+waiting upon the duke of Burgundy in the quality of chamberlain, and
+(when I pleased) I lay in his chamber, as was the custom of that family.
+When he saw the gates were shut, he ordered the room to be cleared, and
+told us who remained that the king was come thither to circumvent him;
+that he himself had never approved of the interview, but had complied
+purely to gratify the king; then he gave us a relation of the passages
+at Liège, how the king had behaved himself by his ambassadors, and that
+all his forces were killed. He was much incensed, and threatened his
+majesty exceedingly; and I am of opinion that if he had then had such
+persons about him as would have fomented his passion, and encouraged him
+to any violence upon the king’s person, he would certainly have done it,
+or at least committed him to the tower. None was present at the speaking
+of these words but myself and two grooms of his chamber, one of whom
+was called Charles de Visen, born at Dijon, a man of honour, and highly
+esteemed by his master. We did not exasperate, but soothed his temper as
+much as possibly we could. Some time after he used the same expressions
+to other people; and the news being carried about the town, it came at
+last to the king’s ear, who was in great consternation; and indeed so
+was everybody else, foreseeing a great deal of mischief, and reflecting
+on the variety of things which were to be managed for the reconciling of
+a difference between two such puissant princes, and the errors of which
+both of them were guilty in not giving timely notice to their ministers
+employed in their remote affairs, which must of necessity produce some
+extraordinary and surprising result.
+
+The king thought himself (as I said before) a prisoner in the castle of
+Péronne, as he had good reason to do; for all the gates were shut and
+guarded by such as were deputed to that office, and continued so for two
+or three days; during which time the duke of Burgundy saw not the king,
+neither would he suffer but very few of his majesty’s servants to be
+admitted into the castle, and those only by the wicket; yet none of them
+was forbidden, but of the duke’s none was permitted to speak with the
+king, or come into his chamber, at least such as had any authority with
+their master. The first day there was great murmuring and consternation
+all over the town. The second, the duke’s passion began to cool a little,
+and a council was called, which sate the greater part of that day and
+night too. The king made private applications to all such as he thought
+qualified to relieve him, making them large promises, and ordering 15,000
+crowns to be distributed among them; but the agent who was employed in
+this affair acquitted himself very ill, and kept a good part of the money
+for his own use, as the king was informed afterwards. The king was very
+fearful of those who had been formerly in his service, who, as I said
+before, were in the Burgundian army, and had openly declared themselves
+for his brother, the duke of Normandy.
+
+The duke of Burgundy’s council were strangely divided in their opinions;
+the greatest part advised that the passport which the duke had given the
+king should be kept, provided his majesty consented to sign the peace
+as it was drawn up in writing. Some would have him prisoner as he was,
+without further ceremony. Others were for sending with all speed to the
+duke of Normandy, and forcing the king to make such a peace as should
+be for the advantage of all the princes of France. Those who proposed
+this advised that the king should be restrained, and a strong guard set
+upon him, because a great prince is never, without great caution, to
+be set at liberty after so notorious an affront. This opinion was so
+near prevailing, that I saw a person booted and ready to depart, having
+already several packets directed to the duke of Normandy in Brittany,
+and he waited only for the duke’s letters; and yet this advice was not
+followed. At last the king caused overtures to be made, and offered the
+duke de Bourbon, the cardinal his brother, the constable of France, and
+several others, as hostages, upon condition that, after the peace was
+concluded, he might return to Compiègne, and that then he would either
+cause the Liègeois to make sufficient reparation for the injury they had
+done, or declare war against them. Those whom the king had proposed for
+his hostages proffered themselves very earnestly, at least in public; I
+know not whether they said as much in private; I expect they did not:
+and, if I may speak my thoughts, I believe that the king would have left
+them there, and that he would never have returned.
+
+The third night after this had happened, the duke of Burgundy did not
+pull off his clothes, but only threw himself twice or thrice upon the
+bed, and then got up again and walked about, as his custom was when
+anything vexed him. I lay that night in his chamber, and walked several
+turns with him. The next morning he was in a greater passion than ever,
+threatening exceedingly, and ready to put some great thing in execution;
+but, at last, he recollected himself, and it came to this result: that
+if the king would swear to the peace, and accompany him to Liège, and
+assist him to revenge the injuries which they had done him and the bishop
+of Liège, his kinsman, he would be contented. Having resolved on this,
+he went immediately to the king’s chamber, to acquaint him with his
+resolutions himself. The king had some friend or other who had given him
+notice of it before, and who had assured him that his person would be in
+no manner of danger, provided he would consent to those points; but that,
+if he refused, he would run himself into so great danger that nothing in
+the world could be greater.
+
+When the duke came into his presence, his voice trembled by the violence
+of his passion, so inclinable was he to be angry again.[60] However, he
+made a low reverence with his body, but his gesture and words were sharp,
+demanding of the king if he would sign the peace as it was agreed and
+written, and swear to it when he had done. The king replied he would;
+and, indeed, there was nothing added to what had been granted in the
+treaty at Paris, which was to the advantage of the dukes of Burgundy
+or Normandy, but very much to his own; for it was agreed that the lord
+Charles of France should renounce the duchy of Normandy, and have
+Champagne and Brie, and some other places adjacent, as an equivalent.
+Then the duke asked him if he would go along with him to Liège, to
+revenge the treachery they had practised by his instigation, and by
+means of that interview. Then he put him in mind of the nearness of
+blood between the king and the bishop of Liège, who was of the house
+of Bourbon. The king answered that, when the peace was sworn, which he
+desired exceedingly, he would go with him to Liège, and carry with him
+as many or as few forces as he pleased. The duke was extremely pleased
+at his answer, and the articles being immediately produced and read, and
+the true cross which St. Charlemagne was wont to use, called “the cross
+of victory,” taken out of the king’s casket, the peace was sworn, to the
+great joy and satisfaction of all people; and all the bells in the town
+were rung. The duke of Burgundy immediately despatched a courier with the
+news of this conclusion of peace into Brittany, and with it he sent a
+duplicate of the articles, that they might see he had not deserted them,
+nor disengaged himself from their alliance; and, indeed, Duke Charles,
+the king’s brother, had a good bargain, in respect of what he had made
+for himself in the late treaty in Brittany, by which there was nothing
+left him but a bare pension, as you have heard before. Afterwards the
+king did me the honour to tell me that I had done him some service in
+that pacification.[c]
+
+
+_The Storming of Liège_
+
+The next day the two princes left together, Charles with his army, Louis
+with his modest following, increased by three hundred soldiers whom he
+had sent for from France. They arrived before Liège the 27th of October.
+Since Duke Charles’ last victories the city had neither ramparts nor
+moats; nothing seemed easier than to enter; but the besieged could not
+believe that King Louis was a sincere ally of the duke of Burgundy. They
+made a sortie, crying: “Long live the king! Long live France!” Their
+surprise was great when they saw Louis advance in person, the cross of
+St. André of Burgundy on his hat, and heard him exclaim: “Long live
+Burgundy!” Among the French themselves who were about the king, some were
+shocked; they could not be resigned to so little pride and to so much
+effrontery in the deceit. Louis himself paid no attention to their humour
+and kept repeating: “When pride prances in front, shame and disaster
+follow close at hand.”
+
+The surprise of the people of Liège was turned into indignation. They
+resisted more energetically and for a longer time than had been expected;
+confident of their strength, the besiegers guarded themselves badly; the
+besieged increased the number of their sorties. One night Charles was
+informed that his people had just been attacked in a suburb they occupied
+and were fleeing. He mounted his horse, gave orders not to awaken the
+king, betook himself alone to the scene of combat, re-established order,
+and returned to tell Louis what had happened, the latter appearing very
+much pleased over the affair. At another time the night was dark and
+rainy: towards midnight a general attack awakened the whole Burgundian
+camp; the duke was soon afoot; an instant later the king arrived; the
+disorder was great. “The people of Liège came out on that side,” said
+some. “No, it was by this gate,” said others; nothing was certain, no
+order was given. Charles was impetuous and brave, but became easily
+alarmed. His followers were not a little worried not to see him put on a
+more cheerful countenance before the king. Louis on the other hand was
+cool and calm, firm in giving his orders, and prompt to take authority
+wherever he might be. “Take what people you have,” he said to the
+constable Saint-Pol who accompanied him, “and go in this direction; if
+they are to come upon us, they will pass on that side.” It was discovered
+afterwards that it had been a false alarm.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH CANNON, MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+Two days later the situation was more serious; the inhabitants of a
+canton bordering the city, and called Franchemont, decided to make a
+desperate attempt and to fall unexpectedly upon the very quarter in which
+the two princes were lodged. One evening, at ten o’clock, six hundred
+men went out through one of the breaches in the wall, all of them men
+of stout heart and well armed. The duke’s house was the first to be
+attacked; twelve archers alone kept watch below and were playing at dice.
+Charles was in bed; Comines quickly helped him on with his helmet and
+cuirass; they went down the stairs; the archers were with difficulty
+preventing an entrance through the door; reinforcements arrived; the
+danger disappeared. The lodging of King Louis had also been attacked;
+but at the first sound the Scotch archers had hastened to the scene,
+had surrounded their master, and repulsed the attack, without troubling
+themselves to see whether their arrows killed the people of Liège or the
+Burgundians who had come to help. Almost all the braves of Franchemont
+perished in the enterprise they had undertaken. The duke and his chief
+leaders held a council the next day; the duke wanted to make an attack.
+The king was not present at this council; when informed as to what had
+been decided upon in it, he was not in favour of an assault. “You see,”
+he said, “the courage of this people; you know how much slaughter and
+uncertainty there is in a fight among the streets of a city; you will
+lose in it many useful men. Wait two or three days; the people of Liège
+will without doubt come to terms.” Almost all the Burgundian chiefs
+shared the king’s opinion. The duke became angry. “He wants to save the
+people of Liège,” he said; “what peril is there in an assault? There
+is no wall; they cannot put one single piece of artillery into action;
+I shall certainly not give up making an attack. If the king is afraid,
+let him go to Namur.” The insult shocked even the Burgundians. Louis was
+informed of it and said nothing. The next day, October 30th, 1468, the
+order for the assault was given; the duke marched at the head of his
+troops; the king came up. “Stay behind,” said Charles to him, “do not
+needlessly expose yourself to peril; I will have you informed when it is
+time.” “My brother,” returned Louis, “do you march in advance; you are
+the most fortunate prince alive; I follow you,” and he continued to march
+with him.
+
+The assault was useless; discouragement had taken hold of the people of
+Liège; the bravest of them had perished. It was a Sunday; the people
+who were left were not expecting an attack. “The cloth was laid in
+every house; all were preparing to sit down to dinner.” The Burgundians
+advanced through deserted streets; Louis marched quietly, surrounded by
+his men and crying, “Long live Burgundy!” The duke came back to join him
+and together they went to thank God in the cathedral of St. Lambert.
+It was the only church preserved from the fury and pillaging of the
+Burgundians; at noon there was nothing more left to take, either in
+the houses or churches. Louis heaped Charles with congratulations and
+compliments. The duke was charmed and mollified. The next day as they
+were conversing together: “My brother,” said the king to the duke, “if
+you have any further need of my assistance, do not spare me; but if you
+have nothing further for me to do, it is fitting that I return to Paris
+in order to proclaim in my court of parliament the arrangement we have
+agreed upon; otherwise it runs the risk of becoming invalid; you know
+that that is the custom of France. Next summer we must meet again: you
+will come to your duchy of Burgundy; I shall go to visit you, and we will
+pass a month together joyously in making good cheer.” Charles answered
+nothing, sent for the treaty which they had concluded shortly before at
+Péronne, and gave the king his choice of confirming or abandoning it,
+excusing himself in veiled terms for having thus forced him and led him
+about. The king appeared to be satisfied with the treaty, and the 2nd of
+November, 1468, the second day after the capture of Liège, he left for
+France. The duke accompanied him half a league out from the city. As they
+were on the point of taking leave of each other, the king said to him:
+“If perchance my brother Charles, who is in Brittany, is not pleased with
+the partition I have made him, out of love for you, what do you want me
+to do?” “If he does not want to take it,” answered the duke, “do you take
+measures to satisfy him; I will leave the matter to you two.” Louis asked
+for nothing more; he returned home free and confident in his own powers,
+“after having passed the three hardest weeks of his life.”[i]
+
+
+_The Return of Louis to France_
+
+To appreciate the import of the promises which Charles had exacted from
+the king, it must be recalled that Champagne and Brie, which Louis
+promised to transfer to his brother, were geographically so situated as
+to separate--or unite--the duchy of Burgundy and the northern possessions
+of Charles the Bold. Hence Charles’ interest in having this territory
+controlled by his friend, the king’s brother, rather than by his enemy,
+the king. Quite as obviously, Louis’ interests were opposed to such
+an arrangement, and of course he had no intention of fulfilling his
+agreement. But he wished to avoid fulfilment in the most diplomatic
+manner possible. This he accomplished by persuading his weak-minded
+brother to take the territory of Guienne instead of that specified in the
+compact with Charles. Thus Louis’ brother was separated by all France
+from the duke of Burgundy instead of being his nearest neighbour; and
+Champagne continued a barrier, not a bridge, between the Burgundian
+possessions. So in the end the diplomacy of Louis stood him in good
+stead, notwithstanding his momentary discomfiture.[a]
+
+Louis’ bearing was far from proud when he recrossed the frontier. He had
+received two great checks from the Burgundian power; in 1465 a check of
+power, in 1468 a check of honour. Had it been only a question of honour
+Louis might have easily consoled himself; but, aside from honour, his
+reputation as an able ruler came into question. It was that which made
+him ill from shame. He knew his contemporaries. The treason to and the
+sacrifice of Liège troubled him less than his blunder at Péronne. It was
+not so much indignation as mockery that he dreaded. Paris received from
+him an order to neither speak, write, paint, or sing anything of the
+detested name of “Monseigneur de Bourgoyne,” and an order was sent out
+that all birds, magpies, crows, starlings, who were making the streets
+resound with allusions to the king’s discomfiture at Péronne, should be
+delivered to a commissioner of the king.[j] At least so runs the story.
+
+When Louis arrived in Paris strange discoveries awaited him. He
+intercepted letters from his favourite the cardinal. He found that his
+friend and gossip was the friend and gossip also of the duke of Burgundy,
+the adviser of all that had happened at Péronne, especially of his forced
+presence at the siege, the degrading clauses of the final treaty, and
+the general harshness of his treatment. He found at the same time that
+the cardinal was in correspondence with his brother Charles, late leader
+of the league, who was still in resistance to his authority; and, in
+short, that he was betrayed in every point. The king was offended at the
+perjury of his subject, but the man was a thousand times more angry at
+the error in his judgment. The son of the tailor, in the red stockings,
+had outwitted the son of St. Louis with the crown on his head. La Balue,
+though prince of the church and bishop of a diocese, was imprisoned in
+an iron cage, about eight feet square, and kept like a wild beast in his
+den for eleven years in the castle of Loches. All that can be said in
+extenuation of this pitiless proceeding was that the man was the disgrace
+of his order and his country, and that the instrument of his torture
+(as the natural justice of mankind is so prone to make out in other
+instances) was of his own invention.
+
+There were some institutions, as well as individuals, which it was now
+Louis’ purpose to get within his power. Edward III of England, reposing
+upon the laurels of Crécy, had founded the order of the Garter in 1349.
+John of France, in rapid imitation, as we have already seen, founded the
+order of the Star. Philip of Burgundy had founded the order of the Golden
+Fleece in 1429, and the principles of all these lordly confederations
+were derived from the ideas of chivalry which the romances had spread
+among the people. They were to be brotherhoods of noble knights, bound
+together by the bonds of mutual honour; they were to succour the weak,
+bridle the strong, and pay honour, as they fantastically expressed it, by
+purity of life and courage of conduct, to God and their ladies. But the
+Garter was a foreign badge; the Golden Fleece was a symbol of his subject
+and liegeman; the Star had fallen into disrepute from its promiscuous
+distribution among the favourites of the crown; and Louis XI determined
+on instituting an order of chivalry himself.
+
+It was to be select in its membership, limited in its number, generous
+in its professions, and he fondly hoped the Garter and Fleece would soon
+sink into insignificance compared to the order of St. Michael. The first
+brethren were named from the highest families in France; the remaining
+great feudatories, who had preserved some relics of their hereditary
+independence, were fixed upon to wear this mark of the suzerain’s
+friendship. But when they came to read the oaths of admission, they
+found that the order of St. Michael was in reality a bond of stronger
+obligation than the feudal laws had ever enjoined. It was a solemn
+association for the prevention of disobedience to the sovereign. The
+members were to swear submission in all things to the chief of the order;
+they were to enter into no agreements with each other, or anyone else,
+without the king’s consent; they were to submit to such punishment, in
+case of breach of the rules, as the order might appoint; and, in short,
+the brotherhood of noble knights sank, in the degrading treatment of its
+founder, into a confederation of spies. Armed with this new weapon, the
+king tried its effect on the duke of Brittany, who was discontented with
+many things that had occurred. If he accepted, he would be bound by the
+statutes; if he refused, it would be an insult to the dignity of the
+king. The duke temporised, and consulted the duke of Burgundy. The fiery
+Charles saw through the design, and swore to defend his neighbour in case
+of a quarrel with the crown. Louis, nothing daunted, sent the collar of
+the order to Burgundy himself. Burgundy refused it, and Louis’ object was
+gained. He discovered who was bold or strong enough to stand out against
+him, and the war began. Not openly--it was not yet time to make it a
+matter of national honour--but the angry subject and hostile king were
+perfectly aware of each other’s designs.
+
+
+_Edward IV of England aids Charles the Bold_
+
+[Sidenote: [1469-1470 A.D.]]
+
+Their animosity first broke out in the sides they chose in the great
+struggle then going on in England, called the Wars of the Roses. Edward
+of York, representing the direct line of Edward III, had taken arms
+against the feeble and dissolute Henry VI of the Lancastrian house.
+Margaret of Anjou had mingled in the fray, and embittered it. We know how
+fortune alternately swayed to the red and the white of the emblematic
+flowers. Warwick, who is known in English history as the “king-maker,”
+had just established Edward IV on the throne, and then failed, when
+he had quarrelled with the monarch he had set up, in restoring Henry.
+While preparing an expedition for this purpose in France, he had fitted
+out privateers, who enriched themselves equally on the English and
+Flemish traders, and then found refuge in the French harbours. Charles
+of Burgundy complained; Louis retorted with accusations of his having
+aided the new king of England in his attacks on the coasts of Normandy,
+and of having accepted the English order of the Garter, though he had
+refused his own St. Michael. He summoned the vassal to appear before
+his parliament in Paris, and the vassal threw the summoners into prison.
+Louis saw the game now in his hands. He had put his enemy legally in
+the wrong, and, moreover, he had all the counsellors, and favourites,
+and warriors, by whom Charles was surrounded, in his pay. We need not,
+however, waste much pity on the duke. He was nearly in the same situation
+with regard to the courtiers and officers of the king. When the armies
+lay face to face, and famine had almost placed the Burgundians in Louis’
+hands, Charles sent a flag of truce with a statement and proofs of the
+infidelity of half the princes and feudatories who commanded the royal
+troops. Charles of France, now duke of Guienne, was at the head of the
+deceivers, and was anxious to gain Charles’ good-will, in hopes of
+obtaining the hand of his daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy. Battle,
+with traitors commanding both the armies, would have been madness, and
+Louis agreed to a truce. Bitterer thoughts than ever, about the pride
+and falsehood of the nobility, rankled in that ignoble heart. Another
+incident soon occurred that brought affairs to a crisis. One of his
+spies, being in the castle of the count de Foix, saw a mass of torn
+papers in a corner of his room, which had previously been occupied by a
+messenger of the duke of Burgundy. The man gathered up the fragments,
+saw a name or two that excited his attention, pasted them all together,
+and was enabled to present to the king a bond of firm alliance, and the
+signatures of enemies whom he might well have trembled to see united
+against him--Edward of England, triumphant at the battle of Barnet, where
+his enemy Warwick was slain, and now firmly established on the English
+throne; the duke of Burgundy, Nicholas of Lorraine, the duke of Brittany,
+and, above all, Charles of France, duke of Guienne. These were all to
+be on him at once, and, as one of the papers said, were to set so many
+greyhounds at his heels that he could not know where to fly for safety.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH GUNNER, MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+[Sidenote: [1470-1471 A.D.]]
+
+Louis, however, was more of the fox than the hare. He doubled on his
+pursuers, and tempted the duke of Burgundy with the promise of restoring
+him some towns on the Somme, and letting him have his full revenge on his
+former favourite, the constable Saint-Pol, who had betrayed him to the
+king. Charles, on the other hand, was to let Louis do as he chose with
+the dukes of Brittany and Guienne.[f] The duke of Guienne, indeed, was
+not likely to be an annoyance much longer to his brother the king, for he
+was seized of a mortal malady, presumably consumption. He died May 24th,
+1472, at Bordeaux. There was a rumour current that he had been poisoned
+along with his mistress the lady of Monsoreau, by the abbé of St. Jean
+d’Angély, at the instance of Louis himself. The story of a peach, cut
+with a poisoned knife and shared by the lovers, became famous. There
+were many suspicious circumstances, and very likely the king may have
+watched the progress of his brother’s illness “with ill-disguised hope”
+as Martin[j] suggests; but the fact that the duke had suspected no one
+during his long illness and had named Louis as his executor may perhaps
+justify us in giving the king the benefit of the doubt for the nonce.
+“Examples of fratricide are all too common in this sinister century,”
+says Martin; but he adds, half doubtingly, that “the best justification
+of the king appears to lie in the long illness of his brother. A man
+poisoned with fruit does not survive eight months.” In any case, the
+death of the duke removed one of the most important obstacles to Louis’
+plans for the centralisation of power and the ultimate autocracy of the
+crown.[a]
+
+[Sidenote: [1471-1474 A.D.]]
+
+Now, then, there was to be war to the knife carried on by the crown
+against the nobility. Burgundy was bought off by promises and gifts;
+England was soothed by concessions. But within the boundaries of France
+itself, no limit was put to the vengeance and cruelty of the king. He
+arrested the duke of Alençon in full peace, and immured him in a dungeon
+in Paris. He sent an army into the territories of the count d’Armagnac,
+and a detachment of it burst into his house, and murdered him in his bed.
+They also forced his wife, who was pregnant, to drink a mixture which
+produced immediate death. His brother was thrown into the Bastille, and
+kept in a cave below the level of the Seine, so that the water penetrated
+the floor. The wretched prisoner lived for eleven years in this manner,
+without shoes or proper clothing; and when released at the end of that
+time, on the accession of Charles VIII, was found to have fallen into a
+state of fatuity. A short cessation in this career of murder and revenge
+was produced by a new combination against Louis’ life and crown. French
+honour and patriotism had now fallen so low that the princes and great
+vassals, in order to get revenge upon their oppressor, agreed to assign
+the crown of France to Edward IV of England. He was to be crowned at
+Rheims, and already he bestowed rewards upon his adherents as if he were
+in possession of the kingdom. The treaty united many contending factions,
+with but one object in common--the destruction of him whom all now knew
+to be their destroyer.
+
+
+_Gold and Diplomacy make Louis the Victor_
+
+Burgundy and Brittany and Saint-Pol forgot their animosities, and
+signed the bond. But Louis detected the plot. The old plans were tried,
+and succeeded. Promises scattered the confederates, and they became
+distrustful of each other. Edward had disembarked in France at the head
+of an English army. Louis sent for great bags of coined money from Paris,
+and signed several papers, with the names in blank, bestowing salaries
+and pensions for distribution among the English council. He disguised a
+common lackey as a herald, and sent him to an interview with the invader.
+The lackey was as clever and subservient as if he had been bred an
+ambassador, and won over the luxurious king. Louis flattered his ambition
+and bribed his avarice. He called him “king of England and France, and
+lord of Ireland,” contenting himself with the title of “king of the
+French.” He gave him 60,000 crowns on condition of withdrawing his forces
+at once, and promised him 50,000 crowns a year so long as they both
+lived. Edward was so captivated by the arts and liberality of Louis that
+he agreed to visit him at Paris. But Louis repented of the invitation
+he had given, and put him off, for fear he should grow too fond of that
+most fascinating of towns. “It is better,” he said, “the sea should be
+between us”; and to attain this object no expense was spared. Gifts were
+heaped upon the officers, and all the public-houses were made free to the
+retiring army. The English pocketed the money, and marched from pothouse
+to pothouse with the greatest satisfaction.
+
+[Sidenote: [1474-1476 A.D.]]
+
+At last it was reported to Louis that his invaders were safe home, and he
+resolved to make use of his victory. The fate of the constable Saint-Pol
+was sealed. Conscious of his approaching doom, he threw himself on the
+protection of his former friend, the duke of Burgundy. Charles hated
+him for his falsehood, but could not reject a suppliant. He told him
+to take shelter in St. Quentin. Louis, however, was at his heels with
+twenty thousand men. He fled, and Charles, rash in promise but infirm
+of purpose, forgot his chivalry, and surrendered him on the threat of
+hostilities against himself. He was tried for treason at Paris, and
+condemned to lose his head on the place de Grève. Thousands of the brave
+and noble have spilt their blood since that time in the great square
+which faces the Hôtel-de-Ville, and allows a last view of the towers of
+Notre Dame; but this is the first occasion in which a prince, a near ally
+of the throne,--for he had married a sister of the queen,--was exposed to
+the sword of the headsman for a crime against the crown. The supremacy
+of the king’s will was now so well established that there was no further
+use for secret assassination. A public execution struck more awe into the
+populace, and kept the nobility in more subjection, than a stab in the
+dark or a poisoned peach. Tristan l’Hermite, almost equally with Louis,
+was from henceforward the acknowledged governor of France. But as long
+as Charles the Bold preserved his independent attitude in Burgundy, the
+discontented had always a refuge from the justice of the king.
+
+
+_Last Deeds of Charles the Bold_
+
+Fortunately at this time the overweening Burgundian became engaged in
+controversy with the strong-armed highlanders of Switzerland. They had
+offended him, by refusing compensation for some injury they had done to
+one of his adherents. To be resisted by a set of republican shepherds was
+too much for the knightly pride of the most touchy prince in Christendom.
+A great army was raised, and poured down upon the town of Granson. The
+inhabitants were put to the sword or drowned in the Lake of Neuchâtel.
+All the cantons were irritated at the shameless deed, and rushed to
+rescue or revenge. Charles met them in a narrow defile at the head of
+his horsemen, who could not act on such unequal ground. The first rank
+fell back upon the second, the second carried confusion into the rear.
+The quick-footed Swiss still pressed on, and at last a complete panic
+seized the Burgundian host. Charles himself spurred out of the confusion,
+and galloped as far as his horse could go. Never had the eyes of the
+mountaineers rested on such wealth and splendour as met them in the tents
+of the discomfited army--silken curtains, golden vessels, barrels of
+money, and armour of the finest polish. A jewel was taken by a soldier
+from the private chest of the duke, sold to a priest for a florin, sold
+by him for five shillings, and is now considered the greatest ornament of
+the French crown, and one of the richest stones in Europe. Louis did not
+know how to proceed in these astonishing circumstances. He had signed a
+treaty to maintain the peace towards the duke, and yet could not resist
+showing his approbation of the Swiss. With the Swiss also he had signed a
+treaty, by which he was bound to give them aid in men and money whenever
+they were attacked. He compromised the two obligations by abstaining from
+assaulting the Burgundian, and from sending assistance to the Swiss. He
+could not fulfil both stipulations, and it was more economical to execute
+neither. He gave the mountaineers, however, unmistakable evidence of his
+sympathy in their cause; and when Charles, in the same year, came forth
+at the head of another powerful army, Louis encouraged the cantons to
+resist. The same thing as before occurred, with only the variation of
+place. Morat was a repetition of Granson. The slaughter of the defeated
+Burgundians was so great that, till the latter end of the eighteenth
+century, a vast monument was still to be seen upon the field of battle,
+built up of the bones of the slain, and called the Bone-Hill of Morat.
+
+[Sidenote: [1476-1477 A.D.]]
+
+The battle of Nancy followed in 1477, and raised the Swiss to the summit
+of military fame, besides weakening Burgundy so as to render it forever
+powerless against France. In the midst of winter, ill-provided, and
+doubtful of the issue themselves, the hosts of Burgundy moved on, and
+laid siege to the town of Nancy. Charles was no longer the impetuous
+warrior he had been. He was broken in spirit, and at times almost mad
+with disappointment and chagrin. He had even summoned to command his army
+an adventurer from Italy, of the name of Campobasso. Campobasso was, as
+might be expected, a correspondent of Louis, and had offered to place
+Charles in his hands.
+
+But Louis played, of course, a double game with the deceiver and his
+dupe. To show how generous he was, he warned the duke of the insincerity
+of his general, feeling well assured that his advice would be attributed
+to dishonourable motives; and accordingly it was thought a weak invention
+of the enemy, and Campobasso was more trusted than before. Again the
+Swiss battalions, aided by the forces of René of Lorraine, began to
+appear. In the midst of a great storm, and in a hard frost, Charles
+resolved to attack them. Campobasso sent over an offer of his treachery
+to the gallant mountaineers; but they despised a traitor, and scorned the
+disgrace of having such an auxiliary. He therefore retired to the rear
+of the Burgundian line, to intercept the fugitives, and enrich himself
+with their ransom. There were few fugitives, however, to ransom; for, as
+the horses slipped upon the icy plain, the victory was easier than at
+either Granson or Morat. The earth was heaped with corpses, and among
+them, after a long search, was found the body of the fiery duke, fixed in
+the snow, and so disfigured that he was only recognised by a scar on his
+face and the length of his nails, which he had allowed to grow, as a sign
+of mourning, ever since his calamities began. Not deserving of a very
+favourable epithet, this harsh and arrogant potentate closed a life of
+violence with a death of defeat.
+
+But now all men’s eyes were turned with earnest expectation to the first
+move in the great drama of intrigue and policy which his demise was
+certain to produce. His daughter had been the great card which he had
+held in his hands for many years. Lady of Hainault and Flanders, and all
+the Low Countries, she was a bait which none of the princes could resist.
+
+
+MARY OF BURGUNDY
+
+Charles had silenced enemies and gathered friends, by a mere hint of
+the bestowal of Mary’s hand. He had played it against the name of king,
+and promised it to the son of Frederick the emperor, if that successor
+of the Roman cæsars would consent to convert his ducal coronet into a
+royal crown. The treaties and arrangements, and all the preparations
+for the betrothal and the creation, would be amusing, if they did not
+show how low morality and honour had fallen in those days. The emperor
+said, “Let the young people marry, and I will name you king.” But the
+duke, who gave no credit, said, “Make me king, and I will give your son
+my daughter.” Neither would trust the other. The emperor hurried off by
+stealth from the place of meeting, when he found the duke had summoned
+an increase to his escort; and Charles, vowing vengeance, and fearful of
+ridicule, packed up the royal crown he had brought with him beside the
+sceptre and mantle, and took his way to his states with no higher rank
+than when he came. Other expectations had been equally disappointed, and
+now, in the year 1477, Mary was an orphan twenty years of age, handsome
+and well-informed, with a portion in her own right which would make any
+man she chose a sovereign prince, or double the grandeur of the greatest
+potentate. When Louis heard of the father’s death, his first thought
+was, of course, to secure the daughter’s succession. He knelt to all his
+saints in gratitude for the defeat of his rival, walked on a pilgrimage
+of grace to a church in Anjou, and vowed silver banisters to the tomb
+of St. Martin of Tours. Having purified his mind by these religious
+exercises, he sent a peremptory demand for the restoration of the two
+Burgundies to the crown, as they lapsed for want of male heirs.
+
+Of this there could be no doubt with respect to the duchy, which
+had been conveyed by John to Philip the Bold; but the county of the
+same name was capable of feminine holding, and if Mary had been in a
+condition to assert her claims, might have refused obedience to the king.
+Mary, however, was lonely in the midst of all that wealth. She had no
+disinterested guardian to apply to, and made only a feeble protest when
+the parliament of Burgundy, purchased or intimidated, recognised its
+feudal obligation, and transferred its allegiance to the French crown.
+Holland, however, and Flanders, and Artois, and large territories in
+Germany, and the disputed cities on the Somme, belonged to her still. If
+she had given her hand to some gallant soldier who would have defended
+her states, she might have aroused the chivalrous feelings of all the
+gentlemen in Europe on her behalf. But this she did not try, knowing too
+well, perhaps, that chivalrous feelings were limited to books of fiction.
+
+[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE OF LOUIS XI INTO PARIS]
+
+The encumbered heiress wrote in her despair to Louis himself. Louis
+was her godfather, and she had no other friend. She sent four trusty
+counsellors to lay her case before him. She begged his protection, and
+made a confidential request that he would conduct all his correspondence
+with her through no one but these trusted friends. “You want, of course,
+to know what I intend to do,” said Louis, when he had read the letter
+on the day of audience; and the four envoys bowed. “I will marry my
+godchild Mary to my son, the dauphin. I will rule her states in their
+joint names, till she is old enough to do homage. I will take possession
+of the male fief at once, and if anyone opposes my decisions, I have
+forces enough to make my will obeyed.” There was no circumlocution
+here, and the ambassadors were silent with surprise. The dauphin was
+a sickly boy of eight years old, and their young mistress, as we have
+seen, was in the flower of her age. The king, in return for the visit
+of the Burgundian envoys, sent an envoy of his own. His barber was a
+quick-witted, unprincipled adventurer, of the name of Oliver le Daim.
+He had come originally from Ghent, and was, of course, master of the
+Flemish tongue. This was the dignified emissary whom France despatched
+to the highest princess in Europe. He covered his original baseness with
+a pinchbeck title, and the barber took his northward way under the name
+of the count of Meulan. But the count of Meulan smelt dreadfully of the
+shop. He never could get the shaving-basin out of his countrymen’s sight;
+and at his first reception he behaved so unlike a royal ambassador that
+he was hissed by the audience, not without allusions to the propriety
+of throwing him out of the window. He was hustled downstairs, and was
+glad to slip out of his house and out of the town in the darkness of the
+night, and make his way back to his employer without having presented his
+letters of recall.
+
+[Sidenote: [1477-1478 A.D.]]
+
+Louis was delighted, for, while these things were going on at Ghent, he
+had succeeded with the messengers of poor Mary, and did not care if they
+had hanged the barber-ambassador on a lamp-post in the street. The trusty
+counsellors, won over by his address and protestations, surrendered
+Artois to his honourable keeping; and on their return were executed by
+the states of Flanders, in spite of the prayers and intercession of the
+princess. The accusation was not for having betrayed their mistress,
+but for having constituted themselves members of the council of Four,
+in whom Mary had told Louis she put all her confidence. She had told
+nobody else, and declared the innocence of her hapless friends. But
+Louis, with his usual generosity, had forwarded the letter in which his
+goddaughter made the fatal avowal, and the discovery was almost fatal to
+herself. The states were republican in tendency, and resolved to submit
+as little as possible to the governance of a woman. They tormented her
+with their advice and wearied her with their reclamations, till she
+fortunately escaped their further importunities by persuading them to
+consent to her marriage with Maximilian, the son of the emperor, the man
+to whom her father had resolved to give her in return for the title of
+king. Louis was quieted for a time by the fear of offending the emperor,
+but carried on more fiercely than ever his war against feudalism, as
+represented by the great nobility at home. Burgundy was gone--Artois was
+his own--Normandy had long been attached to the crown.
+
+The duke of Brittany, uneasy at the rapid extirpation of his brethren,
+intrigued with England; but Louis intercepted the letters, convicted him
+by his own handwriting, and forced him to a treaty which rendered him
+utterly dependent. The duke had seen that a cloud was gathering from
+the increased religious fervour visible in the king. When a murder or
+a treachery was on hand, his activity in visiting shrines and vowing
+church ornaments became remarkable. People trembled when they saw the
+meanly dressed, slouch-gaited, sallow-faced old man travelling from altar
+to altar, and sticking his bonnet full of little images of saints, and
+pouring out flatteries and adulations to the statues of the Virgin. A
+tale of blood was sure to follow; and in 1478 the wildest expectations of
+Paris were surpassed by the horror of one of his executions. There had
+been no such cold-blooded monster since the days of Tiberius. The duke
+de Nemours was representative of the great house of Armagnac, and was
+married to a princess of Anjou, first cousin of the king. A headstrong,
+discontented, and ambitious man, he had joined in the league of the
+Public Weal, and in many of the intrigues against the monarch since
+that time. Louis had taken no notice till he could secure his revenge.
+But two years before this, he had got him in his power, and kept the
+unfortunate man in chains. He was now tried for treason and condemned and
+executed.[f] In after times it was related that the king had placed the
+children of the culprit beneath the scaffold, that a father’s blood might
+bathe their innocent heads. But this is only a fable of later invention
+that marks the reaction against the memory of Louis XI. “What is more
+certain and equally odious, however,” says Michelet,[o] “is that one
+of the judges who were to receive the goods of the condemned, feeling
+insecure of the heritage unless he had the natural heir in his power,
+demanded to be given custody of the eldest son of Nemours. The king
+had the barbarity to deliver up the child, who promptly disappeared.”
+Moreover, the king suspended from office three counsellors who had not
+favoured the death penalty.[j]
+
+
+WAR WITH MAXIMILIAN
+
+[Sidenote: [1478-1479 A.D.]]
+
+Louis’ pilgrimages and prayers must have increased in frequency shortly
+after this, for a tremendous thought had come into his head, and it
+would require a vast amount of saintly aid to make it tolerable to his
+subjects. This was no less than the trial for felony and treason of the
+deceased duke of Burgundy. A court was called, the culprit was summoned,
+barristers were appointed to support the accusation; his whole life
+was inquired into, his faults pointed out, and malicious antiquarians
+ascended to the actions of his ancestors; and the murder of the duke of
+Orleans, in the reign of Charles VI, was urged as an aggravation of his
+crimes. After so much eloquence and such convincing proofs, the verdict
+could not be doubtful. The duke of Burgundy was sure to be found guilty
+of the crimes laid to his charge, and his estates forfeited to the
+crown. Maximilian, the husband of Mary, took the alarm. He begged his
+father the emperor to interfere. He was afraid that action would follow
+the judgment, and tried at least to delay the sentence. The diet of the
+states of Germany was about to meet, and might take up the cause of their
+chiefs. Louis therefore allowed the trial to expire, and had merely the
+satisfaction of showing that a grand vassal was not safe from his insults
+and vengeance even after death. Yet the daughter and son-in-law of the
+insulted potentate could not be expected to remain satisfied under so
+insolent a proceeding. Maximilian collected his forces, and declared war
+against the king of France.[f]
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+By uniting all his forces, Maximilian had assembled, at St. Omer, an army
+of about 27,400. On Sunday, the 25th of July, 1479, he reached Arques,
+waiting there three days, and on the Thursday following, the 29th of
+July, attacked and invested Thérouanne. The belief in his numerical
+superiority, the desire to retrieve his repulses in Burgundy, and
+perhaps also the absence of the king, whom he knew to be occupied in
+Dijon, decided him to take the initiative. Besides, he could only keep
+his army together for a limited period. This was certainly the moment to
+try his fortune.
+
+It was really not until Saturday afternoon, the 7th of August, that the
+principal action took place. Des Querdes, with six hundred picked men,
+tried to surround the Flemish on his right. The Flemish men-at-arms
+hastened to defend the spot attacked. Soon the whole of the cavalry was
+engaged, and the struggle became serious. But the Flemish, separated from
+their infantry, were forced to give in and began to flee towards Aire,
+Thérouanne, and St. Omer. The French thought they had won the battle.
+Encouraged by this success Des Querdes hotly pursued the fugitives, urged
+on by the hope of capturing rich prizes. “Philip de Raverstein,” says the
+chronicle, “was wearing a mantle of cloth of gold, so that, mistaking him
+for Duke Maximilian himself, they pursued him to the gates of Aire, but
+paid dearly for their mistake.”
+
+The battle was far from being over, as Des Querdes imagined. Very few
+men-at-arms remained to support the French infantry, and Maximilian’s
+hope revived. He redoubled his efforts, aided by the Flemish soldiers and
+German crossbows. The French archers, already seeing that all exertions
+to break the enemy’s lines were fruitless, began to slacken their efforts
+and their discouragement was obvious. Just then, the lord de St. André
+arrived with the garrison from Thérouanne. He could still, in this
+critical moment, hope for victory. But instead of making for the thick
+of the combat the new arrivals threw themselves upon the enemy’s baggage
+and provisions, counting upon a rich spoil. The lords of Romont and
+Nassau, seeing the archers busy pillaging, fell upon them. In this tumult
+they threw them into disorder. Then Maximilian, whilst his cavalry was
+escaping, himself caused confusion in the ranks of the French by pursuing
+them with the small number of knights which he could still command, and
+remained master of the battle-field. But he was thus obliged to raise
+the siege of Thérouanne, and could only continue the campaign two months
+later.
+
+Louis XI was much upset when he heard of this defeat. Perhaps he
+regretted the absence of his experienced and proven chief, who had
+defended his frontier so well. Comines,[c] who was then returning from
+his mission in Italy, has preserved for us the portrait of the king:
+“I thought the king our master grown older and beginning to break up.
+However, he conducts his affairs with great common sense. I was with
+him when he received the news of the battle. He was very downcast, for
+he is not accustomed to defeat; it even seemed as if everything always
+happened to suit his pleasure. His common sense helped him in this hour
+of trouble. At first, he feared that his advantages had been lost; but
+when he knew the truth, he was patient and decided to act so that such
+things should not be undertaken without his knowledge again.”
+
+As soon as Louis XI was aware of how the men-at-arms, thinking only of
+making many prisoners, had lost a battle all but won, he ordered that all
+the prisoners and spoil should be collected, sold at auction, and the
+money equally divided amongst them all. This was returning to the times
+of Achilles, to the natural equality of the Homeric ages--an equality
+too often forgotten in barbarous centuries. Forbidding prisoners to be
+ransomed on the battle-field was already a great step gained; but again,
+the chiefs, sure under this system of having prisoners at a cheap rate
+after the battle, thought less of making any during the combat.
+
+[Sidenote: [1479-1483 A.D.]]
+
+But the archduke, in his turn, had to endure some annoyances. The naval
+campaign had been disastrous for him. Through the care and perseverance
+of William de Casenove, known as the vice-admiral Coulon, France was
+in possession of her first real fleet. For several years past, vessels
+were being unceasingly constructed, their forms perfected, and their
+size and strength increased. From henceforth, great battles could be
+waged upon the sea, even against the strongest. Herring fishing had,
+for a long time, been one of the principal resources of wealth, and a
+precious means of existence to the northern nations. The French admiral,
+taking advantage of the fact that the fishermen of Zealand and Holland
+were bringing into port the fruit of their labours, went to meet them,
+attacked them boldly, and brought nearly their entire fleet into the
+Norman ports. In vain did the Dutch equip other vessels to serve as
+escorts to the fishing boats. Coulon attacked and dispersed them and
+brought back more prisoners. Thus the archduke and his followers were cut
+off at one and the same time both from the cereals of Prussia and from
+the fish they depended upon.[k]
+
+The defeat of Guinegate humbled the hopes of Louis. The war was no
+longer prosecuted with vigour. Even the death of Mary of Burgundy,
+which soon after took place, afforded him no opportunity of adding to
+his usurpations. A treaty, called the Treaty of Arras, was concluded
+between him and Maximilian, in December, 1482. Its stipulations were that
+the dauphin Charles should espouse Margaret of Austria, Maximilian’s
+daughter; and that France should acquire, as her dowry, the county of
+Artois, and that of Burgundy (or Franche-Comté), with other territories;
+those possessions reverting to Austria in case no heirs came of the
+marriage. Independently of these cessions, Louis acquired the duchy or
+province proper of Burgundy, as well as that of Picardy, as his share
+of the spoils of Charles the Bold. About the same time, on the death of
+the good king René, he inherited Provence and Anjou. René II of Lorraine
+made some efforts to establish a claim, but in vain. Good fortune never
+crowned political craft more completely than in the instance of Louis
+XI. That monarch had now brought all his favourite schemes to their
+completion: his nobles were humbled; his great rival was destroyed.[l]
+
+
+LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF LOUIS
+
+In 1480 Louis XI had a first attack of apoplexy at the château de
+Montils-les-Tours, called Le Plessis because it had a fortress with many
+enclosures. Other attacks followed this one and warned him that his end
+was approaching. He undertook in 1482 the pilgrimage of St. Claude, but
+the progress of his malady obliged him to retire to Plessis, which he
+never left. Here he lingered for eighteen months, seen by no one, having
+in attendance only a small number of officers and servants, and seeking
+vainly to quiet by religious devotions his customary restlessness. His
+illness, while subduing his physical forces, only served to increase the
+activity of his spirit. The more he felt his power waning the more he
+wished to make others feel it and he became more tyrannical in proportion
+to his weakness.
+
+Meanwhile he lived in this seclusion in perpetual suspicion of
+everyone--not only the princes of the family, but even of the most
+obscure members of the household, though they had been chosen most
+carefully. His castle was a prison, well guarded, where he was bound,
+following the expression of Comines, by strange chains and enclosures,
+in fear of conspirators. Jealous of his power up to the last hour, “he
+had himself arrayed in rich vestments, such as had never been the custom
+before.” His isolation was such that he rarely saw even the dauphin, who
+was brought up far from him, in the château d’Amboise. Little by little
+his state of weakness effaced the king and left only the man. During this
+period he returned to himself, and perhaps to new thoughts; for he wished
+the relief of his people and a peace of six months at least. This was,
+also, the time of his terrors and superstitions, which have been so much
+exaggerated, for he retained his clearness of mind and gave proof of it
+even in the last days of his life. At times the king awoke in him, and
+made those around him feel that he was master; and he was more jealous
+than ever of his authority, suffering no one under any circumstances to
+question it.
+
+He overwhelmed the church with donations in order to obtain acquittal of
+his offences, just as the ancient Merovingian kings thought to expiate
+their crimes on their death-beds at a similar price. He surrounded
+himself with priests whose prayers he desired; he brought from Calabria
+the famous Francis of Paula (Paola), founder of the order of Minims, for
+which order he had built a monastery at Plessis. His doctor, Jacques
+Cottier, took a scandalous part in these liberal actions. He seemed to
+ask of heaven not so much the salvation of the soul as the prolongation
+of life. Many hold that this long agony, these physical and moral
+sufferings, were an expiation. Comines sees in it “a punishment which God
+had sent upon him in this world that he might suffer less in the next,
+and that those who succeeded him might have more pity on the people and
+punish them less than he had.” He died the 30th of August, 1483, in his
+sixty-first year.
+
+The opinions expressed by contemporaries on this king, whose character
+was so remarkable and strange, were various, but of uniform severity.
+Comines, whose opinion might be subject to question, as he was his
+minister, his confidant, and almost his accomplice, has praised but
+little his prodigious activity, his genius for intriguing, and his
+singular aptitude for the carrying on of dark schemes in all directions.
+John de Troyes, although recognising that the power of the country had
+been strengthened, the kingdom brought more into unity, and new provinces
+acquired, blames most strongly the means employed, the dilapidation of
+the finances, the ruin of the people, the excess of arbitrariness, and
+the injury to the morals of the public. If public opinion was mute during
+this reign, it does not follow that it was favourable to the king. Of
+course the evidence that has been preserved is too slight to be able
+to make a positive assertion, but the theatre and popular verse of the
+period show the fault-finding spirit that existed.
+
+In truth, Louis XI left the kingdom overwhelmed with burdens, the people
+unhappy, the prisons full, and discontent everywhere. He is reproached
+with always having had a large army and never having carried on a
+brilliant war; with not having respected the liberty of the church; with
+having ceaselessly violated justice; with having preferably employed
+corrupt agents who were justly detested; with having acted without
+definite plans; with being humble in misfortune and insolent in success,
+commencing enterprises which were never finished. He, however, knew so
+well how to be master; to bring the will of others into subjection to
+his own; to inspire in the world, and especially in those who approached
+him, the sentiments of obedience, fear, and almost admiration for his
+political genius; in fact, he had so well filled the position of king and
+of prince that, even after his death and when a strong reaction had set
+in against his reign, a certain terror continued to be attached to his
+name. It would seem that no one dared oppose him; Comines himself, who
+has drawn his portrait with such a master hand, has in this respect a
+singular discretion.[e]
+
+Guizot, after quoting Comines[c] and Duclos,[m] adds: “I am more exacting
+than Comines and Duclos; I cannot consent to apply to Louis XI the
+words “liberal,” “virtuous,” “good”; he had neither greatness of soul,
+uprightness of character, nor kindness of heart; he was neither a great
+king nor a good king; but I hold to the last word of Duclos, ‘He was a
+king.’”[i]
+
+“He was a king.” That verdict, at least, no one will dispute; and for a
+concluding estimate of the character of his kingship, we perhaps cannot
+do better than to quote the judicious words of Martin:
+
+
+MARTIN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XI
+
+[Sidenote: [1461-1483 A.D.]]
+
+Utility was Louis’ sole rule; he never comprehended what power there
+is in justice. In everything he preferred, sometimes to his own
+disadvantage, the crooked line to the straight line, stratagem to force,
+suavity to courage, although when necessary he had the stubborn courage
+of an indomitable will. He was the incarnate reaction against the Middle
+Ages, against its morals and its ideality as well as its errors, against
+its liberties as well as its anarchy. The very devoutness of Louis,
+the only inconsistency in a character which would otherwise have been
+incredible, had no more of the grand, austere fanaticism of earlier days;
+it was a materialistic fetichism that went back beyond the Middle Ages
+to the time when the barbarian kings gave the saints of heaven half the
+credit for their enterprises and their aims. Except for this weakness
+Louis XI was the most illustrious disciple of that policy of which the
+contemporary Italian despots gave the example and the theory of which
+Macchiavelli was later to set forth and give his name to. The usurper
+of the duchy of Milan, the famous Francesco Sforza, had been Louis XI’s
+master and model. Italian education invaded France earlier in politics
+than in fine arts.
+
+There was one essential distinction between Louis and his masters. He
+was like them in his means, but different in his end. These tyrants on
+the other side of the Alps had only a personal, or at best a family end,
+while Louis pursued a common end. He was the head of a real political
+society, the head of a nation. On this point, and on this alone, he had a
+conscience. He had a strong instinct for the future and wished to leave
+behind a work that would endure after him. This bad man was not a bad
+Frenchman.
+
+His reign, so troublous, so oppressive, so unhappy for the people, had
+accomplished wonderful things for the unity of the French nation. It gave
+to France, Picardy from the sources of the Oise to Burgundy, Provence,
+Anjou, Maine, Barrois, and Roussillon; and at least a provisional title
+to Artois and Franche-Comté. It upheld the power of France to the
+Pyrenees on the west, to the Jura on the east, and to the maritime Alps,
+and it powerfully advanced the important work of establishing natural
+frontiers. It had subordinated the power of great and petty lords alike
+and had placed under the control of the crown a great military force. It
+had favoured the development of the middle classes and of the industrial
+and commercial forces of the country. But if the growth of national
+power under him was immense, if social progress was in certain respects
+incontestable, it is equally certain that despotism made a like progress.
+The instruments of autocracy were fortified and perfected by him, and
+under him the religion of force and of strategy, “the religion of
+success” as Michelet terms it, everywhere dethroned the religion of duty
+and of right; nor is it possible to stifle morality everywhere in the
+political world without profoundly altering the ethics of private life.
+The aurora of a brilliant intellectual dawn was now appearing above the
+horizon; active minds turn eagerly towards the new light; but France
+was not in a healthy moral condition to receive the new lessons of the
+Renaissance.[j]
+
+
+LOUIS’ INFLUENCE ON CIVILISATION
+
+It must not be overlooked, however, that Louis had a powerful influence
+upon his time in other directions than that of mere statecraft. His mind
+was ever receptive to any novelty that did not contradict his authority.
+He favoured literature and science; in particular the healing art made
+progress under the valetudinarian king. In surgery there was at least one
+great conquest; the operation of lithotomy was performed for the first
+time under the authorisation of the king, upon a condemned criminal,
+who recovered and was granted his life. Louis also came to some extent
+under the influence of the learned Greeks, who after the overthrow of
+Constantinople, in 1453, scattered over western Europe. Several of these
+were received at the French court. The king took a certain interest also
+in the famous discussion between the nominalists and the realists which
+so long distracted the philosophical world. Acting, it is supposed,
+under the advice of his confessor, Louis in 1474 took the part of the
+nominalists and prohibited the works of Ockam, Buridan, and other
+realists; though three years later the prohibition was removed. Louis
+showed himself equally receptive in regard to the new art of printing. As
+early as 1469 three exponents of the wonderful new method of book-making
+appeared in Paris in answer to the summons of William Fichet, rector of
+the university, and began their work with the royal sanction. Before the
+close of Louis’ reign many books had been printed in Paris as well as
+in several of the other large cities of France. The chronicles of St.
+Denis were published in 1476, together with numerous other religious and
+classical works. A translation of the Bible appeared in 1477. From this
+time books multiplied so rapidly that the contemporary poets assure us
+with hyperbolic enthusiasm that more books are produced from day to day
+than formerly could be written in an entire year.[a][j]
+
+The catholicity of interest which enabled Louis thus in the midst of his
+political activities to become to so considerable an extent a patron
+of the sciences and arts, furnishes conclusive evidence of the fulness
+of his mental equipment. It remains to call attention to an even more
+important contribution made by Louis to the amenities of civilisation.
+This was in the matter of the establishment of government posts. Here
+he was an innovator not merely for France but for the modern world; and
+there have been those enthusiasts who would claim for this feat a place
+among the three greatest achievements of the fifteenth century--the
+other two being the invention of printing and the discovery of America.
+Whatever may be thought of this estimate, there is no question that the
+creation of the postal service was a most important innovation, and it
+seems equally little in question that Louis XI was the innovator.[a][n]
+
+
+_Establishment of Posts in France_
+
+Certain ancient writers have attributed Louis’ motives in creating the
+posts to his paternal solicitude. They say “Louis XI, being anxious about
+the illness of the dauphin, from whom he was separated, established
+the posts in order to be informed at almost every moment of the hope
+or fear which his condition inspired.” This is most improbable, given
+Louis XI’s character, but it can readily be admitted that his spirit
+of dissimulation might easily have prompted him to invent and circulate
+a fable of this kind, in order to distract attention from the end which
+he really had in view. His restless life, his disputes with his greater
+vassals, particularly with the duke of Burgundy, his continual intrigues
+with the principal courts of Europe, at which he had secret agents,
+suffice to explain the interest he had in establishing posts, by means
+of which he could satisfy at once his suspicious mind and his ambitious
+schemes. In character Louis XI’s institution resembles the ancient
+posts, especially the Roman (_cursus publicus_). Louis’ only object was
+to facilitate the exercise of his royal power and to strengthen his
+authority at the time when the league of the Public Weal was about to be
+founded with the object of dismembering his kingdom. Therefore it was
+greatly to his interest to be rapidly informed of all the unforeseen
+events which might arise. Is it necessary to add that it never entered
+into the thoughts of Louis XI to institute a public service in his
+kingdom by which private individuals might profit in any way?
+
+The exact date when the posts began to be placed along the high-roads
+is not known. According to Nicholas de la Mare even the name of the
+first postmaster-general is not given; but, says he, as Louis XI’s
+intention was to confide this office to a person of credit, intelligent
+and capable, it was probably given to the grand equerry of France, whose
+functions had much more in common with the new charge; the grand equerry
+had, it is true, the king’s messengers already under his orders. The
+same author says, in another passage, that the king’s messengers became
+so numerous that it was found necessary to create a controller of king’s
+messengers (edict of October, 1479). In the absence of proofs to the
+contrary, we believe that it was Robert Paon who, in October, 1479,
+received the double charge of postmaster-general of foot runners and
+of controller of king’s messengers, and was thus invested with supreme
+authority over the growing institution.
+
+The runners or king’s messengers were, properly speaking, cabinet
+messengers, by which denomination they were afterwards known. They
+followed the court and had to be always in readiness to carry the
+king’s despatches. They already existed previous to the decree of 1464,
+and it is to be supposed that the towns or villages that they passed
+on their route were bound to provide them with relays of horses. This
+we understand from the statute of St. Louis, of December 13th, 1254,
+which we have already quoted, and from a statute of Philip V, surnamed
+the Tall, of February 11th, 1318, which gives the royal couriers the
+qualification of king’s messengers (_chevaucheurs_). The edict of 1464
+officially sanctioned the existence of the couriers or messengers and
+made them into a regular and definite body. Their number, fixed at
+first at 230, had at the death of Louis XI risen to 234. But it is very
+probable that this number comprised the officers who kept horses for
+the service of the king, or _maîtres coureurs_, that is to say king’s
+messengers who went by the name of _chevaucheurs_.
+
+The _maîtres coureurs_ were established at distances of four leagues
+along the high-roads, keeping four or five horses of light build and
+suited to go at a gallop; they received, besides their wages, a fee for
+each horse which they supplied to people holding a passport from the king
+with the seal of the postmaster-general. They were also, as we have said,
+qualified as king’s messengers, because they were not only charged with
+keeping horses, but also with carrying letters and parcels of the king,
+the governors, the lord-lieutenants of the provinces, and other superior
+officers. It is not probable, however, that the _maîtres coureurs_
+actually carried the king’s despatches from post to post, as it is
+certain that the court despatches were conveyed by special messengers or
+_coureurs de cabinet_.
+
+Later on the king’s messengers lost the title of _chevaucheurs_, which
+placed them in a relatively inferior position to the _coureurs de
+cabinet_, but what they lost in dignity they gained in profits. At first
+the new institution profited only the king, his commissioners in the
+provinces, or personages accredited to foreign courts. Even the terms of
+the edict, which defined the attributes of the postmaster-general, have
+from the outset given a political character to this high post.
+
+The postal organisation created by Louis XI comprised two distinct postal
+systems--a system of relays, embracing the most important towns and
+served by the king’s messengers on horseback; a secondary postal system,
+branching off at certain points from the former and including secondary
+localities. The latter system was covered by messengers “sworn and
+received in the court of parliament.”
+
+This organisation is justly considered as having been the starting
+point of the modern post, but the state did not as yet look upon itself
+as being the servant of the public. Private letters continued to be
+transported almost exclusively by university messengers. But these,
+even in the time of Louis XI, were in competition with the royal
+messengers already in existence at that time, as is testified by the
+numerous inquiries and proceedings relating to disputes of this nature
+mentioned in the voluminous collection of manuscripts known as the _de
+Toisy_, which is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. These disputes were
+prolonged in the sequel with a vivacity which increased as the interests
+engaged became more considerable by reason of the incessant progress of
+circulation and correspondence.[n]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[56] [In reality, Louis only sanctioned what was already lost. He
+acceded to conditions as they were, awaiting his time to overthrow them.
+The peace was a part of his political game. Needless to say he had no
+scruples as to the carrying out of any terms of the treaty that could
+advantageously be avoided.]
+
+[57] [Enguerrand de Monstrelet[q] ends his famous chronicle with an
+account of the death of the duke of Burgundy. He says: “On the 12th day
+of June, in the year 1467, the noble duke Philip of Burgundy was seized
+with a grievous malady, which continued unabated until Monday, the 15th,
+when he rendered his soul to God, between nine and ten o’clock at night.
+When he perceived, on the preceding day, that he was growing worse, he
+sent for his son, the count de Charolais, then at Ghent, who hastened
+to him with all speed; and on his arrival, about mid-day of the Monday,
+at the duke’s palace in Bruges, he went instantly to the chamber where
+the duke lay sick in bed, but found him speechless. He cast himself on
+his knees at the bedside, and, with many tears, begged his blessing,
+and that, if he had ever done anything to offend him, he would pardon
+him. The confessor, who stood at the bedside, admonished the duke, if
+he could not speak at least to show some sign of his good will. At this
+admonition, the good duke kindly opened his eyes, took his son’s hand,
+and squeezed it tenderly, as a sign of his pardon and his blessing. The
+count, like an affectionate child, never quitted the duke’s bed until
+he had given up the ghost. May God, out of his mercy, receive his soul,
+pardon his transgressions, and admit him into Paradise!”]
+
+[58] [Legeay,[k] in his _Histoire de Louis XI, son siècle, ses exploits,
+etc._, defends Louis against the charge of having incited the Liègeois to
+revolt, in opposition to most of the other French historians.]
+
+[59] [King Charles the Simple. He died in prison at Péronne in 929.]
+
+[60] [“As soon as the king saw the duke enter his chamber, he could not
+conceal his fear, and said to the duke, ‘My brother, am I not safe in
+your house and in your country?’ And the duke answered, ‘Yes, sire; and
+so safe that if I saw an arrow coming towards you, I would put myself in
+front to shield you.’ And the king said to him, ‘I thank you for your
+good will, and will go whither I have promised you; but I pray you that
+peace may be from this time sworn between us.’”--OLIVIER DE LA MARCHE.[h]]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII--THE INVASION OF ITALY
+
+    There never was a period of history in which the efforts of
+    individual minds were more important in their effects than the
+    present. The inventions of one or two artisans on the banks
+    of the Rhine presented mankind with the art of printing; an
+    idea, a theory, springing up in the manly mind of Columbus, led
+    to the discovery of another hemisphere; a whim conceived by
+    Charles VIII, who, from hearing tales of Cæsar and Charlemagne,
+    suddenly became desirous of turning conqueror, had more effect
+    on the destinies of Europe than all those occult causes of
+    human progress which the philosopher of history loves to
+    fathom.--CROWE.[c]
+
+
+CHARLES VIII (1483-1497 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1483-1515 A.D.]]
+
+We now enter the epoch when, according to the usual computations of
+modern writers, the Middle Ages are passing away and modern times are
+being ushered in. Just at the time when Charles VIII is preparing to
+establish a new order of things in Europe by invading Italy, Columbus
+is sailing out into the western seas to discover the New World. This is
+the age when the new forces of the Renaissance are making themselves
+felt in Italy, and, to a less extent, all over Christendom. It is
+the age of Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, and of Leonardo da Vinci
+and Michelangelo; of Alexander VI, the Borgia, and of Savonarola; of
+Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain; and of Edward V and Henry VII in
+England. It is an age of new ideas, an age of discovery. The seat of the
+new culture is Italy; the centres from which the explorers start out
+in quest of new worlds are Spain and Portugal. France has little share
+in either of these movements; but she shares with the other peoples a
+spirit of unrest; and this spirit is to manifest itself in the attempt
+of Charles VIII--Charles the Little as Brantôme[b] calls him--and his
+immediate successors to make the conquest of Italy. A fatal ambition
+that! It will cost France the lives of two millions of her best men; it
+will gain her little else than bitter experiences. But the vain ambition
+of a selfish prince never yet learned to count the cost; and in this case
+it must be admitted that the dominant spirit of the people is in full
+accord with the reckless ambition of the kings.
+
+This idea of extending the domain of France was the one thought that
+dominated the life of Charles VIII, after he came to maturity. Yet the
+first years of his reign were devoted to a very different purpose. During
+these earlier years, as we shall see, the weakly youth was under the
+control of his sister Anne de Beaujeu, who had inherited many of the
+traits of Louis XI, and who carried forward the policy of that crafty
+monarch to its logical conclusion when she succeeded in bringing the last
+of the great feudal fiefs under full control of the crown, through the
+marriage of her brother Charles with Anne of Brittany. Thus the earlier
+years of Charles VIII must be regarded, thanks to the influence of his
+sister, as continuing and perfecting that policy of the unification of
+France which Louis XI had carried forward so efficiently. The events
+of the reign, therefore, divide themselves into two sharply defined
+periods. The first of these, during which Charles though nominally king
+is really subordinate to the influence of his sister, will now claim our
+attention.[a]
+
+
+_The Rule of Anne de Beaujeu_
+
+Charles VIII, born June 30th, 1470, had entered his fourteenth year
+when his father died, and he was consequently of age by the terms of
+the famous ordinance of Charles V: it was therefore not necessary to
+establish a regency. But the government of the realm and the direction of
+council had been given to the first occupant, as the struggle which was
+to begin between the ambitions of the rivals could not be foreseen. The
+king, feeble of body, gave no hint of precocious talents; his minority in
+fact if not in law seemed as if it should be prolonged beyond the usual
+term.
+
+[Sidenote: [1483-1484 A.D.]]
+
+The true danger to the state lay less in public unrest, so easily
+appeased by the reforms partially foreseen and indicated by Louis XI
+himself, than in the pretensions of the princes of the blood to take
+again their baleful power which had been crushed under Louis XI. The late
+king, in dying, had confided his son and his authority to his daughter
+Anne and his son-in-law Peter de Bourbon, sire de Beaujeu. His widow,
+Charlotte of Savoy, trembling still at the memory of her tyrannical
+spouse, made no objection to this exclusion. She survived Louis only a
+few months. Anne of France had laboured in advance to gain the confidence
+of the young king, whom she inspired with a timid deference, and had
+attached to herself the greater part of the councillors as well as the
+leaders and servitors of Louis XI. Anne, who was then twenty-two years
+old, was the only one of the children of Louis XI who resembled him. She
+had the tenacity, the dissimulation, and the iron will of the late king,
+who had once said of her with his usual caustic manner that she was “the
+least foolish of women, since there were no wise women.” She proved that
+there was at least one, since she continued with admirable sagacity and
+energy all that was national in the plans of Louis XI. “She would have
+been worthy of the throne by her prudence and courage, if nature had
+not denied to her the sex upon which empire devolves.” This opinion of
+a contemporary is also that of posterity. Anne’s husband, a man of ripe
+age, of upright judgment, and a certain practical capacity, was but the
+first and most useful instrument of his wife. Through him she hoped to
+conciliate the other princes of the house of Bourbon, the duke de Bourbon
+and the archbishop of Lyons, brothers of the sire de Beaujeu; the old
+count de Montpensier, their uncle; the count de Vendôme and his son,
+their cousins; and the admiral de Bourbon, their bastard brother. The
+natural rival of Anne and her husband was the other son-in-law of Louis
+XI, the first prince of the blood, the duke Louis of Orleans, whose
+birth gave him the place of honour in the council. The name of Orleans
+awakened sad memories. But Duke Louis was hardly twenty-one years of
+age; repressed during the whole of his first years under the iron hand
+of his terrible father-in-law, bound from his infancy to a woman worthy
+of esteem for her gentleness and kindness, but whose exterior repulsed
+every other sentiment, it was not ambition to which he devoted the first
+days of his liberty. He emancipated himself more like a schoolboy than
+a prince, and broke rein only to throw himself body and soul into a
+whirl of pleasure. Women, gambling, tournaments, horses, the pleasures
+of the table, left him little inclination for the cares of politics. He
+preferred courting women, breaking lances, jumping ditches “fifteen feet
+wide,” to discussing royal edicts. Meanwhile he shared with the Bourbons
+the semblance of power, and his cousin, Dunois, son and heritor of the
+great count de Dunois, a most able man, and accustomed to diplomatic
+intrigues, spared nothing to draw him in the direction of duty. All who
+remained of the members and allies of the royal house had hastened to sit
+in council, and the first letters and edicts of Charles VIII are signed
+by several among them.
+
+Some acts of indispensable reparation and amends signalised the beginning
+of the new régime. All who had suffered, all who had been offended,
+oppressed, justly or unjustly, under the late king--that is to say,
+nearly everyone in the kingdom--urgently demanded justice. The people
+clamoured loudly for the abolition of duties, and the punishment of the
+“wicked councillors” of Louis XI. A host of great noblemen, the count du
+Perche, the children of the duke de Nemours, the count de Bresse, the
+brother of the last count d’Armagnac, the prince of Orange, and very many
+others asked, some of them liberty, others restitution of property which
+had been confiscated. The duke, René de Lorraine, came in his turn to
+reclaim the duchy of Bar, and the county of Provence as the heritage of
+his mother. Claims threatened to go very far.
+
+From the 22nd of September, all alienations of the royal domain, made for
+the benefit of either the church or private individuals, were revoked.
+The necessity for that measure could not be contested. The count du
+Perche was liberated from the cruel prison where he languished, and
+recovered the duchy of Alençon, confiscated but lately in spite of the
+just title of his father. The duke John de Bourbon, who had endured
+many affronts and vexations from Louis XI during the last years, was
+created lieutenant-general of the realm, and invested with the office of
+constable, vacant since the death of the count of Saint-Pol. This was
+the most powerful of the princes of the blood, by reason of the extent
+of his domains, but his infirmities and love of repose made him hardly
+equal to active participation in the government; his sister-in-law
+asked of him only the support of his name. The count de Dunois acquired
+a large pension with the governorship of Dauphiné, while the duke of
+Orleans became lieutenant-general of the Île-de-France, Picardy, and
+Champagne. The prince of Orange and the count de Bresse were again put
+in possession of their lands. This was only justice--at least to the
+prince of Orange, since the Treaty of Arras had stipulated reciprocal
+amnesty for all events relating to the war of the Burgundian Succession.
+The duke René of Lorraine, thanks to the support of the duke de Bourbon
+and Madame de Beaujeu, who expected to make use of the hero of Nancy
+against the princes of Orleans, obtained the restitution of Barrois,
+without re-embursement of the sums for which the king held Bar in pledge,
+a company of one hundred lancers, and 3,600 francs annually for four
+years, “during which time the claims of the count of Provence should
+be investigated.” Madame Anne did not intend to go further than the
+concession of Barrois and wished only to gain time in regard to Provence.
+According to feudal law, the pretensions of René were justified: female
+succession was so thoroughly admitted in Provence that two women had
+successively brought this county into the two houses of Anjou; but
+another law, more conformable to reason and the nature of things, tending
+to be substituted in place of feudal law, was that of French nationality
+recognised and accepted by Provence.
+
+These favours accorded to the princes were accompanied by harsh measures
+against the most odious of the ministers of the former reign. Oliver le
+Dain, count de Meulan, was sacrificed to popular vindictiveness, and
+Doyat to the resentment of the duke de Bourbon, whose follower he had
+been, and whom he had gravely offended. Oliver was condemned to death for
+various crimes, among others for having secretly killed a prisoner whose
+wife had sacrificed her honour to him as the price of her husband’s life;
+the barber count de Meulan was hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, and
+his properties were given to the duke of Orleans. Doyat was beaten with
+rods at the pillory of the market-place, and lost both his ears, after
+having had his tongue pierced by a hot iron--punishment reserved for
+blasphemers and calumniators. One of his ears was cut off at Paris, the
+other at Montferrand, where he had filled the office of royal bailiff.
+The physician Coitier was relieved from the loss of his lands and castles
+by a ransom of 50,000 crowns.
+
+Public sentiment demanded more than the punishment of a few wretches.
+The princes, divided among themselves, little known to the people, who
+had for them hardly any affection or fear, felt the impossibility of
+maintaining the despotic rule of Louis XI, and the necessity of having
+recourse to a national authority to obtain the obedience of the masses.
+The people would not have failed to resist universally the continuation
+of arbitrary taxation. This law reacted with irresistible force against
+the existing tyranny: a thousand voices repeated that “no king nor lord
+had the power to levy one denier on his subjects and on the revenues of
+his domain without the concession and consent of the people.” Comines,
+the admirer of Louis XI, devotes a whole chapter to the discussion of
+this principle, which he declares not only equitable but essential to
+the prosperity of states, and regrets profoundly that the late king had
+not respected it. “In England,” said he, “the kings can undertake no
+great enterprise, nor levy any subsidies without assembling parliament,
+which equals the three estates, and which is a just and holy thing.”
+And he declares that “men who enjoy credit and authority without in the
+least meriting them” are the only ones who fear the great assemblies,
+since they will through them be known for the little they are worth. The
+king’s council, on the proposition of the duke of Orleans, decided the
+convocation of the states-general at Tours, for the 5th of January, 1484,
+in spite of the outcries of some persons “of small importance, and little
+virtue, who said it was a crime of _lèse majesté_ to talk of assembling
+the estates, and would tend to diminish the authority of the king.”
+The friends of “Madame” as Anne of France was called, and those of the
+duke of Orleans, were agreed upon that important question. Each of the
+two parties which began to outline itself in the council hoped for the
+assistance of the estates against the other.
+
+The record of state of 1484, drawn up by one of the most trustworthy
+members of the order of the clergy, Jean Masselin, official of the
+archbishopric of Rouen, has been preserved to us. It is the most explicit
+account we possess of the national assemblies of France, before the
+sixteenth century. It is of great interest, and it preserves for us
+the memory of most important incidents. Nevertheless the states of 1484
+became less remarkable for their actions than for their mode of action,
+that is, innovations practised in the system of election. Louis XI, in
+1468, had already overturned the old form of the estates, but without
+substituting definitely a new form in the place of the old. The daughter
+of Louis XI, and the members of the council who nursed the project
+of the late king in the midst of a feudal reaction, effaced from the
+elections all trace of feudality, completing and regulating the work of
+Louis. Before Louis XI, the estates were composed only of the immediate
+feudatories of the king--prelates, barons, representatives of the _bonnes
+villes_, and the ecclesiastical or lay committees held by the crown.
+
+In the estates of 1484 the elections were made after a uniform
+regulation, by bailiwicks and _sénéchaussées_, by purely administrative
+divisions; the electors were convoked not as feudatories of the king, but
+as subjects of the realm; and for the first time the peasants, at least
+the free peasants, were called upon to take part in operations of first
+degree; they sent delegates from the villages to the lesser bailiwicks
+or provostships, where the electors of the third degree were chosen, who
+in the head-quarters of the bailiwick elected the deputies of the third
+estate. The social importance of such a change needs no commentary. There
+is now a real third estate, embracing the whole body of the people. The
+peasant is no longer the chattel of the lord of the manor, the appendix
+of the fief; he is the equal of the citizen, he is a member of the third
+estate.
+
+This is not all; the same spirit of unity and equality, at least
+relative, is manifested in the regulation applied to the two privileged
+orders. There, all vote directly and not by triple degree; and not only
+do the lower clergy elect representatives, but the bishops are admitted
+to the estates only when they have the votes of the ecclesiastical order,
+and not by virtue of their episcopal title. In the nobility as well, no
+great baron is member of the estates unless elected by the noblemen. The
+three orders, under this régime, appear like three superimposed nations,
+in which equality reigns. It is here the great difference appears between
+the democratic spirit of France and the aristocratic spirit of England.
+
+The only exceptions to the new rules were those provinces which were
+administered by annual provincial estates, and which continued to
+choose their deputies in their provincial estates, without resorting
+to popular assemblies of three degrees. This is true at least of
+Languedoc, and resulted, as a rule, in a veritable political inferiority
+of those countries formerly so much in advance of the others, their
+provincial estates retaining an oligarchical character in presence of a
+transformation wholly democratic.[g]
+
+The king’s minority and the factions at court seemed no unfavourable
+omens for liberty. But a scheme was artfully contrived which had the
+most direct tendency to break the force of a popular assembly. The
+deputies were classed in six nations, who debated in separate chambers,
+and consulted each other only upon the result of their respective
+deliberations. It was easy for the court to foment the jealousies
+natural to such a partition. Two nations, the Norman and the Burgundian,
+asserted that the right of providing for the regency devolved, in the
+king’s minority, upon the states-general; a claim of great boldness,
+and certainly not much founded upon precedent. In virtue of this, they
+proposed to form a council, not only of the princes, but of certain
+deputies to be elected by the six nations who composed the states. But
+the other four, those of Paris, Aquitaine, Languedoc, and Languedoïl
+(which last comprised the central provinces), rejected this plan, from
+which the two former ultimately desisted, and the choice of councillors
+was left to the princes.
+
+A firmer and more unanimous spirit was displayed upon the subject of
+public reformation. The tyranny of Louis XI had been so unbounded that
+all ranks agreed in calling for redress, and the new governors were
+desirous at least, by punishing his favourites, to show their inclination
+towards a change of system. They were very far, however, from approving
+the propositions of the states-general. These went to points which no
+court can bear to feel touched, though there is seldom any other mode of
+redressing public abuses--the profuse expense of the royal household, the
+number of pensions and improvident grants, the excessive establishment
+of troops. The states explicitly demanded that the taille and all other
+arbitrary imposts should be abolished; and that from thenceforward,
+“according to the natural liberty of France,” no tax should be levied
+in the kingdom without the consent of the states. It was with great
+difficulty, and through the skilful management of the court, that they
+consented to the collection of the taxes payable in the time of Charles
+VII, with the addition of one-fourth, as a gift to the king upon his
+accession. This subsidy they declare to be granted “by way of gift and
+concession, and not otherwise, and so as no one should from thenceforward
+call it a tax, but a gift and concession.” And this was only to be in
+force for two years, after which they stipulated that another meeting
+should be convoked. But it was little likely that the government would
+encounter such a risk; and the princes, whose factious views the states
+had by no means seconded, felt no temptation to urge again their
+convocation. No assembly in the annals of France seems, notwithstanding
+some party selfishness arising out of the division into nations, to have
+conducted itself with so much public spirit and moderation; nor had that
+country perhaps ever so fair a prospect of establishing a legitimate
+constitution.[j]
+
+The most serious question which the estates had to determine was that
+of regulating the composition of the council and deciding to whom
+the care and education of the king should be confided. The deputies
+would have liked to conciliate the princes without clashing with them.
+However, in the course of examining the various projects submitted to
+them, they were led to inquire if the states-general were invested with
+the constituent power. The opinion that this was so was shared by the
+most eminent members of the assembly, especially by those belonging to
+the order of the clergy, and had for interpreter an eloquent deputy of
+the Burgundian nobility, the sire de la Roche. He demonstrated that no
+absolute, fundamental rule for the administration of the kingdom during
+the minority or childhood of the king existed in France; that neither was
+the right of the princes in such circumstances in any way definite or
+precise. In consequence he maintained that it was for the nation, that
+is for the estates, to constitute the government in moments of crisis.
+He presented a theoretical and philosophic analysis of the principle of
+the sovereignty such as might be laid down in the schools; then he passed
+in review the history of preceding assemblies and showed that several of
+them, called together under exceptional circumstances, had exercised a
+genuine constituent power.
+
+In spite of the weight of this justly celebrated speech, the estates
+shrank from the danger of entering into a struggle with the council
+and the princes. They preferred to attempt an amiable conciliation of
+the different claims. It was not easy to come to an understanding even
+on this basis; for each day brought new difficulties. “It was,” says
+Masselin, “the seven-headed hydra. Cut one and two grow in its place.”
+Finally it was agreed that the duke of Orleans should have the first
+place at the council and the presidency in the young king’s absence; the
+duke de Bourbon and the sire de Beaujeu the second and third places; that
+the other princes of the blood should have the right to take their seats
+there after them; that all the existing councillors should be retained
+and that twelve new councillors, taken from the six bureaux of the
+estates, should be added to them.[k]
+
+
+_The Struggle with the Duke of Orleans_
+
+[Sidenote: [1484-1488 A.D.]]
+
+The discontent of the duke of Orleans was not appeased by the decision
+of the states. He was a handsome, frank, amiable man, not naturally
+inclined to be turbulent; but as first prince of the blood, and heir
+presumptive to the throne, it was derogatory to his pride and spirit to
+remain tranquil, while deprived of all influence by a woman. Dunois, son
+of the famous bastard of Orleans, was his chief friend and councillor--a
+man as fond of intrigue, apparently, as his stout sire had been of
+battle. The dukes of Lorraine and Bourbon seemed at first inclined to
+join him, but both were won over by the lady Anne; Bourbon, the elder
+brother of the lord of Beaujeu, being made constable. Orleans tried
+every expedient to shake the authority of the king’s sister. He sought
+to make himself popular in the capital, and to bring its citizens to
+declare in his favour. He tried the parliament also; but its president,
+La Vaquerie, replied that it was not their interest or duty to interfere
+in a private struggle for power. Orleans was soon after closely pressed
+by La Trémouille at the head of a superior army, and obliged to make
+submission; Dunois being banished to Asti, a town in Italy which the duke
+of Orleans inherited from his grandmother, Valentine of Milan.
+
+Such a forced submission could not conduce to a lasting peace. Dunois
+soon afterwards returned from exile. There was a plot for carrying
+off the king, which failed, and the duke of Orleans was obliged to
+take refuge in Brittany. The gay and fascinating manners of the French
+prince entirely won the good will of Francis, the reigning duke. He was
+without male heirs; and his daughter, as inheritor of the duchy, was a
+rich prize for an ambitious prince. It is said that the duke of Orleans
+became a suitor for the hand of Anne, and that Duke Francis favoured his
+pretensions.[61] But the native nobles of the province were jealous of
+the duke of Orleans and of his influence with their prince. They leagued
+with the lady of Beaujeu against both; and a French army, supported
+by a great body of Bretons, soon after besieged the dukes of Brittany
+and Orleans in Nantes. There were two other pretenders to the hand of
+the heiress of Brittany: the sire d’Albret, a rich lord of Gascony,
+into whose family the crown of Navarre had passed from that of Fox.
+The duke of Orleans, in prosecuting his own suit, affected to support
+this competitor. The other was Maximilian, king of the Romans. A timely
+succour sent by this prince obliged the French to raise the siege of
+Nantes; and the lady of Beaujeu betraying a disposition to conquer the
+duchy, and to garrison and appropriate its towns, the Bretons became
+suspicious, abandoned her, and resumed their allegiance to the duke.
+The war nevertheless continued. The troops on both sides met at St.
+Aubin, and a battle ensued. The French were commanded by La Trémouille;
+the prince of Orange and duke of Orleans led on the Bretons. The French
+gendarmerie, having routed the cavalry opposed to them, took the Bretons
+in flank and rear, and routed them. The duke of Orleans and the prince
+of Orange were both taken prisoners. They were startled to perceive a
+confessor enter their tent in the evening. La Trémouille, who saw and
+enjoyed their consternation, reassured them by observing that it was only
+for the inferior rebels to clear their consciences and prepare for death.
+
+[Sidenote: [1488-1491 A.D.]]
+
+An accommodation followed this defeat. The duke of Brittany made
+submissions, and survived but a short time. He was the last duke of the
+province, which now descended to his daughter Anne. There was another
+sister, who, as she died soon after, need not be more than mentioned.
+Affairs were now as unsettled as ever. The count d’Albret, seconded by a
+strong party of Bretons, who above all things aimed at the independence
+of their duchy, pushed his suit with the young heiress. The addresses
+of this aged noble could not be agreeable to a princess of fourteen.
+The duke of Orleans, the object of her predilection, was in prison. The
+armies of France were invading the duchy, and it behoved her to espouse
+a prince capable of defending her dominions. The resolution was taken
+that she should be married to Maximilian, king of the Romans, and the
+ceremony was accordingly performed by proxy; the archduke’s ambassador,
+to conclude it, putting a naked leg into the couch of the young duchess.
+Hitherto the aim of king Charles and his regent sister had been to
+conquer the duchy by force of arms, laying claim to it as a male fief.
+Charles had been long betrothed to Margaret of Austria, Maximilian’s
+daughter, who was then receiving her education in the French court, and
+awaiting the age of nubility. The stubbornness of the Bretons, however,
+made the lady of Beaujeu despair of her project. The ever-ready Dunois,
+in order to make his own peace and procure the liberty of the duke of
+Orleans, proposed that Charles should espouse the young duchess himself,
+and thus unite Brittany to the kingdom. Charles and his sister instantly
+entered into this scheme. The king, with a kingly generosity, began by
+setting the duke of Orleans, his secret rival, at liberty. This the
+monarch did without consulting his sister; nor was his generosity abused,
+for the duke remained ever after faithful to him, and even seconded his
+purpose of espousing Anne. Dunois, on his side, laboured to render the
+duchess less hostile to France. Anne still held with all the faithfulness
+of a wife to Maximilian, to whom she was nominally betrothed. An
+ostensible act of compulsion was deemed requisite to overcome her
+reluctance. A royal army besieged her in Rennes. One of the conditions of
+the capitulation was that she should espouse the king of France.[c]
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES VIII
+
+(From an old French engraving)]
+
+The marriage festivities which united Brittany to France took place at
+Langeais-Touraine. The pope declared the former marriage of Anne and
+Maximilian null and void, and the new queen was conducted to Paris to be
+crowned. All these negotiations took place in the greatest secrecy, as
+it was desired to conceal them from the envoy of Maximilian. The king of
+the Romans was doubly insulted. Charles VIII took from him a princess
+whom he had already married by proxy, and sent back to him his daughter
+Margaret, educated in Paris, since the Treaty of Arras, and destined to
+the throne of France. When the time came to declare the marriage, it
+was shown that Maximilian had been the first to violate the Treaty of
+Arras, that he had never ceased to make war against France for fourteen
+years, and that he had not respected the conventions of Frankfort or
+Plessis-les-Tours.
+
+[Sidenote: [1491-1492 A.D.]]
+
+The contract was made with much artfulness. Charles VIII and Anne gave up
+all their rights, their reciprocal pretensions which it was useless to
+pronounce upon. It was stipulated that these rights should be combined
+in the persons of the children born of this marriage; that if there were
+none, and the king should die, the duchess could not contract a second
+marriage except with his successor or the heir presumptive to the crown,
+on pain of losing the duchy.
+
+The province demanded the maintenance of its privileges, which were
+confirmed (declaration of July 7th, 1492). It preserved its particular
+estates, its supreme court of justice, which sixty years later became
+the parliament of Rennes, and its independent administration. It was
+assimilated in every respect with Dauphiné, Languedoc, Provence, and
+Burgundy, but it ceased to be a sovereign state, to become like those
+countries one of the members of the body of the monarchy. It is annoying
+that we cannot to-day follow, step by step, the artful conduct of the
+duchess of Bourbon. However that may be, she had at that time achieved
+her ends, and scored a complete triumph. Brittany was joined permanently
+to France; the princes were reconciled, in a definite manner this time.
+Finally Charles VIII arrived at man’s estate, and having nothing to fear
+of internal conspiracies, could defy those of foreign countries.
+
+Meanwhile the coalition, which had shown too little activity to hinder
+the reunion with Brittany, was too strongly opposed to it to accept it
+without protest. A war might be expected, or at least great diplomatic
+difficulties. Henry VII, Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic protested
+in common against an act which the latter called an unheard-of and
+execrable fraud. They agreed to attack France on her different frontiers.
+But the king of England was in a measure the only one to act. Ferdinand,
+for the last twelve years, was directing all his forces against Granada,
+and in spite of the triumph of his officers, who raised the Christian
+flag there in February, 1492, he could undertake nothing against France,
+unless it was to continue the hostilities on the frontier of Roussillon,
+which had never been interrupted. Maximilian, obliged to submit to
+Hungary, and to make war against the Turks, could the less wage war on
+the frontier of Artois, as he continued to be hampered by the ill will
+of the Flemish towns. Henry VII, on the contrary, had full liberty of
+action, and, what made him more dangerous, he never acted on calculation
+or on personal resentment. It was the national sentiment of England which
+protested against the aggrandisement of France. The English rightly
+regarded the union of Brittany with the rest of the monarchy as a fatal
+blow to their hopes of some day regaining Normandy and Guienne. Henry
+VII therefore declared war against Charles VIII; however, in yielding to
+the enthusiasm of his subjects, he took very little part in it; for, if
+the historian of his reign, the chancellor Bacon, is to be believed, he
+proposed alone to obtain the subsidies from parliament by flattering
+national vanity, and to sell to France as dearly as possible his
+recognition of the acquisition of Brittany.
+
+[Sidenote: [1492-1493 A.D.]]
+
+Charles VIII had to oppose the English regular army, already increased,
+whose augmentation had brought taxes up to the figure of 2,300,000
+livres. He collected all his supporters and obliged the principal towns
+of the realm to furnish him with men-at-arms. He called to his court also
+Perkin Warbeck, whom the Yorkists of England represented as a pretended
+son of Edward IV and a rival of Henry VII.
+
+The latter passed the Channel, but not before October, after long delays,
+and besieged Boulogne, which would have strengthened the position on
+the continent which Calais already assured him. Arriving under the
+walls of the fortress, he found there much stronger resistance than he
+had expected; he received no aid from the Netherlands, and he heard
+that the Spaniards had begun separate negotiations with Charles VIII.
+These reasons decided him to sign a treaty at Étaples in the month of
+November. He contented himself with the payment of large sums by France
+as indemnity for the English troops which had served in Brittany, or as
+amends for the rupture of the Treaty of Picquigny and interruption of the
+payment of subsidies promised to Edward IV by Louis XI.
+
+Charles VIII had undertaken separate negotiations with Ferdinand the
+Catholic. Roussillon and Cerdagne were objects of litigation between
+the crowns of Aragon and France, which had already lasted more than
+thirty years. Charles VIII finished by purely and simply restoring those
+two provinces, without even exacting reimbursement of the sums lent by
+Louis XI. The treaty was signed at Barcelona in January, 1493. France
+felt a certain astonishment at this abandonment of pretensions, on the
+subject of which all former offers of compromise had been refused. But
+notwithstanding that the question of law was not a simple one, and that
+the different acts of Louis XI had greatly complicated it, Charles VIII
+considered that, in buying the friendship of Spain at such a price, he
+would attain the dissolution of the coalition, assure to himself the
+possession of Brittany, and finally open an unobstructed road into Italy.
+He then made preparations to force the realm of Naples to respect the
+rights inherited by Louis XI through the princes of the house of Anjou.
+The king of Spain promised at Barcelona not to hinder his march to Italy
+in any way, and to furnish no aid to Ferdinand of Naples, who was of a
+bastard branch of Aragon, and even to aid the pretensions of France at
+the court of Rome, sovereign of the Two Sicilies.
+
+There remained still Maximilian and his son, the archduke Philip, then
+fourteen years of age. Although these princes were for the time not
+redoubtable, a treaty with them presented more difficulties, as they
+had been more personally offended, and in sending back the princess
+Margaret it was not possible to preserve her dowry, stipulated in the
+Treaty of Arras, that is to say of Artois and Franche-Comté. Already
+disturbances had broken out in the two provinces. Arras, which remembered
+the cruelties of Louis XI, had driven out her French garrison the day
+after the Treaty of Étaples. Franche-Comté became insurgent in its
+turn. Charles VIII by a last treaty signed May 23rd, 1493, at Senlis,
+restored the counties of Burgundy, Artois, Charolais, and Noyon. He
+contented himself by sequestrating the fortresses of Hesdin, Aire, and
+Béthune, until the day when Philip, having reached his majority, paid
+him homage; and to stipulate the restitution of Tournay, Mortagne, and
+St. Amand, towns of the ancient domain of the crown. Maximilian finished
+by accepting these conditions, which after all he was not in a position
+to refuse; for although his ambition was cosmopolitan, the extensiveness
+of his dominions and the multiplicity of interests which called him
+every year to a new point of Europe never permitted him to pursue to
+the end any enterprise of long duration. His thoughts were now turning
+towards the imperial throne, which the death of his father Frederick III
+allowed him to mount a few months later. The French government wished
+that, following usage, the Peace of Senlis should be guaranteed by the
+principal towns of Flanders, Hainault, and Artois, such as Ypres, Namur,
+Arras, and Valenciennes.
+
+Historians have often reproached Charles VIII with having signed
+oppressive treaties at Étaples, Barcelona, and Senlis, and above all to
+have partly restored by the last the power of the house of Burgundy,
+which had been previously weakened by the Treaty of Arras. Here was in
+effect a sad offset to the acquisition of Brittany; but the choice had to
+be made between Anne and Margaret, between Brittany and Franche-Comté. If
+Charles VIII made a blunder it was at least more excusable than that of
+Louis XI, who had never been placed in the same position.
+
+Charles VIII has also been reproached with having sacrificed the frontier
+and French-speaking provinces in seeking aggrandisement and conquests in
+a country so far removed as Italy. The conquests in Italy were bound to
+be ephemeral. It had been necessary in the peninsula to battle for half a
+century without retaining in the end a single inch of ground.
+
+Much more would have been attained by extending the northern frontier,
+which was too near Paris, and by attaching again to France the provinces
+which gravitated around her. But it was forgotten that Charles VIII, in
+sending back Margaret, had no claim worth considering on Franche-Comté or
+the Netherlands; that he had consequently on this side no motive for war,
+and that he could not undertake such a war without running foul of the
+empire and of allied Europe.
+
+Italy offered no such dangers. If prudence had, until now, hindered him
+from interfering in her revolutions, Charles VIII, having no longer
+any interior questions to regulate, was in a much better position than
+his father or grandfather had ever been. It is thus the treaties of
+1492 and 1493 should be understood. In France they were judged rather
+unfavourably, which was natural, since they stipulated concessions and
+restitutions; but they were not as has been said the result of the
+heedless enthusiasm of a young king, sacrificing the manifest interests
+of his realm to the passion for foreign conquest.[k]
+
+
+_Charles VIII in Italy_
+
+As already suggested, the acquisition of Brittany marks the conclusion
+of the first period of the reign of Charles VIII. The king was now of an
+age to shake off the leading-strings of his sister. He was old enough to
+have a policy of his own, and he was soon to show that he had one. It was
+a policy dominated by a single thought--the conquest of Italy. In putting
+that sinister policy into effect, Charles VIII inaugurated a new era in
+French history; a new era, indeed, in the history of all Europe. France
+was now the most closely unified kingdom in all Europe; it aspired to
+become an empire.
+
+The idea of the invasion of Italy was no doubt suggested by the fact that
+certain claims upon the kingdom of Naples had been bequeathed to Louis
+XI by Charles II of Anjou. Solicited by disaffected Neapolitans and by
+Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, Charles VIII now determined to go to
+Italy and make good his hereditary claims.[62][a]
+
+The thought of an expedition to Italy was most seductive to a prince as
+young as Charles VIII, nourished on traditions of chivalry, in which the
+study of antiquity was mingled with souvenirs of Cæsar and Alexander. It
+was equally seductive to the nobility, the army, and the whole country,
+as flattering to the national vanity. Since the Crusades no great foreign
+enterprises had been undertaken by the kings in the name of the nation.
+The campaigns of Du Guesclin in Spain, of John the Fearless at Nicopolis,
+of the princes of Anjou at Naples, had been only private expeditions
+and had not involved France. The war in Italy reopened the era of great
+conquests.
+
+In addition, this was an important epoch in French history as well
+as in that of all Europe. The old political system was upset. The
+empire was nothing more than a name at the head of what was still
+called Christianity. France seeking aggrandisement, the result was the
+prevalence of an idea of a necessary equilibrium among the great powers.
+This idea was not entirely new. The growth of France under Louis XI,
+the marriage of Maximilian of Austria to Mary of Burgundy, had already
+conduced to its formation. The powers observed how the rôle of diplomacy
+gradually grew, and conquests formed their necessary counterpoise in
+coalitions.
+
+Without going back to reminiscences of the brother of St. Louis, and the
+protectorate assumed by France over the Guelfs of Italy two centuries
+before, it may be well to recall the expeditions, undertaken by the
+princes of the younger branch of Anjou, to seize the crown of Naples.
+Louis II, René, John of Calabria, had, one after the other, claimed
+a succession regarded in France as a legitimate inheritance. René of
+Lorraine would again have followed that example in 1486, if the news that
+the great Angevin barons were treating with the house of Aragon had not
+stopped him, almost at the moment of departure. Men’s minds were occupied
+with what Comines called “the smoke and glories of Italy.” Louis XI had
+exercised some sort of a protectorate over the different states of the
+peninsula, governing Savoy and Montferrat by French princes; all-powerful
+at Milan; refusing the sovereignty of Genoa, which was offered to him;
+intervening as mediator in the dispute between Rome and Tuscany. Pius II
+has already stated that the greater part of the princes and people of
+Italy were more French than the French themselves, _Gallis Galliores_.
+
+The Orient was also thought of. The prediction of a crusade renewed
+by Pius II and Sixtus IV, after the entrance of Muhammed II into
+Constantinople, the terror with which the Turks inspired Europe, the
+growth of their conquests which had not slackened, the recent heroic
+defence of the walls of Rhodes by Pierre d’Aubusson, grand-master of
+the knights of St. John, carried back public thoughts to memories
+whose vividness time could not alter. Although times had changed, the
+brilliancy and glory of the Crusades had not been forgotten. It was
+indeed all that tradition had kept up after two centuries. Moreover the
+military strength was much greater, and inspired another confidence than
+that of former times. If the route of Charles of Anjou were followed,
+the Ottoman empire could not be attacked before being sure of a base of
+operations at Naples, and it was hoped that the Greek Christians would
+rise at sight of the banners of the new crusaders.
+
+In reality the oriental question had been asked; Europe was interested in
+solving it. Preparations were being made for the expedition into Italy.
+Each time that great events take place, public opinion is excited and the
+dominant ideas of the times reveal themselves in one way or another. It
+was now the first period of the Renaissance, in which the savants caused
+a perpetual confusion of antiquity and modern society.
+
+Ancient memories had therefore a peculiar influence. Guillaume de
+Villeneuve, officer and historian of Charles VIII, Jean Bouchet, author
+of _The Life of De la Trémouille_, Comines himself, in the latter part of
+his memoirs--all abused ancient history, from which they borrowed a long
+list of comparisons; they even took occasion to compare the crossing of
+the Alps by the king to the similar feats of Hannibal and Cæsar.
+
+Italy has always exercised a great and natural fascination, due to the
+beauty of the land and its cities, the splendour of its civilisation. The
+presence of so many monuments of antiquity, the study and appreciation
+of which had begun, had so much attraction for the French nobility, whom
+the Italians haughtily regarded as “barbarians,” but who were far from
+meriting this title. The French had indeed an exaggerated idea of a
+country less known than we should be inclined to suppose, since nations
+were far from having the same intercourse that they have at the present
+day.
+
+Charles VIII was, according to the Italians, who have portraits of
+him, small, of insignificant appearance, and expressed himself with
+difficulty. The desire for pleasure seemed to dominate him, and he is
+reproached with caring only for the chase, for dogs, falcons, and horses.
+The Tuscan and Venetian envoys at his court refused for a long time to
+believe that he could ever become a conqueror. They recognised, however,
+that he showed a certain natural ardour, when he assisted regularly at
+the reunions of his council, and reserved the decisions to himself.
+Nearly two years were consecrated to the necessary preparations. The
+enterprise, without being officially announced, was no secret to anyone.
+The Italian states were engrossed in it, and, with the exception of
+Milan, sent embassy after embassy to the court of France, to spy upon its
+actions, divine its intentions, and avert a project which menaced them
+all. The envoys, Florentines and others, whose correspondence has come
+down to us, showed infinite ability and genius in a series of delicate
+and difficult negotiations. But nothing proves more clearly the weakness
+of the government they were trying to serve than their tendency to
+intrigue, their perplexity, their suspicion, combined with self-deception
+and the duplicity of some of them.
+
+[Sidenote: [1493-1494 A.D.]]
+
+Charles VIII, on his side also, sent envoys beyond the Alps. He wished
+to isolate the king of Naples, to entangle the different states in an
+offensive alliance against him, or at least obtain their neutrality,
+but a neutrality favourable to free passage over their lands. Above
+all he scrutinised closely the court of Rome. As he had had his rights
+to southern Italy examined by the parliament and the parliament had
+declared them valid, he demanded a similar declaration from the pope,
+sovereign of the crown of Naples. Alexander VI could not be relied upon
+very strongly--a Spaniard by birth whose election had been opposed by the
+French; but it was hoped to frighten him by threatening to uphold his
+personal enemies, who were many, and by demanding a general reform in the
+church, a reform equally desired by France and demanded by Maximilian and
+Ferdinand the Catholic.
+
+Much as it was hoped also to find allies and resources in Italy, nothing
+was neglected for raising a large army, well equipped, and which should
+be sufficient in itself. Men-at-arms were not wanting. The difficulty was
+in organising them--the artillery, the wagons, and the ships necessary.
+Money was also needed, and to raise it every means in usage in such a
+case was employed. The pensions paid to the king were reduced for half
+a year; the treasurers were made to give advances; different loans were
+obtained, and an assessment was made on the banks of Milan and Genoa, and
+on Italian merchants; finally a particular tax was made on the clergy,
+under the form of a forced loan, as well as on the states of Languedoc,
+and several cities of the realm. All these negotiations required time,
+and were not concluded without difficulty. Paris and the other cities
+presented remonstrances, from which the Italian ambassadors concluded
+that the war was not popular and would not materialise.
+
+The pecuniary difficulties, the inevitable length of the preparations,
+the boldness of the enterprise, the uncertainty of the political
+situation in Europe gave rise to a natural opposition. Several of the
+former councillors of Louis XI, such as M. d’Argenton (Comines), and the
+sire de Graville, grand admiral, expressed their doubts and fears. The
+duke de Bourbon saw with regret the abandonment of the prudent policy
+which he had followed until then, but neither he nor the duchess was any
+longer master of the government. Des Querdes maintained that, if it were
+desirable to make conquests, it would be better to look for them in the
+Netherlands rather than in Italy. Meanwhile the opponents generally held
+themselves in reserve, and sought rather to moderate the enthusiasm than
+to combat it.
+
+The general rendezvous was to be at Lyons. Des Querdes, who was to have
+the command, died before the departure. The king resolved therefore to
+place himself in person at the head of his troops. He arrived at Lyons
+in the month of April, 1494; but preparations were not completed, and
+he had to wait several months before entering upon the campaign. Ships
+were wanting, and it became necessary to construct a certain number
+for transporting one division of artillery. At last the departure took
+place in the month of September, although no tents, pavilions, nor other
+necessaries were at hand.[k]
+
+[Sidenote: [1494-1495 A.D.]]
+
+The details of the incidents of this memorable tour[63] have already
+been given in our history of Italy, and need not be repeated here. We
+have there seen how Charles VIII was permitted to enter Florence as the
+friend of the people, yet came with all the presumption of a conqueror;
+how he went to Rome and was there received with the outward semblance
+of friendship by Alexander VI; and how he entered Naples and took the
+nominal kingship of that realm without striking a blow. It will be
+recalled that while the king lingered in Naples, antagonistic princes
+gathered in the north of Italy, and attempted to intercept the French
+army on its return. The French army, fatigued from its long march, and
+only about nineteen thousand strong, with five or six thousand servitors
+or guards of the transport in its train, met the Italian army of at least
+thirty thousand fresh and well-supplied men in the duchy of Parma near
+the castle of Fornovo on the right bank of the Taro, on the 5th of July,
+1495.[a]
+
+It was a brief but sharply fought battle with alternations of success
+and defeat for both armies. The two chief officers of the royal forces,
+Louis de la Trémouille and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, sustained without
+wavering the shock of troops far more numerous than their own. “At
+their throats--at their throats!” cried La Trémouille after the first
+counter, and his three hundred men fell upon the enemy with sufficient
+force to break their ranks. During the heat of the battle the French
+baggage wagons were attacked by the _stradiots_, a Greek corps recruited
+and paid by the Venetians. “Let them alone!” shouted Trivulzio to his
+troops; “their ardour for pillage will make them forget everything else
+and we can the more easily overcome them.” At one time the king was in
+advance of the main body of his guard and had neglected to see if they
+were closely following. He approached to within a hundred feet of the
+marquis of Mantua, who, seeing him so slimly accompanied, charged at him
+with all his cavalry. “It is not possible,” says Comines,[d] “to strike
+harder blows than were given on both sides.” The king, closely pressed
+and surrounded, defended himself valiantly against those who sought to
+take him. The bastard Matthew de Bourbon, his brother-at-arms and one of
+the bravest knights of the army, rushed forward twenty steps in advance
+of the king to protect him, and had just been taken prisoner when a large
+body of the royal troops came to the rescue of both and delivered them
+from peril. It was in this engagement that Pierre du Terrail, Chevalier
+de Bayard, at that time scarcely twenty years of age but destined later
+to achieve such fame, performed his first feats of arms.[64] He had two
+horses killed under him, and took one standard, which he presented to
+the king, being rewarded by the latter after the battle with a gift of
+500 crowns.[e]
+
+[Sidenote: [1495-1498 A.D.]]
+
+As a result of the battle Charles VIII and his troops were allowed to
+continue their march unmolested; but their return to France partook
+somewhat of the nature of a retreat. It was not to be expected that a
+territory so distant as Naples could be held subordinate to the French
+crown without difficulty; and while Charles himself and his followers
+no doubt regarded the expedition as a great success, it was really in
+the sober view of posterity a most lamentable enterprise. It was fraught
+with all manner of deplorable sequels, as we shall see. But of course
+the French people could not be expected to anticipate future events, and
+for the moment they were able to welcome their king back to Paris as a
+conqueror and a hero.[a]
+
+
+_Death of Charles VIII_
+
+The two years which elapsed from Charles’ return over the Alps to his
+death were marked by no event of importance. The chief expenditure and
+amusement that occupied him seemed to be the building and ornamenting
+of the castle of Amboise, for which he had brought with him eminent
+architects and artists from Italy. His sons perished in infancy one after
+the other; the name of the last, Charles Orlando, marking the favourite
+studies and thoughts of the monarch. In the spring of 1498 a game of
+ball, which interested the king, was played in the fosse of the castle
+of Amboise, where he resided. Charles, an affectionate husband, brought
+the queen to witness it. Passing in haste through the low archway of a
+gallery, he struck his head somewhat violently against it; for the moment
+the blow did not seem to affect him, but soon after, he was seized with a
+stroke of apoplexy, and died at the early age of twenty-seven. “Charles,”
+says Comines,[d] “was of a small person, and little understanding; but a
+better creature was not to be seen.”[c]
+
+By the death of Charles VIII, the direct line of Valois was ended, and
+the crown was transferred to the collateral branch of Valois-Orleans,
+descended from Louis I, duke of Orleans, second son of Charles V.
+
+
+LOUIS XII, “THE FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE” (1498-1515 A.D.)
+
+The transmission of the crown of France to another branch of the royal
+house had been effected without agitation and without an obstacle;
+there were whispers, but in hushed voices, round Madame de Bourbon, the
+ancient enemy of duke Louis, that that prince had forfeited his rights by
+bearing arms against the crown of France in the Breton war; but no one
+ventured to exhibit such ideas abroad, and the new king, by his prudent
+and generous conduct, prevented any chance of disturbance. It would not
+be becoming and to the honour of the king of France to avenge the wrongs
+of the duke of Orleans--such was the maxim which guided the first acts of
+Louis XII.
+
+[Sidenote: [1498-1499 A.D.]]
+
+He sent for the sire Louis de la Trémouille, that renowned captain who
+had made him prisoner at the battle of St. Aubin, and confirmed him in
+all his offices, rank, pensions, and advantages. He declared that he
+would maintain every man in his full possessions and rights, and refused
+to bear in mind which of the late king’s servants had persuaded Charles
+VIII in the latter part of his life to keep the first prince of the blood
+in a species of exile. Finally he invited Madame Anne of France and her
+husband Duke Peter de Bourbon to come to him at Blois and lavished on
+them marks of esteem and favour of every kind; his generosity towards
+them even appeared to many people to go beyond the boundaries prescribed
+by the interests of the state. Louis XI, in giving his daughter Anne in
+marriage to the sire Peter de Beaujeu, had stipulated in the contract
+that if Peter should inherit property from the ducal branch of the house
+of Bourbon (which actually happened), those great domains, although
+originally feminine fiefs, should return to the crown in case Peter
+should die without male heirs. Now Duke Peter was old and had only
+a daughter named Suzanne; the last great lordship (_seigneurie_) of
+central France was thus about to be merged in that royal domain which had
+successively absorbed all the great fiefs. The king allowed himself to
+be drawn into sacrificing this final result of the labours of Louis XI,
+and by letters patent of the 12th of May, 1498, he annulled the ancient
+contracts and treaties which excluded Suzanne from the paternal fiefs.
+The marriage of Suzanne with her cousin Charles de Bourbon, who like
+herself was still a child, secured that the heritage should not pass from
+that house. The parliament of Paris, accustomed to defend the permanent
+interests of the crown against the kings themselves, only enregistered
+the royal letters after a resistance of several months.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS XII]
+
+Louis XII showed no less benevolence to the good towns than to the
+princes and old servants of Charles VIII; he promised the citizen
+deputies who had come to pay him their respects to give his attention
+to improving the condition of the poor people; he published a severe
+ordinance for the repression of robberies and violences committed by the
+soldiers; he diminished the taxes (_tailles_) by two hundred thousand
+livres, and dispensed Paris and the whole kingdom from the _don de joyeux
+avènement_. Louis XII kept the promises of the opening of his reign: his
+well-directed energy, his desire to do good did not fail. The frivolous
+and libertine young prince had become a humane king, moderate, devoted to
+his duties, an economical administrator, who kept a careful watch over
+the public wealth, the protector of order and of justice, the equitable
+rewarder of merit and honesty: unfortunately he had little initiative
+and little breadth of mind, and the facility of his disposition placed
+him to an inordinate degree under the influence of those he loved. It is
+true that he often had the good sense and the good fortune to bestow his
+affections in safe keeping: his principal minister and his best friend,
+George d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen, who had participated in his evil
+fortune and who shared, not to say absorbed his power, was certainly
+worthy to govern the king and the kingdom, if the internal administration
+alone is taken into consideration; but abroad the blind and often
+reprehensible policy in which George involved Louis afforded a melancholy
+compensation for the services rendered at home.
+
+
+_Marriage with Anne of Brittany_
+
+The first months of the reign of Louis XII were filled with an important
+matter which touched no less the most precious interests of the realm
+than the private life of the king. By the marriage contract of Charles
+VIII and Anne of Brittany the husband and wife had combined their
+respective rights over Brittany to the advantage of the survivor; this
+duchy therefore returned to the widow and was once more separated from
+France. Madame Anne of Brittany had already returned to her town of
+Nantes and had been reinstated in full possession of her sovereignty.
+It is true that another article of the contract, in order to obviate
+this separation, required the duchess not to marry again except with the
+successor of Charles VIII or the heir presumptive to the crown; but for
+twenty-two years the king had been married to the second daughter of
+Louis XI and had no son. Louis resolved to push aside the obstacle which
+separated him and the widowed queen and set to work to obtain a divorce
+from the deformed Joan of France in order to marry the fair sovereign
+of Brittany. It has been universally repeated, on the faith of certain
+writers, contemporaries of Louis XII, that the duke of Orleans and the
+duchess Anne had been previously attached to one another and that, during
+the Breton war, Louis had secretly contended with the other suitors for
+the hand of Anne. This tradition is confuted by a simple comparison
+of dates: when the duke of Orleans withdrew to Brittany in 1484, the
+princess was only eight years old: she was but twelve when he was taken
+prisoner at St. Aubin-du-Cormier. What does seem certain was that
+Landois, the intriguing favourite of Francis II, had even then suggested
+to Duke Louis the idea of a divorce for purely political objects, and
+that Duke Francis II had secretly promised his daughter to the duke
+of Orleans. Be that as it may, the duke of Orleans, after leaving his
+prison, figured without apparent repugnance in the negotiations which
+brought about the union of Charles and Anne and was even one of the
+king’s witnesses at Rennes and Langeais.
+
+[Illustration: ANNE OF BRITTANY
+
+(From an old French engraving)]
+
+Whilst Charles VIII was still alive nothing indicated that the duke and
+the queen had feelings of tenderness for one another; they were even at
+one time on very bad terms--on the occasion of the death of the little
+dauphin Charles Orlando, the death which had made Louis heir to the
+crown. Anne bore a grudge against Louis for the slight sympathy he had
+shown for her in her maternal grief. Finally Anne gave expression to a
+somewhat theatrical despair on the death of Charles VIII, a husband very
+far from faithful, but gentle and affectionate; she was the first queen
+of France who wore black for mourning; hitherto the widows of kings had
+dressed in white, which circumstance had procured for them the title of
+“white queens” (_reines blanches_). Anne assumed black as the symbol of
+constancy, because it cannot fade.
+
+In spite of these demonstrations of a showy grief, the proud and
+ambitious Anne graciously received the first advances of the new king
+who proposed to her that she should not leave the throne of France,
+and Louis had little difficulty in persuading her to sign on the 9th
+of August a promise of marriage to be fulfilled as soon as might be.
+The king, without loss of time, had presented to Pope Alexander VI an
+application for the dissolution of his marriage. The circumstances were
+favourable: the Roman pontiff wished to withdraw his son, the cardinal
+De Valence (Cesare Borgia), from the ecclesiastical state that he might
+make him a secular prince; he had asked for him the hand of a daughter
+of Frederick, king of Naples. Frederick refused this shameful alliance.
+Alexander in his anger threw himself on the French side and undertook not
+only to authorise the king’s divorce but to second his plans in Italy on
+condition that Cesare Borgia should have his share. A bull of the 29th
+of July charged three ecclesiastical commissioners to inquire into and
+take proceedings on the monarch’s application. Two of these delegates,
+the cardinal De Luxemburg and the bishop of Albi, brother of George
+d’Amboise, were devoted to the king. Louis recognised this service by
+investing Cesare Borgia with the counties of Valentinois and Diois in
+Dauphiné; besides this he gave him a company of one hundred lances and
+a pension of 20,000 livres and promised to help the holy see to subdue
+the petty princes of Romagna. George d’Amboise received the cardinal’s
+hat from Alexander VI: such was the earnest of the odious alliance which
+formed the ineffaceable stain on the reign of Louis XII. The excuse of
+the public advantage, the necessity of gaining over the pope in order to
+procure the divorce, closed the eyes of Louis and induced him to take
+the first steps; he was then unable to stop and almost his whole reign
+presented the aspect of two faces offering a strange contrast, the one of
+uprightness, good sense, and humanity at home; the other of injustice,
+violence, and folly abroad.
+
+Joan of France, who had not been crowned with her husband and had not
+been accorded the honours of a queen, was summoned to appear on the
+30th of August at the deanery of Tours before the pope’s commissioners.
+There is something sad and ignominious about the details of this trial.
+Joan, resigned beforehand to a fate too clearly foreseen, defended
+herself solely from a sense of duty: the dissolution of the marriage was
+pronounced on the 17th of December and the repudiated wife withdrew to a
+convent at Bourges.
+
+Louis XII now only awaited the necessary dispensation of consanguinity
+to marry Anne of Brittany: Cesare Borgia, whom the king had enticed into
+France in order to make him an instrument and who had arrived at the
+court in semi-royal state, was endeavouring to extort fresh favours from
+Louis before complying with his wishes; the bishop of Ceuta, one of the
+pope’s commissioners, revealed to the king that the dispensation had been
+signed by Alexander VI and was now in Cesare’s possession. Louis made
+ready to take further proceedings; Cesare then produced the bull which he
+had no further interest in keeping; but the bishop of Ceuta died a few
+days later--poisoned.
+
+In the château of Nantes, three weeks after the granting of the divorce,
+Louis XII married the widow of Charles VIII: the marriage treaty, signed
+the 6th of January, 1499, by the chief nobles of France and Brittany,
+was much less advantageous to the crown than the contract of Langeais
+between Charles VIII and Anne. Anne and her subjects, having in view the
+re-establishment of Breton independence,[65] required that the duchy of
+Brittany should be destined to the second child, male or female, to be
+born of the future marriage or, if the married couple had only one heir,
+to the second child of that heir; if the duchess died childless before
+the king, Louis was to retain Brittany during his life, but after him the
+duchy was to return to the next heirs of Madame Anne. As yet it was but a
+feeble bond which attached Brittany to France. The king swore to preserve
+to Brittany all its rights and liberties, its own administration judicial
+and political, its council, parliament, chamber of accounts (_chambre
+des comptes_), general treasury, and assembly of the three estates for
+the reform of the customs, tolls, and the levy of subsidies; he promised
+that benefices should only be given to natives according to the exclusive
+choice of the queen; that no new jurisdiction might be established and
+that free episcopal electors should be defended against the pretensions
+of the pope.
+
+The whole conduct of Louis had shown that he desired this alliance
+equally as man and king: whether he had or had not loved the queen during
+the lifetime of Charles VIII he bore her during the whole period of their
+union a constant and unique affection which formed a singular contrast to
+the vulgar and licentious amours of his youth. It was doubtless by a kind
+of delicate flattery that contemporary writers traced back the origin
+of the king’s passion to the childhood of the heiress of Brittany. The
+Breton duchess, who had the obstinacy rather than the sensibility of her
+race, made but a feeble response to this tenderness and took advantage of
+it to draw her docile husband into deplorable political errors.[g]
+
+
+_Foreign Affairs_[66]
+
+The domestic and internal affairs of the kingdom thus regulated, Louis
+turned his views towards Italy. He was eager to renew the successes and
+avenge the defeats of his predecessor. He had not only to support the
+claims of the house of Anjou upon Naples, but to maintain his own private
+right to the duchy of Milan. The Sforza, soldiers of fortune, had usurped
+the duchy, and founded their right on the marriage of the first Sforza
+with Blanche, the natural daughter of the last Visconti. Louis XI had
+allied with them, and had refused to permit the duke of Orleans to insist
+upon his heritage. No sooner did the latter become Louis XII than he
+assumed the title of duke of Milan, and prepared, by arms and alliances,
+to prosecute his claim.
+
+Lodovico Sforza had usurped the duchy, and secured it by poisoning his
+nephew: he was peculiarly hateful to the French, from having been the
+first to entice Charles VIII into Italy, and afterwards the first to
+betray him. His crimes made him equally odious to his countrymen. The
+pope was won over by the gift of the duchy of Valentinois, which the king
+gave to his notorious son, Cesare Borgia. The Florentines were in the
+French interest, and the Venetians leagued with Louis in order to share
+the spoils of Lodovico. In short, when a French army entered the Milanese
+in the summer of 1499, it met with no resistance. The duchy submitted
+almost without a blow, and Lodovico fled to Innsbruck, to his only ally,
+Maximilian.
+
+[Sidenote: [1500-1502 A.D.]]
+
+Lodovico returned with an army in the ensuing year. The capital rose
+in his favour. Trivulzio, who had been left governor of the duchy,
+was besieged in the town-house, and was only rescued by the audacious
+gallantry of some sixty knights, his followers. The French were obliged
+to evacuate the province. At the first tidings of the insurrection, La
+Trémouille marched from France to succour Trivulzio. Lodovico sought to
+intercept this aid by posting himself at Novara. But when the outposts
+of both armies touched, the Swiss in Lodovico’s service learned that
+their comrades in the French army were better paid and treated. On the
+eve of action these mercenaries declared their intention of deserting to
+the French. Lodovico Sforza used the strongest entreaties to dissuade
+them; but finding them determined, he merely begged not to be delivered
+to the enemy. How was he to escape from Novara, in which he was in a
+manner besieged? The Swiss consented to allow him to mingle in their
+ranks, clothed as one of their soldiers. Their treachery, however, or
+the vigilance of the French, discovered the unfortunate Lodovico in the
+Swiss ranks, as they marched out of Novara. He was taken, and conveyed to
+France, where he was confined in the castle of Chinon until he died. Thus
+Louis subdued for the second time the duchy of Milan.
+
+The conquest of Naples still remained to be achieved; but the present
+enmity of Maximilian king of the Romans rendered it inexpedient to
+undertake at present so distant an expedition, which would leave Milan
+exposed to the hostility of the Germans. This inability to conquer,
+joined with the impatience to possess, caused Louis to commit an
+egregious blunder. He formed an alliance with Ferdinand king of Spain,
+to divide between them the kingdom of Naples, to the exclusion of its
+reigning monarch, who was of the illegitimate race of Aragon. Louis was
+to have the better or northern half of the kingdom, the city of Naples
+included. Ferdinand, who merely wanted a pretext to obtain a footing in
+the peninsula, and introduce forces, was to content himself with Apulia
+and Calabria. Accordingly, Ferdinand sent Gonsalvo de Cordova, and Louis
+despatched Stuart d’Aubigny, each to conquer their respective portions,
+which they effected; the reigning monarch at first confiding in Gonsalvo,
+who of course betrayed him. Frederick of Naples, being driven from his
+capital and kingdom, fled first to Ischia and thence to France, where
+Louis gave him the duchy of Anjou as a compensation for the loss of his
+crown.
+
+Louis now turned his views towards the Venetians. They had obtained
+Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, the eastern territories of the duchy of Milan,
+as the price of their co-operation against Sforza. The king envied them
+this portion of his duchy, as they hated and feared the newly grown power
+of a foreign monarch in Italy. He endeavoured to bring Maximilian of
+Austria to join in an alliance against them; and a treaty was concluded,
+by which Maximilian promised the investiture of the duchy of Milan to
+Louis. Maximilian’s grandson Charles (afterwards emperor) was to marry
+the princess Claude, the daughter of Louis. The designs, however, which
+the monarchs entertained against Venice were interrupted by the bad
+faith of Ferdinand of Spain, which began to manifest itself in Naples.
+The agreement by which this kingdom was partitioned between two rival
+powers, without any fixed line of demarcation, was necessarily rather
+a source of war than a seal of peace. A great portion of the country’s
+revenue proceeded from the tax on the herds of cattle, which were yearly
+collected in the plains. Quarrels arose about this, and about the limits
+of the provinces; and war soon broke out between Gonsalvo and the duke de
+Nemours, who was viceroy for the French.
+
+[Sidenote: [1502-1503 A.D.]]
+
+He was now leagued with the Borgias--the father, the execrable pope
+Alexander VI; his son, Cesare Borgia, one of the heroes of Macchiavelli.
+They betrayed Louis at every turn; crushed and murdered his friends.
+Still the French king temporised; and in a treaty concluded with them at
+this period, he agreed to sacrifice to them several of the independent
+nobility of Italy--among others, the Bentivoglios and the Orsini. One
+of the causes of this blindness in Louis was the care which the pope
+took to win the favour of the cardinal D’Amboise, the French minister,
+whom he cajoled in a manner which was afterwards practised on Wolsey, by
+flattering him with the hope of succeeding to the popedom. The French
+were at first the strongest party in Naples. Gonsalvo retired before
+D’Aubigny, and shut himself in Barletta. There were several combats: one,
+in which the brave La Palisse was taken; another, of thirteen French
+against thirteen Italians, in which the Italians had the best, although
+their enemies assert that the advantage was won by treacherously stabbing
+the horses of the French knights. The Spanish monarch had recourse to
+artifice, his usual weapon. Seizing the opportunity of his son-in-law the
+archduke Philip’s travelling through France, he proposed a new treaty
+to Louis, by which Naples was to be brought as the princess Claude’s
+dowry to young Charles, the grandson of Ferdinand and Maximilian. Louis
+XII gladly and confidently agreed to these proposals. He relaxed in
+his exertions for reinforcing his army in Naples, while Ferdinand made
+use of the interval to send potent succours to Gonsalvo. The continued
+hostilities and successes of this captain, notwithstanding the pacific
+declaration and arrangement of his master, awakened Louis from his supine
+confidence. But it was too late. D’Aubigny was beaten by the Spaniards
+and taken prisoner at Seminara in Calabria, the scene of one of his
+former victories. On the same day of the ensuing week, the hostile
+commanders, Gonsalvo and the duke de Nemours, met at Cerignola. It was
+towards evening, and the Spaniards threw up an entrenchment before their
+position. The duke de Nemours would not tarry. He ordered an instant
+attack, which was at first successful. He himself, leading on another to
+support it, was slain by a bullet from an arquebuse; and his followers
+failing in the assault, a rout ensued, in which the French army were
+for the most part dispersed. Naples surrendered to Gonsalvo. Its castle
+was taken by mining--a mode of offence invented in these wars. Shortly
+afterwards, the fortress of Gaeta was the only post in the kingdom that
+held for the French.
+
+Louis raised armies to attack Ferdinand in the Pyrenees and in Italy; but
+equally without result. The reign of the Borgias was immediately after
+brought to a tragical close. The pope and his son had invited several
+rich cardinals, their intimates, to sup with them in a vineyard. The
+Borgias intended to poison them; and Cesare Borgia sent some bottles of
+medicated wine, under the especial care of a domestic, to the spot. The
+pope arrived first; he was thirsty, and called for drink. The poisoned
+wine was poured out for him; and his son, coming in at the moment,
+partook of it. Pope Alexander expired soon after, and his son’s life
+was saved only by means of antidotes and a strong constitution. Great
+intrigues agitated the conclave. An aged and infirm pope was elected by
+way of compromise. In another conclave the cardinal D’Amboise was not
+more successful. An Italian prelate was preferred, who soon displayed
+his imperious, ambitious, and warlike spirit, under the name of Julius
+II. Cesare Borgia had contributed to his election, in return for a
+promise of protection; and Julius showed his gratitude by arresting
+Borgia immediately afterwards. He escaped, however, and fled to Gonsalvo,
+who, receiving him with friendship equally insincere, put an end to
+the career of this prince of intrigue by sending him prisoner to Spain.
+In the meantime the French army remained inactive for want of a chief.
+Gonzaga had been driven from the command by the taunts of the French: the
+marquis of Saluzzo succeeded him, but with no more success. The campaign
+served but to display the valour of the brave Bayard, who alone defended
+the passage of a bridge against a body of Spaniards for a considerable
+time. Gonsalvo was everywhere successful; and Gaeta, the last fortress of
+the French, surrendered in a panic.
+
+[Sidenote: [1503-1506 A.D.]]
+
+The tidings of this ill fortune, and especially of the loss of Gaeta,
+so affected Louis that he fell into a dangerous illness. He was tended
+with exemplary affection by his queen, Anne of Brittany. But that prudent
+princess, seeing his death imminent, despatched much of her valuables
+to be conveyed down the Loire to Brittany. The heir to the crown, young
+Francis, Count d’Angoulême, then inhabited, with his mother, the château
+of Amboise. The marshal De Gié was the chief counsellor and influential
+man of this embryo court. Over zealous for the interests of the future
+king, and deeming Louis past hope, De Gié stopped the valuables of the
+queen as they descended the Loire past Amboise. Anne never forgave the
+insult. Louis recovered, and the marshal De Gié was pursued by the
+vengeance of the queen for years. He was tried; and it is a great proof
+of the improvement of the judicature that he escaped with life from so
+powerful an enemy. This circumstance increased the hatred between the
+mother of Francis, Louise of Savoy, and Queen Anne. By the last treaty
+with Maximilian it had been agreed that his grandson Charles should marry
+Claude, the daughter of Louis, and with her inherit the Milanese. Some
+time previous to the last illness of the king, Maximilian had sent an
+embassy to conclude and enlarge this treaty. The monarch was at the time
+sorely vexed by his disasters in Naples, and greatly enraged against the
+fickleness and bad faith of the Italian powers. Above all he was incensed
+against Venice; and in order to be avenged on this proud republic, he
+granted to Maximilian all that he asked. The cessions then made or
+stipulated by Louis are so enormous as to be incredible. The heirs of his
+daughter Claude by Charles of Luxemburg were to possess not only Milan,
+but the duchies of Burgundy and Brittany, thus dismembering the monarchy
+of France, and reducing it almost by one-half.
+
+De Seyssel,[h] the minister and biographer of Louis, excuses his
+conduct on this occasion, by saying that the king merely wanted to gain
+Maximilian’s aid against the Venetians, and that he never intended
+to fulfil these conditions. It seems much more probable that these
+stipulations were owing to the influence of Anne of Brittany; to the
+love of that queen for her own daughter, whose exaltation she preferred
+to that of France; and at the same time to Anne’s hatred of Louise of
+Savoy, and of her son Francis, the heir to the throne. Every Frenchman
+was shocked and terrified at the prospect of these provinces being
+conveyed to a foreign power. Louis himself, listening to the advice
+of his counsellors, was struck with remorse at the folly and want of
+patriotism which characterised such measures. The states-general were
+called together: they drew up a strong remonstrance against them, and
+supplicated that the princess Claude should be given in marriage to
+Francis. The king consented to this. But so long as Anne of Brittany
+lived, she never allowed the marriage to take place.
+
+Maximilian was of course extremely wroth on learning that the king of
+France and the assembly of the nation refused to fulfil the treaty.
+He resolved to attack the French in Italy. Genoa about this time had
+rebelled against Louis. Louis, however, conquered and reduced it to
+submission. Maximilian was too late to support the insurrection. The
+Venetians, then allies of the king, barred the passage of the Austrians
+into Italy. They defeated Maximilian, and compelled him to purchase a
+treaty, resigning his conquests. They concluded it without awaiting the
+consent of Louis, or allowing him to derive from it any advantage.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH PEASANT, REIGN OF LOUIS XII]
+
+[Sidenote: [1506-1509 A.D.]]
+
+This was a new grievance added to the many already entertained against
+these republicans by the French. Maximilian was of course ready to join
+against them. Pope Julius was at variance with them on account of Faenza,
+and other towns, the wreck of the Borgian usurpations, which they held.
+Between these powers and Ferdinand of Spain was formed the famous League
+of Cambray for the destruction of Venice. It was called famous from
+having nearly attained its aim--a distinction which could be applied to
+few treaties of the time. In raising his army for this enterprise the
+king made an important improvement in his levies. He began to mistrust
+the Swiss, whose mercenary and turbulent spirit was scarcely recompensed
+by their character for courage. Therefore, although he hired a corps
+of them to the number of 6,000, he at the same time endeavoured to
+resuscitate the French infantry. Louis XI had abandoned the good custom
+of training the French peasants to arms, which had so contributed to
+the victories of Charles VII. The despot dreaded a national army. The
+armies of Charles VIII, and hitherto those of Louis XII, were composed of
+mounted gentlemen, who formed the cavalry, and of hired Swiss, or perhaps
+a few Gascons, for infantry. This was the principal reason of the first
+success and subsequent defeats of the French in Naples. Cavalry force, so
+superior when in good condition, is liable to be unhorsed, and is more
+easily disorganised than infantry. Louis now levied a body of infantry in
+France of from 12,000 to 14,000 men. To give spirit and respectability
+to this force, he induced his bravest captains, Bayard, Molard, and
+Chabannes, to fight on foot and command these new brigades; and it
+required all his influence to make them submit to such degradation. The
+French cavalry amounted to 12,000 men. With this army he marched against
+the Venetians. Their army, nowise inferior, was commanded by the count
+of Pitigliano, whose policy accorded with the orders of the senate to
+avoid a battle. Alviano, the Venetian general second in command, risked
+an attack in despite of this at Agnadello. An action took place, in
+which the count feebly supported his lieutenant. Louis, who fought in
+the thickest of the engagement, was victorious. The Venetian army was
+utterly routed; and the French king, advancing to the brink of the
+lagunes, enjoyed the satisfaction of sending from his cannon some vain
+shots against the discomfited but still unsubdued queen of the Adriatic.
+This success dissolved the league. Julius II, having obtained possession
+of the towns which he coveted from the Venetians, leagued with them
+against Louis; and a war, or a succession of skirmishes, ensued.
+
+[Sidenote: [1509-1512 A.D.]]
+
+Louis sent a powerful army against the pope, under the command of Gaston
+de Foix, duke de Nemours, his sister’s son, then twenty-two years of age.
+The battle of Ravenna ensued, and the French were victorious. The sack of
+Ravenna was almost the only fruit reaped by this signal victory. Julius
+II, undaunted by defeat, refused to yield. He raised up the English and
+the Swiss against Louis, who threatened with invasion from both these
+countries. Maximilian let loose upon Milan his namesake, Massimiliano
+Sforza, son of Lodovico; and the Swiss espoused the youth’s pretensions.
+The cantons were enraged against Louis for attempting to substitute
+French soldiers for them. When he sent La Trémouille to negotiate with
+them, they demanded that 15,000 Swiss should be yearly hired, and paid
+by France in peace and war. They demanded also the Milanese for Sforza,
+and the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction for the pope. It is said
+they also resented some injurious words spoken by Louis. Whatever was
+its cause, their resentment was but too well seconded by their force.
+The French under La Palisse and Trivulzio were driven out of the
+Milanese, and even Genoa again declared itself independent. The feats
+of Bayard during this unfortunate campaign might be made to fill pages,
+but they availed nothing. Haute-Navarre was at the same time wrested by
+Ferdinand from Jean d’Albret. The province has ever since remained to the
+Spaniards.[c]
+
+
+_Internal Affairs_
+
+[Sidenote: [1509-1510 A.D.]]
+
+Neither the war of Genoa nor that of Venice had interrupted that
+universal movement of internal improvement in France, which, begun under
+Charles VIII, had gone on and increased under Louis XII. The foundation
+of this progress lay, above all, in the vitality of the nation itself;
+next in the good supervision given to the legislation, administration,
+and finances by the appointed members of council and parliament; but to
+the prime minister was due the merit of having given to all this activity
+a united impulse, and to the king the merit of zealous participation
+therein.
+
+During the winter of 1509 Louis visited a large portion of his kingdom,
+and did much good in regard to the execution of justice. Never at any
+epoch of its history had France enjoyed so much prosperity; the twenty
+years’ absence of all civil disorders, the maintenance of order by
+an absolute and vigilant administration, the security of people and
+property, the protection given to the weak against the stronger, to
+the labourers against the nobles and soldiers, bore marvellous fruits.
+The population increased rapidly, the cities in their ancient limits
+constantly expanded into large suburbs; hamlets and villages rose up
+as if by enchantment in the woods and waste places. The last vestiges
+of the fatal wars that had depopulated France were completely effaced,
+and Seyssel, a contemporary writer, states that a third of the kingdom
+had again been put under cultivation during the last thirty years. The
+produce of the land increased enormously; the excise taxes, tolls, fees,
+etc., had increased more than two-thirds in many places, and the revenue
+of the royal estate, augmenting like the private ones, allowed the king
+to carry out his enterprises without oppressing the nation.
+
+Industry and commerce received no less an impetus, communications were
+endlessly extended, and merchants made less of going to Rome, Naples,
+or London than formerly to Lyons or Geneva. The luxury and elegance of
+buildings, furniture, and apparel displayed the progress of the arts and
+public wealth. The condition of all classes was improved, and the poor,
+unaccustomed to see the sovereigns take such care of their interests,
+were deeply grateful to the king and his minister. “Let George do as he
+thinks right,” had become a popular saying expressing the confidence
+placed in Cardinal Amboise. Louis XII received striking testimonies of
+the affection of the people on a journey he took from Paris to Lyons
+through Champagne and Burgundy in the spring of 1510. “Wherever he went,
+men and women assembled from all parts, following him for three or four
+leagues, and when they were able to touch his mule or his dress, or
+anything belonging to him, they kissed their hands with as much devotion
+as they would show to a reliquary.” (Saint-Gelais.) The Burgundians
+displayed as much enthusiasm as the ancient French.
+
+Cardinal George did not reap his share in the popular homage. The
+inseparable companion of Louis XII had not accompanied him on this
+journey; whilst the health of the king was improving somewhat, that
+of the minister was rapidly declining. George, weakened by gout and
+other infirmities, had not the strength to resist an epidemic, called
+“whooping cough” by contemporary historians. Louis XII found him dying
+at Lyons, whither the cardinal had gone to await the king, and had only
+the consolation of receiving the farewells of his “faithful friend.”
+Cardinal Amboise expired May 25th, 1510. He had not yet reached the age
+of forty-five. He was the first of those cardinal-ministers, almost
+kings, who have played so large a part in the history of the monarchy.
+The experiment was not encouraging, for the duties of Cardinal Amboise
+were altogether foreign to his ecclesiastical dignity, and his faults, on
+the contrary, largely proceeded from it. His dream of the papacy and his
+dealings generally with the college of cardinals and the holy see were
+very detrimental to the interest and the honour of France.
+
+His home administration saves his memory. He does not shine therein by
+disinterestedness, but that was never the distinguishing virtue of great
+ministers, and is scarcely compatible with monarchical government. He
+left a vast fortune, amassed rather at the expense of Italy than of
+France; his use of it at least pleads for his memory. Many touching
+anecdotes attest his goodness of heart; the fine remains of those
+buildings mutilated by the hand of the Revolution show us the use to
+which his wealth was put. Like all men of superior talents, whether
+princes or ministers, who have left their mark upon the destinies of
+nations, George was the centre of the art movement, and diffused a
+vivifying influence around him. One of the most beautiful periods of
+French art belongs to his ministry; it has been incorporated too long
+with the reign of Francis I, who during his best years merely continued,
+whilst enlarging it, and who took the first step towards decadence when
+he departed from it.
+
+The artistic history of France in the sixteenth century may be divided
+into two periods: in the first, Italian art modifies French art by
+some happy innovations, and incites it to a healthy emulation; in the
+second, it stifles and absorbs it. In the first period, the Italian
+artists summoned to France concur with native artists in raising
+French monuments; in the second, the Italianised French build Italian
+monuments--vanquished Italy conquers her conquerors.[g]
+
+
+_Last Years of Louis XII_
+
+[Sidenote: [1513-1515 A.D.]]
+
+The internal prosperity of France contrasted strangely with the
+conditions of interminable warfare that characterised the external policy
+of Louis XII. The seat of these wars was not confined to Italy. In 1513
+France became embroiled with her old enemy, England.
+
+Henry VIII of England invaded France in concert with Maximilian. He laid
+siege to Thérouanne. The French succeeded in throwing supplies into the
+town; but being attacked suddenly some days after by the English and
+imperialists, they were seized with a panic and fled. This has been
+called the battle of Spurs. Bayard, who refused to join in the flight of
+his compatriots, was made prisoner after a gallant defence. Thérouanne
+was the sole conquest of Henry.[c] But almost simultaneously the French
+arms were checked in Burgundy and in Italy. In fact, the year 1513 has
+been pronounced (by Dareste[k]) one of the most disastrous in French
+military annals. Yet no very important political sequels were attached to
+these reverses.[a]
+
+In January, 1514, Louis lost his queen, Anne of Brittany. She was a
+woman of distinguished beauty, though she limped in her gait. She
+possessed great influence over Louis: was proud, independent, and
+obstinate--qualities characteristic of the Bretons. Anne was at the same
+time a pious, chaste, and exemplary queen. It was through her influence
+and importance that the female sex, hitherto excluded, was introduced
+into society: she formed a court, and collected around her the principal
+young ladies of rank in the kingdom, whose manners and principles she
+loved to form. The establishment of a court, that is, of a court in which
+woman’s presence was allowed and her influence felt, was, trifling as it
+may seem, a most important innovation.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS XII
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+Louis, attached as he had been to Anne, did not long delay to fill up the
+place by her left vacant. Policy joined with other reasons to prompt this
+step. As the seal of a reconciliation and alliance with Henry VIII, Louis
+espoused that monarch’s sister Mary, a princess then in the flower of
+her age. The gay habits of a bridegroom did not suit the constitution of
+the king, then past fifty-four. In a few weeks after his marriage he was
+seized with a fever and dysentery, which carried him off at the palace of
+the Tournelles, in Paris, on the first day of the year 1515.
+
+Never was monarch more lamented by the great mass of his subjects than
+Louis XII. He was endeared to them principally by his economy and
+forbearance in levying contributions, and by his strict administration of
+justice, so different from the sanguinary executions which characterised
+the reign of Louis XI, when no man could be certain of life. He reduced
+the taxes more than one-third in the early part of his reign, and even
+in his distresses preferred selling the crown lands to any of the usual
+expedients for exaction. Hence Louis earned the appellation of “Father
+of his people.” His popularity was much greater with the middle than
+with the higher classes. The latter called his economy parsimony, and
+his sympathy with the commons forgetfulness of his rank. Writers of the
+reigns of Louis XIV and XV seek to depreciate the character of Louis
+XII, and to elevate that of his successor. Louis XII they consider as
+the _roi roturier_, “the plebeian king”; Francis as the aristocratic and
+chevaleresque. The nobility certainly do not appear prominent in this
+reign. New names arise and become illustrious as in the time of Charles
+VII. The lesser noblesse or gentry were in fact treading on the heels
+and taking the places of the higher aristocracy. The latter rallied or
+were re-created in the days of Francis, but these tendencies were as
+much the effect of opposite states and circumstances, as of the opposite
+characters of the two monarchs.
+
+The writers of the Revolution reverse the system of favouritism: they
+choose Louis, the father of his people, to be their hero, and they
+depreciate the kingly Francis. An author of this school, Roederer,[i] has
+seen every perfection in Louis XII, and he considers that the commons
+of France were in possession of perfect constitutional freedom during
+his reign: history, however, does not present this view of the question.
+Although Louis did certainly seem to allow in the parliament a power of
+examining and objecting to his edicts, yet the assembly of states in his
+reign was far from assuming or being allowed aught like a constitutional
+control. The very virtues and moderation of Louis were inimical to
+political freedom, since, by rendering the commons contented, they took
+from them, with the wish, the right of remonstrance. Had a prodigal and
+an unpopular king been reduced to the same distress as Louis was in
+the latter years of his reign, the commons of France might opportunely
+have made a stand for their privileges, and at least kept alive their
+traditions of freedom.[c]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[61] [The exact attitude of the duke of Orleans, at this early period,
+toward his future wife is not clearly established. Further reference to
+the subject is made later in the present chapter.]
+
+[62] The following table will make clear the bearings of the French claim
+to the kingdom of Naples: Full face type denotes reigning kings of France
+and Naples. Italics denote titular kings of Naples.
+
+                              =Louis VIII=, 1223-1226
+                 =CAPET=              |                     =ANJOU=
+                   |                  |                        |
+                   +------------------+------------------------+
+                   |                                           |
+              =Louis IX=,                                 =Charles I=,
+               1226-1270                                 count of Anjou and
+                   |                                     Provence, ancestor
+                   +---------------------+               of the kings of
+                   |                     |                Naples, 1285
+                   |                     |                     |
+             =Philip III=,      Robert, count of         =Charles II=, 1309
+               1270-1285       Clermont, ancestor              |
+                   |            of the Bourbons                |
+                   |                                           |
+                   +---------------------+++-+       +---------+----+
+                   |                         |       |              |
+             =Philip IV=,               Charles   =Robert=, 1343  John
+               1285-1314               of Valois     |              |
+                   |                         |    Charles         Louis
+     +-------------+-------------+           |       |              |
+     |             |             |           |       |              |
+  =Louis X=,  =Philip V=,    =Charles IV=,   |  =Joanna I=,  =Charles III=,
+  1314-1316    1316-1322      1322-1328      |     1382          1386
+                                             |                      |
+                                             |         +------------+
+                                             |         |            |
+                                             |    =Ladislaus=, =Joanna II=,
+                                             |        1414        1435
+                                             |
+                                     =Philip VI=, 1328-1350
+                                             |
+                                       John, 1350-1364         =BURGUNDY=
+                                             |                     |
+          +----------------------------------+-----------+---------+
+          |                                  |           |         |
+     =Charles V=,                         _Louis_,      John,    Philip,
+      1364-1380                        duke of Anjou,  duke de  duke of
+          |                           founder of the    Berri   Burgundy,
+          +-----------------+          second royal               1404
+          |                 |         house of Naples
+     =Charles VI=,    Louis, duke            |
+      1380-1422,      of Orleans,            |
+      m. Isabella     founder of             |
+      of Bavaria      the line of            |
+          |          Valois-Orleans   _Louis II_, 1417
+     +----+----+----------+                  |
+     |         |          |                  |
+   Louis,    John,  =Charles VII=,           |
+  Dauphin,  Dauphin,  1422-1461       +------+----+-----------+
+   1415      1416         |           |           |           |
+                     =Louis XI=,   _Louis III_, _René_,    Charles I,
+                       1461-1483     1434        1480   count du Maine
+                          |                                   |
+                    =Charles VIII=,                      _Charles II_,
+                       1483-1498                      count du Maine, 1481
+                                               He bequeathed Anjou, Maine,
+                                               Provence, and his title to
+                                               Naples to Louis XI, king of
+                                               France.
+
+[63] See vol. IX, pp. 409 _et seq._
+
+[64] Champier gives the following portrait of Bayard: The noble Pierre
+du Terrail was born at Bayard, a stronghold situated in a province of
+Dauphiné, called Givosdam, near the royal castle of Avalon--which castle
+is a fine mansion wherein were born and bred, in this fair and beautiful
+spot, a family noble and ancient, in Dauphiné, by name Montenar, from
+whom are descended many brave knights and valiant men skilled in the art
+of warfare. This same Pierre was well named Terrail, for no page was a
+better horseman, which same by his prowess did send many to their end
+before their time, and in many places and on many occasions did truly
+guard and defend the territories of his lord and sovereign prince, the
+noble king of France.
+
+The noble Bayard in his youth was kindly, gracious, and courteous to all
+men; none ever beheld him wrathful; he was greater than all other pages;
+he did harm to no woman, relinquishing intrigues with them, as being
+unlawful; but little given to melancholy, he was cheerful towards all,
+loving good company, jestings, and pleasant sport. As for his gravity, it
+was always mingled with kindness and affability; he loved order in all
+things, and was benign, merciful, and charitable.[f]
+
+[65] [Anne had Brittany in dangerously good order; and it has even been
+suggested that she intended by this move to make it almost a political
+necessity for Louis to marry her.]
+
+[66] [The ensuing pages should be read with constant reference to our
+history of Italy, vol. IX, pp. 425 _et seq._, where a complementary
+treatment of the subject is given. See also the history of the Holy Roman
+Empire, vol. XIII.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. IMPERIAL STRUGGLES OF FRANCIS I AND HENRY II
+
+    Francis I, his government and his times, commence the era of
+    modern France, and bring clearly to view the causes of her
+    greatnesses and her weaknesses.--GUIZOT.[b]
+
+
+CRITICAL SURVEY OF FRANCIS I AND HIS PERIOD
+
+[Sidenote: [1515-1559 A.D.]]
+
+The accession of Francis I to the crown of France, January 1st, 1515,
+on the death of Louis XII, may be considered as signalising the passage
+from the Middle Ages to modern times and from ancient barbarism to
+civilisation. The transformations of great masses of men amongst whom
+new ideas and new passions are seen to germinate, are never sudden;
+centuries have prepared them in silence, and an attentive eye may
+have discerned, in the preceding age, the authors of the age which is
+about to open; but their action on the people has an element of the
+unexpected, because the men whose minds have been formed in principles
+and sentiments scarcely avowed by themselves, and scarcely understood by
+their contemporaries, all at once perceive that they form the majority,
+that they are understood, that they will be followed; and they burst as
+it were upon the country which had not noticed them. Thus simultaneously
+with the reign of the young monarch there began a decided taste for arts
+and letters which signalised itself by the most glorious monuments; a
+new zest for the pleasures of society, for wit, and for gallantry which
+corrupted morals while it perhaps gave more elegance to manners; an
+esteem for learning, a zeal for study which reflected a special glory on
+the French magistracy in whom dignity of character soon joined itself to
+knowledge; and finally an independence of opinions which, while admitting
+men to judge what they had adored, led some to new systems of philosophy
+and others to the reform of religion. France, hitherto poor in writers,
+began to turn her attention to herself, to study herself; her follies
+and vices, like her virtues and learning, left their traces; and there
+came into being the double series of courtly and philosophic writers,
+of the friends of disorder and those of wisdom--a series which was not
+afterwards interrupted until the fall of the throne of Louis XVI.
+
+[Illustration: FRANCIS I]
+
+The new sovereign, Francis d’Angoulême, duke of Valois, who gave the
+signal for this revolution, was not however of sufficient force to
+produce it. He was a son of Charles d’Angoulême, cousin german of Louis
+XII, and as he had been born at Cognac on the 12th of September, 1494,
+he was only twenty years and a few months old. His education had been
+begun by Marshal de Gié, whom Louis XII had replaced in 1506 by Arthur
+Gouffier, sire de Boisy; this last had been through all the Italian
+campaigns, and he had acquired in that country a taste for arts and
+polite literature which was scarcely ever to be met with amongst other
+men of noble rank. He perceived that a certain glory might be attached to
+the study of letters, he even accustomed his pupil to show some deference
+to men of learning and to seek their conversation; but if Boisy himself
+took pleasure in reading, it was in vain that he endeavoured to inspire
+the prince he was training with the desire to read any books other than
+the romances of chivalry. It was from them that Francis I derived his
+sole instruction; he modelled himself on the heroes of the Round Table
+and of the palace of Charlemagne, not on those of history; he desired
+to shine as an Amadis rather than as a sovereign; and the height of his
+figure, the beauty of his face, his skill in arms and in all physical
+exercises, his bravery which he had already had occasion to exhibit, and
+finally his love of pleasure which his young comrades esteemed in him
+more than his moral qualities, marked him out for the admiration of those
+who, like himself, knew the world only through the medium of romances.
+“He was as fair a prince,” said Bayard’s _Loyal Serviteur_,[c] “as ever
+was in the world; never had there been a king in France who so rejoiced
+the noblesse.”[d]
+
+
+A BRILLIANT CAMPAIGN IN ITALY
+
+[Sidenote: [1515-1516 A.D.]]
+
+After the coronation, which was celebrated at Rheims with great pomp,
+and the festivities of the royal entrance in Paris, the preparations
+for the expedition into Italy begun by Louis XII were resumed without
+delay. France possessed nothing beyond the Alps since the fort at the
+Lantern or Fanal at Genoa had capitulated. Everyone expected to see
+the French retake the Milanese; but Francis I anticipated the general
+expectation--he wished that conquest to mark the first year of his reign.
+
+Two things were necessary: to hinder a coalition of the great powers, and
+to find allies. The coalition had been dissolved in the year previous;
+in order that it should not be formed again two treaties were signed,
+with England and with the Netherlands. Henry VIII, always displeased with
+the way in which the other kings had abandoned him, consented to renew
+the alliance he had sworn with Louis XII in 1514. The young prince of
+Castile, Charles of Austria, freed from guardianship, took the direct
+government of the Netherlands, and prepared to cross into Spain; he was
+the first to try to regain the friendship of France, in order to secure
+the Belgian frontier. It was agreed that he should be affianced to Madame
+Renée, the second daughter of Louis XII, who had a large dowry, and that
+he might defer for five years the homage he owed to the crown in his
+character of count of Flanders. On the part of Francis I, the concessions
+were important but remote and eventual: the advantage was immediate.
+France, safe-guarded in the north on its most vulnerable frontier, and
+having nothing to fear from England nor the Netherlands, might proceed
+boldly.
+
+France had wished to gain the court of Rome. Leo X had never ceased
+seeking reconciliation with France. His brother, Giuliano de’ Medici, had
+married a sister of Louise of Savoy in 1514. Several ambassadors were
+sent to him, among others the celebrated humanist, Guillaume Budé. But
+the pope desired peace in Italy and the grandeur of his family. A new
+French campaign would derange his plans, and for some months he had done
+everything possible to dissuade the French from such an enterprise. He
+refused to bind himself in any way, even that of simple neutrality.
+
+There still remained Ferdinand the Catholic, Maximilian, and the
+Swiss. The king of Aragon was old and in failing health. His death was
+shortly expected, and he was known to be little in favour of taking the
+management of a new league. It was he who, by his withdrawal, had caused
+the failure of that of 1513. Meanwhile, fearing to lose the alliance
+of the Swiss, and wishing to hinder the return of the French into the
+peninsula, he refused to prorogue the truce of the preceding year, and
+signed a defensive alliance with Maximilian and the thirteen cantons.
+The emperor always had need of Spanish troops to continue his war against
+Venice; he objected all the more to the troubling of the empire by
+France by her levies of lansquenets. But his hostility was as harmless
+as his friendship was useless. As for the Swiss, finding them rejecting
+all offers and manifesting unqualified unreasonableness, the plan to
+conciliate them was abandoned. The alliance with the Venetians was always
+assured. Francis I renewed the treaty signed at Blois by Louis XII with
+the republic.
+
+After these diplomatic precautions it was necessary to renew and
+strengthen the army. The gendarmerie was increased from 2,500 lances
+to 4,000. A national infantry was added to it, also more numerous than
+that of preceding years, 6,000 Basques and Dauphinois, 10,000 French
+adventurers, Picardians, Gascons or Bretons, and 3,000 pioneers or
+engineers. Part of these troops were formed by Pedro Navarro, prisoner of
+the French since the battle of Ravenna. The celebrated Spanish captain,
+not having obtained from Ferdinand the Catholic the payment of his
+ransom, consented to enter into the service of Francis I. The foreign
+infantry was composed of 26,000 lansquenets under the command of the duke
+of Gelderland. The artillery, more important than ever, comprised 72
+large cannon, and 500 mounted pieces.[f]
+
+Thus equipped, Francis crossed the Alps and entered upon that campaign
+which culminated in the brilliant victory over the Swiss army at
+Marignano, a full description of which has been given in our history of
+Italy.[67][a]
+
+It is related that, after the battle, Francis wished to be knighted and
+that he chose Bayard to give him the blow with the sword; a thing never
+before seen, as it was supposed that kings had no need of being knighted,
+as they were knights by birth.[f]
+
+The victory of Francis resulted in his regaining possession of the whole
+of the Milanese, with the addition of Parma and Piacenza. He also signed
+two treaties, on November 7th, 1515, at Geneva, and November 29th, 1516,
+at Friburg, which established a perpetual alliance between himself and
+the Swiss.
+
+
+_The Concordat_
+
+In the course of an interview between himself and Leo X at Bologna,
+Francis took the important step of abolishing the Pragmatic Sanction and
+signed the Concordat, which gave the king the right of nomination to
+bishoprics and other ecclesiastical privileges. “Then it was that Francis
+I and his chancellor loudly proclaimed the maxims of absolute power;
+in the church, the Pragmatic Sanction was abolished; and in the state,
+Francis I during thirty-two years did not once convoke the states-general
+and laboured only to set up the sovereign right of his own will.”[h]
+
+The first article of the Concordat, destined to replace the Pragmatic
+Sanction, transferred to the king the right to appoint the bishops,
+abbots, and priors, the pope reserving for himself the veto, in cases
+where the elect did not fulfil canonical conditions; by the second
+article, the pope renounced the rights of reversion and expectative,
+the reversion of livings during the life of the incumbents; but he
+did not renounce in any way the annats, the most exorbitant of papal
+exactions, and the silence of the Concordat on this subject implied their
+re-establishment. The rights of collators of livings were subsequently
+recognised and limited, and it was decreed that collators could accord
+only to graduates “_ès universités_” the livings which became vacant
+during the months of January, April, July, October. Every collator,
+having from ten to fifty livings at his disposal, was obliged to resign
+one to the discretion of the pope--or two if he had more than fifty.
+It was ordained that ecclesiastical trials should be judged in the
+realm, either by ordinary judges or by commissioners of the pope in
+reserved cases. The Concordat kept a significant silence on the rights
+and periodicity of the councils. A tithe on the clergy was accorded
+to the king, in recognition of the re-establishment of annats, but on
+condition that the pope and the Medici should receive their part. The
+abolition of the Pragmatic was then proclaimed in the Lateran Council, a
+servile assembly which did nothing but register the wishes of the pope,
+which abjured the principles of the councils of Constance and Bâle, and
+dissolved itself obscurely shortly afterwards, without the perception by
+Europe, so to speak, of its closing.
+
+[Sidenote: [1516-1520 A.D.]]
+
+The Concordat was an act of boldness on the part of royalty; which ceded
+only on a question of money (and reduced that concession when it came
+to practice). It was an immense stride in the direction of despotism:
+after the political order it seized upon the religious order; after
+having usurped the right of the Estates in the fixation of taxes, it
+usurped the right of the church in the election of its chiefs. In fact
+during the whole extent of the Middle Ages, the temporal power frequently
+troubled the liberty of elections, sometimes by force, more often by
+recommendations equivalent to commands. The ecclesiastical bodies were
+rarely in full enjoyment of their liberty, and the ancient participation
+of the people, and even of the lower clergy, at the election of the
+bishops had been reduced to a purposeless acclamation. But in the end
+the law remained, the best kings having recognised it, the Pragmatic had
+revivified it, and after the great reaction directed by the councils
+of the fifteenth century against the papacy, the chapters and convents
+proceeded more freely at elections than at any period of the preceding
+centuries. It was this state of things which Francis I and Leo X
+violently overturned in their division of what did not belong to them by
+a bizarre exchange where, as Mézeray says, the pope, the spiritual head,
+took the temporal power unto himself, giving the spiritual power to a
+temporal prince.[k]
+
+This displacement of the Pragmatic Sanction by the Concordat is justly
+regarded as one of the most momentous events in French history. The
+effect of the new order of things upon the immorality of the upper clergy
+can hardly be overestimated. The Concordat remained in force until the
+Revolution, and much of French scepticism and philosophical criticism may
+be ascribed to its influence.
+
+
+STRIFE BETWEEN FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V
+
+The reign of Francis I thus opened brilliantly. That first victory was to
+have no complete parallel during a long reign; but it served to establish
+the reputation of Francis as a warrior, and to cast a glamour about his
+name that no subsequent defeats could quite obscure. We are now to see
+the victor of Marignano enter upon a struggle with that crafty monarch
+Charles I of Spain,[68] who, when the emperor Maximilian died, was
+elected to succeed him, and who came to the imperial throne as Charles
+V. The life-long rivalry with this most powerful monarch of the century
+furnishes the keynote to the reign of Francis I. Francis had himself
+been an eager candidate for the imperial crown.[a] His mortification was
+great when his rival was chosen by the electors. He dreamed of nothing
+but revenge, and fancied that an alliance with Henry VIII of England
+would help him to gain his object. A meeting was consequently arranged
+between the two kings, and took place on June 7th, 1520. So gorgeous were
+the garments of the kings and the trappings of their horses, that their
+courtiers in trying to rival them “bore thither,” the contemporary writer
+Du Bellay[g] graphically tells us, “their mills, their forests, and their
+meadows, on their backs.”
+
+
+_Meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold_
+
+[Sidenote: [1520 A.D.]]
+
+Nothing equalled in splendour this meeting between the two kings and
+the two courts in the camp so well named “The Cloth of Gold.” It was a
+struggle upon both sides for pre-eminence in magnificence. It would seem
+as if they sought more to dazzle than to please, and etiquette, being
+prejudicial to cordiality, was set aside.
+
+Both arrived on the same day, June 1st, 1520, the one at Calais, the
+other at Ardres. Henry VIII and Francis I exchanged visits through the
+most important personages of their courts and councils. Six days passed
+in the necessary negotiations for their meeting. All was at last arranged
+with a care so distrustful and minute as to suggest a mutual fear of
+treason. It was arranged that, leaving the castle of Guines, whither he
+expected to go on June 5th, Henry VIII should advance towards Francis I,
+who, on his side, would leave the castle of Ardres, and advance towards
+Henry VIII.
+
+On Wednesday, June 7th, the kings of France and of England, mounted upon
+great chargers, clothed the one in cloth of gold, the other in cloth
+of silver, covered with pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, their
+heads covered by velvet caps resplendent with precious stones, from
+which floated magnificent white plumes, set out at the same time and at
+the same pace. Their constables preceded them, bare sword in hand, and
+the lords of their court, most gorgeously apparelled, followed in their
+train. Each of them was followed by a bodyguard of four hundred archers
+or men-at-arms. Thus escorted they descended the two hills which led into
+the pleasant plain of the Valdoré, where a pavilion had been erected to
+receive them. Their appearance was more that of two knights marching to
+battle than two princes going to a diplomatic interview.
+
+The escort halted at a certain point, from whence they kept watch, so
+that the English archers should not approach too closely to the king of
+France, nor the men-at-arms of the French army to the king of England. At
+a short distance from each other, Henry and Francis spurred their horses,
+reining them in with all the grace of the experienced cavalier, when they
+found themselves side by side. Saluting one another in kingly fashion
+they then dismounted and entered the pavilion arm in arm. Cardinal
+Wolsey and Admiral Bonnivet, who, since the death of his brother the
+grand-master, Arthur de Boisy, had been the favourite of Francis I and
+managed his affairs, preceded them.
+
+Francis I showed great cordiality to Henry VIII, and, giving utterance to
+the thought always present with him, proffered him his assistance in the
+hope of gaining his. “Dear brother and cousin,” said he, “I have taken
+much trouble to see you. You understand, I hope, that I am ready to help
+you with the kingdoms and lordships which are under my authority.” Henry
+VIII, evading any pledge, relieved himself from the obligation of helping
+Francis I, by not accepting the assistance offered. He contented himself
+with assurances of his friendship, which he still made conditional. “I
+have not in view your kingdoms or your lordships,” answered Henry VIII,
+“but loyalty and the instant execution of promises contained in the
+treaty drawn up between us. If you keep these, my eyes have never beheld
+a prince who could win more the affection of my heart.”
+
+They then examined the treaty which had been drawn up that evening,
+and by which, conforming to the agreement of the 4th of October, 1518,
+the dauphin of France was to marry the only daughter of the king of
+England, and Francis I was to pay an annual sum of 100,000 francs, which
+is equivalent to more than 2,000,000 francs of modern money, until the
+celebration of the wedding, which was yet far distant. Whilst reading the
+introduction to the treaty, in which, according to diplomatic etiquette,
+the title of king of France was added to that of king of England and of
+Ireland, Henry VIII said with tact: “I will omit it. In your presence
+it is not correct.” But if he omitted it in reading, he left it in the
+treaty, and a little later was ambitious to make it real by invading
+France and wishing to reign there. After some discussion, following the
+custom of that time the sovereigns took wine together, and admired the
+nobles of their courts, whom they presented to one another and who were
+embraced, those of France by the king of England, those of England by the
+king of France. As the meetings, so the fêtes were regulated and carried
+through in a very ceremonious manner, with precautions that excluded
+intimacy, and requirements which betrayed jealousy. When Francis I went
+to dine with Queen Catherine at Guines, Henry VIII came to dine with
+Queen Claude at Ardres. The two kings held hostages for one another, and
+behaved in many ways as if they were in the presence of enemies. This
+suspicious attitude, these timid steps, were as little suited to the
+political views as to the trusting character of Francis I.
+
+[Illustration: THE DAUPHIN FRANCIS, SON OF FRANCIS I]
+
+Wishing one day to break down this ceremonious and distrustful barrier,
+he arose earlier in the morning than was customary, and taking with him
+two gentlemen and a page, and wrapped merely in a Spanish cape, he left
+Ardres to go and surprise the king of England in Guines. Two hundred
+archers and the governors were upon the drawbridge when he arrived.
+At the sight of the king of France, come at such a time, so meagrely
+attended, putting himself thus in their hands, they were aghast. Francis
+I crossed their ranks with a frank and laughing countenance, and, as if
+he wished to take the fortress by storm, summoned them gaily to surrender
+to him. The king of England still slept. Francis I went straight to his
+room, knocked at the door, awoke Henry VIII, who, on seeing him, was even
+more astounded than his archers had been, and said frankly, with as much
+cordiality as tact: “My brother, you have done me the best turn that one
+man ever did to another, and showed me what confidence I ought to have
+in you. From this moment I am your prisoner, and pledge you my faith.”
+He took at the same time a beautiful collar from his neck and begged the
+king of France to wear it that day for love of his prisoner. Francis
+I went still further in his demonstrations. He had a bracelet double
+the value of the collar. Putting this upon Henry’s arm he asked him to
+wear it for love of him, and he added that he wished for that day to be
+valet to his prisoner. The king of France as a matter of fact handed the
+king of England’s shirt to him. The next day Henry VIII, imitating the
+confidence of Francis I, went to Ardres slightly attended, and there took
+place a fresh exchange of presents and courtesies between them.
+
+This attempt to rival each other in friendship was followed by a rivalry
+of skill in the tournaments and games that the two kings held at their
+courts. Spacious lists, which ended in strong enclosures for the guards
+of each prince and which adjoined elegant stands erected for the queens
+and the ladies-in-waiting, had been prepared in a high and uncovered
+place. There for eight days were held jousts in which the most skilful
+men-at-arms of France and England took part on foot and on horseback,
+with lance and sword. The two kings who directed them displayed therein
+without contention, the one his brilliant dexterity, the other his
+athletic strength. Francis I, who excelled in horsemanship, broke his
+lances with an accomplished skill. Henry VIII, whose impetuosity could
+not be resisted, struck his antagonist’s helmet so violently that he
+unseated him, and prevented him from fulfilling his other engagements.
+
+King Henry, who was one of the best bowmen in the kingdom, made himself
+remarkable by the strength with which he drew the string and the
+swiftness with which he struck his mark; he would also have liked to show
+his superiority in wrestling with Francis I. The English wrestlers had
+defeated the French wrestlers because through negligence the latter had
+not brought with them the Bretons, who are unsurpassed in this sort of
+game. In the evening Henry VIII, hoping to complete the victory of his
+men by an easy triumph, came close to Francis I and said to him roughly,
+“Brother, I want to wrestle with you.” At the same time he grasped him
+with his powerful hands and tried to throw him; but Francis I, who was
+a well-trained wrestler and more lithe, twisted his leg around his
+assailant, so that the latter lost his balance and rolled on the ground.
+Henry arose, crimson with confusion and anger, and wished to begin again.
+Only the fact that dinner was ready and that the queens intervened
+prevented this dangerous test, which was more likely to make bad friends
+of the two kings by wounding their vanity, than the recent intimacies
+of their long interview were likely to cement their friendship. After
+twenty-five days passed together in the midst of festivals and pleasures,
+Francis I and Henry VIII separated, apparently in cordial friendship.
+
+
+_Francis I and Charles V at War_
+
+[Sidenote: [1520-1522 A.D.]]
+
+Francis I was not certain of the armed co-operation of Henry VIII, but he
+believed he had secured his interested and, from thenceforward, faithful
+friendship. He had bought it by a large annual payment which was simply
+a subsidy in disguise. He flattered himself that if the king of England
+failed to declare himself on his side in the war about to begin, at all
+events he would not espouse the cause of the emperor, his enemy.[h]
+
+But this interview was nothing more than play-acting, as Francis soon
+realised when he learned that Henry on his way back to England had paid
+a visit to Charles V, who was close friends with Wolsey. Furious at
+this duplicity and at learning that Henry VIII had agreed to arbitrate
+on Charles’ behalf in all quarrels between him and France, Francis
+cast about for a pretext for war, and soon found occasions in the Low
+Countries, Navarre, and Italy. In April, 1521, he despatched Marshal de
+Lautrec to defend the Milanese against the Spaniards.[a]
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH BARON, EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+The government of the conquered province had been such as to render the
+French yoke odious to the Milanese. The cause lay in the intrigues and
+corruption of the court. As soon as the government has grown despotic,
+we are instantly compelled to look for the causes of events in the
+scandalous chronicle of harlotry. It has been related that Anne, queen of
+Louis XII, had assembled around her the daughters of the French nobility;
+and a court was thus gradually formed, no longer composed solely of
+warriors and statesmen, but of the gay and idle also of both sexes. This
+sudden freedom had an ill effect upon public morals. The principles and
+habits of courtiers were not prepared for the increased temptation. The
+grossness of the age did not yet admit of that true and pure enjoyment
+of female society which modern cultivation allows. Francis, when he was
+suddenly released from Amboise, and found himself possessed of all power,
+and endowed with all attraction, in the midst of an assemblage of beauty,
+gave a loose rein to his passions. His wife, Claude, daughter of the late
+king, never had the command of his affections; and the court of Francis
+soon arrived at that state of dissoluteness which we find recorded in the
+pages of Brantôme, and from which we shrink in incredulity and disgust.
+
+Françoise de Foix was one of those highborn maidens whom Anne of Brittany
+had reared near her person. That queen had given her in marriage to the
+count de Châteaubriant, who retained her at his remote château, far from
+the fascinations of a court. Francis, however, insisted on the presence
+of the beauty. The countess de Châteaubriant was summoned to the capital,
+and soon became the avowed and chosen mistress of her sovereign. Her
+brother Lautrec was made governor of Milan.[i] In spite of Lautrec’s
+efforts Milan fell into the enemy’s hands, and on April 27th, 1522, he
+lost a battle which robbed Francis of all his power in Lombardy. This was
+the battle of Bicocca, in which Prospero Colonna, occupying an entrenched
+position, repulsed the French and inflicted upon them a decisive
+defeat.[a]
+
+
+_Defection of the Duke de Bourbon_
+
+The rage of Francis against his unsuccessful general was extreme. He
+refused to see him. The duchess d’Angoulême exasperated the king’s
+animosity by her censures; while Madame de Châteaubriant dared not
+intercede for her brother. At length the constable procured Lautrec
+admission to the king, who covered him with reproaches. “It is not I who
+am to blame,” said Lautrec; “the gendarmerie have served eighteen months
+without pay; and the wilfulness of the Swiss, both in fighting against my
+wish and then abandoning me, was owing to my inability to pay them.”
+
+“And the 400,000 crowns?” said the king. “Were never received,” was
+the answer. Francis summoned his treasurer, Semblançay, and asked him
+sternly how it came that the promised sum had not yet reached Lautrec.
+The treasurer replied that the duchess d’Angoulême had made him pay it to
+her. The king then rushed to the apartments of his mother. “It is to your
+avarice then, madam, that I owe the loss of the Milanese?” The duchess
+could not deny the receipt of the sum, but she alleged having received
+it on her private account. The excuse did not satisfy the monarch, and
+Semblançay kept his station. The vengeance of the queen-mother henceforth
+unremittingly followed the unfortunate treasurer. Heads of accusation can
+never be wanting against a man intrusted with the finances of a kingdom;
+and five years after, Semblançay, an honest and irreproachable minister,
+fell a victim to the intrigues and iniquity of the monarch’s mother, and
+died as a malefactor on the common gibbet.
+
+Whilst Francis met with these reverses, which were the natural
+consequences of the blunders and recklessness of his administration,
+the emperor Charles was carefully securing every friend, and improving
+every advantage. The new pope, Adrian, was his creature: Wolsey’s
+resentment, on being disappointed of the tiara, was soothed for a time;
+and Henry VIII was induced not only to break with France, but to send
+thither an army under the duke of Suffolk, which, however, achieved
+nothing remarkable. The Venetian Republic, also, the last of the Italian
+powers that inclined to France, was estranged from his friendship, and
+joined the alliance against him. Not content with making every foreign
+potentate his foe, the French monarch had at the same time the imprudence
+to alienate the most powerful of his subjects. Trivulzio, we have seen,
+expired beneath his neglect. Charles, duke de Bourbon, and constable
+of the kingdom, was now driven by injustice to league with the enemies
+of his country. The last duke de Bourbon had left a daughter, Suzanne.
+The title, and a certain portion of the heritage, went by law to the
+male heir; but as a considerable part would be inherited by Suzanne,
+the paternal care of Louis XII arranged a marriage between Charles, the
+existing duke, and Suzanne de Bourbon, thus preserving unbroken the
+heritage and title of that illustrious family. The duke was of a handsome
+person, and on the death of his duchess, Suzanne, without issue, the
+duchess d’Angoulême made advances to fill her place. This she was the
+more forward in doing, as, being descended in the female line from a
+previous duke de Bourbon, she considered herself to have claims on that
+part of the property which might descend to a female. The constable,
+however, was blind to her advances, backed by this tacit menace. And the
+slighted duchess instantly put forward her claim to the Bourbonnais as
+appertaining by right to her.
+
+Bourbon had previously received affronts from the king, who disliked his
+cold temper and reserved demeanour. The duke was grave and dignified,
+fond of war and business, and averse to join in the follies of a court.
+It appears, too, that Francis amused himself at the duke’s expense; and
+the latter bore raillery with so little good humour as to be called the
+“prince of small endurance.” Whatever was the cause, they certainly
+disliked each other; and Francis manifested this feeling first by
+recalling Bourbon from the government of Milan, and afterwards by giving
+the command of the vanguard in one of the northern campaigns to the duke
+of Alençon, although that post of honour was the constable’s right.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE DE BOURBON]
+
+[Sidenote: [1522-1524 A.D.]]
+
+Bearing all this in mind, when his hitherto unquestioned right to the
+Bourbonnais was called in question, the duke instantly apprehended that
+a league to destroy him had been planned by the king and his mother.
+Duprat, the chancellor, was but a creature of the latter; and to hope for
+justice in the event of trial was absurd. Bourbon was, therefore, driven
+to look abroad for a refuge or for vengeance. The emperor’s emissary
+was at hand, proffering him that prince’s sister in marriage, and many
+advantages, if he would join the emperor’s party, and raise a civil
+war in France against its monarch. Bourbon hesitated long, but finally
+acceded to the proposals of Charles. Francis in the meantime had been
+roused from the lap of pleasure by the league of all Europe against him.
+He was at Lyons, on the way to Italy at the head of an army, when Bourbon
+was about to take the fatal step. Francis tried to soothe him: he showed
+his confidence by appointing him lieutenant-general of the kingdom;
+and assured him that whatever might be the result of this unfortunate
+process, he would not see him despoiled. The object of Francis seems to
+have been the gratification of his mother, and the driving of Bourbon
+to a marriage with her. This failed, however, like every act of the
+monarch’s policy. The constable determined to join the emperor. But
+Francis was now near, accompanied with forces; and as circumstances had
+awakened his suspicions, he called on the constable to accompany him to
+Italy. Bourbon feigned sickness, and took to his couch, as a pretext for
+delay; till at length, seeing that it would be dangerous to trifle any
+longer with the impatient Francis, the constable dispersed his suite and
+fled, followed by a single attendant, into the dominions of the emperor.
+Francis gained by this desertion, as he confiscated the wide domains
+of Bourbon. Charles acquired what he least wanted--a general, and an
+unfortunate claimant.
+
+
+_A Disastrous Campaign in Italy: The Battle of Pavia_
+
+Bonnivet, the personal enemy of Bourbon, was now intrusted with the
+command of the French army. He marched without opposition into the
+Milanese, and might have taken the capital had he pushed on to its gates.
+Having by irresolution lost it, he retreated to winter quarters behind
+the Ticino. The operations of the English in Picardy, of the imperials
+in Champagne, and of the Spaniards near the Pyrenees, were equally
+insignificant. The spring of 1524 brought on an action, if the attack
+of one point can be called such, which proved decisive for the time.
+Bonnivet advanced rashly beyond the Ticino. The imperials, commanded by
+four able generals, Lannoy, Pescara, Bourbon, and Sforza, succeeded in
+almost cutting off his retreat. They at the same time refused Bonnivet’s
+offer to engage. They hoped to weaken him by famine. The Swiss first
+murmured against the distress occasioned by want of precaution. They
+deserted across the river; and Bonnivet, thus abandoned, was obliged
+to make a precipitate and perilous retreat. A bridge was hastily flung
+across the Sesia, near Romagnano; and Bonnivet, with his best knights and
+gendarmerie, undertook to defend the passage of the rest of the army.
+The imperials, led on by Bourbon, made a furious attack. Bonnivet was
+wounded, and he gave his place to Bayard, who, never intrusted with a
+high command, was always chosen for that of a forlorn hope. The brave
+Vandenesse was soon killed; and Bayard himself received a gunshot wound.
+The gallant chevalier, feeling his wound mortal, caused himself to be
+placed in a sitting posture beneath a tree, his face to the enemy, and
+his sword fixed in guise of a cross before him. The constable De Bourbon,
+who led the imperials, soon came up to the dying Bayard, and expressed
+his compassion. “Weep not for me,” said the chevalier, “but for thyself.
+I die in performing my duty; thou art betraying thine.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1524-1525 A.D.]]
+
+Francis, in the meantime, alarmed by the invasion, had assembled an army.
+He burned to employ it, and avenge the late affront. He marched upon
+Milan, whose population was spiritless and broken by the plague, and took
+it without resistance. It was then mooted whether Lodi or Pavia should
+be besieged. The latter, imprudently, as it is said, was preferred. The
+siege of Pavia was formed about the middle of October. Antonio de Leyva,
+an experienced officer, supported by veteran troops, commanded in the
+town. By the month of January, 1525, the French had made no progress; and
+the impatient Francis despatched a considerable portion of his army for
+the invasion of Naples, hearing that the country was drained of troops.
+This was a gross blunder, which Pescara observing, he forbore to send any
+force to oppose the expedition. He knew that the fate of Italy would be
+decided before Pavia.[i]
+
+During the night of the 23rd of February the emperor’s generals harassed
+the royal camp by a lively cannonade and a series of feigned attacks,
+while the main body of their troops was approaching in silence the
+walls of the park. Masons undermined and tore down a considerable
+portion of the wall, and through the breach thus effected the imperial
+advance-guard, under the young marquis del Guasto, cousin to Pescara,
+closely followed by the remaining troops, rushed into the park. In the
+light of the breaking day the French saw the imperial columns defile
+rapidly by the king’s quarters and set out in the direction of Pavia.
+The hostile troops were obliged to cross a wide clearing that was raked
+by the shot of the artillery posted along the king’s entrenchments, and
+so terrible was the fire opened out upon them by the veteran Galiot de
+Genouillac that, says Martin du Bellay,[j] “one after the other great
+breaches were made in the enemy’s battalions, and there was nothing to be
+seen but flying arms and heads.” Their ranks thinned by this frightful
+cannonade, the imperials began running in single file towards a valley,
+where they hoped to be out of range of the royal batteries.
+
+When Francis I saw this movement he believed the enemy to be in full
+flight and his own victory assured; it had, moreover, been reported to
+him that the division under Alençon and Chabot had routed a Spanish
+battalion in the park and captured several cannon. Rallying his
+gendarmerie, he rushed forth from the camp in pursuit of the flying
+enemy, thus masking his own batteries and reducing them to silence at the
+very moment when they might have been the most destructive; the remainder
+of the army followed the king.
+
+Bourbon and Pescara, transported with joy, hastily formed their line of
+battle, while Del Guasto rushed up with his advance-guard, reinforced
+by Antonio de Leyva, and the flower of the garrison of Pavia, which
+the guard left in charge of the camp had been unable to hold back. The
+division of the duke of Alençon formed the left wing of the French army
+and was separated by a large body of Swiss troops from the king, who
+commanded the centre; between the king and the right wing commanded by
+La Palisse were placed four or five thousand lansquenets, the remnant
+of the old bands of Gelderland and Westphalia who were used to fighting
+under French banners against the house of Austria, and to being placed
+under the ban of the empire by Charles V. The shock of the meeting
+between these two armies, inconsiderable as to numbers but composed of
+the bravest fighting-men in Europe, was terrific. Fallen upon by the
+lansquenets of Charles de Bourbon and left without assistance by the
+Swiss, the king’s lansquenets were overwhelmed by force of numbers and
+crushed between two battalions of the enemy. Nearly all these brave men
+perished, as did also their two chiefs, the duke of Suffolk (the White
+Rose) and Francis de Lorraine, brother of the duke de Lorraine and of
+Count Claude de Guise. Bourbon and his victorious infantry next turned
+against the French right wing which was engaged in a hot contest with
+a Spanish-Italian cavalry corps. The right wing, after many great but
+useless exploits, shared the fate that befell the French lansquenets, and
+it was on this field that the veteran Chabannes de la Palisse ended his
+glorious career. His horse having been killed under him, he was about to
+surrender his sword to the Neapolitan captain Castaldo, when a Spaniard,
+envious of Castaldo’s good fortune, killed the illustrious prisoner by a
+shot from his arquebuse.
+
+No less furiously did the combat rage in the centre where the king,
+at the head of his gendarmerie, overpowered an Italian squadron under
+the command of the marquis de Saint Angelo, a descendant of the great
+Scanderbeg; it is said that the king slew this nobleman, as well
+as several other knights, with his own hand. The squadron of the
+Franc-Comtois suffered overthrow in its turn; the Spanish cavalry would
+have had a similar fate had not Pescara devised a manœuvre which was as
+successful as it was terrible in its effects. This was to mingle with
+his horsemen fifteen hundred or two thousand Basque musketeers whose
+agility enabled them to slip into the ranks of the French to choose
+their victims, and who by their deadly fire checked the advance of the
+gendarmerie and threw all the squadrons into confusion. The richest coats
+of mail, the most gallantly plumed helmets were the marks selected in
+preference by these sharpshooters, and one after the other the famous
+leaders who had raised French arms to glory during the last thirty
+years were seen to fall--Louis de la Trémouille, Louis d’Ars, teacher
+and friend of Bayard, the grand equerry San Severino, the bastard of
+Savoy, and the marshal De Foix-Lescun, all were killed or mortally
+wounded. The king and those immediately about him continued to fight
+desperately, a furious charge having brought Pescara to the earth and
+put to flight Lannoy. Victory might still have been on the side of the
+French had Alençon and the Swiss done their full duty; but the duke, on
+learning of the confusion into which the right wing had been thrown, fled
+precipitately, carrying with him almost all the gendarmerie and the left
+wing, while the Swiss, left uncovered by the desertion of Alençon and
+menaced on their left flank by the imperial cavalry, turned their backs
+in their turn, instead of repulsing the enemy’s attack and flying to the
+succour of the king, and set out in confusion on the road to Milan. This
+battle should have served as a terrible lesson to the kings of France,
+who were in the habit of buying the services of mercenaries at a high
+price rather than place arms in the hands of their own subjects.
+
+All the stress and burden of the battle now fell upon the king and the
+valiant body of nobles who pressed about him; Bourbon, Castaldo, Del
+Guasto, De Leyva, and the viceroy Lannoy had successively joined Pescara,
+and there remained to the French gendarmerie but to sell their lives as
+dearly as possible. Diesbach, the Swiss general, and Admiral Bonnivet
+decided not to survive--the one, the ignominious retreat which was to
+tarnish the fame of the league, and the other the sad “misadventure” for
+which he himself had been mainly responsible. They both flung themselves
+upon the pikes of Bourbon’s lansquenets and at once found death.
+Bonnivet, the favourite of Madame d’Angoulême as well as of the king,
+had taken the most active part in the persecution of the constable, and
+Bourbon was now seeking him all over the field of battle. When he finally
+perceived his enemy’s mutilated corpse, “Unhappy man!” he exclaimed with
+sadness, “you are the cause of France’s ruin and my own!”
+
+The French gendarmerie at last succumbed to the superior numbers of
+the enemy; they were broken, dispersed, and cut to pieces. Francis I,
+wounded in the leg and in the face, defended himself bravely for some
+time longer, but his horse, on being dealt a fatal blow, fell and bore
+him to the earth, where he would have been despatched by the soldiers
+who struggled to reach him had not Pompérant, the companion of the
+constable’s flight, recognised the king and rushed to his rescue.
+Pompérant proposed to the king to pledge his faith to Bourbon, but
+Francis indignantly refused; then Pompérant sent for Lannoy, viceroy of
+Naples, who bent his knee to receive the bloody sword of the king, and
+proffered his in exchange.
+
+Eight thousand French and auxiliaries had met death; and all the
+leaders--the king of Navarre (Henry d’Albret), the count of Saint-Pol,
+Fleuranges, Montmorency, Brion--who were not stretched upon the
+battle-field, shared the captivity of Francis I. The king begged his
+captors not to take him back to Pavia where he would be a “spectacle and
+a laughing-stock to those upon whom he had formerly inflicted fear, evil,
+and fatigue.” He was conducted to the tent of the marquis del Guasto,
+where his wounds were properly attended to. In the evening Charles de
+Bourbon presented himself with every mark of respect before the monarch
+upon whom he had taken so cruel a vengeance. Both, according to the
+accounts most worthy of credence, displayed great self-control and
+admirably concealed feelings, of triumph on the one hand, of grief and
+humiliation on the other; the king’s only departure from this reserve
+was in the reception he gave Pescara, which was warm compared to his
+attitude towards Bourbon. Francis I had at least one consolation in his
+misfortune, the one that would most appeal to a nature such as his: the
+imperial soldiers had been so struck by his prowess in the field that
+they divided his effects as relics among themselves, and evinced so
+strongly their desire to see him that the viceroy of Naples experienced
+some alarm. The German mercenaries, without taking into account the
+immense booty they had gained, demanded more imperatively than before
+the battle their arrears of pay, and Lannoy feared that they would seek
+to seize the king as surety, perhaps even go over to the royal side.
+He averted this danger by sending Francis I to Pizzighettone under
+the guard of a Spanish captain of whose fidelity he was sure, and by
+extorting heavy contributions from the pope and the smaller Italian
+states, in order that the soldiery might be induced to wait in patience.
+
+[Sidenote: [1525-1526 A.D.]]
+
+It was in the imperial camp near Pavia, on the eve of departure for
+Pizzighettone that Francis I wrote to his mother the celebrated letter
+that tradition has greatly altered by giving it this laconic form:
+“Madame, all is lost save honour.” The true text is as follows: “Madame,
+To let you know the full extent of my misfortune I have but to say, of
+all things there remain to me only honour and my life; and that this news
+may be of a little comfort to you in your adversity I have prayed them to
+let me write you this letter, which prayer they have readily accorded; I
+also beg of you to allow yourself to come to no harm but to make use of
+your accustomed prudence, for I have hope that in the end God will not
+abandon me. I recommend to you my children and your grandchildren, and
+pray you to let pass the bearer of this to Spain and back, for it is his
+mission to see the emperor to inform him of the treatment I receive.”[k]
+
+
+_Francis Captive in Spain: The Treaty of Madrid_
+
+Although Francis had hoped to overcome his conqueror, he did not fear to
+humiliate himself before him. This rôle of captive and suppliant was so
+new to him that he rather overdid it and rather bore in mind his present
+fortunes, which might change, than his kingly dignity which he should
+never lose. Thus, in three letters written by him to Charles, three times
+he affected to call himself his slave.
+
+“Having no other comfort in my misfortune than the hope of your goodness,
+by which, if it please you, use me, the fruits of your own victory, with
+all fairness. I have firm hope that your virtue will not constrain me to
+do anything dishonouring, and I beg you to let your heart decide what you
+will do with me. Wherefore may it please you to have the kindly pity to
+assure the safety which is due the king of France as prisoner, then will
+you render me friendly and not despairing, you will make an acquisition
+instead of a useless prisoner, and have a king forever your slave. So
+I end my humble petitions which have no other end to expect but that
+you will style me, instead of a prisoner, your good brother and friend
+Francis.”
+
+But when Francis heard the rigorous conditions, when he saw he had in
+vain humiliated himself before his enemy, death appeared less horrible
+than captivity for him, and ruin and shame for France. “Tell your
+master,” he cried, “that I would rather die than submit to his terms.
+My kingdom is still intact, and for my deliverance I neither can nor
+will harm it. If the emperor desires treaties, let him speak another
+language.” The opportunity was propitious for Lannoy, and he well knew
+how to use it. “Your majesty,” said he, “had made a better bargain with
+the emperor by treating directly with him. Go yourself to Spain and put
+yourself in the hands of my master. He will be touched by this proof of
+confidence and will certainly not abuse the rights victory has given
+him.” Francis allowed himself to be taken in the trap, and judging his
+enemy by himself the chivalrous monarch resolved to put himself at the
+discretion of Charles V. He had sent from Marseilles six of his galleys
+to aid in the transport of troops which were to serve him as escort, and
+forbade his admirals to alarm the imperial crews during the crossing. He
+embarked at Genoa May 7th, 1526, and Lannoy was clever enough to persuade
+Bourbon and Pescara that he was conducting his prisoner to Naples.
+
+Charles V was unaware of Lannoy’s project; it was a pleasant surprise,
+then, to learn that the king of France, whom he had thought in Italy,
+was on Spanish soil. He immediately had him transferred to his castle
+at Madrid, leaving it himself for fear of meeting him. Francis, always
+liable to be deceived, had counted on prompt deliverance. While waiting,
+he had imagined himself treated by his conquerors as a guest and not
+as a prisoner. But seeing he had been tricked by Lannoy, guessing the
+astuteness of Charles behind that of his minister, he immediately fell
+ill of grief. Soon his life was in danger. The people of Madrid, moved
+with sympathy for this knightly king, more fitted than Charles V to
+reign over Spain, hastened in crowds to the churches to ask God to cure
+him. Charles, who calculated everything, even his pity, realised that
+if he allowed his prisoner to die he would lose a possible ransom. He
+then decided to pay him a visit, and, lavish of fine words, succeeded in
+raising Francis’ courage. But his object gained and the sick man saved,
+Charles forgot all his promises, refused to see his prisoner again, and
+reinsisted on the hard terms of release.[l]
+
+France in the meantime, though stunned and disordered by the first news
+of the disaster of Pavia, was recovering its composure and force. The
+duchess of Angoulême was regent; the count de Vendôme, cousin of the
+constable De Bourbon, did not take advantage of his being first prince
+of the blood to embroil the kingdom. The parliament, indeed, displeased
+with the imperious character of the king, and angered on account of the
+Concordat and other causes, gave the regent some trouble. But new allies
+flocked to France in her distress. The Italian states were all ready to
+combine against the emperor, whose power they now dreaded. Henry VIII of
+England instantly flung his support into the scale of the discomfited
+Francis, and concluded a treaty with the regent, stipulating that the
+kingdom should on no account be dismembered. Large numbers of the people
+of Alsace had taken advantage of the opportunity to rise and invade
+France, excited by that religious zeal which scorns restraint. The count
+of Guise mustered some forces, fell upon them in time, and cut them to
+pieces. It was for this service that Francis afterwards created the
+county of Guise into a duchy-peerage--an honour heretofore granted solely
+to princes of the blood. The parliament made great opposition to this
+novelty; but the king was resolute in his friendship, and Guise became
+one of the high noblesse of France, a duke and peer.
+
+Negotiations for the liberation of the king proceeded, with little
+prospect of success, at Madrid. Bourbon had betaken himself thither;
+his presence and his claims were no small source of difficulties. The
+emperor had promised him his sister Leonora, queen-dowager of Portugal,
+in marriage; but as Francis, to disappoint Bourbon, offered to marry
+this princess himself, the constable was obliged to forego the honour.
+The marquis Pescara dying at this time, the emperor offered the command
+of his Italian armies to Bourbon, who was urged to accept of it, and was
+thus got rid of. Still the terms offered to Francis were so harsh that he
+could not accede to them. His sister, the duchess of Alençon, had come
+to tend him in his illness and captivity. She was now about to return;
+and Francis put into her hand his absolute resignation of the kingdom,
+that he might be considered as dead, and no further efforts be made for
+his liberation. This alarmed the emperor, who became willing to relax in
+some degree. Still his demands were so exorbitant and unreasonable that
+Francis at length consented to extricate himself by a breach of faith,
+and to swear to a treaty the stipulations of which he was determined not
+to perform.
+
+With these opposite views--grasping severity, that over-reached itself,
+on the one side, and premeditated bad faith, the almost compulsory
+resource of Francis, on the other--the Treaty of Madrid was concluded.
+By it the king agreed to give up Burgundy, to renounce all right to
+Milan and Naples, as well as to Flanders and Artois. He was to be set
+at liberty, and to espouse Leonora of Portugal, the emperor’s sister.
+He was, moreover, to abandon his allies, the king of Navarre, the dukes
+of Gelderland, of Würtemberg, and the count de la Mark; and he was to
+re-establish Bourbon in all his property and privileges. Moreover, the
+two sons of Francis were to remain as hostages for the performance of
+these conditions, the king himself promising to return into captivity if
+they were not fulfilled. On the 14th of January, 1526, the treaty was
+signed; Francis taking the precaution to protest secretly, in presence of
+his chancellor, against the validity of such exactions. Charles himself
+could not but mistrust the sincerity of Francis, and he even retained him
+prisoner a month after the signature. The king’s health again declined
+in consequence; and at length Charles, in a hurried and irresolute way,
+gave orders for his final liberation. He was led to the river Bidassoa,
+which separates the countries: his sons, who appeared on the opposite
+bank, were exchanged for him, and Francis, mounting a horse of extreme
+swiftness, galloped without drawing rein to St. Jean de Luz, and thence
+to Bayonne.
+
+
+_Further Dissensions and the “Ladies’ Peace”_
+
+Thus freed from captivity, on terms which, if fulfilled, must ruin
+his kingdom, and if unfulfilled must stain his honour, Francis, it
+might have been expected, would be instantly occupied in the duty of
+defending himself and retrieving his affairs. His first act on arriving
+at Bordeaux, however, was to become enamoured of Mademoiselle d’Heilly,
+better known as the duchess d’Étampes, who superseded the countess of
+Châteaubriant in his affections, and held thenceforward the greatest
+influence over the monarch.
+
+The liberation of Francis was the signal for a general league against
+the emperor. The Italian powers were ever disposed to unite against the
+strongest. Sforza had already rebelled against Charles, and had been
+driven from Milan by Pescara. All of them--the pope, the Venetians, the
+Florentines--now formed an alliance with the king, on condition that
+Sforza should remain in possession of Milan. A treaty to this effect
+was signed at Cognac, but was kept secret for some time. The states of
+Burgundy had assembled, to protest against the transfer of their province
+to the emperor. The king, they said, had no right nor power to make such
+a stipulation without their consent. When Lannoy, on the part of Charles,
+demanded the cession of Burgundy, Francis referred him to the answer of
+the states. The emperor, on learning this evasion of the treaty, called
+on Francis, as a man of honour, to redeem his word and return into
+captivity.
+
+This was a trying moment for Francis, who piqued himself on possessing
+all the chivalric virtues. He could not openly deride the credulity of
+Charles, as Louis the XI or Ferdinand the Catholic would have done. He
+was perplexed, distressed, and could only allege the necessity of the
+case; a plea which by no means satisfied his nice notions of honour. He
+therefore resolved on taking the advice of his subjects. Despotic as he
+was, he felt in this case at least the necessity of having the nation
+to participate his responsibility. To call together the states-general
+of the kingdom was obviously the natural step in such a case. But no;
+Francis dreaded the very name of that assembly, in which the vulgar
+_tiers état_, or people, had a voice. The legists and judges of the
+parliament had for some time taken upon them to represent the nation,
+in demurring to taxes and to edicts. Francis, and his minister Duprat,
+though not wholly contented with the parliament, yet deemed that
+preferable to an assembly of bourgeois. It was resolved therefore between
+them that the voice of the nation should now be taken, not in the good
+old states-general, but in what has since been called an assembly of
+notables--one of the most unfortunate inventions or innovations that
+despotic craft could have imagined.
+
+[Sidenote: [1526-1527 A.D.]]
+
+This assembly of notables, or, as some historians will call it, this bed
+of justice, was held in December, 1526. It consisted of prelates, nobles,
+courtiers, gentlemen, the parliament of Paris, and the presidents of the
+provincial parliaments; the only admixture of democracy being the provost
+of merchants and the four sheriffs of the city of Paris. Before those
+Francis made a long discourse; entering at large into the affairs of the
+kingdom, its finances and resources. He recounted the misfortunes of his
+captivity, and declared his readiness to return to it, if his people
+thought that either their interest or his honour so demanded. The reply
+of each class, for all answered separately, was that he was absolved
+from an unjust and compulsory oath, against which he had previously
+protested, and the fulfilment of which the privileges and welfare of
+his people alike forbade. They at the same time accorded to him the
+liberty of raising two millions for the ransom of his sons, assuming in
+this particular all the rights of the states-general. Thus satisfied,
+Francis published the general league against the emperor, denominated
+“holy,” because the pope was at its head. Not only the Italian states,
+but the Swiss and the king of England acceded to it; so that the reverses
+of Francis, if they had stripped him of territories, rendered him much
+stronger in alliances than his rival.
+
+The emperor, on his side, promised to Bourbon the investiture of the
+Milanese, if he succeeded in expelling Sforza. This the constable
+accomplished, subsisting his mercenary troops on the unfortunate
+inhabitants of Milan--for of money Charles had as notorious a lack as his
+grandsire Maximilian. Milan taken, pillaged, and wasted, how was Bourbon
+to support his army--that army by which he lived? For since his exile
+the prince had inhabited camps, and was averse to any more orderly way
+of life. He loved his soldiers, rapacious and licentious as they were;
+and was beloved by them, as a valiant and successful leader inclined
+to tolerate the license of the freebooter. Since his treason, Bourbon
+had met everywhere with insults and ingratitude from the French, the
+Spaniards, the emperor, and his brother generals. This situation made him
+misanthropic, and his character degenerated into that of the reckless and
+ferocious corsair. To obtain plunder for his army of lansquenets, in lieu
+of pay, became indispensable; and he accordingly led them south, menacing
+all the great cities of the peninsula, and uncertain which he should
+attack. Florence and Rome had both declared against the emperor; Bourbon
+fixed upon the imperial city as the more glorious prey, and accordingly
+marched thither his mercenary army. Pope Clement was terrified at his
+approach, and used all his country’s artifices to avert the danger. It
+approached nevertheless, and Clement shut himself up in the castle of St.
+Angelo.
+
+The army of Bourbon attacked Rome in the morning of the 5th of May, 1527.
+Bourbon himself applied the first scaling-ladder, and was in the act of
+mounting it, when the first shot from the walls struck him and put an end
+to his disastrous career. His army passed over his body to the assault,
+and Rome was carried by storm. The pillage was general, so merciless
+were the soldiery. Not all the ravages of Hun and Goth surpassed those of
+the army of the first prince in Christendom. The cruelty of the German
+soldiers was unequalled: they indulged in the most horrid extravagance
+of debauch and impiety. For two months they remained masters of the
+city; and the pontiff himself was finally obliged to surrender himself a
+prisoner.
+
+[Sidenote: [1527-1528 A.D.]]
+
+This new triumph of the emperor, over the head of the church too, roused
+the zeal of Henry VIII. He already meditated a divorce from Catherine,
+Charles’ aunt; and it therefore became his policy to befriend and protect
+the pope, whose assistance he would chiefly require, against the emperor.
+Wolsey was therefore despatched to France; the treaty between the crowns
+was renewed; and a joint army was raised, to march into Italy under the
+command of Lautrec. That general now compensated for his former ill
+success. He made himself master of Genoa by the aid of Andrea Doria;
+and took Pavia by assault, abandoning it to pillage, in revenge for the
+defeat which the French had suffered under its walls. The conquest of
+Milan would have been easy; but as that city was now to belong to Sforza,
+the French general turned from it towards Rome, in order to procure the
+liberation of the pope. His approach effected this: the emperor became
+less harsh in his terms, and Clement soon found himself free at Orvieto.
+
+It was about this time, towards the commencement of 1528, that challenges
+and defiances passed between Charles and Francis. The former, in his
+reply to the French envoy, reproached the restored king with an infamous
+breach of faith; and hinted that he was ready to support his charge as
+a true knight, sword in hand. Francis, indignant, sent a reply that the
+emperor “lied in his throat”; and demanded a rendezvous, or _champ clos_,
+for the duel; but notwithstanding the choler of both parties, it never
+took place. It is singular that in this affair of the single combat the
+cold and politic Charles seems to have been most in earnest, whilst the
+obstacles and delays were raised by the headlong and chivalric Francis.
+
+Lautrec in the meantime advanced to the conquest of Naples. He marched
+to the eastern coast, and soon reduced the provinces bordering on the
+Adriatic. The command of Bourbon’s army had devolved on Philibert, the
+last prince of Orange of the house of Châlons, another French chief of
+talents and influence, whom the petulance of Francis had alienated from
+him and driven into exile. With some difficulty this prince withdrew his
+army from the spoils of Rome to the defence of Naples. He was not strong
+enough to face Lautrec in the field: the prince of Orange, therefore,
+and Moncada, the new viceroy, shut themselves up in Naples, where they
+were soon besieged by Lautrec. Andrea Doria, a faithful partisan of
+France, held the sea with his Genoese galleys, and blockaded the port.
+It was proposed to reduce the town by famine. After some time Moncada,
+fitting out all the galleys in port, made an attack on the Genoese, then
+commanded by Filippino Doria, Andrea’s nephew. The attempt failed: the
+Spaniards were beaten, Moncada slain, and most of the captains taken;
+amongst others, the marquis del Guasto, and two brothers Colonna. Naples
+thus became in prospect an easy prey to Lautrec. Its fall might have
+brought the final submission of the kingdom; but the same blunder which
+Francis persevered in committing throughout his whole reign lost him this
+advantage, among so many others.
+
+Such was the fatal habit of the French king to disgust and alienate his
+best and most attached friends. Doria, for example, like Trivulzio, was
+an Italian who united with a love of his own country a firm attachment
+to the French. His exertions had but just torn Genoa from the emperor
+to give it to Francis: he was now doing the very same by Naples, when
+it pleased the French court to insult and disoblige him. The prisoners
+he had won in action were taken from him, and no allowance was made for
+their ransom. These insults to himself Doria might have passed over; of
+wrongs offered to his country he was more sensible. The French undertook
+to fortify Savona, and to raise it into a rival of Genoa. They removed
+thither the trade in salt, one of the most lucrative sources of the
+Genoese commerce. Doria expostulated; and another admiral, Barbescenas,
+was sent to supersede him and bring him prisoner to France. When the
+admiral arrived, Doria received him, saying, “I know what brings you
+hither: the French vessels I deliver to you; the Genoese remain under
+my command. Do the rest of your errand if you dare!” The consequence of
+this blindness and ingratitude on the part of Francis was soon seen;
+Genoa declared herself free, and allied herself with the emperor. The
+blockade of Naples by sea was raised; and the influx of fresh troops
+and provisions enabled the city to defy its besiegers. These, encamped
+under a midsummer sun, ill supplied, and harassed, were soon attacked by
+pestilence. Lautrec their general died of it. The marquis of Saluzzo,
+who succeeded him, raised the siege and retired to Aversa, where he soon
+after surrendered to the prince of Orange; and thus another unsuccessful
+Italian expedition was added to the long list of French disasters.
+
+[Sidenote: [1528-1529 A.D.]]
+
+Another army led by the count of Saint-Pol into the north of Italy met
+with as little success. Francis felt that he could not re-establish his
+fortunes: he sickened of the love of glory that had hitherto animated
+him, and showed himself willing to treat for peace on any terms, provided
+the cession of Burgundy was not insisted on. Charles by this time saw
+that the nation would never consent to such a sacrifice: he therefore
+waived this part of the Treaty of Madrid. The negotiations on both sides
+were carried on by the duchess d’Angoulême and Margaret of Austria. The
+king gave up all his claims to possessions in Italy, Milan, Naples, and
+even Asti, and abandoned all his allies in that country; he renounced
+all right of sovereignty over Flanders or Artois; he ceded Tournay and
+Arras; two millions were to be paid as ransom for the young princes; the
+lands of the house of Bourbon were to be restored to the heirs of that
+family (a stipulation, by the by, never performed); and, finally, the
+treaty was to be sealed by the marriage of Francis with Leonora, the
+emperor’s sister. This Peace of Cambray, called also the “Ladies’ Peace,”
+was concluded in August, 1529: it was as glorious for Charles as it was
+disgraceful to France and her monarch. The emperor remained supreme
+master of Italy; the pope submitted, and obtained the re-establishment of
+the Medici in Florence, with hereditary power; the Venetians, who said
+that Cambray was destined to be their purgatory, were shorn of their
+conquests. Charles forgave Sforza, and left him the duchy of Milan. Henry
+VIII reaped nothing save the emperor’s enmity by his interference: the
+English monarch showed himself generous to Francis, by remitting to him,
+at this moment, a large debt. Thus was Europe pacified for the time.[i]
+
+
+INTERNAL AFFAIRS
+
+[Sidenote: [1525-1547 A.D.]]
+
+The melancholy Peace of Cambray will not be of long duration; the wars
+of Italy are not wholly finished; Francis I has not sincerely renounced
+“his heritage” beyond the mountains, the theatre of his former glory;
+he will continue to meditate and more than once to attempt, with some
+partial success, to shake his rival’s dominion over Italy. But neither
+great expeditions nor great events in the heart of the peninsula will
+again be seen under his reign. The essential interest of the history
+of France is no longer there: it returns to the interior; it is in the
+moral, intellectual, and social condition of that nation--thrown back
+upon itself after having failed in conquest, and confronted at home and
+abroad by the problem, growing daily more formidable, of a religious
+revolution or reaction which will compromise its destiny for centuries.
+The question is no longer whether France will snatch Italy from the
+political domination of Spain united with the empire, but whether France
+will find, in the elements which the Renaissance has brought her, the
+strength and light necessary to maintain or redeem her political and
+religious independence between those two genii of the north and south,
+Teutonic Protestantism and Hispano-Roman Papism[69] which, coming into
+collision, are about to make an attempt to drag everyone into their whirl.
+
+We will not here enter on the religious history, whose crisis does not
+appear in all its intensity till some years after the Treaty of Cambray.
+We will first take a glance at the economical situation of France, at
+the industrial arts and particularly at the fine arts, at letters and
+science, at that Renaissance movement which continued to develop under
+the patronage of Francis I. The taste for a civilisation elegant and
+learned, picturesque and varied, was the sole affection to which Francis
+always remained faithful. He had a more genuine right to the title of
+“father of letters” (_père des lettres_) than to that of “knightly
+king” (_roi chevalier_). Even his own mistakes and the misfortunes of
+the allies he had abandoned were made to contribute to the progress of
+the arts among the French, a progress whose advance in a good direction
+remains, indeed, questionable. The fall of Florence, the persecutions
+of the partisans of France at Naples and in Lombardy, sent a multitude
+of emigrants, the flower of the Italian population, streaming across
+the Alps; and France, as she was so often obliged to do, at least
+opened an asylum to the friends she had not managed to protect. The
+king endeavoured to palliate the wrong he had done Italy by favours to
+Italians, and the exiles experienced some consolation in finding on the
+banks of the Seine and the Loire the tastes, fashions, habits of thought,
+and almost the language of their own country.
+
+Many refugees were pensioned or invested with distinguished posts in
+the army and in diplomacy. The Florentine Strozzi and the Neapolitan
+Caraccioli, prince of Melfi, became marshals of France. Italy not
+only sent France artists and politicians, but merchants and skilful
+manufacturers, who brought into her cities their industry and the
+remains of their fortunes which had escaped the hands of the tyrants.
+The pre-eminence of the manufactures of Lyons dates from the fall
+of Florence: Louis XI had made Lyons a great commercial city and an
+international entrepôt by instituting three annual fairs which caused the
+decline of those of Geneva, and had endeavoured by the aid of Italian
+workmen to develop the manufacture of silk goods, simultaneously at Lyons
+and Tours: still Lyons, where various manufactures had rapidly developed,
+did not begin to rival Tours in silks until about 1525; the Florentine
+refugees soon gave her the superiority; two Genoese are also mentioned
+amongst the chief founders of the manufactures of Lyons.
+
+A bank was instituted at Lyons. An import duty of two gold crowns per
+piece on velvet or silk goods protected the French silk manufactures
+against foreign competition; as to the cloths and woollen goods of Spain
+and Perpignan, they were absolutely prohibited in favour of the cloths of
+Languedoc. In the north the manufacture of the cloths of Darnétal near
+Rouen was very considerable; the edict of May, 1542, which regulated the
+manufacture at Darnétal, qualities it as almost inestimable. An edict of
+the 18th of July, 1540, had decreed that foreign stuffs in gold, silver,
+and silk should enter France by Susa if they came from Italy, by Narbonne
+or Bayonne if they came from Spain: they were to be taken straight to
+Lyons and, there only, unpacked and exposed for sale. This privilege
+must have enormously increased the prosperity of Lyons. Yet in 1543 one
+of those sumptuary edicts which the rigid spirit of the parliament from
+time to time wrung from the kings forbade the wearing of gold and silver
+stuffs. French merchandises were subjected to a uniform export duty of
+one sou per livre. In 1540 a royal ordinance attempted to establish a
+uniform measure as already planned by Louis XI: an ell of three feet,
+seven inches, eight lines was prescribed for use throughout the kingdom.
+But commercial relations were not yet sufficiently active for the
+advantage of such an improvement to be generally felt; local practice
+protested and prevailed: the edict was revoked in 1543.
+
+The French navy was making remarkable progress: Dieppe had raised its
+head since the expulsion of the English and had resumed its ancient
+preponderance amongst the French ports on the ocean; Norman and Breton
+navigators gleaned, so to speak, on the tracks of the Spaniards and
+Portuguese and tried to take up the threads of their old commercial
+relations with Africa, and to open new ones with both Indies. Such
+expeditions were full of peril, for the haughty rulers of the western
+and eastern seas treated as pirates those competitors who ventured into
+their domains. Captain Denis of Honfleur had touched at Brazil as early
+as 1504, before the Portuguese, who discovered it in 1500, had founded
+any settlement there; the French navigators continued to traffic with
+the savage tribes who sold them those precious woods from which Brazil
+has derived its name, and who “gave a better welcome to the French than
+to the Portuguese and other European peoples.” In 1529 two ships from
+Dieppe, under the command of Jean Parmentier, made a voyage to Madagascar
+and Sumatra. During this time attempts which had more lasting results
+were directed to the north of America, towards the countries whither
+the Spaniards had not turned their steps. In 1506 Denis of Honfleur had
+visited the island of Newfoundland which was then taken for a portion of
+the continent; in 1508 Aubert, a native of Dieppe, followed him there
+with a vessel fitted out by Jean Ango, the father of the illustrious
+shipowner of the same name; the Bretons for their part discovered and
+named the island of Cape Breton, and the annual codfishery was founded
+on those coasts. The French government at last decided to second private
+enterprise, and to claim its share of the New World. In 1524, by order
+of Francis I, the Florentine Verazzano undertook a voyage of discovery,
+reconnoitred all the coasts from Cape Breton and Acadia to Florida, and
+took possession of them in the name of Francis I. Ten years afterwards,
+in 1534, the Breton Jacques Cartier of St. Malo, commissioned by the
+king at the suggestion of Admiral Chabot de Brion, satisfied himself
+that Newfoundland was an island, penetrated into the vast gulf which
+that great island bars, and reconnoitred the mouth of the St. Lawrence:
+the year following he ascended this immense river as far as the spot
+where Quebec was afterwards built, and discovered Canada. The name of
+New France (_Nouvelle-France_) was imposed on the whole northern part of
+America.
+
+In 1540 Roberval, a Picard _gentilhomme_, was appointed viceroy of
+Canada by Francis I, and set out with a squadron of five ships which
+Cartier commanded under his orders; the colony was installed at Cape
+Breton. The severity of the climate, so different from the magnificent
+regions conquered by the Spaniards, the insufficiency of supplies, the
+improvidence and negligence of the royal government were the cause
+of the failure at the close of a few years of this first attempt at
+colonisation, which was not renewed till the reign of Henry IV; but the
+sailors of Normandy, Brittany, and La Rochelle continued the codfishery
+and the fur trade with the peoples of Canada. A wealthy shipowner of
+Dieppe, Jean Ango, whom the documents of the time describe as “merchant
+of Rouen and viscount de Dieppe,” made himself one of the glories of the
+French nation by his great enterprises, by his taste for the arts, and
+the energy with which he sustained the honour of the French flag against
+the rulers of the seas, particularly the Portuguese. His beautiful
+manor of Warengeville, farm-house rather than château, still charms the
+traveller amongst the green woodlands of the Dieppe coast. This family of
+Ango was probably the same whence came the architect Roger Ango who built
+the Palais de Justice at Rouen.
+
+
+_The French Renaissance_
+
+Whilst industry and navigation were thus progressing, the arts surrounded
+Francis I with a splendour which Charles V and Henry VIII in vain
+attempted to rival: for example, the king and all the nobles contended
+with one another in erecting buildings, and there sprang from the earth
+all those Renaissance châteaux which arose on French soil to take the
+place of the feudal fortresses, and which like them have unfortunately
+in great part disappeared. There was Madrid, the elegant retreat of the
+Bois de Boulogne, so called because Francis loved to recall the weariness
+of the prison in the midst of pleasures and liberty; there was La Meute
+(by corruption La Muette), and St. Germain, and Villers-Cotterets and
+Chantilly and Follembrai and Nantouillet, the splendid residence of
+Duprat. The national architecture, threatened by the growing invasion
+of the Italian taste, seemed to concentrate all its forces to protest
+against it by a last creation of brilliant originality (1526). He who has
+not seen Chambord does not suspect all the fantastic poetry that was to
+be found in the French art of the sixteenth century. There is something
+indescribable in this palace of the fairies, rising suddenly before the
+eyes of the traveller from the depths of the gloomy woods of La Sologne
+with its forests of turrets, spires, aërial campaniles, the beautiful
+tints of their pearl gray stones, chequered with black mosaics standing
+out on the sombre slates of the great roofs. This impression could only
+be surpassed by the spectacle which delights us on the terraces of the
+keep at the foot of the charming cupola which terminates the grand
+staircase, the centre and pivot of this vast and varied whole and which
+stands up radiant above the terraces like a flower one hundred feet
+high. Everywhere between the _lacs d’amours_ and crowned F’s, mysterious
+salamanders, vomiting flames, climb on the pediments, curl round the
+medallions, or hang from the cornices and panels of the vaults, like the
+dragons which watch over the enchanted castles of old legend, waiting the
+return of the master who will come no more.[k]
+
+Francis I had at first been the pupil of the Italian, Baldassare
+Castiglione, author of a book called _Il Cortegiano_, or “the perfect
+courtier.” Struck by the qualities of the Italian people, the French
+monarch cherished for them a peculiar love, and drew about him the most
+celebrated men of the peninsula. Leonardo da Vinci died at Fontainebleau
+almost in the arms of the king. Primaticcio, Il Rosso, Andrea del Sarto,
+and Benvenuto Cellini came with alacrity at his call, and some of their
+greatest works were destined to be the property of France. The early and
+most illustrious French artists, among them Jean Goujon, were trained in
+the school formed by these masters, and it was to the construction and
+embellishment of Chambord and Fontainebleau that the king devoted their
+inspired brushes and chisels.
+
+The type of the old fortress-castle of feudal times gradually gave place
+to another and less repellent one, that of the great pleasure-mansions
+which included among their attractions everything that the most luxurious
+and refined taste could devise. The court journeyed without ceasing from
+castle to castle and from feast to feast, eliciting loud complaints from
+the foreign ambassadors, who, though unable to afford the expense of such
+continual moving about, were yet obliged to follow.
+
+Not satisfied with the presence of foreign artists about him, Francis I
+offered great inducements to men of science to visit his court. Erasmus,
+the literary oracle of Europe, was warmly solicited to leave Holland and
+establish himself in France, but he consented merely to make the voyage
+thither. Many Italians, however, among whom was the poet Alamanni, and
+a number of Greeks with the aged Lascaris at their head, established
+for themselves a second fatherland in France. The famous Guillaume
+Budé, guardian of the king’s library and one of the most learned men
+of the century, was, with the Estiennes, deputed by the king to show
+these colonists all the honours of the land. Francis I gave his envoys
+to Turkey the mission of procuring for him manuscripts in Greek, and
+the translation into French of ancient documents was undertaken; while
+the art of printing, introduced in France during the reign of Louis XI,
+underwent rapid development; the presses of Lyons, where a numerous
+Italian colony had become established, gaining a celebrity for the town
+almost rivalling that of Venice or Bâle.
+
+The College of France, called in the beginning College of the Three
+Tongues, was founded in 1529 after a plan indicated by Budé, less
+with the object of giving general instruction than for the purpose
+of promoting the study of the three languages of learning, Latin,
+Greek, and Hebrew. The institution bore a great resemblance to the
+Italian academies. Philology, its chief object, was the science most
+in vogue at that time, as it was held to be the initiatory stage in
+the study of antiquity. Thus conceived, the College of France left
+all instruction, properly speaking, in the hands of the old Sorbonne,
+the ancient university. True to its old scholastic spirit, opposed to
+innovations, and attached to its ancient privileges which it now believed
+to be menaced, the Sorbonne entered upon a bitter war against the new
+institution; but the latter, strong in the royal favour and patronage,
+issued victorious from the conflict. The number of chairs was increased,
+to the study of languages was added that of science, particularly
+mathematics, and beginning with the very first years of its existence the
+College of France gained the reputation of being the most brilliant and
+complete of all the European institutes of learning.
+
+The reason for the creation of this college and for its rapid success
+and growth may be found in the tendencies of an age that was rich in
+discoveries of all kinds. There are, in the history of the human mind,
+certain happy periods when the horizons of thought seem to become
+enlarged on all sides at once. A new field was opened to philological
+research, as the Middle Ages had had but little knowledge of Greek and
+less of Hebrew. A corresponding progress was also made in geography and
+the natural sciences by the study of climates and races hitherto unknown.
+
+Always powerful over the entire country, the influence of the court
+increased under Francis I, and was no less beneficial to letters and
+society in general than it was to the cause of learning. The king,
+beloved of his men-at-arms because he was the best knight in the kingdom;
+of artists and scientists because he so generously patronised and
+encouraged them, commended himself equally to courtiers, men of letters,
+and ladies because no one in his realm carried to such a point as he
+the love of the beautiful. Aided by his mother and sister and later by
+his daughter-in-law Catherine de’ Medici, he made his court the most
+remarkable in Europe, not only for the luxury it displayed but for its
+wit and grace and a certain elegant not to say corrupt refinement of
+manners that was best exemplified in the foreign princess brought up
+under the eyes of Catherine, Mary Stuart.
+
+Never had the French court counted so many members. Under Louis XII it
+had been composed of a few favourites, a definite number of officers, and
+a guard of a hundred nobles. Francis I increased in enormous proportion
+the number of court officers, which he intended to bestow on upstarts
+who could in this manner rise to nobility. The posts were mostly filled,
+however, by landless gentlemen of birth upon whom were also bestowed
+detached titles. Thus arose a company of marquises and dukes possessing
+neither marquisates nor duchies. These two innovations alone would have
+sufficed to make the court the point upon which converged all ambitions
+and hopes of fortune. Francis I desired that women should share the
+offices and dignities of the court, and should have a hierarchy of their
+own; he loved to shower upon them, as upon his nobles, the marks of his
+liberality. Two of his mistresses, Madame de Châteaubriant, sister of
+Lautrec and of Lescun; and afterwards Mademoiselle de Heilly, whom he
+made Duchess d’Étampes, reigned for a long time side by side with the
+king, and patronised artists as well as distributed remunerative posts.
+
+Unfortunately one cannot have much to say about this court without
+speaking of its corruption, to which Francis I himself contributed by the
+changes he brought about and by his personal example. Destroying as they
+did the simplicity of former modes of living, the innovations introduced
+by him resulted in confusion to the rules and usages of the nobility, and
+fostered fawning and intrigues. His own many scandalous deeds as well as
+those that were with impunity committed around him, have heavily burdened
+his memory with the charge of violating the public morality.
+
+It would, however, be most unjust to view the court of the Valois only
+through the biased medium of Brantôme’s[p] chronicle of scandals, or the
+writings of contemporaneous Calvinists. As for these latter, they have
+neglected no means by which they could blacken the fame of the prince and
+personages who were the first to persecute their co-religionists; hence,
+on many points, their testimony is not to be believed. The letters of
+Venetian envoys, on the other hand, who were observers of great depth
+and keenness, reveal the warmest admiration for a court of which they,
+among all foreigners, were the quickest to feel the great seduction and
+charm. All the literature of this century, in fact, imaginative as well
+as historical, attests with striking force the elevated character of the
+influence exercised by the court of Francis I over public opinion.
+
+Particularly prominent among the writers of that time are Marguerite
+de Valois[q] and Marot,[r] the king’s valet, from whose works the
+fairest judgments may be formed concerning the tastes of the court--its
+gallantry, its love of wit and social pleasures, the esteem in which it
+held pure learning and the tolerance it accorded free thought. Severely
+as we may condemn certain of their works, they are nevertheless worthy to
+serve as models for sentiment, beauty of form, and light, poetic grace.
+To these two writers compare Rabelais, the author of the people, the
+creator of that strange and inexplicable encyclopædia wherein, as the
+product of a great intellectual debauch, the whole sixteenth century
+passes by us in review, and you will be able to judge on which side
+lay delicacy and taste, in what degree the literature of the court was
+qualified to elevate and refine the literature of the people.[f] But,
+on the other hand, Rabelais[70] remains a classic in our own day, while
+these other writers are forgotten. Rabelais, indeed, is not merely the
+greatest writer of this time, but by common consent he is named as one
+of the three or four greatest humourists of any age or country.[a] His
+work is in itself sufficient proof that Francis I destroyed neither the
+liberty of his subjects nor their originality. Although more absolute
+than his predecessors, Francis always took account of public opinion and
+had the insight to distinguish, as Ranke[s] ingeniously puts it, enforced
+obedience from that which is rendered voluntarily.
+
+Thus even in those personal memoirs wherein the individuality of the
+writer is most wholly revealed, it is to be observed that the tendency of
+the century was all toward expansion, in height as well as breadth. We
+note the origin, the preliminary flights of that freedom of thought and
+research that was later to soar so high. Apparent as are the excesses of
+the age, we must not judge it by its faults alone; its very shortcomings
+raised controversies that served to form public opinion in a graver,
+sterner mould. More ado was made about the use or abuse of supreme
+power, which was for the first time subjected to control. The writer who
+passes the severest judgment on Francis I and his court is Gaspard de
+Saulx-Tavannes, the representative of the most radical of the independent
+nobility.[f]
+
+A word must be said about another phase of intellectual development--that
+which found expression in the words and deeds of Luther and Calvin and
+their followers.[a] The new opinions early crept into France; their
+first converts were men of letters. All the great French jurisconsults
+of that century, in secret or openly accepted the Reformation. A party
+at the court itself inclined towards it. Louise of Savoy appears not
+to have been opposed to it. Her daughter Marguerite, queen of Navarre,
+an independent genius and the author of mysteries and novels, openly
+professed the principles of the German reformers; the duchess of Étampes,
+the king’s mistress, made a point of protecting them. Lefèbre d’Étaples
+(Faber Stapulensis), and Louis Berquin, both men of learning known and
+esteemed by Francis, sustained these in their favour: the first had
+begun six years before Luther. Finally the favourite court poet, Clement
+Marot, abandoned his elegies and epigrams to translate the psalms of
+David, which the reformists of Paris sang about the Pré-aux-Clercs. At
+first Francis, far from being alarmed at these symptoms, would fain have
+attached to himself Erasmus of Rotterdam, the king of the learned and of
+the men of letters of the century, who was accused of having prepared the
+way for Luther by his attacks on the monks. But when the German peasants,
+following out the new doctrines to their socialistic consequences, would
+have overturned all authority, Francis I thought that the Reformation,
+which was a revolt against the pope, was in danger of leading politically
+to a revolt against the king; and if he remained the interested friend of
+the German Protestants he had no wish to allow their doctrines to gain
+ground in his own states.
+
+During the king’s captivity two Lutherans had been burned in the capital.
+He had put a stop to these executions, but in 1528 a statue of the Virgin
+was mutilated at Paris. Francis declared that “if he knew one of his
+own members to be infected with this doctrine he would tear it away for
+fear lest the rest should be corrupted,” and from that day he persecuted
+the innovators. Berquin, who refused to retract, was burned on the
+place de Grève (1529); at Vienne, at Séez, at Toulouse there were other
+executions. The necessity of propitiating the Protestants of Germany
+mitigated the persecution. Again in 1536 six unfortunates were sacrificed
+on different squares in Paris in presence of the court.[m]
+
+
+WAR AGAIN BETWEEN FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V
+
+[Sidenote: [1528-1535 A.D.]]
+
+But we must not pause for further details of this character;[71] we
+must return to the sweep of political events in France, and the renewed
+quarrels of Francis and his old enemy Charles V. A lasting peace between
+such rivals as Charles and Francis was not to be expected. Even if
+the latter could have confined himself to the pursuit of pleasure, to
+the internal regulation of his kingdom, and to the patronage of the
+arts, the spirit of Charles, ever restless in the cabinet, could not
+fail to have provoked him. At one time the emperor sent him a summons,
+requiring his aid against the Turks, and ending with the accusation
+that he had called Suleiman to invade Europe. Francis was now on the
+closest terms of alliance with Henry VIII, who was bent on divorcing the
+emperor’s aunt. The French king used all his influence with the pope
+to procure the necessary license for Henry, but was still baffled by
+the influence of Charles. Clement VII was the potentate whose alliance
+was most warmly disputed by the rival sovereigns. And both assailed the
+pontiff on a pontiff’s weak side, by the offer of aggrandisement to his
+family. Charles proposed that Clement’s niece, Catherine de’ Medici,
+should espouse Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan; by which means the
+Medici would necessarily be ever adverse to the claims of the French
+kings on Milan. Francis, in opposition, offered his second son, Henry,
+duke of Orleans, as a husband for Catherine; and Clement, elated by the
+honour of an alliance with the royal house of France, exulted at the
+proposal. The emperor, who knew the proud character of Francis, could
+not believe that he would sincerely permit his son to ally with such
+upstarts as the Medici; and this incredulity neutralised the exertions
+that he might otherwise have made to obstruct the match. It took place,
+however, in 1533, at Marseilles, where Clement and Francis met to
+honour the ceremonial, and to arrange the conditions of their future
+friendship. One of these, there is no doubt, was the vigorous prosecution
+and extirpation of heresy. Francis, however, reaped as usual little
+advantage from the negotiation. He failed to obtain for Henry VIII the
+dispensation required, and that impatient monarch broke with the church
+in consequence. Clement himself died in the year following, and was
+succeeded by Paul III of the house of Farnese.[i]
+
+[Sidenote: [1535-1537 A.D.]]
+
+Francis I and Charles V vied with each other in seeking alliance with the
+church. Francis burned heretics in the great cities, and made adhesion
+to the new opinions a crime against the crown. Charles, on the other
+hand, led an expedition into Africa, and slaughtered the infidels in a
+new crusade (1535). Victorious over Barbarossa, the usurper of Tunis, and
+followed by the blessings of the thousands of Christian captives whom he
+had delivered from slavery, he made his way to Rome. There, in presence
+of the pope, he stood forth and made his complaint against Francis. He
+declared his readiness to invest one of his sons with Milan, on such
+conditions of suzerainty and subjection as he should afterwards choose to
+name; failing that, to meet his enemy foot to foot, on horseback, or in a
+boat, armed _cap-à-pie_ or naked to their shirts; or, finally, to declare
+internecine war upon him, binding himself by an oath never to sheathe the
+sword till he had made him the poorest gentleman that ever lived. After
+this decent and courageous bravado, at which the pontiff must have been
+greatly amazed, the assembly broke up in most admired disorder, and the
+dogs of war were let loose. An invasion of France was resolved on, and
+Charles already counted his victory so secure that he distributed the
+estates of the French nobility among his favourites (1536). An army of
+Spaniards and Italians was to overrun Provence, and another of Flemings
+to break in on Picardy. Between the two, Francis was to be crushed.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN, TIME OF FRANCIS I]
+
+Misfortunes crowded, not in single file but in battalions, upon the
+thoughtless but affectionate king. His eldest son Francis, the dauphin,
+died at this time [suddenly; there were suspicions, probably unfounded,
+of poisoning]. Defection deprived him of some of the strongest fortresses
+in Savoy; and the forces of his enemy were reported to be on the soil of
+France. Instantly the courageous Francis was roused from his grief and
+dejection. The territory in front of the Spaniards was made a desert; the
+cattle were driven away, the villages burned, and parties of resolute
+horsemen sent forth to harass them on the march. Charles expected that
+all would be risked on the arbitrament of one great engagement, and was
+foiled by the unexpected tactics. He marched without glory, for he saw no
+enemy; and without food, for every field was bare. Sickness came to aid;
+and, in frightful disorganisation, the starving hordes hurried across
+the Alps, slain and pillaged on their way by the angry peasantry, and
+perishing in the clefts of the rocks of hunger and fatigue. Thus fell the
+pride of the invader almost without a blow.
+
+Francis took now the lofty part which hitherto had been played by his
+rival; and at a bed of justice in the palace of the Louvre, summoned
+his rebellious vassal before his feudal court (1537), stripped him by
+solemn sentence of his tenures of Artois, Flanders, and Charolais, which
+always had been held of the French crown, and of which his renunciation
+at the Treaty of Madrid was null and of no effect, as having been
+obtained by violence and fraud. Beside him, on this great occasion, sat
+the king of Navarre and James V of Scotland, who had just married the
+short-lived Madeleine of France--a more dignified, though not a more
+useful demonstration than the quarrel-scene of his rival at Rome. The
+forms of feudalism were occasionally revived to gratify a hatred, as
+the forms of chivalry were retained to justify a duel; but the hatred
+of the two greatest sovereigns in Europe carried them beyond the bounds
+both of feudalism and chivalry. Their language, by their respective
+heralds, would have done honour to two English prize-fighters. They
+interchanged the names of perjurer and liar, and reminded each other of
+the discomfitures they had sustained; Charles being particularly caustic
+on the subject of Pavia and the prison of Madrid, and Francis retorting
+with reminiscences of the emperor’s overthrow in Provence, and starvation
+among the hills. Yet, in a year after this time, the enemies met, and
+spent four of the happiest days of their lives in unrestrained intimacy
+at Aigues Mortes, a small seaport on the Mediterranean. Charles arrived
+in a galley. Francis went on board, and grasping his hand said, “My
+brother, you see I am your prisoner again.” Charles returned the visit
+on shore; listened well-pleased to the open unsuspecting talk of his
+companion, and put down all his sayings, and plans, and recollections in
+his memory, to be used against him at the proper time. He promised him
+great things in return for all his confidence; the investiture of Milan
+for his son, and aid in all his schemes.
+
+[Sidenote: [1537-1544 A.D.]]
+
+A French king at that time would have sacrificed anything for the
+vainglory of establishing himself in Italy. Charles saw his triumph,
+confirmed it by a friendly visit to Paris, and made use of it by
+obtaining permission to pass through France to punish the men of Ghent
+who had rebelled (1539). And, when thus the whole advantages of his
+superior policy were secured, he denounced his friend to the indignation
+of every Christian, as an ally of Suleiman the chief of the unbelievers,
+and bestowed the duchy of Milan on his own son, Philip, the prince of
+Spain. Five armies sprang up at the king’s lifting his hand, to revenge
+this wrong and insult. But though indignation may raise troops, it
+cannot raise money. Fresh burdens were imposed; church ornaments were
+coined into crowns, but still the chest was empty. La Rochelle set the
+dangerous example of rebellion on account of its over-taxation, and was
+only quelled by alleviation of its payments and pardon of its behaviour.
+Assistance was greedily looked to by both parties. Suleiman, the champion
+of Mohammedanism, on the side of Francis, was balanced by Henry, the
+defender of the Protestant faith, on the side of Charles. The Turks,
+under the same Barbarossa whom Charles had displaced from Tunis, besieged
+Nice, and ravaged the shores of Catalonia. Henry did little but keep
+Scotland from aiding France by the intrigues and menaces with which he
+sued for the hand of the unfortunate Mary Stuart, now queen, for his son
+Edward. A great victory at Ceresoles, in 1544, added another useless
+wreath to the chaplet of French achievements, and for a moment Milan
+opened its gates. But Charles and Henry were by this time on the soil
+of France. The Spaniards were at St. Dizier, the English at Boulogne.
+Troops were summoned from Italy, and collected from all quarters. Charles
+steadily advanced, seized Épernay, and rested in Château-Thierry. Paris
+almost heard the thunder of his guns; and, flushed with the possession of
+Boulogne, Henry was reported to be upon the march to join the army.
+
+[Sidenote: [1544-1547 A.D.]]
+
+But other sounds reached the ears of the belligerents. The Protestants in
+Germany were sharpening their swords, and Charles feared the men of the
+confession of Augsburg more than the Catholic French. A peace was patched
+up at Crespy in the Valois (1544) which left things as they were, and
+enabled the two monarchs to turn their religious minds to the extirpation
+of heresy. The royal heretic [Henry VIII] who had been the faithful
+ally of one of them, and the considerate foe of the other, contented
+himself with demanding a bribe of 2,000,000 crowns for the restitution
+of his conquests. From this time Francis and Charles had more interests
+in common. Both glowed with a hatred of the Reformation such as only
+tyrants can feel. They persuaded the pope to summon a general council to
+extirpate Lutheranism and Calvinism at once, and while the famous council
+of Trent was gathering from all the orthodox nationalities, they occupied
+themselves in cruel persecutions of their suspected subjects (1545).[v]
+
+
+LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF FRANCIS I
+
+Francis, however, was growing feeble. He was no longer the brilliant
+knight of Marignano or Pavia, the friend of Leonardo da Vinci and of
+Erasmus. Worn out before his time by excesses, at fifty-one he was a
+morose old man. The greatest blot on his reign belongs to these last
+unhappy years. So long as the war with Charles V continued, Francis
+I was careful not to offend the dissenters; the Edict of Coucy had
+even ordered, in 1535, the suspension of all persecution on account
+of religion. The peace concluded, men of harsh and sinister counsel,
+such as Montmorency and Cardinal de Tournon, resumed the upper hand.
+They attributed the king’s reverses to the relaxation of severity and
+he allowed himself to be persuaded to order new executions. At Meaux
+fourteen pyres were erected in one day (1546); at the place Maubert
+Étienne Dolet was hanged and then burned.
+
+The most odious execution was that of a whole inoffensive population,
+the Vaudois, whose beliefs were more than three centuries old. In 1540
+they had been condemned as heretics. The execution of the sentence had
+been suspended in favour of a peaceable peasantry who paid their taxes
+regularly and merely offered the spectacle of pure and simple manners
+in the two little towns of Mérindol and Cabrières and in some thirty
+villages of the Alps of Provence.
+
+But in the month of April, 1545, precise and rigorous orders from the
+court reached the parliament of Aix. Without warning, the baron de la
+Garde, assisted by the president D’Oppède and the _avocat-général_ Guérin
+and accompanied by soldiers, entered the territory of these unfortunate
+people: 3,000 were massacred or burned in their dwellings; 660 sent to
+the galleys; the rest dispersed in the woods and mountains, where the
+greater part died of hunger and privation. For fifteen leagues round not
+a house, not a tree was left.
+
+Francis I, who perhaps did not know all the details of this execrable
+drama, approved what had taken place and ordered the persecution to be
+continued. Foreign affairs went no better. It was the time when Charles
+V, no longer trammelled by the war with France and assured of peace with
+the Turks, turned his forces against the Protestants of Germany and,
+under pretext of stifling heresy, sought to stifle German liberty; the
+battle of Mühlberg seemed to lay the empire at his feet. Francis I did
+not see this great success of his rival; he had died three weeks before
+at the château of Rambouillet, at the age of fifty-two years (31st
+of March, 1547).[m] He was buried with a magnificence far surpassing
+anything which had yet been witnessed in France; eleven cardinals
+assisted at his obsequies, and the ceremony extended over two and twenty
+days. The bodies of his two sons, the dauphin Francis and Charles duke
+of Orleans, were conveyed to St. Denis together with his own, and Henry
+II succeeded to the vacant throne.[n] Before we take up the events of
+that monarch’s reign, let us listen to an estimate of the character and
+influence of the showy ruler whose life story we have just followed to
+its close.[a]
+
+
+GAILLARD’S ESTIMATE OF FRANCIS I
+
+[Sidenote: [1515-1547 A.D.]]
+
+Charles V and Francis I (says Gaillard) perhaps owe it to each other
+that they were great men; each had some advantages that were denied the
+other. The leading characteristic of Charles was diplomacy, of Francis
+straightforwardness. If we compare the two princes as warriors, the sum
+total of their military exploits appears about equal; nevertheless the
+deeds of Francis are more famous. His early career was so brilliant that
+it has shed a lustre over his whole life, even over his misfortunes. To
+gain a victory at twenty makes a man famous forever. Charles V began his
+career, or at any rate distinguished himself in it, too late. His first
+important expedition was the one against the Turks in 1532; for the time
+when he appeared at Valenciennes only to fly on the approach of the king,
+and the occasion of his failure before Bayonne, when he was enabled to
+regain Fuenterrabia by the treachery of a coward, must count for nothing.
+The expedition to Tunis in 1536 was the first exploit of Charles V
+which can be compared with the battle of Marignano; nevertheless it was
+certainly better to gain the battle of Mühlberg than to lose that of
+Pavia. On the whole Charles V was perhaps the greater general and Francis
+I the better soldier, and this division of military talent is very
+much what might be expected from their individual characters, the one
+deliberate and thoughtful, the other ardent and impetuous.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOUNDARIES OF FRANCE IN THE TIME OF FRANCIS I]
+
+In the matter of policy it cannot be denied that Charles V was much
+greater than Francis I. He kept or gained everything that was contested
+between him and his rival; he obtained the empire and took possession of
+the duchy of Milan, and he kept the kingdom of Naples. Nor did he owe his
+success entirely to the favour of blind fortune; it was rather the result
+of wise conduct, well-thought-out methods, and the adoption of measures
+likely to bring about the end he had in view. He was fortunate, and would
+have been thoroughly worthy of his good fortune had he not so often used
+fraudulent means to bring about success. He possessed in a high degree
+the royal faculty of understanding men. The greatest generals in Europe
+were to be found at the head of his armies; his ministers had no sway
+over him, and he always employed them in the matters for which they were
+most suitable. He understood both his own subjects and foreigners; he
+knew that Bourbon was a hero and that Saluzzo was only a traitor. He
+therefore made use of Bourbon for conquest and Saluzzo for treachery.
+Bourbon was a hero, but he was a French refugee, so Charles placed
+Pescara to act as a spy over him. Pescara was almost on an equality with
+Bourbon and was jealous of him. Both men however were ambitious and not
+very faithful, so Charles employed the trustworthy and useful Lannoy to
+watch them both. He won over from France La Marck, Sickingen, the sublime
+Bourbon, the prince of Orange, and Andrea Doria, the greatest men of
+his time, while Francis only took from him the obscure prince of Melfi.
+Charles V greatly excelled his rival also in steadiness and energy.
+
+Francis I was capable of actions which dazzle us, but he was only
+energetic by fits and starts, with long intervals of lethargy and
+languor; while with Charles V there were no such intervals. Always full
+of energy, he made his preparations, he carried them out, he plotted,
+he sowed dissension where it suited his purpose to do so, he went to
+Germany, to Italy, to Spain; he controlled the great powers and subdued
+the lesser ones, he fettered them all by his negotiations. Bayle remarks
+that since there were many more leagues formed against Francis I than
+against Charles V, the former must have been more feared than the latter;
+but it was the emperor’s cleverness which made people believe that
+Francis I was so formidable. Moreover such leagues do not always prove
+that the power of the person against whom they are formed is greatly
+feared. After the defeat of the De Foix and the expulsion of the French
+in 1522, the whole of Italy formed a league against them; was it because
+she had more fear of Francis I, who was routed and expelled, than of the
+emperor, who was master of the Milanese and of the kingdom of Naples?
+No, but she thought she would be more likely to be left in peace if she
+submitted quietly to the emperor, than if she made an effort to help the
+fallen king to rise, by lending him a helping hand.
+
+Henry VIII, it is true, more often allied himself with Charles V than
+with Francis I. He thought he had some claim to France; he knew he had
+none to Italy, to Germany, or to Spain. Charles V knew how to turn to
+his own advantage the power of his rival, which he exaggerated in order
+to injure him. But Francis I was far superior to his rival when he was
+defending Provence against his attacks, and Bayle is right in saying
+that he deserved more glory for preserving his own kingdom, in spite of
+circumstances, than Charles V, who failed to do this notwithstanding his
+great power and numerous intrigues, deserved for all his other conquests.
+Again, Francis was superior to Charles when he warned the latter that the
+people of Ghent were in rebellion, and allowed him to pass through France
+on his way to subdue them; when he pardoned the rebels of La Rochelle;
+when he behaved with such moderation after the scandalous scene in Rome;
+and when, Charles having calumniated him throughout Germany, he took no
+further vengeance than heaping benefits on the German merchants.
+
+Finally, in military ability Francis I was at least the equal of Charles
+V; in political genius he was his inferior, but he surpassed him in
+honour: indeed his political inferiority was partly the result of a
+greater moral delicacy, which made him more fastidious than Charles as to
+the means by which he tried to gain his ends. In drawing this parallel
+we have been looking at Francis I as a politician and a soldier, but the
+point of view is not advantageous to him. He will perhaps shine more
+brightly in the history of literature and of art.[o]
+
+
+CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY II
+
+Henry II, at the age of twenty-eight, displayed all the military
+qualities that had distinguished his father in his youth. He was trained
+in every kind of physical exercise, and enjoyed the reputation of
+being a most accomplished knight. “He possessed,” says Brantôme,[p]
+“majesty and grace, and manners that were suavely royal. He loved war,
+and never found life so much to his liking as when he was in the midst
+of battle.” His enterprising character had revealed itself in the last
+two struggles against Charles V, in which he had taken part under
+Montmorency and D’Annebaut. Cavalli, the Venetian envoy, who erred on
+the side of leniency, said of Henry that his excellent qualities gave
+promise to France of the worthiest monarch that had reigned there in two
+centuries. Like his father he made it a point to become acquainted with
+every gentleman in his realm. He detested Charles V, and took no pains
+to hide his feeling. The emperor well knew the bellicose humour of the
+king towards him and exerted every effort to furnish it satisfaction.
+“Henry’s father,” wrote Charles V to his ambassador at Rome, “drew the
+Turk towards him by the hair of his head; Henry will seize him by hair,
+hands, and feet.”
+
+One thing, however, was wanting in the new king: though a poet, and
+possessing like all his race a cultivated taste in literature, he lacked
+that personal charm which made of Francis I the natural head of the most
+cultured court in Europe. The men of letters in general have little to
+say in his praise, and the Calvinists, whose numbers were constantly
+increasing and whom he persecuted with relentless rigour, have least of
+all been inclined to spare him.
+
+
+COURT FAVOURITES
+
+Scarcely had Henry II ascended the throne when he recalled Montmorency,
+the master who had instructed him in the art of war and who had beguiled
+the tedium of a recent period of disgrace by building the superb mansions
+of Écouen and Chantilly. Montmorency immediately became all-powerful,
+and showered upon his family the highest dignities and honours. Claude
+of Guise, his brother the cardinal De Lorraine, and his six sons, all
+destined to attain the highest eminence, were also given great prominence
+in the councils of the new reign; they literally blocked the approaches
+to the throne. “It seemed,” says Tavannes, “as though the king had sworn
+to partition France among them.” Diane de Poitiers, grand sénéschale of
+Normandy and mistress of Henry II, though many years his senior, wielded,
+under the title of duchess of Valentinois, an influence far wider and
+more powerful than that exerted by the duchess d’Étampes during the
+preceding reign. By the marriage of her daughter she became allied to the
+family of Guise, with whom all her future movements were made in concert.
+Lastly Saint-André, a former governor of the king, was elevated to the
+position of marshal, and the pope bestowed the cardinal’s hat upon two
+favourite prelates, Charles de Bourbon, brother of the duke de Vendôme,
+and Charles de Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims.
+
+D’Annebaut, to whom Henry attributed the defeat of Perpignan; the
+cardinal De Tournon, and several gentlemen who had served as secretaries
+of state under Francis I were banished from the court. Out of eleven
+cardinals who sat in the council seven were sent to Rome, partly with
+the intention of propitiating the new ministry, and partly to strengthen
+French influence with the government of Rome, and to establish a French
+party in the sacred college. The duchess d’Étampes was also requested to
+withdraw, the king even taking from her the diamonds she had received
+from Francis I to present them to the duchess of Valentinois.
+
+These many changes resulted, as was inevitable, in widespread discontent.
+The new councillors were accused of rapacity, and the spirit of jealous
+distrust in which they arrogated all the power to themselves highly
+incensed the people, while the king was reproached with the weakness
+which made him so readily yield himself over to be governed. The
+highest personages made open traffic of court dignities and positions;
+Montmorency in particular being accused of having furthered his own and
+his kinsmen’s interests by bribes given to the highest nobles, and by
+peopling the courts of justice with magistrates and councillors of his
+own creation. Venality and corruption everywhere prevailed, and the
+spirit manifested by new ministers in entering upon their office was
+almost that of dogs rushing upon a quarry.
+
+Not one of the writings, in which speaks prejudice or passion, that has
+come down to us from that day is unquestioningly to be believed; it
+is an unfortunate fact that many of our most entertaining historical
+memoirs are little better than chronicles of scandals, since, however
+incontestable may be the facts they contain, the manner in which these
+are dressed is invariably calculated to mislead.
+
+On the other hand these memoirs enable us to form an excellent idea
+of the brilliancy of the court, of the intellectual standard of its
+members, of the political ability of the councillors surrounding Henry
+II, of the sentiments of honour and obedience by which were actuated the
+nobility. It is seen that to untrammelled liberty of opinion, whether
+in praise or blame, was allied a deep-seated reverence for law, for the
+government, and for the king. Indeed many diplomatic documents, which for
+a long time remained unknown, are to the honour of Montmorency, Diane de
+Poitiers, and the Guises, attesting a truth that contemporaneous writers
+of military memoirs seem scarcely to suspect--namely, that diplomacy can
+accomplish more than arms. From the additional circumstance that the
+records of the relations with Venice are mainly favourable to the court,
+it will be seen that, strange though it may appear, it was the Frenchmen
+of that day who contributed the most towards blackening the national
+character.
+
+Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henry II, and Jeanne d’Albret, queen
+of Navarre, also played parts during this reign, small at first but
+increasing to great prominence as time went on. Catherine, whom Francis I
+had loved and protected against her enemies, gave as yet no evidence of
+personal ambition or greed for authority. She passively submitted to the
+rule of the duchess of Valentinois, but worked stealthily all the time to
+strengthen her own private influence--an influence which Diane herself
+finally came to second, and which paved the way to the reign upon which
+Catherine was soon to enter.[f]
+
+
+RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS AND ROYAL MARRIAGES
+
+The first days of his accession were employed by Henry in royal
+progresses through his domains, and in shows and spectacles. In the last
+of these he was himself a chief performer, and no one held the lists with
+a firmer lance, or overthrew his opponent with a more scientific thrust.
+Henry next proceeded to the slaughter of such of his people as began to
+think for themselves on religious subjects. Gibbets were erected on the
+side of the road by which he made his entrance into the good city of
+Paris, and unhappy Protestants were suspended from them by cords round
+their bodies, and dropped into a slow fire, which was kindled under them,
+till they expired. The Protestant princes of the league of Smalkald had
+been completely beaten at the great battle of Mühlberg within a month of
+Francis’ death. The elector of Saxony and the landgraf of Hesse were
+taken prisoners, their military followers dispersed, and to all human
+appearance the cause of the Reformation on the continent was at an end.
+
+Before the fruits of the battle of Mühlberg could be gathered by the
+victors, news reached the confederated Protestants that a quarrel had
+broken out between the French king and the emperor, and between the
+emperor and the pope. They actually became the arbiters of these great
+dissensions, and were courted by all parties. Charles, in order to
+intimidate his holiness, insisted on the return of the general council
+to Trent, where it had been originally summoned in 1544, and its removal
+from Bologna, to which it had been transferred by Paul. This was to
+place it where the influence of Protestant belief was greatest, and
+already there were hopes of a compromise, by which Germany might become
+an undivided power. England was under an eclipse at this time, and was
+nearly forgotten outside of her guardian seas. Edward VI was on the
+throne, Somerset was protector, and both were too weak to do anything
+more than defend their authority against the cabals of the political and
+religious parties into which the nation was split.
+
+[Illustration: HENRY II]
+
+The career was therefore open to the rival crowns. Charles, in entering
+on the new contest, showed his usual sagacity, and made concessions
+after having obtained all the advantages of force. He granted liberty
+of worship to the Protestants by an imperial rescript, marriage of
+their priests, and communion in both kinds, till the council of Trent
+should come to a final decision. But this was assuming too much of the
+pontifical authority to be pleasing to the pope. He protested against the
+Interim, as this act was called, and prosecuted his schemes in favour of
+France more zealously than ever. Persecution and toleration therefore
+became the conflicting arms of the champions in this great struggle;
+and it shows us how completely the political view at this time excluded
+the religious, that the heretics were slain and tortured by a man who
+was utterly regardless of the great question in dispute, while their
+liberties were defended by a gloomy and unrelenting bigot, who looked on
+them as the enemies of God and man.
+
+Henry, too thoughtless to take warning by the sudden change in his
+adversary’s treatment of the innovators, sought to strengthen his cause,
+and increase the papal influence, by double severity against the new
+faith. The massacres and atrocities perpetrated under Francis at Mérindol
+and Cabrières rested for a long time in the memory of the people, till
+they were expelled by still wilder excesses of fanaticism and hatred.
+Rebellions, prompted by despair and over-taxation, broke out in several
+places, and an expedition into Italy was thwarted by the necessity of
+hurrying back to punish refractory Bordeaux. Disregarding the protest of
+the local parliament, the edict of the king had imposed a duty on salt,
+which maddened the consumers; for the article lay at their doors, and
+the commissaries were inquisitorial as well as unjust. Montmorency, the
+favourite, was in his element now. He was sent down to execute justice
+on the revolters, and spared neither sex nor age. A hundred of the chief
+artisans of Bordeaux were ignominiously hanged; crowns of red-hot iron
+were placed on other sufferers’ heads while they were broken alive on the
+wheel. The bells were taken down, in sign of the withdrawal of the city’s
+municipal powers; and a breach was made in the walls, in sign of its
+subjection to military law. Wherever the constable went, he was preceded
+by the executioners of his vengeance; and having spread desolation and
+misery through the whole south of the kingdom, he returned to Paris
+in time to take part in the rejoicings which had been going on while
+these terrible events occurred, for the marriage of Anthony de Bourbon
+with Jeanne d’Albret. The mother of this Jeanne was the Protestant and
+poetess, Marguerite of Navarre, the sister of Francis I; and the eldest
+son of this marriage was Henry IV. These blood-stained espousals were the
+connecting link between the follower of Bayard and the friend of Sully.
+It is a great step when we come, with only one life between, from the
+armed bravo of Marignano to the author of the Edict of Nantes.
+
+[Sidenote: [1547-1548 A.D.]]
+
+At this time also another marriage was resolved on, and another royal
+bride made her appearance at the court of France. A beautiful and
+graceful child she was, whose life has been studied with more zeal, and
+fate lamented with more tears, than those of any other queen; for it was
+the fair and unfortunate Mary of Scotland, transplanted now, in her sixth
+year, from the bleak land which scarcely owned its allegiance, and always
+refused its affections--to appear for a brief moment on the brightest
+and gayest throne in Europe, and go back to the toils and struggles, the
+errors and sorrows of her native realm. She was betrothed in 1548 to
+Francis the dauphin, who later ascended the throne as Francis II. The
+rejoicings on these two auspicious events were soon interrupted; for all
+the nations were in a roused and unsettled state, and every day brought
+forth some new complication of parties, or totally unexpected turn in the
+progress of affairs.
+
+A distinction seems always to have been drawn between the doctrines of
+the Lutherans and the Calvinists. The Lutherans were considered merely
+dissidents from the papal church, but the Calvinists were thought rebels
+against royal authority. Excesses on both sides justified to superficial
+observers the opinion, which inflamed the Catholics and reformers
+with unappeasable rage, that their joint existence was impossible.
+Catholicism, when it was triumphant, trampled on the faintest spirit of
+dissent; and dissent, when it had the opportunity, retorted with almost
+insane retribution. The release from the darkness in which all men’s
+minds had been avowedly kept was too sudden to be wisely borne. The light
+blinded their eyes, and the persecutors could point to their victims’
+acts in justification of their own. This will account for the tragedies
+and nameless horrors of the next half century in France, in which the
+national character entirely changed. Jacques Bonhomme became a ravening
+savage instead of a complaining drudge, and knight and cavalier became
+brutalised below the standard of a Chinese mandarin or maddened Hindu.
+
+
+WAR WITH CHARLES V AND HIS SUCCESSOR
+
+[Sidenote: [1548-1552 A.D.]]
+
+National efforts, however they might ostensibly be only on temporal
+or political subjects, borrowed their spirit from these theological
+dissensions. Wars, sieges, marriages, all had reference to the
+great argument of the time; for it was felt on both sides that the
+preponderance of either of the parties in the religious struggle would
+decide the predominance of the political opinions which were supposed
+to be involved. Protestantism and free government, if not the cry, was
+already the sentiment of all the peoples, and Catholicism and loyalty
+to the crown were the counterblasts on the other side. If Charles V,
+therefore, at any time, perceived that the pope himself relaxed in his
+opposition to the Calvinist reformers, he opposed the person of his
+holiness without the least compunction, but with an unabated reverence
+for his office; and if Henry II saw, in the midst of his executions of
+the Protestants of his own kingdom, that encouragement of the Lutherans
+of Germany would weaken his rival’s forces, he sent assistance to the
+confederated princes. But both were equally bent on maintaining their
+individual authority. It will therefore not surprise us when we perceive
+that, in the year 1552, the part played by these unprincipled potentates
+became reversed. Charles, the publisher of the Interim which secured the
+Protestant demands, is at open war with them in Germany; and Henry, the
+torturer of the reformers of his own kingdom, is armed in their defence.
+Maurice of Saxony, however, saved the French king the trouble of crossing
+the Rhine, for he secretly placed himself at the head of a band of
+determined Protestants, forced the passes of the Tyrol, and scattered the
+council of Trent, which was still carrying on its labours. Without check
+or pause they marched without beat of drum, and got so close to the house
+in Innsbruck where Charles was in bed with a slight illness, that his
+imperial majesty had to fly with no more dignified apparel than his shirt
+and stockings.
+
+While the confederated princes were lamenting the escape of their
+expected prisoner, they were cheered with a message from the emperor
+himself offering terms of accommodation. The rapidity of his flight had
+been increased by the knowledge, which reached him in his retreat, that
+Henry, with a great French army, was on the borders of Germany, and ready
+to cross over to the assistance of his enemies. Better, he thought,
+to yield at once than allow his French rival to gain the glory of a
+reconciliation. The princes accepted the offer, and wrote to beg Henry to
+discontinue his advance. Henry yielded to their request by discontinuing
+his advance; but indemnified himself by turning to one side, and seized
+by main force the cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, spread his legions
+over Lorraine, and made an attempt on Strasburg and the county of Alsace.
+In this he was only repulsed by the Protestantism of the people. They
+feared the most Christian king and had more confidence in the Catholic
+emperor, who, to the great satisfaction and at the powerful request of
+sixty thousand armed Lutherans, had just signed his name to the Treaty of
+Passau. This Treaty of Passau was the termination for a long time of the
+German strife. Equal rights were secured by it to Protestant and papist;
+equal eligibility to seats in the great council of Speier, and mutual
+freedom of worship in the states of both communions.
+
+The war henceforth became a petty personal quarrel between the
+sovereigns. Charles, having pacified the reformers, swore he would die
+before the walls of Metz, which the king had taken, before he would raise
+the siege; and Henry swore he would lose his last man before a Spaniard
+crossed the ditch. It was a duel with the world gathered round the
+lists. Metz was a wretchedly placed town, with no regular fortifications,
+no bastions or towers, and was commanded by hills in the immediate
+neighbourhood. But Francis, duke of Guise, threw himself into the place,
+and made preparations for defence.[v]
+
+
+_The Siege of Metz (1552 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1552 A.D.]]
+
+On approaching the place, the 120,000 men who accompanied Charles V found
+neither food nor trees nor shelter in a province which the stupidity of
+the men of Brandenburg had ravaged without aim or profit, as completely
+as the defenders of Metz might have done systematically in their own
+interest. Albert, their markgraf, with the improvidence of a savage, had
+reduced himself to famine. Charles V remained for a long time encamped at
+Saarbrücken and at Forbach, waiting for his heavy artillery.
+
+Guise had no intention of letting himself be surprised by this army,
+masked as it was behind the forests, and most frequently employed himself
+in visiting the guards and sentinels. He established a “watch” of mounted
+men at St. Julien, to give warning of the approach of the enemy. In the
+beginning of October, the imperial army came and encamped at St. Avold,
+and on the 19th Metz was invested. Under fire of the enemy’s cannon,
+Guise continued the defensive works. Frequent sorties kept up the ardour
+and health of his garrison and exhausted the enemy by continual alarms
+and losses. Every day brought some damage to the enemy, taking soldiers
+and horses and spoiling the provisions that were being brought to them.
+
+At the very beginning the emperor sent a trumpeter to Guise to announce
+that Hesdin had been taken from the king of France and that his
+brother, the duke d’Aumale, had fallen into the hands of the markgraf
+of Brandenburg. But Guise did not heed these communications; himself
+informed of what was passing outside, he was in constant communication
+with the king, and imparted to him every episode of the siege, his hopes,
+his checks, and the movements of the besieging army. His quarters were
+near the Champagne gate, the principal object of attack, that he might
+be at all hours on the spot where action and the greatest danger were
+making ready. He had about five thousand men under his orders in the town
+a few days before the investment, but he was entirely without artillery.
+He sent a letter to the king, through the enemy’s lines, on the 29th of
+October: “Having already split and cracked four of the seven pieces of
+artillery I have had fired, am decided on careful consideration to load
+them only with half charges, and to use them to terrify more by their
+noise than their effect, and to employ falconets and other small pieces,
+it not having depended on me to give warning of what I needed in good
+time, when means to assist me were available.” He had a double cannon
+on the Ste. Marie platform, but “one of the pins of the said piece is
+sticking out; the other large culverin is burst at the front end, about
+a foot and a half, and I have had it sawn off and shall still be able
+to use it. I assure you, sire, that the fault was not that they were
+overloaded, but they are so badly cast and of such brittle material that
+they cannot bear even the smallest charge.”
+
+Thus reduced to make use of his artillery only for noise, he still did
+not hesitate to announce that he could defend himself for ten months.
+Every two or three days he sent despatches to Fontainebleau or to the
+relieving army; he indicated means of supplying him with news and of
+seizing convoys. He wrote to his brother, the cardinal De Lorraine, to
+the constable, to the marshal De Saint-André; he excited everyone to an
+interest in the honour of saving his town. The cardinal shared this
+passion with all the ardour of his vehement temperament. To relieve his
+brother, to save Metz, to hurry to the king at any moment to suggest an
+idea, propose a surprise of the besiegers, and--noteworthy solicitude
+which shows the party leader still hidden behind the courtier--commend
+to him those gentlemen whom his brother singled out for their gallant
+conduct in the sorties, name those who were wounded, demand for his
+partisans the offices of those who had just been killed, were the
+occupations of his every moment.
+
+On the 20th of November, Charles V approached the ramparts of Metz,
+believing that in a few days they were to fall into his hands; but at
+this moment his engineers judged it necessary to change the point of
+attack. Whilst they opened new trenches in front of the Tour d’Enfer, not
+a day passed but some troops of French horse went to alarm the enemy and
+ransack the highways, where spoil was made of provisions and booty of
+prisoners. On the 28th of November the Tour d’Enfer fell with a crash.
+Guise wrote to the king that the breach was three hundred paces in width,
+but that he did not fear the assailants, for “St. Rémy swears by all the
+gods he will make them a tasty dish. I think, sire, they will not be cold
+when they go out.” The whole garrison awaited the assault with the same
+gaiety. The ensigns and standards were planted on the breach to defy the
+enemy and every morning on mounting guard new colours were seen to float.
+While filling the sacks of earth, the men-at-arms removed their cuirasses
+and worked clothed in their “woollen liveries.” Bales of wool were rolled
+by women beside the sacks of earth in the space left empty where the
+rampart had fallen in. One evening Guise, between two of these bales,
+was watching the preparations for an attack, when the engineer, Camillo
+Marini, putting his head in the place whence Guise had just withdrawn his
+own, suddenly received a discharge from an arquebuse which scattered his
+brains.
+
+[Illustration: THE DUKE OF GUISE
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+[Sidenote: [1552-1553 A.D.]]
+
+Only on the 7th of December did the assault seem imminent. Guise hurried
+to the breach with all his volunteers whom he encouraged “by many of
+those good words which incite to honour, to virtue, and to victory.”
+The assault was not attempted, but the besieged had no time to rejoice
+at this, for the next day they learned that Henry II was on the march
+to besiege Hesdin, instead of advancing to the relief of Metz. It is
+true that they showed no appearance of desiring to be relieved, but they
+began to be sparing of provisions; Guise had the pack-horses of the
+foot-soldiers killed and salted, in order to husband the forage for his
+cavalry. The Tour de Wassieux fell in near the Champagne gate and left
+a new breach a hundred paces wide: this opening was closed up like the
+first, with sacks of earth; the sorties went on; sometimes two or three
+were made the same day, by different gates. The wounded in the place were
+numerous. For their benefit Guise sent for the surgeon Ambrose Paré,
+who had drawn the lancehead from his cheek when he was wounded before
+Boulogne, and an Italian officer of the imperial army consented for a
+hundred crowns to introduce him into Metz by night with “his apothecary
+and his drugs.” The privations and sufferings which the emperor’s army
+had to endure rendered treasons of this kind possible, especially amongst
+the Italians, bewildered as they were at finding themselves transported
+to the north in the middle of winter for the sake of a German quarrel.
+Whole bands of these Italians deserted from the camp of the besiegers
+and went to take service with Henry’s army, detachments of which were
+overrunning Lorraine and intercepting all the convoys of provisions sent
+from Franche-Comté to the emperor.
+
+The garrisons of Verdun and Toul intercepted food and reinforcements,
+which were arriving from other points for the besieging army, carried off
+the famished soldiers who wandered from the camp, and held enclosed in
+mud and snow this confused multitude of men of all nations. The imperial
+leaders were not in agreement. The duke of Alva would not allow his
+veteran Spanish soldiers to be sacrificed under the eyes of the Germans,
+who refused to advance for an assault. Charles V, exasperated at seeing
+such weak walls and crumbling ramparts resist so formidable an army,
+exclaimed: “How, by the wounds of God, is it that they do not enter? By
+the virtues of God, what is the meaning of it?” He grew irascible, ill,
+discouraged. He was heard to exclaim: “Ha, I renounce God; I see well
+that I have no men left; I must bid farewell to the empire, and shut
+myself up in some monastery, and, by God’s death, in three years I will
+become a Franciscan!” Finally, beaten in several sorties, and embarrassed
+by the capture of his provisions, he opened a furious cannonade without
+attaining the foot of the wall, took to mining, in which he was not more
+fortunate, and withdrew shamed and desperate on the 26th of December,
+1552, leaving his army orders to raise the siege after his departure and
+execute a retreat on Thionville and Treves, under cover of some cannon
+mounted at the château de Ladonchamp. He had lost thirty thousand men
+during the siege.
+
+When, on the 2nd of January, 1553, Guise perceived the men in full
+retreat, he precipitated himself with his garrison into the camp, to
+seize the artillery and cut to pieces those who had lagged behind. But
+a heartrending spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the French.
+Whichever way they looked, lay so many dead, and an infinity of sick were
+heard groaning in the huts. In every quarter were great cemeteries, newly
+dug, tents, arms, and other abandoned furniture. Some of the sick were
+lying in the mud, others were seated on great stones, with their legs
+frozen up to the knees in mire, so that they could not withdraw them.
+More than three hundred were rescued from this horrible condition, but
+the greater number were obliged to have their legs cut off.
+
+As if by magic, the French forgot their own sufferings, the dangers they
+had just escaped, the martial ardour which had animated them, and thought
+of nothing but how to succour these unfortunate Germans, thus abandoned
+with their feet in the snow, administering all necessaries and such
+comforts as poor sick foreigners want. Guise had them taken in boats to
+the duke of Alva at Thionville.[u]
+
+
+_Minor Engagements; the Abdication of Charles V_
+
+[Sidenote: [1552-1557 A.D.]]
+
+The following year the emperor besieged Thérouanne in Artois. The little
+garrison which held it did not capitulate till after a valiant defence;
+he had the town levelled with the ground and it was never rebuilt. Hesdin
+was treated in the same fashion. Charles was avenging his humiliated
+pride by a savage war. In 1554 Henry II paid him ravages for ravages in
+Hainault and Brabant; he sacked Mariembourg, Dinant, and, at the other
+extremity of the Low Countries, he attacked Renty, not far from St. Omer.
+The emperor tried to relieve the place, Guise and Tavannes defied his
+cavalry; but the French army was compelled by lack of provisions to raise
+the siege.
+
+At the same time, Brissac, by a series of campaigns which have remained
+the model of their kind, maintained himself with a small army in
+Piedmont, in spite of the duke of Alva, and seized Casale, capital of
+Montferrat; Strozzi and Montluc defended Siena in Tuscany against the
+Florentines and imperialists; the Turks menaced Naples; finally the
+baron de la Garde, the French admiral in the Levant, sacked the island
+of Elba and set foot in Corsica. Thus the check given at Metz was not
+counterbalanced; France seemed to have recovered her youth with her new
+king: Charles V grew weary of a struggle which he had now sustained for
+five-and-thirty years. Frustrated alike by France and by the princes of
+Germany, he ceded the Low Countries, Italy, and Spain to his son Philip
+II, and sought at the monastery of San Yuste that repose which is never
+to be found by the ambitious great (1556).
+
+Charles V had not been able to deliver all his crowns to his son; Austria
+and the title of emperor remained to his brother Ferdinand. The house of
+Austria was divided. But at the moment in which Philip II lost Germany
+he seemed to gain England by a second marriage with the queen of that
+country, Mary Tudor. He had already one son, Don Carlos; he reserved
+for him all the Spanish possessions, and it was agreed that the child
+who might be born of this new union should reign over both the Low
+Countries and England, that is to say, that London and Antwerp should
+be under the same master, the Thames and the Schelde under the same
+laws, and that the North Sea should become an English lake. Thus both
+for the present and the future France was seriously threatened by that
+domination which was pressing on her from three sides, which might bring
+upon her an English invasion against which she could no longer hope for
+aid from Germany. At the beginning of 1556 Henry II had signed the Truce
+of Vaucelles with Charles V: he broke it the same year (November), that
+he might not leave Philip II time to establish himself firmly. The holy
+see was then occupied by a fiery old man, Paul IV, who was alarmed to
+see the Spaniards beside and above him, at Naples and Milan. The king
+and the pontiff made alliance. An army under command of Montmorency was
+sent to the Low Countries; another under the duke of Guise into Italy.
+The object was to confine Philip II to Spain; Henry II was to enlarge
+his dominions on the north by neighbouring provinces which it would be
+easy to retain, and one of his sons received the promise of the crown of
+Naples, which Duke Francis of Guise, descended in the female line from
+the house of Anjou, counted on taking for himself. The plan was well
+thought out. The energetic Paul IV placed his spiritual power at the
+service of France and the Italian cause; he lanced an excommunication
+against the most Catholic king.
+
+
+_Battle and Defence of St. Quentin (August 10th, 1557)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1557-1558 A.D.]]
+
+Against Montmorency, Philip II opposed the duke of Savoy, Emmanuel
+Philibert, who, despoiled of his states by Francis, rested all his
+hopes on Spain; and against Francis of Guise, the duke of Alva, a true
+Spaniard, devoted to the church more even than to his king. Guise,
+received in triumph at Rome by Paul IV, penetrated into the Abruzzi, but
+failed near Civitella before the scientific tactics of his adversary.
+Emmanuel Philibert, after a feigned attack on Champagne, suddenly turned
+on St. Quentin where he was joined by seven thousand English. This was
+a place without walls, without munitions, without provisions. Admiral
+Coligny threw himself into it with seven hundred men; Montmorency
+approached with supplies; but came so near to the enemy with an army
+very inferior in numbers and took so few precautions to preserve for
+himself freedom of movement, that he was obliged to fight without
+securing his rear. Emmanuel Philibert turned his flank, attacked him
+in front and rear, and completely defeated him. A Bourbon, the duke
+d’Enghien, and a viscount of Turrenne were slain; another Bourbon, the
+duke de Montpensier, and the constable De Montmorency, the marshal De
+Saint-André, the duke de Longueville were taken with four thousand men,
+the artillery, and the baggage. There were more than ten thousand killed
+or wounded.
+
+“Is my son at Paris?” cried Charles V on learning in the depths of his
+retreat of San Yuste of this great disaster to France. Philip II was not
+at Paris and did not get there. Cold and methodical of temperament, and
+obstinate but without dash, he had not thought it prudent to follow up
+his victory. Before taking another step he wished to have St. Quentin,
+and St. Quentin did not allow itself to be taken for seventeen days.
+Coligny, knowing that the salvation of France was in question, had made
+heroic efforts to prolong the defence. There had been time to collect
+forces and Philip II, after having taken Ham and Le Catelet, re-entered
+the Low Countries with the slender results of a victory which had
+promised to be as disastrous to France as Poitiers or Agincourt.
+
+
+_The Retaking of Calais (1558 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1558-1559 A.D.]]
+
+Henry II had recalled the duke of Guise in all haste from Italy. The
+conqueror of Metz left the duke of Alva to impose, one knee on the
+ground, the Spanish will on the pope, and came to receive the title
+of lieutenant of the kingdom with unlimited power. All the nobility
+flocked round him; Guise responded to the universal expectation. Whilst
+a movement of the troops was attracting the attention of the enemy on
+the side of Luxemburg, the duke hastened to Calais which he immediately
+invested on the 1st of January, 1558. The English, reckoning on the
+fortifications of the place and on the marshes which envelop it, had
+left in it but nine hundred men. Two forts cover the town: that of
+Nieullay on the land side and that of Rysbank on the side of the sea.
+Guise attacked the first with fury and carried it on the 3rd of January.
+The fort of Rysbank fell into his power the same day. On the 6th the
+castle was attacked; on the 8th the garrison capitulated. The last and
+shameful memorial of the Hundred Years’ War was thus effaced; the English
+no longer possessed an inch of territory in France. In an attempt to
+compensate themselves by an attack on Brest they were unsuccessful, for
+the troops landed at Le Conquet were driven back into the sea by the
+peasants of lower Brittany. This was the death-blow of Queen Mary. “If
+they open my heart,” she said when she was dying, “they will read upon
+it the name of Calais.” The same blow ended the Anglo-Spanish alliance.
+Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary on the English throne, made
+Protestantism triumphant in the island and became the irreconcilable
+enemy of the king of Spain.
+
+
+_The Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis (1559 A.D.)_
+
+Indeed Philip II, that sombre and fanatical spirit, desired to attain the
+dominion of Europe by another road than his father’s. Half of Germany
+and the Scandinavian states had separated themselves from Rome, and
+the Reformation, stifled in Italy and Spain, was fermenting in France,
+spreading in the Netherlands, triumphing in Scotland and England. Philip
+II conceived the design of crushing Protestantism. He wished to make
+himself the armed leader of Catholicism throughout Europe, the secular
+arm of the holy see, the executor of the sentences of the church. His
+faith and his ambition were in agreement; for he doubtless calculated
+that if he stifled heresy it would not be to the profit of orthodox
+Christianity alone, but to that of his own power, and that the unity
+of religion would bring about the unity of the empire. In this idea a
+war with France for a few towns on the frontiers seemed at the moment
+impolitic and he desired to treat with its king in order to win him to
+his own plan. Before the peace was concluded some further encounters took
+place; Guise seized Thionville and Therme, captured Dunkirk, Bergues,
+and Nieuwport, but suffered a defeat by allowing himself to be caught at
+Gravelines between the count of Egmont who attacked him in front, and an
+English fleet whose cannon belaboured his flanks. On the 3rd of April,
+1559, peace was at last signed.
+
+By this treaty France kept the Three Bishoprics (Metz, Toul, and Verdun
+with their territory). She had already re-entered into possession of
+Boulogne; she also retained Calais, engaging to pay a sum of 500,000
+crowns to the English if she had not restored that city at the end of
+eight years--which she took good care not to do. The two kings of France
+and Spain mutually restored each other their conquests on the frontiers
+of the Low Countries and in Italy, with the exception of Piedmont where
+Henry retained several towns[72] until the claims of Louise of Savoy,
+grandmother of the king of France, should be settled. The acquisitions
+of France were valuable and protected her against England and Germany.
+Nevertheless, one of the negotiators, Montmorency, has been accused of
+having sacrificed his country’s interests to the desire of recovering his
+own liberty more quickly; France ceded the county of Charolais, and 189
+towns or castles, which she was occupying in the Low Countries or in
+Italy, in return for St. Quentin, Ham, Le Catelet and a few unimportant
+places which the Spaniards surrendered to her. “Sire,” Guise and Brissac
+said bitterly, “you give in one day what would not be taken from you in
+thirty years of reverses.” Some towns in Italy were neither necessary nor
+desirable for the French, for they would have served them as a perpetual
+temptation to return across the Alps. But they were abandoning French
+territories which should have been preserved at all costs, especially as
+the Spaniards did not restore Jeanne d’Albret the portion of her kingdom
+of Navarre which they had held for half a century.[m]
+
+Thus the great game of international politics that for half a century
+had been played on the boards of Europe was brought to apparent
+termination,--and France had lost. Since the time of Charles VIII,
+France, as represented by its king, had longed for foreign conquests.
+We have seen Francis I in a life-long struggle with Charles V, striving
+vainly to give imperial influence to his kingly office. Henry II has kept
+up the game, with Philip II for his counter-player. But now, after all
+these struggles, all this loss of property and life, the bounds of France
+still remain almost the same as they were when Francis I came to the
+throne in 1515. The glamour of the deeds of Francis I may have given a
+certain added éclat to the French name; but the actual extra-territorial
+influence of France has shrunk rather than extended since the time when
+Charles VIII marched practically unopposed to the confines of Italy
+(1494).
+
+On the other hand, the duchy of Bourbon has reverted to the crown,
+and the recovery of Calais is an event of real significance. With the
+expulsion of the English troops from this last coign of vantage, the work
+begun by Joan of Arc a century before is finished. If the imperial hopes
+of the French kings have been doomed to disappointment, at least France
+is now mistress of her own territory; hers is a compact and unified
+kingdom, if not an empire in the modern sense of the word.
+
+
+THE LAST DAYS OF HENRY II
+
+It is not to be supposed, however, that the French king regarded the
+imperial contest as really over. Doubtless Henry II, while momentarily
+turning his attention to the interior of his kingdom, dreamed of a future
+day when he should return to the imperial struggle. But if so, the dream
+was not to be realised. The end of his life was at hand. The same year
+that witnessed the signing of the treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis was to see
+Henry II pass finally from the scene; indeed there is nothing more to
+record of him except the manner of his death. This came about in a way
+characteristic of the times, but impossible in any other age; it was
+the accidental outgrowth of the festivities that marked in a sense the
+culminating features of the treaty.
+
+It had been arranged that a double marriage of international significance
+should be effected. Henry’s daughter was to marry the king of Spain; his
+sister to marry the duke of Savoy. Thus the great imperial drama was
+to close in the conventional way amidst the peal of wedding bells. The
+weddings took place; but the fates mocked at such an ending, and insisted
+that what had commenced as a tragedy should remain a tragedy to the
+end.[a] In scandalous contrast to the feverish agitation--an exaltation
+mingled with dread--that pervaded all France, the court had given itself
+over to pleasures and festivities: nothing but balls, masquerades,
+jousts, and banquets on the occasion of the double marriage of the
+princesses of France. But the joyous sounds were soon to be changed to
+the silence of death. On the 20th of June, 1559, Madame Elizabeth of
+France, daughter of the king, was married at Notre Dame to the duke of
+Alva, proxy of the king of Spain. On the 27th the contract of the duke
+of Savoy and Madame Marguerite, the king’s sister, was signed. Splendid
+lists were marked out, at the end of the rue St. Antoine, facing the
+royal palace des Tournelles, and almost at the foot of the Bastille where
+the deposed magistrates were imprisoned. During three days the princes
+and lords tilted there in presence of the ladies. On the 29th of June the
+champions (challengers) of the tournament were the dukes of Guise and
+Nemours, the son of the duke of Ferrara and the king in person, wearing
+the colours of his sexagenarian lady, the white and black of widows,
+which Diana had never left off. When the passage at arms was finished the
+king who had ridden in several races as “swift and expert rider” wished
+to break another lance before retiring, and in spite of the entreaties of
+the queen he ordered that the count de Montgomery should be his opponent.
+
+Montgomery in vain tried to be excused. The two jousters rushed violently
+against each other and broke their lances with dexterity. But Montgomery,
+forgetting to throw away instantly the fragment remaining in his hand as
+the rule was, involuntarily struck the helmet of the king, penetrating
+the bars of his visor, and thrusting a splinter of wood into his eye. The
+king fell on the neck of his horse, which carried him to the end of the
+enclosure; here his equerries received him in their arms, and carried him
+to Tournelles amidst the greatest confusion and indescribable dismay. All
+the aids of science were ineffectual; the wood had penetrated into the
+brain. Vainly the renowned Vesale hastened from Brussels on the command
+of Philip II; Henry II languished eleven days, and expired on the 10th of
+July after having the marriage of his sister Marguerite with the duke of
+Savoy celebrated in his chamber the day before his death. He was a few
+months over forty years of age. All Protestant Europe hailed the arm of
+the Almighty in this thunderbolt which had struck down the persecuting
+king in the midst of his “impious” festivities.
+
+The reformers were not mistaken. The race of Valois was doomed. Restored
+in the fifteenth century by the greatest marvel in French history, it had
+disregarded the will of God as indicated by Joan of Arc. In the sixteenth
+century it outraged humanity and hampered the natural development of
+France. Its days were numbered. Now replacing the fanaticism of Henry
+II by a policy devoid of principle or sincerity, it was to strive at
+random during thirty years against the tempests of the religious wars, to
+disappear finally in a sea of blood.[k]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[67] [See vol. IX, Chapter XV, for the complementary account of this and
+the subsequent Italian campaigns of Francis I.]
+
+[68] [Charles had succeeded Ferdinand the Catholic, who died in 1516.
+Francis made no murmur when Charles entered into his vast heritage;
+indeed, he signed a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with him
+at Nyon in 1516. France gained nothing by it except the restitution
+to Jeanne d’Albret of Basse-Navarre, which Ferdinand had seized. But
+Maximilian’s death in 1519 changed the whole face of affairs.]
+
+[69] [“I purposely make use of this Protestant term,” says Martin,
+himself a Catholic, “as expressing a particular form of Catholicism.”]
+
+[70] [The work of Rabelais is discussed in Chapter XIV of the present
+volume.]
+
+[71] [For a study of the Reformation, see vol. XIII.]
+
+[72] The treaty of 1562 with Savoy finally left France only Pinerolo,
+Perosa, and Savigliano, which were restored by Henry III in 1574. The
+marquisate of Saluzzo which Francis I had snatched from the family of
+that name was usurped by Savoy in 1588 and in 1601 exchanged for Bresse.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS
+
+    The lance-thrust with which Montgomery struck down Henry II in
+    the tournament of June 29th, 1559, was to change the aspect
+    of France. The reign so rudely interrupted in the midst of
+    festivities had not always been happy or brilliant, but it had
+    maintained an appearance of grandeur. The reigns of which it
+    led the sorrowful series, could not bring it the same honour
+    or the same profit. It was no longer the question as to who
+    should have the first place in Europe, the house of France or
+    that of Austria; but who in France would gain by the unchained
+    religious passions--the Guises or the Bourbons. In future
+    it is no longer a question of fighting the Spanish or the
+    English; when they are mentioned, it will be to open the French
+    frontiers to them and have them take part in the country’s
+    struggles.--DE LACOMBE.[b]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1559-1589 A.D.]]
+
+Voltaire--struck with the violent contrast between the misery and
+brilliancy of this century, the sudden rise of the arts, the refinement
+and chivalry of the court which glittered even in the midst of
+crimes--cries out: “It is a robe of silk and gold stained with blood.”
+The gold and silk have been shown; now appear the blood and ruin.
+
+Henry II left to Catherine de’ Medici four young sons. Sickly from birth,
+and already weakened by excess, three of them rapidly succeeded to the
+throne, having themselves no heirs; and thus for a quarter of a century
+the weight of absolute power, so difficult to carry, falls into the
+hands of children or young men without experience. Grandchildren of one
+of the most brilliant of monarchs, and with the blood of the Medici in
+their veins, they were able to show happy qualities of spirit and great
+defects. They were eloquent speakers, occasionally poets, and always
+friends of literature and art, but with vices that endangered the state;
+and the crimes which resulted from their characters, at once violent
+and perfidious, overshadowed their gifts of mind. The oldest, Francis
+II, was not able to show the sad effects of these contradictions in his
+nature; he reigned less than a year and a half.[c] His successor, Charles
+IX, a child of ten on his accession, reigned fourteen years, but never
+ruled, being dominated by the baleful influence of his mother. To Charles
+succeeded his weak and perfidious brother Henry III, with whose troubled
+and ineffectual reign the house of Valois came to an end. Such are the
+reigning monarchs of our present epoch. But the real ruler of France
+during this dark period of thirty years is the mother of the kings, the
+scheming, pitiless Catherine de’ Medici. It is her story that we tell as
+we follow the fortunes of her weakly offspring, the first of whom now
+claims attention.[a]
+
+
+FRANCIS II (1559-1560 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1559-1560 A.D.]]
+
+The law declared the king a major at thirteen years of age; at sixteen
+Francis II was still weak of will and under the tutelage of others. With
+a prince feeble both in mind and body at the head of the state, it was
+natural that the queen-mother should be called upon to take an active
+part in public affairs. The widow of Henry II had not as yet made her
+influence strongly felt; with all her superstition she was known to
+possess intelligence and a refined taste in art and in matters pertaining
+to her personal pleasures, but in moral sense she was notably deficient.
+Always kept by her husband in ignorance of public affairs, she had
+hitherto revealed no higher qualities than a rare constancy under affront
+and a marvellous ability to carry on intrigues. Now passing as she did
+without transition from court circles into state factions, and from
+minor intrigues into war, she was taken at a disadvantage and did not
+at once show herself equal to the requirements of her new rôle; without
+convictions of any kind as without scruples, she was not led to adopt the
+firm and open policy that would best have served the state, but carried
+all the artifices of the boudoir into the conduct of public affairs.
+Her method of government consisted in ruling men by their passions, a
+method which augments corruption by doubling the strength of the parties
+it places in opposition to each other. The many outrages which had been
+inflicted upon her by the triumphant Diane de Poitiers had effaced in her
+mind all distinction between good and evil, and there was left her but a
+single worthy sentiment, her affection for her children. All her efforts
+were directed toward keeping the power in the hands of her sons, and to
+fulfil this end she unhesitatingly made use of every means, from love
+intrigues to assassination. A policy so perverse must inevitably bring
+its own punishment, and the blood-stained crown of the Valois, falling
+from the hands of this unscrupulous Italian woman, came near to being
+irretrievably shattered.
+
+The young Mary Stuart, wife of Francis II, superseded Catherine de’
+Medici in power for a brief period. Henry II had wedded his son to
+this daughter of James V and Marie de Lorraine in order to make sure
+of the aid of Scotland in any future quarrel with England. Beautiful,
+gracious, intelligent, and witty, Mary had not yet committed those faults
+which were to be expiated by a long term of suffering, that ended only
+in death. At the brilliant court of France, surrounded by the poets,
+scientists, and artists that attended her every step, Mary threw herself
+unrestrainedly into the pleasure of exerting those rare charms of mind
+and person which have silenced all adverse criticism on the lips of
+modern historians. The influence exercised by the young queen on all
+around her, the empire she had gained over the mind of the king, might
+have operated powerfully for the welfare of the state had she been
+surrounded by disinterested advisers; as it was she gave herself up
+completely to pleasure and left the management of affairs in the hands of
+her uncles, the cardinal De Lorraine, and Duke Francis of Guise.
+
+The house of Guise, a younger branch of the ducal house of Lorraine,
+had, although but newly established in France, rapidly risen to power.
+Claude, chief of the house, had obtained in recompense for his services
+the governorship of the province of Champagne and the elevation of his
+property of Guise into a duchy, his brother John being made a cardinal.
+Two of his sons were destined to play a prominent part in the affairs of
+France: the elder, Francis, had bravely defended Metz and reconquered
+Calais; while another, Charles, had succeeded his uncle John as cardinal
+and possessed as many as twelve ecclesiastical sees, among which were
+three archbishoprics. The young king left to the first-named, Francis,
+all matters pertaining to “the militia,” while Charles was given
+jurisdiction in civil affairs. Thus the entire administration of the
+state was practically given into the hands of these two brothers, the
+“general superintendence” over the government which Catherine de’ Medici
+was supposed to retain being only a high-sounding, empty title.
+
+There were other candidates that aspired to power, some by reason of
+their birth and others from pure ambition--the Bourbons, for example,
+and the Montmorencys. The house of Bourbon had for chiefs at that time
+Anthony who married Jeanne d’Albret, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre,
+and his two brothers, Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, and Louis, prince of
+Condé. These three were the nearest kindred to the Valois, and Anthony,
+in case of minority, could have laid claim to the regency; but since the
+treason committed by the constable, the Bourbons had been somewhat in
+disgrace, and for the time being were making no demands.
+
+The aged and inflexible constable, De Montmorency, the chief who had met
+defeat at St. Quentin, showed himself less disinterested; but the king,
+pretexting his advanced years, gradually relieved him of the burden of
+affairs. Thus the two Guises remained undisputed masters of the power,
+the king, and the court, until a new enemy rose up to challenge their
+supremacy. It was forty years since Luther had begun to preach against
+the established church, and Europe was now divided into two communions.[c]
+
+
+_Religious Parties_
+
+In France the religious parties were political factors at the same time.
+The Huguenots, as they came to be called, were largely recruited from
+among the nobility which was hostile to the Guise party. This must be
+kept in mind as we enter upon the long story of crime and civil war which
+marks the religious settlement in France. It was particularly unfortunate
+that this great question of religious differences came at a time when a
+line of weak kings left authority the prize of faction or in the control
+of women.[a]
+
+A conspiracy against royalty became the first act of Protestantism in
+France; and thus hundreds of loyal subjects and rational minds were
+alienated from it, and their dislike was strengthened by prejudice.
+The court, with some reason, henceforth declared against it an eternal
+war. Many of the noblesse had already joined the party of Coligny and
+of Condé, though the king of Navarre and the constable hesitated and
+held back. La Rochefoucauld, Jarnac, and the vidame de Chartres declared
+for them. An atrocious impertinence on the part of the cardinal De
+Lorraine, opportunely occurring, swelled this band of foes to the Guises.
+Tormented by demands, some for debts due and some for places promised,
+the all-powerful prelate in a fit of spleen published a proclamation by
+sound of trumpet, ordering all petitioners, of whatever rank, to quit
+Fontainebleau, where the court then was, without delay, and this under
+pain of being hanged. The cardinal, perhaps, meant to be facetious; for
+the court instantly became a desert. The host of noble suitors, proud
+though mendicant, could not forgive the threat, and many joined the
+discontented.
+
+The party had numerous meetings in the château of Vendôme, and in other
+places. La Renaudie, a gentleman of Périgord, and an agent of Coligny,
+was employed by him to be the ostensible leader. A meeting was secretly
+convened at Nantes, where the Protestants and enemies of Guise united to
+the number of six hundred, and took counsel together. It was agreed to
+attack Blois, where the king then was, obtain possession of his person,
+and get rid of the odious Guises. Amongst such a host of conspirators
+secrecy was almost impossible: the duke received warning of the plot, and
+removed the court to the castle of Amboise. The cardinal De Lorraine was
+terrified; he proposed to summon the _ban_ and _arrière-ban_, and gather
+an army against the rebels. All the anxiety of Guise, on the contrary,
+was that his enemies should show themselves; and for that purpose he
+affected confidence. Coligny and Condé both repaired to Amboise, where
+Guise received them without betraying the least mark of suspicion,
+and he appointed them to different posts of defence about the castle;
+each, however, watched by his own trusty partisans. The rising had been
+appointed for the 15th of March: it took place on the 16th, the baron de
+Castelnau seizing the castle of Noizé, not far from Amboise. La Renaudie
+was marching to join him: they hoped to surprise the court; when on a
+sudden the royal troops sent by Guise made their appearance, attacked La
+Renaudie, slew him, and besieged Noizé.
+
+An amnesty was now published in the hope of allaying the insurrection;
+but, as if in contempt of it, the château of Amboise was attacked on that
+very night. All the vigilance and valour of Guise were required to repel
+the rebels. By secret information he had time to prepare for them, and
+they were routed. The amnesty was revoked, and no mercy was shown to the
+captives. Twelve hundred of them were hanged, or otherwise despatched;
+even Castelnau, who had surrendered on the faith of the duke de Nemours,
+was executed in the presence of the court. In the confessions forced
+from many by the torture, none of the real chiefs of the conspiracy was
+mentioned except the prince of Condé. History is even in doubt to decide
+if those chiefs were concerned in the attack: the Protestant party will
+not admit that they by this rash and unwarrantable act produced the civil
+war. Condé was brought to trial in presence of the court: he disdained
+to defend himself but as a knight. “Let my accuser appear,” said he,
+regarding Guise, “and I will prove upon him, in single combat, that he is
+the traitor, not I, and that he is the true enemy of the king and of the
+monarchy.” Guise rose to reply to this challenge: “I can no longer suffer
+these dark suspicions to weigh upon so valiant a prince; I myself will
+be his second in the combat against whoever accuses him.” Most of those
+present were as perplexed as no doubt the reader is, to comprehend this
+conduct in the duke of Guise. Some called it chivalric generosity, others
+the perfection of guile.
+
+In the trouble excited by the conspiracy, the young king, for the first
+time, manifested an opinion of his own. He was shocked at finding
+himself the object of hatred, and he began to mistrust the Guises. The
+queen-mother, Catherine, after the example of her son, also took courage;
+and the chancellor Olivier, as well as Vieilleville and other courtiers,
+joined her party. Hence arose the first amnesty--a concession on the
+part of the Guises which was recompensed by the duke’s appointment
+as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The executions which followed,
+especially that of Castelnau, which the court witnessed, shocked the
+princesses (the cardinal De Lorraine hoped that the sight of heretic
+blood would have had an opposite effect), and they, with the young
+queen Mary, flung themselves into the scale of mercy. Guise was unable
+to resist this influence; he saw that the prince of Condé must in
+consequence be released, and he sought to take to himself full credit for
+a generosity that was forced upon him. Here then Catherine de’ Medici,
+for the first time, appears as the leader of a party.
+
+The continued mistrust and independence of the Guises shown on the part
+of the queen-mother and the young king produced an assembly of notables,
+summoned soon afterwards at Fontainebleau to take the affairs of the
+kingdom into consideration. In it the Protestant leaders, even prelates,
+spoke openly the apology for reformation; and Coligny demanded tolerance
+for the sectarians, relying upon the neutrality of the court. Guise could
+no longer command his temper, as he did at Amboise: mutual recrimination
+and menaces were heard in the assembly of peace. Both parties struggled
+in their discourses to convince the monarch of the justice and expediency
+of their counsels; but the weakness and indecision of the court were at
+the same time seen by both; and an appeal of equal earnestness was made
+by them to the people. The Protestants continually cried out for the
+states-general and a national council. And now the cardinal De Lorraine
+forgot his nature so far as to join in the cry, and make the same demand.
+The independent attitude of the queen rather forced the Guises to
+strengthen themselves by popularity.
+
+Such appear the true reasons why the states-general were summoned to
+meet at Orleans, in October, 1560. Historians in general perceive in
+them merely a snare to catch the Protestant chiefs. They served that
+purpose indeed, but they had been already summoned ere Condé, just
+released, could have recommenced his intrigues. The arrogance and
+boldness of the Protestants, and of Coligny, in the assembly of notables
+at Fontainebleau, were revolting to Catherine and Francis. Between
+August, when that assembly was held, and October, the period for the
+assembling of the states, the Guises had completely won the court to
+themselves, and regained their influence. The prince of Condé attempted
+during that interval to seize Lyons, and convert it into a stronghold
+of rebellion. He failed, however; and his traitorous enterprise became
+thoroughly known at court. Notwithstanding this, the brothers of Bourbon,
+the king of Navarre and the prince, were induced to join the assembly of
+the states. Though full of mistrust, they still ventured on the secret
+favour or neutrality of Catherine, who joined in enticing them to come.
+They were ill received by the king. Catherine was troubled, and shed
+tears on beholding them, knowing them to be victims betrayed by their
+confidence in her. The king’s mind had been filled with the bitterest
+calumnies against them: he accused Condé of having attempted his life,
+and ended by committing that prince to prison. The king of Navarre
+instantly complained, and expostulated with the queen-mother; but she
+could not now retract the consent she had given, or unbend the mind of
+the young monarch. Condé was tried by a commission, and refusing to
+answer, was condemned to death. The day was appointed for the execution,
+and Catherine de’ Medici betrayed to all who approached the agony and
+misgivings of her mind.
+
+
+_Death of Francis II_
+
+Historians will maintain that this sensibility on the part of Catherine
+was affected; but it would seem that she was now sincere in wishing to
+save the life of Condé, and fortune placed this in her power. The young
+king was stricken with sudden illness, arising, it is supposed, from
+formation of an abscess in his head. The supreme authority rested with
+the queen-mother. The Guises urged her to execute the sentence upon
+Condé; but she hesitated, and resolved to save him. She determined,
+however, to turn her mercy to advantage; summoning the king of Navarre,
+she offered to spare the life of his brother, provided he signed an
+agreement renouncing all claims to the regency in case of the young
+king’s death. Navarre signed; and Francis II expired on the 5th of
+December, 1560.[d]
+
+[Sidenote: [1560-1561 A.D.]]
+
+France would quickly have forgotten this unfortunate young man but for
+two ineffaceable memories which were connected with his reign--that of
+the rise to power of the Guises, together with the beginning of the
+terrible religious wars, and the far pleasanter one of the presence
+on the throne of the lovely Mary Stuart. Obliged, after the death
+of her husband, to leave the land of her adoption and return to her
+native Scotland, she wept long on sailing away from the shores that had
+witnessed “evil luck depart from her and good fortune take her by the
+hand.” Leaning on the rail in the stern of the ship that was bearing her
+westward, she kept her brimming eyes fixed on the receding coast-line of
+the country she was leaving, and “remained in this attitude full five
+hours,” says Brantôme,[e] “repeating unceasingly, ‘Adieu, France! Adieu,
+France!’” When night came she caused rugs to be spread in the same place
+and laid herself down there to sleep, refusing all food. At daybreak she
+could still perceive a point of land on the horizon, and at the sight
+she cried out, “Adieu, dear France, I shall never see you again!” She
+was to find a crown, it is true, in the country towards which she was
+journeying, but there awaited her chains as well, an eighteen-year period
+of captivity, and instead of ascending a throne she mounted the steps of
+the scaffold.[c]
+
+
+THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES IX (1560-1574 A.D.)
+
+Charles IX, a boy ten years of age, succeeded his brother Francis.
+Catherine de’ Medici, according to her promise, liberated the prince of
+Condé; and as the king of Navarre, according to his promise, supported
+the queen’s pretensions, she took upon her the office of regent.[d]
+
+The dangerous experiment of a meeting of the states-general was now
+unavoidable, and all parties paused to see what the result would be. The
+result was not so considerable as either side expected. The universal
+voice was for reform in the management of the state and diminution
+of taxation. Reform also in the church was strongly advocated; but
+the priests voted that it could only be procured by strengthening the
+laws against the Protestants; the third estate voted that the object
+was to be gained by freedom of conscience; and the nobles were almost
+equally divided in their votes. All, however, agreed in re-establishing
+the Pragmatic, and diminishing the contributions to the pope. After a
+session of six weeks the states-general was prorogued, and factions
+breathed again. Guise reconciled himself to his enemies, the constable
+and the marshal Saint-André; and the three put themselves under the
+protection of Philip of Spain in defence of the Catholic church. This
+gave them the name of the “triumvirate.” Condé and Coligny, on the other
+hand, strengthened their relations with the Huguenots. They looked in
+all quarters for assistance, and the Protestant prospects were not so
+desperate abroad as to discourage their hopes at home. In Germany,
+indeed, the Huguenots were at that moment triumphant. Not more than one
+tenth of the people had retained their allegiance to the pope.
+
+Catherine, the queen-mother, pretending an impartiality she did not
+feel, condescended to listen to a controversy carried on in her presence
+between the doctors of the contending faiths. She was struck with the
+ability of the Huguenot champions, whom she had considered hitherto as
+mere fanatical enthusiasts, and the admiration of such an enemy is more
+dangerous than her contempt. From this time she brooded over plans for
+the extermination of a sect who could argue so well and fight so bravely,
+and in the meantime gave them some delusive privileges, which irritated
+their opponents and dissatisfied them. They were permitted to worship
+outside the walls of a town, but they must go to the meeting unarmed, and
+disperse when ordered to do so.
+
+[Sidenote: [1561-1562 A.D.]]
+
+It chanced that Francis de Guise was travelling with a stout escort near
+the little town of Vassy, in Champagne, on a Sunday in the March of 1562.
+The Protestants were worshipping in and around a barn beside the road,
+and the gallant escort drew sword upon the unhappy congregation, slew
+sixty of them on the spot, and wounded almost all the rest. Guise, who
+had been struck by a stone upon the cheek, rode on and took no notice of
+the outrage committed by his guard.[f]
+
+
+CIVIL WAR (1562-1569 A.D.)
+
+This was the signal for a war which, interrupted seven times by
+precarious treaties and as many times renewed, covered the land of France
+during a period of thirty-two years with blood and ruins. At the news of
+the massacre of Vassy the Huguenots everywhere took up arms; the duke of
+Guise seized the king’s person in his castle of Fontainebleau and carried
+him, with his mother, to Paris where there were but few Protestants.
+
+[Illustration: CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI]
+
+“As regards the efficient and assured force of the reformers,” says
+Michel de Castelnan,[g] “it consisted of three hundred noblemen and
+as many soldiers accustomed to arms; besides four hundred volunteers,
+students and citizens, utterly without experience. What was this body,
+in face of the infinite number of the people, but a fly measuring forces
+with an elephant?” Outside of Paris, however, the Protestants thought
+they could count upon a tenth of the population, and the greater part of
+the provincial nobility was on their side.
+
+They proclaimed Condé[73] defender of the king and protector of the
+realm; and at the end of a few weeks they had gained possession of
+two hundred towns, among which were Rouen, Lyons, Tours, Montpellier,
+Poitiers, Grenoble, Orleans, and Blois. The Guises had not expected such
+prompt action on the part of their antagonists. Though ill-prepared for
+war, they had the king in their hands, and strong in this advantage they
+declared the Calvinists guilty of rebellion and Condé of the crime of
+lèse-majesté; whereupon Philip II, the champion of Catholicism over all
+Europe, sent them a corps formed of members of those old Spanish bands
+that were as noted for their cold-blooded ferocity as for their valour.
+Condé on his side appealed for aid to the Protestant Elizabeth, who sent
+him an equal number of troops for the defence of Rouen, on condition that
+he would deliver over to her Le Havre as a pledge for the sums she had
+advanced. Thus was committed by the chiefs of both parties the criminal
+error of invoking foreign intervention in their affairs.
+
+It was at the north, where the leaders had taken up their position and
+where the fighting was consequently thickest, that the fortunes of the
+war were finally decided. The duke of Guise, at the head of the Catholic
+army that Anthony de Bourbon had recently rejoined, marched directly
+upon Rouen, which, though scarcely tenable by reason of its position in
+the midst of commanding heights, offered a brave resistance. Anthony
+de Bourbon, king of Navarre, received during this conflict a wound of
+which he died. Montaigne[h] relates that during the siege a Protestant
+gentleman was apprehended who had been charged with the mission of
+assassinating the duke. The latter pardoned and set him free. “I will
+show you,” he said, “how much more merciful is my religion than that
+which you profess. Your faith inspired you with the project of slaying me
+without hearing me in my own defence, and without having received from me
+the least cause for offence; mine commands me to pardon you, convinced
+though I am that you were preparing to kill me without reason.” These
+were noble words, such as are sometimes spoken by ambitious individuals
+who aspire to every earthly glory, but are rarely borne out in their
+lives. The duke had not behaved with such magnanimity at Vassy and at
+Amboise, where he made reply to one of his victims, “My trade is not to
+make speeches but to cut off heads;” nor did he show greater clemency
+at Rouen when that city was at last obliged to surrender. “This great
+city,” says Castelnau,[g] “full of riches of all sorts, was pillaged,
+without regard to the religion of either side, in the space of a week,
+notwithstanding that the very next day after the capture the crier had
+announced that every company or standard-bearer, of whatever nationality,
+must at once leave the city on pain of death.” When all the pillaging was
+at an end judicial proceedings were begun.
+
+Condé, in the hope of repairing the loss of Rouen, and reinforced by
+seven thousand men whom he had received from Germany, set out for Paris,
+the outskirts of which it was his purpose to attack. He turned first
+in the direction of Le Havre with the intention of joining the English
+troops there, but was forced by the duke of Guise to come to a stand at
+Dreux, on the 19th of December. There were arrayed against each other
+at this place fifteen or sixteen thousand men on either side. For some
+time the two armies were directly facing each other--“each man,” says La
+Noue,[q] “thinking in his heart that the soldiers he saw coming towards
+him were neither Spanish nor Italian but French, that is to say, the
+bravest among the brave, and that in their ranks were doubtless many
+of his own comrades, relatives, or friends, whom in less than an hour
+he must seek to kill. Those reflections lent additional horror to the
+situation without diminishing the courage of a soldier.” Condé penetrated
+to the centre of the Catholic ranks, wounding and taking captive the
+constable; but the Swiss restored the balance of forces, and Guise was
+made victor by a successful flank movement which took the prince of Condé
+prisoner.
+
+The admiral Coligny made good his retreat, however, with the Germans,
+and rallied the fugitives. The marshal Saint-André, in endeavouring to
+harass him, was taken and slain. The singularity of the battle of Dreux
+was, that each of the two generals became prisoner to the opposite party.
+Guise gained both ways--not less by the removal of the constable, whose
+rank entitled him always to the superior command, than by the captivity
+of Condé. This prince was treated with the utmost generosity by his
+rival: they shared the same tent, the same bed; and while Condé remained
+wakeful from the strangeness of his position, Guise, he declared, enjoyed
+the most profound sleep. There were, indeed, heroic traits about the duke
+of Guise, that mark him to have been naturally of a generous and noble
+disposition. It appears that, especially when in arms and away from his
+brother, he could shake off the hard-heartedness, the guile, and even the
+ambition which in the cabinet rose to stifle every better quality.
+
+[Sidenote: [1562-1563 A.D.]]
+
+Guise followed up his victories by laying siege to Orleans. While he was
+engaged in reducing this stronghold of his enemies a Huguenot gentleman
+named Poltrot treacherously shot the duke with his pistol. He lingered
+nine days, and expired with exemplary fortitude and piety. He was a brave
+and great man, with such power of nerve and concentrated pride that,
+notwithstanding his equivocal rank in France, the stern constable himself
+and the princes of the blood quailed before him. His virtues were his
+own; his vices those of his party.
+
+
+_The Edict of Amboise and its Results_
+
+The death and captivity of the chiefs on both sides, Coligny excepted,
+necessarily brought on an accommodation. Peace was declared; and the
+Edict of Amboise, issued in March, 1563, granted full liberty of worship
+to the Protestants within the towns of which they were in possession up
+to that day. Thus ended the first religious war, which, in addition to
+the events we have recorded, deluged the entire south of France with the
+blood of the contending parties.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES IX
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+The conclusion of peace restored Catherine de’ Medici to the supreme
+authority. In order to exercise it under a less invidious title than that
+of regent, the parliament of Rouen, by her order, declared King Charles,
+now thirteen years of age, to have attained his majority. Reared by the
+crafty and prudent Catherine, he early acquired, in perfection, the power
+of dissimulation; but he never imbibed that utter indifference to both
+religious parties which distinguished his mother, and which allowed her
+to consult her own interest or the public good in leaguing with either,
+or in balancing and alternating between them. On the contrary, Charles,
+thrown among the Catholic party at an age when a bias is soon and
+strongly gained, amidst the bustle of war and of a camp, which pleased
+him, soon imbibed the zeal of the partisans of Guise. He had the sagacity
+to perceive that orthodoxy was much more favourable than the doctrines
+of the reformers to his kingly authority. A worse effect on his character
+was produced by sights of cruelty; for at this tender age he beheld
+the atrocities practised on the Protestants at the siege of Rouen, and
+during the campaign. The young king was thus led to adopt, in his sober
+counsels, the sanguinary measures that the heat of war engendered but
+could not excuse.
+
+[Sidenote: [1563-1564 A.D.]]
+
+This decision of her son in favour of the Catholics had a very great
+influence in finally drawing over Catherine to that party. Other causes
+also impelled her: the Catholics were without leaders; there was a
+place, therefore, for her at their head; and, in a little time, the pope
+and Philip of Spain both declared so strongly against the Protestants,
+that the queen was driven, from a principle of self-preservation, to
+adopt the winning side. This abandonment of her impartiality Catherine,
+however, delayed as long as it was in her power. After the conclusion
+of peace, she endeavoured to soothe Condé, and win him over to moderate
+demands; thus preparing the way for an accommodation. Condé was a man of
+pleasure, prone to indolence, in which he gladly indulged whenever an
+interval occurred in war or in business. Catherine held out to him her
+usual bait, the charms of her maids of honour; and Condé loitered, like
+another Rinaldo, in the toils of this Armida, until the ministers of the
+reformed religion recalled him from licentiousness and compelled him to
+marry. These stern disciplinarians were said to have hanged one of their
+flock for the crime of adultery. This alone was enough to alienate the
+courtiers of France and the demoiselles of Catherine.
+
+The Edict of Amboise had not long been issued, when a modification of
+it was found necessary. That edict had allowed to the Protestants the
+celebration of their worship in towns which they possessed. It was
+found that several bishops and clergy, construing its terms in their
+favour, had established the new rites in their cathedrals and churches.
+This would have outraged the pope and the Catholic princes. Indeed,
+notwithstanding the clamours of the Protestants, so great a concession
+was not to be expected; and accordingly the privilege was withdrawn. The
+ancient cathedrals were not allowed to become temples of the reformed
+religion. New differences consequently arose: the Guises accused Coligny
+of instigating the murder of the duke; and the admiral arrived to answer
+the charge with his suite, which amounted almost to an army. Either
+Catherine or Charles himself took this opportunity of increasing the
+usual royal guard of 100 Swiss to upwards of 1,000 men. The old constable
+came to instigate the Parisians, and a tumult ensued, in which lives were
+lost.
+
+In the following year, 1564, the young king resolved on making a progress
+through his dominions, especially in the south. The cardinal of Lorraine
+went to Rome at the same time, and Charles was met at Bayonne by his
+sister, the queen of Spain, and the duke of Alva. This meeting, in which
+the minister of Philip communicated the views of his master, completed
+in the mind of Charles his hatred of the Reformation, and instructed him
+concerning the means by which it might be eventually crushed. The Edict
+of Roussillon,[74] which appeared while the court was in the south,
+imposed new restrictions on the toleration granted by that of Amboise;
+so that, as Pasquier observes, “edicts took more from the Protestants in
+peace than force could take from them in war.” The Huguenots, therefore,
+despairing of impartiality or justice from the court, already began to
+look forward to another struggle.
+
+[Sidenote: [1564-1567 A.D.]]
+
+During this state of things an assembly of notables was held at Moulins.
+Catherine, who, notwithstanding her sagacity, very often mistook the form
+for the reality, insisted on a public reconciliation between the Guises
+and Coligny. It took place at her bidding; the cardinal and the admiral
+embraced; but young Henry duke of Guise showed even there, by his cold
+and mistrustful demeanour, that his first ideas were those of vengeance
+and hatred. It was in this assembly that the chancellor De l’Hôpital
+proposed his improvements in the administration of justice. Whilst all
+others, prince, noble, and functionary, were absorbed in the spirit of
+religious party, De l’Hôpital alone, professing at once Catholicism and
+tolerance, but unable to obtain attention, followed the unambitious track
+of judicial amelioration.
+
+Religious troubles, similar to those of France, began to agitate the
+Low Countries. Philip, resolving to present a high example to France,
+established the Inquisition among his Belgic subjects in all its vigour;
+and as this only made matters worse, the duke of Alva was despatched to
+those provinces with an army in 1567. The French court affected to fear
+this course, and raised an army as if against it. When the duke of Alva,
+however, appeared on the frontiers of France, he was treated as a friend;
+and the Huguenots immediately perceived that the troops were levied, not
+for the defence of the kingdom, but for the oppression of themselves.
+They accordingly leagued and armed in secret, determined to meet the
+perfidy of the court with corresponding guile. Their consultations ended
+in a project to surprise the court at Monceaux, and get possession of
+the king. It failed, however, as a similar plot had previously failed at
+Amboise, through the postponement of a single day. The queen had warning;
+the Swiss were summoned; and the court retired to Meaux, and from thence
+to Paris, pursued and menaced by the disappointed Condé.
+
+
+THE SECOND RELIGIOUS WAR
+
+Thus commenced the second religious war, in September, 1567. “Catherine,”
+says Henault, “caused the first civil strife by favouring the reformers,
+and the second by irritating them.” She was now at least zealously
+hostile to them. She had been provoked by the numerous calumnies and
+libels which the Huguenots directed against her, and she accordingly
+joined in the opinions of her young son, and of his and her ally, Philip.
+She no longer sought an habitual adviser in the moderate De l’Hôpital,
+who was of opinion that the reformers were unfairly treated. The
+chancellor always asserted their loyalty. After their attempt to surprise
+Meaux, the queen asked De l’Hôpital: “Would you now answer that their
+sole aim is to serve the king?”--“Yes, madam,” replied he, “if you assure
+me that they will be treated with good faith.”
+
+Condé took up his quarters at St. Denis. The Catholics under Montmorency
+were posted at La Chapelle, a village that is now the suburb of Paris
+on that side. The constable wished as usual to procrastinate, but the
+impatience of the Parisians forced him to attack. The battle was fought
+in the plain of St. Denis: it began with a cannonade; but the Huguenots,
+to avoid the destructive effects of the artillery, charged the Parisians
+furiously, and routed them. Their flight left the constable unsupported;
+Condé turned on him his victorious cavalry, and Montmorency defended his
+position, when Stuart, the captain of the Scotch company in the service
+of the Huguenots, coming up close to the constable, against whom he had
+cause for hatred, fired his pistol and shot him. A furious and confused
+_mêlée_, somewhat like a Homeric fight, immediately took place around
+the dead body of the constable--the Huguenots with savage zeal seeking
+to carry it off. They were beaten, however, and driven from the field
+in the attempt. Thus fell, in civil strife, and engaged against his own
+nephews, the veteran warrior of France. His years, his hardihood, and his
+name, have rendered him deservedly celebrated. His defence of Provence
+against Charles V is particularly memorable. By French historians he
+is characterised in terms of the highest encomium: they commend his
+sternness, his courage, his orthodoxy, and forget that avarice and
+selfishness sullied and almost neutralised all of his virtues.
+
+[Sidenote: [1567-1568 A.D.]]
+
+The constable’s death was a victory to Condé, who was able to offer
+battle to the Catholics on the following day. He denied having lost
+that of St. Denis. Young Charles, who was witness to a dispute on this
+point, asked Vieilleville who had won the battle. “Neither Catholic nor
+Protestant,” responded the marshal; “it is the king of Spain who has
+won by our discord.” The Huguenots had neither pay nor provisions, and
+were therefore obliged to quit the vicinage of Paris, directing their
+course across Lorraine towards the frontier of Germany, as they expected
+a body of auxiliaries from that country. They were pursued, but not much
+harassed in their retreat. Catherine endeavoured incessantly to decoy
+them into negotiations, the department of warfare which she felt herself
+most competent to direct. She restrained the warlike disposition of the
+king; arguing with truth that, from the violent animosities of the time,
+the leaders of armies marched to meet a certain fate, either in battle
+or at the hand of the assassin. The king’s brother, Henry duke of Anjou,
+was created lieutenant-general. Catherine, who knew the weak and yielding
+nature of her second son, would gladly have made him the hero of the
+Catholic party in preference to young Guise, whose name she dreaded.
+
+After much privation, during a march in winter, the Huguenots fell in
+with their German auxiliaries; and as they now outnumbered their enemies,
+they marched back into France. They laid siege to Chartres, which, being
+stoutly defended, kept the army fixed before it, and gave the queen full
+opportunity for employing her favourite efforts at negotiation. Coligny
+saw plainly the perfidy of these overtures; but their followers and
+supporters, anxious for peace, obliged them to listen to terms. A treaty
+was concluded at Longjumeau, in March, called the Lame Peace, as well
+from its infirm and uncertain nature as from the accidental lameness of
+its two negotiators. Its terms were a medium between the Edict of Amboise
+and that of Roussillon.
+
+
+THE THIRD RELIGIOUS WAR
+
+The peace was, as Coligny already saw, but a trap to ensnare the Huguenot
+chiefs as soon as their army should be disbanded. They were on their
+guard, however, keeping away from the court, and far apart from each
+other, that at least one might escape in case of treason. Notwithstanding
+this resolve, Condé and the admiral found it necessary to consult
+together, and for this purpose met at Noyers, a little town in Burgundy.
+The court was soon informed of it; and orders were instantly despatched
+to Tavannes, and to the other governors in the south, to arrest them.
+Tavannes was not vigilant in the execution of their commands, and
+Condé and Coligny escaped. By this order the queen had thrown off the
+mask; though, indeed, without such an indication, the executions and
+murders throughout the south sufficiently proved that the Lame Peace was
+never intended to be observed by the Catholics. Through inconceivable
+difficulties, the two chiefs traversed the country, and reached Rochelle
+in safety, where the Protestants now found themselves obliged, for the
+third time, to raise the standard of revolt. Troops did not fail to join
+them from all quarters; but the most welcome aid came from Béarn, the
+queen of Navarre and her young son [the future Henry IV] arriving at the
+head of 3,000 of their subjects.
+
+[Sidenote: [1568-1569 A.D.]]
+
+This young prince, destined to run so glorious a career, was born at Pau,
+in 1553. His father was Anthony of Bourbon, king of Navarre, slain at the
+siege of Rouen. Chroniclers never forget to relate that his mother sang
+at the birth, and that old Henri d’Albret, the infant’s grandfather, held
+up the child in delight, rubbing its lips with garlic, and moistening
+them with wine. Excepting a short period spent at court, the boy lived
+the rude and healthy life of a mountaineer, and imbibed from his mother
+the rigid principles of the Reformation. It was in September, 1568, that
+he accompanied her to Rochelle.
+
+As if to add to the horrors of civil war, winter was always chosen as
+the period of operations. The duke of Anjou was at the head of the
+Catholic army, with the marshal Tavannes for his adviser. When Condé and
+the Huguenots approached, the cold was so extreme as to chill the zeal
+of both armies. They found it impossible to engage in battle. Mutual
+pillage and cruelties too horrid in many instances for the pen to record
+were the only feats of the soldiery. During the inaction that ensued
+(for the winter grew to that extreme rigour which is seldom known even
+in France), a great part of the Huguenot army dispersed: the bourgeois
+and volunteers, of whom it was principally composed, each betook himself
+to his own home. The Catholic troops, on the contrary, were soldiers
+by profession, paid and disciplined. Hence, in the spring, Condé was
+far inferior in force to his enemies, before whom he was obliged to
+retire towards La Rochelle. In his retreat, the prince, having crossed
+the Charente, took post at Jarnac, determined to keep the river between
+himself and the enemy, and to dispute his passage.[d]
+
+There was some preliminary manœuvring on the banks of the Charente; at
+last Tavannes surprised the rearguard of the admiral [Coligny] near
+Jarnac (March 13th, 1569). Condé, on receiving news of the attack, rushed
+up with three thousand cavalry, but at the moment of charging a kick
+from a horse broke his leg. Oblivious of this, however, as of the wound
+he had received in the arm the previous day, he continued to rush upon
+the enemy, crying out to those behind him: “Remember in what condition
+Louis de Bourbon does battle for Christ and his country!” This impetuous
+onslaught at first made a breach in the enemy’s ranks, but Condé’s horse
+being shot under him, he fell, and a terrific combat immediately ensued
+around him. An old warrior, De la Vergne, who had brought with him into
+battle twenty-five men-at-arms, all sons, grandsons, or nephews, made
+heroic efforts to protect the prostrate body of the prince, but he was
+himself killed, and fifteen of his followers fell with him, “all in one
+heap.”
+
+Condé was in the act of giving his gauntlet to a gentleman when
+Montesquieu, the duke of Anjou’s captain of the guards, fired his pistol
+point-blank at his head. Thus perished a prince as energetic as he was
+brave, whose loss was irreparable to the party of which for nine years he
+had been the head that plans and the arm that executes. The Protestants
+talked of abandoning the campaign and shutting themselves up in La
+Rochelle, but a woman caused them to change their plan. Jeanne d’Albret,
+accompanied by her son Henry of Béarn and the young prince of Condé,
+presented herself in the midst of the discouraged army at Saintes. “My
+friends,” she said, addressing the soldiers, “here are two new chiefs
+that God sends you, and two orphans that I confide to your care.” Prince
+Henry,[75] the future king of France, up to his present age of fifteen
+years had been brought up with all the severity that went to the training
+of a country gentleman. Brave, intellectually brilliant, and with the
+faculty of carrying away his auditors by his words, he pleased all with
+whom he came in contact. He was appointed general-in-chief of the army,
+and Coligny was given him as counsellor and lieutenant.
+
+
+_Admiral Coligny; the Peace of St. Germain_
+
+[Sidenote: [1569-1570 A.D.]]
+
+Coligny possessed many of the qualities necessary to a party-leader
+in a war such as was then waging. A Protestant of exemplary piety and
+austerity, he was beloved and respected by ministers and soldiers alike.
+He fell short of being a general of the very first rank, perhaps,
+and Catherine in common with the other Italians at her court did not
+attribute to him great depth as a politician; but he could never be
+made to accept defeat, which is in itself one form of power, and he
+had the faculty of rendering just judgment, which is another. He was a
+master of limitless resource, and if no particularly brilliant victory
+was to be expected under his leadership there was at least to be feared
+no irremediable defeat. In two respects his name is entitled to come
+down with distinction to posterity: the first of these claims is the
+great deed which opened his career, the defence of St. Quentin; and the
+second is his last political aim, the ambition to conquer the Spanish
+Netherlands, whither he wished to conduct his Huguenot bands that France
+might enjoy the double blessing of rich provincial possession and
+internal peace. In his deep desire to avert domestic dissensions and
+to assure religious liberty he had conceived still another method of
+accomplishing this end; namely, the Protestant colonisation of America.
+The very purpose which the Puritans of Great Britain brought into effect
+in the seventeenth century had been cherished by him. Had he succeeded,
+French blood and French speech might to-day dominate in the New World.
+
+Jarnac had been nothing but a rearguard action in which the Protestants
+had lost no more than four hundred men. Coligny was still strong enough
+to defend Cognac and Angoulême; having been joined by 13,000 Germans
+he even assumed the offensive and inflicted a check on the Catholic
+army near La Roche-Abeille. But Tavannes repaired the harm done. German
+Catholics, Spaniards sent by the duke of Alva, Italians sent by Pius V,
+increased the forces of the duke of Anjou. Already pushed back to the
+Loire, the duke returned on his steps by means of a diversion, relieved
+Poitiers which Coligny had been besieging for the last six weeks, and
+succeeded in surprising the Protestant army between the Dive and the
+Thoué, near Moncontour. The position was a wretched one; six hundred
+Huguenot soldiers were left on the battle-field (October the 3rd).
+
+Yet this victory of Moncontour was as useless as that of Jarnac.
+Charles IX, jealous of the laurels which were being gathered for his
+brother, came to the army, and instead of pressing the Protestants to
+the Pyrenees wasted his time in besieging Niort and St. Jean d’Angély.
+Coligny traversed the whole breadth of the south, replenishing his army
+as he went; and he suddenly appeared in Burgundy, at the head of all the
+Protestant nobility of Dauphin and Provence. A Catholic army of 12,000
+men tried to stop him at Arnay-le-Duc; he held his own against them and
+reached the Loing, a short distance from Paris.
+
+Catherine de’ Medici now triumphed in the council, events having proved
+the justness of her views. Some other means than war must be devised to
+gain control over a party that rose up in renewed strength after each
+defeat. In order to disarm the Protestants, she caused the Peace of St.
+Germain to be proclaimed, with terms extremely favourable to their side.
+They were to be allowed full liberty of worship in two towns in every
+province, and in all those in which the reformed religion had already
+been established; Calvinists were to be admitted to all kinds of office,
+and four fortified towns, La Rochelle, Cognac, Montauban, and La Charité,
+were to be given up to them as strongholds in which to place a garrison
+(August 8th, 1570). “A traitorous, violated peace, the perdition of those
+who trusted in it.”[c]
+
+
+A TROUBLED PEACE; THE MARRIAGE OF HENRY OF NAVARRE
+
+What were the real intentions of Catherine at the moment when she
+concluded the agreement of St. Germain? She had conceived a policy in
+1563, which she tried to carry out by fraud from 1563-1567, then by force
+mingled with fraud from 1567 to 1569. She certainly had still the same
+views, the same desires, but no longer the same confidence. As she had
+firmly believed that her object was attained after the murder of Condé,
+the defeat of Coligny, and the triumph of her favourite son the duke of
+Anjou, so she was proportionately stupefied and discouraged at seeing
+the final victory escape her and the unforeseen powers of those moral
+forces which she could not understand defeat the calculations of her
+Macchiavellian wisdom.
+
+It is almost certain that in 1570, when she entered into negotiations,
+she desired, above all, time to breathe and to look about her, and had
+no fixed plan; this is what appears from the diplomatic documents. There
+is however no doubt that she continued to meditate the ruin of Coligny,
+the man who was the great obstacle in her way; the idea of destroying
+the leaders of the party was never absent from her mind; but in 1570 her
+hopes on this subject were very weak and very vague. As to the general
+extermination of heretics planned two years in advance by this “great
+queen” and pursued without deviation to the dénouement with “an admirable
+dissimulation,” it is a romance invented by the depraved fanaticism or
+the cynical Macchiavellianism of Catherine’s Italian panegyrists, and
+accepted by the resentment of the Huguenots.
+
+The historians of Catherine have associated Charles IX with the two
+years of plotting and with “the admirable dissimulation” of his mother:
+they have done more than the Protestants themselves to draw on the name
+of this unfortunate and guilty prince the immense execration which has
+descended on him. Here it is no longer a question of mere exaggeration,
+but of complete error. It was not by sentiments of morality that Charles
+IX was incapable of deserving the hideous praises which posterity has
+changed into maledictions; the lessons of the masters whom his mother
+had imposed upon him had destroyed in him all principles; in his eyes
+good faith was but folly, compassion nothing but cowardice; but the
+passion and inequality of his humour would not have permitted him such a
+long perfidy, and above all he was absolutely without bias: the grudge
+which he nourished against the Protestants for the attempt of Meaux
+was balanced by the jealous hatred he bore his brother Henry, and by
+his distrust of his mother and the Guises. He submitted to Catherine’s
+skilful domination as to a sort of fatality, but at times he chafed at
+the curb in anger, and he was quite as capable of proceeding to final
+acts of violence against the house of Lorraine or even against the duke
+of Anjou as against Coligny. Although Catherine held him by chains
+scientifically forged, he might well end by turning against her the
+lessons she had given him.
+
+What should he do? Whither should he turn? He had no idea. He received
+the schemes of betrayal laid before him by Tavannes, the adviser of his
+brother who desired to become his; but immediately he gave ear to the
+most opposite projects.
+
+Meantime, at court the politicians had got the better of the Catholic
+zealots: little was wanting in order that a bloody tragedy should
+exhibit this at the expense of the house of Lorraine. Even before the
+peace was signed, the partisans of toleration had worked to prepare a
+complete understanding between the court and the Protestant leaders: the
+Montmorencys had proposed the marriage of Prince Henry of Navarre with
+the king’s third sister, Marguerite of France. This marriage had been
+talked of almost ever since the birth of the two young people; Charles IX
+eagerly recurred to the idea, but Marguerite, then aged eighteen years,
+had made another choice; she was beginning the series of her innumerable
+gallantries and had surrendered to the young duke of Guise, the most
+brilliant cavalier in France, all possible rights over her heart. Henry
+of Guise, encouraged by the cardinal De Lorraine, wished to turn the
+victory of his love to the profit of his ambition and aspired to the hand
+of the princess. In the month of May, 1570, the marriage of Marguerite
+and Guise was regarded at court as a thing decided on: suddenly, in the
+middle of June, the king, the queen-mother, and the duke of Anjou turned
+indignantly against the bold pretensions of Guise; the king, who knew
+no half measures, gave orders to his brother the bastard d’Angoulême to
+kill the duke of Guise at the hunt. The bastard, not from repugnance to
+the crime, but from cowardice, missed the opportunity for action: the
+reproaches made to him by the king were heard by a courtier who, perhaps
+at Catherine’s instigation, warned Guise: the murder of Guise would have
+thrown the king into the arms of the Huguenots and overturned the power
+of the queen-mother. The young duke, forced to renounce Marguerite, found
+no better expedient to appease the king than to marry another woman; he
+espoused Catherine of Cleves, countess d’Eu, sister of the duchess de
+Nevers and widow of the prince de Portien.
+
+At this price Guise was restored to favour and followed the court to
+Champagne where the king, in his turn, was to be married: after long
+negotiations the emperor Maximilian II had granted Charles IX the hand
+of his second daughter, Elizabeth, without further insisting on the
+restoration of the Three Bishoprics to the empire. This alliance with
+the house of Austria in no way impelled France towards Spain: it made
+Charles IX for the second time brother-in-law of Philip II, who, the
+widowed husband of Elizabeth of France, had just taken as his fourth wife
+his niece, the eldest daughter of the emperor; but on the other hand
+it gave Charles a father-in-law from whom he had to expect no counsels
+but those of toleration and humanity. However, Elizabeth of Austria, a
+gentle, simple, and modest young woman, did not have, or seek to have,
+any share of influence in the events of her husband’s reign. The wedding
+was celebrated, November 26th, 1570, at Mézières, whither the archduchess
+Elizabeth had been conducted by the archbishop elector of Treves,
+chancellor of the empire. The princes and the great Huguenots had been
+invited to the marriage festivities. They excused themselves, and did not
+quit their refuge at La Rochelle, although the admiral had written in
+respectful terms to the queen-mother to protest his forgetfulness of the
+past and his devotion.[l]
+
+[Sidenote: [1570-1572 A.D.]]
+
+Almost two years of relative quiescence followed, during which the
+Huguenot party gained an increasing influence at court, chiefly through
+the favour shown Coligny by the king. The admiral, ever mindful of the
+interests of his fellow-Huguenots, attempted once more to put into
+execution a colonisation scheme that had long been a favourite project
+with him. He had made an effort to establish a colony in Brazil as
+early as 1555; and in 1562 and again in 1564 Charles IX had given him
+permission to found colonies in Florida; but all of these colonies had
+failed, nor did anything tangible come of his present effort.
+
+This colonisation project tended to bring France into antagonism with
+Spain. But another plan of Coligny’s still more directly menaced that
+power; this plan involved nothing less than a direct attack upon the
+Spanish forces in the Netherlands. Charles IX lent an attentive ear to
+this idea, actuated in part, perhaps, by the desire for military glory,
+in part by Coligny’s belief that a foreign war would be the best possible
+means to harmonise the political factions at home. It will be understood
+that the Huguenot question at this time had come to be quite as much
+a political as a religious problem. The antagonism between the Guise
+faction and the Coligny faction, which led to the appalling scenes we are
+now fast approaching, was based by no means exclusively--perhaps not even
+prominently--upon differences of opinion regarding questions of doctrine.
+It was essentially a personal and political rivalry that actuated the
+chief personages in the drama. This, of course, does not necessarily
+impugn the sincerity of their religious differences; it was merely that
+these differences were not sufficient in themselves to supply motives for
+the bitter and ineradicable hatred with which Catherine de’ Medici and
+the Guises regarded Coligny.
+
+The fact that the negotiations for the marriage of the king’s sister
+Marguerite with the Protestant Henry of Navarre were carried forward,
+sufficiently illustrates the superficiality of the religious element as
+a source of political jarrings. This marriage was, indeed, opposed by
+the pope, who declined to give to a heretic the dispensation necessary
+to legalise the marriage of second cousins. None the less were the
+negotiations carried forward at court in open defiance of the papal
+decision. Jeanne d’Albret, the mother of Henry, came to Paris and was
+received at court with at least the outward appearance of friendliness.
+Her death there in 1572 was probably due to natural causes, though the
+usual intimations of foul play--which the partisanship of that time
+never neglected as an aid to practical politics, however shadowy the
+evidence--were not wanting. The marriage of Henry, now king of Navarre,
+with the not over-willing Marguerite, took place on a specially erected
+platform in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris on the 22nd of
+August, 1572. The story goes that the bride refused to make the customary
+affirmations, and that her brother, Charles IX, pushed her head forward
+with his own hands; but this most likely is an embellishment suggested
+by the known preference of Marguerite for another lover, and by the
+uncongenial wedded life that followed the spectacular nuptials.
+
+It may well be supposed that the Huguenots looked upon the marriage of
+their leader with the sister of the king of France as a great political
+triumph. Doubtless a large number of Huguenot nobles who had long been
+conspicuous by their absence from court came to Paris in honour of the
+occasion. To many of them it proved a fatal visit, for the awful tragedy
+of St. Bartholomew’s day followed hard upon the wedding, turning the
+seeming triumph of the Huguenots into disaster and threatening actual
+annihilation of their party. Such being the sequence of events, it is
+but natural that the surviving Huguenots should have tried to trace
+a causal connection between the marriage of Henry of Navarre and the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew. It has been alleged that the real pretext
+for the marriage was to beguile the Huguenot nobles into visiting Paris
+that they might be caught, as it were, in a trap and the more readily
+massacred. No one doubts that Catherine de’ Medici was quite capable of
+such a plan. But, on the other hand, it must not be overlooked that King
+Charles was most anxious for the consummation of the marriage; and all
+historical evidence tends to exonerate him from early complicity in the
+plot, if plot existed. Still the fact of so many enemies being at hand
+may no doubt have influenced Catherine to carry into effect an idea which
+had at least been dear to her heart. Just how much she was influenced
+by this; just when the first thought of it all came to her--these are
+questions which Catherine herself probably could not have answered, and
+which it is quite futile for any interpreter of her actions to attempt to
+solve. Here, as so often elsewhere, the threads of design make a web too
+intricate for disentangling. This much, however, seems sure: the tangled
+mesh, whatever relations of designs and of accident in its structure,
+was one of which Catherine de’ Medici was the main artificer; her chief
+assistants being her son the duke of Anjou, and the Guises.[a]
+
+
+THE ATTACK ON COLIGNY
+
+[Sidenote: [1572 A.D.]]
+
+A murderous coil had been woven around the king and the admiral.
+Catherine had been for some time torn between her natural timidity and
+her ardent desire to free herself from Coligny: at one time she had
+hoped to obtain the admiral’s destruction from the king; after a first
+success she had failed; a scene of an opposite kind drove her to the
+last extremities. The duke of Anjou himself has revealed these mysteries
+of crime: in a night of trouble and fear if not of remorse he dictated
+with his own lips the history of his own and his mother’s guilt. “Every
+time,” he says, “that the queen had conferred privately with the admiral,
+the queen-mother and I had found him marvellously angry and sullen,
+rough in countenance and aspect and still more in his answers. One day
+when I entered the king’s room, without saying anything to me he walked
+up and down with long strides, often looking at me askance and putting
+his hand on his dagger with so much animosity that I expected to be
+poniarded. I managed so dexterously that while he was walking about and
+with his back turned to me I retreated to the door which I opened and,
+with a brief reverence, I made my exit.” Charles IX was nearer striking
+at Anjou than Coligny; the admiral certainly did not urge him to raise
+the dagger against his brother, but he conjured him to despatch him with
+all speed to Poland that there might no longer be two kings in France.
+Catherine and Anjou, brought to bay, took their resolution. They secretly
+sent for the duchess de Nemours, widow of the great Guise, the woman
+in whose veins flowed the blood of Louis XI mingled with that of the
+Borgia. She had continually professed an implacable hatred for Coligny.
+Catherine declared to her that she placed in her hands the vengeance so
+long pursued by the house of Guise. Catherine desired to profit by the
+murder but to impose the execution and the responsibility on someone
+else. Her Macchiavellian mind went further: she did not doubt that the
+Huguenots would rush to arms to avenge the murdered Coligny and attack
+the Guises even in their palaces; the people of Paris would go to the
+help of the Guises, the Montmorencys and their friends to the help of the
+Huguenots, all the great nobles, partisans of Lorraine, Huguenots and
+politicians, would cut each other’s throats; the Huguenots would finally
+be overwhelmed by numbers, the Guises would be exhausted by their very
+victory; and royalty, held in reserve during the conflict, would remain
+mistress of a field strewn with dead.
+
+Whatever _arrière-pensées_ there may have been, an agreement was arrived
+at as to the action to be taken. Young Guise, in his furious joy, at
+first wished that his mother should herself kill the admiral with
+an arquebusade in the midst of the court; more practical means were
+resorted to; the blow was intrusted to a hand more expert in crime,
+that of the same Maurevert who had already been hired during the last
+war to assassinate Coligny, and who in his stead had killed one of
+his lieutenants under the most odious circumstances. He was sent for
+mysteriously and the duke d’Aumale’s maître d’hôtel concealed him in the
+house of a canon, a former tutor of the duke of Guise, in the cloister
+of St. Germain-l’Auxerrois, on the road from the Louvre to the rue de
+Béthisi, where the admiral was staying. Maurevert remained there three
+days on watch. On the morning of Friday the 22nd of August, as the
+admiral was returning from the Louvre on foot, walking slowly and reading
+a petition, a shot from an arquebuse came from behind the curtain of a
+window, carried off the first finger of his right hand, and lodged a ball
+in his left arm.
+
+Coligny, with his mutilated hand indicating the place whence the shot
+had come, sent to tell the king what had occurred and to ask him to
+judge what fine fidelity that was, considering the understanding between
+him and the duke of Guise; then he returned to his hôtel, supported by
+some gentlemen, whilst his suite broke down the door of the dwelling
+in which the assassin had lain in wait; the arquebuse was found still
+smoking; “but not the arquebusier.” Maurevert had flung himself on a
+horse belonging to the duke of Guise which was held in readiness for him,
+and had fled by the rear of the house. He left Paris by the porte St.
+Antoine; two Protestant gentlemen had discovered his track and pursued
+him for several leagues, but without being able to come up with him.[l]
+
+The king was playing at tennis when he was told that Coligny was wounded,
+and that the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were coming to him
+to demand justice against the Guises. The circumstance both surprised and
+alarmed him. He threw away his racket in a passion, and after giving vent
+to a number of oaths, he declared he would have the assassin sought for,
+even in the recesses of Guise’s hôtel. Charles succeeded in satisfying
+the young princes that the assassins should meet with exemplary
+punishment, and immediately ordered the president De Thou, the provost
+of Morsan, and Veale, a counsellor, to commence an investigation; this
+calmed them in some measure, and made them give up the plan, which they
+had agreed on, of leaving Paris immediately.
+
+But the king felt convinced that something more must be done. He
+announced his intentions of visiting the admiral in the afternoon. He
+could not with prudence go among the Huguenots unprotected, nor could he
+consistently be attended by his guards; he therefore desired that all the
+court should visit Coligny also.
+
+Charles entered the admiral’s dwelling, accompanied by his mother,
+the duke of Anjou, De Retz, and his other counsellors, the marshals
+of France, and a numerous suite. He began by consoling the admiral,
+and then swore that the crime should be punished so severely that his
+vengeance should never be effaced from the memory of man. Coligny thanked
+his sovereign for such testimonials of his kindness, and conjured him
+to support with his authority the execution of the different edicts
+in favour of the Protestants, many points of which were violated, or
+misunderstood. “My father,” answered the king, “depend upon it, I shall
+always consider you a faithful subject, and one of the bravest generals
+in my kingdom; confide in me for the execution of my edicts, and for
+avenging you when the criminals are discovered.” “They are not difficult
+to find out,” said Coligny, “the traces are very plain.” “Tranquillise
+yourself,” said the king, “a longer emotion may hurt you and retard
+your cure.” The conversation then turned upon the war with Spain, and
+lasted nearly an hour. Coligny complained of the Spanish government
+being informed of whatever was decided on; and as the intimacy between
+the queen-mother and the Spanish ambassador was very great and caused
+suspicion, he spoke to the king in a low voice. The war in Flanders was a
+subject of great alarm for Catherine; she knew her son’s secret wishes,
+and she dreaded the effect which Coligny’s remarks might have upon him;
+she interrupted the conversation and prevailed upon the king to leave
+the place. Charles, who was exerting himself to efface any suspicion
+which might have arisen in Coligny’s mind, became vexed at the anxiety
+displayed by his mother; and as they were returning to the Louvre, being
+pressed to tell what Coligny had said, he declared, with an oath, that
+the admiral had said what was true--that he had suffered the authority
+to fall from his hands, and that he ought to become master of his own
+affairs. When the king and his suite retired, the admiral’s friends
+expressed great astonishment at his affability, and the desire he showed
+to bring the crime to justice. “But,” says Brantôme,[e] “all these fine
+appearances afterwards turned to ill, which amazed everyone very much
+how their majesties could perform so counterfeit a part, unless they had
+previously resolved on this massacre.”[k]
+
+
+PREPARING FOR THE MASSACRE
+
+Catherine and Anjou returned in consternation: “We remained,” said
+Anjou, “so bereft of counsel and knowledge of how to act that being, for
+the moment, unable to resolve on anything we retired, putting off our
+decision until the next day.” Meantime they despatched to the king the
+count de Retz, Gondi, the man who best knew how to manipulate that fiery
+and pliable mind, to endeavour to appease him. Retz made him uneasy,
+agitated him, but got nothing from him.
+
+The king’s attitude towards the Huguenots remained the same: Charles
+IX launched great threats against the Guises, who were more and more
+compromised by the information collected by the commissioners: orders
+were given to arrest certain servants of their house. On the morning of
+Saturday the 23rd the dukes of Guise and Aumale came to seek the king and
+said to him, that it seemed to them that his majesty had not been well
+pleased with their service for some time, and that they would retire from
+court if their withdrawal was agreeable to him. The king “with an ill
+countenance and worse words,” answered that they might go whither they
+would, and that he would always be well disposed towards them if they
+were recognised as guilty of what had been done to the admiral. They left
+the Louvre about mid-day, mounted on horseback and with a good following
+took their way towards the porte St. Antoine; but they did not quit
+Paris, and shut themselves up in the hôtel de Guise.
+
+Meantime the king was giving the Reformed fresh tokens of interest: he
+had a general list made of the Protestants who were present in Paris; he
+offered lodging to the Huguenot nobility about the admiral; he invited
+the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé to accommodate their friends
+at the Louvre. The security of the Protestant princes, of Téligny and
+almost all those about the admiral, was complete: the vidame de Chartres
+(Ferrières-Maligni) twice endeavoured to persuade them to leave Paris;
+his advice was rejected with impatience. Ambroise Paré answered for
+the life of the wounded man, and this great failure in crime seemed to
+promise the ruin of its authors.
+
+Most of the Huguenots indulged in vain clamours against the house of
+Lorraine, passing and repassing “in great companies, in cuirasses, before
+the lodging of MM. de Guise and d’Aumale,” but they took no precautions
+for the night, trusting to the protection of a detachment of the king’s
+guard and in the tranquillity of the first night which had followed the
+wounding of the admiral.
+
+In the afternoon the queen-mother and the duke of Anjou summoned the
+count de Retz, the chancellor Birague, Marshal de Tavannes, and the duke
+de Nevers to the garden of the Tuileries. Of the three advisers who
+helped the widow and sons of Henry II to soil the annals of France with
+an ineffaceable stain, three were foreigners. They arranged their plan,
+and then all six went to seek the king in his cabinet in the Louvre.
+Fatal hour, which decided for Charles IX between glory with Coligny and
+eternal shame with Catherine; between the redemption of his misguided
+youth and his eternal damnation in history. The destiny of France hung
+on a word, on the motion of a weak head, of a mind without compass and
+without curb, of one who was almost a madman. And the unhappy man was
+alone, abandoned, in the midst of these demons!
+
+We have the account of this infernal council dictated by that one of
+the accomplices who became Henry III. A few other writings of the time
+almost complete our knowledge on the subject. We see this impious mother
+artfully distilling the poison into the shuddering soul of her son, and
+closing round him every other issue save that of crime. “The Huguenots,”
+she said to him, “are everywhere arming, not to serve you but to make
+themselves your masters: the admiral has sent for six thousand _reiters_
+and ten thousand Swiss; at home their leaders have an understanding with
+a number of towns, communities, and peoples, all agreed to reduce your
+authority to nothingness under pretext of the public advantage. The
+Catholics, on the other hand, are resolved to put an end to this state
+of affairs. If you refuse their advice they have decided to elect a
+captain-general and to form an offensive and defensive league against the
+Huguenots. You will be left alone between the two. Already Paris is under
+arms.”
+
+“How is that? I had forbidden them to arm in the _quartiers_.”
+
+“The _quartiers_ are armed.”
+
+In fact the demonstrations of the Huguenots and the rumour circulated
+by Anjou and the Guises that the marshal De Montmorency, who after the
+wedding had returned to his château of Chantilly for a few days, was
+about to re-enter Paris “with a great force,” had greatly excited the
+masses, and had brought out the citizen militia.
+
+Fear began to take possession of the king. Anjou and others ardently
+supported Catherine. She continued, “One man is the leader and author of
+all this ruin and calamity; the admiral is deluding the king, making him
+the instrument of his ambitions and of his party, urging the state to its
+downfall while pretending to aggrandise it! Let the king remember the
+attempt of Amboise against his brother, and that of Meaux against himself
+when he saw himself constrained to flee before his revolted subjects!”
+
+The memory of Meaux, as Catherine knew too well, always acted on the
+pride of Charles IX as a hot iron on a wound.
+
+“The Huguenots,” she resumed, “demand vengeance on the Guises. Well,
+you cannot sacrifice the Guises; for they will exonerate themselves by
+accusing your mother and your brother! And they will accuse us with good
+reason. It was we who struck the admiral to save the king! The king must
+finish the work or he and we are lost!”
+
+Charles IX seems to have lost his head. He was seized with a fit of
+blind, mad fury against all and everything; his only clear idea was that
+he would not “have the admiral touched”; then, sinking into a melancholy
+dejection, he conjured all these sinister advisers to seek some other
+means of salvation.
+
+Tavannes, Birague, Nevers insisted on the death of the admiral and of all
+the principal leaders. Retz, if Anjou is to be believed, opposed himself,
+contrary to all expectation, to the execution of a design which he,
+more than anyone, had contributed to prepare. Was it fear or was it an
+awakening of conscience in this corrupt man? “You will dishonour the king
+and the French nation; you will plunge again into civil wars, and you
+will be able to speak no more of peace! You will summon again the arms
+of the foreigner, and calamities and ruin whose end we, and perhaps our
+children, shall never see.”
+
+There was a moment of stupor amongst the conspirators. The man who had
+ruined the youth of Charles IX was holding out to him the plank of
+safety. The king was to escape!
+
+They recovered themselves and made a simultaneous and desperate effort.
+“It is too late! The Guises are on the verge of denouncing the king
+himself with his mother and his brother! The Huguenots will not believe
+in the king’s innocence. They will turn their arms against all the royal
+family! War is inevitable! Better to gain a battle in Paris where we have
+all the leaders than to risk it in the open country!”
+
+Retz was silent. The king resisted for more than an hour and a half. “But
+my honour!--but my friends! the admiral!--La Rochefoucauld!--Téligny--”
+
+Catherine saw that he was panting and exhausted: “Sire, you refuse. Give
+us, myself and your brother, permission to take our leave of you--to go.”
+
+He realised that Catherine and Anjou would not go far, and that the
+“captain-general” of the Catholics was already found. He shuddered.
+
+“Sire, is it from fear of the Huguenots that you refuse?”
+
+He arose; he sprang forward intoxicated and furious: “By the death of
+God,” he cried, “since you think good to kill the admiral, I will have it
+so; but kill all the Huguenots in France as well, that there may not be
+left one of them to reproach me with it afterwards! By the death of God
+give the order promptly!” And he went out like one frantic. Catherine had
+won--the race of Valois was devoted to the furies!
+
+The conspirators passed the rest of the day, the evening, and a great
+part of the night in preparing for the enterprise. The king having gone
+they had discussed the heads to be proscribed. Should they strike at the
+princes--Henry of Navarre, a king, and the king’s brother-in-law? They
+shrank from this. Henry of Condé, son of him who died at Jarnac? The duke
+de Nevers, whose sister-in-law he had just married, had, it is said,
+great difficulty in obtaining his life. Catherine was aware that to kill
+the Bourbons would be to render the Guises too strong. Should they strike
+at the friends of the Huguenots, the Montmorencys? Retz, soon recovered
+from his scruples, advised it. Tavannes opposed it. The head of the
+house, who was at Chantilly, was not in their power; to kill the younger
+members in the absence of the eldest would be to give a leader to the
+civil war.
+
+Thus it was agreed to kill only the Huguenots. All the Huguenots, as
+the king had exclaimed in his madness. Catherine afterwards pretended
+that she had the blood of only five or six on her conscience. Hypocrisy!
+She insisted on the deaths of only these five or six, but she foresaw
+and accepted the deaths of all the others. At the pass to which things
+had come it was no longer a question of isolated assassinations but of
+massacre--the massacre at least of the nobles who had come with the
+princes and the admiral.[l]
+
+[Illustration: A COURT GENTLEMAN, TIME OF CHARLES IX]
+
+Everything was soon decided on; the duke of Guise was to begin the
+massacre by despatching the admiral directly he heard the signal
+given, by ringing the great bell of the palace, which was used only on
+public rejoicings. Tavannes in the meantime sent for the provost of
+the trades and some other persons of influence among the inhabitants;
+he ordered them to arm the companies and to be ready by midnight at
+the Hôtel-de-Ville. Those persons made some excuses and scruples of
+conscience, for which Tavannes abused them in the king’s presence. He
+told them that if they refused they should all be hanged and advised
+the king to threaten them too. The poor frightened men then yielded
+and promised to do such execution that it should never be forgotten.
+The instructions they received were that directly they heard the
+bell, torches were to be put in the windows and chains placed across
+the streets; pickets were to be posted in the open places; and, for
+distinction, they were to wear a piece of white linen on their left
+arms and put a white cross on their hats. Notwithstanding the awful
+crime in contemplation, the king rode out on horseback in the afternoon
+accompanied by the chevalier d’Angoulême, his natural brother: but the
+sight of his unsuspecting people had no effect upon him. The queen also
+showed herself at court as usual in order to avoid suspicion.
+
+Secrecy was desirable till the last moment and no one was informed of
+the plan who was not necessary to its execution. But there were several
+persons who caused great concern and anxiety to both the king and queen.
+The queen of Navarre describes herself as altogether ignorant of the
+affair previous to the execution; and when she retired after supper to go
+to bed, her sister, the duchess of Lorraine, entreated her not to go. The
+queen-mother was angry at that and forbade her telling anything further.
+The duchess of Lorraine thought that it would be sacrificing her to let
+her go to bed; and the queen-mother said that if she did not go it might
+cause suspicion and observed that if it pleased God no harm would befall
+her.
+
+The count de la Rochefoucauld was a great favourite with Charles, who
+took such delight in his company that he wished to save his life. He had
+passed the evening with the king, and when he prepared to go home Charles
+advised him to sleep in the Louvre. In vain did he press him; the count
+resolved to go; the king was grieved that he could not preserve him
+without violating his secret, and observed as his guest retired, “I see
+clearly that God wishes him to perish.” Ambrose Paré, his surgeon, was a
+person indispensable for the king’s health and comfort, and he used less
+ceremony with him. He sent for him in the evening into his chamber and
+ordered him not to stir from thence; he said, according to Brantôme,[e]
+“that it was not reasonable that one who was so useful should be
+massacred, and therefore he did not press him to change his religion.”
+
+
+THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, AUGUST 24TH, 1572
+
+As midnight approached the armed companies were collecting before the
+Hôtel-de-Ville. They required some strong excitement to bring them to a
+proper mind, and in order to animate and exasperate them they were told
+that a horrible conspiracy was discovered which the Huguenots had made
+against the king, the queen-mother, and the princes, without excepting
+the king of Navarre, for the destruction of the monarchy and religion;
+that the king, wishing to anticipate so execrable an attempt, commanded
+them to fall at once upon all those cursed heretics (rebels against God
+and the king), without sparing one; and afterwards their property should
+be given up to plunder. This was sufficient inducement for a populace who
+naturally detested the Huguenots: everything being thus arranged, they
+impatiently waited the dawn and the signal which it was to bring with it.
+
+The wretched king of France had gone so far that a retreat was
+impossible; but there is every reason to believe that even at the
+last moment he would gladly have obeyed the dictates of nature and
+have desisted from the cruel purpose. But the queen had perceived the
+inquietude which tormented him; she saw that if the signal depended upon
+him he would not have resolution enough to give it; she considered that
+the hour should be hastened to prevent any rising remorse from destroying
+her work: she therefore made another effort to inflame her son by telling
+him that the Protestants had discovered the plot; and then sent someone
+to ring the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, an hour earlier than had
+been agreed upon. A few moments after was heard the report of a pistol,
+which had such an effect on the king that he sent orders to prevent the
+massacre; but it was then too late.
+
+Guise, who had waited with impatience for the signal, went at once to
+Coligny’s house accompanied by his brother Aumale, Angoulême, and a
+number of gentlemen. Cosseins, who commanded the guards posted there,
+broke open the doors in the king’s name and murdered some Swiss who were
+placed at the bottom of the stairs. Besme, a Lorrainer, and Pestrucci,
+an Italian, both in Guise’s pay, then went upstairs to the admiral,
+followed by some soldiers. He was awakened by the noise, asked one of his
+attendants what it was: he replied, “My lord, God calls us to himself.”
+Coligny then said to his attendants: “Save yourselves, my friends; all
+is over with me. I have been long prepared for death.” They all quitted
+him but one, and he betook himself to prayer, awaiting his murderers.
+Every door was soon broken open, and Besme presented himself. “Art thou
+Coligny?” said he. “I am he indeed,” said the admiral; “young man,
+respect my gray hairs; but do what you will you can shorten my life only
+by a few days.” Besme replied by plunging his sword into Coligny’s body;
+his companions then gave him numerous stabs with their daggers. Besme
+then called out of the window to Guise that it was done: “Very well,”
+replied he, “but M. d’Angoulême will not believe it unless he sees him at
+his feet.” The corpse was then thrown out into the court from the window;
+and the blood spurted out on the faces and clothes of the princes. Guise
+wiped the murdered man’s face in order to recognise him, and then gave
+orders to cut off his head.
+
+The ringing of the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois was answered by the
+bells of all the churches, and the discharge of firearms in different
+parts. Paris resounded with cries and howlings which brought the
+defenceless people out of their dwellings, not only unarmed, but half
+naked. Some tried to gain Coligny’s house in the hope of obtaining
+protection, but the companies of guards quickly despatched them; the
+Louvre seemed to hold out a refuge; but they were driven away by men
+armed with spears and musketry. Escape was almost impossible; the
+numerous lights placed in the windows deprived them of the shelter which
+the darkness would have afforded them; and patrols traversed the streets
+in all directions killing everyone they met. From the streets they
+proceeded to the houses; they broke open the doors and spared neither
+age, sex, nor condition. A white cross had been put in their hats to
+distinguish the Catholics, and some priests holding a crucifix in one
+hand and a sword in the other preceded the murderers and encouraged them,
+in God’s name, to spare neither relatives nor friends. When the daylight
+appeared, Paris exhibited a most appalling spectacle of slaughter: the
+headless bodies were falling from the windows; the gateways were blocked
+up with dead and dying, and the streets were filled with carcasses which
+were drawn on the pavement to the river.
+
+Even the Louvre became the scene of great carnage; the guards were drawn
+up in a double line, and the unfortunate Huguenots who were in that
+place were called one after another and were killed with the soldiers’
+halberts. Most of them died without complaining or even speaking; others
+appealed to the public faith and the sacred promise of the king. “Great
+God,” said they, “be the defence of the oppressed. Just judge! avenge
+this perfidy.” Some of the king of Navarre’s servants who lived in the
+palace were killed in bed with their wives. Tavannes, Guise, Montpensier,
+and Angoulême rode through the streets encouraging the murderers; Guise
+told them that it was the king’s wish; that it was necessary to kill
+the very last of the heretics, and crush the race of vipers. Tavannes
+ferociously exclaimed, “Bleed! Bleed! the doctors tell us that bleeding
+is as beneficial in August as in May.” These exhortations were not lost
+upon an enraged multitude, and the different companies emulated each
+other in atrocity. One Crucé, a goldsmith, boasted of having killed four
+hundred persons with his own hands.
+
+The massacre lasted during the whole week, but after the third day its
+fury was considerably abated; indeed, on the Tuesday, a proclamation was
+issued for putting an end to it, but no measures were taken for enforcing
+the order; the people however were no longer urged on to the slaughter.
+What horrors were endured during that time can be best described by those
+who were present, or by contemporaries.
+
+[Illustration: SULLY
+
+(1560-1641)]
+
+Sully[j] gives the following account of his suffering: “I went to bed the
+night before, very early. I was awakened about three hours after midnight
+by the noise of all the bells and by the confused cries of the populace.
+St. Julien, my governor, went out hastily with my valet-de-chambre to
+learn the cause, and I have never since heard anything of those two
+men, who were, without doubt, sacrificed among the first to the public
+fury. I remained alone dressing myself in my chamber where a few minutes
+after I observed my host enter, pale and in consternation. He was of
+the religion, and having heard what was the matter he had decided on
+going to mass to save his life and preserve his house from plunder. He
+came to persuade me to do the same and to take me with him. I did not
+think fit to follow him. I resolved on attempting to get to the college
+of Burgundy where I studied, notwithstanding the distance of the house
+where I lived from that college, which made my attempt very dangerous. I
+put on my scholar’s gown, and taking a pair of large prayer books under
+my arm, I went down stairs. I was seized with horror as I went into the
+street at seeing the furious men running in every direction, breaking
+open the houses and calling out, ‘Kill! Massacre the Huguenots!’ and
+the blood which I saw shed before my eyes redoubled my fright; I fell
+in with a body of soldiers, who stopped me. I was questioned; they
+began to ill-treat me, when the books which I carried were discovered,
+happily for me, and served me for a passport. Twice afterwards I fell
+into the same danger, from which I was delivered with the same good
+fortune. At length I arrived at the college of Burgundy; a still greater
+danger awaited me there; the porter having twice refused me admittance,
+I remained in the middle of the street at the mercy of the ruffians,
+whose numbers kept increasing and who eagerly sought for their prey,
+when I thought of asking for the principal of the college, named Lafaye,
+a worthy man who tenderly loved me. The porter, gained by some small
+pieces of money, which I put into his hand, did not refuse to fetch him.
+This good man took me to his chamber, where two inhuman priests whom I
+heard talk of the Sicilian Vespers tried to snatch me from his hands to
+tear me to pieces, saying that the order was to kill even the infants at
+the breast. All that he could do was to lead me with great secrecy to a
+remote closet, where he locked me in. I remained there three whole days,
+uncertain of my fate and receiving no assistance but from a servant of
+this charitable man who came from time to time and brought me something
+to live upon.”[k]
+
+
+EFFECTS OF THE MASSACRE
+
+No allowable space would suffice for the records of such indiscriminate
+massacre. Charles, by his missives, ordered the same scene to be renewed
+in every town throughout his dominions. And the principal cities but
+too zealously responded. Fifty thousand Protestants are said to have
+fallen victims of the monarch’s order.[76] A few commanders refused. The
+viscount d’Orthe wrote back to the court, that he “commanded soldiers,
+not assassins.” And even the public executioner of a certain town, when
+a dagger was put into his hands, flung it away, and declared himself
+above the crime. The family of the Montmorencys, though Catholic, showed
+their abhorrence of these acts, and had the courage to take down the
+body of the admiral, which had been hung to the common gibbet, and to
+give it burial at Chantilly. Charles IX had not failed to visit it,
+while yet suspended. His followers complained of the odour. “The body
+of a dead enemy cannot smell otherwise than sweet,” was his reply. He
+now avowed that all was committed by his orders; and even held a “bed of
+justice” in his parliament for the very purpose. The trembling judges,
+with De Thou, their president, could not but applaud his zeal. As for De
+l’Hôpital, who had long been banished from court, and who had abandoned
+the friendship of Catherine since she had joined the Guises, he expected
+not to be spared, and ordered his domestics to throw open the gates. They
+disobeyed, and the murderers were unable to reach him. But De l’Hôpital
+did not long survive to deplore the miseries of his country. His words
+were, “After such horrors, I do not wish to live.” The joy of the pope,
+on the other hand, and of Philip of Spain, knew no bounds. The supreme
+pontiff went in state to his cathedral, and returned public thanks to
+heaven for this signal mercy.
+
+[Illustration: MICHEL DE L’HÔPITAL
+
+(1505-1573)]
+
+Charles had spared his sister’s husband, the young king of Navarre, and
+his companion the prince of Condé. It was only at the price of being
+converted. Death or the mass was the alternative offered to them; and
+both, after some resistance, yielded in appearance. On the other hand,
+mere abhorrence of the massacre caused many Catholic gentlemen to turn
+Huguenots. Amongst these was Henry de la Tour d’Auvergne, viscount de
+Turenne. After all, the crime, from which so much was expected, produced
+neither peace nor advantage. The Huguenots were, indeed, paralysed by
+the blow; but the Catholics were no less stupefied by remorse and shame.
+King Charles himself seemed stricken already by avenging fate. He was
+nervous and agitated. The blood he had spilled seemed ever to stream
+before his eyes. A continual fever took possession of him, and henceforth
+never ceased to consume him. The chiefs were equally languid, equally
+disunited. The Huguenots had time to rally, and to prepare for defence.
+Rochelle and Montauban shut their gates. Charles in his blindness sent La
+Noue, the Huguenot, to Rochelle; he became its commander. The town was
+at length besieged, and thousands of the Catholics fell before it; among
+them, not a few of the murderers who assisted in the massacre on St.
+Bartholomew’s eve. At length Charles, unable to conquer, and incompetent
+to carry on the war with vigour, granted the Huguenots a peace. Rochelle
+and Montauban preserved the freedom of their religion; and Charles had
+the pain of perceiving that the grand and sweeping crime to which he had
+been impelled had but enfeebled the Catholic party, instead of insuring
+its triumph.
+
+
+LAST YEARS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER OF CHARLES IX
+
+[Sidenote: [1572-1574 A.D.]]
+
+Catherine, in the meantime, had the address to procure the crown of
+Poland for the son of her predilection, Henry duke of Anjou. She had
+lavished her wealth upon the electors for this purpose. No sooner was
+the point gained than she regretted it. The health of Charles was now
+manifestly on the decline, and Catherine would fain have retained Henry;
+but the jealousy of the king forbade. After conducting the duke on his
+way to Poland the court returned to St. Germain, and Charles sank,
+without hope or consolation, on his couch of sickness. Even here he was
+not allowed to repose. The young king of Navarre formed a project of
+escape with the prince of Condé. The duke of Alençon, youngest brother
+of the king, joined in it. A body of horse were to wait in the forest
+of St. Germain for the princes, and protect them in their flight. The
+vigilance of the queen-mother discovered the enterprise, which, for her
+own purposes, she magnified into a serious plot. Charles was informed
+that a Huguenot army was coming to surprise him, and he was obliged to be
+removed into a litter, in order to escape. “This is too much,” said he;
+“could they not have let me die in peace?”
+
+Condé was the only prince that succeeded in making his escape. The king
+of Navarre and the duke of Alençon were imprisoned. The former, accused
+of conspiring against the king’s life, defended himself with magnanimity,
+and asked if it were a crime, that he, a king, should seek to free
+himself from durance? This young prince had already succeeded by his
+address, his frankness, and high character in rallying to his interests
+the most honourable of the noblesse, who dreaded at once the perfidious
+Catherine and her children; who had renounced their good opinion of
+young Guise after the day of St. Bartholomew; and who, at the same time
+professing Catholicism, were averse to Huguenot principles and zeal. This
+party, called the _politiques_, professed to follow the middle or neutral
+course, which at one time had been that of Catherine de’ Medici; but she
+had long since deserted it, and had joined in all the sanguinary and
+extreme measures of her son and of the Guises. Hence she was especially
+odious to the new and moderate party of the _politiques_, among whom the
+family of Montmorency held the lead. Catherine feared their interference
+at the moment of the king’s death, whilst his successor was absent in a
+remote kingdom; and she swelled the project of the princes’ escape into
+a serious conspiracy, in order to be mistress of those whom she feared.
+Lamole and Coconas, both confidants of the princes, were executed for
+favouring their escape. The marshals De Cossé and De Montmorency were
+sent to the Bastille.
+
+In this state of the court Charles IX expired on the 30th of May,
+1574, after having nominated the queen-mother to be regent during his
+successor’s absence.[d] His end was so miserable that even Huguenot
+writers express pity for it. His short and infrequent sleeping moments
+were troubled by hideous visions. Exhausted by violent hæmorrhages, he
+sometimes waked up bathed in his own blood, and this blood reminded him
+of that of his subjects which had been shed in streams by his orders. He
+saw again in his dreams all their dead bodies floating with the current
+of the Seine; he heard mournful lamentations in the air. The night
+before his death, his nurse, of whom he was very fond, although she was
+a Huguenot, heard him complaining, weeping, and sighing: “Ah nurse,” he
+cried, “what streams of blood, how many murders! What wicked counsel I
+have had! O my God, pardon me and grant me mercy! I know not where I am,
+so much do they agitate and perplex me! What will become of all this
+country? What will become of me, to whom God intrusts it? I am lost, I
+know it well!” Then his nurse said to him: “Sire, the murders and the
+blood shall be on the head of those who influenced you, and on your evil
+counsellors.” His last words were that he was glad he left no male child
+to wear the crown after him.
+
+This prince, who was so guilty and so unhappy, whose name has been
+handed down from generation to generation, loaded with anathemas, was
+born with the most brilliant gifts of mind and imagination, and with
+less inclination to vice than most of his race. He had that real love
+of art which had been the glory of his ancestor, Francis I, and verses
+of his have been preserved, which are far superior to those of the
+captive at Pavia--beautiful verses, addressed to Ronsard, who might
+have taken lessons in good taste and spontaneity from this essay of
+royal genius. He loved music no less than poetry, and during his last
+illness melody alone had the power to soothe his pain for a moment. A
+detestable education had destroyed all the gifts of nature in Charles
+IX. When real glory was offered to him, when the chance was given him
+to snatch France from factions, to make her enter upon her real destiny
+by a bound towards her natural frontiers, by a brilliant and legitimate
+conquest, the unfortunate man did not have the strength to seize this
+unique opportunity. It came too late for him; his soul was confused and
+without a guide, his mind vacillating. After long struggles he became a
+prey to the infernal inspirations of his mother, and, as if carried away
+by furies, he leaped into the gulf of shame and of blood, into which he
+was followed by the rest of his race, and in which France came near being
+destroyed with the Valois.[l]
+
+The above version of the end of Charles IX expresses the opinion held
+by most of the historians. Dareste,[m] however, finishes the reign of
+Charles IX with the following remark in regard to this generally accepted
+description: “During his last days there were current rumours which
+have been transmitted to us by D’Aubigné,[n] L’Estoile,[o] and other
+contemporaries. They recount his great inquietude, his idea that the
+phantoms of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew besieged his
+death-bed; they tell us that he succumbed to his great remorse and these
+avenging hallucinations. All these accounts, of doubtful origin, are at
+least greatly exaggerated. His last illness, the phases and progress of
+which were followed by the Venetian envoys,[77] was of a most natural
+character. Cavalli[p] contents himself with saying that the plots during
+the last days of his life caused him great torture of mind and prevented
+his tasting an instant’s repose.”
+
+Charles IX does not lack defenders. In great contrast to the almost
+universal condemnation of him are the writings of some of his
+contemporaries. Sorbin,[t] after a description of his physical qualities,
+goes on to express his admiration of him in these words: “His manners
+were the most gentle in the world; he loved peace and quiet for his
+people, and desired nothing so much as to see his subjects reunited in
+the faith and religion of the Catholic church, which made apparent to
+everyone his great generosity, and showed how worthy he was to have
+reigned in a more happy period than the one he lived in, when the
+malice of his subjects kept him in difficulties. Had he reigned in a
+more fortunate time, the opinion of his intimate friends and his most
+faithful subjects and servants would have been correct, for they called
+it a golden age. He would have been loved by all in a good and virtuous
+age.”[a]
+
+
+THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III (1574-1589 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1574-1575 A.D.]]
+
+The duke of Anjou,[78] heir presumptive of Charles IX, was in Poland at
+the time of his brother’s death. Henry was no sooner in possession of
+this crown than he took a dislike to the “land of the Sarmatians,” where
+the rough and virile nobles knew nothing of the refinements of luxury and
+vice which the corrupt civilisation of Italy had inoculated upon France.
+Upon the news of his brother’s death he fled from his capital at night,
+like a malefactor. Pursued by his subjects, who wished to keep him, he
+did not stop until he was on Austrian soil. The pleasures of Vienna and
+of Venice captivated him for a long time; he did not set foot within his
+new kingdom until two months after he had secretly left the old one.
+
+The prince was ill-fitted to master the situation that his brother had
+left him. The victories won in his name by Tavannes had given him a
+great reputation; but abuse of pleasure had cooled that early ardour
+which had at first made him as brave as his ancestors. He no longer had
+a taste for any but childish or effeminate pastimes, when he did not
+surrender himself to horrible debauchery. It could hardly be said that
+his ostentatious devotion was a trick of impiety, but all his religion
+consisted in certain external practices. He thought that all his accounts
+with heaven and his own conscience could be settled by a fast and a few
+penances. Charles IX, his brother, had sometimes had ideas and plans
+worthy of a king. Henry had almost puerile occupations; and D’Aubigné,[n]
+seeing this man so careful of his toilet, his complexion, the whiteness
+of his hands and face, was uncertain whether he beheld “a woman-king or
+a man-queen.” Charles IX was vicious in anger and on occasion; Henry in
+character and constantly. He read nothing but Macchiavelli, and, in a
+word, he never knew that which makes pardonable much of his brother’s
+conduct--remorse.
+
+His first acts showed what was to be expected of him. At Turin he repaid
+the hospitality of the duke of Savoy with prodigal magnificence by
+giving him Pinerolo, Perugia, and Savigliano, the last remains of the
+conquests of Francis I beyond the Alps. Hardly had he entered France
+when he commanded the Protestants to turn Catholic or leave the kingdom.
+His words were indeed menacing: but the reformers were reassured when
+they saw that action was limited to sending a few officers to the
+southern provinces, which were then much disturbed, and to processions
+of flagellants, in which the king took part and which went through the
+streets scourging their shoulders for the remission of their sins. He
+made a solemn entry into Paris, where he greatly scandalised serious
+people by having about him a great number of monkeys, parrots, and
+little dogs. At Rheims, “when the crown was placed upon his head,” says
+L’Estoile,[o] “he said in a loud voice that it hurt him; it slipped twice
+as though it were going to fall.” An evil omen was seen in this, and with
+reason. This head, which could not bear a crown, could no more bear the
+strong and virile ideas that would have been so necessary to defend it.
+
+
+POLITICAL CONDITIONS
+
+France had need, however, of an able, honest, strong chief to take up
+the reins of government. Castelnau[g] estimates that “already, by reason
+of the civil wars, more than a million persons had been put to death,
+all under the pretext of religion and public utility, with which both
+parties shielded themselves.” It was only with great difficulty that
+Catherine de’ Medici had been able to prevent a new explosion during
+the last days of Charles IX and the two months of her regency. Between
+the extreme Catholics and the fanatical Protestants a new party was
+gaining ground, that of the _Politiques_, composed of moderate Catholics
+who desired the re-establishment of public tranquillity by religious
+tolerance and energetic repression of factions. The three Montmorencys,
+Damville, Thoré, and Méru, were the most conspicuous men of this party,
+which includes a great number of magistrates and of rich bourgeois. A
+prince of the blood, the duke of Alençon, had undertaken the leadership
+of it, less through patriotism than through ambition, for he counted upon
+making use of it for his personal ends. The Guises were at the head of
+the Catholics, the Bourbons at the head of the Protestants; in order to
+be neither isolated nor second in one or the other camp he had thought it
+possible to form a third party that should be devoted to his interests.
+The Béarnais [Henry IV] justly calls him “a double heart, an evil and
+misshapen mind, like a deformed body.” We must, however, give him credit
+for two things: he wished to be French, he said, in name and in fact, and
+an enemy of Spain; and he never stained his hands with the blood of the
+Huguenots.[c]
+
+On his return to Paris, Henry III remained there for the winter and
+during Lent, taking part in the feasts and the devotions. Accompanied
+by the queen, and carrying a large rosary in his hand, he visited the
+churches, the oratories, and the different religious houses; an action
+which gave rise to numberless lampoons, libels, and satirical writings.
+
+[Illustration: HENRY III]
+
+L’Estoile[o] in his journal, indifferent in the main and censorious,
+gives a faithful portrayal of the feelings of the Parisian people. They
+were anything but disposed to pardon the effeminacy and ridiculous
+actions of the king.[m]
+
+[Sidenote: [1575-1576 A.D.]]
+
+They saw the descendant of St. Louis and Francis sink religion into
+ridicule, and knighthood into disgrace. They saw a king of France,
+surrounded by minions or favourites, dress himself in woman’s clothes,
+and sing infamous ballads in a public meeting, and on the same day sing
+psalms through the streets dressed in the robe of a penitent--a Christian
+Nero, with the solemn voice of Coligny scarcely hushed, and the grim
+eyes of the Bible-reading Huguenots fixed on all his proceedings. As a
+consequence there was strife and misery in the land. Alençon, wicked
+as the king, and not so clever, joined the levies which were gathering
+round the old leaders. Henry of Navarre escaped from his honourable and
+close-watched detention by the swiftness of his horse at a hunting-party,
+and bade his adherents, who came to him in great numbers, once more “to
+follow the White Plume, always in the front of battle.” He celebrated
+his recovered independence by resuming the exercise of the Protestant
+faith. But the great families of the Montmorencys and others, who were
+merely discontented with the government, were disinclined to mix their
+standards with the avowed Huguenots. It was, therefore, easy for the
+queen-mother to break up the ill-assorted union. She sent embassies
+of her bedchamber-women to wait on the duke of Alençon, and in a very
+short time that feeble prince was detached from the cause. He, however,
+mediated a peace which was very favourable to the reformers. Their
+worship was permitted in all parts of France except in Paris; all edicts
+against them were withdrawn; the massacre itself was disavowed; and
+several additional towns were surrendered to them as pledges. This was
+the fifth peace since the religious wars began, and was called the Peace
+of Monsieur, in honour of Alençon.[79] The king, who appeared at ball
+and theatre with rich necklaces round his bare neck, and affected the
+appearance of a female beauty, had no wish, in signing this pacification,
+but to be left undisturbed by the anger of faction or the ambition of
+his brother. To separate Alençon from the Huguenots, he would have made
+greater sacrifices still. But the sacrifice he made was quite enough. The
+Catholics saw the overthrow of their faith in the terms of the treaty;
+the Huguenots the finger of God in the spread of their opinions.
+
+
+THE HOLY LEAGUE
+
+[Sidenote: [1576-1584 A.D.]]
+
+The Holy League began in 1576--a league which bound itself by the most
+awful sanctions to extirpate heresy--to spare neither friend nor foe
+till the pestilence was banished, and even, if need be, to alter the
+succession to the throne. The next heir after the childless Alençon was a
+Huguenot; but ascending far above the successors of Hugh Capet, Bourbon,
+or Valois, there was a prince whose whole heart was devoted to Rome,
+and who traced his lineal descent to Charlemagne--and this was Henry of
+Guise, son of that old Francis who was assassinated by Poltrot, and who
+himself bore marks of his Catholic soldiership in a wound upon his face,
+which made him known as the Balafré. “No Protestant king of Navarre! We
+will have Catholic Henry of Guise!”
+
+But Alençon [who hated Guise and had tried once or twice to assassinate
+him] was by no means pleased with this part of the league’s intentions.
+He threw himself into its ranks by way of stemming its course, and was
+lost or forgotten in the tumult which raged in every heart. The king
+summoned the states to meet at Blois, but the states showed the somewhat
+contradictory symptoms, not only of hatred of dissent, but of something
+very like republicanism. They wished to control the royal power by
+commissioners appointed by themselves, whose decision on any disputed
+question was to be final; and being bribed and coerced by the party
+of the Guises, they passed an edict interdicting the Huguenot faith,
+and withdrawing all the guarantee towns from their hands. This was, in
+fact, a declaration of war; the white plume was waving in the breeze in
+a moment, and all the party were in arms. More sincerity arose on both
+sides in viewing the matters in dispute, and amalgamation became almost
+impossible. The king brought discredit on the league and on himself by
+joining it as a member. This move degraded him from being monarch of
+France to being one of a faction, and not even the chief of it; for in
+spite of Henry’s calling himself the leader of the confederacy, the
+real authority remained with Henry of Guise. The king, for instance,
+wished to raise money, but the Balafré frowned, and the Catholic purses
+remained closed. He could neither command nor persuade. [In fact there
+seems to have been some idea of setting him aside somewhat as his fabled
+ancestor Pepin had set aside the last of the Merovingians.] His thoughts,
+therefore, were soon bent on peace. He managed to obtain a treaty at
+Bergerac in 1577, by which the former state of affairs was restored. A
+compliment at the same time was paid to the Huguenots, and a triumph
+gained to himself, by the abolition of the league.
+
+But one of the articles of the league was the indissoluble “association
+and brotherhood of its members till its objects were obtained.” Now, its
+objects could not be obtained while a Huguenot was favoured, or even
+tolerated in France, or while there was a chance of the accession of so
+dangerous a heretic as Henry of Navarre. War after war broke out, to
+the number of seven in all, and with still increasing hatred; but it is
+useless to particularise them. It will serve to show the curious mixture
+of motive and action that one of these is called the War of the Lovers,
+because it arose from the jealousies and rivalries of the leaders who
+were invited to meet at the palace of the queen-mother. That astute
+Italian introduced a sort of chivalry of vice in the prosecution of a
+campaign. She invited the young king of Navarre to come to her court with
+all the cavaliers he chose. There were balls and dances every night,
+and the appearance of the greatest cordiality; for a radius of a mile
+and a half was established round the house, within which quarrels and
+fighting were unknown. It was an oasis consecrated to the coarser Venus.
+But outside those narrow limits the war raged with undiminished ardour.
+A Huguenot lord, after joining in the same dance with a Catholic, would
+ask him to accompany him for a ride across the line, and the survivor
+came in with bloody sword to boast of the result. One night Henry gave
+a return entertainment to the queen and all the court. When the supper
+was over, and the dances were resumed, Henry slipped out of the garden,
+joined Sully and some other young nobles who were waiting his arrival,
+and rode all night. On the following day the queen-mother heard that one
+of her towns about thirty miles off had been surprised and pillaged; and
+when Henry rode back within the peaceful circle, complimented him on the
+success of his stratagem.
+
+But gloomy forebodings began to mingle with these festivities. Alençon,
+to weaken the power of Spain, was allowed to place himself at the head of
+the revolted provinces. The revolt was religious as much as political,
+and the furious leaguers saw the brother of the king and heir of the
+throne enlisted against the church. His visit to London, to prosecute
+his claim to Elizabeth’s hand, also, though terminating in ridicule and
+disappointment, showed his want of attachment to the true faith. He came
+back to Paris humiliated and unsuccessful, both in love and war. His want
+of zeal was discovered, and not much reliance could be placed on a man
+who supported the rebels of Holland and wooed the great heretic Elizabeth
+of England. His death, in 1584, was not lamented on any other account
+than that it advanced by one step the cause of a far more hated, because
+far more terrible opponent.[f]
+
+
+THE WAR OF THE THREE HENRYS
+
+[Sidenote: [1584-1586 A.D.]]
+
+The next heir to the throne was now the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. With
+such a prospect before them the Catholic party grew stronger and more
+determined. Three men, all Henrys, now stood forth as leaders of these
+parties, and of these the royal faction was least. The vacillating king
+sought alliance first with one side and then with the other. His own
+inclination led him away from the Huguenot cause; his safety was not
+assured with the cause of Guise. He was not strong enough himself to have
+a loyal and determined following of his own.[a]
+
+[Illustration: A GALLANT, TIME OF HENRY III]
+
+The conduct henceforth of Navarre and Guise proved a remarkable contrast.
+It was the interest of the Bourbon to elevate and dignify the throne
+to which he saw himself likely to succeed; he therefore treated with
+profound reverence the office of the king, and his person with outward
+respect. It was the business of the Guise to degrade the crown, which
+would otherwise have been too sacred for a sacrilegious hand to touch;
+he therefore treated the king with marked indignity, and stirred up the
+lowest passions of the mob in opposition to the highest authority in the
+land. By his success in this policy he made a narrow escape of exciting
+feelings of hatred to royalty itself, which would have punished his
+ambition by taking away the object of it.[f]
+
+An interesting result, however, of this attitude of the Guise party
+was an advance in political thinking. There were hints abroad of the
+sovereignty of the people. The Jesuit opponents of Elizabeth and
+Navarre must give up the idea of hereditary monarchy. Orthodoxy was the
+indispensable qualification, however, rather than popular choice; the
+church rather than the nation was the source of sovereignty. It was on
+this basis that the Guise party made a treaty with Philip of Spain. The
+Pact of Joinville at the end of 1584 made the league party not only a
+menace to hereditary monarchy in France, but by junction with Spain it
+became anti-national in its character. The war now became more political
+and less trivial. The destinies of France were at stake. But the foreign
+aid which made the Guise cause a European question, and widened the
+quarrel to one of universal religious war, was not destined to amount to
+enough to repress Protestantism in France. The year 1585 was spent in
+useless negotiations in France; during the next year the war was hardly
+begun, and before decisive action had been taken in France the foreign
+situation had changed entirely through the action of Elizabeth.[a]
+
+On the 18th of February, 1587, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots
+fell like a firebrand on the Catholic plans. She had once been queen
+of France, and was related to the Guises. She had been true to but one
+object throughout her life, but that object justified and ennobled all
+her deeds, for it was the supremacy of the church. The violences of the
+league, the curses of the pope, and the threats of Philip of Spain and of
+all the Catholics of Europe, had led to the sad catastrophe, by showing
+the wise counsellors of Elizabeth that while Mary lived and plotted there
+was no safety for Protestantism or freedom; and now the blow recoiled
+with tenfold force on the persons who had made it unavoidable. Philip
+began his preparations for the Armada. Guise concealed no longer his
+enmity to the king, and roused the populace and parliament of Paris,
+both of which were entirely at his command, against him. The infatuated
+monarch showed his usual want of judgment. He replied to the reclamations
+of the magistrates by confiscating their salaries, and threatening to
+throw them in sacks into the Seine. But no course of proceeding would
+probably have altered the result. Victories and defeats all had the same
+effect.[f]
+
+
+_The Battle of Coutras (1587 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1587 A.D.]]
+
+One great battle stands out in the dreary stretch of these years. Henry
+of Navarre had marched from La Rochelle across the Loire country to meet
+a German force which was advancing from the east. Henry III sent an army
+under Joyeuse to intercept the forces of the Huguenots and he succeeded
+in doing this at the strong position of Coutras. The situation was such
+that the Huguenots had no hope of escape except through victory. Henry
+had reached the château of Coutras an hour before Joyeuse and on the
+evening of the 19th of October, 1587; the advance guard of the Huguenots
+drove the duke’s Albanian scouts from the town. Joyeuse, however, was
+afraid that the enemy would try to escape and began preparations for
+battle in the middle of the night.[a]
+
+The young courtiers had sworn to give quarter to no one. The king of
+Navarre had only time to leave Coutras and prepare for battle, a little
+before day, in the angle of land formed by the two rivers Dronne and
+Isle. According to D’Aubigné,[n] who has left us the most circumstantial
+account of this day [and who was himself a soldier in the service of
+Henry IV], the Catholics had about five thousand foot-soldiers and
+twenty-five hundred cavalry; the Protestants, almost as many infantry,
+but hardly half as many cavalry.
+
+The battle began with volleys of cannon. The Catholics suffered from
+the Huguenot artillery, which was better aimed than their own, and with
+loud cries demanded a charge. At the moment when the Catholics started,
+the ministers Chandieu and D’Amours began to chant in front of the
+Protestant army the twelfth verse of Psalm cxviii. At the sight of the
+kneeling Protestants the frivolous youths who were about Joyeuse uttered
+insulting cries. “They tremble, the cowards, they are confessing.” “You
+are mistaken,” replied a more experienced captain, “when the Huguenots
+look like that, they are determined to conquer or die.” In an instant the
+Huguenot men-at-arms had mounted. “Cousins!” cried the king of Navarre
+to Condé and Soissons, “I will say no more to you than that you are
+of the blood of Bourbon, and, as God lives, I will show you that I am
+your senior.” “And we,” replied Condé, “we will show that you have good
+juniors.”
+
+The Huguenot line was formed in a crescent on a little plain. The light
+cavalry of Poitou, which formed the point of the crescent on the right,
+were driven back by a great force of Catholic cavalry, and drew the
+Gascon squadron of the viscount de Turenne along in their rout. The left
+wing of the Catholics with a shout of victory pushed on to the baggage
+in order to plunder, without heeding what was taking place on the rest
+of the battle-field. Three hundred Protestant arquebusiers, believing
+the battle lost and inspired by a heroic despair, threw themselves upon
+a large battalion of nearly three thousand of the enemy’s foot-soldiers
+with such violence as to break through the first ranks. The rest of the
+Huguenot infantry followed this movement and the two bodies of infantry
+attacked each other with great violence.
+
+But in the meantime the fate of the day was decided elsewhere. Joyeuse
+had started at a gallop with his men-at-arms spread out in a single line
+of lances; the three Bourbons were awaiting him steadfastly at the head
+of three squadrons formed six files deep. Most of the Huguenot cavalry
+was armed with sword and pistol; when the enemy was fifteen paces distant
+they threw themselves with all their might from their horses and fired
+point blank, while some platoons of arquebusiers stationed between the
+squadrons fired with surer aim upon the Catholics. The latter could
+not even make use of their lances. Their long line was driven back and
+broken. There followed a short and terrible hand-to-hand conflict, in
+which the king of Navarre and his cousins kept their word to one another
+and fought like true knights. The nobles of the court, gaily decked,
+plumed, dressed in velvet and embroidery, were crushed like glass by the
+poor and rude gentlemen of the south. These young effeminates knew only
+how to die.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH SAVANT, TIME OF HENRY III]
+
+The first squadrons had met at nine o’clock; at ten there was not a man
+of Joyeuse’s army who had not either fallen or fled. The infantry had
+also dispersed after the defeat of the cavalry. The king of Navarre had
+great difficulty in stopping the carnage. The Protestants took cruel
+revenge for the barbarities practised by Joyeuse upon their comrades;
+more than four hundred gentlemen and two thousand soldiers were put
+to the sword. Joyeuse surrendered to two Huguenots when a third split
+open his head with a blow of his pistol butt. Nearly all the lords and
+gentlemen who had followed him were killed or taken prisoners. The booty,
+including the ransoms, amounted to more than 600,000 crowns. The victors
+had not lost forty men.
+
+The king of Navarre showed himself worthy of this brilliant triumph by
+moderation and humanity. He exhibited no more pride after the victory
+than fear before the combat. He received all the prisoners with kindness,
+restored their arms to some, released others without ransom, and declared
+that after as before he demanded only the edict of 1577.[l]
+
+At the same time Guise repulsed the enemy from the soil of France in
+Alsace. The defeat was attributed to the king, and the victory to the
+duke--a fatal contrast between him and Guise, of which he could not
+weaken the effect by comparison with Navarre. The two uncrowned Henrys
+were held up as models for the third, for even the Catholics saw with a
+sort of pride the achievements of Henry, who, though a Huguenot, was a
+prince and a Frenchman still. This state of affairs could not last long.
+Guise made a solemn entry into Paris, and was received with all the
+ceremony usually reserved for a king.[f]
+
+Henry de Guise at this time was thirty-eight years of age. He was tall
+and well proportioned, with blond curly hair and piercing eyes. The scar
+on his cheek gave him a martial appearance. Although not a great general,
+he possessed all the military qualities necessary to gain the love of the
+populace. Indefatigable, prompt of decision, rapid and sure of execution,
+affable, generous, familiar even, though ever guarding his dignity, he
+had the external gifts and the successful personality which Henry III
+lacked. Madame de Retz said that in comparison to him the other princes
+were but people. All were devoted to him. “France,” Balzac said of him
+later, “went mad over this man; to say they loved him is too weak an
+expression.”[m]
+
+
+_The Day of the Barricades and the Treaty of Union_
+
+[Sidenote: [1588-1589 A.D.]]
+
+Henry was at the Louvre, and trembled at his subject’s approach. When the
+interview was over, Guise returned to his house and surrounded it with
+armed men, as if to hint that his life was in danger from the king--a
+very old trick, and very often successful. Everything continued quiet
+on both sides till some Swiss royal guards marched into the town. In a
+moment the mob were up in arms. Barricades were erected in the streets;
+pistols were fired at the passengers. The Swiss were attacked, and
+indiscriminate massacre began. Catherine strove in vain to induce her
+unworthy son to go and show himself to the malcontents. He heard the
+firing on his troops, and had not the courage to order them to defend
+themselves; and while his mother rode boldly into the streets to quell
+the insurrection, he slipped noiselessly to his stables, where the
+Tuileries gardens now are, and galloped without pause to Rambouillet.
+On the following day he got safe within the walls of Chartres. This was
+called the day of the Barricades, and for a while it certainly advanced
+the cause of the duke of Guise. With affected moderation he rejected the
+acclamations of his party, allowed the Swiss guards to escape, and in
+other ways endeavoured to pacify the adherents of the king. To Chartres
+the king was followed by the now triumphant Guise, who dictated there,
+to the degraded king, what was thenceforward called the Treaty of Union
+of July, 1588. It forgave, or rather it applauded, all the outrages of
+Paris. It declared all heretics incapable of any public trust, office,
+or employment. It excluded the heretical members of the house of Bourbon
+from the line of succession to the crown. It raised the duke to the
+office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and it provided for the
+immediate convention of the states-general of France. To the observance
+of these terms, Henry pledged himself in the most solemn forms of
+adjuration.
+
+
+_The Meeting of the States-General_
+
+Again, therefore, the states-general were summoned to meet at the city
+of Blois; and, on the 16th of October, 1588, 505 deputies were assembled
+to listen to the inaugural oration of the king. “Among them,” says the
+contemporary historian, Matthieu, “was conspicuous Henry, duke of Guise,
+who, as great master of the royal household, sat near the throne, dressed
+in white satin, with his hood thrown carelessly backward; and from that
+elevated position he cast his eyes along the dense crowd before him that
+he might recognise and distinguish his followers, and encourage with
+a glance their reliance on his fortune and success; and thus, without
+uttering a word, might seem to say to each of them, ‘I see you;’ and
+then (proceeds Matthieu) the duke rising, with a profound obeisance
+to the assembly, and followed by the long train of his officers and
+gentlemen, retired to meet and to introduce the king.”
+
+The lofty consciousness of his royal character still imparted some
+dignity to Henry’s demeanor. Addressing the states with a majestic and
+touching eloquence, he asserted his title to the gratitude of his people,
+claimed the unimpaired inheritance of the prerogatives of his ancestors,
+pronounced the pardon of those who had already entered into traitorous
+conspiracies against him, and threatened condign punishment of all who
+might in future engage in any similar attempts. Even Guise listened, with
+evident discomposure, to this unexpected rebuke, and public menace, from
+the lips of his sovereign. It was, however, the single gleam of success
+with which Henry was cheered in his intercourse with the representatives
+of his people; and the rest of the history of the states-general of 1588,
+is little else than a record of the humiliations to which they subjected
+him.
+
+He spoke, as we have seen, with royal indignation, of the outrages of
+Paris and of Chartres: but he was compelled to omit all those passages of
+his address in his subsequent publication of it. He publicly claimed for
+himself the cognizance of all questions respecting the verification of
+the powers of the deputies: but he was constrained, with equal publicity,
+to retract that pretension. He entertained an appeal from one of the
+members of the Tiers État against a decision of his order: but he was
+sternly reminded that the states had met at Blois, not as supplicants
+to obey, but as councillors to advise, him. He pardoned the dukes of
+Soissons and Conti their having borne arms under the Huguenot standards,
+that so they might be qualified to take their places among the order of
+the nobles: but the validity of his pardon was contemptuously denied.
+He resisted, as an insult, the demand of the states, that he should
+repeat, in their presence, the oath he had already taken to observe the
+Treaty of the Union: but he was taught that submission was inevitable.
+He demanded that the states should, in their turn, swear fidelity to
+himself, and to the fundamental laws of the realm: but he was obliged to
+withdraw that demand. He insisted that the exclusion of Henry of Béarn
+from the succession to the throne should be preceded by an invitation to
+that prince to return into the bosom of the church: but his proposal was
+inflexibly and scornfully resisted. He commissioned two of his officers
+to lay before the order of the clergy his objections to the acceptance of
+the decrees of the Council of Trent: but his officers were driven away
+with insult. He solicited pecuniary aid for carrying on the war against
+the Huguenots: but the suit was answered by a demand for his surrender of
+a large part of his actual revenue.
+
+This long series of indignities was readily traced by Henry to the
+guidance of a single hand. Guise was but too successfully exerting his
+influence at Blois to dethrone the king by degrading him. The crown,
+which must inevitably fall from the grasp of a prince whom all men had
+been taught to despise, might readily be transferred to the brows of a
+prince to whom all were looking with admiration.
+
+Yet it was a hazardous policy. The king who had conquered at Jarnac
+and Montcontour, and who had concurred in devising the massacre of St.
+Bartholomew, was not a man to be restrained by the voice either of fear,
+of humanity, or of conscience. The friends of Guise saw, and pointed out
+to him, the danger of provoking the dormant passions of the enervated
+Henry; but he received their remonstrances with contempt, and habitually
+and ostentatiously placed himself within the powers of the sovereign
+whom he at once despised, exasperated, and defied.[w] This contemptuous
+attitude was to lead to his undoing.
+
+
+THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY, DUKE OF GUISE (1588 A.D.)
+
+On December 23rd, at three o’clock in the morning, the duke of Guise left
+the room of Charlotte de Beaune, and found on returning to his house five
+notes which warned him to leave Blois immediately. His attendants begged
+him to take refuge without delay with his troops; but being weary he
+retired to sleep. At about eight o’clock, he got up, dressed himself in
+a new gray satin doublet, too thin for the season, took his cloak, went
+out, passed over the drawbridge and entered the castle.
+
+Henry III, during the same night, prepared the ambuscade. The evening
+before, at seven o’clock, he told Liancourt, the chief equerry, in a loud
+voice, to order his coach for four o’clock in the morning, because he
+wished to visit a shrine and return in time for the council. He gave a
+secret order to the Corsican Ornano, and to the forty-five Gascons of his
+especial guard, to be near his room the following day at five o’clock;
+then he shut himself up in his private chamber. At four he rose and went
+out, saying nothing to the queen, who was uneasy. He ascended one flight
+with Du Halde, led him into a gallery which he had divided into fifty
+cells, during the last two or three days, under the pretext of lodging
+there some Capuchin friars whom he wished to have constantly near him,
+but in reality to hide and separate all those who were to take part in
+the premeditated act. He pushed Du Halde into one, and without speaking
+a word shut him in. Towards five o’clock the forty-five guards presented
+themselves, one by one. He took each one in turn to the higher landing,
+and locked them up, each in a separate cell.
+
+The members of the council convoked for six o’clock arrived, and not
+noticing anything strange on the staircases or in the corridors, began
+their sitting. As soon as the king had seen Cardinal De Guise, who was
+staying in the town, at the hôtel d’Allaye, enter the large hall, he
+ascended to his cells, opened the doors, made his men come down, took
+them into his room, having commanded them to make no noise so as not
+to awaken the queen-mother, who was dying on the lower landing. The
+glimmering light of the December dawn and the light from the king’s
+candle but dimly showed their uneasy countenances and eager eyes. The
+king made a speech to his forty-five men, urging them to avenge him; he
+was delighted to find that his oratory was more successful than it was
+with the state deputies. These young noblemen, suddenly transported from
+their Gascony cottages, where they suffered hunger and every sort of
+privation, to become the confidants of the king, to enter his chamber,
+to hear themselves called his champions, his avengers, his friends, must
+have been the more amazed at this sudden fortune, in that the duke of
+Guise had threatened to plunge them back into their former misery.
+
+By the advice of the duke of Guise these forty-five noblemen, sent by the
+states to entreat the king to reform his household, were to be dispersed
+as unnecessary. Still boorish, and knowing nothing beyond the patois
+of their villages, they remained homely and unaffected. One of them,
+called Périac, dimly understood that the king’s speech showed that it was
+necessary to stab the duke of Guise, and he interrupted him with a joyous
+familiarity, striking him in the stomach with the flat of his hand, and
+crying out to him, “Cap de Jou, I’ll kill him for you!” Reassured by the
+enthusiasm of these young men, Henry III himself posted them in his room
+and in the passages; then he retired to his private chamber, impatient
+and troubled at not having seen the duke of Guise arrive, but learning
+finally, at half-past eight, that Henry of Guise had just entered the
+council-room.
+
+Henry of Guise had felt very cold in his satin doublet; his night had
+exhausted him. As he entered he felt sick and faint; his eyes were full
+of tears. “I am cold,” said he, “let me go to the fire.” Whilst more
+wood was being thrown on the fire, he said to M. de Morgondaine, keeper
+of the treasury, “I beg of you to ask M. de Saint-Prix to give me some
+Damascus raisins, or some preparation of roses.” They could only find
+some Brignolles plums, which he began to eat. M. de Marillac, master of
+requests, read a report upon the salt-taxes, when the door opened and
+Revol, secretary of state, was seen to advance. He said to the duke,
+“Monsieur, the king asks for you; he is in his old room.” Then he hastily
+went out. The duke did not notice this hasty retreat, nor the agitation
+of Revol, who was so white that the king had come to him a minute before,
+and said, “My God, Revol, how white you are! Rub your cheeks, Revol, rub
+your cheeks.” The duke of Guise got up, put some prunes in his silver
+comfit plate, leaving the rest upon the cloth. “Gentlemen,” said he “who
+will have some?” He threw his cloak upon his left arm, took his gloves
+and the comfit plate in the same hand, placed the fingers of his right
+hand upon his beard, was saluted and followed by the forty-five who were
+waiting for him. Two paces from the door of the old room he turned to see
+why they followed him, and immediately received first a sword-thrust in
+the back, then innumerable stabs from sword and dagger. Seizing hold of
+some of his murderers he dragged them along with him, and fell near the
+king’s bed.
+
+On hearing this noise Cardinal De Guise broke up the council and rose:
+“Ah,” he cried, “they are killing my brother!” “Do not move, sir,”
+answered the marshal D’Aumont, drawing his sword, “the king has need of
+you!”
+
+At the same moment, the king half-opened the door of his room, and
+seeing the body gave orders for the pockets to be searched. Whilst they
+were carrying out this command the Balafré, uttering a long, deep, and
+husky sigh, died. The body was covered again with a gray cloak and with
+a cross of straw, and left lying there for some time exposed to the
+taunts and mockeries of the courtiers, who called him “the handsome king
+of Paris.” They were not content with insulting him by words alone. “A
+diamond heart,” someone says, “was taken from his finger by the sieur
+D’Entragues.” To prevent the members of the league procuring any relics
+of their leader, the dead body was burned, by order of M. de Richelieu,
+grand provost of France, and the ashes were thrown into the Loire.[s] The
+cardinal De Guise and many other partisans of the house of Guise were
+arrested. The president of the Tiers État, and three other conspicuous
+Leaguers among the members of that body, were made state prisoners. The
+cardinal De Guise was murdered next day.[a]
+
+It is said that when Henry III was certain that Guise had expired, he
+stepped from his room, sword in hand, and cried out: “We are no longer
+two! I am now king!”[80] then pushed with his foot the still quivering
+body. It was just sixteen years since Guise, at dawn of a fatal day, had
+struck with his foot another corpse!
+
+
+DEATH OF CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI
+
+Another famous death soon followed that of the Guises. The queen-mother
+had been violently affected by the catastrophe of December 23rd. Several
+days after, she visited the cardinal De Bourbon in the apartment whither
+he had retired. The cardinal broke forth in reproaches and accused
+Catherine of having caused the assassination of the Guises. This scene
+so disturbed the aged queen that her gout became worse; she was confined
+to her bed and never recovered. The 5th of January, 1589, at the age
+of sixty-one years, she joined her accomplice in the disaster of St.
+Bartholomew. The other accomplice, doubly an assassin, was not long in
+following his mother.
+
+The death of this woman, who had figured so prominently in Christian
+affairs for thirty years, made but a feeble sound in the midst of the
+tempests that rose from the ashes of the Guises. The importance of
+Catherine had diminished greatly in the last few years: justly punished
+through the only source which could affect her, her love for Henry
+III, she had seen her power wane at the moment when she hoped to reign
+completely: neglected by her favourite son, half sacrificed to the
+favourites, at enmity with her son-in-law the Béarnais, she finally was
+without guidance; the race of Valois, which she had dreamed to place on
+all the thrones, being without issue, the Bourbons being her enemies,
+with the instinct of family, always found in a woman even the most
+corrupted, her hopes turned to the children of her eldest daughter;
+she thought to found a Lorraine dynasty; and only made herself the
+instrument and the puppet of the league. Her qualities as a ruler cannot
+be judged by the last years of her life: although morality and patriotism
+equally forbid the justification of this fatal woman, the historian must
+acknowledge that when it was possible to combine the policy of her family
+with the policy of state, she pursued two ideas which were beneficial to
+the destiny of France--the humiliation of the great, and resistance to
+the house of Austria. The end which she failed to attain by treachery
+and deceit might have been gained by the force and audacity of a genius
+more magnanimous: Richelieu was in this regard the happy inheritor of
+Catherine’s idea.[l]
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF PARIS AND THE DEATH OF HENRY III
+
+Heaven and earth rose against the massacre of Blois. It seemed a wilful
+playing into the hands of the Huguenots to remove the Catholic chief, and
+the pope looked on the deed not only as murder, but as heresy. The unruly
+capital burst into a cry of disobedience, and the Sorbonne formally
+withdrew the allegiance of the people from an unworthy king. The name
+of royalist was as fatal as that of Huguenot had been. The president
+Harlay, and sixty of the councillors, who bore the royal commission,
+were only saved from death by being taken to the Bastille. But in the
+midst of this general indignation, the states-general, and they alone,
+were, in appearance at least, unmoved. Occasionally, indeed, and even
+earnestly, they solicited the release of the prisoners. But they breathed
+not so much as a single remonstrance to the king against his enormous
+infringement of their sacred character and privileges in the persons of
+their colleagues. With an almost incredible abjectness they addressed
+themselves at once to the ordinary business of the session, and discussed
+with Henry, amendments in the law of treason, schemes for the admission
+of his officers to join in their deliberations, and plans for bringing
+to account all public defaulters. They presented to him, not indignant
+defiances, but humble descriptions of the sufferings of his people,
+and meek supplications for the redress of them; and continued, during
+a whole month after the death of the Princes of Lorraine, to prostrate
+themselves before the king, as in the presence, not of an assassin, but
+of a conqueror. The session then closed with the royal audience customary
+on such occasions; when, in the hope of propitiating his favour to the
+imprisoned deputies, they addressed him in a speech in which his royal
+virtues, and especially his _clemency_, were lavishly extolled. On the
+16th January, 1589, they at last took their leave of their sovereign, and
+of each other: when “we parted,” says their great orator and memorialist,
+Bernard, “with tears in our eyes, bewailing what had passed, and looking
+forward with terror to what was yet to come; and observing that, in our
+separation, France had an evil augury that she herself was about to be
+torn in pieces.”
+
+The augury was but too well verified. The states-general of France never
+again assembled till they met ineffectually in the reign of Louis XIII,
+to be then finally adjourned till the eve of the French Revolution.[w]
+
+Notwithstanding all this, however, when the meeting at Blois was
+dissolved, the members spread the flame of disaffection through town
+and country. The duke of Mayenne, brother of the murdered Guise, was
+declared by the council of Sixteen, consisting of deputies from the
+sixteen quarters of Paris, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, till the
+states-general could be assembled. In short, the king was deserted by
+his people, and nothing was wanting but the formal sentence of his
+deposition. Henry of Navarre saw his inheritance endangered, and came
+to the rescue. An interview took place between the cousins--the most
+Christian king, and the most chivalrous Bourbon. It was not altogether
+regard for his own interests which moved the new ally. In so unsettled a
+nation as France then was, a forcible change of dynasty would have led
+to unending conflict. To save his country from perpetual civil war or
+total anarchy was the object of Henry’s efforts. His plans were bold and
+masterly. The few devoted adherents who still clung to their sovereign,
+from hereditary attachment, or from the poetic compassion which binds
+noble natures to a fallen race, accepted the guidance of the Huguenot
+chief. Mayenne was repulsed from Tours, and when men saw such measures
+of tenderness, as now distinguished the royal army, announced in the
+royal name, and such admirable military tactics displayed under the royal
+banner, the personal vices of the nominal monarch began to be forgotten.
+
+Opposition was paralysed by the consciousness that the royal authority
+was now supported by conduct worthy of a king; and at the end of July,
+an army of forty thousand men, confident in their leader, and restored
+to the full feeling of loyalty to the throne, commenced the siege of
+Paris. Henry of Valois gazed on the hated battlements with delight.
+“Farewell, Paris,” he said; “from this time your towers and pinnacles
+shall offend my eyes no more. I will make it difficult to discover where
+your position was.” But Henry of Navarre was more wisely employed. He was
+superintending the placing of the troops, bringing up the guns, arranging
+the tents; and it was understood that the day of assault was fixed for
+the 2nd of August. Mayenne saw no chance of safety. His garrison was weak
+and dispirited; the populace, with its usual fickleness, was cowardly
+where it was not mad.
+
+But among the rabble there was a youth of twenty-two, who had been a
+Jacobin friar for some time, and had degraded the cowl by the wildest
+excesses, both of debauchery and blood. Every crime was sweet-smelling
+odour to Jacques Clément the monk. He wore a dagger which was displayed
+with ferocious energy in every quarrel, and yet was fanatical in his
+religious beliefs, and carried the practices of superstition and idolatry
+to an almost insane extent. This was a sort of man who might be extremely
+useful in the distress to which the Catholic party was reduced. He was
+sent for by the duchess de Montpensier, sister of the duke of Guise, a
+woman so wicked that her conduct drives us into a charitable unbelief of
+its reality, who used such arguments and arts with the blinded, arrogant,
+sensual young fanatic, that he went forth on the 1st of August determined
+to repay his benefactress for her goodness and condescension in the way
+she herself had prescribed. Letters were furnished to him, which were
+obtained by false pretences from the president Harlay in the Bastille,
+and on presenting them he was admitted to the camp of the besiegers, and
+taken into the presence of the king. While Henry was reading the missive
+which Clément put into his hand, the Jacobin drew a knife from his
+sleeve, and stabbed him in his chair. It was not at once fatal. The king
+started up, and, drawing the weapon from his side, wounded his assailant
+in the face, thus mixing on the same blade the blood of the assassin and
+his victim. The attendants rushed forward and killed the murderer at
+once--a happy chance for his employer, for her name escaped the formal
+revelation which a trial would have produced. Henry was placed in his
+bed, and for a while hopes were entertained of his recovery.
+
+Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it. An undiscovered
+spring of goodness welled forth as his last hour drew nigh. He forgave
+his enemies, recommended himself to his friends, embraced the hero of
+Navarre, and thanked him for all his aid. He turned to the crowd in the
+apartment, and declared Henry his rightful and true successor, and added,
+“Dear cousin and brother-in-law, be sure of this, you will never be king
+of France unless you profess yourself a Catholic.” If the dignity and
+tenderness of a death-bed could have wiped out the vices and deficiencies
+of all his former years, Henry III might have been reckoned among the
+kings who have done honour to the crown. But the inflexible verdict of
+history must be delivered upon the course of a man’s life, and not on
+the expressions or aspirations of his last hours; and the last of the
+Valois must be pronounced a king without honesty or patriotism, and a man
+without courage or virtue.[f]
+
+The Valois had given to France thirteen kings in the space of 261 years.
+They had assisted and contributed to the decline of old feudal France:
+they seemed at first during several reigns to institute a new order;
+then, incapable and weak, they let slip from their hands this great work,
+and disappeared after having plunged France into chaos.[m]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[73] [Louis I of Bourbon, first prince of Condé (1530-1569), brother of
+Anthony, King of Navarre, and great-grandfather of the “Great Condé.”]
+
+[74] It was this edict which ordered that the year should commence on the
+1st of January, instead of, as heretofore, commencing at Easter.
+
+[75] [He did not take the title of King of Navarre until after the death
+of his mother in 1572.]
+
+[76] [Martin[l] says: “Nothing definite can be affirmed as to the
+exact number of the victims: the _Martyrologe des réformés_ places it
+at 30,000; M. de Thou thinks this figure somewhat exaggerated; the
+_Réveille-matin_ speaks of no less than 100,000 dead; Capilupi speaks
+of 25,000; La Popelinière of more than 20,000; Papyre Masson, one of
+the panegyrists of the occasion, reduces the number to 10,000. The last
+figure is too low; about twenty thousand appears to be the most probable
+estimate.” This estimate of Martin’s, confessedly only conjectural, is
+perhaps a trifle conservative. Sully[j] thought that 70,000 perished
+throughout France. Davila[i] estimated the number killed in Paris at
+10,000, over 500 of whom were nobles. This is manifestly overdrawn, when
+we consider that the massacre of the first night was for the most part
+confined to the north of the Seine. Possibly about three thousand may
+have perished in and about Paris and twenty-five thousand in the rest of
+France. But this, let it be repeated, is mere conjecture.]
+
+[77] [The Venetian despatches are regarded as among the most reliable
+historical sources.]
+
+[78] The following table shows the genealogy of the last kings of the
+house of Valois:
+
+HOUSES OF ORLEANS AND ANGOULÊME
+
+              =Charles V= (third king of the house of Valois), 1364-1380.
+                  |
+       +----------+--------------------------------+
+       |                                           |
+  =Charles VI=,                           Louis, duke of Orleans, 1407.
+   1380-1422.                               m. Valentine Visconti
+                                                  | He received the
+                                                  | duchy of Orleans
+                                                  | from Charles VI in
+                                                  | exchange for Touraine.
+                      +---------------------------+----------+
+                      |                                      |
+                   Charles,                                John,
+             duke of Orleans, 1467.               count of Angoulême, 1467.
+                      |                                      |
+                =Louis XII=,                              Charles,
+                 1498-1515.                       count of Angoulême, 1496.
+          m. (2) Anne of Brittany                    m. Louise of Savoy
+                      |                                      |
+                  Claude II---------------+-------------=Francis I=,
+                                          |             1515-1547.
+                                     =Henry II=,
+                                      1547-1559.
+                                m. Catherine de’ Medici
+                                          |
+  +---------------+--------------+--------+----+------------+--------+
+  |               |              |             |            |        |
+  =Francis II=,  Elizabeth, =Charles IX=,  =Henry III=, Francis,  Margaret,
+   1559-1560.    m. Philip    1560-1574.    1574-1589,  duke of      m.
+    m. Mary      II, king   duke of Anjou,              Alençon  =Henry IV=
+    Stuart       of Spain   king of Poland,             and Anjou,
+                             last king of               1584
+                           house of Valois
+
+[79] [The title of Monsieur for the king’s brother next himself begins
+to be used from now on. But, according to Saint-Simon, it was not used
+regularly and constantly until the time of Gaston, brother of Louis XIII.]
+
+[80] [When he repeated the remark to his mother, she is said to have
+replied: “God grant you have not made yourself king of nothing.”]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. HENRY OF NAVARRE, FIRST OF THE BOURBONS
+
+    It is my wish that every peasant may have meat for dinner every
+    day of the week, and a fowl in his pot on Sundays.--HENRY IV.
+
+
+HENRY’S STRUGGLE FOR THE CROWN
+
+[Sidenote: [1589-1610 A.D.]]
+
+Jacques Clément in killing Henry III, whom he found not Catholic enough,
+opened to a Huguenot the road to the throne. This was Henry, king of
+Navarre, to be known in future as Henry IV of France.[b]
+
+Henry IV has been compared to Francis I. His face has, in fact, the same
+large outlines, the same sensual mouth and brilliant eye, the same smile
+full of an attraction that is sometimes deceptive, the same expression
+of countenance whose openness is not always that of sincerity. But we
+must not be misled. This quick, ardent eye sometimes looks within to
+depths unattainable to Francis I; and above these projecting eyebrows,
+a sign, as with the Valois, of quickness of perception, rises instead
+of the low forehead of Francis I the vast brow of genius. Though Henry
+too pushed voluptuousness to the point of license, he nevertheless had
+tenderness if not constancy of heart. Though his language has too much
+of the unstable levity with which his Gascon race is reproached, though
+the confinement of his youth in the most depraved of courts and later the
+infinite difficulties of his position changed the cordial spontaneity
+of his nature, he nevertheless has a reserve of true and strong feeling
+that Francis I never knew. Apparently selfish, he was able in reality to
+associate his interests and his glory with the idea of the welfare of
+France and the interest of humanity. Infinitely superior in essential
+things to the Valois and the Guises, he is their inferior in elegance, in
+external dignity. Compared with the other two Henrys he has the air of
+a soldier of fortune before princes, but he redeems this inferiority of
+manners by a singular charm; he attracts the imagination and the heart
+by an irresistible mixture of shrewdness and good nature, of tenderness
+and sharp raillery, of ardour and calculation, of gaiety and heroism, of
+authority and the comradeship of the soldier. After two centuries and
+a half he is still irresistible when we see him act and hear him speak
+in history, when we follow him almost day by day in the truly unique
+monument of his prodigious correspondence. The most severe, whether
+historians or moralists, after many and too often deserved reproaches,
+almost always end, if they are French, by extending their hands to the
+most French of the kings of France.
+
+[Illustration: HENRY IV]
+
+We shall witness the stubborn struggle in which he fought for his throne;
+after the struggle we shall see what his work was as re-organiser of
+domestic peace and founder of foreign politics. The immediate effects
+of the death of the last Valois in the rebellious capital and in the
+besieging army announced only too forcibly to the first of the Bourbons
+the immense tasks and the immense perils that confronted him. The news
+of the death of Henry III was spread in Paris after the morning of the
+2nd of August; all doubts were dissipated when the duchesses de Nemours
+and de Montpensier were seen driving through the city in their coaches
+and crying out on all the squares: “Good news, my friends--good news!
+The tyrant is dead! There is no more a Henry of Valois in France!” The
+mother of the Guises, mad with joy and vengeance, mounted the steps of
+the high altar of the church of the Cordeliers to harangue the crowd. Her
+daughter distributed everywhere scarfs of green, the colour of hope and
+joy, instead of black scarfs. In a few moments the multitude passed from
+consternation to frenzy. There was nothing but “laughter and singing,”
+tables set in the streets, feasts in the open air. In the evening
+bonfires burned on all the squares. Everywhere resounded the praises of
+the “new martyr” who had given his life for the good of the people. The
+blessed Jacques Clément was honoured in the pulpits, sung in the streets,
+invoked as a saint. Images of him, painted and sculptured, were set in
+the place of honour in private houses, in public places, in churches,
+and even on the altars! His old mother was brought to Paris, loaded with
+presents and shown to the people “as a wonder,” who had borne in her
+bosom the liberator of the church.[c]
+
+[Sidenote: [1589-1590 A.D.]]
+
+When the intelligence reached Rome, the rejoicings were still more
+revolting. Sixtus pronounced the assassin’s praises in full consistory,
+and compared his achievement in usefulness and self-sacrifice to the
+incarnation and crucifixion. In Germany and England the deed was
+differently viewed. Elizabeth got ready troops to be landed in Normandy
+in aid of the new king. Lutherans and Swiss came pouring into France. Yet
+Henry’s position was dangerous and undefined. The nobles who commanded
+his armies were Catholics as zealous as the enemy. Before the corpse
+of the late king was cold, they proposed to his successor a retraction
+of his Huguenot errors, and conformity to the church. “You don’t know
+what you ask,” replied Henry. “You require a change which would argue no
+sincerity either in one faith or the other. If you think to terrify me to
+so sudden an alteration, you know neither my courage nor my conscience.”
+“Sire,” cried the gallant Givry, and kneeled at his feet, “you are the
+true king of the brave, and none but a coward would desert you.”
+
+The others, however, hung back. The spirit and principles of the
+league remained unbroken. The cardinal De Bourbon was even proclaimed
+by Mayenne under the name of Charles X. All the victories which made
+Henry’s name distinguished had been gained over Catholic foes. If full
+powers were conveyed to him, would his policy of depressing the leaguers
+not be continued? Henry came to an agreement. He consented to accept
+a conditional allegiance, binding himself to study the doctrines of
+the Catholic faith; to summon a states-general at Tours; to restore to
+the churches the goods of which they had been despoiled; and to limit
+the privileges of the reformers to the places in which they at present
+existed. These things were all to be done within six months. In reliance
+on these terms, he was recognised sole sovereign of France, and entitled
+to the obedience of all.
+
+But Paris still resisted, and riots and massacres were continually
+renewed under pretence of religious fears, till Mayenne himself was
+glad to leave that city of contention and misrule, and take the field
+against the Man of Béarn, as he was insultingly called. The quality and
+composition of the contending forces had greatly changed. Mayenne, at the
+head of preponderating numbers, besieged Henry in Arques, and was only
+repelled by the union, which his great rival displayed, of the courage of
+despair and the calmness of military skill. With a mixed army of English,
+French, Germans, and Swiss, he found it difficult to keep them together,
+as his purse was low, and the diversity of tongues and nations prevented
+the unity of the force. To fight was the only way to combine those
+discordant elements; and on the 13th of March, 1590, the battle of Ivry
+took place.[d]
+
+
+_The Battle of Ivry_
+
+The plain on which the king desired to offer battle to the leaguers
+extends to the west of the river Eure, between Anet and Ivry; neither
+bank, hedge, nor any natural obstacle intersects it, but in the middle
+the ground slopes almost imperceptibly, so that the royal army, protected
+on the one side by the village of St. André, and on the other by that of
+Turcanville, could not be reached by the enemy’s artillery. Henry IV,
+having seen to the rest and refreshment of his forces, occupied this
+position on Tuesday, March 13th; his cavalry, which was almost entirely
+composed of nobles, and upon which he consequently placed most reliance
+as being more dependable in point of honour, he divided into seven
+divisions, each of them supported by two regiments of infantry. Marshal
+D’Aumont, the duke de Montpensier, the grand-prior assisted by Givry, the
+baron de Biron, the king, the marshal De Biron, and Schomberg, commandant
+of the _reiters_ (German troopers), were at the head of the seven
+divisions.
+
+Whilst the army was taking up its position, it was joined successively by
+Duplessis, De Muy, La Trémouille, Humières, and Rosny, who, with two or
+three hundred horse, came from Poitou, Picardy, and the Île-de-France to
+take part in this much desired engagement. The last comers were nearly
+all Huguenots; up to now but very few had been numbered among the army.
+
+The duke of Mayenne did not suppose that Henry wished to await him, but
+flattered himself he would overtake him in crossing some river in his
+retreat upon Lower Normandy, so hurried on his march in expectation of
+this, not without exposing his own forces to that disorder in which he
+expected to find the enemy. But on reaching the plain of Ivry, on the
+afternoon of March 13th, he beheld before him the royalists awaiting him,
+drawn up in order of battle with the advantage of position. He slackened
+his march to restore order to his forces, and did not come within range
+of the enemy until evening, when it was too late to contemplate beginning
+hostilities. The weather was very unfavourable, and the soldiers of the
+league, wearied by the cold rain they had experienced throughout their
+march, were forced to sleep in the open, only a few officers succeeding
+in pitching their tents, whilst the royalists established themselves for
+the night in the villages of St. André and Turcanville.
+
+On the morning of Wednesday, March 14th, the royal army occupied the same
+position as on the previous day. The two armies were not ranged in order
+of battle until ten o’clock. D’Aubigné[e] relates that whilst putting on
+his helmet Henry addressed these words to his companions-in-arms: “My
+friends, God is for us! Behold his enemies and our own! Behold your king!
+At the enemy! If your ensigns fail you, rally round my white feather. You
+will find it in the path that leads to victory and honour!” These words
+were received with a universal cry of “God save the king!” and the battle
+began.
+
+The royalist artillery directed their fire full upon the leaguers,
+who were exposed upon the rising ground; that of the league, on the
+contrary, was unable to reach the royalists, sheltered as they were in
+their hollow. Count Egmont, stationed at the extreme right of Mayenne’s
+army, would not wait for a third discharge from this artillery, and fell
+furiously upon the light cavalry of the grand-prior, which was opposite
+him and which he overthrew. With the same impetuosity he came up to the
+cannon of the king, which had cut up his company. “Friends,” cried he, “I
+will show you how the weapons of cowards and heretics should be served,”
+and, turning his horse at the same moment, he backed it up against the
+royalist guns. Not one of his warriors but wished he could boast of
+having done as much. They lost not only their time in this extraordinary
+manœuvre, but all Egmont’s cavalry fell into disorder. No longer carried
+forward by that impetus which constituted its strength, it was attacked
+simultaneously by Marshal d’Aumont, the baron de Biron, the grand-prior,
+and Givry. Egmont and his chief officers were killed, all his followers
+routed and cut to pieces.
+
+[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE OF HENRY IV INTO FRANCE]
+
+In another part of the line the duke of Brunswick, who led the leaguers’
+reiters, was also killed. These reiters were accustomed after each
+charge to pass through gaps left for the purpose between each battalion
+to form again behind the line; but the viscount de Tavannes, to whom
+Mayenne had intrusted the drawing up of his army in battle array, was so
+short-sighted that he mistook the interval that should be left between
+the corps, so that there was not sufficient space left for this manœuvre.
+Thus the reiters returning from the charge, bore down upon the duke of
+Mayenne’s squadron of lancers, and threw it into disorder. The duke was
+forced to repulse them at the point of the lance, for there was no room
+to manœuvre his horses, and whilst striving in vain to restore order, he
+was violently charged by the king, who perceived his predicament; he was
+routed and forced to fly to the woods. Soon all the cavalry of the league
+shared the same disastrous fate, the battalions of infantry, hitherto
+covered by the cavalry, now found themselves alone in the middle of the
+plain, and attacked on all sides by the king’s forces.
+
+The Swiss, though as yet not routed, held up their arms in token of
+surrender, and were immediately given quarter by the marshal de Biron;
+the lansquenets, encouraged by this example, and at the same time
+weakened by this defection, also held up their arms, declaring that
+they surrendered. But Henry and his soldiers held them in particular
+abhorrence. Several of them had been already concerned in the treachery
+of Arques, where they had feigned to give themselves up; several, engaged
+by the Protestant princes to reinforce the royal army, had gone over to
+the enemy; the king declared that they had transgressed against martial
+honour, and that he would give them no quarter. The massacre lasted a
+whole hour, but whilst they were being killed without resistance, the
+king cried, “Spare the French and put the foreigners to the sword!” And,
+as a fact, after the _mêlée_ no more French were killed.
+
+The fugitives of the league sought refuge, some in Chartres, some at
+Mantes. The bridge of Ivry, by which they made their escape, gave way,
+and the king’s cavalry, in order to pursue them, was forced to go by a
+longer route and to cross the Eure at Anet. The losses of the army of the
+league were nevertheless very considerable. Davila[f] reckons them at
+six thousand men; D’Aubigné,[e] calculating the armies as being weaker
+by one-half than his estimate, also reduces the loss of the leaguers by
+the same amount, namely one-half. Since the beginning of the civil wars
+no such brilliant victory had yet been won. Henry IV, victor at Coutras,
+victor at Arques, victor at Ivry, seemed to surpass his rivals both in
+military ability and good fortune, and the people rejoiced as much in his
+good luck as in his skill.[g]
+
+After this a new power displayed itself, which had never played a part
+in the quarrels of a nation before. It was the brilliancy of the sayings
+of the new king, which spread all through France, the land of all others
+in Europe where a brilliant saying has most weight. After the combat of
+Arques, where he had been foremost in the attack, he wrote to his friend
+the duke de Crillon, “Hang yourself, brave Crillon; we have fought at
+Arques, and you weren’t there.” At supper, on the night before the battle
+of Ivry, he had spoken harshly to an old German of the name of Schomberg;
+and while he was marshalling the troops before the charge, he stopped his
+horse. “Colonel,” he said, “we have work before us, and it may chance I
+don’t survive; but I must not carry with me the honour of a gentleman
+like you. I beg your pardon for what I said last night, and declare you
+a brave and honourable man.” He embraced the colonel. “Ah! sire,” said
+the German in his broken language, “you kill me with your words, for now
+there is nothing for it but to die in your defence.” Schomberg did so. He
+rode up to the rescue of the king in the hottest of the fight, and fell
+before Henry’s eyes.[d]
+
+
+_The Duke of Parma and the Spaniards_
+
+The change that came over public opinion after the battle of Ivry raised
+the hopes of the royalists. Henry was no longer a contestant but the
+logical master of the realm. This feeling of the people caused Henry to
+move but half-heartedly against Paris where the strength of his opponents
+lay. He besieged the city, but he did not forget that the inhabitants
+were his own people. He permitted Mayenne to send out the useless people,
+said to number some six thousand.[a] Henry fed them, and soothed their
+fears. Some peasants were brought before him for having introduced
+provisions into the beleaguered town, and expected to be hanged for
+aiding the rebels. He gave them all the money he had in his purse. “The
+Man of Béarn is poor,” he said; “if he were richer, he would give you
+more.”
+
+Compared to these actions and words of Henry, the conduct of his
+opponents was not only unchivalrous but unpopular. Divisions raged high
+among the leaders of the league. Mayenne wished to be king; the duke of
+Lorraine wished his son to be king; and when Henry of Guise, the son of
+Balafré, escaped from his prison of Tours, and joined the garrison of
+Paris, he also wished to be king. The infanta, or daughter of Spain,
+wished to be queen; and it did not need half the quickness which is
+always found in the French to perceive that, compared with any or all of
+his competitors, the man of the white plume and the generous spirit was
+the fittest occupant of the throne.
+
+But a rigorous pontiff filled the Roman chair. Sixtus V would hear of no
+accommodation with a heretic, and Henry would hear of no recantation when
+his motives might be suspected. “Master first, disciple afterwards,” was
+his motto, and the war went on. The Sixteen, as the sections of Paris
+called themselves, were in the pay of Spain. Availing themselves of the
+absence of Mayenne, they encouraged the brutal populace to break out into
+a riot; they tore the more moderate of the judges from their seats and
+hung them, with their president, above the doorway of the court. Mayenne
+came back. Great was his fear of Henry, but greater his wrath against
+the Sixteen. He hanged four of them from lamp-posts in the street, and
+restored the ordinary municipal officers to their authority. But regular
+authority dislikes rebellion, and the now pacified city looked kindly on
+the legitimate heir.
+
+Other opponents were driven over to his side by the injudicious aid
+his enemies received. Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, was the most
+famous general of the time, and had been chosen to bring the legions
+of Spain and the chains of the Inquisition over to France in the year
+of the Armada, 1588. He was now selected to head the same legions to
+support the fantastic claim of his master’s daughter. Henry was driven
+to extremities, for Alessandro was unluckily the most cautious of
+commanders, and always refused a battle. The daring gallantry of the
+royalists, with Henry at their head, fell back like sparkles of foam
+before the imperturbable solidity of the Spanish lines. They would not
+fight--they would not retreat--they solemnly performed the work assigned
+to them, the protection of a border or the relief of a town, but they
+would do nothing more. Alessandro of Parma had nothing of the hero in him
+except his courage, and trusted nothing to chance. Against policy like
+this the Man of Béarn had no defence. His allies were not united in their
+desires. The English wished to drive the Spaniards from the shores of
+Brittany and Normandy, where they would have been dangerous neighbours to
+Elizabeth; Henry wished to drive them from the middle of France and send
+them to the shore, where they could do least harm to himself. He could
+raise no taxes by the legal machinery of parliament and council, and
+would not lay hard contributions on the districts he held.
+
+[Sidenote: [1590-1593 A.D.]]
+
+He was the poorest of gentlemen, this most lovable of kings; and hints
+are given that his majesty’s apparel was not altogether free from darns,
+or his boots from holes in the leather. Nothing kept its gloss but the
+plume of white feathers which swayed above his head, and his bright sword
+and imperturbable good-humour.[d] But even this left him as he faced the
+almost certain defeat which a battle would mean. In August he wrote to
+Gabrielle d’Estrées: “The issue is with God. If I lose the battle thou
+wilt never see me again, for I am not one to flee nor to retreat.”
+
+But Parma’s masterly generalship was more than a match for the king’s
+chivalric courage. He relieved Paris after it had been reduced to the
+most awful straits. Two hundred thousand are said to have perished of
+hunger and disease. There were rumours that mothers devoured their own
+children; the Protestants had made merry over the fact that the one cheap
+thing in Paris was sermons; but such fanaticism was yet bound to conquer
+the king. The relief of Paris was a victory for the Spanish party which
+was growing stronger in the capital. In 1592 the same story was repeated
+at Rouen. Once more Parma outmanœuvred the king. But a wound in the
+hand received before Candebec was destined to prove fatal to the great
+Italian, and the conqueror of Antwerp withdrew to the Netherlands, and,
+then turning back, died in the harness at Arras, December 3rd, 1592.
+
+Henry’s fortunes revived with the fall of this redoubtable adversary.[a]
+He gathered all his forces for a last attempt upon Paris, and his enemies
+as usual played into his hands. Philip of Spain, who had united all
+classes and creeds of Englishmen in favour of Elizabeth by his insolent
+Armada, now was the creator of French union by his domineering conduct
+in France. Mayenne summoned a states-general at his request, and Philip
+there in no courteous terms stated his royal will; it was very short and
+very decisive--they were to accept his daughter as queen, that was all.
+A compromise was attempted; they would declare the duke of Guise king,
+and he should marry the infanta. Philip refused; his daughter should be
+queen in her own right, and then would marry Guise. Mayenne, who saw,
+whether it was king or queen, his pretensions were at an end, procured
+a resolution of the parliament of Paris, that “any sentence, decree, or
+declaration contrary to the Salic law, should be void and of non-effect.”
+Whatever strengthened the Salic law and the direct succession was a vote
+on the side of Henry of Navarre.[d]
+
+
+_Henry IV and the League_
+
+The league was now divided into two parties, the Spanish League and the
+French League, who conspired incessantly, sometimes together, sometimes
+against one another, to promote their personal interests. But meantime
+the great national instinct was gradually winning France over to Henry’s
+cause; men’s eyes turned to him as the only one able to put an end to
+war at home and abroad, and to bring about national unity. The burning
+question of the day was, would Henry turn Catholic? Rumours were rife;
+the question was openly discussed. Such being the case, it was only to be
+expected that Henry would boldly face the question himself and lose no
+time in finding an answer.
+
+[Sidenote: [1593-1594 A.D.]]
+
+And this he found most puzzling, notwithstanding his broad and
+independent mind. It is M. Guizot’s opinion that Henry’s religious creed
+was not based on mature or deep conviction, but was rather the result
+of first claims of his having been born in the reformed faith; and
+that it was a feeling of patriotism, a desire to save France from all
+the horrors of civil and religious wars, that decided him to abjure his
+religion. However that may be, he did so decide, and on the 16th of May,
+1593, announced to his council his intention of becoming a Catholic. On
+July 15th, 1593, he assembled a conference of Catholic and Protestant
+divines at Mantes, and ten days after, on Sunday, July 25th, he solemnly
+abjured his Protestant creed at the church of St. Denis. Here then, says
+M. Guizot, was religious peace, a prelude to political reconciliation
+between the monarch and the great majority of his subjects. And now the
+Catholic Henry was crowned king of France,[81] the 27th of February,
+1594.[a]
+
+France has known few periods which can be compared to this time of Henry
+IV; few periods when she has been nearer to ruin and yet has raised
+herself from a state of terrible disturbance to one of glorious peace. A
+kingdom only just relieved from the exhaustion of prolonged strife, and
+threatened with downfall by the new religious doctrines; feuds which stir
+up struggles whose annals are stained by murder, and which are destined
+to end in a huge massacre; a crown rendered insecure by the claims of
+rival houses, and in turn making use of criminal measures as a means of
+vengeance or finding in them its own punishment; a prince whose birth
+seems to call him to the throne while his beliefs seem likely to deprive
+him of it forever; poverty, famine, the growing claims of the foreigner
+whose pretensions increase in proportion to the misfortunes of France;
+and in the midst of all these vicissitudes a nation which does not know
+where to look for help, nor in whose hands to trust its fate--what
+scenes! what years! what memories full of dark heroic grandeur!
+
+The importance of contemporary events and the sombre majesty which
+seems to preside over all the actions of the league, make it difficult
+to pass judgment on it. It presents, both as regards things and men,
+such striking contrasts, it has passed through so many different phases,
+and has included under one name so many motives entirely opposed to
+one another, that it would be impossible to criticise it from only one
+point of view. And yet what contrary opinions it has elicited! Some have
+praised, while others have condemned everything connected with it. It has
+been handed down as entirely faultless or utterly blameworthy.
+
+But through all this confusion one thing is clear, and sums up the whole
+matter--namely, that the conversion of Henry IV was the triumph of the
+league and the ruin of its members. The law of France was not entirely
+on the side of Henry IV nor wholly in favour of his adversaries; it
+was divided. The accession of the king of Navarre placed in opposition
+two principles which had hitherto been united: hereditary monarchy,
+whose claims this prince represented; and the national religion, whose
+doctrines he did not profess. Can it be denied, unless we bring to bear
+on the examination of this period ideas which belong to a different
+age, that the union of monarchy and Catholicism had become a part of
+the constitution just as monarchy itself had? And had not the country
+some right to insist on the maintenance of this union, which was one
+of the first laws imposed on the sovereign? One thing remains certain,
+and that is that after the league this union was re-established, and
+peace along with it; that Henry IV, when he became king, recognised its
+existence by promising to be instructed in the faith; that, with rare
+exceptions, the best of the royalists, the bishops, those hundred bishops
+who so firmly supported him, the chief generals of his army, and his
+parliaments, continually referred to and called upon the king to remember
+this promise, either in the hope of attracting to him the members of
+the league, or of inducing him to embrace their religion; in short that
+France, exhausted, a prey to the horrors of civil war, and in danger of
+the Spanish yoke, did not rally round Henry IV till after his abjuration,
+but, that abjuration once pronounced, she unanimously declared in his
+favour.
+
+Who can be astonished at this? Who could fail to understand that
+a nation accustomed to mingle its faith and its history, finding
+amongst its Catholic princes its greatest kings, and knowing nothing
+of the Protestants but the unhappy dissensions which were the result
+of persecution on the one side and revenge on the other, must hate
+the idea of seeing on the throne, which was the centre to which its
+dearest traditions clung, a representative of that belief which was
+destroying those very traditions? Was the promise of Henry IV to respect
+the Catholic religion a sufficient guarantee at that time, when party
+strife ran so high, when political law was on all sides confounded
+with religious law and had everywhere followed the vicissitudes of the
+latter, and when an instance of a king professing a different religion
+from that of the nation he ruled was unknown? And, as if to emphasise
+the apprehensions of the leaguers, did not England furnish them with an
+example of a nation which had changed its religion three times to suit
+the pleasure of three successive monarchs? This resolution to maintain
+the Catholic religion on the throne of St. Louis, regardless of all
+political considerations, was not the predominant idea of one party only:
+the whole of France was strongly imbued with it.
+
+The league was responsible for more than this. How can we forget that
+besides inculcating the principle which it succeeded in rendering
+triumphant, the league was the moving spirit of many excesses, that it
+abolished beliefs, or used them as means to an end, as best suited its
+purpose; that it was responsible for the frenzied actions of the famous
+faction known as the Sixteen, of which the very name is sufficient;
+that it appealed in turn to revolutionary and tyrannical theories; that
+it menaced the monarchy even before it had been threatened by the reform
+party; and that the result of this violent party feeling was to place
+before the nation the alternative that France must either have a Catholic
+king who was not legitimate or a legitimate king who was not a Catholic?
+
+Of course the union of the two principles which constituted the monarchy
+found partisans and opponents in both camps. In both also there were many
+of those turbulent spirits who war against peace, who elevate hatred into
+a duty, and encourage strife on principle. Some of these exaggerated the
+rights of the king, others those of the pope; though they compromised
+the former by their violence, and disavowed their support of the latter
+by rising in rebellion when the king and the pope were reconciled to
+each other. In both camps also, wise and moderate men with a true
+understanding of religion and of France were advancing by different paths
+towards the same goal. Jeannin, Villeroi, and perhaps at certain moments
+the duke of Mayenne, were approaching the same goal as Luxemburg, the
+duke of Nevers, the bishop of Paris and the archbishop of Bourges. But
+the royalists had the good fortune to possess as their leader a prince
+who, personifying one of the two great principles, was soon to submit to
+the other; whilst the members of the league, divided against themselves,
+having no recognised head, in revolt against monarchic authority and
+yet having no special right to be considered as the representatives of
+the Catholic religion, lost ground by the want of consistency in their
+claims.[h]
+
+The extravagant enthusiasm of the league had evaporated; in part it had
+been reasoned down by the mild and rational philosophy promulgated in the
+_Essays_ of Montaigne,[i] and in part scouted by the poignant ridicule of
+the _Satire Ménippée_.[j] These are the two chief literary works of the
+epoch--the former sufficiently known to every reader, the latter one of
+the finest specimens of political satire to be found in any language. It
+proved to the leaguers what Hudibras proved to the English Puritans--it
+exposed the absurdity and hidden selfishness of fanaticism, and showed
+that ridicule might be made a more effectual weapon than the sword.[k]
+
+Henry, in his negotiations with the clergy, had ignored the
+ultramontanes, who leaned on Spain, but dealt with the patriotic national
+clergy. Whether Henry said that Paris was worth a mass or not,--and the
+saying was in accord with his wit and his sincerity,--he had left off
+conversion until he could deal with effect directly with the people, and
+not play over into the hands of the high Catholic party. France was ready
+for the act. By the end of 1593 the most of the kingdom had declared for
+Henry; the centres which had been in opposition, Meaux, Orleans, and
+Bourges, and finally Lyons gave in, and in the winter of 1594 he was
+crowned at Chartres,--Rheims not having yet declared for him. The papal
+absolution had not yet arrived and the higher clergy was mostly hostile
+still. But in March Paris opened its gates and Henry went to mass at
+Notre Dame amid the riotous joy of the citizens.[a]
+
+
+_Opposition of the Pope and Philip II_
+
+The only two powers who now delayed the recognition of the king were the
+pope and Philip. The Catholic Henry availed himself of the Pragmatic
+which had conveyed the patronage of abbeys and bishoprics to the crown,
+and turned the tables on the holy father by employing the honours of
+the church in pacifying the state. If a zealous leaguer still held
+back, hesitating to believe the sincerity of the conversion, he was
+convinced of the Catholicism of the most Christian king by the bestowal
+of the revenues of a vacant stall or rich deanery. Villars Brancas, a
+zealous papist and gallant soldier, who was governor of Rouen against
+the king, never gave credit to Henry’s attachment to the church till he
+was presented with two or three abbacies for his own enjoyment. Rouen
+then opened its gates, and the military abbot did suit and service to his
+orthodox and discriminating patron. All the leaders were softened by the
+same arts, and at last Guise and Montmorency were admitted into favour.
+Guise, a disappointed opponent, was made governor of Provence; and
+Montmorency, a discontented supporter, received the constable’s staff.
+Hatred, doubt, and bitterness of course lay for a long time in the hearts
+of the fanatical and ambitious. Clement VIII, the fifth pope who within
+four years had sat on the Roman throne, had not pronounced the absolution
+of Henry’s previous unbelief, and a youth, a pupil of the Jesuits, imbued
+with their principles, if not incited in this instance by their advice,
+attempted the murder of the king. His knife slipped, and only inflicted
+a trifling wound; but the whole nation was awake to the indignity of the
+action. The university and parliament pronounced against the Jesuits,
+and they were ordered from the soil of France. Henry confessed the step
+was necessary, but it was not legal, and in a few years he revoked the
+sentence of banishment, and allowed the society to return.[d]
+
+[Sidenote: [1594-1598 A.D.]]
+
+When the papal absolution came it was the sign of the end of the league,
+which collapsed when Mayenne made his peace early in 1596. The only
+revenge which the king allowed himself being, Sully[p] tells us, to lead
+him on a hot, tiresome tramp around the park of Soisson, which the gouty
+Mayenne must acquiesce in without grimace.[a]
+
+Meantime Philip II refused to recognise the king of France under any
+other title than that of Prince of Béarn, and in other ways also showed
+his hostility. So in January, 1595, Henry formally declared war against
+Spain and a conflict began which lasted for three years. It is not worth
+while to follow step by step this monotonous conflict, pregnant with
+facts which had their importance for contemporaries but which are not
+worthy of an historical resurrection.[l] Several battles were fought,
+several towns submitted; Amiens surrendered in September, 1597, after
+a long siege, and with the fall of Amiens fell all the knights who had
+been raising their heads throughout France. The Peace of Vervins was
+signed May 2nd, 1598, four months before the death of Philip II. So
+the peace was made; and in it the aged sixteenth century seems to sink
+to rest. It closed the wounds of all that strife of three generations
+which began with the Reformation as a group of purely religious wars,
+and, after dreary epochs of civil contest, came to an end in which
+nothing was said as to matters of faith, an end heralded by the great
+Edict of Toleration.[m] A month previous to the signing of the treaty
+of peace Henry had signed and published the Edict of Nantes, defined by
+M. Guizot[l] as his treaty of peace with the Protestant malcontents.
+Hitherto there had never been anything but truces or armed neutrality.[a]
+
+
+THE EDICT OF NANTES
+
+The Edict of Nantes, in common with almost all measures which have
+been taken to redress grievances in times of disturbance, consisted of
+two distinct parts: one of temporary value and intended to meet the
+special circumstances of the case, the other calculated to endure, and
+dictated by fixed principles. Much has been said about the excessive
+privileges granted by the Edict of Nantes to the Huguenots. This special
+organisation, giving them quite a peculiar position in the state; those
+two hundred towns, where they were to be secure from interference, and
+which were placed for a time in their hands; those places, strong enough
+to endure a siege and against which the whole of the royal forces were
+no more than adequate, given up to them--these, as Sully declared, were
+concessions quite incompatible with the security of any government, and
+when Cardinal Richelieu, after two civil wars, cut down these privileges
+without interfering with the Protestant religion, it became evident that
+they were not at all necessary to insure liberty of conscience.
+
+The measures which did insure that liberty formed the very basis of the
+Edict of Nantes. They secured to the Huguenots the free practice of the
+reformed religion throughout the greater part of the kingdom, excepting
+certain towns belonging to the league, where the Calvinists had realised
+that it was better not to settle. They provided that Protestants should
+enjoy the same civil rights as Catholics, and the very law for depriving
+people of hereditary rights on account of religious opinions, which was
+to be formally promulgated in England against the Catholics, was as
+formally suspended in France with regard to the Protestants. Lastly,
+not to mention the less important clauses, a chamber was created in
+parliament called the chamber of the Edict, an allowance was granted to
+the Protestants for their ministers and their schools, and they were
+admitted to the dignities and offices of state.
+
+The true spirit of the Edict of Nantes, temporarily obscured by the
+granting of the concessions which it enumerated, is contained in these
+latter clauses which granted toleration to the Protestants while
+depriving the Reformation movement of any political character whatever.
+At a time when sovereigns and people were in the habit of shielding
+their ambition and their crimes under the name of religion, Henry IV
+consistently tried, in his relations with foreign powers, as well as in
+his own kingdom, to separate the two orders, and to maintain civil unity
+in the midst of religious dissension; civil unity being in his eyes not
+only a pledge of peace, but the presage of a still higher unity.
+
+Besides this tolerance granted to the Protestants, there is also an
+evident desire to encourage where it was possible a reconciliation with
+the church, and to put an end simultaneously to persecutions and to
+religious differences. He had seen that persecution, far from destroying
+opposition, only tended to excite it, and that the persecution itself,
+by a sort of reaction, tended to become more virulent. He expressed this
+with striking eloquence in the parliament of Paris, saying: “After St.
+Bartholomew four of us who were playing with dice at a table saw drops
+of blood appear there, and finding that after they had been wiped away
+twice they returned a third time I said I would play no more; and that
+it was a bad omen against those who had shed it; M. de Guise was one of
+the party.” He had said elsewhere: “It is a clear proof of unreasonable
+excitement to begin the work of conversion by subversion, of instruction
+by destruction, by extermination, and by war, when one ought to begin by
+fraternity, admonition, and gentleness.” Whilst granting these liberties
+to the Protestants, whilst further developing the significance of the
+Edict by ordering it to be enforced in Béarn and in the places where
+Catholics were in a minority, whilst he instanced his own example in
+order to protect the latter from the harshness of Protestant rulers,
+Henry turned his attention to the church; strove to satisfy her claims,
+to secure her liberty, and by so doing to insure her ascendency. “I
+know,” he said to the clerical deputies in 1598, “that religion and
+justice are the pillars and the foundation of this kingdom, whose
+preservation depends on justice and piety; and where these do not exist I
+wish to establish them, but little by little, as I wish to do everything.
+I will, God helping me, act in such a way that the church will be in as
+good a state as she was a hundred years ago. I hope to satisfy you and my
+own conscience.”[h]
+
+
+REORGANISATION OF FRANCE WITH THE AID OF SULLY
+
+In 1598 Henry IV had driven out the foreigner, united Catholic and
+Protestant, and finally established peace in his domestic and in his
+foreign relations. It was now necessary to heal France from all the
+blows she had received. “I have hardly a horse on which I could fight,”
+wrote Henry in 1596: “my doublets have holes at the elbows and my pot
+is often empty.” The country was in a like condition. A contemporary
+estimated that, since 1580, 800,000 persons had perished by wars and
+massacres, that nine cities had been razed, 250 villages burned, 128,000
+houses destroyed. And since the period preceding the league, what fresh
+ruin! Workmen without work, commerce interrupted, agriculture ruined,
+brigandage everywhere--that was the condition from which Henry must raise
+France. The nobility had proposed to him a means to get out of this
+distress; they offered him all the money necessary for the government and
+the maintenance of the army on the sole condition of a decree “that those
+who held governments by appointment might hold them as their property
+upon acknowledging them to be from the crown by simple liege homage,
+a thing that was formerly practised.” This thing formerly practised
+was precisely what royalty had incessantly been destroying piece by
+piece for two centuries, and Henry IV was less disposed than any of his
+predecessors to restore feudalism. On the contrary, it was by withdrawing
+France from the hands of these “tyrants” in order to govern it himself
+that he undertook to regenerate it.
+
+Henry had already found the man who was to aid him in this work which was
+more difficult than that of the battle-field; a man of strong good sense,
+intrepid heart, and withal a wise mind, the Protestant Maximilian de
+Béthune, later duke of Sully. Born at the château of Rosny, near Mantes,
+in 1560, he was seven years younger than the king. At the time of St.
+Bartholomew he was studying at Paris. He attached himself to the king of
+Navarre and followed him in all his adventures and his battles, showing
+himself as brave as any. He was often wounded, for example at Ivry,
+whence he was borne apparently dying, when the king met him and “embraced
+him with both arms” as “a brave soldier, a true French knight.” Not a
+knight, however, after the paladins of romance, for though he attended
+well to the affairs of his master, he did not forget his own. He married
+a rich heiress, a Courtenay. He did not disdain the profits of war, the
+pillage of cities or the ransom of captives, nor even the profits of
+business; he bought horses at a low price in Germany and sold them in
+Gascony for a high price. Increasing his fortune in every honest fashion,
+he established order in his own house as he did in the public finances.
+But, devoted to the prince and to the state, this good manager cut down
+his forest of Rosny to take the proceeds to Henry when the latter was at
+the end of his resources; and the zealous Protestant advised the king to
+end the war by becoming a Catholic. Sully was neither a Colbert nor a
+Bayard; he had, however, some of the qualities of both.[n]
+
+Sully introduced into the government the energy of a soldier, and into
+the prince’s household the same economy and punctuality as prevailed in
+his own. Having become superintendent of finances, and having assumed
+the supreme direction of this department, he laid the traditions of
+method and of that perfect efficiency which cannot exist without it. He
+performed a very important, very difficult, but not very brilliant work.
+He formed men and trained them so that they could satisfactorily carry
+on existing institutions. By his unfailing watchfulness, he succeeded in
+having the accounts systematically kept, and rendered peculation almost
+impossible. As most of the hereditary financial offices had gradually
+acquired an independence which had been fostered by the civil wars, Sully
+tried to reunite, as far as they were concerned, the ancient ties of
+centralisation, so as to secure the influence of the supreme power over
+them. He also wished to have the census taken regularly, and to insure
+an accurate statement of the budget being drawn up. He wanted to find
+out the exact value of the taxes, and to institute a regular system for
+their collection; finally he took advantage of the low rate of interest
+to reduce the pensions paid by the state.
+
+This change, and a better system for farming the taxes and of securing
+their returns enabled him to leave the ministry, having made up the
+deficit, and leaving several millions of savings in the cellars of the
+Bastille. This accumulation was very valuable at a period when there was
+hardly any better way of providing for future emergencies than by laying
+by money. Sully was the first superintendent of finance whose memory was
+not execrated, and even remained popular. Let us hear what is said of him
+in an anonymous eulogium, written probably after his death, and which,
+in spite of its somewhat obscure language, contains a true appreciation
+of his administrative powers: “He only, up to the present time, has
+discovered the connection between two things in the government of states,
+which our forefathers were not able to unite, and which they even
+considered incompatible: the amassing of wealth in the royal coffers,
+side by side with the diminution of taxation and increasing prosperity of
+the people: the increase of the king’s wealth simultaneously with that of
+private individuals.”
+
+Sully called agriculture and cattle breeding the two feeders of France;
+he made a point of encouraging agriculture, the interests of which had
+already attracted attention in the sixteenth century, and he diminished
+the rates though he could not succeed in compelling the nobles to pay
+them in those provinces where the assemblies claimed the right of levying
+them. As for commerce and manufactures, he did not yet recognise their
+importance. He looked upon them simply as ministers to luxury, just
+as he saw nothing in luxury but the extravagance of individuals and
+the corruption of the public mind. Fortunately Henry IV, who did not
+share these very military prejudices, instituted an elective chamber
+of commerce, granted many facilities to manufactures which were taking
+root or seemed likely to take root in France, protecting them by fixing
+tariffs, commanded the most competent men to draw up memoranda on the
+economic interests of the country, created or rather tried to create
+an India company, and assumed the exclusive right of legislating in
+commercial matters--a right which had hitherto been claimed by the
+representatives of the provincial governments.
+
+We owe to Sully the institution of two important administrations, one for
+public works by which many valuable enterprises were at once undertaken,
+such as the draining of marshy places, and the construction of canals;
+the other in connection with the mines, the working of which, having
+been granted as a monopoly to companies by Charles VI and Louis XI, had
+not produced very good results. His reforms extended to almost every
+service. In the army responsibility and discipline were re-established,
+the stock of ammunition, artillery, etc., was augmented, the condition
+of the troops ameliorated, and provision made for the wounded and for
+veterans. The fifteen years of this ministry were too short, though much
+was effected during their course; Sully could not carry out all the
+plans he had conceived. The most important of these were to accustom
+the nobility to take part in business, to form a training school for
+statesmen in connection with the king’s council, which would have insured
+the maintenance of traditions and made the carrying out of reforms much
+easier. He retired “satisfied,” he said in his letter to Marie de’
+Medici, “with having by his industry and ingenuity succeeded in reducing
+to order the most terrible confusion which had ever existed in the
+finances of France.”[b]
+
+
+AMOURS AND SECOND MARRIAGE OF HENRY IV
+
+[Sidenote: [1597-1599 A.D.]]
+
+Let us inspect another phase of the character of Henry of Navarre. Let us
+turn from the warrior and the reformer to the man and the lover.
+
+Who has not heard of the fair Gabrielle? Henry saw her first at the
+château of her father, during one of his campaigns, and became enamoured.
+He frequently stole from his camp in disguise, and crossed the enemy’s
+lines to visit her. A hundred stories are told of the romantic adventures
+he underwent whilst wooing. He won, and was happy. Never had illegitimate
+love a more flattering excuse. Compelled to espouse, when a boy, the
+abandoned sister of Charles IX, his wedding feast had been stained with
+the blood of his friend, and the dissolute Marguerite led a life such as
+might be expected from such a race and such espousals. Henry consoled
+himself in the affections of Gabrielle d’Estrées, whose society he loved,
+and to whom he was constant. She had borne him several children.
+
+And now the wish of Henry was to obtain a divorce from his queen, and
+to sanction his connection with Gabrielle by a marriage. So serious
+and sincere was he in this that all his courtiers applauded the
+determination. Sully alone looked cold. Henry consulted him, and besought
+his advice; and the minister represented to him all the dangers of a
+disputed succession, of the pretensions of the young duke de Vendôme,
+who could not be legitimated, and of all the obvious objections to
+such a step. Henry was grieved: he saw the justice of the counsel, and
+remained irresolute. Gabrielle broke forth in invectives against Sully,
+and at length demanded his dismissal. Henry brought his minister by the
+hand into the apartment of Gabrielle, and entreated her to be reconciled
+to him. She persisted in her pride and in bursts of resentment. “Know,
+madam,” said Henry, harsh for the first time, “that a minister like
+him must be dearer to me than even such a mistress as you.” Gabrielle
+henceforth gave herself up to grief. The king was true and kind as
+ever. In the spring of the year 1599 she was advanced in a state of
+pregnancy. Henry, about to go through the pious ceremonies of Easter
+at Fontainebleau, felt it decorous to separate for a few days from his
+mistress. She retired to Paris, weighed down by despondency and the
+blackest presentiment. Astrological predictions were then the mode; and
+some imprudent or malevolent information of this kind tormented her: “We
+shall never meet again,” were her words on parting from the king, and
+they proved true. She was taken with convulsions, delivered of a dead
+child, and expired in a few hours. Henry had mounted on horseback at the
+first news, and was halfway on the road to Paris, when he was told it
+was too late. The brave Henry could not support this blow: he wellnigh
+fainted, and was obliged to be conveyed back to Fontainebleau. There
+he retired, and shut himself up to indulge his grief. Sully alone was
+able to console him, and rouse him, after a time, to the affairs of the
+kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: [1599-1600 A.D.]]
+
+It were to be wished, for Henry’s character, that his amours had ended
+here. His intention was to marry; and the niece of the grand duke of
+Tuscany, Marie de’ Medici, had already been mentioned. But the divorce
+had not yet been expedited by the pope; and the inflammable temperament
+of Henry took fire in the meantime with a new passion. Mademoiselle
+d’Entragues was the object, a being lovely indeed, but wanting alike
+the modesty, the sweet temper, and unambitious conduct of Gabrielle.
+She long enticed and tormented the monarch. Her father, the count
+d’Entragues, affected resentment and vigilance; and Henry had recourse
+to such disguise as he had formerly used to gain admission to Gabrielle
+d’Estrées. Henrietta d’Entragues had not the same taste: she is said
+to have so disliked the monarch in the humble dress of a gardener that
+she turned him from her presence. At length she obtained from Henry a
+promise of marriage in case that a son was born to her within the year,
+and Mademoiselle d’Entragues became marquise de Verneuil. Henry showed
+the contract to Sully, who, without other comment, tore and cast it under
+his feet. The king felt bound to write another; but in consequence of a
+stroke of lightning which fell on the house where the marquise resided,
+it ultimately became void. The fright which the lightning occasioned had
+the effect of destroying the hopes she had entertained of fulfilling her
+part of the contract, a stipulation indecent and unworthy of the monarch.
+Henry soon after was roused to a fuller sense of his dignity and of the
+nation’s weal. A divorce was by this time obtained; and he espoused Marie
+de’ Medici in the course of the year 1600.[k]
+
+The duke de Bellegarde, a successful rival to Henry IV in the affections
+of several of his mistresses, had been sent by him to Florence to fetch
+the bride. The Tuscan princess, already twenty-seven years of age, had
+shown some inclination for gallantry. Paul Giordano Orsini, her first
+cousin, one of the nobles who accompanied her to the French court, was
+said to have inspired her with love. Concino Concini, grandson of a
+secretary of Cosmo, a young man of wit and pleasing appearance, but who
+had ruined himself by his licentiousness, came also in her train in
+search of fortune in France. With her also went Leonora Dori, a woman of
+low origin, remarkable for her slenderness and pallor, the daughter of a
+carpenter and of a woman of ill-fame. This woman, in attendance on the
+princess from her earliest infancy, had obtained a complete ascendency
+over her. Leonora had profited by her patronage to induce the noble
+Florentine house of Galigaï to bestow their name upon her. Marie gave her
+the post of tire-woman, destined by the king for a French lady. The new
+queen left Florence on October 13th, took ship at Leghorn for Marseilles,
+and proceeded from one festivity to another, until she arrived at Lyons
+on December 2nd.
+
+It was not until December 9th that Henry, posting to Lyons, saw his queen
+for the first time. He was not greatly pleased with her stout figure, her
+round face, and her large, staring eyes. The queen had nothing endearing
+in her manner, nor was she of a cheerful disposition; she had no liking
+for the king, and did not pretend to show any; she did not propose to
+amuse or please him; her temper was peevish and obstinate. She had been
+brought up entirely according to the Spanish custom, and in the husband
+who appeared to her old and disagreeable she still suspected the relapsed
+heretic. Henry was detained at Lyons by the negotiations with Savoy, but
+the signing of the treaty of peace taking place on January 17th, 1601,
+he posted to Paris the next day, to be near the marquise de Verneuil, who
+pleased him far more than the queen, possessing precisely the charms,
+vivacity, and gaiety that the latter lacked.
+
+[Illustration: MARIE DE’ MEDICI
+
+(1573-1642)]
+
+[Sidenote: [1601-1602 A.D.]]
+
+After the departure of the king, Marie de’ Medici and all her court
+set forth for the capital; travelling by post, she only reached Paris
+on February 9th. The princess of Conti (Louise Marguerite de Lorraine)
+relates that the day of the queen’s arrival in Paris, “the king bade the
+duchess de Nemours (the first lady of the household) fetch the marquise
+de Verneuil, and present her to the queen. The aged princess attempted
+to excuse herself from so doing, saying she would lose all credit with
+her mistress; but the king insisted, and ordered her to do his bidding,
+and that somewhat rudely, which was contrary to his usual courteous
+habits. She therefore conducted the marchioness to the queen who, greatly
+astonished at the sight of her, received her with much coldness; but
+the marquise de Verneuil, very bold naturally, talked so much and so
+familiarly that she finally succeeded in forcing the queen to discourse
+with her.
+
+“The king, tired of going two or three times a day to see the marquise,
+on perceiving that the queen had softened towards her, desired her
+to come to the Louvre where he had an apartment made ready for her.
+This, after some time, roused the jealousy of the queen, who had been
+entertained by several people with sayings of the marquise de Verneuil;
+who in truth, spoke of her freely enough and with little respect. The
+queen and the marquise were both enceinte, and the king seemed as if
+he did not know how to be on good terms with them both. He showed that
+respect to the queen to which her rank entitled her, but he was happier
+in the society of the marquise. Everyone wishing to please the king
+visited the latter, which was taken very ill by the queen. They dwelt
+so near one another as to be unable to avoid each other, and continual
+misunderstandings were the result.”[g] Sully was more than once called
+in to quiet their domestic broils. The birth of a son, afterwards Louis
+XIII, occurred at Fontainebleau in 1601 to allay the fears of a disputed
+succession, and also contributed to bind Henry to his queen.[k]
+
+The king, though so well-wishing, never thought of cutting down the
+expenses of the court. Yet the desolation of the country, due to the
+civil wars, was appalling. The highways were lost in weeds and brambles,
+and wolves preyed on the country in great bands. Taxes could not be
+raised, so that finally the king gave up trying to collect arrears and in
+1598 he gave up the taxes of 1594 and 1595.[a]
+
+
+INTRIGUES OF DE BIRON
+
+Another obstacle to the security and happiness of the monarch lay in
+the intrigues of his grandees. The people gave him little trouble; the
+turbulence of the civic class was over: they were ashamed, as well as
+weary, of the long disorders of the league, and in no way sought to renew
+them. Satisfied by the mild and economical management of the revenue by
+Sully, they applauded so beneficent a power, and forgot, or regretted
+not, that it was absolute. None clamoured for the states-general; they
+made loyalty a part of their religion; and abandoned all doctrines of
+liberty and republicanism to the hated Huguenots, who professed them.
+
+The nobles, who were the contemporaries of Henry, could not find the same
+repose: they had lived a life of turbulence and war; they had been bred
+in intrigue, and in all the excitement of contending parties; peace could
+not content them. Then the life of a camp had placed them on a kind of
+equality with their monarch, who had terminated the war by yielding up
+the administering authority in the provinces to the several grandees. He
+had compounded with them, as much as conquered them; and the Protestant
+nobles had taken a position of equal independence with that of the
+Catholics. The high aristocracy, in fact, that Francis I so prudently
+kept down, had reconstituted itself in the subsequent reigns. They now
+made a covert, but not less serious proposal to Henry, choosing the
+duke de Montpensier, a stripling and a prince of the blood, to be their
+spokesman on the occasion. This demand was no less than to re-establish
+the old feudal system, by allowing the present governors of provinces
+to hold them in fief, and transmit them to their descendants. Henry was
+not a monarch to tolerate such a demand; and his angry reply struck
+young Montpensier with terror. The grandees determined to win by union
+and force what gentler means could not obtain. They conspired, leagued
+with Spain, with the duke of Savoy, and even with England, endeavouring
+to excite a malcontent party. Protestants as well as Catholics joined
+in this: the duke de Bouillon at the head of one, the proud Épernon
+representing the other. Such, however, was Henry’s power, and such
+his character for courage as well as promptitude, such, too, was the
+vigilance of Sully, that this intrigue could never be matured into a
+conspiracy. Henry’s frank and amiable temper won over many; and he never
+proceeded to punish the guilty until he had used every gentle means to
+admonish, to pardon, and recall them to duty.
+
+The marshal De Biron was almost the only one of his nobles who still
+persisted in treasonable views. The king, on one occasion, had summoned
+him, charged him seriously, but not severely, with the crime, and showed
+him that he was well informed of his intrigues. Biron fell on his knees,
+confessed his weakness, but vowed that he would never more forsake the
+path of loyalty. Henry pardoned and embraced him. But Biron, vain and
+fickle, jealous even of his monarch’s fame, was weak enough to listen
+once more to the insinuations of Spain. The duke of Savoy, on a visit
+to Henry, manifested every sign of admiration for the king, while he
+occupied himself in corrupting the French courtiers, and in fomenting a
+party. He was ably seconded by the Spanish count de Fuentes. Biron was
+fascinated by the mighty promises of these intriguers: he was to have
+Burgundy as an independent state. The constable de Bourbon himself never
+received more magnificent promises. Nothing more displays the baseness
+and declension of the Spanish monarchy than its recourse to such weak and
+dishonourable machinations.
+
+Henry soon after, wearied with the bad faith and subtle subterfuges of
+the duke of Savoy, made war on that prince. Biron was intrusted with
+the command, and in conducting it his treachery became manifest. One
+day, when Sully rode with him to view the siege of a fortress belonging
+to the duke, the former could perceive that the fire from the ramparts
+slackened, and was directed from them. Sully took the same ride alone
+on the following day, and was received with a heavy and well-directed
+cannonade. It afterwards appeared that the marshal had intended to
+entice the king into an ambuscade, where the fire of the enemy would
+have certainly proved fatal. The duke of Savoy, worsted by the arms of
+Henry, made his submission, and obtained peace. Biron continued his
+intrigues with Spain, in concert with the duke de Bouillon, with the
+count d’Auvergne, bastard of Charles IX, and probably with Épernon, and
+the whole body of the malcontent noblesse.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DE GONTAUT, DUC DE BIRON
+
+(1562-1602)]
+
+The king was perfectly aware of these intrigues. Biron was betrayed by
+his chief counsellor and instigator, a person named Lafin. Henry saw
+Biron once talking with Lafin, and warned him, saying, “I know that
+man; he will lead you into evil.” But the marshal was deaf to advice.
+Henry did not at first place much credit in the revelations of Lafin,
+who accused Sully himself among others of the court. But the informer
+produced written documents, proofs of Biron’s connection with Spain.
+Biron was summoned to court. It was the king’s intention to reproach
+his ancient comrade, to endeavour to awaken his loyalty, shame him
+into a confession of his treason, and again pardon him. Sully received
+instructions to pursue the same conduct, and to try every means short
+of letting the marshal know that Lafin had confessed all. Biron and the
+count d’Auvergne came to court boldly. Henry drew the traitor apart, led
+him into familiar conversation, showed himself open, frank, forgiving,
+yet suspicious. Biron betrayed no misgivings, no repentance, no wish
+to remove his sovereign’s distrust. At last, as they arrived before an
+equestrian statue of Henry lately erected, which was ornamented with
+trophies, the king asked, “What would the king of Spain say were he to
+see me thus?” Biron, who felt that this was meant to try him, insolently
+replied, “Sire, he scarcely fears you.” Then correcting himself, he
+stammered out, “I mean in that statue, not in this, your person.” Henry
+smiled sorrowfully, and gave up his merciful and friendly purpose. Sully,
+on his side, exerted himself to the same effect, but in vain. Biron was
+hardened. It was only then that Henry gave orders for his arrest, and
+that of the count d’Auvergne. As they left the king’s chamber, their
+swords were demanded. They were conveyed by water to the arsenal. Biron
+was tried before the parliament, condemned, and executed. He evinced the
+greatest rage on the scaffold; it amounted to frenzy, and was excited by
+his horror of so disgraceful a death. The executioner was obliged to hide
+his sword, and strike off the head of the culprit unawares.
+
+
+THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY’S REIGN
+
+[Sidenote: [1602-1609 A.D.]]
+
+The last years of Henry’s reign are scarcely marked by any important
+incidents. The few that did take place, such as the conspiracy of the
+family D’Entragues, and the weaknesses into which Henry’s amorous
+disposition led him, are exaggerated in importance, and narrated by
+historians with a detail they little merit. The punishment of Biron,
+which Henry meant as a warning to his discontented nobles, succeeded
+in keeping them in awe. If they intrigued, it was in fear, and with a
+caution that marred all progress or purpose. The count d’Auvergne alone,
+though pardoned for being implicated with Biron, renewed his schemes in
+conjunction with the marquise de Verneuil; this mistress treated the
+king with the capriciousness and severity which a wronged beauty might
+use towards a gallant more advanced in years; the monarch construed
+her caprice into infidelity; and a loving quarrel grew to be a serious
+misunderstanding. Henry withdrew the written document of the promise
+of marriage. The father and daughter, joined by the count d’Auvergne,
+plotted against the king, it was said against his life; and, as usual,
+they found support in a Spanish emissary. They were all three arrested,
+tried, and condemned to death; but Henry pardoned his mistress, as well
+as her relatives, and commuted their punishment into exile. The restless
+and false D’Auvergne was confined permanently in the Bastille.
+
+Squabbles with his queen, Marie de’ Medici, on account of her Italian
+favourites, Concini and his wife; distrust of Sully, excited by the
+envious courtiers; these, with national improvements, negotiations,
+festivals, and hunting parties, bring the reign of Henry IV nearly to its
+close.
+
+In 1609, its happy and glorious monotony was varied by the enthusiastic
+admiration which the aged monarch conceived for Mademoiselle de
+Montmorency, the young and lovely daughter of the constable, who had just
+appeared at court and eclipsed all its beauties. There is some difference
+of opinion as to the nature of Henry’s admiration: the memoir writers of
+the age saw scandal in every connection; and certainly Henry’s past life
+and his known failings incline to the worst side. Bassompierre,[o] then a
+young man, relates that he himself became a suitor for the beauty’s hand,
+and that he was induced by the entreaties or commands of the enamoured
+king to desist. Bassompierre was a babbler, however, whose vanity
+breaks out in the arrogance of the mere pretension. The young prince
+of Condé was also smitten, but shrank back from so formidable a rival
+as the monarch. What belies the account of Bassompierre is that Henry
+came forward, and assured Condé that he might woo in all confidence,
+and that he had nothing to fear on that score from his king. If Henry
+had licentious views, Bassompierre, and not Condé, would have been the
+convenient husband of Mademoiselle de Montmorency.
+
+Condé was the successful suitor, and the marriage was celebrated at
+court with unusual splendour. Henry, having given his word to the
+prince, indulged his predilection for the lovely bride by showering
+presents and favours upon her and her husband. The court, full of the
+malevolent, amongst whom the followers of the jealous queen were not the
+least forward, construed all these symptoms to be the homage of a guilty
+passion: they poured this in the prince’s ear; and Condé, alarmed for
+his wife’s honour, carried her off from the court by stealth, first
+to Picardy, whence, on receiving a summons from the king to return, he
+made a second flight, and gained the Low Countries. The king showed
+himself strangely affected by this incident: the discovery of Biron’s
+conspiracy did not cause him more trouble. Sully was called up in the
+night; and the whole court was roused by the agitation of the monarch,
+who was pacing and stamping up and down the chamber of the queen, while
+the courtiers stood “pasted to the walls,” says Sully, lest they should
+interrupt the monarch’s passion. The flight of the first prince of the
+blood, and his taking refuge with the Spaniards, was certainly a grave
+question, love and jealousy being set aside. The king demanded Sully’s
+advice, who hesitated, but being forced, advised him to “do nothing.”
+“Nothing!” said Henry; “call you that advice?” Sully replied that the
+escape of the prince was a matter of little importance, unless the king
+chose to make it important by raising a clamour, and showing that he took
+an interest concerning it. Henry, however, was not in a humour to treat
+the matter thus slightly and thus wisely: he instructed his ambassador to
+demand of the archduke to deliver up the prince and princess of Condé;
+and, as Sully foresaw, the court of Brussels, in refusing, filled Europe
+with calumnies against Henry; asserting that he wanted to take by force
+the wife of the first prince of the realm and of the blood. When Henry,
+immediately afterwards, menaced war, the outcry was that Europe was about
+to be deluged in blood for another Helen.
+
+It was, indeed, unfortunate that Henry, who had remained so many years
+at peace, no doubt preparing and amassing the materials and resources of
+war, and cautiously awaiting fit pretext and proper reason, should now
+draw the sword for a cause at once criminal and absurd.[k]
+
+
+_Grand Design of Henry IV; His Death_
+
+[Sidenote: [1609-1610 A.D.]]
+
+At home the rest of Henry’s reign was perhaps monotonous; but it was
+none the less momentous, for on the ruins of France the Bourbon monarchy
+was already building up the centralised absolutism which it was the work
+of Richelieu to perfect and Louis XIV to wield. But in foreign affairs
+the schemes of Henry were not less far reaching. France was to become
+the centre of European politics, the dictator of Germany. In Sully’s
+_Economies Royales_ we may read of the details of the great scheme which
+anticipated that of Napoleon by two centuries. But such details are the
+work of subsequent addition and the plan of making Europe into a grand
+republic of fifteen states with well-balanced interests, etc., was
+perhaps not so clearly conceived even by Sully as historians have been
+accustomed to state. But some such design was undoubtedly behind the
+foreign policy which Henry was inaugurating at his death. He possibly
+intended to unite with France the Flemish, Dutch, and North German states
+in a movement that would overthrow Spain and Austria. His own statements
+make this plain.[a]
+
+Henry IV had expressed on many occasions and had incessantly repeated in
+his diplomacy the end which he had in view. His object was to restore the
+cities and states of the empire to their former rights and liberties,
+to assure the liberty of the United Provinces, to base the politics of
+France upon the alliance of the secondary states, in the north the United
+Provinces, Denmark, Sweden, and the German principalities, in the south,
+Switzerland, Savoy, and the Italian principalities; finally to extend his
+system of religious tolerance so as to guarantee liberty everywhere to
+the dissenters from the established cult, whether these dissenters might
+be Catholics, Lutherans, or Calvinists; and to prevent religious wars or
+religious pretexts assigned to purely political wars and enterprises. He
+had long since declared to all the courts of Europe that he had ended the
+era of civil war in France and wished to end it everywhere else.
+
+However it may be as to these observations, France, according to him,
+must pursue a double end in her foreign relations, lay the foundations
+of perpetual peace, and drive the Turks from Europe. In order to bring
+about perpetual peace it would be necessary to reduce the possessions
+of Austria, establish a certain balance of power, and create periodical
+diets or congresses, either for this or that category of states or for
+all Europe, with federal armies and fleets to execute the decisions made
+in common.[b]
+
+He now resolved to realise his dream: but this, which had been a
+vision of heroism and philanthropy, was now degraded and sullied by
+the immediate motive. Henry, who was passionately fond of glory, saw
+the stain that was to rob his achievements of their brightness and
+purity. The accusation of the Spaniards troubled him: perhaps there
+was even truth in the reproach that the love of a sexagenarian king
+for a princess, and a married princess of twenty, was the only cause
+and pretext for convulsing Europe and shedding its best blood. This
+weighed upon Henry, and fretted him: his gaiety disappeared. Remorse and
+mortification came to cloud the heaven of his declining days. A dark
+presentiment, similar to that which had forewarned his loved Gabrielle of
+her fate, now gathered around Henry: he could not shake it off.
+
+He intended leaving the queen as regent during his absence at the head
+of his army; and her previous coronation, a ceremony that had not
+yet taken place, was considered requisite. This detained him in the
+capital; and Marie de’ Medici, fond of state and ceremony, insisted on
+it, and delighted in it. Henry was annoyed and fretted: he frequently
+said he should never leave Paris alive, and he longed to contradict his
+presentiment. The coronation of the queen at length took place. On the
+following day, the 14th of May, 1610, he manifested strong feelings of
+despondency. Despatches brought him word that his enemies were making
+no preparations for defence, and that they gave out that the delivery
+of the prince and princess of Condé would at once allay his choler and
+arrest his schemes. This increased his ill humour: he called for Sully;
+but learning that his minister was ill at the arsenal, the king’s coach
+was ordered to convey him thither. Seven of the suite occupied with the
+king his ample carriage. The duke d’Épernon was in one corner, and Henry
+next to him. The vehicle proceeded, but was stopped in the narrow rue
+de la Ferronnerie by two loaded carts. This was the moment chosen by an
+assassin, Ravaillac, who, mounting on the step, and leaning full into the
+carriage, struck the king with a poniard, first in the stomach, and then
+in the breast. One of these stabs pierced the heart of the noble Henry.
+
+To paint the rage and despair of the people would be impossible. The
+once detested Henry had won every heart; and the general grief for
+him partook of the character of madness. Tears were the least tokens
+of sorrow; many died on learning the catastrophe, amongst others the
+brave De Vic, the comrade of Henry. The lifeless body was borne to the
+Louvre, whilst Ravaillac, who made no attempt to escape, was taken,
+brandishing his dagger, and only preserved by the guards from being
+instantly torn in pieces. He had been a monk, strongly imbued with the
+king-killing principles that the Jesuits had broached. His crime had long
+been meditated by him; but no proof exists that he had been instigated
+either by Spain or by any knot of malcontent courtiers. Suspicion,
+indeed, has scattered its stain on all with an unsparing hand. Épernon,
+the queen, Concini, and many others, were accused as being privy to the
+deed; and the record of Ravaillac’s trial having been destroyed, whilst
+these personages possessed the chief influence, gives some colour to
+the charge. But the tortured culprit might idly or malevolently cast
+imputation on the powerful, as indeed he menaced to do. For when some
+one pressed him to name his accomplices, Ravaillac answered, “Suppose
+I name you.” The seed of his crime was the diabolical maxim to which
+the fanaticism of the league had given birth, and which it had rendered
+popular. It had germinated and grown in the dark solitude of a rancorous
+and fanatic spirit.[k]
+
+
+CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY IV
+
+[Sidenote: [1589-1610 A.D.]]
+
+There are two Henry IV’s; the Henry of tradition and the Henry of
+history. The one more heroic and, thanks to Voltaire,[q] more popular;
+the other, underneath his crafty good nature, much more able and, with
+his pliant character, much better fitted to raise a falling edifice
+than a simple character would have been. Henry of Navarre had the most
+brilliant bravery, a quality common to the warriors of that time and of
+all times. But it is pleasing in a prince, and the chief who is ever
+ready to offer his life to the sword point is sure to win his soldiers’
+hearts. Reared among the mountaineers of the Pyrenees, he possessed an
+agility equal to theirs and a body incapable of fatigue. The vicissitudes
+through which he had passed had made his religion uncertain. Charles IX
+said to him, “Death or the mass!” He took the mass; later he abjured,
+and this abjuration was not to be the last. So he felt no anger against
+those who professed a different doctrine; his nature made fanaticism
+odious to him, and his position imposed tolerance upon him. Furthermore,
+he was a good comrade, showing the same face to good or to ill fortune.
+He bent under misfortune but did not break, and found resources in the
+most desperate situations. He loved pleasure, but not as it was loved by
+Henry III. He was kind through good nature as well as experience of life.
+He had friends who, it is true, got from his friendship more good words
+than good results; but his heart was open if his hand was closed, because
+he was for twenty years the chief of a party obliged to give much and to
+take nothing except from the enemy.
+
+One night when D’Aubigné[e] and La Force were sleeping not far from the
+king, the former complained bitterly to the latter of their master’s
+stinginess. La Force, overcome by fatigue, did not listen. “Don’t you
+hear?” asked D’Aubigné. La Force roused himself and asked what he was
+saying. “Why, he is telling you,” cried the king, who heard everything,
+“that I am a harsh, miserly fellow and the most ungrateful mortal on the
+face of the earth.” “He did not treat me worse on account of it,” adds
+D’Aubigné, “but he did not give me a quarter of a crown more.”
+
+His forced residence at the court of the Valois had been fatal to his
+morals. For several years he forgot his rôle and his fortune. After the
+death of the duke of Anjou, Duplessis-Mornay wrote to him: “Pastimes are
+no longer in season. It is time for you to make love to France.” Henry
+felt this rebuke; he gave up his pleasures and put on his cuirass.[n]
+
+In Sully’s _Mémoires_ we find this description of him[82]: “Such was
+the tragical end of a prince, on whom Nature, with a lavish profusion,
+had bestowed all her advantages, except that of a death such as he
+merited. I have already observed that his stature was so happy, and
+his limbs formed with such proportion, as constitutes not only what is
+called a well-made man, but indicates strength, vigour, and activity;
+his complexion was animated; all the lineaments of his face had that
+agreeable liveliness which forms a sweet and happy physiognomy, and
+perfectly suited to that engaging easiness of manners which, though
+sometimes mixed with majesty, never lost the graceful affability and easy
+gaiety so natural to that great prince. With regard to the qualities of
+his heart and mind, I shall tell the reader nothing new by saying that he
+was candid, sincere, grateful, compassionate, generous, wise, penetrating.
+
+“He loved all his subjects as a father, and the whole state as the head
+of a family; and it was this disposition that recalled him even from the
+midst of his pleasures to the care of rendering his people happy and his
+kingdom flourishing; hence proceeded his readiness in conceiving, and his
+industry in perfecting, a great number of useful regulations. Many I have
+already specified; and I shall sum up all by saying that there were no
+conditions, employments, or professions to which his reflections did not
+extend; and that with such clearness and penetration, that the changes
+he projected could not be overthrown by the death of their author, as it
+but too often happened in this monarchy. It was his desire, he said, that
+glory might influence his last years and make them at once useful to the
+world and acceptable to God; his was a mind in which the ideas of what is
+great, uncommon, and beautiful seemed to rise of themselves: hence it was
+that he looked upon adversity as a mere transitory evil, and prosperity
+as his natural state.
+
+“I should destroy all I have now said of this great prince if, after
+having praised him for an infinite number of qualities well worthy to be
+praised, I did not acknowledge that they were balanced by faults, and
+those, indeed, very great. I have not concealed, or even palliated his
+passion for women; his excess in gaming; his gentleness often carried to
+weakness; nor his propensity to every kind of pleasure: I have neither
+disguised the faults they made him commit, the foolish expenses they led
+him into, nor the time they made him waste; but I have likewise observed
+(to do justice on both sides) that his enemies have greatly exaggerated
+all these errors. If he was, as they say, a slave to women, yet they
+never regulated his choice of ministers, decided the destinies of his
+servants, or influenced the deliberations of his council. As much may
+be said in extenuation of all his other faults. And to sum up all, in a
+word, what he has done is sufficient to show that the good and bad in
+his character had no proportion to each other; and that since honour and
+fame have always had power enough to tear him from pleasure, we ought to
+acknowledge these to have been his great and real passions.”[p]
+
+
+_Martin’s Estimate of Henry IV_
+
+The whole reign of Henry IV, after the Peace of Vervins, had been but a
+preface; the half-opened book is closed forever! All the past glory of
+the Béarnais would have been eclipsed by the magnificent results that
+his policy had prepared and that his arms were to realise. In spite
+of the exertions and the excesses of his life his robust constitution
+still promised him some years of military activity, enough without
+doubt to make sure if not of the complete triumph, at least of the
+predominance of his European system; his heirs would have done the
+rest! The politics of France, allied with the Protestants without being
+absorbed by Protestantism, triumphing by the aid of the entire foreign
+and French Reformation, would have been started beyond recall upon the
+paths of international equity, intellectual liberty, and religious
+tolerance. Henry IV would have made splendid reparation for the faults
+of Francis I and himself. He would not have abjured Catholicism, but
+with his victorious sword he would have obliterated his coronation oath
+and the humiliation of Roman absolution. Germany would not have seen the
+Thirty Years’ War, nor France the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The
+seventeenth century would have had all its glory without its fatal errors.
+
+God did not grant it him! Henry IV bore to the tomb not only the European
+system which he intended to inaugurate but all the elements of order
+and power that he had given to his country. France fell from the height
+to which he had raised her, until the day when a powerful genius came
+anew to bring order into chaos and to revive in part the policy of
+Henry, but under much less favourable conditions. This genius was that
+of an individual, not that of a king, and Henry IV has remained the
+greatest and above all the most French of the kings of France; not again
+has there been seen on the throne a soul so national, an intellect so
+liberal. No one ever felt better than he the true destiny of France.
+It is not without reason that the popularity of Henry has increased
+with the growth of the modern spirit; it is not without reason that the
+eighteenth century tried to make him the epic hero of French history. The
+labouring classes have never forgotten the king who was to them the most
+sympathetic in manners and in heart, the king who occupied himself most
+seriously with the interests of the soil and of labour. Thinkers will
+never cease to honour in him the forerunner of a new Europe, the just
+and profound mind whose diplomatic plans are to-day in many respects the
+politics of the most enlightened men, and finally the champion and martyr
+of the most sacred of liberties, that of conscience.[c]
+
+Having listened thus to a contemporary and to a modern French estimate of
+the great ruler, let us take a parting glance at him through the eyes of
+a scarcely less appreciative English historian.[a]
+
+
+STEPHEN’S CHARACTERISATION OF HENRY IV AND HIS TIMES
+
+It has been said of Henry IV [says Sir James Stephen], with equal truth
+and force, that he was l’Hôpital in arms. The principles which had been
+asserted by the wisdom and the eloquence of the great chancellor became
+triumphant by the foresight and the conquests of the great king. In an
+age of wild disorder and overwhelming calamity, he was raised up to
+restore his kingdom to affluence and to peace. He appeared to rescue
+his Protestant subjects from the tyranny which had so long denied to
+them the freedom of conscience. He came to give a firm basis to the
+national policy, and to open to his people at large a new direction,
+and a wider scope, for the martial energies by which they had hitherto
+been at once so highly, and so ineffectually, distinguished. For these
+high offices he was qualified by great talents, and by many virtues.
+With a capacity large enough to embrace all the social, military, and
+political interests of his dominions, he combined that practical good
+sense and flexibility of address, without which there is no safe descent
+from the higher regions of thought to the real business of life. The
+intuitive promptitude, and the enduring stability, of his resolutions
+attested at once his large experience in affairs, and his wide survey
+both of the resources at his command, and of the contingencies to
+which he was exposed. He possessed that kind of mental instinct which
+advances by the shortest path to what is at once useful and possible,
+and which turns aside, with unhesitating decision, from any illusive and
+impracticable scheme. Never was a great innovator more characterised by
+practical wisdom; and never did such wisdom assume a more attractive
+aspect. His manners exhibited all the graces of his native land in
+their most captivating form. Delighted with his bonhommie, his gaiety,
+and his frankness, his subjects not only forgave his vices, but even
+found in them a fascination the more. They smiled at the scandalous
+amours of their gallant monarch as a not unbecoming tribute paid by
+human greatness to human infirmity. If they looked with awe on the
+desperate valour of his enterprises, on the inflexible rigour of his
+discipline, or on the soaring ambition of his political designs, they
+were reconciled to the stern character of the prince by the ever-flowing
+and genuine sensibilities of the man. If his lofty sense of his personal
+and ancestral dignity sometimes gave an austere aspect to his intercourse
+with his people, that pride of birth did but enhance the charm of his
+quick sympathy with the feelings and interests of the meanest of them.
+And, above all the rest, every Frenchman loved and admired in Henry the
+lover and admirer of France; and became patriotically blind to the faults
+of his renegade, and debauched, but still patriot, king.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE TIME OF HENRY IV]
+
+And even now, when the spell is broken, and we may look back on the life
+of Henry IV with judicial impartiality, and reprobate the apologies which
+would have elevated his crimes into virtues, we cannot conceal from
+ourselves the fact that he conferred on his people benefits which well
+entitled him to their lasting gratitude.
+
+For, first, Henry of Navarre was the founder of religious toleration
+in France. Until the Edict of Nantes there had been many truces, but
+no real peace, between the adherents of Rome and the followers of
+Calvin. To compel all the fragments of the Christian church to coalesce
+into one body, each member of which should hold the same opinions, and
+worship under the same forms, had been the inflexible policy of all his
+predecessors. To acquiesce in their separation, and yet to maintain each
+section in the nearest possible approach to an equality both of civil
+and religious privileges, was the no less inflexible design of Henry.
+His charter could not, indeed, restore unity to the church, but it
+established, on what seemed a secure basis, the unity of the state. The
+two religions were thenceforward placed under ecclesiastical laws widely
+differing from each other, but under a civil law common to them both.
+
+The second great praise of the first of the Bourbon line is that of
+having rescued France from the abyss of bankruptcy and financial
+ruin in which it had been involved by the improvidence of the house
+of Valois. For the completion of that great work the larger share of
+honour is, indeed, due to Sully. But from his own _Economies Royales_ we
+sufficiently learn that, unaided by the magnanimity, the self-denial,
+and the affection of the king, not even the zeal, the courage, and the
+sagacity of the great minister would have accomplished that herculean
+labour.
+
+The third title of Henry to the place which he has ever held among the
+benefactors of France, has at all times been acknowledged by Frenchmen
+with more enthusiasm than any other of his services. He was the first of
+her kings who had at once the discernment to perceive how high a station
+belonged to her in the European commonwealth, and the energy to devise
+the methods by which that rank might be effectually vindicated.
+
+It is not, however, on these grounds alone, that the reign of Henry
+IV occupies a memorable position in the constitutional history of
+his country. It was a period of great consummations and of great
+beginnings. Like some inland sea, which is at once the receptacle of
+many converging, and the source of as many diverging, streams, it was
+interposed between two eras strikingly contrasted with each other. It
+marked the close of the mediæval sovereignty, and the commencement of the
+modern monarchy,--the first a dominion of undefined rights, of unsettled
+habits, and of a fluctuating policy,--the second, a government absolute
+in fact and in right, severely consistent in its arbitrary principles,
+but elaborately adapted to the various exigencies of a civilised
+commonwealth. The hitherto unorganised elements of the state were now,
+for the first time, reduced into a political unity. The invidious
+distinctions of earlier times now began to give place to social equality;
+and the slow, though steadfast, progress of that unity and of that
+equality may be considered as the subject of the whole of the subsequent
+history of France. In the triumph of these two principles consists
+the peculiar distinction, and the chief boast, of the French policy,
+whether monarchical or republican, of later times; and, therefore, the
+age of Henry IV when considered as the origin of these great national
+characteristics, demands, and will repay, the most diligent attention.[r]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[81] THE HOUSE OF BOURBON
+
+                   =Louis IX=
+                       |
+        +--------------+---------------------------+
+        |                                          |
+  =Phillip III=                           Robert, c. of Clarmont,
+                                      m. Beatrix, heiress of Bourbon
+                                                   |
+                                        Louis, d. of Bourbon, 1541
+                                                   |
+           +---------------------------------------+
+           |                                       |
+  Peter, d. of Bourbon,                  James, c. de la Marche,
+         1356                                     1362
+           |                                       |
+  Louis, d. of Bourbon,                 John, c. de la Marche, 1393
+        1410                          m. Catherine, heiress of Vendôme
+           |                                       |
+  John, d. of Bourbon,                 +-----------+----------+
+        1488                           |                      |
+          |                  James, c. de la Marche,          |
+          |                          1438                     |
+          +--------------------------------+                  |
+          |                                |                  |
+  Charles, d. of Bourbon,             Louis, c. of            |
+         1456                         Montpensier             |
+          |                                |                  |
+  +-------+----+---------+                 |                  |
+  |            |         |                 |                  |
+  John II   Charles   Peter II             |                  |
+    1488     1488                          |                  |
+                                Gilbert, c. of Montpensier,   |
+                                         1496                 |
+                                           |                  |
+            +------------------------------+                  |
+            |                              |                  |
+  Charles, Constable of France, 1527,   Francis, 1525         |
+  d. without male issue                                       |
+                                                              |
+                                                    Louis, c. of Vendôme,
+                                                            1446
+                                                              |
+                                                     John, c. of Vendôme,
+                                                            1478
+                                                              |
+                                                   Francis, c. of Vendôme,
+                                                            1495
+                                                              |
+                                                   Charles, d. of Vendôme,
+                                                            1537
+                                                              |
+            +-------------------+--------------+--------------+----+
+            |                   |              |                   |
+  Antoine, d. of Vendôme,   Francis,        Charles,             Louis,
+  m. Jeanne d’Albert,     d. of Enghlên  Cardinal Bourbon   Prince of Condé
+  q. of Navarre, 1562                     (Charles X)
+            |
+      =Henry IV=, 1610
+  m. (1) Margaret, d. of Henry II
+  m. (2) Mary de’ Medici
+
+[82] [It must be recalled that Sully’s estimate is that of a comrade in
+arms and a counsellor. It is a flattering tribute rather than a calmly
+judicious one.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+    “It is in Rabelais, in the satire of Ménippée, and in Montaigne
+    that we shall find principles of social justice, ideas of
+    reformation, expressed with as much profundity as eloquence;
+    in these writers they are scattered, hidden under buffoonery
+    in Rabelais, tempered by philosophical _insouciance_ in
+    Montaigne; but they bear witness to the extent to which the
+    study of antiquity, the religious struggles, and the civil war
+    had set political ideas in motion. The great history of the
+    President de Thou marked in the highest degree the spirit of
+    legal freedom under the monarchy. Calvin had been the despotic
+    legislator of a democracy, yet the Reformation everywhere
+    raised the questions of civil liberty involved in the question
+    of religious liberty; and as the governments of the Middle Ages
+    owed their origin to the church the political innovators owed
+    theirs to dissenting theologians.”--VILLEMAIN.[b]
+
+
+While we have followed the fortunes of Henry of Navarre another century
+has been rounded out. Almost a hundred years have passed since Francis
+I came to the throne; more than half a hundred since that monarch laid
+down the sceptre. It has been a troublous epoch for France as we have
+seen: a time of foreign and civil wars that would have disrupted a less
+stable civil organisation. Yet the new forces of the Renaissance and
+the Reformation were making themselves felt throughout this period,
+and, as so often happens, the time of military strife has been also a
+time of social development. Some phases of this development we have
+studied, particularly in connection with the reign of Francis I; it
+remains to mention in some detail the work of three great writers who
+made this century memorable in French literary annals. We have already
+cited a comment of Villemain on the retardation of the French literary
+Renaissance. How marked this retardation was will be even more evident
+when we reflect that the century which has just been rounded out saw
+Italian culture in its decadence, and that the immediate period of Henry
+IV is precisely contemporary with the age of Elizabeth in England,--the
+time of Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare; whereas French literature is
+only at its beginnings. Notable beginnings these are however, for the
+names that we now have to chronicle are those of Rabelais, of Calvin,
+and of Montaigne. It is true that Stephen, whom we quote now somewhat
+in extenso, cites this trio as the second great literary triumvirate
+of France; having named Joinville, Froissart, and Comines as the great
+triumvirate of an earlier period. In the widest view this classification
+no doubt is just; yet it can hardly be asserted that these earlier
+chroniclers are classic in the same sense as are Rabelais and Montaigne.
+The earlier writers are preserved more for their method than for their
+manner; and it is only work in which literary form takes precedence over
+mere fact that can be classified on the highest plane of art. According
+to this standard, the work of Calvin scarcely belongs beside that of
+Rabelais and Montaigne; yet a study of French literary development in the
+sixteenth century from which that work was omitted would be obviously
+incomplete. Let us glance then at the work of these three greatest French
+writers of the sixteenth century, between whom, as Sir James Stephen
+asserts “the parallelisms are as remarkable as the contradictions.”
+Taking them in the order of time we have first to consider the great
+humourist Rabelais, mention of whose work has already been made when we
+were speaking of the French Renaissance of the middle of the century.[a]
+
+Rabelais, the son of an innkeeper at Chinon, was born at that place in
+the year 1483.[83] He became a Franciscan friar, a deacon, and a priest
+in holy orders; and then, at the mature age of forty-two, commenced
+the study of medicine in the college at Montpellier. Various medical
+treatises were the fruit of those labours; and the reputation derived
+from them was sufficient to obtain for him the office of physician
+to the public hospital at Lyons. But his professional books proving
+unsaleable, Rabelais, to indemnify his bookseller, wrote and published
+his _Pantagruel_, or _Chronique Gargantuine_, of which (as he says)
+more copies were sold in two months than of the Bible in ten years.
+Having thus discovered the secret of his power, he next produced the
+_Gargantua_; the work which has secured for him the admiration of all
+subsequent ages, though the reverence of none. It is a romance in
+which Rabelais may be considered as depicting the habits, opinions,
+errors, crimes, and follies of that age of religious and intellectual
+revolutions, in the centre of which he lived. Yet the critics have
+doubted, and must ever continue to doubt--whether Gargantua and his son
+Pantagruel are actual portraits of those who led the armaments (literary,
+theological, or military) of those times, or are mere impersonations of
+those abstract qualities by which the world was then governed--whether
+Panurge and Friar John had any living prototypes amongst the men of the
+sixteenth century--or whether the one is but a name for mediocrity,
+ceasing to be honest as it becomes conspicuous; and the other a name for
+sensuality, rescued from contempt by a shrewd and jovial spirit. But why
+investigate these and such other riddles, proposed by their author in
+avowed defiance of any such attempt? Why, indeed, read at all a book of
+which not only the general scope, but almost every page is enigmatical?
+Why squander time and patience on a writer who, of set purpose, makes his
+readers dependent on the guidance of some dull and doubtful commentator?
+For those passages which do reward the toil of the student are separated
+from each other, not only by this profound obscurity, but by foul abysses
+of impurity, which no skill or caution can always succeed in overleaping.
+I know not how to describe them in terms at once accurate and decorous,
+except by borrowing Mr. Carlyle’s denunciation of a work of Diderot’s,
+and saying with him, or in words resembling his, that he who, even
+undesignedly, shall come into contact with these parts of Rabelais’ great
+work, should forthwith plunge into running waters, and regard himself,
+for the rest of the day, as something more than ceremonially unclean.
+
+[Illustration: RABELAIS]
+
+Yet he whose business, or whose determination, it is to appreciate aright
+the civil, and therefore the literary, history of France, must needs
+pay this heavy price of knowledge. For, in that history, the romance
+of _Gargantua_ is an indispensable link. From the revival of heathen
+antiquity, Rabelais had gathered a mass of learning resembling the diet
+of his own Pantagruel, who had 4,600 cows milked every morning for his
+breakfast. From the revival of Christian antiquity, he had learned to
+despise the authority and the superstitions of the church of Rome;
+without, at the same time, learning to reverence the authority and the
+doctrines of the Gospel. He thus traversed the boundless expanse of
+human knowledge. He traversed it under the guidance of his own wit,
+sagacity, and humour, a wit, vaulting at a bound, from the arctic to the
+antarctic poles of thought; a sagacity embracing all the higher questions
+of man’s social existence, and many of the deeper problems of his moral
+constitution; and a humour which fairly baffles all attempts to analyse
+or to describe it. For it was the result, not of natural temperament
+alone, but also of the most assiduous and severe studies. The language
+of Greece had become as familiar to him as his mother-tongue; and, while
+he learned from Galen and Hippocrates to investigate the properties
+of living or of inert matter, he was trained, by Plato, to spiritual
+meditation, and by Lucian to a scepticism and a buffoonery, alike
+audacious and unintermitted. From the union of such a disposition and
+of such discipline, emerged the strange phenomenon of a philosopher in
+his revels. In contemplating it one knows not, as it has been well said,
+“whether to wonder most that such wisdom should ever assume the mask
+of folly, or that such folly should permit the growth and development
+of any true wisdom.” It is, however, an apparent, rather than a real,
+difficulty. The wisdom is never sublime, and the folly but seldom abject.
+Each is but a different aspect of a nature, of which the parts are,
+indeed, inharmonious, but not incompatible--of a genuine Epicurean gifted
+with gigantic powers, but of cold affections, and of debased appetites;
+ever worshipping and obeying his one idol, pleasure, though at one time
+she bids him soar to the empyrean, and at another commands him to wallow
+in the sty.
+
+Rabelais was wise in the sense in which any man may be so who delights in
+the strenuous exercise of a powerful understanding, and loves thinking
+for thinking’s sake. He was wise to detect popular fallacies, and to
+discern unpopular truths. He was wise to see how the young might be
+better educated, laws better made, nations better governed, wars more
+vigorously conducted, and peace more securely maintained. He was wise to
+call down both theology and philosophy from the skies above to the earth
+beneath us. And he was not more wise than eloquent; sometimes arraying
+truth in the noblest forms of speech, though more frequently enhancing
+her beauty by enveloping and contrasting her with the homeliest. At his
+prolific touch his native tongue germinated into countless new varieties
+of expression; and the mines of wealth, both intellectual and verbal,
+which he bequeathed to future ages, after being wrought by multitudes in
+each, still appear inexhaustible.
+
+The wisdom of Rabelais, was, however, of the world, worldly. It never
+ascended to the eternal fountains of light, nor descended to illuminate
+the dark places of the earth. It neither sought to interpret the awful
+mysteries of our nature, nor bowed down to adore in the contemplation
+of them. It aimed at no exalted ends, nor did it ever lead the way
+through any rugged and self-denying paths. It expressed neither sympathy
+for the wretchedness, nor pity for the sorrows, of mankind; but was
+satisfied to be shrewd, and witty, and comical upon them all. To the
+keen gaze of Rabelais, the frauds, and follies, and ignorance, and
+licentiousness of the papal court and priesthood afforded endless matter
+of scorn and merriment; but to his last hour he lived in their outward
+garb and communion. To that penetrating eye had been clearly revealed
+the majesty of the truth which the Reformers taught, and the majesty
+of the sufferings which they endured in its defence; but not one glow
+of enthusiasm could they ever kindle in his bosom, as they toiled in
+indigence, and died in martyrdom, to evangelise the world. Secure in the
+absolution of Clement VII for whatever he had done and written against
+the church, and secure in the license of Francis I, to publish whatever
+else he might please, Rabelais delighted to assume the character of a
+chartered libertine, or, as it might almost be said, of an intellectual
+debauchee. And yet, voluptuary, scoffer, and sceptic as he was, his
+laughter was so hearty, his glee so natural, his frolic so riotous, and
+his buffoonery so irresistible, that he became, not merely the tolerated,
+but the favoured and privileged, Momus of his times. He became also a
+proof to all later times, that, by the great mass of mankind, anything
+will be forgiven or permitted to genius, when, abandoning its native
+supremacy, it condescends to undertake the strangely inappropriate office
+of master of the revels.[c]
+
+“In the works of Rabelais,” says Michelet,[f] “the French language
+appeared in a greatness it never possessed before nor since. What
+Dante accomplished for Italian, Rabelais did for French. He employed
+and blended every dialect, the elements of every period and province
+developed in the Middle Age, adding the while a wealth of technical
+expression furnished by art and science. Another man would have been
+overwhelmed by this immense variety, but he,--he harmonised everything.
+Antiquity, especially the Greek genius, and a knowledge of all modern
+languages permitted him to envelop and master that of France.”
+Saintsbury[e] declares that the only two men who can be compared to
+him in character of work and force of genius combined are Lucian and
+Swift, adding: “He is much less of a mere mocker than Lucian, and he is
+entirely destitute, even when he deals with monks or pedants, of the
+ferocity of Swift. He neither sneers nor rages; the _rire immense_ which
+distinguishes him is altogether good-natured; but he is nearer to Lucian
+than to Swift, and Lucian is perhaps the author whom it is most necessary
+to know in order to understand him rightly.”[a]
+
+
+CALVIN
+
+[Illustration: CALVIN]
+
+One cannot better show how contrarieties are related than by the
+immediate transition from Francis Rabelais to John Calvin;[84] for,
+probably, no two men of commanding minds were ever more curiously
+contrasted with each other, as certainly no two minds were ever enshrined
+in bodies more dissimilar. To look upon, Rabelais was a drunken Silenus,
+Calvin a famished Ugolino. The one emptied his bottle before he wrote,
+while he was writing, and after he had written; the other contented
+himself with a repast of bread and water once in each six-and-thirty
+hours. Reposing in his easy chair, the merry doctor was hailed as lord of
+misrule by all the jovial spirits of his age; enthroned in the consistory
+of Geneva, the inexorable divine was dreaded as the disciplinarian of
+himself and of the whole subject city. The witty physician was L’Allegro,
+the austere minister Il Penseroso, of their generation. The reader of the
+_Gargantua_ yields by turns to disgust, to admiration, and to merriment;
+but Democritus himself would not have found matter for one passing smile
+throughout the whole of the _Christian Institute_. To Rabelais, human
+life appeared a farce as broad as the knights of Aristophanes; to Calvin,
+a tragedy more dismal than the Agamemnon of Æschylus. And as they wrote,
+so they also lived. The traditional stories about Rabelais, if true,
+attest his love, and, even if untrue, they attest his reputed love, of
+that kind of wit which is called practical; all the traditions of Calvin
+represent him as a man at whose appearance mirth instantly took flight.
+
+The gay doctor is made in these tales to play off his tricks on the
+graduates in medicine, on the chancellor du Prât, on the king and queen
+of France, and even on the mule of the pope himself; while the solemn
+theologian makes his domiciliary visits to ascertain that no dinner table
+at Geneva was rendered the pretext for levity of discourse, or for excess
+of diet.
+
+What, then, is the congruity on which to found any comparison between
+these most incongruous minds? The answer is (to borrow an expressive
+word), that they were both devoted _ergoists_, each of them being at once
+a mighty master, and a submissive slave, of logic.[c] With the religious
+significance of Calvin’s teaching we have no present concern. We shall
+have occasion to see something more of this in the course of our study of
+the Reformation. Here we are concerned rather with Calvin the writer--the
+author of the _Institution Chrétienne_.
+
+Published in 1536 this book was received with unbounded delight.[a]
+We may, indeed, reject the story, that a thousand editions of it were
+sold in his own lifetime; but we cannot dispute that, during a century
+and a half, it exercised an unrivalled supremacy over a large part of
+Protestant Europe. For that dominion it was indebted, in part, to the
+novelty and comprehensiveness of the design it accomplished,--to the
+vast compass of learning, scriptural, patristic, and historical, which
+it embraced,--to the depth and the height of the morality which it
+inculcated,--and to the calm but energetic keenness with which it exposed
+the errors of his adversaries. But the popularity and the influence of
+this remarkable book is also, in part, to be ascribed to its literary
+merits. Calvin has been described as the Bossuet of his age. Of all
+the French authors whom France had as yet produced, he was the most
+philosophical when he speculated, the most sublime when he adored, the
+most methodical and luminous in the development of truth, the most acute
+in the refutation of error, and the most obedient to that law or spirit
+of his nation, which demands symmetry in the proportions, harmony in the
+details, and concert in all the parts of every work of art, whether it be
+wrought by the pen, the pencil, or the chisel. In the ninth chapter of
+Bossuet’s _Histoire des Variations_ may, indeed, be found the best, as
+it is a very reluctant, eulogy on the literary excellence of his great
+rival and predecessor. Even in the haughty gloom which the bishop of
+Meaux discovers in the style and tone of the reformer of Geneva, there is
+a not inappropriate interest. The beautiful lake of that city, and the
+mountains which encircle it, lay before his eyes as he wrote; but they
+are said to have suggested to his fancy no images, and to have drawn from
+his pen not so much as one transient allusion. With his mental vision
+ever directed to that melancholy view of the state and prospects of our
+race, which he had discovered in the book of life, it would, indeed, have
+been incongruous to have turned aside to depict any of those glorious
+aspects of the creative benignity which were spread around him in the
+book of nature.
+
+
+MONTAIGNE
+
+The immediate effect of the servitude into which Calvin had subdued
+the minds of his disciples was to provoke a formidable revolt. When he
+was giving his latest touches to his _Institution Chrétienne_, Michel
+de Montaigne,[85] then in his twenty-second year, had just taken his
+seat in the Parliament of Bordeaux. That he afterwards became a deputy
+in the states-general of Blois, though maintained by no inconsiderable
+authorities, seems to me impossible; but it is clear that his early
+manhood was devoted to public, and especially to judicial, affairs. He
+was thus brought into contact with the busy world at the moment of a
+greater agitation of human society than had occurred since the overthrow
+of the Roman Empire. Marvellous revolutions, and discoveries still more
+marvellous, in the world of letters, of politics, of geography, and of
+religion,--the welfare of inappeasable passions,--the working of whatever
+is most base, and of whatever is most sublime, in our common nature,--and
+calamities which might seem to have fulfilled the most awful of the
+apocaliptic visions, had passed in rapid succession before the eyes
+of this acute and curious observer. It was an unwelcome and repulsive
+spectacle. He turned from it to seek the shelter and the repose of his
+hereditary mansion. In that retirement he indulged, or cherished, a
+spirit inflexibly opposed to the spirit by which his native country was
+convulsed. The age was idolatrous of novelties; and, therefore, Montaigne
+lived in the retrospect of a remote antiquity. It was an age of restless
+ambition; and, therefore, he passively committed himself and his fortunes
+to the current of events. The minds of other men were exploring the
+foundations, and criticising the superstructure, of every social polity;
+and, therefore, his mind was averted altogether from the affairs of the
+commonwealth. Because his neighbours yielded themselves to every gust
+of passion, he must be passionless. Because the times were treacherous,
+he must punctiliously cherish his personal honour. Because they were
+inhuman, he cultivated all the amenities of life. Because calamity swept
+over the world, he was enamoured of epicurean ease. Heroism was the boast
+of not a few, and to their virtues he paid the homage of an incredulous
+obeisance. Dogmatism was the habit of very many; and, therefore,
+Montaigne must surrender himself to an almost universal scepticism.
+
+[Illustration: MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE]
+
+The contrast was as captivating as it was complete. With a temper easily
+satisfied,--with affections as tranquil as they were kindly,--with a
+curiosity ever wakeful, but never impetuous,--with competency, health,
+friends, books, and leisure, Montaigne had all the means of happiness
+which can be brought within the reach of those to whom life is not a
+self-denying existence, but a pleasant pastime. Yet, with him, it was
+the pastime of an active, enlightened, and amiable mind. The study of
+man as a member of society was his chosen pursuit, but he conducted it
+in a mode altogether his own. The individual man, Michel Montaigne,
+such as he would be in every imaginable relation and office of society,
+was the subject of his daily investigation. He became, of all egotists,
+the most pleasant, versatile, and comprehensive. He produced complete
+sketches of himself with an air of the most unreserved frankness, and in
+a tone frequently passing from quiet seriousness to graceful badinage.
+He describes his tastes, his humours, his opinions, his frailties,
+his pursuits, and his associates with the most exuberant fertility of
+invention, and has wrought out a general delineation of our common
+humanity from the profound knowledge of a single member of it. And, as
+the variety is boundless, so is the unity well sustained. His essays
+are a mirror in which every reader sees his own image reflected, but
+in which he also sees the image of Montaigne reflecting it. There he
+is, ever changing, and yet ever the same. He looks on the world with
+a calm indifference, which would be repulsive were it not corrected
+by his benevolent curiosity about its history and its prospects. He
+has not one malignant feeling about him, except it be towards the
+tiresome, and especially towards such of them as provoke his yawns and
+his resentment by misplaced and by commonplace wisdom. He has a quick
+relish for pleasure, but with a preference for such pleasures as are
+social, inoffensive, and easily procured. He has a love for virtue, but
+chiefly, if not exclusively, when she exacts no great effort, nor any
+considerable sacrifice. He loves his fellow-men, but does not much, or
+seriously, esteem them. He loves study and meditation, but stipulates
+that they shall expose him to no disagreeable fatigue. He cherishes every
+temper which makes life pass sociably and pleasantly. He takes things as
+he finds them in perfect good humour, makes the best of them all, and
+never burdens his mind with virtuous indignation, unattainable hopes, or
+profitless regrets. In short, as exhibited in his own self-portraiture,
+he is an Epicurean, who knows how to make his better dispositions
+tributary to his comfort, and also knows how to prevent his evil tempers
+from troubling his repose.
+
+The picture of himself, which Montaigne thus holds up to his readers as a
+representation of themselves, is not sublime, nor is it beautiful; but it
+is a striking and a masterly likeness. It is drawn with inimitable grace
+and freedom, and with the most transparent perspicuity; and they who are
+best entitled to pronounce such a judgment, admire in his language a
+richness and a curious felicity unknown to any preceding French writers.
+Even they to whom his tongue is not native, can perceive that his style
+is the easy, the luminous, and the flexible vehicle of his thoughts, and
+never degenerates into a mere apology for the want of thought; and that
+his imagination, without ever disfiguring his ideas, however abstract,
+and however subtle they may be, habitually clothes them with the noblest
+forms and the most appropriate colouring.
+
+But our more immediate object is, to notice the relation in which
+Montaigne stands to the other great moral teachers of his native land,
+and to those habits of thought by which France is, and has so long
+been, characterised. The antagonist in everything of the spirit of his
+times, he seems to have regarded with peculiar aversion the peremptory
+confidence by which the great controversy of his age was conducted, both
+by the adherents of Rome and by the founder of Calvinism. Because they
+would admit no doubt whatever, every form of doubt found harbour with
+him. Because they were dogmatists, he must be a sceptic.
+
+In M. Faugère’s edition of Pascal’s _Thoughts_ will be found the famous
+dialogue on the scepticism of Montaigne, between Pascal and De Sacy,--a
+delineation so exquisite, that it seems mere folly to attempt any
+addition to it. The genius of Port Royal, however, exhibits there its
+severity, not less than its justice; and a few words may not be misplaced
+in the attempt to mitigate a little of the rigour of the condemnation.
+Montaigne was a sceptic (as very many are), because his sagacity and
+diligence were buoyant enough to raise his mind to the clouds which float
+over our heads, but were not buoyant enough to elevate him to the pure
+regions of light which lie beyond them. His learning was various rather
+than recondite. It was drawn chiefly from Latin authors, and from the
+Latin authors of a degenerating age; not from Cicero or Virgil, but from
+Seneca and Pliny. Of Greek he knew but little, though he was profoundly
+conversant with the translation of Plutarch, with which Amyot had lately
+rendered all French readers familiar. From such masters Montaigne did
+not learn, and could not have learned, the love of truth. They taught
+him rather to content himself with loose historical gossip, and with
+half-formed notions in philosophy. They taught him not how to resolve,
+but how to amuse himself with the great problems of human existence. They
+encouraged his characteristic want of seriousness and earnestness of
+purpose. From such studies, and from the events of his life and times, he
+learned to flutter over the surface of things, and to traverse the whole
+world of moral, religious, and political inquiry, without finding, and
+without seeking, a resting-place. His aimless curiosity and versatile
+caprice form at once the fascination and the vice of his writings,
+though not indeed their only vice, for the name of Montaigne belongs to
+that melancholy roll of the great French sceptical writers--Rabelais,
+Montesquieu, Bayle, Voltaire, and Diderot--who, not content to assault
+the principles of virtue, have so far debased themselves, as laboriously
+to stimulate the disorderly appetites of their readers.
+
+Yet the scepticism of Montaigne was not altogether such as theirs is. He
+has none of their dissolute revelry in confounding the distinctions of
+truth and falsehood, of good and evil. He does not, like some of them,
+delight in the darkness with which he believes the mind of man to be
+hopelessly enveloped. He rather placidly and contentedly acquiesces in
+the conviction that truth is beyond his reach. He could amuse himself
+with doubt, and play with it. With few positive and no dearly cherished
+opinions, he had no ardour for any opinion, and had not the slightest
+desire to make proselytes to his own Pyrrhonism. He was, on the contrary,
+to the last degree, tolerant of dissent from his own judgment; and, in
+the lack of other opponents, was prompt, and even glad, to contradict
+himself. Of all human infirmities, dulness, and obscurity, and vehemence,
+are those from which he was most exempt. Of all human passions, the zeal
+which fires the bosom of a missionary is that from which he was the most
+remote. We associate with him as one of the most pleasant of all our
+illustrious companions, and quit him as one of the least impressive of
+all our eminent instructors.[c]
+
+Montaigne’s fame has passed through several very different phases. Among
+his own contemporaries it grew without overstepping a somewhat restricted
+circle of enlightened minds. After that, the main current of French
+thought took a direction opposite to that of Montaigne’s. Dogmatism
+returned and the seventeenth century in general adhered to it. Pascal
+launched anathemas at Montaigne. But the sumptuous edifice of the age of
+Louis XIV soon crumbled away, and Montaigne came forward again, hailed as
+a glorious ancestor by the entire age of Voltaire and Rousseau. To-day
+he has ceased to arouse any tempests, but he occupies his uncontested
+place in the national pantheon. He will live as a writer as long as
+French literature exists, for like the other great sixteenth century
+writers, men of strong individualities like Rabelais and Calvin, he had
+his own language as well as his own thought--a language sovereignly
+free, eternally young, inimitable, and above all a fertile source of
+rejuvenation for the whole language. He will live as a philosopher as
+long as men practise the axiom of the _Essays_, “Know thyself.”[d]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[83] [The date of Rabelais’ birth is not certain, although most
+authorities place it about 1483. Of his early years very little is
+known, but from 1519 his history is more definite. He was educated at a
+convent school and, after his entrance into the Franciscan order, devoted
+himself to serious study. In 1524 he became a Benedictine, this change of
+order and dwelling-place being attributed by some to a disgust with the
+cloister. Six years later he is found studying medicine in Montpellier
+and afterwards practising in Lyons. John du Bellay, bishop of Paris, took
+him with him to Rome in 1534 as physician. Rabelais died at Paris in
+1553.]
+
+[84] [John Calvin, the celebrated Protestant reformer and theologian,
+was born at Noyon, Picardy, France, in 1509, and died at Genoa, May
+27th, 1564. His father, Gerard Calvin, was a notary-apostolic and
+procurator-fiscal for the lordship of Noyon, besides holding other
+ecclesiastical offices. His early years are obscure, but from childhood
+he showed great religious feeling and an intense earnestness. He studied
+at Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, and although brought up with the
+intention of entering the priesthood, after close study of the Bible, he
+embraced the Reformation. In 1532 Calvin published his first work, an
+edition of Seneca’s _De Clementia_ with an elaborate commentary. In 1533,
+on account of speeches in opposition to the court, he was banished from
+Paris and it is said it was during his retirement at Saintonge that he
+made his first sketch of his _Institution Chrétienne_. His other works
+are all of a religious nature, mostly controversial. A great many of
+these are of an exegetical character, of which his expository comments
+or homilies on the books of Scripture are by some considered the most
+valuable of his works. (For a further account of Calvin, see the history
+of the Reformation movement, volume xiii.)]
+
+[85] Lacépède, referring to Montaigne’s _Essays_, says: “In a work that
+one reads again with delight and self-improvement, Michel de Montaigne
+has given a new glory to France.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, was born
+at Périgord, of an ancient and noble family, in 1533. Perhaps the finish
+of his _Essays_, his principal work, is due to his early training, his
+father having so managed his education, that at the age of five he spoke
+the purest Latin, and, as an old book gives it, “was also taught Greek by
+way of recreation.” He was married at the age of thirty-three. He lived
+at the court of Francis II and Henry VIII. He became mayor of Bordeaux in
+1581 and in 1592; according to one old chronicle, “he died a constant and
+philosophic death, when he was some months short of sixty.” His _Essays_
+were first published in 1580; the edition of 1588 was the last to be
+published in the author’s lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII AND THE RISE OF RICHELIEU
+
+
+THE REGENCY OF MARIE DE’ MEDICI
+
+[Sidenote: [1610-1628 A.D.]]
+
+The terrible instability of the monarchical government is revealed upon
+the death of Henry IV, who left as his successor a child of eight years.
+What follows is the opposite of what he desired; France turned inside out
+like a glove.
+
+The treasure that Sully had amassed and protected is squandered in
+a moment, the domain that he cleared of debt is remortgaged, the
+possessions of the state are sold. All the institutions of this reign are
+abandoned, buildings are interrupted, canals given up. The manufactories
+of silk and of glass, the Savonnerie and the Gobelins are closed and
+the workmen discharged. The Louvre, which was to be degraded by lodging
+great inventors--the Louvre is left to the courtiers. Adieu to the museum
+of trades and the Jardin des Plantes; these hobbies of the king, and a
+thousand others sleep on the charts of Sully. At the Tuileries, at the
+arsenal, Henry’s favourite trees, his mulberries, are removed. But for
+fear of the people his monuments would be torn down. By an unexpected
+change the people discover that they loved Henry IV. The legend begins
+the day of his death; it will go on increasing by comparison of what is,
+with what was.
+
+Paris at this moment was dominated by an extraordinary terror. The
+people believed themselves lost. Women tore their hair, less from grief
+than from fear. It was the same everywhere. The terror of the league
+returned to people’s minds and caused them to tremble. Hence there was
+a surprising, or rather a striking calm. For this great wisdom stuck to
+one thing--that is, that France, having neither idea, nor passion, nor
+moral interest, should no longer have a feeling of life. It was entirely
+identified with the king, with a man who had been killed; and what
+remained? A boy of eight who on the 15th of May surrendered the kingdom
+to his mother and on the 29th got a flogging.[b]
+
+The last dispositions of Henry, on his intended departure to head his
+army, had appointed his queen, Marie de’ Medici, regent: this was
+strongly in her favour as dowager; and she now found little difficulty in
+assuming the same authority. The duke d’Épernon, her partisan, summoned
+the parliament, and procured their acquiescence, not, however, without
+having made some show of menace. This seemed unnecessary: of the princes
+of the blood, three in number, who could alone have pretended to the
+regency, Condé was absent in the Netherlands, his brother of Conti was
+imbecile, whilst their uncle, the count de Soissons, also absent, was at
+enmity with every influential personage.
+
+[Sidenote: [1610-1614 A.D.]]
+
+It was to Sully that Henry’s death came as the greatest blow. Sully was
+panic-struck; he saw in the murder a Catholic plot, and dreaded a renewal
+of the massacres of St. Bartholomew’s eve; he accordingly shut himself
+up with his followers in the Bastille, which he hastily provisioned by
+carrying off all the bread from the bakers’ shops around. By the morrow,
+however, his suspicions had subsided, and he appeared at the court of the
+regent. [He was cordially received; a reconciliation was effected, and
+the queen got what she was after,--the treasure that Sully had stored up
+in the Bastille.]
+
+Marie de’ Medici was of a weak character; she was simple womanhood,
+unenforced by either firmness or sagacity. She had come to France a
+stranger; and wanting both charms and wit, she had never acquired any
+influence either with her husband or amongst the followers of his
+court. Marie, therefore, shrank back into her private circle, and made
+confidants and counsellors of her two Italian domestics, the woman,
+Leonora Galigaï, and Concini, the husband of Leonora. These upstart
+personages, full of all the meanness and narrowness of their calling,
+had frequently fanned the petty jealousies of the queen against Henry;
+and now it was to be feared their influence would be perniciously felt.
+Marie, however, was as yet too conscious of her weakness and inability.
+She had a vague idea of the justice of the late king’s policy in keeping
+down the noblesse, that now pressed around her, and terrified her with
+their pretensions and their quarrels. She therefore had recourse to those
+best fitted to guide her--the ministers of the late monarch, Villeroi
+the secretary, Sillery the chancellor, the president Jeannin, and
+Sully, superintendent of finances: these, except Sully, had none of the
+pretensions and haughty bearing of the noblesse; and Marie felt no loss
+of her will and authority in being guided by them.
+
+It would prove a wearisome task either to narrate or to peruse an
+account of the cabals, quarrels, duels, and claims of the personages
+and princes amongst each other, and with or against the regent, during
+the three years which followed Henry’s death. They formed a repetition
+of the conspiracies and alliances of the aristocracy against Catherine
+de’ Medici half a century previous, except that at that time there were
+at least some noble characters and some serious aims. Whatever might be
+said of Châtillon or of Guise, they were animated by high views; but
+the political puppets who occupied the scene during Marie de’ Medici’s
+regency, wanted not courage--indeed they were quite as ready as their
+predecessors to slay each other in duels--but purpose, at least other
+purpose than immediate greed, they had none. There were some examples
+of ferocity in Louis XIII’s early days, which reminded one of Charles
+IX--the chevalier de Guise, meeting the baron de Luz and running him
+through the body, and being universally censured for the act until he
+redeemed the murder by slaying the young De Luz, son of the baron, in
+a fiercely-contested duel. This spirit, which showed itself in private
+broils, never rose into a public sentiment. One would have thought that
+in the army which Henry had formed, and amongst the officers whom he had
+honoured with his patronage and friendship, there might have been some
+who burned to distinguish themselves in prosecuting that war against the
+house of Austria which the monarch had planned. Not one noble opposed
+the peace; not one soldier of note raised his voice in behalf of the
+spirited policy of the late king; scarcely even a Huguenot. For Bouillon
+was immersed in the intrigues of Concini, and Lesdiguières was tempted by
+the title of duke and peer, as he afterwards was by that of constable.
+
+
+_Disgrace of Sully_
+
+As long, however, as the rigid Sully held the finances under his care,
+there was a check to spoliation, as well as a generous voice in the
+council to support the sage, the firm, and yet conciliating measures of
+the late monarch. He was at first retained, indeed, for the sake of the
+stern negative which he was wont to put on the demands of the greedy
+courtiers, as well as from fear or respect of his influence with the
+Huguenots. But his economical temper became soon a disagreeable restraint
+upon the queen herself; and the duke de Bouillon, an indefatigable votary
+of intrigue, offering to effect more than even Sully in conciliating and
+quieting the Huguenots, this old and upright minister of the great Henry,
+was dismissed. Despite his probity, his able administration, and the
+esteem of Henry, a cloud would rest on the character of Sully but for the
+honest and simple exculpation contained in his own memoirs. His austere
+and rude manners made him many enemies. Most of his contemporaries unite
+in accusing him; and, strange to say, the only family, beyond his own,
+whose friendship and good-will he preserved in his retreat, was that of
+Guise.
+
+The disgrace of Sully left the treasure of the late king completely at
+the regent’s disposal, who dissipated it by bribing prince and noble to
+remain quiet. The favour of Leonora Galigaï and her husband Concini, now
+Marshal d’Ancre, became more apparent. The avarice of these foreigners
+knew no bounds: not content with the purchase of a marquisate, and the
+dignity of marshal, Concini contrived to get some of the principal
+fortresses of the kingdom in his possession--Péronne amongst others, and
+the citadel of Amiens. Épernon, on his side, secured Metz; whilst the
+count de Soissons and the prince of Condé, despite their pensions and
+their submission, by turns thwarted the court, and threw it into disorder
+by their private quarrels. Although the marshal d’Ancre and his wife were
+the chief favourites of the queen-regent, Villeroi was nevertheless the
+counsellor whose views, in matters of serious policy, she principally
+adopted. Villeroi, say the _Mémoires_ attributed to Richelieu,[e] bred
+in the civil wars, had imbibed their virulence, which he repressed
+during the life of Henry. Instead of now recommending that monarch’s
+conciliating policy, which Sully upheld, Villeroi said that there were
+but two parties in the state, Catholic and Protestant, and that the
+government must necessarily embrace one or the other. He leaned to the
+Catholic side, and supported the project of strengthening it by marrying
+the young king to a daughter of Spain, rather than to a princess of
+Lorraine or Savoy, as had been the advice of Henry. The prince of Condé,
+however, urged by the duke de Bouillon, opposed the ministry in this,
+for no reason, apparently, except the sake of making opposition. And for
+the time, Louis XIII being as yet but nine years of age, the project was
+allowed to slumber.[d]
+
+
+_First Revolt of the Lords (1614 A.D.)_
+
+The pretensions of the nobles grew with the weakness of the government.
+“The presents of the queen,” said Richelieu, “stilled the great hunger of
+their avarice and ambition; but it was by no means extinct. The treasury
+and the coffers of the Bastille were exhausted; then they aspired to
+so great things that royal authority could not possibly give them the
+increase of power which they demanded.” What they wanted in fact was
+governorships for themselves and their families, places of surety, and
+the dismemberment of France. Épernon was governor of Metz, but Henry,
+being afraid of that proud noble, had imposed a lieutenant upon him, who
+occupied the citadel and corresponded directly with the ministers. The
+very day of the king’s death Épernon hastened an order to take possession
+of the lieutenant and the citadel. He had a strong place at that time
+only two steps from the Spaniards, which people called “his kingdom of
+Austrasia.” Many lords at the news of the assassination had thus thrown
+themselves into the cities with which they had an understanding, and some
+did not wish to ever come out again or wished at any rate to return.
+“The time of kings is past,” they said, “that of the nobles is come.”
+The first refusal of the regent brought about a civil war. Condé took up
+arms and published a manifesto in which he accused the court of having
+debased the nobility, ruined the finances, and taxed the poor--singular
+reproaches in the mouth of a prince who with his friends had received the
+best part of this money of the poor. He concluded according to custom by
+demanding the convocation of the states-general to work at the reform of
+existing abuses.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH COURTIERS, TIME OF LOUIS XIII]
+
+Brought up in the Catholic faith, although born of a Protestant family,
+Condé hoped to rally both parties to his cause. A large number of lords
+came to take their places under his standard, at their head the dukes de
+Vendôme, de Longueville, de Luxemburg, de Mayenne, de Nevers, de Retz,
+etc. The Calvinists refused to be associated in this rising in arms. “We
+have all the liberty for our consciences,” said they, “which we could
+desire, and we do not wish to abandon our wives and our houses to satisfy
+the appetite of some factious persons.” The Catholics did not take fire
+either. Since the estates of the league, popular passions had been
+greatly appeased. The party of tolerant politicians born with L’Hôpital,
+and come to power under Henry IV, now counted nearly all members of the
+cloth and bourgeoisie. The experience which had been so cruelly bought
+by the civil war was not lost. The nation compared the twelve years of
+prosperity it had enjoyed, with those thirty-eight years of massacres
+and pillaging, and held close to the throne; leaving the great lords to
+exercise their sterile ambition in space. “The people,” wrote Malherbe at
+that moment, “remain obedient everywhere, and without them nothing can
+be done.” Let a firm hand take the rudder and even the most turbulent
+will return to the quiet in which Henry IV had held them. Some of Henry
+IV’s old ministers, Villeroi, Jeannin, counselled the queen to act with
+vigour. She preferred to make terms at Ste. Menehould (May 15th, 1614).
+The prince of Condé received 450,000 livres in cash; the duke of Mayenne
+300,000 “to get married”; M. de Longueville 100,000 livres pension, etc.
+But the court, wanting to gain on one side what it had lost on the other,
+did not pay the stockholders of the Hôtel-de-Ville in that year. That was
+what was done for “the poor.”[f] And the court assented to the call of
+the states-general.
+
+
+_Last Assembly of the States-General_
+
+The states-general, assembled at Paris in 1614, demands especial
+attention, not only as the last of these national assemblies previous to
+the Revolution (at the commencement of which it was continually referred
+to as affording precedent), but as a scene in which the political
+feelings and views of the age were completely developed. We have an
+ample account of the sittings and discussions of the commons or third
+order, written by Florimond Rapine,[g] a member, one of the king’s
+advocates. From this we learn that the majority of the lower chamber
+were lawyers, and a considerable portion nobles, almost all the king’s
+lieutenant-generals being elected by their several governments. The most
+important consideration in the eyes of all was evidently the respective
+dignity of persons and classes. The first two months were consumed in
+disputes of precedence, in ceremonials, in mutual compliments between the
+orders at first, and afterwards in mutual abuse. Miron, provost of the
+merchants of the city of Paris, was elected president. The address of
+the commons to the king was spoken by this magistrate on his knees; the
+deputies were clothed in simple black, whilst priests and nobles shone in
+gold, and an attempt of the president to wear his city robes of red and
+blue in a procession was looked upon as a monstrous piece of ambition.
+
+The grievance most odious to the nation was the enormity of pensions
+granted to the princes and chief officers. Against these the commons
+and the clergy joined in lifting up their voice. The next demand
+was to abolish the venality of the judicature, and the right of the
+_paulette_, a kind of annual fine, paid by the officers of parliament,
+in consideration of which their offices were considered hereditary. This
+demand the chamber of the commons could not in decency oppose; but being
+principally lawyers and provincial governors, it was their interest to
+preserve the _paulette_, and they therefore slurred over the question,
+and laid greater stress on the necessity of abating the _taille_, which
+pressed upon the people. Thus, the nobles insisting on abolishing the
+hereditary right to their offices held by the legists, the legists or
+commons retaliated by demanding the retrenchment of pensions; and a
+struggle ensued between them. Savaron, an orator of eloquence in the
+_tiers_, exclaimed against the mercenary spirit of the noblesse, which,
+he said, had forsaken the pursuit of honour for the worship of the
+goddess Pecune, and bartered even its fidelity for a price. The nobles
+were indignant at this, and demanded an apology. De Mesme, another
+member of the _tiers_, was deputed to explain, and he made matters
+infinitely worse. “France,” said he, “had three children: The clergy, if
+not the eldest born, had at least, like Jacob, got the heritage and the
+blessing, and therefore were to be considered the eldest. Next came the
+noblesse, the second son--fiefs, counties, and commands, were its share.
+The youngest born was the commons, whose portion was the offices of the
+judicature. But,” concluded the orator, “let not the noblesse presume too
+much over the _tiers_; since it often happens that the cadets of a great
+family restore to it that honour and illustration which has been thrown
+away by the elder brethren.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1614-1615 A.D.]]
+
+The difference of interest between the states rendered their meeting
+productive of no effect. The regent would willingly have reduced the
+pensions of the great, and destroyed the _paulette_, or hereditary
+right of the legists to their offices; but she feared to outrage the
+princes by the first, whilst uncertain of the support of the commons.
+Nothing accordingly was decided on. The _cahiers_ or remonstrances
+of the states were presented, were smilingly received, and slept in
+the king’s hands. The assembly was dissolved. The queen took her own
+inactivity and inability for prudence. It proved the contrary. The
+party of the princes leagued with that of the legists, the union being
+effected by the exertions and intrigues of the duke de Bouillon. As the
+assembly of the states had proved an empty ceremony, all its advice and
+remonstrance being disregarded, the legists of the parliament were urged
+to put themselves forward as the popular representatives, and finish the
+work that the states had vainly attempted. The chambers of parliament
+accordingly assembled, and began by summoning the great peers to join
+them, and form a court of peers for taking into consideration the affairs
+of the kingdom.
+
+This bold act was the inspiration of Bouillon. The court was terrified,
+and with good cause; but the parliament itself was almost equally
+intimidated by its own boldness, and showed but hesitation when the queen
+put forth her authority. Nevertheless, the peers being forbidden to join
+the parliament,--an injunction that Condé had the weakness to obey,--the
+legists prepared their remonstrances; amongst which were not only all
+the demands of the states, but also a claim that no act of the king
+should have force unless freely registered by the parliament, and that
+the parliament should have the right of summoning a court of peers and
+great officers, when occasion required. These remonstrances they insisted
+on reading in public before the young king, who showed a favourable and
+benign countenance, whilst that of the regent was convulsed with anger.
+But this bold attempt to put a check on the royal authority utterly
+failed: an edict of the king reproved the audacity of the parliament; and
+the latter who had been urged on more by the intrigues of the princes
+than by any conscientious or firm love of liberty and the public good,
+yielded pusillanimously, when affairs began to assume the appearance of
+an open rupture. Condé acted pusillanimously, also, in not declaring
+himself, and taking his place in the parliament, to which his secret
+promises of support could not impart sufficient confidence. It ended
+by the court obtaining the upper hand, and in the consequent revolt of
+Condé; the queen resolving, at the same time, to fulfil the project of
+the double marriage with Spain.
+
+
+MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII; MARRIAGE WITH ANNE OF AUSTRIA
+
+[Sidenote: [1615-1616 A.D.]]
+
+Marie de’ Medici, with the young king, set out for Bordeaux, to meet
+his future spouse. It was a military enterprise rather than a nuptial
+procession, the court marching at the head of an army, whilst it was
+pursued by Condé with an equal force. Both sides avoided an action. The
+king arrived at Bordeaux, despatched his sister Elizabeth, who was to
+espouse the infante of Spain, to the Pyrenees, and received in return
+Anne of Austria, a young and not unlovely princess of fifteen. The
+marriage was celebrated at Bordeaux in November, 1615. Louis XIII was now
+of age; the possession of a wife gave him the consciousness of manhood,
+and he began accordingly to feel and to express a will of his own that
+disquieted and constrained the queen-mother, no longer regent.
+
+One of the young monarch’s most dominant tastes was falconry, and as he
+was not allowed to follow it in the fields, he kept a number of these
+birds of prey in his apartments. A young man, of the name of De Luynes,
+charged with the care of them, interested the king by his knowledge and
+conversation on such subjects. He soon became a favourite. And Marie de’
+Medici, who discovered the rising sun, made repeated offers to resign
+her authority, which Louis was not prepared to accept. She then sought
+to conciliate Luynes, but he, ambitious and desirous of full power, held
+aloof, and continued in the king’s presence to criticise the feeble
+administration of Marie and the prodigal folly of Concini.
+
+Feeling her influence undermined, and humouring the impatience of the
+young monarch and his queen, who longed to visit Paris, she concluded a
+new accommodation with Condé, greatly to the advantage of that prince.
+He was allowed to participate in the government, and to sign the decrees
+of the council. The queen objected to granting this power, but she was
+overruled by Villeroi, who observed that this would put the prince always
+in the king’s power, by bringing him to the Louvre.
+
+“There is no danger,” said he, “in trusting the pen to a hand, the arm of
+which you hold.” The duke de Longueville superseded the marshal D’Ancre
+in the government of Picardy. The Huguenots, who had armed for Condé, had
+also their recompense. The court and royal authority was, in fact, at the
+feet of this young chief of the noblesse.
+
+
+RICHELIEU APPEARS
+
+The queen-dowager saw the condition to which her weakness had reduced
+her. The marshal D’Ancre was her only friend, and, from the general odium
+borne to him, he proved more a weight than a support. Another counsellor
+indeed she had, a man attached both to her and D’Ancre, and who was well
+capacitated to counsel her in this extremity. This was Armand du Plessis
+Richelieu, bishop of Luçon, who had somewhat distinguished himself in the
+states-general of 1614.[d]
+
+[Illustration: COMING OF AGE OF LOUIS XIII. (BY RUBENS)
+
+(From the painting in the Louvre)]
+
+A painter who was remarkably faithful and conscientious in art and in
+life--the Fleming, Philip de Champagne--has left us a true representation
+of the fine, strong, and spare figure of the cardinal De Richelieu. This
+Jansenist painter would have disdained to relieve or enrich the gray
+image with a ray of light, as Rubens or Murillo would have done. That
+would have been changing the nature of the grave, unpromising subject.
+The eye would have been pleased and art better satisfied, but it would
+not have been true to history. It must be remembered that this was the
+epoch of the monochrome, when plain glass was replacing the stained glass
+of the sixteenth century. In France especially the taste for colour was
+dead.
+
+Gray everywhere. Literary gray in Malherbe. Religious gray in Berulle and
+the Oratory. The new-born Port-Royal aims at dullness, one might almost
+say at mediocrity. Pascal will appear in thirty years. The colour is very
+good here, but moderate in very truth, neither too much nor too little.
+A learned master among masters, the good Philip nevertheless stuck so
+closely to nature and went so deeply into it that he satisfies both the
+conceptions of history and the popular impression. History recognises in
+this gray-bearded phantom with its lustreless gray eye and its fine spare
+hands the grandson of the prevost of Henry III who assassinated Guise.
+He comes towards you, and you do not feel reassured. That personage has
+indeed the appearance of life, but is it truly a man, a soul? Yes, an
+intellect certainly, strong, clear, and shall we say luminous, or dark
+and sinister? If he would take a few steps further we should be face
+to face. He does not inspire anxiety, but one fears that this strong
+head has nothing in its breast, neither heart nor vitals. In trials of
+witchcraft there have been too many of these evil spirits that will not
+remain in the lower regions, but return and disturb the world.
+
+What contrasts in him--so hard, so yielding; so complete, so broken! By
+how many tortures he must have been moulded, formed, and unformed, let us
+say rather disarticulated, to have become that eminently artificial thing
+which goes without going, advances without appearing, and noiselessly, as
+though gliding over a deadened carpet--then, having arrived, overthrows
+everything. He looks at you from the depths of his mystery, this
+red-robed sphinx; one dare not say from the depths of his craftiness.
+For, in contrast with the ancient sphinx, which dies if one divines it,
+this one seems to say: “Whoever divines me shall die.” If one should
+be densely and profoundly ignorant of Richelieu,[e] one must read his
+_Mémoires_. All the people of this race, Sulla, Tiberius, and others,
+have written memoirs or caused them to be written, in order to render
+history difficult, to baffle men, to disconcert the public, and above
+all to connect the beginning of their lives with the end and to disguise
+somewhat the terrible contradictions of their different periods.
+
+His ill-fortune forced him to have merit early. He was the youngest
+of three brothers. His family was not rich, and had intermarried with
+plebeians. The eldest brother, who was at court, spent everything. The
+second, who held the bishopric of Luçon, became a Carthusian; and as this
+bishopric did not leave the family, the third, our Richelieu, had to
+become a churchman, in spite of his military taste. The eldest brother
+was killed in a duel, too late for his cadet, who would have taken his
+place and would never have become a priest. He perhaps was not born
+ill-natured, but he became so. The contradiction between his character
+and his robe gave him that rich fund of ill humour to which is due his
+great strength--“the bitterness of blood, which alone makes him win
+battles.” His battles as priest could only be theological. He promptly
+transmitted his theses with great ostentation to the Sorbonne, dedicating
+them to Henry IV, and offering himself to the king for important
+services. Then he went to Rome to be consecrated, to offer himself to the
+pope. Neither the king nor the pope responded to the impatience of the
+ardent young politician.
+
+Then he sadly fell back upon his bishopric of Luçon, which was poor
+enough and in a country of disputes, near to La Rochelle and the
+Huguenots. This nearness caused him annoyance; in spite of violent
+headaches, he wrote against them. He is not without talent. His pen is
+a sword, short and keen, well-fitted for disputation. He does not dwell
+dully upon the absurd. If he writes nonsense he does not do it like a
+fool. He has a happy insolence and bold turns of thought; and retreats
+haughtily, and by this means he makes a very good showing.
+
+For all that, he would have remained in his obscurity at Luçon if he had
+had nothing but his controversy. But he was a handsome fellow, a fine
+porcelain creature. Concini was of faience. The handsome Bellegarde,
+a beau since the time of Henry III, was getting worn out. These
+considerations influenced the queen-mother, and she took him as her
+almoner.[b]
+
+[Sidenote: [1616-1617 A.D.]]
+
+It was the 30th of November, 1616, that Richelieu entered the ministry
+for the first time. The Spanish ambassador, the duke of Monteleone,
+showed keen satisfaction at his accession and wrote to Madrid that there
+was “no better than he in France for the service of God, of the crown
+of Spain, and of the public good”--of the public good, as the heirs of
+Philip II understood it! This diplomat had not the gift of divination!
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME OF THE TIME OF LOUIS XIII]
+
+The majestic drama of the ministry of the great Richelieu thus opens
+as a comedy of intrigue. It is by no means probable that he began his
+career by deceiving the pope in order to obtain his bishop’s bull, but
+it seems certain that he got into power by deceiving Spain and preparing
+to deceive and supplant Concini. He was determined to gain power at any
+price; he felt himself necessary; an irresistible force was driving him
+forward! In this feverish need of action by which he is devoured he
+passes over all obstacles, perhaps even over those of conscience and
+personal dignity as over others. He flatters those who despise him,
+caresses those who hate him, and lowers to vain mediocrity that brow
+which was made for empire. He hides at the bottom of his soul all his
+nobler and better feelings, as one would conceal criminal tendencies.
+Unfortunate novitiate of political greatness! There will always be very
+different opinions of Richelieu according to whether one studies the end
+or the means, the public man or the private man. Richelieu never was
+false to the duties of the statesman toward his country’s greatness,
+but he was unfortunately less faithful to the laws of morality and of
+humanity.[h]
+
+Marie was not aware of the merit of this personage; yet it may have been
+by his bold counsel that she ventured a stroke of policy, of boldness
+unusual to her, in arresting Condé in the Louvre, and sending him to
+the Bastille. The noblesse, his partisans, instantly fled to raise
+their followers. The Parisian mob collected, and showed its humour by
+pillaging the hôtel of the marshal D’Ancre; there, however, its fury
+subsided. The queen was victorious, and the fugitive partisans of Condé
+were reduced to impotent exclamation of vengeance and rage. Their cause,
+however, was not lost. The young king had joined his mother in the
+project for getting rid of Condé; but in delivering himself from one
+master, Louis was mortified to find that he had given himself another.
+The marshal D’Ancre now ruled uncontrolled at court and in council; and
+the pride of Louis was even more hurt by the ascendency of the upstart
+Concini than by that of Condé. Luynes, his favourite, and the young
+nobles who composed his court, flattered the monarch’s pride, and fanned
+his resentment. Marie de’ Medici deemed this knot of striplings to be
+occupied in pleasure, whilst they meditated a plot. The arrest of Condé
+was a precedent and example.[d]
+
+
+ASSASSINATION OF MARSHAL D’ANCRE
+
+It was well to have arrested the prince de Condé, said Richelieu;
+one might have done as much for Concini. Strange forgetfulness of
+circumstances; the king had no one, and his man Vitry, captain of the
+guards, did not have the guards with him. Concini on the contrary never
+went anywhere unless surrounded by thirty gentlemen. Vitry collected
+fifteen with great difficulty, hid them, and armed them with pistols
+under their coats.
+
+They chose the moment when Concini came to make his usual morning visit
+to the queen. He was on the Louvre bridge with his large escort. Vitry
+was so frightened that he passed without seeing him, having him before
+his eyes. When told, he returned. “I arrest you!” “_A mi!_” (“to my
+aid!”) cried Concini. He had not finished when three or four pistol shots
+went off and blew his brains out. “It is by order of the king,” said
+Vitry. Only one of Concini’s men had put his hand to his sword (April
+24th, 1617).
+
+The Corsican Ornano took the king, raised him in his arms, and showed
+him at the window. The people did not understand. It was first said that
+Concini had wounded the king. But when it was known it was he on the
+contrary who had been killed, there was an explosion of joy throughout
+the whole city. The queen-mother was very much frightened. Her one
+cry was “_Poveretta di me!_” However, what had she to fear? Whatever
+antipathy her son might feel for her he could not dream of bringing her
+to judgment. He was satisfied with removing her guards. The doors of
+her apartments were walled up, save one. She showed no pity for Concini
+or his widow. When someone said to her: “Madame, your majesty alone can
+inform her of the death of her husband”--“Ah, I have many other things
+to do! If you can’t tell it to her, sing it to her; cry in her ears:
+_L’Hanno ammazzato_.” Terrible word; it was the very same that Concini
+had used to the queen the day of Henry IV’s death, when he told her the
+news that she knew only too well. Leonora tremblingly sought refuge with
+her. She refused it. Then that woman to whom the queen had confided her
+crown diamonds (as a resource in case of misfortune) undressed and went
+to bed, hiding her diamonds under her. She was pulled from her bed;
+everything was ransacked; the room was pillaged. She was taken to the
+Conciergerie. Paris was in a state of celebration. The crowd hunted and
+disinterred her husband’s body, which was solemnly burned in front of
+Henry IV’s statue in token of expiation. It was said that a madman had
+bitten out the heart and eaten a piece of it.
+
+The life of the queen-mother hung by a thread. Among the murderers,
+several would have liked to kill her, thinking that she might arise later
+and avenge the death of her lover. But Luynes would have dared neither to
+counsel the royal child to do such a thing nor to do it without orders.
+He saved her by surrounding her with the king’s guards. The Capuchin
+Travail, Père Hilaire, who had formerly intrigued against the marriage
+of Marie de’ Medici, and who was actor and executor in the murder of her
+favourite, thought that nothing was accomplished unless she perished.
+He applied to a man of her party who had access to her at will, her
+equerry Bressieux, trying to get him to kill her. The equerry refused.
+“Never mind,” said Travail, “I will bring it about that the king goes
+to Vincennes; and then I will have her torn in pieces by the people.”
+Luynes, who had promised the Capuchin the archbishopric of Bourges if he
+aided in killing Concini, did not wish to keep his word when the deed
+had been done. Instead he profited by some sanguinary words which this
+chatterer had uttered, out of folly and bravado, to have him judged and
+broken on the wheel.
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED DE LUYNES]
+
+The king had caused parliament to be informed that he had ordered the
+arrest of Concini, who, having resisted, had been killed. He spoke of
+his mother only with respect, saying that he had prayed his lady and
+mother to approve of his taking the rudder of state. Parliament came to
+congratulate him. The action which could so easily be brought against
+Concini and his wife was skilfully stifled and turned from the true
+issue. A case of sorcery was made out of it. That was, moreover, the
+custom of the century. The libidinous tyrannies practised by priests in
+women’s convents, when by chance they came to light, were changed into
+sorcery, and the devil was charged with everything. Leonora herself
+thought the devil was in her body and had herself exorcised in the church
+of the Augustines by priests who had come from Italy at her request. As
+she suffered terribly in her head, Montalte, her Jewish physician, killed
+a cock, and applied it to her head still warm, which was interpreted as a
+sacrifice to hades. An astrological document was also found in her rooms,
+the nativity of the queen and her children. It is not at all improbable
+that when losing her influence she tried to keep her hold on the queen
+by magic. It was the general folly of the age. Luynes believed in it
+also. Richelieu says that he had two Piedmontese magicians come to find
+him powders which he might put in the king’s garments, and herbs for his
+shoes.
+
+However much of truth there may have been in Leonora’s sorcery, it did
+not deserve death, and her thefts even, her brazen-faced sales of places
+and orders, would have merited only the whip. Court tradition, which was
+very favourable to such people, as enemies of Henry IV, has not failed
+to invent, to place in the mouth of Leonora proud and insolently daring
+words--for example: “My charm was that of a mind set on folly.” She was
+beheaded at the Grève and then burned.[b]
+
+
+THE MINISTRY OF LUYNES (1617-1621 A.D.)
+
+The position of the queen-mother was mortifying and distressing. She had
+been deceived by the boy-king; stripped of her power; her dearest friends
+had perished. Of the band of courtiers who so lately hung upon her smile,
+Richelieu alone evinced a determination to adhere to the fortunes of
+his mistress. Marie de’ Medici besought an interview with her son. This
+favour was long denied. Luynes feared a mother’s influence over a being
+so young and so weak as Louis. Marie was allowed to retire to Blois,
+whither Richelieu accompanied her.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS XIII]
+
+The wealth as well as the influence of Concini fell to the share of
+Luynes, who was, however, neither a foreigner nor so rash and avaricious
+as his predecessor. Louis XIII, from his very first moment of grasping
+power, showed the same incapacity of wielding it that ever distinguished
+him. The love of the chase was the only active quality the young monarch
+seemed to have inherited from his father Henry. Luynes became hence sole
+master of the state. He found two parties aspiring to influence--that of
+the prince of Condé, and that of the queen-mother. One was in prison,
+and the other exiled; so that Luynes found no difficulty in flattering
+and giving hopes alternately to both, whilst he permitted neither the
+liberation of the prince nor the return of Marie de’ Medici. The body
+of the noblesse, who had flown to arms upon Condé’s arrest, and who had
+returned on learning Concini’s fall, thought it a more serious step to
+rebel against the king than against his mother and her favourite. The
+young court, too, had charms; and the prince of Condé was now but ill
+supported by that aristocratic band that had shared his envy and hatred
+towards the family of Ancre.
+
+Marie de’ Medici bore her disgrace with impatience. For some time she
+lulled herself with the hope that Luynes was sincere in his promises of
+allowing her to return. She expected in vain; and at length resolved to
+work her deliverance by leaguing with the prince of Condé and her former
+enemies. These intrigues coming to light, Richelieu, who was considered
+to be the source of them, was ordered to quit Blois, where the queen
+resided, and retire to his bishopric. But Marie had already profited by
+the advice of this able counsellor. She kept up an active correspondence
+with the duke d’Épernon, who was master of Metz, and through him with
+such of the nobility as were envious of Luynes. Having by these means
+formed a party, Marie escaped by night from the château of Blois; was met
+by Épernon at the head of an armed body of gentlemen; and, retreating
+south, soon found herself at the head of a party strong enough to defy
+her enemies. There cannot be a stronger example of the overgrown power
+of the nobles, and of the manner in which they absorbed the whole force
+of the crown, than the authority wielded by Épernon at this time against
+his sovereign. The duke had no less than five governments, viz., the
+provinces of Saintonge, Auxerrois, the Limousin, the Bourbonnais, and the
+Three Bishoprics. Add to these Metz, the bulwark of the kingdom adjoining
+Lorraine; Loches, the strongest fortress of Touraine, which he held,
+together with the command of all the French infantry, as colonel-general;
+and it can be no longer a wonder that the defection of such a grandee
+should have immediately reduced Louis and his favourite to treat with the
+queen-mother.
+
+[Sidenote: [1617-1620 A.D.]]
+
+Richelieu was recalled from his diocese, and employed to effect an
+accommodation, which took place. Marie de’ Medici was the principal
+gainer: she obtained the government of Anjou, and the towns of Angers,
+Chinon, and Pont-de-Cé, as fortresses of surety. The king promised to
+restore Marie de’ Medici to his confidence, and to her place at court.
+But this was postponed for the time. An interview took place betwixt
+Louis and his mother. A light remark on one side, answered by a cold
+compliment on the other, is all that is recorded of the meeting. “How
+your majesty has grown!” exclaimed Marie. “Grown for your service,
+madame,” was the young monarch’s reply. The queen-mother remained
+at Angers, whilst the court returned to Paris. Épernon received
+a written pardon for his rebellion, from which he had derived no
+advantage; a circumstance that caused him to be taxed with folly by his
+contemporaries. Disinterestedness was inconceivable to the age.
+
+The first step of Luynes, in order to counteract the revived party of
+the queen-mother, was to liberate Condé from Vincennes. But his long
+captivity had secluded this prince from his ancient followers; and
+Richelieu, who saw the object of Luynes, was able to succeed in not only
+drawing over the whole body of the noblesse to the queen-mother, but
+even in exciting the Huguenots to stir in her favour. These measures of
+Richelieu, who was at the same time amusing Luynes by feigned friendship
+and communications, became ripe in 1620, when, upon a fresh refusal to
+admit Marie de’ Medici to court, all the great nobles, who had most
+of them formerly conspired against her, now espoused her cause, and
+quitted the court. Almost all France was in array against Louis and
+Luynes. Épernon armed his five governments and his many towns. Marie
+herself was in Anjou. The duke de Longueville held Normandy; the duke de
+Vendôme, Brittany; the count of Soissons, Perche and Maine; the marshal
+De Bois-dauphin had Poitou; De Retz, La Trémouille, Mayenne, Rouen, and
+Nemours held the southern provinces betwixt them, except Languedoc, where
+Montmorency remained neutral. The Huguenots were also against the court,
+as was the duke de Rohan, their principal leader, and La Rochelle, their
+chief town. This was owing to a decree, issued by Luynes, that the church
+lands of Béarn, where Henry IV had established Protestantism, should
+be restored to the Catholic priesthood. Thus Richelieu enlisted under
+the banners of his mistress these two great malcontent and independent
+powers in the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the reformers, which it
+was afterwards the great aim and achievement of his policy to crush. In
+thus wielding them successfully against the monarch, Richelieu became
+acquainted with their danger, their strength, and their secret springs.
+
+[Sidenote: [1620-1621 A.D.]]
+
+Condé, however, inspired Luynes this time with additional vigour. The
+prince himself was excited to avenge his long confinement upon the
+queen-mother, who had caused it; and the king, therefore, was induced
+to march with an army, headed by Condé, to reduce the rebels. He was
+successful in Normandy; the insurgents retired everywhere before the
+royal army, which turned southward, and drove the queen from even Angers,
+her principal fortress. Luynes, contented with these advantages, showed
+himself willing to treat, as did Richelieu, who was somewhat disgusted
+by the want of alacrity and resolution evinced by the noblesse, his
+partisans. Condé, however, pushed on the war; and although a treaty
+was on the eve of being concluded, he attacked the forces of Marie’s
+adherents, and put them to the rout at Pont-de-Cé.
+
+This success, instead of breaking off negotiations, accelerated them; for
+Luynes became instantly jealous of Condé, and feared his predominance,
+if the queen-mother should be completely crushed. A treaty was therefore
+concluded on similar terms to the preceding one, with the important
+addition that the king should become really reconciled to his mother, and
+that she should reside at court. Many doubts and accusations exist as to
+the good faith of Richelieu in these transactions. The loss of Angers,
+and the defeat of Pont-de-Cé, were said to be arranged and allowed by
+him; and it is more than probable that, in disgust with the noblesse,
+who were at once domineering to their friends and feeble towards their
+enemies, Richelieu had conceived the project of reconciling Louis and the
+queen-mother, as well as their respective favourites, Luynes and himself;
+thus uniting the scattered elements of the government, and enabling it
+to set its turbulent enemies at defiance. Richelieu, by this plan, hoped
+to secure to himself a place in the council, where he felt confident
+he would soon rule such weak spirits as Louis, the queen-mother, and
+Luynes. But the latter had the sagacity to dread Richelieu’s superiority.
+Although the bishop sedulously sought the favourite’s friendship, and
+although an alliance took place betwixt their families, nevertheless
+Luynes persevered in his jealousy; prevented, by his intrigues, the
+cardinal’s hat stipulated for Richelieu in the late treaty, and kept the
+doors of the council chamber inexorably closed against him.
+
+
+_The Huguenot Uprising; The Siege of Montauban (1621 A.D.)_
+
+Although Luynes had risen to power as a mere favourite, he still held
+it with a firmer hand than Concini; nor was he without the views or
+the sagacity of a statesman. Even previous to his having at court so
+able a prompter as Richelieu, he had anticipated the future policy
+of that minister in endeavouring to crush the Huguenots. Luynes was
+determined upon restoring to the Catholic priesthood the church lands
+of Béarn, which had been in the hands of the Protestants since the days
+of Jeanne d’Albret. Louis was equally bent on rescuing from heresy
+the native province of his family. After the Treaty of Pont-de-Cé,
+the king marched into Béarn, and reduced not only the church lands to
+his will, but the little province itself, the privileges of which he
+annulled. The Huguenots were of course indignant and alarmed. This was
+not the only infraction of the agreements made with them. Favas, their
+deputy at court, declared that the government intended to reduce them
+altogether. They accordingly summoned a general assembly of reform at
+La Rochelle, despite the prohibition of the king; and their consistory
+published a bold decree, dividing the Protestant regions of France into
+circles, after the manner of Germany, uniting again those circles in a
+general government, and establishing the rules by which this government
+was to raise troops and taxes, to levy war and exercise independent
+jurisdiction. The scheme was a direct imitation of the United Provinces
+of Holland. It manifested fully the republican ideas and leanings of the
+Huguenots, and roused the court, and above all Richelieu, to crush them.
+
+An army was raised by Luynes,[d] and Louis XIII left Paris accompanied
+by the good wishes of all zealous Catholics and those who were desirous
+of peace. He had re-established the tax paid by judges, magistrates, and
+financiers on their offices, to secure them to their sons in case of
+death, contracted a loan, and obtained from the clergy an extraordinary
+tax. On the 19th of May, 1621, he occupied Saumur, which he was able
+to leave to Duplessis-Mornay in spite of his neutral attitude. It was
+necessary to prevent all communication between the Protestants, both
+north and south of the Loire. He afterwards received the submission of
+the towns in Touraine and Poitou, with the exception of La Rochelle, and
+St. Jean d’Angély. This latter place belonged to the duke de Rohan, who
+placed a garrison there under the command of Soubise, whilst he himself
+went to take command in Guienne.
+
+Lesdiguières undertook the siege of it, which lasted twenty-five days,
+from the 30th of May to the 25th of June, and was very murderous.
+Soubise, seeing the royal troops continually increase, ended by
+capitulating; he obtained for the garrison the honours of war, on
+condition of his promising always to serve the king. The fortifications
+of St. Jean were demolished, the trenches filled in, and its privileges
+suppressed. Deliberations took place as to the besieging of La Rochelle,
+or the advance on Guienne, where Rohan and La Force were raising arms on
+all sides. The taking of La Rochelle would have ended the contest; but it
+offered great difficulties, especially on the side next the sea, where
+the royal fleet would scarcely hold its own against the numerous and
+well-disciplined ships of the Calvinists.
+
+Luynes wished to obtain peace by the quickest means; he believed it would
+be much more rapidly accomplished by dividing the enemy and gaining over
+the leaders. Therefore he sent Épernon with four or five thousand men to
+blockade La Rochelle by land, whilst he himself took the Guienne route
+with the king and the bulk of the army. Mayenne,[86] who commanded the
+first division, carried Nérac by storm on the 9th of July; the little
+towns hastened to throw open their gates. One of the principal Calvinist
+_seigneurs_ of Guienne, De Boisse de Pardaillan, had made his submission
+the moment the royal troops had arrived, so as not to obey La Force.
+They received favourable intelligence on every side. In the north and
+in the centre the Protestants allowed their arms to be taken from them
+and the walls of their towns pulled down, without striking a blow. Condé
+occupied and demolished without resistance the fortress of Sancerre,
+in his government of Berri. They met with resistance only at Clérac, a
+little town upon the Lot. It took the royal army twelve days to gain
+possession of it; it then entered, August 5th, and inflicted the most
+severe punishment. The chancellor Duvair, who accompanied the king, died
+during this siege; Luynes did not hurry to appoint a successor, and
+appropriated the seals meantime. This method of monopolising all the
+power, all the military and civil honours, put the finishing touch to the
+irritation caused by his favours, and furnished an inexhaustible subject
+for the raillery of his enemies.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN, TIME OF LOUIS XIII]
+
+La Force was shut up at Montauban, where the minister Chamier, one of
+the most fanatical Calvinists, and the mayor Dupuy, who showed an equal
+devotion to the cause, co-operated with him most energetically. All the
+future of the party lay in the defence of this place. Rohan scoured
+Languedoc and the Cévennes to raise men, and to form a relieving army.
+The king had the choice of pursuing Rohan, or of besieging Montauban. He
+decided upon this last step, in the hopes of striking a decisive blow,
+and after some useless parleying, with which Sully was intrusted, the
+works were commenced without delay. Unfortunately they had not taken part
+in any other siege for a long time, except that of St. Jean d’Angély;
+they had fallen out of the way of taking part in real warfare, and they
+were even obliged to employ Italian engineers. The royal army found
+itself hardly sufficient for a siege of such importance. They believed in
+vain that they might find some partisans in the place. They attempted to
+surprise it, but were unsuccessful. Mayenne, who had opened the trenches
+August 18th, wished to rush the attack, before the works were finished.
+He lost many of his men, and, imprudently exposing himself, paid for his
+temerity with his life.
+
+The news of Mayenne’s death caused a stir in Paris, as his name had acted
+as a spell on the populace, amongst whom the war against the Protestants
+had awakened all the ancient passions of the league. The following day,
+the 18th, they attempted with no better result to make a breach by aid
+of the cannon. On the 28th, Rohan came to the assistance of the place in
+spite of the vigilance of the dukes of Angoulême and Montmorency. He cut
+himself a passage through at the point of the sword, although losing many
+men, and gave to the besieged garrison the means for prolonging their
+resistance. The king called together all the most experienced marshals
+and military men. They recognised the fact that it was impossible to
+carry Montauban before the winter. Luynes, who had become constable
+without knowing how to command an army or direct a siege, incurred
+the responsibility of this failure, but it did not disturb him. He
+wished to make peace, contrary to the desires of the military men and
+of the earnest Catholics. He asked for an interview with Rohan, and
+tried to bribe him. Rohan refused to desert his party, all the more
+because he was unable to do so, being under the direction of ministers
+whose impassioned ideas allowed him very little personal freedom. The
+Calvinists hoped that, thanks to the resistance of Montauban, they would
+weary the king of his policy. They were not mistaken. A final attack,
+attempted the 21st of October, failed like all the previous ones. The
+royal army, weakened by fatigue and sickness, and decimated by little
+battles, rapidly diminished. They had fired uselessly twenty thousand
+cannon shots, an enormous total for the times. On the 2nd of November
+Luynes decided to raise the siege, subject to a renewal in the spring.
+
+[Sidenote: [1621-1622 A.D.]]
+
+The king, on retiring, made his entry into Toulouse, the most Catholic of
+the towns of the south, where he was received with general acclamation.
+He decided to limit himself during the winter to the keeping open of the
+communications between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Accordingly he ordered the
+marshal De Rouquelaure and Bassompierre to besiege the little town of
+Monheur, which the Calvinists occupied near Tonneins. The camp and the
+court were full of divisions, as always happens after great reverses.
+They threw on one another the responsibility for the errors that had
+been committed. Luynes was naturally the one whom they attacked the
+most. The most ardent Catholics reproached him with having desired peace
+too much; the military men with having attempted the siege of Montauban
+with insufficient forces, through avarice, some said. Father Arnoux,
+the king’s confessor, and Puisieux, secretary of state, began to rise
+up against him and tried to destroy his credit. On the 11th of December
+Monheur capitulated.
+
+
+_Death of Luynes (1621 A.D.)_
+
+Their lives were granted to the garrison, but the town was pillaged and
+burned for having given itself to the Huguenots. Three days after, on
+the 14th, Luynes died suddenly of fever. He was just at the pinnacle
+of his success. Nevertheless, Louis XIII, in spite of his caution and
+his ordinary dissimulation, had begun to complain of his yoke, and to
+lend an ear to the accusations of his adversaries. Luynes had had few
+friends, and his enemies, whose numbers were increasing, were already
+attacking him with extreme vigour. His ambition and his avidity, equally
+unrestrained, had turned everyone against him. The greater number of
+the authors who were contemporary with him, animated against him by
+prejudice and the strongest personal feelings, had treated him unfairly,
+and attributed all sorts of extravagances to him, as, for instance,
+wishing to see himself made prince of Avignon, or king of Austrasia.
+His political talents deserve more justice. Firm without illusion, and
+knowing how to ally moderation with energy, he had conducted the war
+briskly in the desire to arrive more quickly at a peace which he wished
+to make prompt and certain. This end he never ceased to pursue, and
+Richelieu, who gained it, only finished a work that had been begun.[i]
+
+This check saved the Huguenots for the time, although it was
+counterbalanced by the ascendency of Guise in Poitou. The treaty
+was concluded in the following year at Montpellier, by which it was
+stipulated that affairs should be replaced as they were before the war,
+new conquests restored, and new fortifications demolished. One point
+the king gained; this was that the Huguenots should no more have a lay
+assembly. A synod of ecclesiastics was alone allowed them; thus obviating
+the revival of that republican assembly at La Rochelle, which had roused
+all the suspicions and energy of king and court. Louis, returning to his
+capital, was welcomed as a hero. The two queens rivalled each other in
+the brilliancy of their fêtes. But neither applause nor pleasure could
+prevent the king from relapsing into that state of apathy which was
+natural to him. Louis XIII was as completely the _roi fainéant_ as were
+the last of the race of Clovis and Charlemagne. But times were altered;
+the tree of royalty had taken root, and stood as erect, when withered and
+sapless, as when in spring and leaf.
+
+
+RICHELIEU’S RETURN TO THE MINISTRY
+
+[Sidenote: [1622-1624 A.D.]]
+
+Louis XIII had been inspired by Luynes with an aversion for Richelieu. It
+was with great difficulty that Marie de’ Medici obtained for him in 1622
+the cardinal’s hat stipulated in a former treaty; but all her efforts in
+procuring him admission to the council were resisted. The marquis de la
+Vieuville was favourite for the moment, and he strengthened the king’s
+prejudice against the cardinal. Marie was persevering; and at length
+Louis yielded. He permitted Richelieu to take his seat at the council
+table, but on the express condition that he was to be without office, and
+that he should not consider himself a minister. The cardinal expressed
+himself perfectly contented with this arrangement: he took his seat; and
+the inefficacy of all the precautions taken against him soon appeared.
+They had bound the arms of a giant, who broke his bonds the instant that
+it pleased him to be free. From the first moment that Richelieu spoke,
+his genius dominated; and the monarch himself, as well as La Vieuville,
+cowered beneath an ascendency that they found it vain to dispute.
+
+To secure this ascendency over the monarch, Richelieu scorned to make
+use of the same means which sufficed La Vieuville and Luynes. Instead
+of flattering Louis, and directing him in the way of pleasure, the
+cardinal at first strove to awaken the young king to a sense of the
+country’s debasement, to its true interests, and its possible glory. He
+pointed out the turbulent disobedience of the great, the sedition of
+the Huguenot assemblies, the weakness of ministers, and the disorder of
+the finances--the consequent poverty and misery of the kingdom, as well
+as the decay of its influence and dignity in its relations with foreign
+potentates. He pointed to the house of Austria, daily increasing its
+strength and extending its territories, at that very moment triumphant
+from the conquest of the Palatinate, and threatening to crush those
+Protestant states of Germany which had defied the might of Charles V.
+Louis listened, and was excited, not indeed to take vigorous counsels
+himself, but to confide in a minister who had shown himself able to
+conceive and execute them.[87]
+
+The chief object then coveted by the house of Austria was the possession
+of the Valtelline, a strip of Alpine territory which might serve to
+connect the dominions of that family in Germany and in Italy. It had been
+in subjection to the Grisons, a Protestant race; and Spain seized this
+pretext to conquer it in the name of the pope. France had opposed this
+with the usual feebleness of her diplomacy. The first act of Richelieu
+was to cut short the negotiation, to defy both the pope and Spain, and
+to send an army under the marshal D’Estrées into the Valtelline, which
+expelled the Spaniards, and restored the region to its ancient masters.
+
+Richelieu dared to show the same bold front to the Huguenots at the
+same time. Determined on completely reducing them, his first endeavour
+was to drive them from Poitou and La Rochelle, where they could at all
+times receive succours from England, and to circumscribe their influence
+to the provinces of the southeast. He refused to evacuate Montpellier;
+and the Huguenots were thus provoked to rebel. The cardinal at the same
+time deprived them of the aid of the English monarch, with whom he
+was negotiating the marriage of Henrietta of France, sister of Louis.
+Rohan, and a great number of the Protestants, thought it on this account
+imprudent to recommence war; but his impetuous brother, Soubise, made an
+attack on the port of Blavet, seized some ships that were fitting out
+there, and sailing thence made a descent upon the island of Ré. He was
+defeated, the Huguenots being neither decided nor prepared for a general
+insurrection. The consequence of the rash attempt of Soubise was that
+in the accommodation that ensued the royalists kept Fort Louis, merely
+promising not to annoy from it the inhabitants or shipping of La Rochelle.
+
+
+CONSPIRACY OF THE COURT AGAINST RICHELIEU
+
+[Sidenote: [1624-1626 A.D.]]
+
+Richelieu here postponed his design of completely reducing the Huguenots.
+The conquest of La Rochelle could alone do this effectually, and that
+required a large naval force, as well as such preparations of every kind
+as would ensure success. Besides, for the present, the cardinal was
+aware that he would soon have to encounter a court intrigue, a triumph
+over which was more requisite to establish his power than even the
+subjugation of La Rochelle. The marriage of the princess Henrietta with
+Charles of England, which had been desired by Richelieu, as securing
+the previous neutrality of the latter country in a war against the
+Huguenots, had proved a source of difference rather than of alliance. The
+gallant Buckingham, who had come to demand and escort back the princess,
+had excited the jealousy of the cardinal. He had shown at the French
+court the sample of such a minister as the age esteemed--gay, liberal,
+handsome, looking as well as wielding command. He had admired the young
+queen, and had boldly expressed his admiration. His friend, Lord Holland,
+had paid court to the duchess de Chevreuse, the companion of the queen,
+and the most lovely woman of the time. Richelieu admired Madame de
+Chevreuse, nay, by some, is said to have pretended to the queen herself.
+Whatever was the truth, Richelieu and Buckingham conceived for each
+other a mutual hatred, which afterwards produced a rupture between their
+respective sovereigns. And a strong pique at the same time arose between
+the cardinal and the queen.
+
+Another personage at court, now grown into importance, was Gaston, duke
+of Orleans, brother of the king. Louis was extremely jealous of him.
+A tutor, under whom the young duke improved and began to give promise
+of good conduct and manly virtue, was superseded by a mere courtier,
+calculated to give lessons in vice and dissipation. Ornano, who succeeded
+this man, found the prince absorbed in pleasure, and debased. He
+endeavoured to rouse Gaston, by explaining to him his rank, his hopes;
+and he did succeed in awakening his ambition. The young duke of Orleans
+demanded to enter the council. Richelieu, then in the commencement of his
+influence, replied by banishing Ornano for a time. Gaston relapsed into
+dissipation, and seemed little inclined to give umbrage or uneasiness to
+the government.
+
+The worst part of feudal tyranny was that it interfered with the private
+affections of all men. Richelieu, wielding the power of Louis XIII, was
+not content with commanding the loyal submission of the first prince of
+the blood. He thought proper to impose a wife upon him, nay, to choose
+one. The lady selected was Mademoiselle de Montpensier, rich, lovely,
+allied to the crown, and heiress of the house of Guise. There could be no
+objection to such a bride, except the compulsion that gave her. Gaston
+rebelled. The projected marriage convulsed the entire court, and wellnigh
+the kingdom also.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH GENTLEMAN, TIME OF LOUIS XIII]
+
+Richelieu’s object was to provide an heir to the crown, which Louis
+seemed not destined long to wear. Anne of Austria, the little queen, as
+she was called, to distinguish her from the queen-mother, was on the
+other hand averse to Gaston’s marriage; and she joined the friends of the
+latter in endeavouring to thwart the cardinal’s plan. Ornano had resumed
+his influence and station in the prince’s household; and he it was who
+chiefly urged Gaston to resist. Ornano was arrested. This increased
+the rage of the duke of Orleans; and at length a plot was entered into
+and approved by him, to get rid of the domineering Richelieu in the
+same manner that Ancre had been removed. The cardinal then inhabited a
+country house at Fleury. Gaston’s servants were to betake themselves
+thither, under pretence that their master was to honour Richelieu on
+that day with his company to dinner, and the murder was to have taken
+place. Richelieu received warning. The count de Chalais, who was to have
+been the chief perpetrator, ventured to sound a friend, who expressed at
+once a lively abhorrence of the attempt, and threatened to denounce it.
+Chalais became alarmed, and, resolving to anticipate the informer, went
+himself to the cardinal, and made a disclosure. Gaston was astonished, in
+consequence, by the appearance of the cardinal in his apartment, on the
+morning appointed for the deed. “I am sorry,” said Richelieu, smiling,
+“your highness did not give me warning of your intention to make use of
+my residence. I should have been prepared. As it is, I abandon it to
+your service.” Having so said, Richelieu handed his shirt to Gaston (one
+of the ceremonials of etiquette observed at a prince’s levée) and then
+retired.
+
+The cardinal, not content with thus confounding his enemies, was resolved
+to punish them and intimidate others by their example. By probing Chalais
+and his family, it was discovered that the nobles upon whose aid Gaston
+reckoned were the duke de Vendôme and his brother the grand prior,
+illegitimate sons of Henry IV. The former was governor of Brittany.
+Richelieu, dissembling his suspicions, enticed them to repair to the
+court at Blois, where both were instantly arrested. The imprisonment of
+all his friends, and the danger of some, would have roused to serious
+resistance a prince of more energy than Gaston. The young duke was not
+wanting in indignation; but Richelieu had prepossessed the monarch’s
+mind, and had taught Louis to believe that his royal life had been aimed
+at as well as his minister’s; that the young queen, Anne of Austria, was
+privy to the plot; and that she was to have married the duke of Orleans
+on his accession to the throne. These accusations hardened and enraged
+the mind of Louis XIII. Gaston, in the power of the court, was forced to
+espouse Mademoiselle de Montpensier; the count de Chalais perished on the
+scaffold; the queen was publicly reproached by her husband with having
+sought a second marriage, to which she indignantly replied that there was
+not so much to be gained by the change. Her friend, Madame de Chevreuse,
+was banished from court. Thus Richelieu, triumphant over his foes,
+amongst whom the queen and the king’s brother were numbered, showed how
+fatal it was to provoke his enmity, how fruitless to resist his power.[d]
+
+[Sidenote: [1626-1627 A.D.]]
+
+The Treaty of Montpellier in 1626 granted a hollow peace to the
+Huguenots; and a few months later, that is to say in May, peace was
+signed with Spain. Years before, Richelieu, then young and obscure, had
+often discussed with his friend Father Joseph how best to subdue the
+neighbouring town of La Rochelle, the stronghold of the Huguenots; and
+time had not softened his views on the subject. The English people,
+chafing under the influence of their French and Catholic queen, Henrietta
+Maria, longed to assert their Protestantism; Buckingham, opposed to her
+anti-Protestant policy, longed to provoke the French court. What then
+would better serve their ends than adoption of the Huguenot cause? So war
+was begun with France. Richelieu brought his forces up under the walls of
+La Rochelle, and drew a cordon of forts around the unhappy town, cutting
+off all approaches. To shut the city off from English aid, Richelieu
+constructed a wonderful mole across the mouth of the harbour. This was
+built of solid masonry, extending about seven yards from one shore and
+four hundred yards from the other, the intervening space of six hundred
+yards being partially blocked with sunken ships and further guarded by
+a half-circle of ships lashed together with their prows outward. Inside
+the boom a royal fleet watched against sallies, and outside another fleet
+watched for the English.[a]
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE DESCRIBED BY SEIGNOBOS
+
+The work of construction at first went on slowly, and the besieged could
+do little to hinder it. They could only fire off a few guns or post a
+few ambuscades in the path of the staff officers as they went from one
+part of the army to the other; but it was winter time, and bad weather
+often interrupted the work of construction. The besieged had sent to ask
+the king of England to help them; and the latter pledged himself “to the
+mayor, aldermen, peers, and citizens of La Rochelle, to help them by
+land and sea according to his royal power until a firm peace had been
+established.” As a result he promised to send an expedition to help them
+in the spring, and to furnish them with provisions; in the meantime he
+allowed a collection to be made for their benefit in his kingdom.
+
+The inhabitants of La Rochelle, on their part, engaged themselves to
+provide pilots for the English, to prepare magazines and shelters on
+their coasts, and to equip vessels to help in the expedition. And if the
+king of France should attack the territories of the king of England,
+they would do all they could to create a diversion. It was agreed that
+neither the besieged nor the king of England should make any treaty
+without consulting the other. The king of England had wished to impose
+two other conditions; he asked the besieged to send him the children of
+their principal families as hostages, and to receive an English garrison
+within their walls. They only consented to receive English ships into
+their harbour. They accepted the king of England as an ally to help them
+to defend their independence, but they did not wish to have him for a
+master.
+
+[Sidenote: [1627-1628 A.D.]]
+
+The royal army encamped before La Rochelle did not suffer very much
+from the winter. A tax had been levied in the principal towns in France
+which had made it possible to provide the soldiers with good clothing.
+The construction of the dike provided occupation for the men, and the
+boats were manned by volunteers from picked regiments. Meanwhile Louis
+XIII was wearying of this long siege with no fighting. He declared that
+his health would suffer if he did not go to Paris for a time. Richelieu,
+fearing lest the king’s departure might have a bad effect on the troops,
+tried to afford him some distraction by giving false alarms; several
+times a sortie was announced, and the king remained on horseback all
+night waiting for it, but the besieged did not make any movement. At last
+Richelieu felt he could no longer keep the king with the army, so he
+wrote to him saying that he could now absent himself for a time “without
+any injury to his cause.”
+
+The king immediately announced his departure. In his absence the cardinal
+was to be commander-in-chief, he was called “lieutenant-general of the
+king in the army before La Rochelle.” He had full power over all the
+troops, cavalry and infantry, and also over the artillery for continuing
+the siege, and was even empowered to receive the submission of the
+inhabitants and take possession of the town. The king admonished all the
+generals and officers to “obey him as implicitly as they would their
+king.”
+
+On the 10th of February, 1628, Richelieu accompanied the king two leagues
+from the camp; there they separated, embracing each other at parting.
+Louis warned the cardinal to take good care of his health; but Richelieu,
+out of respect for etiquette, had not dared to take his umbrella when
+accompanying the king, and was very much upset by the winter sun and had
+five attacks of intermittent fever. After being absent two months and a
+half, Louis returned to the camp, where he was saluted by salvos from
+the forts, the batteries, and the dike. He found his army stronger and
+the military works considerably advanced. He had left his army reduced
+by illness to eighteen thousand men; but owing to the recruits who had
+joined from the neighbouring provinces, he now found a force twenty-five
+thousand strong.
+
+The whole line of circumvallation which was to cut off La Rochelle on the
+land side was completed and furnished with redoubts. The shore on both
+sides of the harbour was provided with batteries. The dike was almost
+finished and was defended by a sort of floating palisade formed of ships
+linked together. An attempt to surprise the town had failed, owing to bad
+generalship. But the besieged had been unable to make any sorties or to
+obtain any provisions; and hunger was beginning to make itself felt in
+their ranks. The day after his return, on the 24th of April, Louis XIII
+sent an envoy to call upon the besieged citizens to surrender. According
+to the custom of the time the summons had to be made by a herald-at-arms,
+but there was not one with the army and they could not even find the
+insignia of the office. A tabard had therefore to be prepared in a hurry,
+a clerk of finance put it on and went forth to play the part of a herald.
+The besieged refused to receive the summons. A sort of revolution had
+taken place in La Rochelle. The rich citizens who had hitherto governed
+the town were anxious to bring the siege to an end, for it was ruining
+their commerce and exposing them to the wrath of their king. The sailors,
+who were on the side of resistance, seized the power and elected one of
+themselves, a captain Guiton, as mayor. Guiton was a bold corsair, of
+small stature, but brave and energetic. He had a splendidly furnished
+house, full of flags which he had taken from the ships of his enemies;
+he was fond of showing them and of saying from what kings and in what
+seas he had captured them. He was not anxious to be made mayor, but when
+he took possession of his office, he placed his dagger on the table in
+the town hall and said to his companions: “You do not know what you have
+done in choosing me; you had better think well about it, for it will be
+useless to talk to me about surrendering. If anyone mentions it I will
+kill him.”
+
+Another English fleet set out to relieve the blockade of La Rochelle,
+or at any rate to revictual the town. This fleet consisted of thirty
+vessels and twenty boats laden with provisions and ammunition. It was
+signalled on the 11th of May by three shots fired from the forts on
+the island of Ré. The fleet took up its station near the point of the
+island, opposite to La Rochelle. The besieged fired salvos as a sign
+of rejoicing, and very soon their ramparts were fluttering with red,
+white, and blue flags. The royal fleet of thirty-eight ships was divided
+into four squadrons which were stationed in front of the dike; behind,
+on the La Rochelle side, the dike was guarded by twenty-six galleys. A
+light English ship succeeded in passing these batteries and in reaching
+the harbour; she carried a captain, a native of La Rochelle on board,
+and he was commissioned to ask his compatriots to open a passage before
+their harbour, so that the ships laden with provisions might come in.
+The English fleet, he said, had not come to fight. The inhabitants of La
+Rochelle and the Protestant refugees on board the English ships begged
+the admiral to force the passage; he replied that he only had orders to
+cross to facilitate the entrance of the convoy with provisions, and that
+he must spare his fleet. On the 18th of May, the English ships set sail,
+drew close to the harbour, fired a salute, and sailed away to the open
+sea. The besieged, deserted by their allies, found themselves in a very
+critical position. One of them proposed to sacrifice himself and save
+the town by assassinating Richelieu. That was the way in which Orleans
+had formerly escaped from the duke of Guise. But he would not commit
+this deed unless he was certain it was not a sin. He consulted Guiton,
+who replied: “In such matters as this I never give advice.” He asked the
+pastors what they thought; and they answered: “If God is going to save us
+it will not be by means of a crime.” So he gave up the idea.
+
+The besieged were suffering much from starvation. The rich still had
+provisions which they kept concealed, but others were dying of hunger. On
+the 26th of May they decided to drive out of the town all who were unable
+to fight--women, children, old men, and all who were infirm. These poor
+creatures made for the French camp; the soldiers, by the king’s order,
+received them with a shower of bullets and forced them to go back to
+the town. The royal troops also destroyed the crops of beans which the
+besieged had sown at the bottom of the other side of the escarpment.
+
+On the 1st of June some of the citizens who were anxious for peace
+succeeded in opening communications with Bassompierre, proposing a
+capitulation; but on the 10th a letter reached La Rochelle from the king
+of England, promising that he would see his whole fleet destroyed rather
+than fail to extricate the besieged from the peril they were in. They
+therefore broke off the negotiations and began firing again. For three
+months they waited for the promised help, while Richelieu continued his
+dike. Towards the open sea he had had long beams bound together and fixed
+in the ground at the bottom of the water to prevent access to the dike,
+and on the harbour side he had placed a line of ships anchored and
+chained together. Every day visitors came to the royal camp, and were
+entertained; and sometimes, to amuse them, a skirmish was got up at which
+they looked on. The king went out hunting and kept his court just as if
+he had been in Paris.
+
+Within La Rochelle the famine was becoming terrible. The rich were eating
+horses, donkeys, dogs, and cats; and even for these they had to pay well,
+the price of a cat being 45 livres. The poor were no longer able to go
+and look for dead shellfish cast up by the tide and stranded in the mud,
+for the guns of the besiegers made this dangerous. They had eaten up all
+the green stuff and were reduced to boiling pieces of leather with fat
+and moist sugar. Many left the town and would have given themselves up at
+the outposts of the royal army; but they were sent back, so that the town
+might not be enabled to hold out longer by having fewer mouths to feed.
+The soldiers would take away their clothes and then drive them back to
+the town with sticks or leather thongs. A great number of the inhabitants
+had died from illness or privation. Even those who were defending the
+town were so weak with hunger that they could only walk with sticks; they
+could hardly drag themselves along and were quite unable to bear arms.
+Often in the mornings sentinels were found dead of starvation at their
+posts. Guiton still refused to surrender. He had some of those who wished
+to capitulate imprisoned, and on the 22nd of July he had three or four
+beheaded as traitors, and their heads placed on the gates of the town. On
+the 9th of August the president of the presidial, an inferior court of
+judicature, was imprisoned in his turn. The councillors were so alarmed
+that two of them took refuge in the royal camp.
+
+Louis XIII, hearing what great distress prevailed in La Rochelle, on the
+16th of August sent a herald-at-arms to call upon the town to surrender.
+This time it was a real herald in a tabard, cap on head, sceptre in hand.
+Before him rode two trumpeters bearing waving pennants. They presented
+themselves at one of the gates and asked to see the mayor. They were
+kept waiting a long time; then, instead of the mayor, appeared a troop
+of citizens and soldiers, whose leader told the herald with an oath to
+go away at once, and pointed to his men’s guns ready cocked for firing.
+The herald withdrew, placing on the ground two proclamations that he had
+brought with him. The English fleet, on the point of sailing, had been
+delayed by the murder of the duke of Buckingham. The longer the siege
+went on the stronger became the temptation to fly to the royal camp;
+and the chance of being killed seemed preferable to the certainty of
+being starved to death. To rid themselves of these obtrusive fugitives
+the besiegers adopted a cruel plan. They placed gibbets on the line of
+circumvallation surrounding the town and every time a group of fugitives
+arrived to give themselves up, they made them draw lots, and the one on
+whom the lot fell was hanged while the rest were sent back to the town.
+
+On the 29th of August Guiton read the citizens a letter from the king of
+England saying that help was at hand. It was madness, he said, to hope
+for mercy from the king of France: if the town surrendered it would be
+sacked and the men massacred. They must stand firm as long as anyone
+remained alive to shut the gates. “As for me,” he added, “if I am left
+with only one other, and without food, I shall be quite willing to draw
+lots to decide which of us is to eat the other.” On the 3rd of September,
+Guiton, while speaking to the people who had assembled to hear the Sunday
+sermon, was interrupted by a woman crying out that her child’s nurse
+had not tasted food for a fortnight. Guiton to appease the crowd made a
+pretence of negotiating. He sent two envoys to the king, who received
+them fairly. But a native of La Rochelle, just arrived from England,
+managed to make his way into the city in broad daylight and announced
+that the English fleet was just setting sail; so again the negotiations
+were broken off. A fortnight later, on the 28th of September, an English
+fleet of 140 sail carrying 6,000 soldiers arrived, and taking up a
+position before the harbour, tried to force the passage, which was
+guarded by the French fleet. The French refugees asked to be allowed
+to manage the fire-ships which were to be sent against their king. The
+English wished to work them themselves, but the fire-ships proved a
+failure, and would not act. They waited for a favourable wind, and on the
+3rd of October began firing on the fleet and batteries of the besiegers.
+The fighting continued for two days without much loss of life, and on
+the evening of the 4th the English fleet withdrew to the isle of Aix. It
+remained inactive for some days owing to stormy weather, and, when the
+wind was once more favourable, the English, instead of making an attack,
+sent an envoy to Richelieu.
+
+Those inside La Rochelle, seeing they were deserted, resigned themselves
+to the necessity of suing for peace. Richelieu received at the same time
+the envoys from the town and those from the French Protestants on board
+the English fleet. On the 29th of October the capitulation was signed,
+the inhabitants of La Rochelle acknowledged the great offence of which
+they had been guilty, “not only in resisting the just wishes of their
+king, but in joining with foreigners who had taken up arms against the
+state.” They begged the king to pardon them for this crime, and they
+placed their town in his hands. The king, taking into consideration
+“their repentance and protestations of sorrow,” promised them an amnesty,
+the free exercise of their religion, and the restoration of any of their
+property which had been confiscated. The officers and nobles might leave
+the town wearing their swords, and the soldiers carrying white sticks,
+and they would then be free. On the 30th of October the French army
+entered La Rochelle and the garrison came out; they were reduced to
+seventy-four Frenchmen and sixty-two English.[j]
+
+Richelieu showed himself clement towards La Rochelle; there was
+no vengeance taken, no victims were sacrificed. The town lost its
+independence, which was, indeed, incompatible with the idea of
+sovereignty; but its worship and its religious opinions were left free,
+“the only avowed and open toleration,” says Hume[c] “which at that time
+was granted in any European kingdom.”[d]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[86] [Henry, duke of Mayenne, son of that duke who was at one time the
+head of the League.]
+
+[87] [In Richelieu’s _Mémoires_, which he intended to serve as historical
+material for his biography, it is stated that Richelieu in a single
+interview dramatically placed this gigantic scheme before the young
+king, and that Louis from this time was obedient to the minister. This,
+however, is hardly in agreement with the facts. Richelieu seems hardly to
+have found his policy at first; and he was not sure of Louis’ constancy
+until after his success at La Rochelle.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU
+
+    Cardinal Richelieu is one of those men in whose favour the tide
+    of affairs always turns at the critical moment, and who also
+    have skill and courage to take it at the turn. Vigilant, cool,
+    sagacious, and absolutely fearless, he never throughout his
+    life missed a single point in the great game he played; and
+    even with dramatic force knew how to snatch a triumph out of
+    the very clutches of defeat.--KITCHIN.[w]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1629-1643 A.D.]]
+
+Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, grown now through the
+exercise of his own genius to be the mightiest man in all Europe, was
+born at the castle of Richelieu in Poitou, September 5th, 1585. He was
+therefore forty-three years old when the famous siege of La Rochelle,
+by which he broke the power of the Huguenots in France, was brought to
+a close. Chronic invalid though he was, he was destined to live fifteen
+years longer, and during that period to control the fortunes of France,
+and to exercise a dominating influence in European politics at large; to
+be recognised everywhere as the greatest statesman of his age. We have
+already seen enough of him to know that he is a man of the largest ideas,
+the most indomitable courage, and that he is a born master of men; we
+must understand also that he is the wiliest of intriguers, the shrewdest
+judge of human motives; that he has a taste for art and for literature;
+and that with it all he is not restrained from the successes of practical
+politics by any undue niceties of conscience. He is perhaps more similar
+in his mental equipment to Augustus than to any other great man of
+history; or let us say rather to Augustus with a certain share added of
+the genius of Julius Cæsar, further modified by some traits of Louis XI.
+
+But why attempt to characterise? We shall see the great cardinal in the
+full exercise of these powers in the coming years. We shall see him carry
+war into Italy, acting as his own lieutenant-general. We shall see him
+take a hand in the Thirty Years’ War, and accomplish by diplomacy the
+overthrow of the great Wallenstein. We shall see him put down uprisings
+at home, triumphing over Marie de’ Medici and his other enemies;
+holding King Louis XIII as a child in leading strings. We shall see him
+dominating church and state alike, and exercising a permanent influence
+on the literature of his land through the foundation of the French
+Academy. And all the while we must remember that this myriad-minded
+statesman is the most hated of Frenchmen at the same time that he is the
+most feared. Even those he has benefited do not love him. “Let the world
+speak well or ill of the famous cardinal,” says Corneille, “neither in
+my prose nor in my verse will I mention his name; he has done me too
+much kindness to speak ill of him, and too much injury to speak well.”
+There is none to speak well of this strange man; but all speak of him
+with bated breath; all contemplate him with something of apprehension.
+A weird, incomprehensible figure, he stalks across the scene, lonely,
+hated, feared,--but always masterful. Let us follow out the details of
+his life story.[a]
+
+
+RICHELIEU AND THE KING
+
+The history of Richelieu is obscure as to the essential point, his
+resources, the ways and means. On what did he live and how? This is not
+to be seen either in his memoirs or his documents. All that we have of
+Richelieu’s accounts includes only four years (1636-1640) and in a very
+confused way gives the ordinary receipts, up to eighty millions. Not a
+word of anything extraordinary.
+
+In 1636, when France was invaded, a tax on persons in comfortable
+circumstances (_des gens aisés_) was created, or rather regulated, and
+the agents placed everywhere in 1637, with the triple power of justice,
+police, and finance, collected it with great rigour. But one cannot
+doubt that something similar existed even before, especially in the
+passages of armies through certain provinces. Otherwise it is impossible
+to understand how, with such a deficit under ordinary circumstances,
+extraordinary and unforeseen expenditures, for wars or subsidies to
+allies, could have been made every year.
+
+Hence action was variable, intermittent, sometimes brilliant, with
+relapses due to exhaustion. It was not possible to have a really
+permanent army. That was evident in 1629, when Richelieu finished the war
+with the Huguenots, but that with Italy was still in a critical state.
+He disbanded thirty regiments to raise others six months later. The same
+way, in 1636, he disbanded seven regiments in January to make them up
+again in June--an economy of five months, necessary perhaps, but which
+nearly lost France. In July nothing had been reorganised, and the enemy
+came to within twenty leagues of Paris.
+
+The suffering of the great man of affairs who directed this machine with
+its spasmodic movements must have been terrible. And one can easily
+understand that he was always ill. The insufficiency of his resources,
+the continual effort to invent impossible money, on the other hand the
+court intrigues, the pricks of no one knows how many invisible insects,
+were something to keep him in a terrible agitation. But even that was
+not enough; twenty other devils haunted this restless soul, like a
+great ruined mansion--the battle of women, tardy gallantries, moreover
+theology and the wild desire to write, to make verses, tragedies! What
+tragedy could be more gloomy than his very person. Macbeth is gay in
+comparison. And he had attacks of violence in which his inner fury would
+have strangled him, had he not like Hamlet massacred tapestries with the
+blows of his dagger. More often he swallowed his bitterness and fury,
+covered everything with the outward seeming of ecclesiastical decency.
+His powerlessness, his passion, turned within, worked themselves out on
+his body; the red iron burned his soul and he was near to death.
+
+His greatest evil was still the king, who might escape him at any moment.
+Spain, the court, waited for the death of Louis XIII. His wife and his
+brother looked at his face every morning and hoped. Valetudinarian at the
+age of twenty-eight, feverish, subject to abscesses which nearly carried
+him off in 1630, it was in vain he claimed to be alive, to act at times
+and show courage; it was held that he was dead, at least that no one
+had need of him. It was a curious union of two invalids. The king would
+have thought his kingdom lost if Richelieu were wanting. Richelieu knew
+that, with the king dead, he had not two days to live. So well hated,
+especially by the king’s brother, he had to plan to die with Louis XIII.
+Perhaps it was for that reason that he was so pleasing to the king, who
+was sad, suspicious, and malevolent and who never liked him, but who
+could always say to himself: “If I die, that man will be hanged.”
+
+This double chance of death, on which the enemies of Richelieu placed
+their hope, was precisely what made him strong and terrible. He had
+moments when he talked and acted as though in the presence of death; and
+then the sublime, which he had sought so laboriously elsewhere, came of
+itself. He touches it, in fact, in passages of allocution which he had
+with the king on the return from La Rochelle, in the presence of his
+enemies, the queen-mother and the king’s confessor, the suave Jesuit
+Suffren. In this conversation he tells everything, his actual situation,
+what he has done, what received, what he owns, what he has refused. He
+has a patrimony of 25,000 livres rental and the king has given him six
+abbeys. He is obliged to make heavy expenditures, especially to pay for
+guards, being surrounded with daggers. He has refused 20,000 crowns
+pension, refused the appointments of the admiralty (40,000 francs),
+refused the right of admiral (100,000 crowns), refused a million which
+financiers had offered him in order not to be prosecuted.
+
+He asks for his dismissal, not definitely but temporarily--he may be
+called back later if he is still alive and is needed. He explains
+clearly that he is in great danger and that he is obliged sometimes to
+conceal himself. Does he want to make himself necessary, declare himself
+indispensable, and so make sure of so much the more power? If that is
+his end, one must say that the method is very strange and daring. He
+speaks with the frankness of a man who has no end in view. He dares to
+give his master, perhaps as a last service, an enumeration of the faults
+of which the king ought to correct himself. And this was not one of
+those flattering satires, where one shows a slight fault, a shadow, as a
+successful method for showing the beauties of the portrait. No, it is a
+firm, hard judgment, like that of a La Bruyère, of a Saint-Simon, which
+would penetrate to the depths of a character after a hundred years, a
+judgment of the dead by a dead person. Quickness of mind and instability,
+suspicions and jealousy, no assiduity, no application to great things,
+impulsive aversions, forgetfulness of services, and ingratitude--not a
+trait is lacking.
+
+The queen-mother must have trembled with indignation, with terror also,
+perhaps, feeling that the man who would venture such a thing would
+venture all--and that a man so composed, with death under his feet, would
+pay little regard to the death of others. The Jesuit must have fallen
+backwards, plunged into silence and humility. The king felt all this and
+received it as the testamentary word of one invalid to another, of one
+dying man to another. Richelieu, being begged and entreated, remained in
+the ministry. It was difficult for him to retire with affairs at such a
+crisis. The war with the Huguenots still continued in Languedoc, and the
+war with Italy was commencing. Richelieu, called by the pope as well as
+by the duke of Mantua, had a good opportunity which might relieve him
+from his embarrassments. Victor at La Rochelle, if he saved Italy he
+might hope that the pope would appoint him legate for life as Wolsey and
+George d’Amboise[88] had been--real kings and more than kings, since they
+united the two powers, temporal and spiritual.[b]
+
+
+RICHELIEU ENTERS THE EUROPEAN ARENA
+
+[Sidenote: [1629-1630 A.D.]]
+
+France had submitted; six years of power had been sufficient for
+Richelieu to make himself her master; now he turned his incessant
+activity in the direction of Europe. “He feared the repose of peace,”
+wrote Nani, the ambassador to Venice, “and believing himself more secure
+in the turmoil of arms, he was the author of many wars, and of long and
+weighty calamities. We may say that having reunited divided France,
+succoured Italy, upset the empire, harassed England, and weakened Spain,
+he was the instrument chosen by heaven to direct the great events of
+Europe.”
+
+The liberal, penetrating mind of the Venetian was not mistaken on this
+point; all over Europe the hand of Richelieu was felt. “Far and near, we
+must always negotiate,” he said. He had succeeded with negotiations in
+France, and he carried his ideas further. Numerous treaties had already
+marked the first years of the cardinal’s power; after 1630 his activity
+in external affairs was redoubled. From 1623 to 1640 seventy-four
+treaties were concluded by Richelieu; four with England, twelve with the
+United Provinces, fifteen with the German provinces, six with Sweden,
+twelve with Savoy, six with the Venetian Republic, three with the pope,
+three with the emperor, two with Spain, four with Lorraine, one with the
+Grison Leagues, one with Portugal, two with the rebels of Catalonia and
+Rousillon, one with Russia, and two with the emperor of Morocco; such was
+the network of diplomatic negotiation which the cardinal wove in nineteen
+years.
+
+While the cardinal was holding La Rochelle in siege, the duke of Mantua
+died in Italy, and his natural heir, Carlo di Gonzaga, living in France
+as the duke de Nevers, hastened to take possession of his estates.
+Meanwhile the duke of Savoy claimed the marquisate of Montferrat. The
+Spaniards upheld him, and entering the duke of Mantua’s states, lay siege
+to Casale. When La Rochelle fell, Casale was still resisting; but the
+duke of Savoy had already seized the greater part of Montferrat, and the
+duke of Mantua asked help of the French king, whose subject he was. This
+furnished a new field of battle against Spain.[t]
+
+[Illustration: RICHELIEU]
+
+Nobody could understand why the cardinal thought insignificant
+possessions at a distance from France, like Mantua and Montferrat, were
+of such great importance.[89] He was obliged to explain to the king that
+Casale and Mantua were the citadels of Italy--the most valuable military
+stations in the basin of the Po; and then war was decided on. Richelieu
+left on the 29th of December with the title of “lieutenant-general
+representing the person of the king.” He had doffed the cardinal’s
+robe to assume the military uniform; under him were the cardinal De la
+Valette, marshals Montmorency, Schomberg, and Bassompierre, with Sourdis,
+now archbishop of Bordeaux, as administrative lieutenant. The duke of
+Savoy declared himself neutral and refused to revictual Casale, though he
+would allow the French free passage to go to its relief. The cardinal,
+determined in spite of this treacherous ally to gain possession of the
+passes into Italy, crossed the Alps at Susa and pretended he was about
+to march on Turin; he then rapidly marched back and besieged Pinerolo,
+which capitulated (1630). Spinola hastened to the defence of Piedmont,
+and owing to his superior forces checked the advance of the French. Louis
+XIII then took the command of the army himself and conquered the whole
+of Savoy; but he fell ill and his place had to be taken by the duke de
+Montmorency, who defeated the Spaniards at Vegliana and took possession
+of the marquisate of Saluzzo on the 10th of July. However, Mantua had
+been taken and Casale was sorely pressed, the French army was reduced by
+sickness, reinforcements were expected from the army in Champagne and
+money from Paris. The latter, however, did not arrive, for the marshal De
+Marillac and his brother the chancellor, acting under the influence of
+the queen-mother, neglected to send it off. Richelieu, rendered uneasy
+by the intrigues of his enemies, effected a truce through the mediation
+of the abbé Mazarin,[90] who had been sent from the court of Rome.
+Mazarin, who was a man of supple and crafty temper, gained and retained
+the confidence of Richelieu and was destined subsequently to carry on
+the work which the latter had begun. At the expiration of this truce the
+serious events which were passing in Germany prevailed on Austria, as we
+shall see, to conclude a definite peace. This was the Peace of Ratisbon,
+concluded on the 25th of October, 1630.[d] The emperor agreed to invest
+the duke de Nevers and withdraw the imperial troops from his states on
+the Grison passes provided that France would withdraw hers from Pinerolo
+and Savoy.[a]
+
+
+ENMITY OF MARIE DE’ MEDICI AGAINST RICHELIEU
+
+The termination of war was the commencement of new perils for Richelieu.
+He foresaw the fresh efforts of his enemies, and on the return of the
+court to Paris, he used all the resources of his address to avert and
+conciliate the resentment of the queen-mother. She dissembled, and did
+not forgive. Leagued with the Marillacs, and favoured by many of the
+nobility, Marie laboured to overturn the minister, who defended himself
+with firmness and adroitness. Louis XIII was of a feeble mind, still more
+enfeebled by a weak temperament and languid constitution. Resolution was
+a state above his powers; it was to him an unnatural tension, menacing at
+each instant a relapse.
+
+Despite of this, he was clear-sighted. He loved France, was alive to
+its glory and prosperity, and saw that it required the strong hand of
+Richelieu to govern and to guide. He did not love the minister, indeed;
+and it was thus the more to his credit that he upheld him from a sense
+of his talents and utility. When Marie poured into his ear complaints
+against the cardinal’s insolence, against his tyranny and domineering
+ambition, Louis allowed that she was right. He acquiesced; and the
+queen-mother argued from this passive assent that the king shared her
+aversion and her views against the minister. She would hurry home to
+her palace of the Luxembourg after such interviews, and confidently
+assure her followers that her ascendency was complete, that the fall of
+Richelieu was near. By that hour, however, Richelieu was closeted with
+the monarch, was unfolding to him his high and masterly views of policy,
+was exposing the selfish manœuvres of Marie de’ Medici; and had at length
+gained in his turn such complete ascendency that the feeble Louis would
+not only assent, but kindle up for the moment with warmth and friendship
+towards his minister, and then, in confidence, betray the very secrets of
+his mother’s converse with him. Richelieu thus drew from a certain source
+the hopes, the plans, and the names of his enemies.
+
+
+_The Day of Dupes_
+
+In an interview with his mother, Louis, assenting to the justice of all
+her complaints against the cardinal, had proposed that his niece first,
+and then Richelieu himself, should come publicly and ask pardon of Marie
+at the Luxembourg. The king intended this as a measure of conciliation.
+The queen accepted it for the sake of seeing her enemy humbled.
+Accordingly, on the appointed day, Madame de Combalet, the cardinal’s
+niece, entered, and flung herself at the feet of Marie, imploring her
+forgiveness. The latter, instead of preserving the disdain that suited
+her purpose, or of assuming the air of forgiveness that the king desired,
+was unable to contain her temper, and burst forth in invectives against
+the suppliant lady. Madame de Combalet retreated, terrified and in tears.
+The cardinal himself succeeded, equally suppliant, and was received by
+the same volley of coarse vituperation. Louis XIII, scrupulous in his
+ideas of dignity and delicacy, shocked at the conduct of his mother, took
+the part of his minister, and reproved her; but at the same time bade
+Richelieu, in the same tone of anger, to retire.[e]
+
+Everyone was convinced of the cardinal’s disgrace; it was already
+satirised on the Pont Neuf, and the little porter of the Samaritaine
+indulged in a thousand grimaces in imitation of his eminence. At the
+palace all minds were occupied with the approaching triumph of M. de
+Marillac, lord keeper of the great seal and fairly popular with the
+parliament on account of his being known to be for the interests of the
+queen-mother and Gaston of Orleans.
+
+Already presidents in caps, councillors in scarlet robes, deliberated
+amongst themselves whether it would be made a criminal action to
+prosecute his eminence as guilty of tyranny and peculation. The
+ambassadors, watching the smallest diplomatic step in Paris, announced
+the inevitable disgrace of Cardinal Richelieu to their courts, and the
+increasing authority of the queen-mother. The _Mémoires_[f] relate that
+Charles I, so ardent a promoter of royal prerogative, replied to the
+despatch of his ambassador: “The king of France is making a great mistake
+in disgracing a minister of so great competency.”
+
+Louis XIII had set out for Versailles, that poverty-stricken palace he
+was too parsimonious to restore, and had there sequestered himself. A
+great concourse of people filled the apartments of Marie de’ Medici;
+the crowd surrounded her and Gaston of Orleans; power was about to pass
+into their hands. The queen-mother, smiling graciously, affectionately
+held the hand of Anne of Austria, with whom she conversed amicably. They
+treated each other as mother and daughter, although Anne of Austria,
+intensely proud of her noble Spanish blood, considered herself superior
+to a member of the princely and mercantile house of Florence. The court
+wore a new aspect; it was thought that the days of the regency would
+be reproduced and Marshal de Marillac, then with the army of Italy,
+seemed a new Concini destined to enjoy the favours of Marie de’ Medici.
+But the queen-mother was not sufficiently energetic. Naturally of an
+indolent disposition, she easily yielded to the Italian _far niente_,
+to that nerveless temperament which prevented her from prompt decision
+in decisive circumstances. She did not join her son at Versailles, but
+remained to be congratulated by the crowd of courtiers that surrounded
+her.
+
+[Sidenote: [1630-1631 A.D.]]
+
+During this time the friends of Richelieu were becoming uneasy. Cardinal
+de la Valette, that devoted prelate, had gone with all speed to
+Versailles, and had had his arrival announced to the king. The cardinal
+had been informed by Saint-Simon, the diminutive equerry and favourite,
+that Louis XIII had spoken of his minister in terms that did not lead
+one to suppose he was out of favour. La Valette was immediately ushered
+into the king’s presence and the king smilingly said to him, “Cousin, I
+think you are surprised at all that is taking place.” “Sire, more than
+your majesty can imagine.” “Well, cousin, return to Cardinal Richelieu
+and tell him that he is a good minister, and I desire him to come
+instantly.” The minister’s friend did not wait to be told a second time.
+Richelieu, who had retired to a small house in the village of Versailles,
+immediately hastened to the old palace. The interview took place in the
+presence of Saint-Simon, the first equerry, and the marquis de Mortemart,
+the first gentleman of the household. Richelieu, throwing himself on his
+knees, his customary attitude, thanked the king in humble and submissive
+terms for the favour he was conferring upon him. Louis showed himself
+kindly and affable. “Cousin, in you I possess the most faithful and
+loving servant it were possible to find. I consider myself the more
+obliged to protect you that I am cognisant of the respect and gratitude
+you bear the queen, my mother. I would have forsaken you, had you not
+shown these evidences of your generous nature. Be assured henceforth of
+my protection. I shall know how to disperse the cabal of your enemies;
+they abuse the credulity of the queen, my mother, who permits herself to
+be easily prejudiced. Continue to serve me faithfully, and I will uphold
+you against all those who have vowed your destruction.” “Sire,” replied
+Richelieu, “solitude is a necessity to me, and I will never remain at
+your court against the desire of the queen-mother.” “Cousin, it is not my
+mother that you need fear, but certain mischief-making spirits about her;
+I know them and I promise you they will do nothing.”[h] Thus the great
+cardinal triumphed, while his enemies were rejoicing at his supposed
+overthrow. The day when the queen-mother and her coterie were thus
+deceived--the 11th of November, 1630--has passed into history as the “Day
+of Dupes.”[a]
+
+
+_Exile of Marie de’ Medici_
+
+The popular feeling was nevertheless against Richelieu and in favour of
+Marie de’ Medici, whose munificence and fête-loving habits had won the
+good will of the Parisians. This had no small weight in detaining the
+king at St. Germain, where he held his court, and where the two queens
+appeared, although Louis scarcely spoke to them. Marie bore disgrace and
+contempt with impatience; but she could now find no one hardy enough to
+brave the cardinal and espouse her quarrel, except Gaston, her second
+son, the rash and weak duke of Orleans. The prince imagined a singular
+mode of vengeance. Accompanied by a body of young and armed companions,
+he entered the cardinal’s palace, came rudely into his presence, and
+apostrophised him in a rough and menacing speech. After this bootless
+outrage, Gaston retired, left the capital, and proceeded to levy troops
+in the provinces. Louis, on learning this sally of his brother, whom he
+peculiarly disliked, took up the cause of his minister more warmly; and
+attributing, not unjustly, the turbulence of Gaston to their mother, he
+openly reproached her, and warned her to become reconciled to Richelieu.
+Marie would not abandon her hate; and monarch and minister were obliged
+to proceed to extremities.
+
+It required much address to bring the king to this point; and Richelieu
+was only enabled to reconcile Louis to use harsh measures towards his
+parent by means of the confessors whom he himself had provided for his
+master. These smoothed away the difficulties presented by the king’s
+conscience, or rather by his filial habits. Some months passed in vain
+attempts at accommodation; but the ultimate result was the flight of
+Gaston and of Marie de’ Medici out of the kingdom. The latter retired
+to Brussels. Thus Richelieu came triumphant from the second struggle.
+Bassompierre was sent to the Bastille; the duke of Guise[91] was deprived
+of his office of admiral, and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Even the
+proud and veteran Épernon was obliged to crave pardon. The parliament
+objected to an ordinance of the king declaring the partisans of Gaston
+guilty of high treason. They rightly argued that such a condemnation
+could not be issued without trial or by other than a judge. But even from
+this just position they were compelled to recede. They were summoned to
+the Louvre; their edict of objection was cancelled in the presence of
+Louis and his minister, and the obnoxious ordinance registered in its
+stead. Richelieu showed a still more culpable contempt for the forms of
+justice in the trial of the marshal De Marillac. He was brought before a
+commission, which sat in the cardinal’s country-house at Ruel, accused
+of a long list of crimes, of all save his true fault of conspiring with
+Marie de’ Medici. Being convicted, he was beheaded in the place de Grève.
+
+[Sidenote: [1631-1632 A.D.]]
+
+Marillac was the second victim sacrificed to the supremacy of the
+minister. The desire of vengeance and of blood grows, like other criminal
+tastes, upon those who indulge and gratify it; and Richelieu stained
+deeply his high reputation. Hitherto the nobility bore the tyrannic
+ascendency of the cardinal with jealousy and impatience. They saw plainly
+that his designs were directed against their power and independence.
+Still, from want of union, and from the absence of a spirit amongst them
+capable of coping with their great enemy, they held back, in trembling
+though indignant submission, looked on while their chains were preparing,
+and even aided to forge them. Thus they had helped to put down the
+Huguenots, ever the mainstay of rebellion. They then, when too late,
+sought to intrigue with Marie de’ Medici against the cardinal. The trial
+of Marillac, not by his peers but by a mock commission, and the execution
+of that marshal on no grounds save enmity to the minister, filled all the
+noblesse with fresh indignation and alarm. And one who, from birth and
+position, might well take the lead of the highborn of France in this its
+cause, declared himself unhesitatingly on this occasion.
+
+
+THE REVOLT OF GASTON AND THE EXECUTION OF MONTMORENCY
+
+The duke de Montmorency was governor of Provence. He had distinguished
+himself in the Italian war; had never been foremost to complain or to
+intrigue; but, like his family, had been remarked for moderate and
+independent principles; tolerant though orthodox in religion; a loyal
+subject though no fawning courtier. In the king’s extreme illness, he had
+given his word to protect the minister, and Richelieu had other causes of
+gratitude.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH GALLANT, FIRST HALF OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+But Montmorency was now indignant at the insult offered to his rank
+in the person of Marillac. He felt it equally a shame that the king’s
+brother, the son of Henry IV, should be driven into exile by the enmity
+of an upstart minister. Gaston had fled to Lorraine, and there passed
+his time in the wooing and espousal of the duke’s daughter. Richelieu
+advanced to Lorraine, and Gaston was obliged to fly. He applied to
+Montmorency for protection and support, and the duke was both imprudent
+and generous enough to grant it. This could be done with arms alone.
+The dukes of Orleans and Montmorency therefore raised a little army,
+cantoned themselves in Languedoc, and resolved to fight the royal
+forces, which under Schomberg advanced against them. It appears that the
+population of the south looked with disfavour on the enterprise of the
+dukes, either in dread of Richelieu’s power and vengeance, or in dislike
+of the aristocratic cause. The issue of the rebellion was decided in a
+skirmish at Castelnaudary, where Montmorency, at the head of five hundred
+followers, charged the royalists, and was taken prisoner. The news of his
+capture dispersed his army, and left Gaston no resource but to join his
+mother at Brussels.
+
+It was now in the power of Richelieu to give an example of his
+moderation. In pardoning Montmorency, he would have gained many hearts;
+nor would his power have been less formidable. Gaston even promised
+to submit, if his generous protector were spared: but Richelieu was
+inexorable; he knew what would be his own fate if overthrown. He
+recollected the fall of Ancre, of every favourite and minister whom
+the nobles had overthrown; and private reasons of vindictiveness
+concurred with the wish of making a striking example, and by the death
+of Montmorency giving the same salutary warning to his order as the
+execution of Biron had proved in the last reign. Richelieu had the
+power of communicating his own firmness to the king. Louis resisted the
+supplications of all the nobles of his court, of the princess of Condé,
+Montmorency’s sister, and even the clamours of the mob, who cried under
+the windows of the Louvre for mercy. The marshal De Châtillon begged the
+king to show himself to the people, and to grant to their prayers the
+life of the first noble of the land. “Should I obey the suggestions of
+the rabble, I should not act as a king,” replied Louis, displaying that
+extreme of monarchic arrogance which his posterity so deeply cherished
+and so dearly expiated. The kingdom’s safety might have been an excuse
+for cruelty--the pride of the monarch was none.
+
+Montmorency owned his crime, and promised to redeem the disloyalty of
+a moment by devoting his after life to the king; but he made no mean
+submissions. In passing to the place of execution, he regarded the statue
+of Henry IV with emotion. He was the godson of that monarch, who knew how
+to unite clemency with firmness. But, shaking off thoughts of the past,
+he pointed onward to the scaffold, which he said was the surest road to
+heaven. In him perished the last of the lineal descendants of the great
+constable, the most illustrious of which were still said to be only the
+younger branch of that noble family.
+
+
+FOREIGN AFFAIRS
+
+[Sidenote: [1629-1632 A.D.]]
+
+As soon as Richelieu felt assured that the political dissensions of
+France herself would no longer obstruct his plans abroad, he marched with
+firm step to that weakening of Spain and upsetting of the empire of which
+Nani speaks. Henry IV and Queen Elizabeth, in pursuit of the same ends,
+had sought and found the same allies. But Richelieu had better luck than
+they for the execution of his designs to run across the king of Sweden.[t]
+
+Gustavus Adolphus was young, active, bellicose and surrounded by a
+military halo which permitted him to be looked upon as a future champion
+of Germany against the house of Austria. He had had several clashes
+with the emperor or his lieutenants over the Baltic towns, and the idea
+occurred to Richelieu to make use of his sword.[l]
+
+Richelieu arranged a truce between the young king and the Poles with whom
+he was at war, in September, 1629; he then granted him by the Treaty of
+Berwald, in January, 1631, a subsidy of 1,200,000 francs, and threw him
+at Germany, pointing out, to excite his ardour, the immense booty to
+be seized, his co-religionists to be avenged, and the great rôle to be
+played on a brilliant stage.
+
+The Thirty Years’ War was then at its height.[92] This struggle, both
+religious and political, began in Bohemia in 1618, and had extended
+little by little over the empire. The elector-palatine and the king of
+Denmark (Christian IV) had been, one after the other, vanquished and
+humiliated. The imperial army created and commanded by Wallenstein had
+penetrated as far as the Baltic, crushing under foot on its way, both
+Germany and her secular liberties. The oft-discussed problem of that
+country--that is, its partition among independent princes or its union
+under a single master, was on the point of being solved in favour of
+unity under the despotism of the house of Austria. Cardinal though he
+was, Richelieu acted like Francis I, like Henry II, and like Henry IV;
+he undertook the cause of the German princes without regard to their
+religion. His confidential agent, Father Joseph, managed the electors so
+well at the diet of Ratisbon in 1630, that they wrung from the emperor
+the recall of Wallenstein and the disbandment of his army, after which
+they refused to give the emperor’s son the title of king of the Romans,
+which Ferdinand II regarded as the implied price of these concessions. “A
+miserable Capuchin,” he cried in anger, “has been clever enough to put
+six electoral hats into his cowl.”
+
+[Sidenote: [1632-1634 A.D.]]
+
+Gustavus Adolphus fell upon the empire like a thunderbolt. He invented
+new tactics which disconcerted his adversaries. He defeated Tilly near
+Leipsic, killed him at the passage of the Lech, but was killed himself at
+Lützen (November 8th, 1632). “The world is for others,” he cried, as he
+fell. Richelieu picked up the hope and the fortune of the young hero. He
+was now free from all domestic anxiety and could employ his attention and
+his strength abroad. He boldly substituted in the struggle against the
+Austrian house, for exhausted Denmark and for Sweden bereft of her king,
+France full of youth and ardour.[u]
+
+Richelieu still upheld his alliance with Sweden and the Protestant
+powers; and thus keeping the force of Austria employed, he was enabled to
+effect his next ambitious project, which was the occupation of Lorraine.
+
+That province was in its origin feudatory to the empire, and was totally
+independent of France, except that from vicinity and interest its dukes
+were far more French than German. The Guises had drawn these ties closer.
+And now that the duke of Lorraine had harboured the duke of Orleans,
+and, against the king’s consent, had given him his daughter Margaret
+in marriage, the latter had reason or pretext for anger. Richelieu, as
+usual, caused an army, with the king at its head, to march to Lorraine.
+The duke was alarmed, and sought to parry the attack by offering to
+espouse Madame de Combalet, niece of the cardinal; but Richelieu refused
+to sacrifice the interests of the state to the aggrandisement of his
+family. Perhaps he saw in the offer a trap laid for him. Lorraine was
+invaded; and Nancy, its capital, besieged. The duchess of Orleans
+contrived to escape from it to Brussels; but Nancy fell into the power of
+the king. In vain did the duke negotiate, and make submissions; equally
+in vain did he resign his duchy in favour of his brother. The capital and
+fortresses were held in firm possession by Richelieu.
+
+Here fell another noble, or rather an independent prince, from having
+espoused the quarrel of the duke of Orleans. Whilst the queen-mother gave
+signs of increased exasperation, by suborning an attempt to carry off
+the cardinal’s niece, Gaston began to be weary of exile. His favourite,
+Puylaurens, who had chief influence with him, was still more anxious; and
+Richelieu offered great advantages to the latter, if he would induce the
+prince to submit. Gaston at length did so, quitted Brussels abruptly,
+and repaired to Paris, where he was graciously and splendidly received.
+Puylaurens received the hand of the cardinal’s niece, and was created
+duke d’Aiguillon for his services. But Richelieu was a dangerous friend,
+except to an all-devoted servant. He sought to break Gaston’s marriage;
+and Gaston was obstinate in resisting. The cardinal laid the blame on
+the new duke d’Aiguillon, and without further pretext arrested and shut
+him up in the Bastille, where he soon after perished. Gaston was, as
+usual, enraged; and, as usual, allowed his rage to evaporate in vain
+menaces, and in vainer enterprises.
+
+
+_Wars with Austria_
+
+[Sidenote: [1634-1635 A.D.]]
+
+The nobles checked, the Huguenot power destroyed, it remained to abase
+still lower the house of Austria, and to extend the territories of France
+at its expense. To make the Rhine the limit of the empire was the darling
+aim of Richelieu, as of Henry IV. Gustavus Adolphus and the Protestant
+princes of Germany had hitherto been instruments in Richelieu’s hand
+to effect or further this; but, since the death of the king of Sweden,
+the emperor had recovered his superiority, had defeated the Swedes,
+and reduced his enemies. It behooved France no longer to confine her
+efforts to negotiation; but to draw the sword, if she wished to preserve
+her ascendency or to prosecute her political schemes. She demanded
+certain advantages for thus declaring herself; and neither Sweden nor
+the malcontent Germans were backward in paying the price. Oxenstierna,
+the Swedish chancellor, ceded the fortress of Philippsburg to France.
+The league of Protestants put the whole of Alsace and its important
+fortresses under her protection. Lorraine was already occupied; and now
+Richelieu pushed northwards, and garrisoned Treves, forming, at the
+same time, a defensive alliance with Holland. Spain, informed of this
+treaty, sent an expedition to surprise the town of Treves; and war was in
+consequence declared by France against the emperor and the king of Spain,
+in the commencement of 1635. A herald was sent to Brussels to announce
+it; the last time that this species of feudal etiquette was observed.
+
+Richelieu, the destroyer of the Huguenots, was thus leagued with the
+Protestant powers of Europe against its Catholic princes--a clear proof
+that his principles were politic, not bigoted. This war, which lasted
+thirteen years against the emperor and twenty-five against Spain,
+produced little glory to the minister, at least from its victories, and
+has brought as little interest to history.[93] It is marked by as much
+want of spirit as of talent. Yet the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, then
+drawing to its close, was marked with both. But religious differences had
+given ferocity to this war, which was carried on in the heart of Germany,
+and which put daily at stake the fate of kingdoms, capitals, and creeds.
+On the other hand, the war which we enter on was merely an extended
+line of frontier skirmishes, idle sieges, and fitful expeditions, in
+which Richelieu had the advantage, not from military but ministerial
+superiority. His vigorous administration enabled France to bear the
+expense and weight of the war, whilst the house of Austria, from the bad
+husbandry of more immense resources, became exhausted, and towards the
+close of it was in a tottering state. As to the lack of able generals, it
+may be observed that great military talent must necessarily be wanting at
+the commencement of a war, and that it requires half a score of years’
+campaigning for the age and the nation to form its military system
+anew--the old never sufficing--and to find for that system a head and an
+arm capable of directing it. Turenne was a young officer at this epoch.
+It was not till the following reign that he and Condé were able to assert
+the superiority of French generalship.
+
+[Sidenote: [1635-1636 A.D.]]
+
+France entered on the campaign with four armies--one in the Low
+Countries, one on the Rhine, the others in Italy, and the Valtelline.
+The first exploit was one of promise and éclat. The marshal De Brézé was
+marching to join the Dutch through the country of Liège. Prince Thomas
+of Savoy, at the head of the Spanish, sought to prevent the junction.
+He was defeated by Brézé at Avein, and lost all his cannon and colours.
+Tirlemont was given up to the pillage of the victors. Louvain was
+besieged, and Brussels threatened. The unfortunate Marie de’ Medici was
+obliged to fly from the latter town, with the duchess of Orleans, pursued
+by the good fortune of her enemy Richelieu. Chance, however, may give a
+victory; talents can alone make the most of it. The French were obliged
+to retire behind the Maas. They and the Dutch, most ill-assorted allies,
+laid the blame of tardiness upon each other.
+
+In the following year the imperialists had all the advantage. They
+penetrated into Picardy, passed the Somme, and took Corbie. Paris was
+in alarm, and her citizens began to retire southward. It was a critical
+moment for Richelieu. His ascendency over the king consisted solely in
+the monarch’s opinion of his sagacity and good fortune as minister. This
+opinion was greatly shaken; yet Richelieu kept a good countenance, and
+did all that the emergency required. He made the king show himself to
+the people; he despatched reinforcements to the count de Soissons, who
+commanded in Picardy. The Spanish knew as little as the French how to
+push an advantage. Instead of advancing upon the capital, they passed the
+time in pillaging, and were soon obliged to retreat. The court advanced
+to Amiens, whilst the army besieged and endeavoured to retake Corbie.
+
+
+ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE CARDINAL
+
+Here Richelieu’s good fortune saved him from new peril. The count de
+Soissons, son of that prince of the blood whose turbulence made him
+conspicuous in the first year of the regency of Marie de’ Medici, had
+stepped from the obscurity in which he had been kept, on the unexpected
+invasion of his government by the enemy. He had valiantly resisted; but
+the cardinal, who dreaded the renown of a prince of the blood, avoided
+placing any large force at his disposal, and at length brought the king
+himself to command and eclipse Soissons. The count vowed vengeance; he
+leagued with Gaston, ever ready to commence a plot; and they agreed to
+assassinate the cardinal at Amiens. Two gentlemen, named Saint-Ibal
+and Montrésor, were charged with the execution, but were to wait for
+the signal to be given by the duke of Orleans. An opportunity offered.
+Richelieu was alone at the foot of his staircase, which he had descended
+to his carriage, and in the midst of the conspirators. The agents had
+their hands on pistols, eagerly watching the countenances of both the
+count de Soissons and the duke of Orleans for the signal. Neither had
+the courage to give it, and Richelieu walked on; for the moment he was
+unsuspicious of the danger that he had escaped.
+
+On reflection, the princes saw that the danger lay in having meditated
+the deed, rather than in having executed it. They tried other means,
+leagued with the Spaniards, and endeavoured to rouse the nobility to
+rebel. Épernon, to whom they chiefly applied, bade them, in answer,
+recollect the fate of Marillac and Montmorency. They did so, and fled
+from court; the count de Soissons to Sedan, and Gaston to Blois. But the
+latter was soon brought back by fair words.
+
+
+CHARACTER OF LOUIS
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH GENTLEMAN, TIME OF LOUIS XIII]
+
+[Sidenote: [1615-1638 A.D.]]
+
+In the midst of these intrigues, this warfare, these struggles betwixt
+nations and parties, Louis XIII was perhaps the personage who felt the
+least interested. “He led,” says Madame de Motteville,[i] “the most
+wretched and sad life; without court, or friends, or power; spending his
+time in catching birds, whilst his armies were taking towns.” He was
+plaintive, melancholy, retiring; not wanting either in good sense or
+in any other manly quality, perhaps, but cursed with a diffidence that
+neutralised them all. Thus he despaired of ever finding another minister
+like Richelieu; and, in fear of offending the cardinal, whom he might
+have controlled as well as employed, he resigned all authority into his
+hands. Another idea of his, proceeding from the same diffidence, and a
+great cause of discontent and sadness with him, was that he despaired
+to render himself agreeable to the fair sex. He was cursed with a
+bashfulness and a backwardness that he blushed to avow, and that he
+concealed under the colour of apathy and suspicion. This kept Louis XIII
+for a number of years a stranger to his young and not unlovely queen;
+as the same defect produced, in after years, a similar result with his
+descendant, Louis XVI. Anne of Austria, piqued by this coldness of her
+spouse, avenged herself by ridicule and sarcasm. The king’s indifference
+or distance thus became hatred; and Richelieu, who had cause to dread
+the young queen, fanned the latter sentiment. Louis nevertheless felt
+attracted towards female society, and he paid a kind of distant and
+formal court to Mademoiselle de Hautefort. This young lady as little
+understood his bashful and susceptible temper as did the queen, and Louis
+soon accused them both of leaguing together to mock him. The attentions
+of the king were then turned towards a new object, Mademoiselle de la
+Fayette, with whom the novel of De Genlis has perhaps rendered the
+reader familiar. She, of tenderer feelings and more penetration, knew
+how to appreciate the timid affections of the monarch. She cherished and
+returned them; never, however, overstepping the bounds of modesty. Louis,
+whose reserve, or “wisdom,” to use the words of Madame de Motteville,[i]
+“equalled that of the most modest dame,” at length ventured to propose an
+apartment at Versailles to Mademoiselle de la Fayette, who replied, after
+some hesitation, some intrigue, and certain interference, by retiring to
+a convent. The king wept, and was in despair; but his scruples would not
+permit him, like Louis XIV, to tear a beauty from the altar. He did not
+cease, however, to visit Mademoiselle de la Fayette at her convent; and
+long conversations were wont to pass between them through the _grille_
+or iron railing of the parlour. The monarch felt the influence of this
+virtuous young woman; her counsels, to which her piety now gave weight
+and her secure position boldness, prompted him to mistrust Richelieu,
+whom she represented as supporting heresy against Catholicism, and to
+give peace to Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: [1638-1641 A.D.]]
+
+Another voice, of equal weight with the king, was pouring the same
+sentiments into his ear. This was his confessor, the father Caussin, whom
+Richelieu had placed in that station, but who betrayed his confidence.
+To resist at once a mistress and a confessor was difficult, and the
+influence of the minister began to totter. One urgent counsel given
+to Louis by Mademoiselle de la Fayette and Caussin was that he should
+become reconciled to his queen; they showed, and even proved to him,
+that his suspicions against her were unjust. Richelieu, who observed the
+changed sentiments of the king towards Anne of Austria, was alarmed, and
+tried to prevent the reconciliation that he feared. Suspecting that the
+queen held a correspondence with Spain, he caused the police to visit
+and search her apartments at the Val de Grace. But his enemies were too
+adroit: no discovery was made, and the insult served but to display the
+unfounded rancour of the cardinal. After this the pious and generous
+voice of Mademoiselle de la Fayette had more influence; and, obedient to
+it, Louis XIII became reconciled for the time to his queen. The happy
+and unexpected consequence was the birth of a prince (afterwards Louis
+XIV) on the 5th of September following (1638). To this, however, the
+result was limited. Richelieu regained his ascendency over the king; the
+confessor was banished; Mademoiselle de la Fayette forgotten; and the
+queen, though no longer banished from the king’s presence, had as little
+share as before of his influence or friendship.
+
+The fresh hold which Richelieu here took of the monarch’s confidence was
+owing, in a great measure, to the success of the war. In the beginning
+of the campaign two actions were fought at Rheinfelden, in the first of
+which the gallant duke de Rohan perished; in the second, the duke of Saxe
+Weimar defeated the imperials, and took their two generals, one of whom,
+the famous Johann von Werth, was sent to Paris. The principal consequence
+of this victory was the conquest of Breisach, the chief fortress of
+Alsace. The name of the town reminds us again of the celebrated Father
+Joseph, a Capuchin friar, the follower and confidant of Richelieu. We
+can scarcely imagine a statesman and an ambassador clothed in a monk’s
+frock and sandals: yet such was Father Joseph, a name more or less
+mingled in all the intrigues of the French court, and its negotiations
+with others. His influence was known, and he was dreaded by the court
+as a kind of evil spirit, in fact the demon of Richelieu. Although the
+latter never procured for his monkish friend the cardinal’s hat which he
+demanded, still the people called Father Joseph his “gray eminence,” at
+once to distinguish him from and assimilate him to his “red eminence”
+the cardinal. They had been friends from youth; congenial spirits in
+ambition, depth, and talent: the monk, however, sacrificed his personal
+elevation to that of the cardinal. Richelieu was much indebted to him: it
+was Joseph that roused and encouraged him, when stupefied and intimidated
+by the invasion of Picardy; and it has been claimed that after his
+death Richelieu showed neither the same firmness nor sagacity.[94]
+When Father Joseph was on his death-bed, Richelieu stood by it: it was
+a scene such as a novelist might love to paint. The conversation of
+the two ecclesiastics was still of this world; and the cardinal’s last
+exhortation to the expiring monk was, “Courage, Father Joseph, Breisach
+is ours!” a form of consolation characteristic of both.
+
+
+REVOLT OF THE COUNT DE SOISSONS (1641 A.D.)
+
+The count de Soissons, on the failure of his scheme against the
+cardinal, had taken refuge with the duke de Bouillon in Sedan. All
+the enemies of the latter, especially the exiles, looked towards this
+prince of the blood as the rallying-point, the support of their cause.
+Richelieu employed every art to pacify the count, remove his distrust,
+and entice him to court. All efforts proved vain; and Richelieu was
+even obliged to purchase the tranquillity of Soissons, and tolerate his
+independent posture. It was dangerous, however, to let such an example
+of disobedience subsist; and the cardinal at length sent an army, under
+the marshal De Châtillon, to reduce Sedan, and take or humble the count
+de Soissons. Châtillon was both valorous and skilful; but nothing could
+compensate for the ill humour and backwardness of the troops, who, with
+their officers, felt more inclined to a gallant prince of the blood than
+to the domineering cardinal. In an action that took place at La Marfée,
+near Sedan, the royal troops showed neither alacrity nor determination;
+and Châtillon, despite his efforts, was completely put to the rout. No
+obstacle seemed now to prevent the count de Soissons from marching to
+Paris, when the almost miraculous good fortune of Richelieu saved him
+from ruin. As Soissons rode over the field of battle, he pushed up his
+visor with his pistol; it was accidentally discharged, and the victor
+perished. Report did not fail to say that he was assassinated, and, of
+course, by the order of Richelieu; but there is no evidence to support
+such a rumour. Louis, who, on receiving tidings of the defeat, was
+preparing, with equanimity, to sacrifice the obnoxious minister, was
+now struck with his unvarying good fortune; and, with a superstitious
+feeling, bowed still lower to the cardinal’s will. The court did not
+share the monarch’s obsequiousness.[e]
+
+
+CAILLET’S ESTIMATE OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF RICHELIEU
+
+[Sidenote: [1624-1642 A.D.]]
+
+Having regarded the great minister of Louis XIII as the politician who,
+after having conquered Protestantism and the reawakening of feudalism
+at home, continued abroad the work of Francis I and Henry IV, and
+finally subdued the power of Austria and laid the foundation of French
+ascendency in Europe, we hope now to show that Richelieu was as great an
+administrator as he was a politician, and that the sources of national
+wealth, as well as what was essential for sound administration, were
+subjects to which he gave deep and serious attention. It will be seen
+that he did not suffer the work of regeneration, begun by Henry IV and
+so disastrously interrupted by the dagger of the assassin Ravaillac, to
+fall to the ground. Undertaking in his boundless energy affairs of the
+most varied nature, this great genius gave a powerful impetus in every
+direction to the national activity, which, having been long restrained or
+wrongly directed, was ripe for producing great results.
+
+Richelieu really laid the foundations on which Colbert and Louvois
+afterwards built under the eye of Louis XIV. To him is due the final
+triumph of pure monarchy, of that form of government which alone was
+legitimate at that time, because it alone could bring about and maintain
+unity in France. The kingship, elevated into a living symbol of the
+national welfare and of the best interests of the country, became a
+sort of rampart behind which Louis XIII’s minister, with indomitable
+energy, and with that breadth of mind which characterises a great man,
+carried on for eighteen years the work of monarchical centralisation.
+What he accomplished during this immortal dictatorship, in the midst of
+constantly recurring difficulties, is almost incredible. By destroying
+Protestantism as a political power, Richelieu made a distinct advance
+towards unity in the state. He gave a very essential bond of union to
+the higher administration by establishing the council of state, which
+remained practically unaltered till 1789. He rendered the triumph of
+monarchical authority over the new feudalism a certainty by lessening
+the excessive authority which the provincial governors had arrogated to
+themselves, by establishing resident overseers, who were energetic and
+obedient servants of the king, in various parts of the country to see
+that the law was properly administered, that the police were properly
+organised, and that the interests of the state in financial matters
+were not neglected; by commanding fortified places to be destroyed; and
+finally by his treatment of the most important members of the aristocracy
+as well as of the royal family, whom he punished or even banished when
+necessary, thus showing that the sword of the law was long enough to
+reach any head, however highly placed.
+
+He obliged the parliament to keep strictly within the limits of its own
+judicial functions, and forbade its taking any part whatever in the
+management of public affairs. He maintained a perpetual struggle against
+provincial institutions, whose resistance, usually self-interested and
+unjust, tended continually to fetter the action of the central power. But
+though he abolished the power of all enemies of the royal prerogative,
+Richelieu himself was capable of holding very wide and liberal views.
+If he destroyed Protestantism as a political party, he rose above the
+religious prejudices of his time by adhering strictly to the terms of
+the treaties which had been concluded with the Protestants, and by
+fearlessly bestowing his favours and his confidence on many of them. If
+he compelled the nobility to renounce their claims to independence, he
+opened up to them new paths to fortune and power, he enabled them to
+engage in maritime commerce without any loss of dignity, he admitted
+them to the royal councils, and he founded schools for them. In short,
+he wished them to take the lead in the country by superiority of culture
+as well as of wealth. If he failed to assemble the states-general, he
+nevertheless did not claim to be independent of public opinion; he
+frequently summoned assemblies of important people and explained to them,
+in patriotic language, his great projects for the good of the country; he
+more than once took for his text the resolutions presented to the states
+of 1640 by the commons. Lastly, he created one of the most powerful
+engines of modern civilisation, the periodical press, by authorising the
+publication, under his patronage, of Renaudot’s _Gazette_.
+
+Absorbed as he was by all these plans and preoccupations, Richelieu
+nevertheless found time to effect important improvements in all the
+public services. The statute of January, 1629, drawn up under the
+direction of Marillac, the keeper of the seals, summarises and completes
+the great statutes of the sixteenth century, and must be regarded as the
+most important attempt at codification previous to the time of Louis
+XIV. A stricter enforcement of police regulations increased the public
+security, whilst the numerous hospitals and benevolent institutions of
+all kinds founded at this time greatly ameliorated the condition of the
+labouring classes. Nor were manufactures, agriculture, and internal
+commerce neglected. Richelieu encouraged the formation of many companies
+whose object was to turn to account all the riches of the soil; he had
+the canal of Briare, begun in the time of Henry IV, finished, and he
+made wise regulations respecting the taxation of the common people and
+the allowance of provisions to be given to the troops, which improved
+the condition of the rural population. He was the creator of military
+administration; he gave France a merchant navy and a military navy,
+he organised consulates, concluded commercial treaties with Russia,
+Persia, Morocco, etc., and did much to encourage early French colonial
+enterprise. Literature, science, and the arts were also in a flourishing
+condition during this period. The special patronage accorded by Richelieu
+to artists and men of letters, whom he extricated from the precarious and
+humiliating position they had previously occupied; the creation of the
+French Academy,[95] the reorganisation of the Sorbonne, the foundation of
+the royal botanical gardens, of the royal press, and of the mint, prove
+how large a share in the striking development of the national genius
+which took place during his time may justly be claimed by the great
+cardinal.
+
+It is difficult to believe that one single man can have carried out
+successfully so many plans whilst at the same time laying the foundations
+of internal prosperity and of political ascendency in Europe, and that
+amid such difficulties as no other statesman has ever succeeded in
+surmounting. And what makes all this the more wonderful was the frailty
+of the body which contained this invincible spirit, and which was
+liable to be prostrated by illness at any moment. Although Richelieu’s
+health was extremely delicate, and he was constantly falling ill,
+this extraordinary man seemed able to make his body obey his mind. He
+usually went to bed at eleven o’clock, and would sleep for three or four
+consecutive hours; then he would do some writing himself or dictate to
+a secretary till about six o’clock, at which time he would go to sleep
+again till between seven and eight, when he rose. Avenel has clearly
+proved that Richelieu kept some confidential secretaries night and day
+about his person, but that he had no offices. The secretaries of state,
+who were nothing more than his head clerks, used to come for his orders,
+get the necessary work done in their own offices, bring it when required
+to the prime minister for his inspection, and then signed the documents
+themselves. Richelieu only signed what was written in his own study.
+Father Joseph himself does not seem to have been permitted, any more than
+were the secretaries, the privilege of supervising the minutes signed
+by the cardinal. The latter wished everything to be seen and done by
+himself. To our thinking, nothing more striking could be conceived than
+the picture of this statesman fighting against sleep and death for every
+moment of his existence, in order to consecrate it to the glory of France.
+
+What is specially characteristic of Richelieu, and gives him a distinct
+position among the founders of unity in France, is the clearness and
+the grandeur of his projects. Without foreseeing all the results of his
+system, results which he would no doubt have been unwilling to accept,
+he inaugurated with power and splendour that last social phase which the
+modern world was to pass through, before the light of a new era should
+shine upon it. Raising the kingship above family ties, and above all the
+traditions of precedent, he detached from it all foreign elements, and,
+isolating it within its own sphere, as a pure idea, he made it the living
+personification of the public welfare and the best interests of the
+nation. Thanks to this formidable weapon he broke away definitely from
+the traditions of the Middle Ages, and caused French society to enter
+once for all on the path of civil unity and equality. From the time of
+Louis the Fat to that of Louis XIV, the kingship had always pursued the
+mission which providence seemed to have laid upon it, to draw towards the
+shadow of the throne all the varied and inimical forces which divided the
+country between them; but there had been unfortunate intervals when it
+seemed almost as if the spirit of disaffection and anarchy would finally
+prevail, as happened after the reigns of Philip the Fair, Charles V,
+Louis XI, and after the death of Henry IV. From the time of Richelieu,
+the work of monarchical centralisation met with no further check. The
+kingship, having reached the height to which this great minister had
+raised it, was only to descend from that position in order to make way
+for a still wider and more productive form of government.
+
+
+THE CHURCH AND THE STATE UNDER RICHELIEU
+
+[Sidenote: [1624-1639 A.D.]]
+
+Two great facts are of paramount importance in the history of the church
+of France during the first half of the seventeenth century. On the one
+hand a sort of intellectual and moral regeneration, a true religious
+renascence, was taking place in her midst, a movement which might be
+compared to the literary renascence which had taken place in lay society
+in the preceding century. On the other hand, the question so long debated
+between the temporal and the spiritual power was at last decided in
+favour of the former. Richelieu fought desperately against ultramontanism
+and loudly proclaimed the absolute independence of the civil power, and
+the necessity of having a national clergy whose interests should be bound
+up with those of the state.
+
+The religious wars had left the French clergy in a deplorable condition.
+The church of France was in such a lax state that she seemed in danger
+of losing the fruits of the victory she had gained, by the incapacity or
+the vices of her members. However, we may say at once that this state
+of religious decadence was not irremediable. It was necessary to take
+prompt measures for reform, but the machinery for the work was there,
+and in greater completeness than appeared at first sight. It was only
+awaiting the workmen who were to set it in motion. If the wars of the
+league were responsible for great crimes and terrible outrages, they had
+also produced great virtues and fine characters. Men’s minds, somewhat
+enervated at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the introduction
+of a new morality, had regained their vigour in the struggle. Having
+erred temporarily they were nevertheless not weakened, and when the
+combat was over they felt an intense craving for action and for a living
+faith; two forces which, well directed, can accomplish wonders.
+
+This condition of mind also explains the very practical tendency shown
+by the religious movement which then took place. Indeed one of the most
+remarkable features of this regeneration of French Catholicism was, as
+Henri Martin[p] observes, the predominance of the practical over the
+ascetic and contemplative element.
+
+Richelieu did not intend to exclude either the nobility or the clergy
+from the administration of state affairs; on the contrary he treated the
+clergy just as he did the aristocracy. He sought to introduce members of
+the order into the king’s councils, but only on condition that they were
+sufficiently enlightened to be worthy of such a position. He acted in
+the same way with regard to the clergy. We see him giving most important
+positions, both military and naval, to ecclesiastics. What he insisted
+upon was that these two orders of the nobility and clergy should not
+subordinate the interests of the state to their own, as they had been
+too prone to do in former times. He wished the clergy to be part of the
+state and to belong to the state, and to contribute a fair proportion
+towards public expenses. In a word, he wished for a national clergy.
+Therefore in his struggles to maintain, in the civil power as well as in
+the religious order, the ascendency of the patriotic principles of the
+true Gallican spirit, Richelieu found himself supported by his bitterest
+opponent, the parliament, and deserted by the majority of the clergy,
+who saw in this extension of the civil power the possible abolition of
+their own privileges. In 1625, the clergy, in order to defend themselves
+from the constant demands for money made on them by the government, had
+decided that in future no deputy could vote subsidies under any pretext
+without having expressly received full powers in the matter, and that
+the opposition of a single province should be sufficient to annul the
+resolutions of the assembly. Richelieu replied that he could not admit
+the principle in virtue of which the clergy were claiming absolute
+immunity from taxation; that the needs of the state were real, while
+those of the church were chimerical and arbitrary; that if the king’s
+armies had not repulsed the enemy the clergy would have suffered much
+more.
+
+The struggle about taxation between the civil power and the clergy
+attained still more formidable proportions in 1638. Richelieu seems to
+have made use of the brothers Dupuy to prepare the ground on which he
+intended openly to attack the immunities of the clergy in the matter
+of taxation. Pierre Dupuy in conjunction with his brother Jacques
+published anonymously, about the middle of 1638, his great work on the
+_Liberties of the Gallican Church_. He collected in the first volume
+some very daring tracts on the subject; then, following his usual
+method, he supported them by a second volume of official acts and
+significant precedents, systematically arranged under the title _Proofs
+of the Liberties_. In the tracts, published mostly during the troubles
+of the league, when the national orthodoxy of France was called in
+question, it was stated amongst other things that the pope had exercised
+no jurisdiction at all over the Gallican church during the first six
+centuries; that in the time of Clovis the sovereign head of the church
+after Jesus Christ was the king, not the pope; that the pope had no
+right to issue excommunications outside his own diocese; that there
+is no instance of either the popes or their legates presiding at any
+council held in Gaul before 742; that the said popes had not then any
+title which placed them above the other archbishops, and indeed did not
+possess any which was not common to them all. As for the proofs, “great
+care had been taken not to draw deductions from the acts; our kings, the
+assembled bishops of France, the parliament, and other sovereign bodies,
+the universities and some of the communities of the kingdom, were the
+authors of this work.” This was an adroit way of assuming the consent of
+the whole nation during many centuries.
+
+The clergy understood the significance of the attack, and protested
+strongly against doctrines which they thought would declare them
+independent of Rome only to make them the slaves of temporal power. On
+the 9th of February, 1639, eighteen bishops met at the house of Cardinal
+de la Rochefoucauld and drew up a letter denouncing “this work of the
+devil” to their colleagues in a most violent manner. The cardinal
+undertook to deliver this letter to Richelieu. How the minister replied
+is not known; but from that time edicts more violent than ever were
+issued against the clergy.
+
+[Sidenote: [1639-1640 A.D.]]
+
+Amongst the bishops was one, the bishop of Chartres, who was entirely
+devoted to the cardinal, and who supported him strongly in his struggle
+with the church. He succeeded, it is said, in recovering a copy of all
+the edicts issued against the church in the most disturbed times and
+sent them to the superintendent Bullion. The latter made a report on
+them to the cardinal, and on the 16th of April, 1639, appeared an edict
+in which it was set forth that “ecclesiastics, communities, and other
+persons falling under the statute of mortmain are incapable of holding
+real property in France, that the king can compel them to pay dues on it
+within a year and a day of acquiring it, and in default of this the king
+may add the said property to his own domains; that the king is willing
+nevertheless to be satisfied with the payment of the indemnity for royal
+and feudal rights, which is due to him by his claims under mortmain; his
+majesty commands that these rights shall be sought out wherever they
+exist, in all sorts of livings, foundations, hospitals, confraternities,
+etc., excepting only the new communities, established thirty years ago,
+of the Jesuits and the Carmelites.” The edict commanded that the research
+should extend as far back as 1520. This was, according to financiers,
+a matter of nearly eighty millions for the state. A short time after,
+an order appeared commanding the alienation of 200,000 livres a year
+on the Hôtel-de-Ville, guaranteed for five years only by the clergy,
+and imposing on the latter a perpetual responsibility for these 200,000
+livres, and this without their own consent. The irritation of the clergy
+had reached a climax. They protested forcibly against this measure.
+Richelieu thought it would not be wise to push things to extremities. A
+declaration issued on the 7th of January, 1640, announced that the king
+would be satisfied with a levy of 3,600,000 livres as a compensation for
+his royal rights.
+
+It was then that Dupuy, seeing that the king’s authority was waning,
+published a violent discourse in defence of the king. Upon this an
+obscure priest named Hersent undertook in a Latin pamphlet, entitled
+_Optatus gallus_, to defend the rights of the church and denounce the
+machinations of those who were trying, he said, to foster schism in
+France. The parliament by a decision dated March 23rd, 1640, ordered
+the _Optatus gallus_ to be torn up and burned “as casting doubt on the
+authority bestowed on sovereign princes by God.” On the 28th of the same
+month, the archbishop of Paris, F. de Gondi, with Léonor d’Étampes bishop
+of Chartres, Nicolas bishop of Orleans, and Séguier bishop of Meaux,
+signed a declaration couched in almost the same terms, and having for
+its special object to repel most decidedly the accusation of schism made
+against the cardinal and a portion of the French clergy by the author of
+the _Optatus gallus_.
+
+As for the government, it recommenced its attacks on the clergy and,
+no longer satisfied with the 3,600,000 livres at first demanded, it
+called upon all holders of livings to pay over the sixth part of their
+income for two years (6th of October, 1640). The edict was published
+under the seal, and a chamber was established at the Louvre composed of
+councillors of state, both ecclesiastic and lay, and magistrates, whose
+function it was to carry out the provisions of the edict and settle the
+law. Berland, the prior of St. Denis-de-la-Chartre, who, having entered
+the clerical agency and not being recognised as an agent, had not the
+keys of the archives at his disposal, had the audacity to break in the
+doors and carry off the old assessment rolls, amongst them that of 1583,
+and to hand them over to the superintendent. When the new assessment
+was drawn up the agents of the clergy were desired to sign it. The abbé
+Saint-Vincent immediately formed an opposition party. This was suppressed
+by a decision of the 10th of November, which also forbade the agents
+“to hold any meeting either general or particular without the king’s
+permission.” The abbé Saint-Vincent then wrote to the dioceses telling
+them that all was lost. They decided to write to the cardinal and even
+the king, to appeal to his holiness, and to order public prayers to
+be offered up. In short, the clergy were in a state of indescribable
+tumult. The most violent accusations were hurled against this tyrant,
+this apostate, who was violating the privileges of the church, and trying
+to reduce her to a state of slavery which was quite unprecedented.
+Richelieu, however, who was at this time involved in a gigantic struggle
+against Austria and Spain, was anxious to be freed from all these
+entanglements at home. He appeared to give way and agreed to accept from
+an ecclesiastical assembly what he found it difficult to obtain by force.
+A general assembly was summoned at Mantes at the beginning of 1641. The
+government demanded 6,600,000 livres in all. The debate was long and
+stormy. The sieur d’Émeri was deputed by the king to signify to the
+archbishops of Sens and Toulouse and the bishops of Évreux, Maillezais,
+Bazas, and Toulon that they must leave the town, and each one retire to
+his own diocese without passing through Paris.
+
+On the other hand the minority, who were devoted to Richelieu, made some
+very bold speeches. The affair finally ended according to Richelieu’s
+desires. The government reduced its claims to five and a half millions,
+which were voted by the majority on the 27th of May.[r]
+
+
+THE CONSPIRACY OF CINQ-MARS (1641-1642 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1641-1642 A.D.]]
+
+One more effort was made to shake off the trammels of the hated cardinal.
+A conspiracy was entered into to deliver the land by the old Roman method
+of putting the tyrant to death; and the curious part of the design is
+that it was formed almost in the presence of the king.[j]
+
+Louis XIII had at that time a favourite, Henry d’Effiat, son of the
+old marshal and marquis de Cinq-Mars. He was a young man of twenty-two
+years of age, with a handsome face, finished manners, magnificent and
+extravagant. The king, always gloomy, found the need of an agreeable
+person, capable of diverting his thoughts, and even of amusing him.
+Having formed an affection for Cinq-Mars, he gave him in succession the
+posts of keeper of the wardrobe and grand equerry. Richelieu, whose close
+observation extended even over the intimate friends of Louis XIII, did
+not take umbrage at the favour bestowed upon a young man of so frivolous
+a nature, son of a father who had been one of his most devoted servants,
+and step-brother of the marshal De Meilleraie; on the contrary he felt
+that the equerry usurped the place in the king’s confidence of one of his
+declared enemies, Mademoiselle de Hautefort.
+
+But Cinq-Mars was a young madman and, as Monglat said, too presumptuous.
+Intoxicated by his success, thinking he could do in all things as he
+pleased, he began to show an inordinate ambition. He dreamed of the
+fortune of Luynes; he wished to be a duke and a peer, and to command
+the armies. Richelieu treated him like a child. Louis XIII had enough
+strength of mind to resist these follies, but not sufficient to send
+him away from him. He quarrelled with him, became reconciled again, and
+treated him as if he were a spoiled child. They called the equerry “the
+king’s plaything.” Cinq-Mars--offended at the way in which the cardinal
+snubbed him, encouraged, moreover, by the society of the Marais in which
+he was considered a success, and which was not afraid to show political
+opposition, in words at least--thought that he could, thanks to the
+liberty which Louis XIII granted him, compass the downfall of Richelieu.
+Louis XIII, like everyone else, felt the burden of his powerful
+minister’s rule. He allowed his favourite to talk; he even listened to
+him willingly, without taking him seriously. At heart he looked upon
+Richelieu as a necessary man and one whom he could not do without, as
+much from habit as from a conviction of the superiority of his genius. He
+told Cinq-Mars that he need never think of replacing him. Cinq-Mars then,
+with his daring and swift imagination, conceived the most incoherent
+ideas, such as killing the cardinal, waiting for his death, which the
+failing condition of his health made him think might be very soon, or
+bribing Gaston who would become regent if the king were to die. Each day
+he changed his plans, deciding upon no particular one. He had made vows,
+and probably more than vows, for the success of the count de Soissons.
+After the battle of La Marfée, he was advised to leave court, because of
+the suspicions that had arisen against him; he refused, hoping to refute
+them by his presence, and to think of some new plan by which he could
+compass the end he desired.
+
+[Illustration: HENRI COIFFIER DE RUZÉ, MARQUIS DE CINQ-MARS
+
+(1620-1642)]
+
+Notwithstanding the risk, he formed a conspiracy. He tried to come to
+an understanding with the duke of Orleans, who might become regent, and
+also with the duke de Bouillon, whose fortress of Sedan was admirably
+situated to furnish him a refuge should he be obliged to fly from France.
+It was beginning over again the plot of the count de Soissons. Gaston
+answered vaguely, according to his custom, leaving others to act, and
+doing nothing himself. Bouillon showed himself more decided. Although
+he had accepted from the cardinal the command of the Italian army,
+he believed himself able, should the conspiracy prove unsuccessful,
+to withdraw to Sedan, and there await the death of the king. Francis
+Augustus de Thou, son of the historian, an inconsistent, restless, and
+nervous person, served as a go-between for the equerry, with the duke
+de Bouillon, and even with the queen. Bouillon simply observed that an
+army was necessary to protect Sedan. Cinq-Mars and Gaston then sent into
+Spain an agent, Fontrailles, with some blank signatures, to demand troops
+and a subsidy, and to propose a treaty. Olivares seized this opportunity
+to cause Richelieu trouble. Seriously or not, he accepted the proposals
+which Fontrailles made to him; he signed the treaty, scarcely discussing
+the terms of it, and contented himself with exacting from the princes
+a promise to restore to peace all that France had wrested from Spain.
+Fontrailles returned to Narbonne, where he found the conspiracy half
+divulged, and the head equerry decided to undertake nothing until he knew
+how the cardinal’s illness would end. The duke of Orleans, carried away
+by the passion and zeal of some of his followers, but always irresolute
+and full of contradictions, had not left Blois; Bouillon was in Italy
+at the head of the army, they could not even communicate with one
+another. Fontrailles took a great deal of trouble to establish a secret
+correspondence between them. It was not only the illness of the cardinal
+that induced them to wait, but also the striking failure of the king’s
+health. Cinq-Mars only looked upon the treaty as a last resource which
+they could keep back for a time. Gaston demanded that it should be given
+to him; then when Cinq-Mars, after much resistance, decided to send it to
+him, he kept it without signing it, or addressing the ratification to the
+governors of the Spanish Netherlands, as they had agreed to. Fontrailles
+fled to England.
+
+
+RECOVERY AND TRIUMPH OF RICHELIEU
+
+For a whole month Richelieu hung between life and death. At last he
+recovered, not indeed his health, but that energy which even suffering
+could not keep under. Prostrated by infirmity and pain, he appeared
+to have scarcely a spark of life, but, notwithstanding, never has one
+seen a finer example of Bossuet’s _mot_: “A courageous soul is master
+of the body it animates.” Retiring to Tarascon, a healthful and lonely
+town, under the care of the count d’Alais, governor of Provence, the
+cardinal, in spite of illness and absence, did not cease to rule the
+king, the government, and the army. A rumour was circulated that his
+retirement was due to fear; his enemies made a last attempt to destroy
+his influence over Louis XIII, but he triumphed over them on this as
+on all former occasions. The king, wearied by the length of the siege
+of Perpignan, and ill himself, left the camp to establish himself at
+Narbonne. There he fell a prey to the most contrary anxieties. He saw
+himself beset and spied upon on one side by Cinq-Mars, on the other by
+Chavigny and the Noyers. But, apart from the fact that he was in no wise
+willing to sacrifice Richelieu, he could perceive that the principal
+leaders and officers of the army were partisans of the cardinal, that
+the vain boastings of the equerry were displeasing to the military men,
+and that the latter indulged the maddest schemes for making himself well
+thought of. He was already very weary of his favourite, when on the 10th
+of June, 1642, he received a copy of the Spanish treaty that Richelieu
+sent to him at Narbonne by the intervention of Chavigny. How did this
+copy get into the cardinal’s hands? No one could tell; according to the
+most likely conjectures, he obtained it through one of his secret agents
+or by the treachery of the abbé De la Rivière, who sought his favour, or
+through a servant of the duke of Orleans. Louis XIII was most indignant,
+and no longer hesitated. On the 12th he ordered Cinq-Mars, De Thou, and
+two others, to be arrested. Cinq-Mars remained concealed all one day in a
+house in the town, but he was discovered, and imprisoned in the citadel
+of Montpellier. Bouillon was arrested in Italy by his brigadiers at the
+head of the very army that he commanded. Gaston only was not pursued. The
+abbé De la Rivière came in his name to acknowledge his fault and to beg
+for the royal pardon.
+
+The king went to Tarascon to the cardinal to assure him that his
+sentiments had not changed, and that he wished to await with him the end
+of this great trial. We are told how Richelieu was in bed; how Louis,
+himself ill, was obliged to have a bed made up for himself by the side
+of Richelieu, and how they discussed thus the measures they ought to
+take. They decided that Gaston should be questioned and then pardoned,
+but on the condition of his making a full confession, the only means of
+convicting the accused parties. Louis XIII was unable to return to the
+army; he went to Fontainebleau by easy stages, arriving there the 23rd
+of July. Whilst on the road he heard of the death of his mother; Marie
+de’ Medici had left England, where her presence was looked upon as a
+public encumbrance. Not finding the inhabitants either of Spain or of
+Holland willing to receive her, she went to Cologne where, at the house
+of the archbishop elector, she terminated the anxieties of her wandering
+life. The chancellor and the members of parliament claimed that a prince
+could not be cross-examined like anyone else, and that it was necessary
+he should give his declaration in writing. This mode of procedure had
+been adopted towards the duke of Orleans. The judges received his
+declaration at Villefranche on their way to Lyons, where the commission
+would sit. This commission was composed of state counsellors, of
+masters of requests, and of several members of the Grenoble parliament.
+Cinq-Mars had been transferred from the citadel of Montpellier to that
+of Pierre-Scize. De Thou had been taken to Lyons in a boat towed up the
+Rhone by that of the cardinal. Bouillon was brought there from his side.
+Richelieu had started by going up the Rhone slowly, for he could not
+bear the least fatigue. As this navigation was very laborious, he left
+the river at Valence and was placed in a great litter, or room, made
+expressly and carried upon the shoulders of his musketeers, who succeeded
+each other in relays. He was partially paralysed, incapable of moving or
+even of signing anything; nevertheless he never ceased working, having
+beside his bed in this portable room a chair and a table for a secretary.
+In this fashion he arrived at Lyons. He remained there only a few days,
+leaving before the end of the trial, and continuing his strange journey,
+partly by land, partly by the Loire and the recently finished canal of
+Briare.
+
+Gaston’s declarations left no doubt as to the reality of the plot.
+Cinq-Mars did not deny it; he owned to everything, and appeared before
+his judges with a bearing as noble as it was courageous. As for De Thou,
+he had played an absurd part, and one full of contradictions; “he was
+concerned in everything,” said Fontrailles,[k] “and denied knowledge of
+anything.” Priding himself upon a scrupulous loyalty and delicacy of
+conscience, he was made the confidant of all the conspirators and all
+the conspiracies invented against the cardinal and against the king.
+He had got it into his head that his name, his character, his title of
+former minister of state would assure him a high place in the government
+that should succeed to that of Richelieu. He was then mixed up with the
+enemies of the cardinal; he had even, which was far more serious, warned
+the queen of what was being prepared. Of his complicity there was no
+doubt. His guilt was not so certain.
+
+The judges passed a sentence of death. Cinq-Mars was condemned
+unanimously; De Thou unanimously but for one voice. The execution took
+place at once upon a scaffold erected in the middle of the place des
+Terreaux (September 13th). The grand equerry and his friend died with as
+much dignity as resignation. De Thou, whose eager mind was filled with
+the deepest sentiments of religion, showed a martyr’s enthusiasm. Neither
+of them protested against the blow which struck them, but their youth,
+the sensation they had caused, the candour of their answers at the trial,
+their noble bearing upon the scaffold deeply affected the town of Lyons.
+“M. de Thou,” wrote Marca, one of the judges, “died like a Christian and
+a brave man. M. le Grand also showed an equal firmness and met his death
+with an admirable confidence, composure, and Christian devotion.” The
+sight of this execution awoke a very natural pity, seeing that the public
+knew little of the details of the plot. It was regarded as the last act
+of vengeance of a minister who felt his power ebbing with his life.[l]
+
+
+THE LAST DAYS OF RICHELIEU
+
+[Sidenote: [1642-1643 A.D.]]
+
+The tempestuous year of 1642 was drawing to a glorious close. Fortune,
+after long wavering, threw itself on the side of France. Austria
+was humiliated and France was in the ascendency. Henry IV had won
+independence for her, Richelieu gave her supremacy; the work of Charles V
+and Philip II was undone forever. France resumed the position at the head
+of the nations which she had held when she led Europe in the Crusades
+of the Middle Ages. This grand symphony of victories resounded about a
+funeral pyre. All these conquered standards were lowered before a dying
+man. The epic poem that astonished the world for eighteen years was not
+to lack a majestic end; the hero was to be buried in the triumph which
+providence did not permit him to complete.
+
+The victory over Cinq-Mars, and above all the general success of the
+French policy, had for a few months brought back the life that was ebbing
+away; but the slow dissolution of the worn-out organism had continued. On
+the evening of the 28th of November Richelieu, after returning from Ruel
+to the palais Cardinal, was taken with a violent fever, with pain in the
+side, and spitting of blood; four bleedings were insufficient to allay
+the fever. On the 2nd of December public prayers were offered for the
+sick man in all the churches of Paris, and the king came from St. Germain
+to see him. Richelieu talked to Louis like a man resigned to death,
+asked him to protect his family in memory of his services, recommended
+to him the ministers Noyers and Chavigny, and especially Mazarin whom he
+represented, it is said, as the person most capable of filling his own
+place; and finally submitted to the king a declaration which he had just
+had drafted against the duke of Orleans, to exclude that prince from all
+right to the regency and the administration of the kingdom in case of the
+death of the king. This was the last service that Richelieu rendered to
+France.
+
+After the visit of the king the cardinal, feeling worse, asked the
+physicians how long he might still live. They, wishing to flatter the
+master to the very mouth of the tomb, replied that there was no need to
+despair--that God, seeing how necessary he was to the welfare of France,
+would intervene to save him. The cardinal shook his head and calling
+back one of the royal surgeons said, “Speak to me with open heart, not
+as a physician but as a friend.” “Monseigneur,” said the physician, “in
+twenty-four hours you will be dead or well.” “That’s the way to talk!”
+said Richelieu, “I like that.” He sent for the curate of St. Eustace,
+his parish. “Here is my Judge,” he said when the consecrated host was
+presented to him, “my Judge who is soon to pronounce my sentence. I pray
+him to condemn me if in my ministry I have followed any other end than
+the welfare of religion and of the state.” “Do you forgive your enemies?”
+asked the curé. “I have never had any but the enemies of the state.”
+
+Most of those present contemplated the dying man with admiration, some
+with fear. “Here,” said Cospéan, the bishop of Lisieux, “is an assurance
+that dismays me!” Doubtless Richelieu,[m] in order to fortify his
+conscience, repeated the maxims of those two Latin testaments which
+contain his supreme thought; his official will in which he disposes of
+his dignities and his wealth concerns only his family; the other two are
+addressed to posterity. “I have been severe to some,” he said, “in order
+to be good to all. I have loved justice and not vengeance.” Was he very
+sure of it? “I have tried to give to Gaul the boundaries that nature
+intended for it, to identify Gaul with France, and to establish the new
+Gaul wherever the old one was.”
+
+On the afternoon of the 3rd of December the king came to see the cardinal
+for the last time. The physicians, having no more hope, had given up the
+sick man to empirics, who gave him a little relief. But his feebleness
+was increasing; on the morning of the 4th, feeling the approach of death,
+he made his niece, the duchess d’Aiguillon retire, as she was “the person
+whom he had most loved,” according to his own words. This was the only
+moment, not of weakness, but of tenderness, that he had; his indomitable
+firmness had not given way during his long suffering. All present,
+ministers, generals, relatives, and servants, burst into tears; for this
+terrible man was, according to the testimony of his least favourable
+contemporaries, “the best master, relative, and friend that ever was
+known.” Towards noon he heaved a deep sigh, then a feebler one, then
+his body collapsed and was still; his great soul was gone. He had lived
+fifty-seven years and three months, the same number of years as Henry IV.
+
+Human judgments [continues Martin] have been and still are contradictory
+concerning this minister of salutary harshness, this strong-armed
+labourer who is accused of having pulled up from French soil the good
+grain along with the tares. The most opposite opinions are in league
+for and against his memory. Before 1789 lords and commons, after 1789
+ultramontanes and a large part of the liberals heap abuse upon him.
+Retz[n] claims that Cardinal Richelieu traded on all the evil intentions
+and all the ignorance of the last two centuries, in order to form in the
+most legitimate of monarchies the most scandalous and most dangerous
+tyranny. Montesquieu[o] believes that “the most harmful citizens of
+France” were Richelieu and Louvois.
+
+On the other hand the partisans of unity and of strong and vigorous
+power, whether monarchists or democrats, rise in favour of the great
+man, as do all those who put the love of country above all other social
+or political sentiments. The _Moniteur_ of 1789, as the mouthpiece of
+this party, exclaims with the voice of the Revolution itself: “Let
+the aristocrats rage against the memory of this intrepid minister who
+overthrew their pride and avenged the people for the oppression of the
+great. By sacrificing great victims to the tranquillity of the state he
+became its pacifier. He was the first to apply true remedies to the root
+of the evil by degrading the intermediate powers that had enslaved the
+nation for nearly nine centuries. Nothing that can make a vast kingdom
+powerful and glorious escaped his indefatigable activity.”
+
+The popular instinct however has not decided the question as it has for
+Henry IV. The abstract and half veiled greatness of this invalid who
+from his bed overturned empires has not taken hold of the heart and the
+imagination of the unlettered masses and imprinted its pale mysterious
+figure in ineffaceable lines. The man who did most for the greatness of
+France is little known by the French people: is this the punishment for
+his severity towards the suffering masses and for his harsh maxims? “If
+the people were too much at ease, it would not be possible to hold them
+within the rules of their duty.”[p]
+
+When the king heard of the death of his minister he coldly remarked: “A
+great statesman is dead.” He survived him but six months. A few days
+before his death he named Anne of Austria regent and Gaston, his brother,
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Louis XIII felt great remorse for the
+assassination of Marshal d’Ancre and for his treatment of his mother, the
+queen. He died at the château St. Germain, at the age of forty-two years.
+One of his contemporaries says of him that he was so indifferent in his
+government that all the world awaited his death with impatience, even
+those who owed most to him.[c]
+
+
+STEPHEN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XIII AND OF RICHELIEU
+
+Louis XIII [says Stephen] was a man of large and just capacity. His ideas
+of the duties of his station were princely and magnanimous. He lived in
+profound submission to the law of his conscience, in the fear of God,
+and in veneration for all men in whom he saw, or thought he saw, any
+image, however faint, of the divine beneficence and power. But he was of
+a feeble, indolent, and melancholy spirit. He was habitually wrapt in
+reveries, sometimes splendid, though more often gloomy; but he was always
+incapable of prompt or decisive action. Though a king, he never was and
+never could have been a free man. It was among the necessities of his
+existence to live under the government of a master. After selecting and
+rejecting many such, he at length submitted himself to the dominion of
+Richelieu, and thenceforward endured that bondage to the last. He endured
+it certainly, neither from attachment nor from fear, but because, as
+often as he struggled to regain his liberty, his efforts were baffled by
+his admiration of the genius of his great minister, and by his persuasion
+that no other man could so effectually promote the welfare of his state
+and people.
+
+Richelieu, on the other hand, was one of the rulers of mankind, in virtue
+of an inherent and indefeasible birthright. His title to command rested
+on that sublime force of will, and decision of character, by which, in
+an age of great men, he was raised above them all. It is a gift which
+supposes and requires in him on whom it is conferred, convictions too
+firm to be shaken by the discovery of any unperceived or unheeded
+truths. It is, therefore, a gift, which, when bestowed on the governors
+of nations, also presupposes in them the patience to investigate, the
+capacity to comprehend, and the genius to combine, all those views of the
+national interest, under the guidance of which their inflexible policy is
+to be conducted to its destined consummation. For the stoutest hearted of
+men, if acting in ignorance, or under the impulse of haste or of error,
+must often pause, often hesitate, and not seldom recede. Richelieu was
+exposed to no such danger. He moved onwards to his predetermined ends
+with that unfaltering step which attests, not merely a stern immutability
+of purpose, but a comprehensive survey of the path to be trodden, and a
+profound acquaintance with all its difficulties and all its resources. It
+was a path from which he could be turned aside neither by his bad nor by
+his good genius; neither by fear, lassitude, interest, or pleasure; nor
+by justice, pity, humanity, or conscience.
+
+The idolatrous homage of mere mental power, without reference to
+the motives by which it is governed, or to the ends to which it is
+addressed,--that blind hero-worship, which would place Wallenstein and
+Gustavus Adolphus on the same level, and extol with equal warmth the
+triumphs of Cromwell and of Washington, though it be a modern fashion,
+has certainly not the charm of novelty. On the contrary it might, in
+the language of the Puritans, be described as one of the “old follies of
+the old Adam”; and, to the influence of that folly, the reputation of
+Richelieu is not a little indebted.
+
+In his estimate, the absolute dominion of the French crown and the
+grandeur of France were convertible terms. They seemed to him but as two
+different aspects of the great consummation to which every hour of his
+political life was devoted. In approaching that ultimate goal, there were
+to be surmounted many obstacles which lie distinctly perceived, and of
+which he has given a very clear summary in his _Testament Politique_.
+“When it pleased your majesty,” he says, “to give me not only a place
+in your council, but a great share in the conduct of your affairs, the
+Huguenots divided the state with you. The great lords were acting not
+as your subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors of your
+provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes.
+Foreign affairs and alliances were disregarded. The interest of the
+public was postponed to that of private men. In a word, your authority
+was, at that time, so torn to shreds, and so unlike what it ought to be,
+that, in the confusion, it was impossible to recognise the genuine traces
+of your royal power.”
+
+Before his death, Richelieu had triumphed over all these enemies, and
+had elevated the house of Bourbon upon their ruins. He is, perhaps,
+the only human being who ever conceived and executed, in the spirit of
+philosophy, the design of erecting a political despotism; not, indeed,
+a despotism like that of Constantinople or Teheran, but a power which,
+being restrained by religion, by learning, and by public spirit, was to
+be exempted from all other restraints; a dynasty, which like a kind of
+subordinate province, was to spread wide its arms for the guidance and
+shelter of the subject multitude; itself the while inhabiting a region
+too lofty to be ever darkened by the mists of human weakness, or of human
+corruption.
+
+To devise schemes worthy of the academies of Laputa, and to pursue them
+with all the relentless perseverance of Cortes or of Clive, has been
+characteristic of many of the statesmen of France, both in remote and in
+recent times. Richelieu was but a more successful Mirabeau. He was not
+so much a minister as a dictator. He was rather the depositary, than the
+agent, of the royal power. A king in all things but the name, he reigned
+with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences, which has so
+often imparted to the papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy, and
+has as often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.
+
+Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV, and the ancestor
+of those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the
+applause and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in
+one unintermitted struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies
+over whom he ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed
+forever the political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his
+strong hand, the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial
+duties, and their claims to participate in the government of the state
+were scattered to the winds. Trampling under foot all rules of judicial
+procedure and the clearest principles of justice, he brought to the
+scaffold one after another of the proudest nobles of France, by sentences
+dictated by himself, to extraordinary judges of his own selection; thus
+teaching the doctrine of social equality, by lessons too impressive
+to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation. Both the
+privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had surrendered
+their independence, and the franchises, for the conquest of which the
+cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were alike swept
+away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother, oppressed the
+wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and put to death
+the kinsman and favourites of the king, and compelled the king himself
+to be the instrument of these domestic severities. Though surrounded by
+enemies and by rivals, his power ended only with his life. Though beset
+by assassins, he died in the ordinary course of nature. Though he had
+waded to dominion through slaughter, cruelty, and wrong, he passed to his
+great account amidst the applause of the people, with the benedictions
+of the Church; and, as far as any human eye could perceive, in hope, in
+tranquillity, and in peace.[v]
+
+[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE PERIOD OF LOUIS XIII]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[88] [Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530), the celebrated English cardinal, was
+prime minister of Henry VIII. Cardinal George d’Amboise (1460-1510) was
+the minister of Louis XII of France (see pp. 294 and 303).]
+
+[89] [The war in North Italy cut off Spain from the Netherlands, now that
+England dominated the sea. Hence the great importance of Richelieu’s
+plan.]
+
+[90] [Giulio Mazarini, born at Piscina, Italy, July 14th, 1602; died at
+Vincennes, France, March 9th, 1661. He was to be Richelieu’s successor
+and scarcely his inferior in power.]
+
+[91] [Charles IV, duke of Guise. He died in exile in Italy in 1640.]
+
+[92] [For the detailed history of the Thirty Years’ War, see vol. XIII.]
+
+[93] [As regards what was done by French armies. But of course the allies
+entered constantly into Richelieu’s plans.]
+
+[94] [Kitchin’s[w] estimate of Father Joseph seems a just one. He
+says: “It is impossible to say with the Italians, that Richelieu owed
+everything to him; that Father Joseph not only strengthened him in all
+the crises of his fortune and gave him wise advice, but that he even
+invented his policy for him, and supplied him with ideas; yet we must
+admit that Richelieu owed more to him than to any other person, and that
+he was thrice happy in such an agent and friend. Yet the difference
+between them is great: Father Joseph lives in history as an able
+intriguer; Richelieu as a king among men.”]
+
+[95] [Richelieu formally created the ever afterward famous _Académie
+Française_ in the year 1635. Its membership was (and is) limited to
+forty,--the “forty immortals.” Its object was to control the French
+language, and regulate the literary taste of the people. Its influence
+has been extraordinary; but the wisdom of attempting to dam up the stream
+of so limpid a medium as language may be questioned. Membership in the
+Academy continues to be the highest honour that can be offered a French
+man of letters. See below, chapter xxi.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN
+
+    Any other nation, after its Mazarins, its Fouquets, its
+    Louvois, so many wars, so many glories, so many heroes, so
+    many rascals, would have stayed crushed and never arisen.
+    Nevertheless, France still lives.--MICHELET.[b]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1643-1661 A.D.]]
+
+Louis XIII had hastened to carry out all the provisions of Richelieu’s
+will. His own did not meet with the same fate, for its most important
+dispositions were immediately modified. While regretfully appointing
+Anne of Austria regent he had put strong restrictions upon her authority
+and provided that the partisans of Richelieu, Mazarin and the prince of
+Condé, were to control the government. He knew the queen had not been
+unaware of the conspiracies of the court, not even of that of Cinq-Mars,
+and that she had always listened to Richelieu’s enemies. Towards the end
+he had drawn nearer to her and his brother, but without granting them his
+confidence.
+
+[Sidenote: [1643 A.D.]]
+
+Scarcely had Louis closed his eyes when Mazarin resolved to give over the
+entire government to the queen. Unity and power seemed, to the cardinal,
+the most necessary thing: he came to an understanding with the bishop of
+Beauvais, almoner of the queen; he was able to persuade Gaston, Condé,
+and the other councillors, who withdrew opposition in consideration
+of the compensation offered them. Consequently, on the 18th of May,
+parliament met in extraordinary session; the peers were present. The
+queen attended with the young Louis XIV and held a bed of justice. On the
+express renunciation of the duke of Orleans and the prince of Condé the
+assembly unanimously set aside all the restrictions to the queen’s power,
+and decided that the title of lieutenant-general held by the duke of
+Orleans would be simply honorary.[c]
+
+The queen-mother was now in her forty-second year. She inspired almost
+universal sympathy, by her good looks, agreeable manner, and previous
+misfortunes which now counted for virtues. Age had made her more
+sedate and more devout; her devotion, however, was still mingled with
+gallantry, but it was the serious romantic gallantry of Spain which is
+not incompatible with external dignity and reserve. Facile and genial in
+ordinary intercourse, but altogether impulsive and insincere when her
+passions were aroused; going when necessary as far as perjury--though
+doubtless with the resource of mental reservation--to extricate herself
+from a wrong step; intrepid by temperament, in spite of more than one act
+of moral cowardice; of an unconquerable stubbornness in her prejudices
+and in certain of her attachments, although sensitive to ingratitude; at
+the same time absolute by her temperament and her principles, and unable
+through inactivity to exercise the absolute power, her queenly nature was
+invaluable to a minister capable of making a favourable impression on her
+head and her heart.
+
+Mazarin made an attack on both of these at the same time, and soon
+occupied an unshakable position with her. Their correspondence leaves
+doubt neither as to the passion which this minister expressed and which
+he inspired in the queen, nor as to the constancy which Anne had at least
+the merit of preserving in this last passion, which the progress of age
+did not extinguish.[96]
+
+Mazarin was of the same age as the queen. We may recall his brilliant
+début as a diplomat thirteen years before, when before Casale he
+prevented two armies from falling upon each other. Since then he had
+remained faithfully attached to the interests of France, which had raised
+him to the cardinalate without his having received holy orders--he never
+was a priest.[97] He gave himself out to be a Roman nobleman. His enemies
+denied this, and asserted that his father, a Sicilian merchant, had taken
+refuge in the states of the holy father, after having gone bankrupt at
+Palermo. A. Renée[e] has investigated every version of the cardinal’s
+origin and concludes that his father, the son of a Sicilian artisan, came
+a fortune-seeker to Rome, where he became chamberlain to the constable
+Colonna. At all events the mind, the face, the complaisance, and the
+dexterity of the young Giulio Mazarini won him, at an early age, the
+patronage of some of the noble houses of Rome, and after having tried the
+sword, the young adventurer felt his vocation and assumed the soutane
+as a stepping-stone to diplomacy; at the age of twenty-eight he met
+Richelieu--we know the rest.
+
+The character and the future of the fortunate Italian were still at
+this moment a problem for the court and for the public.[d] As yet he
+frightened no one. He was far from being believed as powerful and
+especially as much a master of the queen’s mind as he already was. He
+often spoke of returning to Italy. What then was the astonishment when,
+on the very evening of the bed of justice, it developed that Anne of
+Austria had designated him to preside over the council.[c]
+
+It would take a simple mind indeed to believe that an event as foreseen
+as the death of the king should have taken the queen unawares, that
+she should not have known which way to turn, and that she should have
+seriously offered the power to this one or to that. The whole affair
+was certainly settled beforehand; and for what reason? By reason of her
+indolence, which told her that a bed already made was better to lounge
+on, sleep in, than a new arrangement which would oblige her to will, to
+think. She knew that, ready to set out from London, from Brussels, from
+Madrid, there was a crowd of exiles, calling themselves martyrs to the
+queen’s cause, who would demand the crown for their martyrdom. How to
+satisfy them? She was all ears to him who taught her the sweetness of
+ingratitude.
+
+In this Mazarin was admirable. He often varied, but never on this point.
+His character offers the beauty of a well-sustained type which does
+not contradict itself. Ingrate towards Joseph and Chavigny, who made
+him in France, he got out of two scrapes during the Fronde by the same
+means--ingratitude towards Condé and then towards De Retz. Finally he
+crowned his life with what was worse than all--ingratitude towards the
+queen, his old-time sweetheart.
+
+The puppets of Richelieu, odious, detested, the Chavignys, the
+Bouthilliers, were impossible; Mazarin was a stranger, with no ties
+in France, and ready to depart as soon as he had put the queen _au
+courant_. He was packing up his things. A good excuse for remaining.
+The queen appeared very uncertain. She consulted much, hesitated much.
+Finally Condé came to tell Mazarin, “ready to depart,” that the queen
+made him chief of the council, keeping also Chavigny and his father, the
+chancellor Séguier, the same who had conducted the inquiry against her in
+1637.
+
+A mortal blow for Beaufort and the Vendômes, the queen’s friends. When
+they demanded an explanation she said that Mazarin would not let her
+forget her friends, that he was _au courant_ of affairs, a stranger,
+consequently the less dangerous, that he was amusing, but above all
+disinterested. This disinterestedness was so extreme, and the poor man
+remained so poor, that after a few years, when he was driven out and
+wished to return, he was able to raise an army with his own money![b]
+
+
+BATTLE OF ROCROI (MAY 18TH-19TH, 1643 A.D.)
+
+But before anything could happen, Paris was suddenly struck with a piece
+of good news which produced the very greatest effect. While under the
+last reign no great battle had been accomplished by the French armies,
+that of Louis XIV opened with the victory of Rocroi.
+
+Francisco de Mello had advanced to the frontier of the Low Countries
+with 28,000 men, counting on profiting by the uncertainty into which the
+last illness and death of Louis XIII would plunge the French government.
+France had, on her side, an army in the field to observe him, and
+it was Louis XIII’s will that this army be placed in command of the
+duke d’Enghien, son of Condé, a young prince of twenty-two years, the
+choice of whom must attach his house all the more closely to the future
+regency. Enghien had served hitherto only as a volunteer; but he had
+been instructed, exercised, and formed in the best of schools. He had
+already shown in war a vigour and intelligence which everyone applauded.
+He inspired confidence both in his officers and his soldiers. They
+foresaw in him a great captain. As an adviser and to moderate his ardour
+he had been given an able lieutenant-general, Duhallier, become Marshal
+de l’Hôpital, and several excellent _maréchaux de camp_, Gassion, La
+Ferté-Senneterre, and Sirot.
+
+The Spaniards entered Champagne, and besieged Rocroi. The place,
+important by its situation at the head of the Ardennes, was in no
+condition to resist. Enghien, having collected between St. Quentin and
+Guise 14,000 infantry and 6,000 horse, marched to its relief. On the
+way he learned of Louis XIII’s death, but the news did not stop him. He
+resolved to give battle to relieve the tedium of methodic warfare--this
+was also the advice of Gassion and Sirot. On the 18th of May he arrived
+before the Spaniards, who, protected by woods through which the French
+had to pass, were not expecting to see them appear; and the time they
+took to range themselves for battle permitted the French prince to
+approach. The day was far advanced and he contented himself with a
+small amount of cannonading. The next day Enghien ordered the attack at
+daybreak, for he wished to forestall the arrival of a corps which General
+Beck was bringing to Francisco de Mello. He himself, with Gassion,
+charged at the head of the right wing and routed the enemy. The left
+wing, commanded by Marshal de l’Hôpital and La Ferté-Senneterre, had
+less success. It disputed its ground but was badly used. Enghien and
+Gassion, victorious on the right, did not neglect their advantages. They
+immediately fell upon the Spanish division which was in action with De
+l’Hôpital, the moment at which, thinking itself victorious, it began to
+break ranks and was running to pillage the tents of the French. Sirot,
+in command of the reserves, received the order to advance, and he waited
+to execute it until the very moment when Enghien and Gassion should have
+renewed the contest. Then he gave it, and the victory was decided. The
+two divisions of the enemy broken and put to flight, there yet remained
+the Spanish reserve infantry which formed a square battalion difficult to
+penetrate. It was composed of picked veterans and commanded by the old
+count de Fuentes, who had to be carried in a litter at the head of his
+soldiers. The victorious Enghien threw himself upon the square, dealt it
+several sharp attacks, and finally broke it by attacking its rear and
+flanks while his cannon thundered upon it.[c]
+
+The massacre was appalling. Moved to pity, the duke d’Enghien threw
+himself between the two armies, commanding his men to spare the
+vanquished. “All the Spanish infantry,” says La Moussaie, “crowded
+round him and his commanding officers, seeking shelter from the fury
+of the French, and more particularly of the Swiss, who could not bring
+themselves to make prisoners of any.” After giving orders to the
+prisoners’ guard, the prince collected his troops and prepared to receive
+Beck, should he have the courage to meet him on the plain. But Gassion
+shortly returned from his pursuit of the enemy and informed the duke that
+he had nothing to fear from the German general. Beck had not even passed
+beyond the edge of the wood, being content with rallying the fugitives,
+and at the approach of Gassion’s cavalry he had fled precipitately
+towards Luxemburg.
+
+Seeing his triumph thus complete, the duke d’Enghien, with the Christian
+piety that never forsook him even in battle, fell on his knees, in
+company with his whole army, and gave thanks to God for the victory.
+Thus ended one of the most bloody and most glorious days in the history
+of France. The battle had lasted four hours. The Spanish army left 8,000
+dead upon the field, and 6,000 prisoners in the hands of the French.
+Among the slain was the brave count de Fuentes. Don Francisco de Mello
+had been made a prisoner for a few moments, but he managed to escape and
+took refuge at Mariembourg, then at Philippeville, where he collected the
+fragments of the Spanish army. Two hundred flags and sixty standards fell
+into the hands of the French. The Spanish baggage wagons were plundered
+and were found to contain all the money destined for the pay of the
+troops. The French lost about two thousand men.[f]
+
+Enghien possessed the power of prompt decision and knew the value of
+time. He turned his victory to good account by marching immediately upon
+Thionville, the possession of which was of extreme importance to the
+Three Bishoprics and at the siege of which Feuquières had come to grief
+in 1639. Mazarin approved his plan and furnished all that was necessary
+for the siege. Instead of proceeding with that methodical regularity
+learned from the Dutch, Enghien pressed his attacks; they were very
+deadly, especially for the officers, but his plan was to reach his end
+the more quickly, to astonish the enemy, and to avoid sickness, which was
+more fatal than artillery in prolonged sieges. Thionville surrendered
+the 8th of August. The little town of Sierck, which commanded Luxemburg,
+capitulated a few days later.
+
+Enghien was placed at a bound above all the captains employed by
+Richelieu. The French army, formed by eight successive years of
+campaigns, equal at least to those of neighbouring nations, leaving
+nothing to be desired in instruction, experience of its officers,
+discipline, good administration, or material organisation, had finally
+found a leader worthy of it. Enghien, with his eagle glance, great
+promptitude of execution, and an ardour which he knew how to moderate,
+disconcerted the rational and prudent tactics of the enemy’s generals.
+The battle of Rocroi bore witness to the military progress of France, and
+dealt a serious blow to the prestige of the Spanish armies, when Spain
+had, for three years, been seeing her power shaken and her resources
+weakened.[c]
+
+
+THE IMPORTANTS (1643 A.D.)
+
+The return of Mazarin to power was received with surprise and
+mortification by the returned exiles, the enemies of Richelieu, those who
+had deemed themselves possessed of the heart and confidence of the queen.
+They were for the most part young men, such as the duke de Beaufort,
+and a host of noble striplings, who were all, nevertheless, profound
+statesmen in their own esteem.
+
+With pretensions to govern, they found it necessary to alter or conceal
+their juvenile and frivolous habits; they affected to be grave and
+sententious, and some even thought it necessary to give time to study and
+reflection; a whim, the characteristic and beneficial consequences of
+which are seen in the _Mémoires_ of De Retz and the _Maximes_ of the duke
+de la Rochefoucauld. The latter was at this time one of the young friends
+of the queen. Despite the talents that some of these youths afterwards
+displayed, their present pretensions and demeanour were considered as
+absurd, and the party was ironically called _les Importants_, that of the
+“important.” On the side opposed to them were drawn up Cardinal Mazarin,
+the old partisans of Richelieu, and, amongst the noblesse, the prince of
+Condé and his gallant son, the duke d’Enghien.
+
+The queen-regent, as became her position, affected neutrality, but
+supported her newly chosen minister. The _importants_, however, hoped
+to regain the ascendency through the means of Anne of Austria’s old
+favourite, Madame de Chevreuse, who was now returning from her long
+exile. This lady had once been all-powerful with the queen: her
+misfortunes, occasioned by that attachment, gave her, she thought, an
+increase of claim; she totally put out of consideration how far the
+policy of a regent might interfere with the affections of a queen, and
+her party pretensions were as high as her resentments. She was warmly
+and cordially welcomed back by Anne; Mazarin hastened to conciliate her,
+and commenced by placing 50,000 crowns before her, asking if he might
+count her amongst his friends. Madame de Chevreuse required the dismissal
+of Chavigny, and the cardinal instantly consented to sacrifice the
+secretary: then came the great demands of the party, _viz._, that Sedan
+should be restored to the duke de Bouillon, the government of Brittany to
+the duke de Vendôme, and that of Guienne to young Épernon; Le Havre, too,
+was required for the future duke de la Rochefoucauld.
+
+[Illustration: MADAME DE MONTBAZON]
+
+These demands were no less than to re-constitute the power and
+independence of the grandees, that Richelieu had spent his life and
+steeped his memory in blood in order to reduce. Anne of Austria and
+Mazarin, now in the place of authority held by Richelieu, could not but
+see with his eyes: the adroit Mazarin, however, did not give to Madame
+de Chevreuse the flat and peremptory denial that would have come from
+Richelieu’s mouth; he looked complaisant and yielding, and drew on the
+negotiatrix of the _importants_ to fresh pretensions. One of these was
+to supersede the chancellor Séguier by Châteauneuf. Now Châteauneuf had
+presided at the commission which condemned the duke de Montmorency, and
+to favour him would be to outrage the princess of Condé, sister of that
+duke. Mazarin pretended to stand out on this point, hesitatingly, no
+doubt; Madame de Chevreuse insisted; and the cardinal, determined to
+break with a party whose pretensions were exorbitant, and which sought to
+replace the aristocracy on its old footing of superiority to government
+and ministry, affected to break with them rather than insult the family
+of Condé; thus securing powerful support, and averting the suspicions of
+the young noblesse from the political jealousy which he bore them.
+
+A rupture was declared; and a lady’s quarrel soon afterwards occurred to
+precipitate hostilities, and give the minister a pretext for acting. The
+duchess de Longueville, of the family of Condé, and one of the beauties
+of the court, was maligned by Madame de Montbazon, sister-in-law of
+Madame de Chevreuse. The latter found a _billet-doux_ in the handwriting
+of the former, and addressed, she asserted, to the count de Coligny. This
+piece of scandal or calumny convulsed the entire circle of influential
+personages. The duke d’Enghien challenged the duke de Beaufort; the Duke
+of Guise and the count de Coligny fought in the Place Royal, Madame
+de Longueville being spectatress of the discomfiture of her chevalier,
+who died of his wounds. The queen in vain endeavoured to bring about an
+accommodation. The _importants_ were too deeply mortified, and nothing
+short of the disgrace of the cardinal would satisfy them. The queen
+peremptorily refusing this, the duke de Beaufort entered into a scheme
+for making away with the cardinal by violence. Circumstances occurred
+to baffle and interrupt the design. Épernon was sounded in the meantime
+by one of the conspirators, and he instantly betrayed it. The duke de
+Beaufort was consequently arrested on the following day. Mesdames de
+Montbazon and Chevreuse were both exiled, as well as the duke and duchess
+of Vendôme, the dukes of Guise and Mercœur, and other less illustrious
+nobles. Here is the exculpation of Richelieu, and the excuse of his
+severity. No sooner is Anne of Austria, his rival and enemy, in the
+place of power, than she is obliged to adopt his policy and his strong
+measures, notwithstanding that such acts did violence to her private
+feelings. She wept on ordering the arrest of Beaufort; but, like the late
+monarch, she was compelled to sacrifice her feelings to her own interest
+and that of the state. The reign of the _importants_ lasted three months
+and a half.
+
+[Sidenote: [1643-1647 A.D.]]
+
+The four years which succeeded 1643 were years of tranquillity to the
+regent, triumph to Mazarin, and glory to France. The petulance of the
+noblesse was checked by the discomfiture of the _importants_. Mazarin,
+instead of imitating Richelieu and reigning by terror alone, sought to
+captivate by giving scope to pleasure, and creating a general taste for
+light and social amusements. He encouraged fêtes and gallantry. He was
+prodigal of favours, of money, of everything save authority. He bound
+the noblesse, and their more froward dames and mistresses, in golden
+and in flowery chains; and those who a year before were clamouring for
+independent governments, then limited their ambition to a duke’s title.
+The sage La Rochefoucauld himself has recorded in his _Mémoires_[m] how
+he pleaded for this important distinction, in order, as he observes, that
+his wife might enjoy the privilege of a _tabouret_ or stool at court.[g]
+
+
+THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG KING
+
+Louis XIV, born September 5th, 1638, had now (1645) completed his seventh
+year; that being the age at which kings passed from the control of women
+to the control of men, it became necessary to provide him with a governor
+and a tutor. To Cardinal Mazarin the queen desired to hand over the
+supreme control of Louis’ bringing up, and for that purpose created for
+him the post of superintendent of the king’s education.
+
+Several contemporary writers have reproached Mazarin with having directed
+the education of the young Louis carelessly. La Porte, a groom of the
+bed-chamber to the king, accused the cardinal of having no other dream
+than to obtain empire over the young prince’s will by surrounding him
+with his own family and partisans. Madame de Motteville,[k] without being
+quite so prejudiced, claims that he thwarted the good intentions of the
+young prince’s governor, the marquis de Villeroi. Nevertheless, an entry
+in the note-books proves that even as early as 1647 Mazarin exerted
+himself to remove from the prince such persons as he thought dangerous.
+In the case of François de Rochechouart, who enjoyed an old-established
+credit with the queen, Mazarin declared that a place must not be given
+him near the king; “for,” he writes, “his incessant flatteries are
+extremely prejudicial to the king, and prompt him to regard with great
+displeasure those who speak the truth to him.” Yet one must recognise
+that during a long period the cardinal, absorbed in politics, paid little
+heed to the king’s education. It was only during the later years of his
+life that, having reached the summit of power and glory, he helped by his
+counsels to inspire in the young Louis habits of order, of regular work,
+of strong and tenacious will, of supreme and authoritative government.
+Judging by results, this education was far from being sterile. The king’s
+governor, intrusted to accompany him everywhere, to watch over his safety
+and direct his actions, was Nicolas de Neufville, first marquis, then
+duke and marshal, de Villeroi. This individual had gained a certain
+renown in war, but it was pre-eminently as a clever and pliant courtier
+that he shone. He was a willing tool in the hands of the minister. It
+seems that his rôle was limited to winning the young king’s good graces,
+to teaching him the ways and manners of the court, in which he himself
+excelled, and to giving him for companion and favourite his own son,
+François de Neufville-Villeroi, who became in his turn Duke-Marshal de
+Villeroi.
+
+The post of tutor was filled by Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, doctor
+of the Sorbonne, who ultimately became archbishop of Paris, and to whom
+we owe a _History of Henry IV_ written for the instruction of Louis
+XIV. The classical education of the young king was meagre. Madame de
+Motteville[k] tells us “he was made to translate Cæsar’s _Commentaries_;
+he learned to dance, to draw, and to ride, and he was very skilful in all
+bodily exercises.” The Venetian ambassador, Nani, asserts that the tutor
+did neglect to teach the young king the principles of virtue.[f]
+
+
+MILITARY GLORY (1644-1648 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1644-1648 A.D.]]
+
+The year 1644 is marked by the brilliant manœuvres of the duke of Enghien
+and Turenne.[g] After the capture of Sierck, Enghien drove the Germans
+back across the Rhine, and crossed after them; he hastened to repair
+the losses and defeats which the French had met with on the frontier
+after the death of Marshal de Guébriant, which had occurred at the
+siege of Rottweil in Swabia (1643). [Guébriant’s army, now badly led by
+several leaders, had allowed itself to be surprised by the imperials at
+Tuttlingen.] Enghien found Freiburg im Breisgau taken and the Bavarian
+general Mercy beneath its walls with an army greater than his own.
+Enghien had two marshals of France under him, of whom one was Grammont
+and the other Turenne, who had just been created marshal after having
+served brilliantly in Piedmont against the Spaniards. The duke and
+his two generals attacked Mercy’s camp intrenched on two heights. The
+battle recommenced three times on three different days (August 3rd-5th,
+1644). It is said that the duke of Enghien threw his commander’s baton
+into the enemy’s entrenchments and, sword in hand, went after it at the
+head of the Conti regiment.[98] The battle of Freiburg, more bloody
+than decisive, was the duke’s second victory. Mercy decamped four days
+afterwards. Philippsburg, Worms, and Mainz were the proof and the fruit
+of the victory.
+
+Enghien returned to Paris, received the acclamation of the people and
+demanded recompense of the court; leaving his army to the prince-marshal
+Turenne. But this general, skilful as he was, was beaten at Marienthal
+(May, 1645). Enghien hastened back to his troops, resumed the command,
+and joined to the glory of again commanding Turenne that of repairing
+his defeat. He attacked Mercy on the plains of Nördlingen, and won a
+great battle early in August. Marshal de Grammont was captured, but so
+was General Glen who commanded under Mercy, and the latter himself was
+among the slain. Mercy, who has been reckoned among the great captains
+of his time, was buried close to the battle-field, and on his tomb was
+graven, “_Sta Viator; Heroem Calcas_” (Halt traveller, thou treadest on a
+hero).
+
+The name of the duke d’Enghien[99] now eclipsed all others. In October,
+1646, he besieged Dunkirk in sight of the Spanish army, and was the first
+to give that place to the French. Such success and such service brought
+forth less reward than suspicion in the court, and made him as much
+feared by the ministry as by the enemy. Condé [as we must now call him]
+was therefore withdrawn from the scenes of this conquest and glory and
+sent into Catalonia with inefficient and ill-paid troops. He besieged
+Lerida, but was obliged to raise the siege (1647). A wavering state of
+affairs soon forced the court to recall the prince to Flanders. The
+archduke Leopold, brother of the emperor Ferdinand III, was besieging
+Lens in Artois. Condé, restored to the troops which had always been
+victorious under him, led them straight for the archduke. This was the
+third time he had given battle with disadvantage in numbers. He spoke to
+his soldiers these simple words: “Friends, remember Rocroi, Freiburg, and
+Nördlingen!”[100] (August 20th, 1648).
+
+He himself relieved Marshal de Grammont, who was about to surrender with
+the left wing; he captured General Beck. The archduke saved himself with
+difficulty with the count of Fuensaldaña. The imperials and the Spaniards
+composing the army were scattered; they lost more than a hundred banners
+and thirty-eight pieces of cannon, which was a considerable number for
+that time. Five thousand prisoners were taken; three thousand men were
+killed; the rest deserted and the archduke was left without an army.
+Never since the foundation of the monarchy had the French won so many
+battles in succession, and ones so noted for military ability and courage.
+
+While the prince of Condé was thus counting the years of his youth in
+victories, and the duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, was upholding
+the reputation of a son of Henry IV and of France by the capture of
+Gravelines (July, 1644), Courtrai, and Mardyck (November, 1644), the
+viscount de Turenne had taken Landau, had driven the Spaniards from
+Treves, and re-established the elector. In November, 1647, with the help
+of the Swedes under Wrangel, Torstenson’s successor, he won the battle of
+Lawingen, and that of Zusmarshausen (May, 1648). He compelled the elector
+of Bavaria to leave his states, at the age of almost eighty. The count
+d’Harcourt took Balaguer and beat the Spaniards. They lost Porto Longone
+in Italy (1646). Twenty vessels and twenty galleys of France, which
+composed almost the whole navy as re-established by Richelieu, defeated
+the Spanish fleet off the Italian coast.
+
+This was not all. The French arms had again invaded Lorraine; and Duke
+Charles IV, a warrior prince, but an inconstant, rash, and unfortunate
+one, saw himself at the same time deprived of his state by France and
+kept prisoner by the Spaniards (May, 1644). The allies of France pressed
+the Austrian power on the north and south. The duke of Albuquerque, the
+Portuguese general, won the battle of Badajoz from Spain in March, 1645.
+Torstenson defeated the imperials near Tabor and obtained a complete
+victory. The prince of Orange, at the head of the Dutch, penetrated as
+far as Brabant.
+
+The king of Spain, beaten on every side, saw Roussillon and Catalonia
+in the hands of the French. Naples in revolt against him had just given
+itself into the hands of the duke of Guise, the last prince of that
+branch of a house fruitful in illustrious and dangerous men. This one,
+who had passed only for a bold adventurer, because he did not succeed,
+had at least the glory of boarding single-handed a bark in the midst of
+the Spanish fleet and of defending Naples with no other resource than his
+own courage.
+
+At the sight of so many misfortunes crushing the house of Austria, so
+many victories accumulated by the French, seconded by the success of
+their allies, one would have believed that Vienna and Madrid were only
+waiting to open their gates, and that the emperor and the king of Spain
+were almost without dominions. Nevertheless these five years of glory,
+crossed with only a few reverses, brought few real advantages and much
+spilled blood, but no revolution. If one was to be feared it was for
+France. She was on the verge of ruin in the midst of this apparent
+prosperity.[i]
+
+
+TREATY OF WESTPHALIA (1648 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1641-1648 A.D.]]
+
+Negotiations for peace had been going on for a long time. Proposed in
+1641, conferences were opened April 10th, 1643, in two Westphalian
+cities--Münster and Osnabrück. The questions for consideration were the
+altering of the map of Europe after a thirty years’ war; of providing the
+empire with a new constitution; and of regulating the civil and religious
+rights of the several Christian nations. France was represented at this
+congress by able negotiators, the count d’Avaux and Abel Servien; but her
+best diplomats were Condé and Turenne, whose swords had simplified the
+negotiations by rendering peace a necessity. At the last moment Spain
+withdrew, hoping to profit by the troubles of the Fronde, then commencing
+in France. The other countries, in haste to have finished, signed the
+peace (October 24th, 1648).
+
+During the Thirty Years’ War Austria had striven to stifle religious and
+political liberty in Germany. Austria being defeated, that against which
+she had fought remained and increased. The Protestants obtained full
+liberty of conscience, and imperial authority, but lately threatening,
+was annulled; the princes of the German states, confirmed in the
+exercise of complete authority over their territories, had the right of
+alliance with foreign powers so long as these alliances (so read a vain
+restriction) were “against neither the emperor nor the empire.”
+
+The two powers which had achieved the defeat of Austria had stipulated
+for themselves important indemnities. Sweden gained the island of Rügen,
+Wismar, western Pomerania with Stettin, the archbishopric of Bremen,
+and the bishopric of Verden--that is to say, the mouths of the three
+great German rivers, the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser--with 5,000,000
+crowns and three votes in the diet. France continued to occupy Lorraine,
+promising to restore it to its duke when he should have complied with
+her conditions. She obtained the empire’s renunciation of all right over
+the Three Bishoprics--Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which she had possessed
+for a century; over the town of Pinerolo, ceded by the duke of Savoy in
+1631; over Alsace, which was now--with the exception of Strasburg--given
+to France, carrying her boundaries beyond the Vosges as far as the Rhine.
+She also obtained Breisach, on the right bank of that river, and her
+right to garrison Philippsburg was recognised; the right of navigation on
+the Rhine was guaranteed her.
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH OFFICER, MIDDLE OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+These were great advantages; because, by recovering Alsace, France
+covered Lorraine on the side of Germany and established herself to the
+north of Franche-Comté, which since Henry IV she had enveloped on the
+south; so that the return to France of these two provinces was only
+a question of time. Not only were her frontiers now better outlined
+for defence, but she was able to maintain an offensive position. By
+the acquisition of Pinerolo France planted a foot beyond the Alps in
+Italy; by Breisach and Philippsburg, beyond the Rhine in Germany. By
+opening the eyes of the German states to their right to contract foreign
+alliances France was always able to buy over one or another of their
+indigent princes, and by guaranteeing the execution of the treaty, she
+gave herself the right to interfere in German affairs. The empire--being
+now no more than a sort of confederation of 360 states, Lutheran and
+Catholic, monarchical and republican, laical and ecclesiastical--became
+of necessity the theatre for all sorts of intrigues, the battle-field of
+Europe, as Italy had been at the beginning of modern times, and for the
+same reasons--division and anarchy.
+
+The Treaty of Westphalia, which was the foundation for all diplomatic
+conventions from the middle of the seventeenth century until the French
+Revolution, put an end to the supremacy of the house of Austria, and
+rescued the independence of the small states. If the Bourbons had not
+inherited the ambition of the Habsburgs, and roused against themselves
+the same coalitions, the Peace of Westphalia would have accomplished the
+supremacy of France and the political liberty of Europe.
+
+
+MAZARIN’S DOMESTIC POLICY
+
+[Sidenote: [1646-1648 A.D.]]
+
+While Mazarin gloriously continued the policy of Richelieu, his power in
+France was being destroyed by factions.[h]
+
+At first he used his power with moderation. He affected, at the beginning
+of his supremacy, as much of simplicity as Richelieu had displayed of
+arrogance. Far from employing guards, and keeping up royal splendour,
+he had at first the most modest retinue. He was affable and even gentle
+where his predecessor had shown inflexible pride.
+
+But with all this, taxation was necessary to maintain the war against the
+Spaniards and against the emperor. The finances of France were, since the
+death of Henry IV, as badly administered as those of Spain and Germany.
+The excise offices were in chaos, ignorance was extreme, thievery was
+paramount. The revenue of the state amounted during the first year of the
+regency to between fifteen and sixteen million livres. This was quite
+sufficient if there had been any economy in the ministry; but in 1646 and
+1647 there were deficits. The superintendent of the finances was at times
+a Sienese peasant named Particelli Émery, whose soul was even baser than
+his birth, and whose extravagance and debauchery aroused the nation to
+indignation. This man invented burdensome and ridiculous expedients. He
+created and sold posts of inspectors of fagots, of licensed hay venders,
+of king’s councillors, of wine hawkers; he sold letters of nobility.
+The debts on the Hôtel-de-Ville at Paris then amounted to only about
+eleven millions, but the fund-holders were deprived of several quarterly
+dividends; import duties were increased; several posts of masters of
+requests (to whom all petitions were intrusted) were created; about
+eighty thousand crowns of magistrates’ salaries were held back.
+
+It is easy to realise how far the minds of the people were aroused
+against two Italians, both come penniless to France, who had enriched
+themselves at the expense of the nation and who now had such a hold over
+them. The parliament of Paris, the masters of requests, the other courts,
+the fund-holders, rebelled. In vain did Mazarin remove his confidant
+Émery from office and relegate him to one of his estates--there was
+indignation that this man should have estates in France. The cardinal was
+held in abhorrence, although at this very moment he was consummating the
+great work of the Peace of Westphalia; for it must be noted that this
+famous treaty and the “day of barricades” are of the same year, 1648. The
+civil wars began at Paris as they had begun in England, over a little
+money. In 1647 the parliament of Paris, in verifying the tax edicts,
+showed itself spiritedly opposed to them. It acquired the confidence of
+the people by remonstrances which were very wearying to the ministry. But
+it did not revolt. Its spirit became embittered and hardened by degrees.
+The populace might rush to arms at once and choose a leader as they had
+done with Masaniello at Naples; but magistrates and statesmen proceed
+with more deliberation, and begin by observing the proprieties as far as
+party spirit will permit.
+
+Cardinal Mazarin had thought that by skilfully dividing the magistracy he
+would prevent all troubles, but his cunning was met with inflexibility.
+He withdrew four years’ salary from all the higher courts, at the same
+time remitting the _paulette_; that is to say, exempting the judges
+from paying the tax devised by Paulet under Henry IV for assuring the
+magistrates the permanency of their posts and permitting them to sell
+them. This retrenchment was not an injury, but he did not withdraw
+the four years’ salary from parliament, thinking to disarm it by this
+favour. But parliament scorned this mark of grace which exposed it to
+the reproach of preferring its interests to those of the others; and it
+did not hesitate to issue an _arrêt d’union_ with the other courts of
+justice. Mazarin, who was never able to pronounce French, having said
+that this _arrêt d’ognon_ was an attacking measure, and having had it
+vetoed by the council, this single word _ognon_ made him ridiculous, and
+as one never yields to one that is scorned, parliament became more active.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARREST OF BROUSSEL]
+
+It loudly demanded that all the intendants regarded by the people as
+extortioners should be recalled, and that the new kind of magistracy
+instituted under Louis XIII, without the procedure of ordinary forms,
+should be abolished. This was to please the nation as much as to irritate
+the court. It desired that, according to the ancient law, no citizen
+should be put in prison without his natural judges knowing of it within
+twenty-four hours.
+
+Parliament did more; it abolished the intendants by a decree with orders
+to the king’s prosecutors in its jurisdiction to inform against them.
+Thus the hatred of the ministry, supported by the love of the public
+weal, threatened the court with a revolution. The queen yielded; she
+abandoned the intendants and asked only that three be retained. In this
+she was refused. While these troubles were brewing the prince of Condé
+won the famous victory at Lens, which crowned his glory. The king, who
+was only ten years old, exclaimed, “Parliament will be very sorry!”
+These words make it sufficiently evident that the court looked upon the
+parliament of Paris as an assembly of rebels. Indeed, the cardinal and
+his courtiers gave it no other name. But the more the parliamentarians
+were treated as rebels the more resistance they made.[i]
+
+This state of affairs between ruling power and the parliament expressing
+the feelings of the people brings us to that remarkable revolt known as
+the Fronde, “the last echo of the civil wars of the sixteenth century.”
+
+“The origin of the name,” says Martin,[d] “seems to have been the
+comparison made between the young and turbulent _conseillers aux
+enquêtes_ and the urchins who gathered in the city ditches to indulge in
+mimic fights with slings (_frondes_). The malcontents adopted the name
+of _frondeurs_, and longed for the glory of ‘slinging the court well’
+(_bien fronder la cour_). The first to adopt this title of _frondeur_
+was, it is said, the councillor Bachaumont, son of the president Le
+Coigneux.” Kitchin[q] says that the name of the Fronde was first adopted
+by the coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris, Paul de Gondi, of whom
+we shall presently speak. “The young lords and dames,” says Crowe,[g]
+“who afterwards embraced the party, willingly adopted a name which so
+well characterised their petulance, and sportive rather than serious
+rebellion.” But the Fronde, sportive though it may have been to the
+nobles, was the cause of immense misery to the people. Famine and pest
+walked in its train and the country was enormously depopulated.[a]
+
+
+FIRST INSURRECTION OF THE FRONDE (1648 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1648 A.D.]]
+
+The queen and the cardinal resolved to arrest three of the most stubborn
+magistrates of the parliament: Novion Blancménil president of a court of
+justice, Charton president of a court of inquiry, and Broussel former
+councillor-clerk of the grand chamber. They were the tools of party
+leaders and not leaders themselves. Charton, a man of very limited
+abilities, was known by the nickname of “I say this,” because he always
+opened and closed his remarks with those words. Broussel had nothing
+to recommend him but his white hairs, his hatred for the ministry, and
+a reputation for always raising his voice against the court no matter
+on what subject. His confrères paid little attention to him, but the
+populace idolised him.
+
+Instead of arresting them without any hubbub in the silence of the night,
+the cardinal thought to impress the people by having them arrested in
+broad daylight, on August 26th, 1648, while the _Te Deum_ was being
+sung at Notre Dame for the victory of Lens and the Swiss of the chamber
+were carrying into the church the seventy-three banners taken from the
+enemy. It was precisely this plan that caused the ruin of the kingdom.
+Charton escaped, Blancménil was taken without difficulty, but it was not
+the same with Broussel. An old servant, seeing her master thrown into a
+coach by Comminges, a lieutenant of the bodyguard, collected a mob. It
+surrounded the coach, which was smashed to pieces; but the French guards
+lent assistance to Comminges and got Broussel away from his friends. He
+was taken out on the road to Sedan. The arrest, far from intimidating the
+people, irritated and emboldened them. Shops were closed. The great iron
+chains which at that time were at the entrance to the principal streets
+were stretched across them; barricades were built, and four hundred
+thousand throats cried “Liberty and Broussel!”[i]
+
+The marshal de la Meilleraie with two hundred guards tried to disperse
+them; he drove some back to the Pont Neuf, where his progress was
+impeded, and where he met Paul de Gondi, coadjutor of the archbishop of
+Paris, so famous later under the name of Cardinal de Retz, who had rushed
+out in his robes amongst the mob. After having harangued and momentarily
+tranquillised the populace, De Retz hurried with the marshal to the
+Palais Royal, to represent the alarming state of the city to the queen.
+Anne of Austria, who knew the coadjutor’s character, suspected him as
+one more likely to throw oil than water on the flame. “It is rebellion
+itself to imagine that the people can rebel,” said she; “you would have
+me deliver Broussel; I will first strangle him with these hands.” This
+resentment, seconded by the jeers of the court, had the ill effect of
+converting De Retz into a dangerous enemy.[g]
+
+
+_The Day of the Barricades (August 27th, 1648)_
+
+It is difficult to reconcile all the details of what followed, related
+by Cardinal de Retz,[j] Madame de Motteville,[k] Advocate-General Talon,
+and many others; but all agree upon the principal points. During the
+night which followed the riot the queen had about two thousand troopers,
+quartered a few leagues from Paris, come into the city to protect the
+king’s residence. The chancellor Séguier had already proceeded to the
+parliament accompanied by a lieutenant and several archers to quash all
+its decrees and even, it is said, to suspend that body.
+
+But during that very night the factionists assembled at the house of De
+Retz, and everything was arranged to arm the city. The chancellor’s coach
+was stopped and overturned. He escaped with difficulty, with his daughter
+the duchess de Sully, who in spite of him had insisted on accompanying
+him. He retired in disorder into the hôtel de Luynes, jostled and
+insulted by the populace. The civil lieutenant now took him into his
+coach, and escorted by two Swiss companies and a squadron of gendarmes
+attempted to bring him to the Palais Royal. The people fired on them;
+several were killed and the duchess de Sully was wounded in the arm.
+
+Two hundred barricades were formed in an instant; they were pushed to
+within a hundred paces of the Palais Royal. The soldiers, after seeing
+several of their number fall, retreated and looked to see what the
+bourgeois were going to do. The parliament marched on foot in a body
+to the queen, across the barricades which were lowered before it, and
+demanded the liberation of its imprisoned members. The queen was obliged
+to set them free.[i]
+
+The barricades were immediately levelled, and the people ceased their
+turbulence and clamour. “Never was disorder more orderly managed,” says
+Madame de Motteville;[k] “the citizens who had taken up arms to prevent
+the ascendency of the rabble and to check pillage were little more
+peaceable than the populace itself, and roared for the liberation of
+Broussel with equal violence.” The court in yielding had but temporised,
+however; and it soon made its escape from the capital to St. Germain.
+Such was the first insurrection of the Fronde.[g]
+
+Cardinal de Retz has boasted of having all by himself armed the whole of
+Paris on that day (August 27th, 1648), which has been called the “Day
+of the Barricades” and which was the second of its kind. This singular
+man is the first bishop of France to plan a civil war without religion
+for a pretext. He has described himself in his _Mémoires_,[j] written
+in a grandiose manner with the impetuosity of genius and an unevenness
+which are the mirror of his conduct. He was a man who, from the depths of
+debauchery and the infamous consequences which it brings, preached to the
+people and made them idolise him. He breathed faction and conspiracy; he
+had been at the age of twenty-three the soul of a conspiracy against the
+life of Richelieu; he was the author of the barricades; he precipitated
+parliament into cabals and the people into seditions. His extreme vanity
+made him undertake bold crimes in order that they might be talked about.
+It was this same vanity that made him repeat so often, “I am of a house
+of Florence as ancient as that of the greatest princes”[101]--he whose
+ancestors had been merchants like so many of his compatriots.[i]
+
+[Illustration: A FRENCH OFFICER, MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+The hopes of the queen were now in the young prince of Condé. But that
+young hero, though opposed to the party of the _importants_, was not
+yet prepared to martyrise his popularity for Mazarin. He proposed his
+mediation. Mazarin accepted it, well knowing how soon the hot prince
+would lose patience at the formal and democratic pleadings of the
+parliamentary statesmen. De Retz, now the leading man of the popular
+party, made every effort to gain Condé, who replied, “My name is Louis
+de Bourbon: I will not shake the throne.” Through his means negotiations
+were entered into with the court; the elders of the parliament, and
+Molé, the president, at their head, being anxious to avoid a civil war,
+whilst the violent party, bestowing on the pacific chiefs the nickname
+of _barbons_, pushed matters to extremities. They had revived an old
+law, passed after the fall of the marshal D’Ancre, which prohibited the
+administration of the kingdom by foreigners, thus aiming at Mazarin.
+Still a second accommodation took place: a royal declaration, dated the
+28th of October [the very day of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia],
+accepted the principal articles of the plan of reformation, and the court
+returned to the capital.
+
+[Sidenote: [1648-1649 A.D.]]
+
+This proved but a hollow truce, entered into by both parties out of
+respect for Condé, whom both feared and both hoped to gain. The popular
+party was suspicious; De Retz continued his intrigues; whilst the queen
+urged Condé to make preparations for defending the royal authority by
+force. It has been the fate of all attempts to establish liberty in
+France to be frustrated, not by the opposition of the aristocracy, but by
+their affecting to abet and adopt its principles.
+
+In the Fronde, the magistracy of Paris, supported by the citizens,
+endeavoured to supply the want of a national assembly. They framed a
+constitution; forced it on the court without effusion of blood; and might
+have succeeded in upholding and perhaps ameliorating it, when the young
+noblesse interfered, drove the citizens to insurrection first, then
+to submission, and for the sake of their selfish quarrels, which all
+their light-heartedness and valour cannot redeem, they sacrificed the
+last hope that the French had of even a degree of liberty; they pierced
+the last plank that shut out the overwhelming ocean of despotism. We
+certainly, of the present day, can look but with a small degree of hope
+or approbation on a judicial body which grasps at legislative power. But
+had the noblesse known its true interests, and acted its natural part of
+mediator, the states-general might have superseded the parliament in its
+political functions; the moderation of the provincial deputies would have
+tempered the ardour of the capital, and the ever consecutive extremes of
+insurrection and pusillanimous submission might both have been avoided.
+
+The old party of the _importants_ now roused itself. The duke de Beaufort
+escaped from prison. The duke de Bouillon, smarting under the loss of
+Sedan, joined counsels with him; and both intrigued with the violent
+men in the parliament to form an insurrection against the court. The
+duchess de Longueville brought her charms to support the same cause:
+these decided La Rochefoucauld, her lover, to adopt it. She used all her
+influence to the same effect with her brother Condé in vain. In default
+of him, the prince of Conti, his brother, was won over. No cause could
+subsist, in the opinion of these gentlemen, unless it could boast the
+name of a prince of the blood. The duchess de Chevreuse, though still in
+exile, corresponded with the party, and promised to it the accession of
+the princes of Lorraine. Madame de Montbazon was found united in the same
+cause with her rival, Madame de Longueville. The marshal D’Hocquincourt
+offered the strong and important fortress which he commanded, in homage
+to the charms of the former. “Péronne,” wrote he to her, “is at the
+disposal of the fairest of the fair.” A crowd of nobles gaily joined the
+conspiracy; and the court was once more obliged to make its escape from
+Paris, and retire to St. Germain, in January 1649.[102]
+
+Strong and extreme measures were at last resolved upon, although not
+prepared with that vigour and foresight that Richelieu would have
+displayed. Troops, under Condé and the duke of Orleans, prepared to
+invest Paris, and occupied on either side of the city the bridges of
+Charenton and St. Cloud; but with only 12,000 men, the utmost of the
+royalist force, it was impossible to invest the metropolis. A royal
+order, commanding the parliament to retire to Montargis, was treated by
+them with contempt. A civic guard was raised, to the number of 12,000,
+the chief officers, it is remarkable, being lawyers and officers of
+parliament; the provost of the merchants, however, retained the supreme
+command. In addition to these, a stipendiary force of 20,000 men was
+raised in a few days, by means of a house tax, fixed at so much for
+every plain house-door, and double the sum for the gate which admitted
+a carriage. The noblesse did not forget their petty ambition, even in
+adopting the bourgeois cause. The duke d’Elbeuf had first seized on the
+chief command, and was reluctant to yield it to the prince of Conti.
+The duke de Beaufort, however, was the most popular chief, owing to his
+affable manners and handsome person. He was called the _roi des halles_
+(the king of the markets). The war, if it can be called such, commenced
+by the attack of the Bastille, at which the ladies of the party assisted.
+It surrendered gallantly to these fascinating adversaries. On his side,
+Condé began to press towards the walls; and some skirmishes took place,
+in which a few were slain, amongst others the duke de Châtillon.
+
+Two circumstances soon after occurred that much altered the views and
+shook the resolutions of the court. One was the defection of Turenne,
+who, won over by his brother the duke de Bouillon, promised to march the
+army, which he commanded on the Rhine, to the support of the Fronde;
+the other was the connection of the _frondeur_ nobles with Spain, and
+the public reception by the parliament of an envoy from that power.
+This savoured of the inveteracy of the league. The elder magistrates,
+and principally Molé the president, indignant at this alliance with
+the enemies of the country, began to exert themselves to frustrate the
+violent projects of the young noblesse, and to seek an accommodation
+with the court. The majority of the parliament, already disgusted with
+the froward, frivolous, and arrogant behaviour of the nobles, came so
+far into the same views, that Molé himself, with some of his brethren,
+was despatched to the queen at Ruel, to essay an accommodation. The
+court grasped at the opportunity, but still negotiated for advantages;
+whilst Bouillon stirred the populace of Paris against the moderation of
+the parliament, and urged the alliance with Spain. Molé, determined to
+disappoint the ambitious duke, signed a treaty with the court in haste,
+on the 11th of March, ere Turenne could arrive, or Spain despatch its aid.
+
+Great was the indignation of the populace, and of the seditious
+leaders, at the news of this peace. All cried out treason. Bouillon was
+confounded, and De Retz perplexed. Molé knew that he risked his life by
+thus balking the seditious ardour of both the nobles and the mob; but the
+thought gave him courage, not hesitation. The critical moment was that
+of declaring the treaty to the assembled parliament. A ferocious crowd,
+crying “Treason! no peace! no Mazarin!” surrounded the Palais de Justice;
+and the throng within its walls was scarcely less hostile or less
+calm. Molé stood up and read the treaty; clamour instantly covered his
+voice. The prince of Conti exclaimed against a peace concluded without
+his knowledge, and that of the nobles his friends. “You, then, are the
+cause,” retorted Molé: “whilst we were at Ruel, you were treating with
+the enemies of France; you were inviting the archduke, the Spaniard, and
+the foe to invade the kingdom.” “It is not without the consent of several
+members of the parliament that we took this step,” replied the prince,
+not denying the charge. “Name them,” was Molé’s instant retort; “name the
+traitors, that we may proceed to try and judge them.”
+
+The firmness of the president at once awed the nobles, and won over
+the majority of the assembled magistrates to support him. The only
+hope of the favourers of sedition was in the rabble, which, incensed
+and tumultuous, had penetrated into the passages and corridors of
+the palace. Some, with poniards and arms, demanded the head of the
+president. “Give us up the _grande barbe_” (long beard); so they called
+the venerable magistrate. Others shouted the word “Republic.” Molé heard
+them with unshaken courage. Those around besought him to make his escape
+by a postern. “Justice never skulks,” replied Molé, “nor will I, its
+representative. I may perish, but will never commit an act of cowardice,
+which would give hardihood to the mob.” Accordant to this magnanimous
+resolution, the chief magistrate walked boldly down the principal
+staircase through the mob, awing the most audacious by his firmness.
+Even De Retz[j] was lost in admiration; and has recorded that he could
+perceive in the countenance of Molé, then threatened by the fury of the
+multitude, not a motion that did not indicate imperturbable firmness, and
+at the same time a presence and elevation of mind greater than firmness,
+and every way supernatural. This is one of the noblest exhibitions of
+courage which history has recorded.
+
+[Illustration: FRENCH MAN-OF-WAR, TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+When the chiefs of sedition saw that they could not conquer, and that
+the treaty would pass in their despite, each hastened to make his
+private offers and demands of the court. Bouillon wanted Sedan; Turenne,
+Alsace; Elbeuf, the government of Picardy; Beaufort, to be admiral. They
+were not listened to. Angered and resolved to proceed to extremities,
+they wrote to Turenne to advance, and to the archduke to invade the
+north. But Turenne’s treason was defeated by Erlach, commander of the
+Swiss--himself obliged to fly; and the archduke, his support failing,
+retreated. Thus the moderate portion of the parliament, supported by the
+civic guard, succeeded in restoring peace with the court, despite the
+opposition of the nobles and the mob. The reader will not fail to remark
+how distinct these several classes kept from each other, even when in
+alliance and fighting the same battles; a state of society that has not
+ceased at the present day to characterise France: whilst in England, the
+blending of the lower ranks of the nobly born with the higher ranks of
+the industrious and unennobled, effected by the habits and institutions
+of the country, have rendered the pernicious line of demarcation betwixt
+castes and classes almost invisible to the historian.
+
+
+SECOND ACT OF THE FRONDE; ARREST OF CONDÉ
+
+[Sidenote: [1649-1650 A.D.]]
+
+The scene now shifts, and another act of the Fronde commences, displaying
+the chief actors in altogether new characters and dresses. No sooner was
+the peace declared than the prince of Condé, jealous of the cardinal,
+united with the nobles whom he so lately combated: he visited his sister,
+Madame de Longueville, became reconciled to her and to La Rochefoucauld;
+the duke de Beaufort and the coadjutor being the only two that remained
+at the same time hostile to Mazarin and jealous of Condé. A few nobles,
+however, were not sufficient to give weight to the demands of the prince,
+and Mazarin resisted them. The prince, in consequence, saw the coadjutor,
+and planned, or pretended to form, an alliance with him and the violent
+members of the parliament. The court, terrified at the prospect of being
+so abandoned, and of seeing Condé at the head of the frondeurs, granted
+all the desires of the latter, who, ashamed to break with his new allies,
+yet left without a pretext to continue his quarrel with Mazarin, “changed
+his mind three hundred times in three days.” The haughty prince, who
+hated the parliament and the rabble, at last decided to disappoint the
+coadjutor; he became reconciled to Mazarin, and of course quarrelled with
+the frondeurs, whom he accused of an attempt to assassinate him. The
+same imprudence, the same haughtiness, petulance, and overbearing temper
+marked the prince to whichever side he leaned, and disgusted both. As a
+friend he was even more troublesome than as an enemy: Mazarin and the
+queen felt this; they could no longer tolerate his insolence; and the
+present moment, as he had left himself no friends in any party, seemed
+the best opportunity for being revenged on him.
+
+To arrest and send the prince to prison was the old monarchic mode
+of treating the froward; but one of the articles stipulated by the
+parliament, and secured to them in the last treaty, was that every
+prisoner should be interrogated in four-and-twenty hours, and delivered
+over to his lawful judges. To infringe upon this law might rouse the
+parliament, and re-excite the rebellion of the Parisians. To secure
+himself against such an event, Mazarin leagued with--whom? The coadjutor
+himself, and the most violent of the frondeurs! They, the populace
+sharing their sentiments, hated Condé for his ancient enmity and his late
+desertion. De Retz and Mazarin, accordingly, had interviews, the former
+entering the Palais Royal by night in disguise. The consequence of this
+secret understanding soon appeared. The prince of Condé, the prince of
+Conti, his brother, and the duke de Longueville were arrested at the
+door of the council-chamber, and sent to Vincennes in January, 1650. The
+dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld, as well as the duchess de
+Longueville, succeeded in escaping; the princesses of Condé were ordered
+to retire to Chantilly. Bonfires, illuminations, and every sign of joy on
+the part of the Parisians marked this extreme measure. The popular hatred
+of Condé and confidence in De Retz lulled for the moment their dislike of
+the cardinal Mazarin.
+
+Two events which mark the spirit of the time, and which occurred previous
+to the prince’s arrest, must not be passed over. The honour of a
+_tabouret_, or stool at court, was only granted to the ladies of princes
+of sovereign houses, or to the wives of dukes and peers. Exceptions,
+however, had been made in favour of the younger branches of the Rohans,
+the La Trémouilles, and the family of Bouillon. La Rochefoucauld
+pretended to the same distinction: the prince of Condé supported his
+claim. The noblesse instantly assembled to the number of eight hundred,
+and formed a protest against such pretensions, which went, they said,
+to destroy the natural equality that existed amongst all gently born.
+The dispute led to a discussion of political rights and principles,
+then the dangerous mania of the age, and some voices clamoured for the
+states-general. The French noblesse are entitled certainly to the credit
+of having demanded these national assemblies at a time when the judicial
+body or parliament, in whom the favour and confidence of the people were
+then centred, deprecated any such proposition. It may be asked why the
+chiefs of the judicature, and such upright lovers of liberty as Molé,
+were opposed to the convocation of the states-general. The answer is that
+the example of England, then in the mouths and minds of many, terrified
+them, and made them prefer their own body as a constitutional check,
+to such a representative assembly as that which, in the neighbouring
+kingdom, had begun with civil war, and ended in regicide and despotism.
+It must be owned they had some cause for fear. A revolution is bad
+enough; but an imitative revolution, a parody of such a great event,
+is to be deprecated tenfold, as incurring all the evils and few of the
+advantages of the convulsion.
+
+Already the people of Paris talked of republics and liberty: the
+monarchy, they said, was too old, and it was time it should expire. Nay,
+the duke de Bouillon himself, adopting the revolutionary phrase, proposed
+on one occasion to purge the parliament. The taste for assembling and
+debating was general. The annuities charged on the Hôtel-de-Ville were
+suspended by the troubles: three thousand of these fund-holders, chiefly
+citizens of Paris, met, drew up resolutions, petitioned, and clothed
+themselves in black, the uniform of the tiers or third estate. Molé
+instantly rebuked them, as attempting to form a _chambre de communes_, a
+house of commons. The citizens were indignant at the comparison: and this
+very reproach, that they were imitating the commons of England, had great
+effect in dissipating their assembly.
+
+
+RESISTANCE OF BORDEAUX (1650 A.D.)
+
+Principles, however, were soon forgotten in the general sympathy which
+the misfortunes of Condé excited. The haughtiness, the imprudences of
+the hero of Rocroi and Lens were now forgotten; and the nobility began
+to rally to his cause as their own. The court were at first successful
+in reducing Normandy, the government of the duke de Longueville; but in
+Languedoc and the provinces on the Gironde, the dukes de la Rochefoucauld
+and de Bouillon soon gathered an army of adherents, and were joined by
+the wife and infant son of the prince.
+
+Clémence de Maillé, princess of Condé, had hitherto commanded little
+respect either from the world or from her husband, who, having married
+her merely as the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, was ashamed of her
+humble origin and his own condescension. She now however displayed a
+heroism and an attachment worthy of the spouse of the Great Condé. The
+princess escaped with her young son, the duke d’Enghien, from Chantilly,
+and after some delay in a fortified place, joined the dukes de la
+Rochefoucauld and de Bouillon in the south. But the noblesse was not
+then the predominant order in the state, and she was obliged to seek
+more powerful protection in the parliament of Bordeaux. This provincial
+court of justice was highly incensed against the duke d’Épernon, governor
+of Languedoc; and consequently ill-disposed towards the queen and the
+cardinal, who seconded him. They of course embraced with ardour the new
+laws established by the parliament of Paris, which gave to the courts
+of magistracy power to control the measures of government, and which
+forbade arrests without bringing the accused to speedy trial. They could
+little comprehend the manœuvres by which De Retz and his violent party
+induced the parliament of Paris to overlook the imprisonment of Condé.
+They were eager to take his part and to admit the princess within their
+walls; but at the same time had considerable distrust of the nobles who
+supported her, and who were negotiating with Spain. To satisfy these
+scruples, the princess entered Bordeaux alone; but the popular clamour
+drowning the voice of the magistrates, she soon had the city at her
+command, and the dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld entered with
+their troops and took the command.
+
+The queen and Mazarin led the young king and an army commanded by the
+marshal De la Meilleraie to reduce Bordeaux. Its first feat was to raze
+Verteuil, the famous château of the La Rochefoucauld family, a barbarous
+act, and inconceivable in Mazarin, who loved the arts. Bordeaux was then
+invested, and its suburb was carried after a valiant defence, in which
+La Rochefoucauld displayed remarkable gallantry. To gain footing in the
+town itself was soon found impossible, such was the obstinacy of the
+armed citizens. Whilst Mazarin and the court thus lay encamped before
+Bordeaux, Turenne had entered the north of France, and was marching
+without opposition towards the capital, intending to liberate the princes
+from Vincennes. Condé, confined in the donjon of that castle, whiled away
+his captivity by cultivating the few flowers that the terrace of his
+window could contain. “Who would have thought,” exclaimed he, in learning
+the resistance of Bordeaux, “that my wife should be fighting whilst I was
+gardening!” The princes were removed from Vincennes to the safer retreat
+of Marcoussis, and Turenne, who, fearing to indispose the parliament of
+Paris by appearing at the head of foreign troops, retired again towards
+the frontier.
+
+
+DISGRACE AND EXILE OF MAZARIN (1650-1651 A.D.)
+
+[Illustration: MAZARIN]
+
+[Sidenote: [1650-1651 A.D.]]
+
+The coadjutor and the violent frondeurs grew weary of their alliance with
+Mazarin, into which their fear and hatred of Condé had alone induced
+them to enter. They not only found Mazarin ungrateful and insincere,
+refusing even to De Retz the cardinal’s hat that he demanded, but their
+popularity, which was their chief force, and their influence over the
+parliament, were rapidly diminishing from their union with the court.
+Mazarin, suspecting the intention of the frondeurs, and alarmed by the
+march of Turenne, granted peace to Bordeaux, concluding more a truce
+than a treaty with the princess of Condé, La Rochefoucauld, and Bouillon.
+
+The minister then returned to Paris, where he found the parliament no
+longer silent as to the arrest of Condé, but prepared to expostulate,
+and demand his release. Mazarin caused the princes to be instantly
+conveyed from Marcoussis to La Havre, where they were still more in
+his individual power. La Rochefoucauld and Bouillon also returned to
+Paris; and a series of intrigues took place; these partisans of Condé
+negotiating at the same time both with the coadjutor and with Mazarin
+for his release. An alliance with either would effect this, and La
+Rochefoucauld was in doubt. The coadjutor, in the habit of a cavalier,
+came by night to the rendezvous at the house of the princess palatine. La
+Rochefoucauld went in equal secrecy to the Palais Royal. The over-caution
+of the cardinal lost his cause. La Rochefoucauld pressed him at once
+to conclude the alliance, and give orders that Condé should be set at
+liberty. Mazarin hesitated. Unprincipled as he was himself, he could not
+believe it possible that the friends of Condé could unite with De Retz.
+La Rochefoucauld warned the cardinal in parting that the morrow would
+be too late. Mazarin smiled incredulity and irresolution; and the duke,
+hurrying to the other place of rendezvous, concluded the agreement with
+the coadjutor. The effects of this alliance were immediately manifest.
+The majority of the parliament clamoured for the release of Condé, and
+addressed the queen on the subject. It was necessary to yield; and
+Mazarin saw that, deserted by all parties, he would infallibly be the
+victim.
+
+In his rage he anathematised the parliament before the whole court,
+called it an English house of commons, compared the coadjutor De Retz
+to Cromwell and himself to Strafford, and declared that, in sacrificing
+its minister to popular clamour, the crown would, as in the case of
+Strafford, sacrifice itself. This conversation, being reported to the
+parliament by De Retz, raised a storm indescribable, and terminated in
+an address to the queen, desiring that Mazarin should be banished from
+her councils, and that the prince should be liberated. Nought was left
+the cardinal but flight. He took his departure immediately. It was agreed
+that the queen and young king were to follow him, and that, possessed
+of La Havre and the persons of the princes, they would be able either
+by open war or negotiation to bring the parliament and the frondeurs to
+more reasonable terms. This project however failed, through the cunning
+and activity of the coadjutor, who, learning the queen’s intention of
+departing, raised a mob round the palace, and made her virtually a
+prisoner there. Cardinal Mazarin alone found himself without authority.
+He could not even gain entrance into Havre unless unattended. He entered,
+nevertheless, saw the captive princes of Condé, Conti, and Longueville,
+endeavoured to cajole them, and set them at liberty, without receiving in
+return a single mark of gratitude or regard. Thus every way disappointed,
+Mazarin resigned himself to his disgrace, and left the kingdom.[103]
+
+
+CONDÉ IN POWER (1651 A.D.)
+
+The prince of Condé was now all-powerful--the parliament, the Fronde,
+the noblesse, the populace, had all rallied to him; the minister was in
+exile, the queen a prisoner. Many blamed him for not setting aside Anne
+of Austria, and assuming the regency; but he was totally without the
+qualities requisite for taking advantage of his position; he was too
+lazy, too confident, too generous, too rash: and, making not a single
+exertion, the several parties that had united to compel at once his
+release and the exile of the minister were allowed again to fall asunder,
+and abandon to the court the recovery of its ancient influence. The
+noblesse at this period were animated with a strong desire to imitate
+the magistracy, and, by remaining united, to restore or re-establish the
+influence of the aristocracy, in opposition both to crown and judicature.
+They assembled in the convent of the Cordeliers (afterwards doomed to
+hold a club of a very different kind, that of Danton), and formed a house
+of peers, discussing state affairs, and fixing the privileges of the
+nobles. The parliament took fire at this, and forbade the assemblies. The
+noblesse looked to Condé to head them; but he, without principle or aim,
+and deeming his interests, as prince of the blood, distinct from those
+of the aristocracy, held back at this crisis. The noblesse called the
+assembly of the church, then sitting, to their aid, who protested, and
+complained that the parliament had altered the ancient constitution of
+the kingdom, by adding themselves as a fourth and spurious estate to the
+three established ones of king, lords, and commons. Despite of this, the
+parliament had force and the popular feeling on its side. The noblesse
+were obliged to succumb, and dissolved their assembly; not, however,
+before they had recourse to the queen and the royal authority, who issued
+a declaration, promising to convoke the states-general for the following
+September.
+
+Here the queen recovered consideration and authority sufficient to enable
+her to aim at and grasp more, by allying with the prince of Condé. One of
+the stipulations betwixt them was that the marriage should be broken off
+betwixt the prince of Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The coadjutor,
+connected by gallantry and friendship with the family of Chevreuse, was
+indignant at this, and a quarrel ensued betwixt Condé and the old party
+of the Fronde. Hence another scene in the drama, which represents Condé
+insulted by those very men who had been so instrumental in releasing him.
+De Retz and the prince nearly came to blows in the Palais de Justice; and
+the former had almost fallen a victim to the passion of La Rochefoucauld,
+who jammed the coadjutor betwixt two folding doors till he was almost
+suffocated: the duke at the same time called to one of his friends to
+stab De Retz, an injunction that was not obeyed, and perhaps not intended
+to be obeyed. It is, nevertheless, startling to the modern reader to find
+the courtly author of the _Maximes_ engaged personally in the office and
+using the language of the assassin.
+
+The consequence of these dissensions was the recovery of her authority
+by Anne of Austria, who, in affecting to ally with Condé, was merely
+enticing him to disgust and desert the Fronde. This achieved, she flung
+off the mask, and Condé found himself as much detested by all parties
+as a few months back he was their favourite and their rallying word.
+The prince, thus deserted, endeavoured to make common cause with the
+noblesse, and clamoured for the states-general; but it was too late: the
+parliament united with the court in opposing their convocation, and Condé
+in despair retired from Paris, obliged to seek support in civil war and
+an alliance with Spain.
+
+
+RETURN OF MAZARIN (1651 A.D.)
+
+In September, 1651, Louis XIV, then approaching fourteen years of age,
+was declared to have completed his minority. The day was celebrated with
+great magnificence. The royal authority remained, however, as before,
+in the hands of the queen: her only thought was the recall of Mazarin.
+The attachment borne by Anne to this prelate-minister is inexplicable.
+She might have reigned supreme, and been the arbiter betwixt contending
+parties, could she have consented to leave Mazarin in exile. De Retz
+endeavoured to impress this necessity upon her; but power appeared to
+her worthless without the cardinal; and no sooner had Condé broken with
+the parliament, and burst into war against the court, than the minister
+prepared to return. He levied an army, made an attempt on Brissac, and
+soon after joined the court at Poitiers, taking as usual the chief seat
+in the council.[g]
+
+At the first news of his return, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis
+XIII, who had demanded the removal of the cardinal, levied troops in
+Paris without knowing for what they would be employed. Parliament renewed
+its decrees; it proscribed Mazarin and put a price on his head. This
+proscription tempted no one to earn the 50,000 crowns, which, after all,
+would never have been paid. With another nation and in another age,
+such a decree would have found executors; but here it served simply to
+incite fresh pleasantries. The Blots and the Marignys, wits, who carried
+gaiety into the tumult of these troubles, caused to be placarded all over
+Paris a distribution of the 50,000 crowns--so much for whoever should
+cut off the cardinal’s nose, and so much for an ear, so much for an eye,
+so much to make him a eunuch. This ridicule was all the effect of the
+proscription against the minister’s person, but his furniture and library
+were sold by a second decree. This money was destined for the assassin’s
+pay, but it was dissipated by the depositaries, like all funds that had
+been raised hitherto. The cardinal on his side used against his enemies
+neither poison nor steel and, in spite of the bitterness and madness of
+so much partisanship and hatred, no great crimes were committed. The
+party leaders were less cruel and the people less furious than in the
+days of the league--this was not a war of religion.
+
+[Illustration: CANNON OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+The spirit of madness which reigned at this time so possessed the
+whole body of the parliament that, after having solemnly ordered an
+assassination which everyone ridiculed, it passed a decree by which
+several councillors should betake themselves to the frontier for
+information against the army of Cardinal Mazarin: that is to say, the
+royal army. Meanwhile the king interdicted the parliament of Paris and
+transferred it to Pontoise. Fourteen members attached to the court
+obeyed; the others resisted. There were now two parliaments, which,
+to cap the confusion, thundered against each other with reciprocating
+decrees, as in the days of Henry IV and Charles VI.
+
+It was precisely at the time when this company was going to extremities
+with the king’s minister that it declared the prince of Condé, who had
+only armed himself against this minister, guilty of _lèse majesté_; and
+by a turn of mind which its preceding steps could alone make credible,
+it ordered the new troops of Gaston, duke of Orleans, to march against
+Mazarin and forbade at the same time any money from the public receipts
+to be used in maintaining them. We can expect nought else from a company
+of magistrates, thrown out of their proper sphere, knowing not their
+rights, their real power, political affairs, or war, assembling and
+deciding amid tumult, making decisions of which they had no thought the
+day before, and at which they themselves were afterwards astonished. The
+parliament of Bordeaux was then serving the prince of Condé, but it kept
+to a little more rational conduct, because being further removed from the
+court it was less agitated by opposing factions. More important matters
+were interesting the whole of France.
+
+
+THE LAST PHASE OF THE FRONDE
+
+[Sidenote: [1651-1652 A.D.]]
+
+Condé, leagued with the Spaniards, was on a campaign against the king;
+and Turenne, having quitted these same Spaniards, with whom he had been
+beaten at Rethel, had just made his peace with the court and was in
+command of the royal army. The exhausted finances did not permit either
+of the two parties to maintain great armies, but small ones did not the
+less decide the fate of the state. Louis XIV, brought up in adversity,
+went with his mother, his brother, and Cardinal Mazarin from province
+to province, without having as many troops about his person, by a great
+deal, as he had afterwards for a single guard in times of peace. Five to
+six thousand men, some sent from Spain, others raised by the prince of
+Condé’s partisans, pursued him into the very heart of his kingdom.
+
+Meanwhile the prince of Condé hastened from Bordeaux to Montauban, taking
+towns and everywhere increasing his party. All the hope of the court lay
+in Marshal Turenne. The royal army found itself near Gien on the Loire.
+The opposing force of Condé was some leagues away, under the orders of
+the dukes de Nemours and de Beaufort. The duke de Beaufort was incapable
+of commanding anything. The duke de Nemours was braver and more amiable
+than he was skilful. Both together had demoralised their army. The
+soldiers of Condé knew that their leader was a hundred leagues away and
+believed themselves lost, when, in the middle of the night, a courier
+presented himself at the outposts in the forest of Orleans. The sentinels
+recognised in this courier the prince of Condé himself, who had come
+all the way across France from Agen, with many adventures and always in
+disguise, to place himself at the head of his army.
+
+His presence did much and his unexpected arrival still more. The royal
+army was divided into two corps. April 7th, 1652, Condé fell upon that
+which was at Bléneau, commanded by Marshal d’Hocquincourt, and his corps
+was dissipated as quickly as it had been attacked. Turenne could not
+even be warned. The terrified Mazarin hastened to Gien in the middle of
+the night to awaken the sleeping king and himself tell him the news.
+The little court was in consternation; they proposed to save the king by
+flight and to conduct him secretly to Bourges. The victorious Condé drew
+near to Gien; the desolation and the fear increased. Turenne reassured
+their spirits by his firmness and saved the court by his skill. With
+the few troops that remained to him he made such fortunate movements
+that he prevented Condé from following up his advantage. It is difficult
+to decide which won the more honours, the victorious Condé or Turenne
+who had robbed him of the fruits of victory.[104] It is true that in
+this fight at Bléneau not four hundred men were killed; but the prince
+of Condé was none the less on the point of making himself master of
+the entire royal family, and of having in his hands his enemy Cardinal
+Mazarin. It would be hard to find in history any smaller battle with
+greater interest and more pressing danger.
+
+Condé, who did not flatter himself that he could surprise Turenne, as he
+had done Hocquincourt, marched his army towards Paris. He hastened to
+that city to enjoy his glory and the favourable disposition of a blind
+populace. The admiration they had for his last fight,--all of whose
+details had exaggerated the hate that was borne for Mazarin,--the name
+and the presence of the Great Condé, seemed at first to make him absolute
+master of the capital; but at the bottom all minds were divided. The
+coadjutor--now become Cardinal de Retz, reconciled in appearance with the
+court which feared him and which he defied--was no longer the master of
+the people and no longer played the principal rôle. He ruled the duke of
+Orleans and was opposed by Condé. Parliament wavered between the court,
+the duke of Orleans, and the prince. Although all were in accord in
+crying down Mazarin, each one was nursing his own particular interests in
+secret; the people were a stormy sea whose waves were driven at chance by
+many contrary winds.[i]
+
+Condé hoped to find the parliament his ally against Mazarin: but the
+stern magistrates, though firm in their abhorrence of that minister, were
+not more favourable to Condé, and openly reproached him with his Spanish
+alliance. From the parliament he did not scruple to appeal to the people,
+whose lowest class rose in tumult, and threatened the magistrates. The
+very courts proved no refuge: councillors and judges were insulted and
+even beaten as “Mazarins.”
+
+Condé, thus disappointed in the support of the parliament, and of the
+respectable citizens, could not cope unaided with the royal army. The
+Parisian rabble, very forward in a riot, could not be made to stand the
+fire of regular troops. The prince had recourse to the Spaniards, who,
+themselves busied in the sieges of Gravelines and Dunkirk, induced the
+duke of Lorraine to march into France and support Condé. The skilful
+strategy of Turenne, however, compelled this new auxiliary to retreat;
+and the prince, after a fresh attempt to raise sedition in the capital
+and control the parliament, was reduced to fight Turenne with far
+inferior forces. The latter drove him from St. Cloud, and Condé marched
+to take post at Charenton, when, his rival pressing him closely, as he
+defiled round the walls of Paris, the prince was obliged to throw himself
+into the faubourg St. Antoine, behind the entrenchments formerly raised
+for their defence by the inhabitants.
+
+
+_Battle of St. Antoine (July 2nd, 1652)_
+
+The gate of Paris called St. Antoine was then immediately under the
+Bastille, the cannon of which swept the three roads diverging from it.
+Condé, denied entrance into the city, was still secure from attack on
+this side; and, posted in the central position of the gate St. Antoine,
+he determined to make head against the royalists, who approached to
+attack him by the three roads. Mazarin and Louis XIV were on the heights,
+now covered with the cemetery of Père Lachaise, spectators of the ensuing
+action, the young monarch being most anxious to witness the destruction
+of this rebellious prince.
+
+The triple attack commenced: that on the prince’s left, commanded by
+three sworn and personal enemies to him, was defeated by his valour, the
+chiefs all perishing. The hero then rushed to defend the central street:
+he met Turenne in person, and there the conflict was more doubtful. “Did
+you see Condé during the action?” asked someone of Turenne when the
+affair was over. “I must have seen a dozen Condés,” was the reply: “he
+multiplied himself.” On the right the action was most bloody: the nobles
+of the prince’s party were almost all slain or wounded there, amongst the
+rest La Rochefoucauld, who, struck on the head, was carried off by his
+wounded son. Turenne was the most powerful; and no chance appeared of
+Condé’s saving himself and the relics of his army, when the gate of St.
+Antoine unexpectedly opened to receive him, the cannon of the Bastille at
+the same time sending their fire up the three attacked streets, and thus
+effectually checking the progress of the royalists.
+
+This well-timed succour came from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter
+of the duke of Orleans, whose sympathy for the heroic Condé, now in
+distress, was aided by the clamours of the populace, enraged at beholding
+a rash and imprudent but still generous prince sacrificed to the detested
+Mazarin. She wrung from the municipal officers the orders for opening the
+gates; herself directed the firing of the guns of the Bastille; nay, her
+hand is said to have applied the match. Mademoiselle had aspired to the
+hand of Condé, to that of the king, and might hope at least to espouse
+a sovereign prince. But Mazarin observed, on seeing the fire of the
+Bastille, and knowing who commanded it, “That shot has killed the husband
+of Mademoiselle.”[g]
+
+
+SECOND EXILE OF MAZARIN
+
+After this bloody and useless combat of St. Antoine the king could not
+return to Paris; and the prince did not remain there long. Popular
+feeling and the murder of several citizens, for which he was believed
+to be responsible, made him odious to the people. [He fled from Paris
+and joined the Spanish army, October, 1652.] However, he still had his
+faction in the parliament. This body, now intimidated by a wandering
+court, and driven after a fashion from the capital to Pontoise, pressed
+by the cabals of the duke of Orleans and the prince, declared, by a
+decree, the duke of Orleans lieutenant-general of the realm, although the
+king was an adult. The two parliaments of Paris and Pontoise, contesting
+the authority one with the other and issuing contradictory decrees,
+agreed in demanding the expulsion of Mazarin--so much did the hatred
+of this minister seem the essential duty of every Frenchman. The court
+saw itself obliged once more to sacrifice Mazarin whom everyone believed
+the author of the troubles, but who was but their pretext. For a second
+time he left the country, and to increase his shame the king must needs
+make a public declaration dismissing his minister, the while praising his
+services and deploring his exile.
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS XIV AS A YOUNG MAN]
+
+Charles I, king of England, who had just lost his head on the scaffold,
+had in the beginning of his troubles abandoned the blood of Strafford,
+his friend, to his parliament. Louis XIV on the contrary became the
+peaceful master of his realm by permitting his minister’s exile. Thus the
+same weakness bore different results. The king of England, in abandoning
+his favourite, emboldened a people that breathed war and hated kings;
+and Louis XIV, or rather the queen-mother, by dismissing the cardinal,
+removed all pretext for revolt from a people tired of war and who loved
+royalty.
+
+While the state was thus torn at home it had been attacked and weakened
+abroad; all the benefits of the battles of Rocroi, Lens, and Nördlingen
+were lost; the important place of Dunkirk was retaken by the Spaniards
+(September, 1652); they drove the French from Barcelona, they retook
+Casale in Italy (October, 1652).
+
+Scarcely had the cardinal left for Bouillon, place of his new retreat,
+when the citizens of Paris, of their own accord, sent to the king and
+asked him to return to his capital. Louis entered Paris October 21st,
+1652, and all was so peaceful that it would have been difficult to
+imagine that a few days before all was in confusion. Gaston of Orleans,
+unfortunate in his undertakings, which he never knew how to carry
+out, was relegated to Blois, where he passed the rest of his life in
+repentance; and he was the second son of Henry the Great to die without
+much glory. Cardinal de Retz, as imprudent as he was audacious, was
+arrested in the Louvre, and after having been sent from prison to prison
+long led a wandering life which he finished in retreat, where he acquired
+virtues which his great courage had not known in the agitations of his
+fortune.
+
+Several councillors who had most abused their ministry paid for their
+actions with exile; the others withdrew into the limits of the magistracy
+and others attached themselves the closer to their duties with an annual
+gratuity of five hundred crowns which Fouquet, attorney-general and
+superintendent of the finances, gave them surreptitiously. The prince
+of Condé meanwhile, abandoned in France by nearly all his partisans,
+and badly assisted by the Spaniards, continued a disastrous war on the
+frontiers of Champagne. There still remained factions in Bordeaux, but
+they were soon pacified.[i]
+
+[Sidenote: [1652-1653 A.D.]]
+
+Thus ended the Fronde. Voltaire dismisses it in a few pages, satisfied
+with recording its _bon mots_. He seems to have looked upon this civil
+war as merely a pastime, entered into by a few froward youths and their
+mistresses. He did not see in it the serious, the sanguinary and unhappy
+struggle of a nation for its liberty. Even later writers, more profound
+than Voltaire, have designated the Fronde as “the last campaign of the
+noblesse.” It was indeed so. But the noblesse formed not the prominent
+body. It was the parliament, the magistracy, that put itself forward
+to represent the commons, of which they claimed and established the
+privileges for themselves. This was, no doubt, an audacious and hopeless
+enterprise. The states-general, the ancient representative assembly of
+the nation, was the form to which they should have rallied. But the
+extravagance of the English parliament deterred them; and they fixed
+upon their own body, as a less democratic and dangerous assembly, to
+participate in legislative power. The scheme was new: it was conceived
+with boldness, and supported with courage; and if the legists failed
+in arriving at settled liberty by its means, they may plead that
+representative assemblies have frequently failed in the same endeavour.[g]
+
+
+MAZARIN AGAIN IN POWER (1653 A.D.)
+
+The calm in the kingdom was the result of Cardinal Mazarin’s banishment;
+however, scarcely had he been driven away by the general cry of the
+French people and the king’s decree, when the king made him come back.
+He was astonished to see himself re-enter Paris all powerful. Louis XIV
+received him like a father and the people like a master. He held a great
+reception at the Hôtel-de-Ville amid the acclamations of the citizens; he
+threw money to the populace, but it is said that in his joy for so happy
+a change he showed his scorn for the inconstancy or rather the folly of
+the Parisians. The officers of parliament, after having placed a price on
+his head like a public robber, sued, almost all of them, for the honour
+of asking his protection; and this same parliament a short time after
+condemned by contumacy the prince of Condé to lose his life. They saw the
+cardinal, who urged this condemnation of Condé, marry to the prince of
+Conti his brother, one of his own nieces--a proof that the power of the
+minister was going to be boundless.
+
+The king reunited the parliaments of Paris and of Pontoise; he forbade
+the assembling of the chambers. Parliament wished to remonstrate, one
+councillor was sent to prison; several others were exiled: parliament
+kept quiet; the change had already come.[i]
+
+[Sidenote: [1653-1655 A.D.]]
+
+The events of Louis XIV’s youth were such as to inspire him not only
+with high ideas of his kingly rights, but to prove to him the necessity
+of absolute power in the monarch.[105] In the great English rebellion,
+and in the Fronde, he had seen freedom under its most hideous aspect,
+and followed by the vainest of results. We can scarcely then blame him
+personally for his despotic propensities, which, moreover, his manly and
+ambitious character tended to increase. The young king and his brother
+Philip, then called the duke of Anjou, were educated in the privacy of
+the palace. The nieces of the cardinal were their playmates; and Louis
+formed successive attachments for two of these young ladies, especially
+for Maria Mancini, afterwards the wife of the constable Colonna. So
+intimate was the connection betwixt Mazarin and Anne of Austria that many
+were persuaded of their marriage.[106] Certainly her attachment to him
+was personal and tender. Louis XIV always preserved for the cardinal a
+sort of filial reverence: he may be said to have learned in the school of
+implicit obedience how to be himself despotic.
+
+At intervals, however, the imperious temper of the young monarch burst
+forth, and betrayed itself. In 1655, the parliament, after registering
+certain fiscal edicts, thought proper to re-examine them, to complain,
+and show symptoms of their ancient independence. Louis was at Vincennes,
+engaged in the chase, when he heard of their conduct. Instantly, without
+consulting the cardinal, or even tarrying to change his dress, the
+young monarch galloped to Paris, entered the Palais de Justice and
+the Hall of Parliament in his hunting habit, booted, and with whip in
+hand. “Gentlemen,” said Louis to the astonished legists, “everyone is
+acquainted with the ill consequences of your former assemblies. Their
+recurrence must be prevented. I command you instantly to cease busying
+yourself with my edicts. And you, Mr. President, I forbid either to call
+or suffer such assemblies.” This bold assertion of the royal will from
+the mouth of a stripling proved sufficient to crush the reviving spirit
+of the magistracy. It was silent, and obeyed.[g]
+
+
+WAR WITH SPAIN CONTINUES
+
+Condé, who had become general in the Spanish armies, was unable to revive
+what he had himself weakened at Rocroi and Lens. He was fighting with raw
+troops against the veteran French regiments that had learned to conquer
+under him, and that were now commanded by Turenne. The fate of Turenne
+and of Condé was to be uniformly victorious when they were fighting
+together at the head of the French and to be defeated when they were
+commanding the Spanish.
+
+Turenne had with difficulty saved the wreck of the Spanish army at Rethel
+when, instead of a general of the king of France, he had been made the
+lieutenant of a Spanish general; the prince of Condé had the same fate
+before Arras (August 25th, 1654). He and the archduke besieging this
+city, Turenne attacked them in their camp and forced their lines; the
+troops of the archduke were put to flight; Condé, with two regiments of
+French and Lorrainers, sustained alone the attack of Turenne’s army; and,
+while the archduke was in flight, he defeated Marshal d’Hocquincourt,
+repulsed Marshal de la Ferté, and retired victorious, covering the
+retreat of the defeated Spaniards.
+
+The relief of Arras, the forcing of the lines, and the rout of the
+archduke covered Turenne with glory; and it is to be observed that in the
+letter concerning this victory written in the name of the king to the
+parliament the success of the entire campaign is ascribed to Cardinal
+Mazarin and that Turenne’s name is not even mentioned. The cardinal had
+been in fact a few leagues from Arras with the king. He had even been in
+the camp at the siege of Stenay, which Turenne had taken before relieving
+Arras. Councils of war had been held in the presence of the cardinal.
+On this basis he ascribed to himself the honour of the events; and this
+vanity brought upon him a ridicule that all the authority of his ministry
+could not suppress. The king was not present at the battle of Arras. He
+had gone into the trenches at the siege of Stenay, but Cardinal Mazarin
+was unwilling that he should further expose his person, upon which the
+tranquillity of the state and the power of the minister seemed to depend.
+
+Thus on the one side, Mazarin, absolute master of France and of the young
+king, and on the other, Don Luis de Haro, who governed Spain and Philip
+IV, continued in the name of their masters to carry on the war, but with
+little vigour.
+
+These two men vied with each other in directing their policies towards
+forming an alliance with Cromwell, the English Protector, who for some
+time enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing himself courted by the two most
+powerful kingdoms of Christendom. The Spanish minister offered to help
+him take Calais; Mazarin proposed to besiege Dunkirk and restore that
+city to him. Cromwell had to choose between the key of France and that
+of Flanders. He was also much solicited by Condé, but he did not wish to
+negotiate with a prince who had nothing left but his name and who was
+without a party in France and without power in Spain.
+
+
+ALLIANCE WITH CROMWELL (1655 A.D.); WAR IN FLANDERS (1656-1658 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1655-1657 A.D.]]
+
+In May, 1655, the Protector decided in favour of France, but without
+making any special treaty or a division of conquests in advance. He
+wished to shed lustre on his usurpation by greater enterprises. His
+design was to wrest Mexico from the Spaniards, but the latter were warned
+in time. Cromwell’s admirals, however, took Jamaica from them. It was
+not until after the Jamaican expedition that Cromwell signed his treaty
+with the king of France, but without making any mention of Dunkirk. The
+Protector treated as equal with equal; he forced the king to give him the
+title of brother in his letters. In the copy of the treaty that remained
+in England his secretary signed before the French ambassador; but he
+negotiated really as a superior by forcing the king to drive out of his
+dominions Charles II and the duke of York, the grandsons of Henry IV,
+to whom France owed an asylum. A greater sacrifice of honour to fortune
+could not have been made.
+
+While Mazarin was making this treaty Charles II asked for one of his
+nieces in marriage. The bad condition of his affairs that drove the
+prince to this step also brought upon him a refusal. It has even been
+suspected that the cardinal wished to marry to the son of Cromwell the
+niece whom he refused to the king of England. This much is certain--that
+when he afterwards saw the way to the throne more open to Charles II he
+wished to renew this marriage; but was refused in his turn.
+
+The war continued in Flanders with varying success. Turenne, having
+besieged Valenciennes along with Marshal de la Ferté, suffered the same
+kind of reverse that Condé had sustained at Arras. The prince, assisted
+this time by Don John of Austria, who was more worthy to fight at his
+side than the archduke had been, forced La Ferté’s lines, took him
+prisoner, and relieved Valenciennes (July 17th, 1656). Turenne did what
+Condé had done in a similar rout. He saved the defeated army and opposed
+the enemy everywhere; a little later he even besieged and took the little
+town of La Capelle (September 27th). This was perhaps the first time that
+a defeated army had dared to make a siege.
+
+This famous march of Turenne, which was followed by the taking of La
+Capelle, was eclipsed by an even finer march of the prince of Condé.
+Turenne had laid siege to Cambray when Condé, at the head of two
+thousand cavalry, forced a passage through the besieging army, and having
+driven back all who tried to stop him threw himself into the town (May
+31st, 1657). The citizens received their deliverer on bended knees. Thus
+these two men, opposed to each other, exhibited the resources of their
+genius. We admire them in their retreats as well as in their victories,
+in their good conduct and even in their faults, which they were always
+able to retrieve. Their talents alternately arrested the progress of each
+monarchy; but the financial disorder in Spain and in France was a still
+greater obstacle to their success.
+
+[Sidenote: [1657-1658 A.D.]]
+
+The alliance with Cromwell finally gave France a more marked superiority.
+On the one hand, Admiral Blake was about to burn the Spanish galleons
+and cause the loss of the sole treasure with which the war could be
+maintained. On the other hand, twenty English vessels had just blockaded
+the port of Dunkirk and six thousand veterans of the English Revolution
+reinforced Turenne’s army. Then Dunkirk, the most important place in
+Flanders, was besieged by sea and land. Condé and Don John of Austria,
+having united all their forces, came forward to relieve it. The eyes of
+Europe were upon this event. Cardinal Mazarin brought Louis XIV near the
+scene of war without allowing him to get to it, although he was nearly
+twenty years old. The prince stopped at Calais, and hither Cromwell sent
+to him a pompous embassy, at the head of which was his son-in-law, Lord
+Falconberg. The king sent to him the duke de Créqui, and Mancini, duke
+de Nevers, a nephew of the cardinal, followed by two hundred noblemen.
+Mancini presented the Protector a remarkable letter from Cardinal Mazarin
+in which he said that he was sorry not to be able to pay him in person
+the respect due to the greatest man in the world.
+
+Meanwhile the prince-marshal Turenne attacked the Spanish army, or rather
+the army of Flanders, near the Dunes. The latter was commanded by Don
+John of Austria, son of Philip IV and an actress, who two years later
+became the brother-in-law of Louis XIV. The prince of Condé was with
+this army but not in command; hence it was not difficult for Turenne to
+gain the victory (June 14th, 1658). The six thousand English soldiers
+contributed to the victory, which was complete.
+
+The genius of the Great Condé was of no avail against the best troops of
+France and England. The Spanish army was destroyed. Dunkirk surrendered
+soon afterwards (June 23rd). The king came up with his minister in order
+to see the garrison pass out. The cardinal did not allow Louis XIV to
+appear either as warrior or as king. He had no money to distribute to the
+soldiers, and was poorly attended. When he was with the army he dined
+with Mazarin or with Marshal Turenne. This neglect of royal dignity was
+not in Louis XIV the effect of contempt for pomp, but of the confusion
+in his affairs and of the pains the cardinal took to unite splendour
+and authority in himself. Louis entered Dunkirk only to turn it over to
+Cromwell’s ambassador, Lord Lockhart. Mazarin tried whether by finesse
+he could not evade the treaty and not give up the place; but Lockhart
+threatened, and English firmness got the better of Italian subtlety.
+
+Several persons have asserted that the cardinal, who had attributed to
+himself the victory of Arras, tried to induce Turenne to yield to him
+again the honour of the battle of Dunes. Du Bec-Crépin, count de Moret,
+it is said, came on behalf of the minister and proposed to the general
+to write a letter in which it would appear that the cardinal had himself
+arranged the entire plan of operation. Turenne received these hints with
+contempt and would not make a statement that would have brought disgrace
+upon a general of the army and ridicule upon a man of the church.
+Mazarin, who had been so foolish, now had the misfortune of remaining on
+ill terms with Turenne until his death.
+
+[Sidenote: [1658-1659 A.D.]]
+
+In the midst of this first triumph the king fell ill at Calais and for
+several days was near death. Immediately all the courtiers turned towards
+his brother, Monsieur. Mazarin lavished deference and flattery upon
+Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, the former tutor of this young prince, and
+upon count de Guiche, his favourite. A cabal was formed in Paris that was
+bold enough to write to Calais against the cardinal. He made preparations
+to leave the kingdom and to conceal his immense riches. An empiric of
+Abbeville cured the king with emetic wine that the court physicians
+called poison. This good man seated himself upon the king’s bed and said,
+“This is a very sick boy, but he is not going to die.” When the king
+became convalescent the cardinal banished all who had intrigued against
+him.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE GATE TO THE CHÂTEAU DE VINCENNES]
+
+A few months later Cromwell died (September 13th, 1658) at the age of
+fifty-five, in the midst of his projects for the strengthening of his
+power and the glory of his nation. Richard Cromwell succeeded peaceably
+and without opposition to the protectorate of his father, as a prince
+of Wales would have succeeded a king of England. The emperor Ferdinand
+III had died in 1657. His son Leopold, who was seventeen years old and
+already king of Hungary and Bohemia, had not been elected king of the
+Romans during the lifetime of his father. Mazarin wished to attempt to
+make Louis XIV emperor. This was a chimerical idea; it would have been
+necessary either to coerce or to bribe the electors. France was neither
+strong enough to seize the empire nor rich enough to buy it; so the first
+overtures made at Frankfort by Marshal de Grammont and by Lionne were
+abandoned almost as soon as they were proposed. Leopold was elected. All
+that Mazarin’s politics accomplished was to form an alliance, known as
+the League of the Rhine, with certain German princes,[107] to observe
+the Treaty of Westphalia, and to furnish a check to the authority of the
+emperor over the empire (August, 1658). France, after the battle of the
+Dunes, was powerful in her foreign relations through her glory and her
+arms as well as through the condition to which the other nations were
+reduced. But the country itself was suffering; it was stripped of money,
+and there was need of peace.
+
+
+THE TREATY OF THE PYRENEES (1659 A.D.)
+
+The cardinal had to do two things in order to bring his ministry to a
+happy close--make peace and insure the tranquillity of the state by the
+marriage of the king. The intrigues during the latter’s illness made
+Mazarin feel how necessary an heir to the throne was to the splendour of
+the minister. All these considerations determined him to marry Louis XIV
+promptly. Two princesses were proposed--the daughter of the king of Spain
+and the princess of Savoy. The king’s heart had made another choice: he
+was desperately in love with Mademoiselle Mancini, one of the cardinal’s
+nieces. Born with a tender heart and a firm will, full of passion and
+without experience, he would have been capable of resolving to marry the
+lady of his choice.
+
+Madame de Motteville, the favourite of the queen-mother, whose _Mémoires_
+have a great air of truth, claims that Mazarin was tempted to let the
+king’s love have its way and to place his niece on the throne. He had
+already married another niece to the prince de Conti, and one to the duke
+de Mercœur. The one whom Louis XIV loved had been asked in marriage by
+the king of England. These were titles enough to justify his ambitions.
+He adroitly sounded the queen-mother. “I fear,” he said, “that the king
+has too great a desire to marry my niece.” The queen, who knew the
+minister, understood that he desired what he feigned to fear. She replied
+to him with all the haughtiness of a princess of the blood of Austria,
+daughter, wife, and mother of kings, and with the bitterness which she
+had felt for some time towards a minister who affected to be independent
+of her. She said to him, “If the king were capable of this indignity I
+would place myself with my second son at the head of the whole nation
+against the king and yourself.”
+
+Mazarin, it is said, never forgave the queen this reply; but he took
+the wiser course of thinking as she did. He made it a point of honour
+and merit to oppose the passion of Louis XIV. His power did not need a
+queen of his own blood to support him. He even feared the character of
+his niece; and he believed he would further strengthen the power of his
+ministry by avoiding the dangerous glory of elevating his own house too
+high.
+
+In the year 1656 he had sent Lionne to Spain to negotiate peace and to
+ask the hand of the infanta; but Don Luis de Haro, convinced that, feeble
+as Spain was, France was not less so, rejected the cardinal’s offer. The
+infanta, daughter of Philip IV by his first wife, was intended for the
+young Leopold. By his second marriage Philip had at that time only a son
+whose sickly infancy caused fears for his life. It was desired that the
+infanta, who might be the heir to many states, should transfer her rights
+to the house of Austria and not to a hostile dynasty; but finally, Philip
+IV having had another son, Don Philip Prosper, and his wife being again
+_enceinte_, the danger involved in giving the infanta to the king of
+France seemed to him less great, and the battle of the Dunes made peace
+necessary to him.
+
+The Spaniards promised the infanta and asked for a suspension of
+hostilities (1659). Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro repaired to the isle
+of Pheasants on the frontier of France and Spain. Although general
+peace and the marriage of the king of France were the objects of their
+conference, more than a month passed in regulating ceremonies and
+settling difficulties of precedence. The cardinals called themselves the
+equals of the kings and the superiors of other sovereigns. France, with
+greater justice, claimed pre-eminence over the other powers. Don Luis de
+Haro, however, assumed perfect equality between France and Spain.
+
+The conferences lasted four months. Mazarin and Don Luis employed all
+the resources of their respective policies; that of the cardinal was
+strategy, that of Don Luis delay. The latter never gave promises: the
+former only equivocal ones. The genius of the Italian was to try to
+surprise; that of the Spaniard, to keep from being surprised.
+
+Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs that of this famous Peace of
+the Pyrenees, signed November 7th, 1659, not two articles have endured.
+The king of France retained Roussillon which he would have kept anyway,
+without this peace, also Artois and Cerdagne; but the Spanish monarchy
+has no more possessions in Flanders.
+
+But if Don Luis de Haro said that Cardinal Mazarin could deceive, it has
+been said since that he could foresee. He long meditated the alliance
+of the houses of France and Spain. This famous letter of his, written
+during the negotiations at Münster, is cited: “If the most Christian king
+could have the Netherlands and Franche-Comté as dower upon espousing the
+infanta, then we might aspire to the Spanish succession, whatever we
+might have to relinquish to the infanta; and it would not be a very long
+wait, since there is only the life of the prince her brother that could
+exclude her from it.” This prince was Balthazar, who died in 1649.
+
+The cardinal was evidently deceived in thinking that the Netherlands and
+Franche-Comté could be given to the infanta as her marriage portion.
+Not a single city was stipulated for her dower. On the other hand,
+important cities that had been conquered, like St. Omer, Ypres, Menin,
+Oudenarde, and other places, were restored to the Spanish monarchy. Some
+were retained. The cardinal was not mistaken in believing that this
+relinquishment would be useless some day. But those who gave him the
+honour of this prediction make him also foresee that Prince Don Balthazar
+would die in 1649; that later the three children of the second marriage
+would be cut off in the cradle; that Charles, the fifth of the male
+children, would die without issue; and that this Austrian king would one
+day make a will in favour of a grandson of Louis XIV. But at any rate
+Cardinal Mazarin foresaw what value this relinquishment would have in
+case the male line of Philip should become extinct: and after more than
+fifty years strange events justified him.
+
+Maria Theresa, the infanta, able to have as dower the cities that France
+restored, brought by her marriage contract nothing else than 500,000
+gold crowns; it cost the king more than that to go to receive her at
+the frontier. These 500,000 crowns, equivalent to 2,500,000 livres,
+were the subject of a great deal of dispute between the two ministers.
+In the end France never received but 100,000 francs. Instead of this
+marriage bringing any other real and immediate advantage than that of
+peace, the infanta renounced all rights she might ever have to any of her
+father’s lands. Louis XIV ratified this renunciation in the most solemn
+manner.[108]
+
+[Sidenote: [1659-1661 A.D.]]
+
+The duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, against whom France and Spain had much
+cause to complain, or rather who had much to complain of against them,
+was included in the treaty; but only as an unfortunate prince who was
+punished, because he could not make himself feared. France restored his
+states to him, demolishing Nancy, however, and forbade him to maintain
+troops. Don Luis de Haro forced Cardinal Mazarin to receive Condé into
+favour again, by threatening to leave in the sovereignty of the prince
+Rocroi, Le Catelet, and other places of which he was in possession. So
+France gained both these towns and the Great Condé. He lost his dignity
+of grand-master of the royal household, which was afterwards given to his
+son, and returned with scarcely anything but his glory.
+
+Finally (August, 1660) Cardinal Mazarin brought the king with his new
+queen to Paris.[109] Mazarin acted exactly like a father who would marry
+his son without giving him charge of his own property. He returned
+more powerful and more jealous of his power, and even of honours, than
+ever. He required parliament to address him through deputies. This was
+something unparalleled in the monarchy, but it was not too great a
+reparation for the wrong that parliament had done him. He no longer gave
+his hand to the princes of the blood as formerly. He who had treated Don
+Luis de Haro as an equal tried to treat the Great Condé as an inferior.
+He went about with royal pomp, having besides his guards a company of
+musketeers, which was ever afterwards the second company of king’s
+musketeers. There was no more freedom of access to him. If anyone was
+a poor enough courtier to ask a favour of the king, he was lost. The
+queen-mother, so long the stubborn protectress of Mazarin against France,
+was without credit as soon as he had no more need of her. Her son, the
+king, brought up in blind submission to this minister, could not shake
+off the yoke that she had imposed upon him as well as upon herself; Louis
+XIV could not reign during the lifetime of Mazarin.
+
+
+LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF MAZARIN (1659-1661 A.D.)
+
+A minister is excusable for the evil he does when the helm of state is
+forced into his hands by tempests; but during a calm he is answerable
+for the good that he fails to do. Mazarin did good only to himself and
+his family. Eight years of absolute and undisturbed power, from his
+final return until his death, were marked by no glorious or useful
+establishment; for the college of the Four Nations was only created by
+his will.[110]
+
+He controlled the finances like the steward of a lord involved in debt.
+The king sometimes asked money of Fouquet, who replied, “Sire, there is
+nothing in your majesty’s coffers, but the cardinal will lend you some.”
+Mazarin was worth about two hundred millions, reckoning in the money
+values of to-day (_i.e._, the middle of the eighteenth century). Several
+memoirs say that he amassed part of it by means far beneath the grandeur
+of his position. They relate that he shared with privateer captains the
+profits of their voyages. This has never been proved; but the Dutch
+suspected him of it, and they never would have suspected Cardinal
+Richelieu.[i]
+
+In high spirits was Mazarin at the moment of signing the great treaty
+at Bidassoa (Treaty of the Pyrenees). He wrote to Paris: “All will soon
+be over. I shall not stay long in the Basque country, unless I find
+amusement in watching them hunt whales, in learning their language and
+their dances.”
+
+However, the dancer was soon smitten by gout. His lungs became affected.
+The bed of the moribund, covered with cards, was a gaming table over
+which offices were sold. Cards and the sacrament went pell-mell.[b]
+It is said that on his death-bed he felt remorse, but outwardly he
+displayed courage. At least, he feared for his property, and he made the
+king a complete donation of it believing that the king would return it
+to him. He was not mistaken; the king returned the gift in three days.
+Finally he died at Vincennes, March 9th, 1661, and no one but the king
+seemed to mourn him, for this prince already knew how to dissemble.
+The yoke was beginning to weigh heavily upon him; he was impatient to
+reign. Nevertheless he wished to seem affected by a death that put him
+in possession of his throne. Louis XIV and the court wore mourning for
+Cardinal Mazarin, an unusual honour, and one which Henry IV had paid to
+the memory of Gabrielle d’Estrées.
+
+We will not undertake [says Voltaire] to decide whether Mazarin was a
+great minister or not; his actions must speak for themselves. There is
+often a popular idea of a vast breadth of mind and an almost divine
+genius in those who have governed empires with some success. It is
+not a superior power of penetration that makes statesmen; it is their
+character. Men, if they have ever so little good sense, nearly all
+perceive their own interests. In this respect a citizen of Amsterdam
+or of Bern is as wise as Sejanus, Ximenes, Buckingham, Richelieu, or
+Mazarin; but our conduct and our enterprises depend solely upon the
+temper of our soul, and our successes depend upon fortune. For example,
+if such a genius as Pope Alexander VI or his son Borgia had had to
+take La Rochelle, he would have invited the principal leaders to his
+camp under a solemn oath and would have made away with them. Mazarin
+would have entered the city two or three years later by winning over
+and dividing the citizens. Don Luis de Haro would not have risked the
+enterprise. Richelieu built a dyke along the sea, after the example of
+Alexander, entered and took La Rochelle; but a less strong tide or a
+little greater promptness on the part of the English would have saved La
+Rochelle and made Richelieu seem foolhardy.
+
+The character of men can be judged by their enterprises. It may well
+be said that the soul of Richelieu breathed pride and vengeance, that
+Mazarin was wise, pliant, and avaricious. But in order to tell in how far
+a minister has genius one must either have frequently heard him talk, or
+one must read what he has written. What is seen every day among courtiers
+often happens among statesmen: he who has most genius fails, while he who
+has in his character more of patience, force, pliancy, and persistence
+succeeds. On reading the letters of Cardinal Mazarin and the _Mémoires_
+of Cardinal de Retz[j] one easily sees that De Retz was the superior
+genius. Nevertheless Mazarin was all-powerful and De Retz was overthrown.
+Finally, it is quite true that to make a powerful minister often nothing
+is needed but a mediocre mind, good sense, and luck; but to be a good
+minister a man must have love for the public welfare as his dominant
+passion. The great statesman is he who leaves to his country great and
+useful memorials.
+
+The memorial that immortalises Cardinal Mazarin is the acquisition
+of Alsace. He gave this province to France at a time when France was
+enraged at him; and by a singular fatality he did more good for the
+kingdom when he was persecuted than in the tranquillity of absolute
+power.[i]
+
+Mazarin’s end [says Michelet] was at least consistent with his life--he
+lived and died a cheat. He believed he had cheated the future. Fortunate
+player, he had all his plans well laid. The prophecies of his youth were
+fulfilled. He had appeared, at the age of twenty-five, upon a field of
+battle crying, “Peace! Peace!” From the noble and serious workers who had
+died painfully in preparing his opportunities, he filched the glory of
+the triumphant Peace of Westphalia and that of the Pyrenees. Richelieu
+sowed, Mazarin harvested. The one created the administration, the army,
+the navy, and died on the eve of Rocroi. The other spoiled everything
+and succeeded in everything. Great through the greatness of Condé, and
+greater through that of Turenne, his position was strengthened by even
+the futile tempest of the Fronde; he retains at least the honour of that
+forced and fatal peace into which France fell through sheer lassitude.
+This pedestal is still left him; his features even after death wear the
+mask of the Angel of Peace.
+
+Was it really peace? Too late it had arrived: Germany, agonising in ruin,
+found no peace in the Treaty of Westphalia; Spain, dead and done with,
+was in no condition to reap benefit from the Peace of the Pyrenees. And
+France herself, entering by this door into a fifty years’ struggle for
+the Spanish succession, was to find in this peace fiscal war at home and
+bloody strife abroad.[b]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[96] [Michelet[b] believes that the love affair of Mazarin and the
+queen began even earlier than their contemporaries think. He says: “It
+has been said that Louis XIV was the son of Mazarin--this is certainly
+wrong. He was of France, ballasted by Austria. But his brother, the
+second duke of Orleans (born September 22nd, 1640), like the first,
+Gaston, was thoroughly Italian in spirit and in manner. He was as much
+Mazarin as Gaston was Concini. I fully appreciate the difficulties. Their
+contemporaries believe that she did not give herself to him until later.
+There was at least one entr’acte in her favour.” To a court tradition,
+related, among others, by the Princess Palatine,[n] mother of the regent,
+is due a belief that Mazarin’s continued hold over the queen-mother is
+explained by the fact that they had been secretly married. Kitchin[o]
+says “there is no reason to doubt that they were actually married.” But
+Martin assures us that “there is not the slightest indication of this,
+either in their correspondence or in what we know of the _Carnets_[p] of
+Mazarin.”]
+
+[97] [He was, however, a deacon, and so in lesser orders.]
+
+[98] [This statement is not substantiated, and is not to be found in any
+contemporary writing. The first book that speaks of it bears the date
+1694.]
+
+[99] [The aged prince of Condé (Henry II de Bourbon) died December
+26th, 1646, when the duke d’Enghien (Louis II de Bourbon) assumed his
+father’s title. He came to be known as “The Great Condé,” and we shall
+see much of him in the ensuing pages. He was born at Paris, September
+8th, 1621; died, December 11th, 1686. The first prince of Condé (Louis I
+de Bourbon), whose death at the battle of Jarnac in 1569 will be recalled
+(see p. 363), was his great-grand-father. This first prince of Condé was
+the younger brother of Anthony, king of Navarre, the father of King Henry
+IV. So the Great Condé came honestly by his fighting propensities.]
+
+[100] [Some historians refuse to credit Condé with these words. Indeed,
+Madame de Motteville reports a much less stirring harangue: “My friends,
+have good courage; we must of necessity fight to-day. It will be useless
+to back out. For I promise you that all the brave and the cowardly will
+fight; the ones of good will, the others through compulsion!” “This
+was perhaps,” adds Duruy,[h] “the only kind of language to impress the
+soldiers at that time.”]
+
+[101] [Cardinal de Retz was the descendant of a Florentine family that
+came to the court of France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici; it
+was his grand-uncle who figured so prominently in the massacre of St.
+Bartholomew. See above, pp. 369, 399.]
+
+[102] [According to Voltaire,[i] so low were the royal resources that
+almost the entire court had to sleep, while at St. Germain, on straw.
+They were obliged to leave the crown jewels as security with the usurers.
+The young king often lacked necessities. The pages of his chamber were
+dismissed because there were no means to keep them. At the same time
+Louis’ aunt, Henrietta Maria of England, in refuge at Paris, was reduced
+to the extremes of poverty; her daughter, afterwards married to Louis’
+brother, had to stay in bed to keep warm.]
+
+[103] [He went first to Liège and afterwards to Cologne.]
+
+[104] [In comparing these great rivals, Kitchin[q] says: “It has been
+well said of these two masters in war, that as Condé grew older he lost
+his early fire and military insight, without becoming wiser or more
+prudent, while each campaign made Turenne more daring as well as more
+skilful. The careers of the two great soldiers form a striking contrast:
+it is genius without industry pitted against high talent combined with
+infinite painstaking, and a belief in the scientific treatment of the art
+of war. The more brilliant Condé was sure to fail when pitted against
+Turenne.” Vicomte de Turenne (Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne) was a grandson
+of William the Silent. He was born in 1611 (September 11th, at Sedan),
+and was therefore now just over forty. Condé was ten years younger (born
+September 8th, 1621). The span of life of each of the great generals was
+destined to compass almost exactly the same period; Turenne being just
+under sixty-four, Condé just over sixty-five, at death.]
+
+[105] [“Joan of Arc made France a nation against the English; Louis XIV
+made France a state against all Europe. The Fronde had none of these
+creative ideas--whence its incertitude and its weakness. Louis XIV had
+the idea of state--whence his firmness, his decision, and that famous
+phrase, ‘_L’État, c’est moi_,’ which has been taken for an expression of
+pride but was an expression of policy.”--SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN.]
+
+[106] [See note, page 488.]
+
+[107] [The three ecclesiastical electors, the duke of Bavaria, the
+princes of Brunswick and of Hesse, the kings of Sweden and Denmark.]
+
+[108] [It has been suggested that Mazarin purposely made the dowry such
+as Spain could not well pay, so that the treaty must be broken. That
+clause once broken, the renunciation of the succession was also void,
+with the rest of the treaty. If such was really Mazarin’s plan, it was an
+extraordinary one.]
+
+[109] [The marriage had taken place in June, 1660, at Fuenterrabia in the
+Pyrenees.]
+
+[110] [We may add that he pensioned several writers--among them Descartes
+and the historian Mézeray--and that he provided for the splendid Mazarin
+library, opened later to the public. “Mazarin,” says Duruy,[h] “had the
+liveliest if not the best taste for art. He brought from Italy a number
+of paintings, statues, and curiosities--even actors and machinists who
+introduced the opera into France. In 1655 he founded the Academy of
+Painting and Sculpture.”]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. “L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI”
+
+    The two foundations of the absolute throne of Louis XIV
+    were terror and admiration: the terror of a power which had
+    subjugated the army, the church, the magistracy, the noblesse,
+    and the municipalities; the admiration of a power to which
+    literature and art, arms and fortune, rendered their richest
+    and their uninterrupted tribute. King-worship had never before
+    taken so entire a possession of any Christian state. Never had
+    the luxurious pomp of an Oriental court been so intimately and
+    so long associated with the energies, the refined tastes, and
+    the intellectual culture of an European sovereignty. During
+    fifty successive years, Louis continued to be the greatest
+    actor on the noblest stage, and in the presence of the most
+    enthusiastic audience, of the world.--STEPHEN.[p]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]
+
+Never had there been at any court more intrigues and hopes than
+during the last hours of Cardinal Mazarin. Women who had any pretence
+to beauty were flattering themselves that they would now govern a
+twenty-two-year-old prince whom love had already so far seduced as
+to make him offer his crown to his mistress. The young courtiers had
+hopes that the reign of the favourites would return; each minister was
+expecting the first place; none of them thought that a king who had
+been so excluded from affairs would dare take upon himself the burden
+of government. Mazarin had prolonged the king’s childhood as far as he
+could; and only for a short time had been giving him instructions, and
+that because the king had demanded it. So far were they from expecting
+to be governed by their sovereign, that of all those who had hitherto
+worked with the prime minister there was none who asked the king when
+he wished an audience. One and all asked, “To whom shall we now address
+ourselves?”--and Louis XIV replied, “To me.”[b]
+
+The secretary of state for war, Michel le Tellier, hastened with the
+astounding piece of news to the queen-mother, who laughed in his face:
+“In good faith, M. le Tellier, what do you think of it?” This resolution,
+however, was nothing but the accomplishment of the advice twenty times
+given by Mazarin, and if there was any cause for astonishment it was
+not that the king took the advice but that he held to it; he was, as La
+Bruyère says, “his own prime minister and exacted of the chief state
+functionaries that they deal directly with him.” For thirty years he
+worked regularly eight hours a day. He relates in his _Mémoires_,[f]
+with legitimate pride, the effect produced by the announcement of his
+assumption of authority, and he recommends his son in a few truly
+eloquent words “not to forget that it is by work one reigns; to rule
+without working is to be ungrateful and defiant towards God, unjust and
+tyrannical towards man.”
+
+But what is still more remarkable is that the young prince who so boldly
+assumed the power had already mapped out his policy. Not only did Louis
+XIV rule with the boundless power of some of his predecessors, but he
+was the first to establish in France the theory of an absolute monarchy.
+In his eyes royalty was a divine institution. Sovereigns were the
+representatives of God upon earth--his inspired lieutenants; and on this
+account participators, in a fashion, in his power and infallibility. And
+as royalty, in making itself absolute, had kept to the old principle of
+feudal law, that sovereignty and property are the same thing, Louis not
+only believed himself master of his subjects, but the owner of their
+possessions--a monstrous doctrine which carries us back to oriental
+monarchies. At all events it did not seem to him that authority to
+which he recognised no limits but those imposed by conscience and by
+religion, ought to remain sterile. He wished it active and hard working;
+he believed that kings had imperious duties to fulfil. It was thus that
+Louis XIV understood his royal profession.[c] Nor can it be denied that
+he carried out to a large extent in practice the theory of royalty that
+he professed. He was destined to reign for fifty-four years after the
+death of Mazarin; his reign in its entirety being one of the longest
+in history. After Mazarin he had no minister whom he did not dominate:
+he was king in fact as well as in name. He came to be by far the most
+famous monarch of his time. His court at Versailles set a standard of
+magnificence which other monarchs of that and succeeding ages strove to
+imitate without hoping to rival.
+
+In his political relations with his subjects, as has been said, Louis
+came to represent the culmination of that autocratic system which for
+generations had been almost steadily advancing in France,--a system which
+had known such exponents as Louis XI, Francis I, and Henry IV; and which
+Sully, Richelieu, and Mazarin had done so much to fortify. Nor did he
+confine his theory to his own subjects. He came finally to feel almost
+the same proprietary right in the affairs of Europe and he attempted
+with the aid of his armies to dictate to foreign nations somewhat as he
+dictated within the bounds of his own territory. And, having the good
+fortune to be served by two great soldiers, Condé and Turenne, he was
+enabled, notwithstanding his own rather meagre military talents, to carry
+out the idea here also with some measure of success. It was a qualified
+success, to be sure, for he did not secure the control of Holland at
+which he aimed; he did not very greatly extend the boundaries of France;
+and if his grandson was left finally in possession of the Spanish throne,
+this was a victory tempered with the concession that the thrones of Spain
+and France should never be consolidated. Nevertheless, to have embroiled
+all Europe in war after war; to have been the central figure of a long
+epoch; to have given his name to an important period of history; to have
+placed that name in the small list of those rulers to whom posterity
+concedes the title “Great,”--this surely is to have played the part of
+king right royally.
+
+This reign, then, is a curiously full and vital one. We shall best
+understand it perhaps if we study it first from within, witnessing the
+activities of the great monarch in his relations with his own people
+before turning (in subsequent chapters) to the foreign relations of
+the kingdom. As preliminary to this study of the economic and social
+development of France during the long reign of Louis XIV, we must take
+a glance at the interesting figure of the monarch himself. In the first
+place it must be remembered that this remarkable man had a remarkable
+heritage. He numbered among his direct ancestors not far removed such
+remarkable characters as Henry IV of France, the German emperor Charles
+V, and the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. This in itself
+suggests a strange mixture of races in his ancestry. But further
+examination of his ancestral tree reveals even more striking facts. It
+appears that this greatest of French kings is, so far as his ancestral
+blood is concerned, almost as much Spaniard or Italian as he is French;
+and quite as much German. His father was born in France, his mother in
+Spain; of his four grandparents one was born in France, one in Spain, one
+in Italy, one in Germany. Of his thirty ancestors within four generations
+only eight were born in France while ten were born in Germany or in the
+yet farther outlying regions of Hungary and Bohemia; the remainder of the
+company being distributed between Spain (and Portugal) and Italy. The
+subtended table[111] showing details of the ancestry of Louis XIV for
+four generations will make these facts clear at a glance. It is worthy
+of careful study as illustrating in detail the heterogeneity of ethnic
+elements that went to build up the personality of this cosmopolite.
+Persons fond of generalising as to national characteristics will perhaps
+feel that the more conspicuous traits of Louis’ personality are not
+difficult to account for in the light of his conglomerate ancestry.
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1683 A.D.]]
+
+Leaving such speculations, however, to whoever may choose to make them,
+let us turn from the ancestry of the king to the king himself. “He had,”
+says Kitchin,[q] “all the qualities which strike the eye: and was, as
+Bolingbroke acutely remarked, ‘if not the greatest king, the best actor
+of majesty at least that ever filled a throne’; as a king should be, he
+was courteous, dignified, calm, and ‘debonair,’ firm in act and speech,
+and constant: he had a great sense of duty and propriety; and said
+himself that a king should act according to the dictates of good sense;
+he cultivated that habitual discretion and seriousness of manner which
+often cloak ignorance or want of capacity. He spoke but little, that
+little, however, was to the point; he was reserved, was thought rather
+stingy, did not often laugh. These characteristics were backed by one
+marked quality, strength of will, which could be obstinacy: and were
+all made subservient to one persistent passion, the inordinate desire
+of reputation and glory.” Yet Kitchin sees in Louis, on the whole, a
+“second-rate man,” distinctly inferior in many ways to his grandfather,
+Henry IV. Thus he declares that “In no branch of his life’s work does
+Louis show one spark of originality; even Voltaire confesses that there
+was ‘more uprightness and dignity than spring’ in him: he had no boldness
+and no enthusiasm: ‘he made war without being a warrior,’ decreed many
+laws, but had not the slightest idea of legislation; he busied himself
+with administration, but had no real organising gifts. He had that sure
+mark which distinguishes the second-rate man from the great man: he
+loved details for their own sake; he shrank instinctively from all that
+was noble and strong; and chose the inferior agent in preference to the
+better.”
+
+It seems almost paradoxical to pronounce such a judgment as this upon
+a monarch of such celebrity. Yet perhaps the judgment is not far from
+just. Louis XIV had the good fortune to follow Henry IV and Richelieu
+and Mazarin; the later years of his reign, in which he was in effect
+gathering the harvest of his own sowing, are far less notable than
+are the earlier ones during which he profited by the labours of his
+forerunners. Yet after all allowances are made for Louis’ shortcomings
+and for his mistakes, it seems futile to deny that the famous monarch who
+for the space of almost three average generations dominated the European
+situation had at least some of the elements of greatness.
+
+With this introduction to the personality of Louis XIV, we are now
+prepared to take up in detail the affairs of his government. First of
+all, as has been said, we shall consider those measures through which
+the internal prosperity of France was furthered during the early years
+of the reign. In so doing we shall have occasion to see something of the
+ministers who aided Louis in this work. There are no more Richelieus and
+Mazarins; yet in Colbert we have a man not altogether unworthy to wear
+the mantle of these great predecessors; nor are Le Tellier, Lionne, and
+Fouquet by any means despicable.[a]
+
+
+THE MINISTERS
+
+The _clercs au secret_ who, in 1547, became ministers of state were
+four in number; each of them administered not only certain affairs,
+but all the affairs of certain provinces. They formed an impracticable
+organisation. The religious wars, the troubles of Louis XIII’s minority,
+prevented any change.[112]
+
+In 1619 a single member of the ministry was charged with the conduct of
+war and with the correspondence with the _chefs de corps_; another in
+1626 had the foreign affairs. Finally under Louis XIV the ministry of the
+king’s household was established for ecclesiastical affairs and those
+of the navy. Important posts, raised to offices, that is to say, making
+their holders irremovable--such as the chancellor-keeper of the seals,
+chief of the magistracy, and controller-general of the finances--were
+like two other ministries. The special functions allotted to each of the
+four secretaries of state did not prevent them from keeping, for other
+affairs, the old-time division by provinces which existed until the
+Revolution.
+
+The ministers whom Mazarin had left behind him were Pierre Séguier,
+chancellor and keeper of the seals, a sort of irremovable minister who
+was clever enough, by assuming no political importance, to make himself
+regarded as necessary for fifty years; Michel le Tellier, secretary
+of state for war, Hugues de Lionne who had charge of the marine (the
+portfolio of which he kept till 1669) and of foreign affairs; and
+Nicholas Fouquet, the superintendent of finance. The first two were
+distinguished men, the third a superior man; as for the fourth, Fouquet,
+by his encouragement of letters, he had acquired the reputation of
+a generous Mæcenas, and he counted illustrious persons among his
+friends--Pellisson, La Fontaine, Gourville, Madame de Sévigné and
+Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who have pleaded his cause before posterity
+without gaining it. He had put, or rather left, the finances in extreme
+disorder and he himself drew without scruple on the treasury. He was
+increasing the king’s expenses and diminishing the receipts; finally,
+what was still more serious, he seemed to seek supporters everywhere,
+even amongst the great nobles, and he fortified the places of which he
+held command as though to prepare for himself, in case of disgrace, an
+impregnable retreat. He was almost a frondeur; he was certainly a knave.
+Less was needed for Louis to strike him.
+
+The king had a secret minister who every evening called his attention to
+the errors and falsehoods of the superintendent. This was Jean-Baptiste
+Colbert, born at Rheims in 1619 of an ancient family of tradesmen and
+magistrates. He had been intendant to Mazarin, who before he died had
+said to the king: “Sire, I owe you everything; but I think I am to some
+extent discharging my debt when I give you Colbert.”[c]
+
+This working together in secret was the cause of the catastrophe of
+Fouquet, in which were involved many others. The fall of this minister,
+who is much less to be reproached than is Cardinal Mazarin, teaches us
+that it is not the privilege of everybody to commit the same faults.[b]
+
+The precaution of disarming Fouquet was made in advance. His post
+of general prosecutor assured him the privilege of being judged by
+parliament; and the king put no trust, and for reason, in the justice
+of parliament. Fouquet therefore was skilfully inveigled into selling
+his post. It is said that he discarded his robe of office in the hope
+of obtaining the _cordon bleu_, which the king did not wish any longer
+to give to persons connected with justice. Moreover, he was counting on
+becoming chancellor on the death of the aged Séguier. Of the 1,400,000
+francs, the price of his office, he offered one million as a pure
+gift to the king, who had expressed to him a desire for ready money.
+He thus prepared the instruments of his own ruin. It was feared that
+at the moment of his arrest his friends would attempt to get him to
+Belle-Île and to agitate Brittany and Normandy where many malcontents
+were under cover. A journey to Brittany was planned for the coming month
+of September, under pretence of holding the provincial estate at Nantes
+and of obtaining a greater gratuitous gift through the presence of the
+king.[d]
+
+Fouquet’s undoing was thus already resolved upon when the king accepted
+the magnificent fête which the minister arranged for him at his house
+at Vaux for August 17th, 1661. The palace and its gardens had cost him
+about eighteen millions.[113] He had built the mansion twice over and
+bought three hamlets whose area was included in the enormous gardens,
+then considered the most beautiful in all Europe. The fountains of Vaux,
+since relegated to mediocrity by those of Versailles, Marly, and St.
+Cloud, were marvels in their day. But however magnificent the place,
+its enormous cost proves that he had been served with as little economy
+as he himself served the king. It was also true that St. Germain and
+Fontainebleau, the only pleasure places used by the king, could not
+compare in beauty with Vaux. Louis XIV felt this and it irritated him.
+All over the mansion were to be seen the arms and motto of Fouquet--a
+squirrel with these words, _Quo non ascendam?_ (To what point shall I not
+mount?)
+
+The king interpreted the device for himself; the ambition of the motto
+did not serve to appease the monarch. The courtiers remarked that the
+squirrel was everywhere painted pursued by a snake which was the arms
+of Colbert. The fête was far beyond those which Mazarin had given, not
+only in magnificence but in taste. The _Facheux_ of Molière was presented
+for the first time: Pellisson had written the prologue, which was much
+admired.[b]
+
+The king said to the queen-mother in anger, “Ah, madame, shall we not
+make this fellow disgorge his prey?” And he was tempted to have the
+minister arrested on the spot; however, he restrained himself.[c]
+
+On the 5th of September, during the prearranged sojourn of the court of
+Nantes, D’Artagnan, captain of the musketeers, laid hands on Fouquet
+as he was leaving the cabinet of the king, put him into a coach and
+conducted him under a strong escort to the château of Angers. He had the
+greatest difficulty in protecting the superintendent during the journey
+from the fury of the people. All his houses were sealed and his property
+was seized. Among the latter were found directions as to what his friends
+should do in case he was arrested. The plan, like those that Cardinal
+de Retz had made several times, consisted in procuring for him places,
+money, and presses by means of which France could be inundated with
+pamphlets. Fouquet was transferred without delay to Vincennes and brought
+before a chamber of justice.[e]
+
+He was accused of wasting the revenues, which was only too true, and of
+plotting against the safety of the state, which was never proved. At the
+end of three years nine judges gave their voices for death, thirteen
+others for banishment. The king, aggravating the penalty, changed it
+into perpetual imprisonment and Fouquet was incarcerated in the citadel
+of Pinerolo, where he died after nineteen years of captivity (March 23,
+1680).[c]
+
+
+_The Man with the Iron Mask_
+
+For a long time Fouquet’s end remained a mystery; and even Voltaire,
+writing little more than a half century afterwards, says, “We do not
+know where died the unfortunate man, whose least actions in the days of
+his power made a stir.” For this reason attempts were afterwards made to
+connect Fouquet with one of the most extraordinary episodes of the secret
+history of Louis XIV’s reign.[a]
+
+We know that a masked and unknown prisoner, object of an extraordinary
+surveillance, died in 1703 in the Bastille, whither he had been brought
+from the Îsle Ste. Marguerite in 1698 (and was buried under the name
+of Marchiali). He had been detained about ten years in these islands,
+and traces of his existence are found in the fortress of Exilles and
+at Pinerolo as far back as 1681. Now no great personage disappeared
+in Europe about this time. What powerful motive had the government of
+Louis XIV for concealing this mysterious visage from human sight? Many
+explanations more or less chimeric, more or less plausible, have been
+attempted of the “man with the iron mask” (an erroneous term; the mask
+was not of iron but of black velvet; it was probably one of those _loups_
+so long in use). In 1837 Le Bibliophile Jacob (Paul la Croix) published
+an ingenious volume to prove that Fouquet was passed off as dead,
+sequestered anew, and, masked, dragged from fortress to fortress until
+his death in 1703.[d]
+
+Many other theories have been advanced to account for this person’s
+identity. It has been said that he was a twin brother of Louis XIV,
+who had been made to disappear; the count de Vermandois, natural son
+of Louis XIV and Mademoiselle de la Vallière, who was imprisoned for
+having struck the dauphin; the duke de Beaufort, who disappeared at the
+siege of Candia (1669); the duke of Monmouth, nephew of James II; Count
+Girolamo Mattioli, minister of Mantua, who was abducted from Turin for
+having prevented his master from selling Casale to the king of France
+(this hypothesis is sustained by Topin[g]); or Giovanni di Gonzaga,
+Mattioli’s secretary; a son of Anne of Austria by Buckingham or Mazarin;
+the Armenian patriarch Avedick; and, according to a recent theory of M.
+Bazeries, a certain general De Bulonde, imprisoned for raising the siege
+of Candia in spite of Catinat’s orders.[h] But the very multiplicity of
+theories sufficiently shows the doubtful character of each and all of
+them; and the identification of the man with the iron mask still holds a
+place among the most curious of the unsolved enigmas of history.[a]
+
+
+THE MINISTRY OF COLBERT
+
+The great trial of Fouquet involved another victim: Pellisson was
+condemned to restore 200,000 livres. But he was one of those skilful
+persons who, having fallen, always rise. From having been a Calvinist he
+became a Catholic and perhaps died a Protestant; from being Fouquet’s
+friend he became the favourite of the king [Louis XIV] and drew up his
+_Mémoires_[f] in which he speaks of the superintendent’s thefts, and he
+founded a prize at the Academy for an annual eulogy of Louis XIV. Thanks
+to his verses and his prose, which were supple like his conduct, he was
+very successful in money matters. In 1677 he was in receipt of 75,000
+livres, just the same sum as Vauban received, without counting abbeys
+and priories. Finally he was a kind of prime minister and had charge of
+the funds devoted to the conversion of heretics, and yet he brought so
+much dignity into his office that posterity has forgotten in him the man
+of business and only remembers the man of letters. Colbert succeeded
+Fouquet with the title of controller-general. In 1666 Michel le Tellier
+left his charge to his son, the celebrated Louvois; the first ministry of
+Louis XIV was thus complete.
+
+Colbert directed five of the French departments of administration: the
+king’s household, with the fine arts, the finances, agriculture, with
+commerce, public works, and, after 1669, the navy--a crushing weight
+under which he did not succumb.
+
+“Jean Baptiste Colbert,” says a contemporary, “had naturally a frowning
+countenance. His hollow eyes and thick eyebrows gave him an air of
+austerity and rendered him at first sight savage and forbidding; but
+afterwards when one came to know him, he was sufficiently facile,
+expeditious, and immutably steadfast. He was persuaded that good faith
+is the solid foundation of all business. Infinite application and an
+insatiable desire to learn took with him the place of knowledge. He was
+a restorer of the finances, which on his accession to the ministry he
+found in a very bad condition. A solid but ponderous intelligence, born
+principally for calculation, he disentangled all the embarrassments which
+the superintendents and royal treasurers had purposely introduced into
+the accounts in order that they might fish in troubled waters.” Let us
+add that this austere and hard financier, “this man of marble,” as Gui
+Patin calls him, had a heart. “We must be careful of every five sous in
+matters which are not of necessity,” he wrote to Louis XIV, “and lavish
+millions when it is a question of your glory. A useless banquet costing
+3,000 livres gives me incredible pain; and when it is a question of
+millions of gold for the affair of Poland, I would sell all my goods, I
+would pledge my wife and children, and I would go on foot all my life to
+provide them.”
+
+
+_Reorganisation of the Finances_
+
+The finances, indeed, had fallen back into the chaos from which Sully
+had rescued them. The public debt was four hundred and thirty millions,
+the revenues were swallowed up three years in advance, and out of
+eighty-four millions in annual imposts the treasury received scarcely
+thirty-five. Colbert began by annulling or reimbursing at the rate of
+purchase eight millions of bonds on the Hôtel-de-Ville, which had been
+acquired at an insignificant price, and caused the _chambre de police_
+to make an investigation of the malversations committed by officers of
+finance during the last twenty-five years; the very curés had to press
+their parishioners to denounce abuses. The money lenders who had taken
+advantage of the necessities of the state to lend to it at usurious
+interest were made to disgorge their profits; the fines rose to one
+hundred and ten millions; several money lenders were hanged. These were
+measures in harmony with the spirit of the times but not in accordance
+with good policy; the surest way for the state to avoid having to submit
+to burdensome contracts in evil days is to hold, in good ones, to a
+promise once given, because there are no usurers save for those who are
+suspected of not paying their debts.
+
+Colbert was the true creator of the budget. Hitherto money had been
+dispensed haphazard, without consulting the receipts of the treasury.
+He was the first to draw up annually a provisional statement divided
+into two chapters in which the probable revenues and expenses were
+set down beforehand. When a secretary of state had a disbursement to
+make he signed an order for the intended payment; the persons receiving
+it presented it at the office of the controller-general’s department,
+when the payment of the sum was charged on a particular fund and this
+assignment was presented for the king’s signature.
+
+Colbert modified the form and assessment of the imposts. The _taille_,
+or tax on landed property, was personal, that is it was paid by the
+_roturiers_ and in certain circumstances two or three times in the same
+year. He wished to make it real as it was in the south, as it now is
+everywhere--that is to say, payable on the landed property, whoever the
+holders might be. In 1661 it had reached fifty-three millions; he brought
+it back to thirty-two. Amid the troubles of the Fronde many persons had
+been ennobled on their own authority or had bought titles of nobility
+for a few crowns; these were so many privileged individuals added to the
+real ones. As early as 1662 Molière in the _École des femmes_ had laughed
+at this vanity which cost the people dear. A royal ordinance revoked all
+the letters of nobility granted within the last thirty years: Gros-Pierre
+was obliged to show his titles and had none, and nearly forty thousand
+families amongst the richest in the parishes were once more subjected
+to the impost which proportionately lightened the burdens of their
+neighbours.
+
+[Illustration: COLBERT
+
+(1619-1683)]
+
+The controller-general rightfully preferred to the _taille_ the _aides_
+or indirect taxes to which all contributed. He diminished the price of
+salt, a commodity of the first necessity to the poor; but he increased
+or created taxes on coffee, tobacco, wines, cards, etc., and from one
+million five hundred thousand francs brought them up to twenty-one
+millions. Thus the indirect taxes, some of which have been so vigorously
+attacked in our own day, had their origin in an idea of justice and
+equality.
+
+He disliked loans, not because he did not understand the advantage of
+borrowing at a low price to repay burdensome debts, but he dreaded giving
+Louis XIV facilities for burdening the future to the advantage of the
+present. On leaving the council in which the first loan was decided
+on, in 1672, he bitterly reproached Lamoignon for having approved this
+measure. “Do you know as I do the man with whom we have to deal, his
+passion for display, for great enterprises, for all kinds of expenses?
+Here is a free course opened for loans and by consequence for unlimited
+expenditure and taxes. You shall answer for it to the nation and to
+posterity.”
+
+In truth a time was to come when Colbert would be no longer there and
+Louis XIV would borrow at 400 per cent. At least the great minister
+tried to protect the treasury against the exigencies of the financiers
+by inviting the small capitalists to pour their funds directly, without
+costly intermediaries, into a loan account which he established for the
+purpose and into which the money flowed.[c]
+
+Colbert’s efforts extended into so many fields that it is impossible to
+follow them in detail. His service to agriculture was most beneficial. He
+exempted very large families from paying tithes, and forbade the seizure
+of implements and beasts of labour for non-payment of taxes. He improved
+the breeds of horses and cattle by crossing them with imported animals.
+His code for water highways and forests is still largely in force.
+
+He assisted industry by sparing no means of obtaining the manufacturing
+secrets of neighbouring countries. In 1669, says Duruy,[c] there were
+42,220 looms and more than 60,000 workers in wool alone. The draperies
+of Sedan, Louviers, Abbeville, and Elbeuf were unrivalled in Europe;
+tin plate, steel, faience, and morocco leather, which had largely been
+imported, were now made in France; the cloth and serges of Holland,
+Genoese point, and velvets were imitated and equalled, the carpets of
+Persia and Turkey surpassed at the Savonnerie, at Aubusson, and at
+Beauvais. The rich silken stuffs shot with gold and silver were made at
+Tours and at Lyons; at Tour-la-Ville (near Cherbourg) and at Paris they
+made finer glassware than at Venice. The tapestries of Flanders yielded
+to those of the Gobelins.
+
+For commerce the great minister did much by regulating customs and
+reducing tariffs. He made Dunkirk, Bayonne, and Marseilles free ports,
+and was the projector of the Burgundian canal opened in 1692, and built
+between 1664 and 1681, that connected the Mediterranean at Cette with
+the Garonne (and consequently the ocean) at Toulouse. Henry IV’s council
+of commerce was re-established in 1665 and the king presided over its
+fortnightly meetings.
+
+At that period the Dutch and the English were far ahead of the French
+in foreign trade. The better to compete with these rivals Colbert
+substituted privileged associations for the isolated efforts of
+individuals. “He established,” says Duruy,[c] “five great companies
+modelled on the English and Dutch societies; those of the _Indes
+Orientales_ and the _Indes Occidentales_ in 1664; the _Compagnie du Nord_
+and the _Compagnie du Levant_ in 1666, and the _Compagnie du Sénégal_ in
+1673, according them exclusive commercial monopolies and granting them
+considerable loans. He wished to restore life to the colonial system,
+much neglected since the days of Richelieu. The French now possessed only
+Canada, with Acadia, Cayenne, the Île de Bourbon [Île de Réunion], and
+several establishments in Madagascar and the Indies. Colbert purchased,
+for less than a million, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, Grenada,
+and the Grenadines, Marie Galante, St. Martin, St. Christopher, St.
+Bartholomew, Santa Cruz, and Tortuga (Île de la Tortue) in the West
+Indies. He placed under the protection of France the French filibusters
+of Santo Domingo who had seized the western portion of the island (1664).
+He planted new colonies in Cayenne (1677) and in Canada (1665). He took
+Newfoundland in order to control the entrance to the St. Lawrence, and
+began the occupation of the magnificent valley of the Mississippi, which
+had just been explored by that adventurous captain, Robert de la Salle
+(1680). In Africa he wrested Gorée in Senegal from the Dutch in 1665 and
+took possession of the east coast of Madagascar. In Asia the _Compagnie
+des Indes_ established itself at Surat and Chandarnagar and afterwards
+at Pondicherry,” but to offset these achievements he was short-sighted
+enough to close the colonial ports to foreign vessels and to forbid in
+1669 the importation of sugar and tobacco from Brazil.
+
+Colbert also revived the navy and established the naval inscription by
+which the people of these maritime provinces, in return for certain
+advantages, furnished the necessary recruits for the navy, dividing them
+according to age and family position into different classes (the _régime
+des classes_). He likewise instituted in 1672 the corps of marine guards,
+composed of one thousand gentlemen, in order to have good officers, a
+school of cannoneers for good marksmen, a school of hydrography, and a
+board of naval construction.
+
+For the encouragement of the fine arts and the sciences, the Academy
+of Inscriptions and Belle-Lettres was founded in 1663, the Academy of
+Science in 1666, the Academy of Music (1669), the Academy of Architecture
+in 1671. A school of fine arts established at Rome (1667) received the
+prize pupils of the Academy of Painting in Paris who copied on canvas
+or in marble the masterpieces of antiquity. The cabinet of medals
+founded also a school for the study of oriental languages. The Royal
+Library received many additions and the Mazarine Library was opened to
+the public. The Jardin des Plantes was enlarged and the foundation of
+academies in the provinces encouraged. All the famous littérateurs and
+artists of the day were generally pensioned, including many from foreign
+countries who were induced to take up their residence in France.[a]
+
+
+_Michelet’s Estimate of Colbert_
+
+The king in 1683 was relieved of Colbert. He pressed heavily upon him,
+forced him to reckon, was always talking of making the receipts balance
+the expenditures. In his long ministry of twenty years he had passed
+through two phases. During the first he tried to live on the revenue;
+during the second, dragged on and compelled, he borrowed and lived on
+the future. One moment he lightened the taxes and nevertheless collected
+ninety millions; but the king spent one hundred millions.
+
+Between him and the king there was a dispute about everything: concerning
+buildings--he condemned Versailles: concerning religion--he upheld the
+Protestant manufacturers. He died from his public disgrace--died because
+he could do nothing and had lost hope. Ridiculous quarrels were forced
+upon him. The king reproached him for the expense of Versailles, which
+had been built in spite of his advice to the contrary.[114]
+
+He died, detested and cursed. It was found necessary to bury him at
+night to protect his body from the insults of the populace. Songs were
+composed, _ponts neufs_ on the death of the tyrant. Was this word wrongly
+applied? Not at all. This great man had been the tyrant of France in two
+ways at once--tyrant through his position, the times, and the necessity
+of things; tyrant through his violence in well doing and his impatience,
+through his impulsiveness of will.
+
+The war and Louvois, the king and the court, Versailles and the immense
+waste had been blamed very justly. But there was something else. The
+situation was tyrannical. Colbert built on a foundation already ruined,
+on that of the misery which grew in that century without anything being
+able to stop it--political and moral causes come from afar, above all,
+the indolence of the nobility and of the Catholics, which after having
+ruined Spain was about to ruin France. Mazarin had killed Colbert
+in advance. The tax placed by the league of notables on the small
+landholder, which was doubled about 1648, compelled him to sell his
+field to the lord of the parish. But these fields, gathered together
+under idle hands, produced little. Under Colbert there was a famine
+every three years. To sustain the army and the working classes with
+ease, he himself kept the wheat at a low price, almost always forbidding
+its exportation, thus discouraging agricultural labour. From 1600 to
+1700 every manufactured article quintupled in value. Wheat alone was
+treated as a natural product, in connection with which labour would avail
+nothing; nothing was done for it; it remained at the same price. That
+evil of Spain, the hatred of work, the taste for a life of ease had for
+a long time been inoculated in France. Colbert revolved in the circle
+of a fatal contradiction. He wanted to discourage idleness, he said; he
+struck at the false nobles. With what? With the authority of the king--of
+the king of nobles, who, attracting everything to the court, “ennobling”
+the nation, drew it into idleness. The dead and unproductive life of the
+courtier, of the priest, more and more deadened everything.
+
+This man of work was devoured by three great unproductive classes:
+the nobles, who more and more lived on the state; the officials, whom
+the progress of order brought into existence; the third class, the
+permanent army, enormously increased. Now, the king drawing little or
+nothing from the large rich body, that is the clergy, Colbert, triply
+crushed, was obliged to create a productive class, to over-stimulate
+work by driving industry abroad. War of customs duties, and soon a war
+of armies, resulted. He himself, who was so interested in maintaining
+peace, actively engaged in the war against Holland, and expected to gain
+something from it for the navy and for industry.
+
+History can cite nothing greater or more terrible than his sudden
+improvisation of the marine. It astonishes, it frightens, both by
+material enormity and by moral violence. Colbert demanded from France
+the severest sacrifice which had ever been asked of her (before the
+conscription[115]).
+
+He showed the same vehement impatience in commercial regulations, in the
+improvisation of a French industry. He was justly indignant at seeing an
+ingenious people, very artistic in many things, awaiting and receiving
+from elsewhere all the products of the useful arts. Manufactories are not
+only a product of wealth but of education also, a special development of
+certain faculties, of a certain aptitude. A people who did only one thing
+would be very low in the scale of nations. Colbert awakened and revealed
+in the French people an unknown aptitude; he caused a new art to burst
+forth, that above all, which puts good taste and elegance into all the
+requirements for the fitting out of a house, which relieves material life
+by a noble gleam of mind. It was splendid, it was grand of him. But the
+means were less happy. On the one hand, this budding industry he wanted
+perfect all at once; that young plant which could not grow without the
+liberties of life he confined and choked with tyrannical precautions.
+Almost at the outset, his regulations were laws of terror (even to
+putting a person in the pillory for defective merchandise, 1670). By
+requiring this perfection he hoped to gain credit for French goods abroad
+and to make people buy them with confidence. But, on the other hand, he
+prevented the manufacture of goods of inferior quality, to satisfy the
+less pretentious needs of the poorer classes.
+
+The grandeur of this industrial creation has been told wonderfully well;
+but not its fall, its prompt decadence. It perished both from the
+general poverty (no more buyers) and from emigration (the producers left
+even before the death of Colbert). His last glances beheld the decay of
+the edifice which was soon to crumble to pieces.
+
+The great historian of France for the end of this century is Pesant de
+Boisguillebert. He is not acquainted with ancient times and he is wrong
+in thinking that evils date from 1660. He is none the less truthful and
+admirable in the picture he gives of the misery of the country and of
+the crying abuses which continued even under Colbert. The three fiscal
+terrors (_tailles_, _aides_, _douanes_) are found there in characters
+of fire. One must see the unfortunate peasant collectors, who raise the
+land-tax and are responsible for it, march through the village. They go
+only together in companies for fear of being killed. But it is impossible
+to take away anything from him who has nothing. Everything falls back
+upon the collectors. The king’s bailiff seizes their cattle, the village
+flocks, then even their persons. They are imprisoned.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME OF A NOBLEMAN, TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+The case of the aides is much worse. The clerks, become merchants, make
+a fierce war on the merchants who wish to buy wine from the vine grower
+and not from them. All communication is broken off. “Everything which
+comes from Japan quadruples its price, merely on account of the distance.
+But everything here which passes from one province to another becomes
+twenty times dearer, twenty-four times. Wine for a sou at Orleans is
+worth twenty-four at Rouen. The salesman alone is six times more terrible
+than pirates and tempests, than a sea of four thousand leagues.” France
+pulls up its vines. The people no longer drink anything but water. The
+custom-house has killed foreign commerce. No merchant dares any longer to
+put himself in the hands of a receiver, who brings a suit against him if
+he wishes and who is judged only by his own judges.
+
+Thus the people, thus Colbert, remained the miserable slaves of the
+financiers, of the general farmers of the taxes, of negotiators, of
+partisans more powerful than the king. Colbert, on his coming to power,
+had had the good fortune to hang several of them. In vain. They survived
+and flourished and in the end strangled him; much worse, they caused
+his name to be cursed. Under Mazarin there was absolute chaos. Under
+Colbert there was relative order. The old abuses subsisted, but with
+the odious force of order which an established government lent to them.
+Under Mazarin France, miserable and in rags, still drank wine; but under
+Colbert it drank water.
+
+Progress was an evil. Under Colbert, the farming of the taxes was not
+given out to favourites, but was sold at auction, to the highest bidder,
+and thus it brought in more. Yes, but on the condition that the farmers
+were permitted to use the terrible severity which made tax collecting a
+war. In his mortal effort Colbert thus acted against himself. She escaped
+him, however, do what he would--this France whom he wished to cure,
+tormented by _recors_, eaten up by bailiffs’ men, expropriated, sold, and
+executed.
+
+The great malediction under which he died troubled him on his death-bed.
+A letter from the king came to him and he did not wish to read it. “If I
+had done for God,” said he, “what I have done for this man, I would be
+sure of being saved, and I do not know where I am going.” We know it,
+hero! You are going into glory. You remain in the heart of France. Great
+nations, who judge with time like God, are as equitable as he, valuing
+the labour less according to the result than in proportion to the effort,
+the grandeur of the desire.[l]
+
+After Colbert’s death his ministry was divided. The marquis of Seignelay,
+his son, had the navy; the finances were intrusted to Claude le Pelletier
+(1683-1689), later by the count de Pontchartrain (1689-1699); these last
+succeeded but did not replace him. After 1689 the general penury was
+such, that Louis was obliged to send to the mint the masterpieces in
+chiselled silver which adorned Versailles.
+
+
+LOUVOIS
+
+[Sidenote: [1666-1691 A.D.]]
+
+Colbert had organised peace; Louvois, “the greatest and most brutal of
+clerks,” organised war. François Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois,
+was born in 1641. At the age of fifteen years he entered the office
+of his father, the secretary of state, and was initiated by a long
+apprenticeship into the science of military administration, to which he
+brought an activity equal to that of Colbert. When Louis XIV determined
+to assume the rule, Louvois became the real minister of war, although he
+did not succeed his father, Michel le Tellier, till 1666. He reformed the
+army, and his reforms lasted as long as the old monarchy. If he preserved
+the system of voluntary enlistment which had been in practice for three
+centuries, he diminished abuses and dangers by a more exact discipline
+and more severe regulations. He established uniforms by ordering that
+each regiment should be distinguished by the colour of its clothes and
+by various marks (1670). He introduced the use of copper pontoons for
+crossing rivers; he instituted magazines of food and supplies, barracks,
+military hospitals, the Hôtel des Invalides, all things almost unknown
+before his time. He created the corps of engineers whence came the great
+Vauban’s best pupils; schools of artillery at Douai, Metz, and Strasburg,
+the companies of grenadiers in the infantry, the regiments of hussars in
+the cavalry, and lastly cadet companies, a species of military school for
+the _gentilshommes_.
+
+The army still showed the spirit of feudal times. The soldier belonged
+less to the king than to his colonel; the cavalry was given too much
+importance and the nobility would serve only in it. From this reign the
+French infantry became and long remained the first in the world. Louvois
+required it to march in step and substituted the gun and bayonet for the
+pike which was still prevalent; but it was not till after his time that
+Vauban succeeded in making the gun at once a weapon for projectiles and a
+weapon for fencing, and so rendered it the most formidable instrument of
+destruction which was ever put into the hands of men.
+
+He made a revolution in the army by the _ordre du tableau_ and by the
+creation of the service of inspection. He did not destroy the venality
+of offices which had been introduced into the army, and was exercised
+almost entirely to the profit of the nobles; but in order to merit
+promotion it was no longer sufficient for them to have ancestors--they
+must have services; and the grades, from the rank of colonel, became the
+prize of seniority--an excellent reform in those days, which would be
+so now no longer. The hatred of the nobility pursued the minister who
+was degrading “those born to command others, on the pretext that it is
+reasonable to learn to obey in order to command; who wished to accustom
+seigneurs to equality and to mingle with all the world indiscriminately.”
+Louvois, with inflexible firmness, required that each should perform his
+duty; to secure this he instituted inspectors-general who made the king’s
+authority and his own everywhere present; and severe rebukes awaited
+negligent officers.
+
+He created recreation camps, a ruinous innovation when these assemblies
+of troops were only a spectacle to divert the ladies of the court and
+the king’s _ennui_, but an excellent school for officers and generals
+when preparing for the great manœuvres of war. It was only after his
+death that the order of St. Louis was instituted (1693) for the purpose
+of bestowing honours as a reward for military services--this time
+without distinction of birth, but not without distinction of religion;
+the reformed could not obtain it. By such measures France was able to
+have under arms, in the war of Flanders, 125,000 men; for that with
+Holland, 180,000; before Ryswick, 300,000; during the War of the Spanish
+Succession, 450,000.
+
+
+VAUBAN
+
+There was one point, the only one, perhaps, on which the minister of war
+and the minister of marine were in accord: namely, the fortification
+of the kingdom. To accomplish this immense work they found the man who
+is, with Colbert, the greatest of this reign. Le Prestre de Vauban was
+a _gentilhomme_ of no great family, who was born at Saulieu in Burgundy
+in 1633. His father died in the service, leaving him only his name. A
+prior of the neighbourhood took him in and brought him up. When he had
+completed his seventeenth year the Fronde was in full swing. Eleven of
+his brothers, uncles, and relatives were under arms; one morning Vauban
+ran away and hastened to join the Great Condé, who received him as a
+cadet and soon made him an officer.
+
+Vauban fought well; he studied more. The good prior had given him some
+notions of geometry; he developed them and these first acquirements
+decided his vocation. Having passed into the royal army he served under
+the chevalier de Clerville, the most renowned engineer of that time, and
+at twenty-five directed the works during the sieges of Gravelines, Ypres,
+and Oudenarde. In 1668 his reputation was so great that Louis XIV charged
+him with the fortification of Dunkirk. This first work of the young
+engineer was a masterpiece: two moles projecting over six thousand feet
+into the water and defended by formidable batteries created a harbour
+where nature had put only an unfavourable shore. The waters inside and
+those of the high tides skilfully manipulated, incessantly hollowed
+the channel and restored to the sea the mud it brought up. Henceforth
+Vauban was the indispensable man whom every general demanded when he
+had a siege to make. In time of war he took towns; in time of peace he
+fortified them. It has been calculated that he worked on 300 old towns,
+that he constructed 33 new ones, that he conducted 53 sieges, and was
+present at 140 important actions. He was several times wounded; for in
+order to reconnoitre the situation of a place and to spare the blood of
+his soldiers, he exposed himself in such a manner as to call forth the
+accusation of temerity, had not his cool and deliberate courage been like
+the fulfilment of a duty.
+
+Vauban, who fortified towns, knew still better how to take them. He
+introduced the use of hollow cannon-balls for dispersing earth; ricochet
+firing to dismount the artillery of the besieged and destroy the angles
+of the bastions; above all he perfected the parallels at the siege of
+Maestricht in 1673. These parallels joined the trenches which converged
+towards the town, and gave the attack the advantage over the defence.
+Vauban went forward slowly but surely; he marched under cover by lines on
+which the troops were in a position to render each other mutual support,
+did not hurry on attacks when he could dispense with them, took pains
+to spare the soldiers, who had previously been flung away, and attained
+his object incomparably more quickly and with fewer losses, because
+he first silenced the enemy’s fire and left on the ramparts neither a
+tenable point nor a cannon in condition to be fired. There was no longer
+any impregnable fortress and it was easy to look forward to the day when
+every well-besieged town would be taken. It is to him that we also owe
+the invention of the socket which allows the infantry to fire whilst
+still keeping the bayonet at the end of the gun.
+
+
+SÉGUIER, LEGISLATIVE WORKS
+
+[Sidenote: [1665-1685 A.D.]]
+
+In a memorial handed to the king, August 15th, 1665, Colbert had proposed
+to remodel the whole legislation so that there should be in France
+but one law, one system of weights and measures; in addition he asked
+for gratuitous justice, the abolition of the venality of offices, the
+price of which was reckoned at four hundred and twenty millions, and
+the diminution of the number of monks, and the encouragement of useful
+callings.
+
+A commission was appointed. When the members had held a meeting and at
+last brought their task to a conclusion they discussed the matter with
+eminent members of the parliament in the presence of the ministers,
+under the presidency of the chancellor Séguier, sometimes under that of
+the king. Six codes were the result of these deliberations: in 1667 the
+civil ordinance or Code Louis which abolished some iniquitous procedure
+belonging to the justice of the Middle Ages, “true witness of human
+imbecility,” says Montaigne, shortened its delays and regulated the form
+of the registers of births, marriages, and deaths which, it was ordered,
+were to be deposited at the office of each law-court; in 1669 that of
+Rivers and Forests which continues in its principal dispositions; in 1670
+the ordinance of Criminal Instruction which the parliaments accepted only
+after many _lettres de cachet_ and decrees of exile; it restricted the
+application of the torture and various cases of provisional imprisonment,
+fixed rights of jurisdiction so that none might be deprived of his
+natural judges, laid down identical rules for all tribunals, thus
+preparing the way for unity of principle by means of unity of form, but
+did not yet allow either counsel or defender for the accused in capital
+cases, preserved the atrocity of earlier penalties, the wheel and
+quartering, and still made the penalty disproportionate to the crime; in
+1673 the ordinance of Commerce, a true title to glory for Colbert; in
+1681 that of the Navy and the Colonies, which has formed the common law
+of the nations of Europe and serves them to this day as maritime law;
+in 1685 the Black Code, which regulated the condition of negroes in the
+French colonies.
+
+These ordinances form the greatest work of codification executed from
+Justinian to Napoleon. Some portions of them are still in operation.
+
+
+LIONNE, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND DIPLOMACY
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]
+
+If Colbert and Louvois, by the re-establishment of the finances, the
+creation of a navy, and the reform of the army, allowed Louis XIV to
+make war successfully, Lionne, secretary of state for foreign affairs,
+prepared that success by his negotiations. “He had,” says Choisy, “a
+superior genius: his understanding, naturally keen and penetrating,
+had been still further sharpened in the affairs in which the cardinal
+had early employed him.” Saint-Simon, who was no flatterer, also says
+that he did everything with a skill and superiority quite unequalled.
+The king indeed watched closely over this branch; he himself wrote the
+first despatches to his ambassadors; he often wrote minutes of the most
+important letters with his own hand, and he always had the instructions
+sent in his name read aloud to him.
+
+When Lionne died in 1671 the king gave him as successor the marquis de
+Pomponne who had conducted several embassies with success and was then in
+Sweden, whose king he had succeeded in detaching from the Dutch alliance.
+Pomponne directed all the negotiations which terminated in the Peace of
+Nimeguen. “But,” said Louis XIV, “the office I gave him was found to be
+too great and extensive for him. I was obliged to order him to retire,
+because everything that passed through his hands lost something of the
+grandeur and force which are needed in executing the orders of a king of
+France who is not unfortunate.”
+
+
+TRIUMPH OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY
+
+Some of these ministers of Louis XIV, especially Colbert and Louvois,
+were certainly great administrators; they were not, they could not be,
+great statesmen. Colbert himself aimed at making France richer only in
+order to render the king more powerful; and all laboured to constitute
+the excessive centralisation which enveloped the whole country, its
+industry and commerce, the arms and the brain, with a thousand bonds of a
+minute regulation, so that the initiative of the ministers was everywhere
+substituted for the action of individuals and communities. The result of
+this system was to be that France would live less by her own vitality
+than by that of her government. When age and sickness should freeze that
+ever-present hand all would decline. A great people would be subjected to
+the vicissitudes of one man’s existence.
+
+[Illustration: A COURT COSTUME, TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+If the administration of the realm was as much the work of Louis XIV’s
+ministers as his own, one thing belonged to him alone: this was the
+general direction he gave to the government and to society--the skilful
+and energetic manner with which he knew how to control all other powers,
+to annul them, and make them to serve his greatness; it was in fact
+that art of ruling which no other prince, in Saint-Simon’s[i] judgment,
+possessed to a greater degree. We have already seen his ideas on the
+rights of sovereigns; he had summed them up in that phrase attributed to
+him, it is said, in his youth, at the end of the Fronde: “_L’État, c’est
+moi_--The State, it is I.”[116]
+
+He believed this; everybody believed it with him, and the church taught
+it. Bossuet founded the divine right of the monarchy on maxims drawn from
+the Scriptures. “Oh kings, ye are gods,” exclaimed the great bishop at
+the very moment that Lebrun was filling Versailles with the apotheosis of
+Louis XIV. While he lived there was but one uncontrolled and limitless
+will--his own. The states-general might have recalled other wills, but he
+never convoked it; he punished those that spoke of it, and when, at the
+Treaty of Utrecht, the allies, still defying his ambition, tried to exact
+that the conditions of peace should be ratified by a national assembly,
+he haughtily refused and declared that he regarded the demand as an
+insult to the majesty of the throne. The minority of the provinces had
+their own estates, but he suppressed many of them. Those which remained,
+as in Languedoc, Burgundy, Provence, Brittany, etc., never assembled
+except to execute the orders of the ministers. Whatever remained of
+municipal liberty disappeared like that of the provinces. The king,
+coining money with the ancient rights dear to the towns, changed the
+mayoralties into hereditary offices and sold them to the highest bidders.
+An edict of 1683 placed the financial administration of the towns under
+the direction of the intendants. Their finances did not improve. The
+communities were made responsible for the payment of the _taille_ as the
+_curiates_ had been under the Roman emperors. Former fiscal arrangements
+had ruined the magistrates. The new one held them exempt, but ruined the
+communes.
+
+A phrase sums up this entire policy--unfortunately it was spoken by
+Colbert: “It is not well,” he wrote to a governor, charging him to let an
+elective magistracy fall into desuetude, “that some one should speak in
+the name of all.”
+
+
+_Submission of Parliament_
+
+Royalty had taken five centuries to undermine the great body of the
+feudal aristocracy, and the better to perfect this work had formed with
+its own hands another body--that of the judiciary order. In the sixteenth
+century they spoke of the parliaments as “the strong columns on which the
+monarchy is supported,” but in the seventeenth the new royalty wished for
+no other support than its absolute power.
+
+Nevertheless, thanks to the sale of offices, which left the same offices
+in the same hands, thanks to the dignity of the magistrate’s lives, to
+the political rôles they had played on several occasions, to the _esprit
+de corps_ which had quickly been established in the bosom of the great
+judiciary companies, there had been raised alongside the nobility of
+the sword a nobility of the robe, which seemed quite as troublesome as
+the other because it already had its souvenirs and regrets. It was not
+always easily managed. It parried attacks with that force of inertia
+peculiar to assemblies of aged men, which is difficult to overcome at a
+time when tradition stands for law. The spirit of opposition, everywhere
+punished, took refuge here--political opposition, scarcely sensible
+in the parliament of Paris, provincial opposition in the others, all
+religious opposition, under the form of Jansenism. One of Louis XIV’s
+ideas which he sought to realise with the greatest perseverance was to
+transform the parliaments into simple courts of appeal, to put his state
+councils over them, even the parliament of Paris which had brought about
+the Fronde. In an edict of 1667 he proscribed it from enregistering
+ordinances within a week and he suffered no remonstrance. The following
+year he had torn from the parliament registers the records of all its
+deliberations during the civil war, in order to efface even the memory of
+its old-time pretensions. Besides this he changed its title of sovereign
+court into that of superior court, as if the first were a usurpation of
+royal sovereignty.
+
+
+_Submission of the Nobility_
+
+It appeared a more difficult task to reduce the nobles. Cardinal
+Richelieu had razed their fortresses and cut off the heads of some of
+the most unruly. Mazarin had bought them or vanquished them by ruse.
+Louis XIV made himself their master by drawing them around him by his
+fêtes, dragging them from their domains, where they thought too often of
+their ancestors and still felt themselves free, filling his antechamber
+and household posts with the descendants of those who had made his
+fathers tremble, and forming for royalty such brilliant cortèges as the
+representative of God on earth would wish to be surrounded by.
+
+If they had titles and honours they had no political influence in the
+state. In his councils, the king, after the death of Mazarin, admitted
+but a single one of the old noblesse, the duke de Beauvilliers, governor
+of the royal children; and he chose all his ministers from those of
+middle conditions, in order, according to Saint-Simon’s[i] forceful
+expression, to be able “to plunge them into the depths of nothingness
+from which he had drawn them.” The French nobility never knew how, like
+that of England, to become a political class; it was never anything but a
+military caste.
+
+
+_The Third Estate_
+
+Louis XIV preferred, following in this the ancient monarchical
+traditions, to be served by the middle class, more educated and,
+moreover, more devoted, because it did not yet feel the inconveniences
+of absolute power, as it had been feeling for centuries those of the
+feudal régime. Louis turned over to it all the financial, political, and
+judicial functions; he established it peacefully in the administration of
+the realm; he pushed it energetically towards commerce and industry--two
+forces of the new era--and the regard he had for those _petites gens_
+named Boileau, Racine, Molière, announced the coming substitution of
+the rights of intellect for those of birth. Louis XIV thus unknowingly
+paved the way for democracy in France and the Revolution. However he must
+not be regarded as a sort of bourgeois king, a _roi des maltôtiers_,
+as Saint-Simon[i] disdainfully calls him. His policy, the high idea
+he had of his person, the rigorous ceremonial which made a sort of
+redoubtable and inaccessible divinity of him, the _carrousels_, the
+brilliant fêtes--none of these recalls to mind the modest pictures of
+constitutional monarchies.[117] More than that, those nobodies whom Louis
+made his councillors, his ambassadors, and his secretaries of state
+quitted their plebeian state before entering his court. They became the
+marquis de Louvois, the count de Pontchartrain, the marquis de Torcy.
+While working with the bourgeois, the grandson of Henry IV always had the
+desire to remain the king of the noblemen.
+
+
+LOUIS XIV AND THE CHURCH
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1685 A.D.]]
+
+Louis XIV conducted himself towards the clergy as he had done towards the
+nobility--in honouring them he watched to see that they robbed him of
+none of his power. The great lords, with but few exceptions, were removed
+from the church as they had been from the administration. Therefore the
+aristocratic Saint-Simon[i] reproaches Louis “with having ruined the
+episcopacy by filling it with seminarian pedants and their pupils without
+education and without birth”--a strange reproach from the mouth of a man
+who had lived with Bossuet, Fénelon, Fléchier, and Massillon, the eternal
+honour of the French church.
+
+[Illustration: STREET COSTUME, TIME OF LOUIS XIV
+
+(From an old French print)]
+
+The clergy was therefore under Louis XIV one force the more at the
+disposal of royalty. In the affair of the _régale_, the bishops even
+upheld the king against Rome. The _régale_ was the king’s right to enjoy
+the revenues of certain benefices, bishoprics, and archbishoprics, during
+vacancies in the sees. In 1673 an edict declared all the French sees
+subject to the _régale_. Two bishops refused to obey and their action
+was approved by the pope. Louis XIV, to end the dispute, convoked an
+assembly of French clergy which adopted, in 1682, under the inspiration
+of Bossuet, four propositions which were registered by the courts and
+the faculty of theology. They were in substance: God gave to St. Peter
+and his successors no power, direct or indirect, over temporal affairs.
+The Gallican church approves those decrees of the Council of Constance
+which declare the œcumenical councils superior to the pope in spiritual
+affairs. The rules and customs received in the kingdom and in the
+Gallican church must remain unalterable. The pope’s decisions, in matter
+of doctrine, shall not be irreformable until the church has accepted them.
+
+Innocent XI neither approved nor quashed these resolutions, but he
+refused to grant bulls of investiture to those bishops, appointed by
+the government, who had been members of the assembly. The consequence
+was that at his death there were twenty dioceses without heads. The
+matter was, however, brought to a conclusion in 1693 by a compromise.
+Innocent XII granted the bulls of investiture and the king ceased to
+impose upon the theological faculties the obligation of teaching the four
+propositions of 1682.
+
+
+_The Protestants_
+
+The dissenters profited nothing by the quarrel with the court of Rome.[c]
+
+Since the Peace of Alais the Protestants, being deprived of their
+political organisation, of their “towns of security,” and of everything
+which had helped to form them into a party, had been living in obscurity,
+doing their best to make their enemies forget them, and carefully
+abstaining from taking any part in the civil troubles of the time. During
+the Fronde not one of them had shown any sign of life. Their attitude
+towards the government was that of a child in disgrace, and towards
+the Catholics that of a disdainful enemy. They persisted in isolating
+themselves from the rest of the nation, and continued to correspond with
+their friends in England and Holland. They were law-abiding, peaceable,
+and industrious citizens, and contributed their full share to the
+greatness and prosperity of their country by their courage and their
+energy.
+
+Nevertheless, the nation continued to look on them with mistrust, as if
+they were foreigners; France felt as if there were a little Holland in
+her midst, rejoicing at the success of the greater one (with which it
+was then waging ineffectual war). To reunite the Protestants with the
+national church was a fixed idea with Louis XIV. This desire inspired
+his policy, and was the chief goal of all his efforts; this was to be
+“the noble work and special feature of his reign”; and he looked upon
+the enterprise as a noble one, not only from a political but from a
+religious point of view. He was beginning to get into a narrow devotional
+groove, and allowed the Jesuits to exercise a powerful influence over
+him. He wished to free himself from the reproach of heresy, which his
+conduct towards the pope had drawn down upon him, and to atone for the
+irregularities of his youth. He resolved to revoke the Edict of Nantes.
+The assembly of the clergy, the parliament of Toulouse, the Catholics in
+the south all advocated this measure so strongly that it appeared to be
+the general desire of the nation; Louvois in his ambition, Le Tellier in
+his fanatical piety, also did their best to urge the king on, and last,
+but not least, Madame de Maintenon, whose influence during the rest of
+his life was to be paramount, threw all the weight of her persuasions
+into the scale in order to bring about the revocation of this edict.
+
+Up to this time bribery had been the chief means employed in the
+attempts to convert the Protestants. Richelieu had used this method with
+great success. Louis XIV followed his example with favourable results;
+flattery, favours, rewards of every kind were lavishly bestowed in the
+attempt to gain over the Protestants. Pensions were given to the newly
+converted, they were exempted from taxation, all sorts of offices were
+given to them over the heads of staunch Catholics. A fund was formed for
+making conversions, with Pellisson, a converted Protestant, as director.
+France was flooded with missions, sermons, tracts, and books of dogma.
+
+Calvinism suffered such severe losses that Madame de Maintenon said,
+“Very soon it will be ridiculous to belong to that religion.” But these
+methods of bribery and persuasion were not rapid enough, and harsher
+methods began to be used: royal edicts, parliamentary decisions, and
+orders issued by governors of provinces and cities rendered the preaching
+of the reformed doctrines difficult, made the Protestant pastors very
+uneasy, forbade their synods to assemble. Protestants were deprived of
+their pensions and of their titles of nobility; the chief burden of the
+taxes was laid on them; they were excluded from the king’s household,
+from the university, from holding municipal offices. They were also
+forbidden to practice as lawyers or doctors. They were expelled from
+financial offices, the rights of free citizenship were refused to them,
+they were not allowed to be members of corporations, their schools were
+closed, any of their places of worship which had been built since 1598
+were destroyed, and their children were taken from them to be educated
+as Catholics. Then the Protestants began to fly from France (1682); but
+emigration was forbidden under pain of being sent to the galleys.
+
+The Calvinists in the south made one last appeal to the king in March,
+1684, begging him to allow them to serve God according to the dictates
+of their own conscience, or else to take refuge in some other country.
+For answer, the king sent them a number of missionaries accompanied by
+a detachment of dragoons, who were supposed to be the most cruel of all
+the French soldiers. Every day conversions by the hundred were announced
+to the king. On the 2nd of September all the Protestants of Montauban
+changed their religion by a resolution passed at a meeting in the town
+hall; on the 5th of October Montpellier, Castres, Lunel, etc., followed
+suit; then the dioceses of Gap and Embrun, then the whole of Poitou.
+The governor of Languedoc said that he had seen sixty thousand people
+converted in three days. It was thought that nothing more remained to be
+done, but to publicly announce the destruction of a sect which had only
+a few adherents left in distant provinces, among the rude inhabitants of
+the mountainous parts; it was necessary to strike only one more decisive
+blow and so complete the work for which a long series of unjust acts and
+the ingenious tyranny of the last fifty years had been the preparation.
+Père Lachaise, the king’s confessor, and Louvois promised that not a
+single drop of blood should be shed.
+
+
+_Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685 A.D.)_
+
+Accordingly on the 22nd of October, 1685, an edict appeared ordaining:
+(1) The suppression of all the privileges which had been accorded to
+the Protestants by Henry IV and Louis XIII; (2) the proscription of
+Protestant worship throughout the kingdom (except Alsace and Strasburg);
+(3) the expulsion of Protestant ministers, the closing of Protestant
+schools, and the demolition of the churches, etc. Numerous rewards were
+given to those who agreed to change their religion; Calvinists were
+forbidden on pain of being sent to the galleys and the confiscation of
+their property, to go out of France; permission was given them to remain
+on their own property and engage in business without their worship being
+interfered with so long as they did not hold public services.
+
+This edict was received in France with the greatest enthusiasm: sermons,
+poems, pictures, medals were produced with astounding rapidity to
+celebrate this great act of unity! At last the whole country was to
+be under one jurisdiction and under one king! Louis XIV was a second
+Constantine, a modern Theodosius. Never had any king performed such a
+wonderful achievement, nor was it likely that any parallel to it would be
+seen in the future. The whole of Europe was amazed at the promptitude and
+ease with which this great king had stamped out a heresy which had defied
+the efforts of six of his predecessors.
+
+The only complaints that arose were directed against the leniency of that
+clause which allowed the Protestants to worship in their own fashion in
+private. This clause was only a lure, and Louvois wrote to the governors
+and those in authority: “His majesty desires that those who refuse to
+embrace his religion should be treated with the utmost rigour, and those
+who foolishly pride themselves on being the last to be converted are to
+be driven to the extremity of their endurance.” Then began a series of
+bloody atrocities which the king had never commanded, and which were not
+at all in accordance with his character for moderation. A defenceless
+population was delivered over to the cruel brutality of the soldiery,
+men were put to the torture, women were subjected to a dishonour worse
+than death, children were torn from their parents, houses and farms
+were wrecked, converts who refused to take the sacraments were sent to
+the galleys, as were those who harboured Protestant ministers or those
+who attempted to leave the kingdom. Sentence of death was pronounced
+against all who practised any other than the Catholic religion, against
+all Protestant ministers, and all who formed themselves into gatherings
+or held meetings. Those who were weak yielded; they were dragged to
+the altar and, with the executioner standing over them, forced to
+commit sacrilege. “Torture, abjuration, and forced communion,” says
+Saint-Simon,[i] “often all took place within twenty-four hours,” and the
+executioners were the guides and the sponsors of the convert. Almost all
+the bishops took part in these hasty irreverent practices. Most of them
+urged on the executioners and used every means to swell the number of
+conversions, for they sent an account of their triumphs to the court,
+and were anxious to gain as much glory and substantial recompense as
+possible. The king received from all quarters news and details of these
+persecutions; those who had abjured Protestantism and received the
+communion were counted by the thousand. The king gloried in his power and
+in his piety; the bishops sent him the most fulsome panegyrics on the
+great work he was doing; pulpits rang with his praises.
+
+The Protestants fled from the country. The police were unable to prevent
+them. Certificates of confession were required from all travellers,
+sentence of death was pronounced against anyone who countenanced or
+assisted others in emigrating. The emigrants had been deprived of
+seventeen millions of francs in house and land property, the frontier
+was guarded by numerous troops; but all these measures were vain, and
+in spite of them fifty thousand families left the kingdom, and took
+refuge in Holland, England, Germany, and Switzerland. They consisted
+of nobles, tradesmen, and manufacturers. This active, energetic, and
+enlightened body of men, placed at the service of foreigners their
+talents, their swords, the secrets of French manufactures, their wealth,
+and a relentless hatred of the tyrant who had banished them. Their
+emigration did an irreparable injury to France. They were received
+everywhere with the greatest kindness; they were even invited to leave
+their country, and good positions were promised them. One part of London
+was peopled with silk-weavers and workers in crystal and steel; and
+England became the leading manufacturing nation. Brandenburg rose from
+its abasement; Berlin became a town; Prussia was opened up; the influence
+of the refugees on Frederick William’s states was so marked that it is
+from this time that their greatness and their subsequent weight among
+European powers may be dated. Amsterdam built a thousand houses for them,
+William gave them pensions, granted them privileges, and provided them
+with places of worship; he formed them into a royal guard of six hundred
+noblemen and two regiments. He made use of their ministers, embittered by
+hatred, to flood Europe with pamphlets against Louis XIV. Henceforth on
+every battle-field the French would meet these emigrants filled with a
+fierce hatred of their country, and, for more than a century afterward,
+French soldiers found that their bitterest enemies in Germany were the
+descendants of these refugees.[j]
+
+
+_The Jansenists_
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]
+
+Nor did Louis protect the Jansenists who were, on certain points, in
+disagreement with the church of Rome. The Jansenists owed their doctrine
+to a bishop of Ypres, named Jansenius, who died in 1638, and to the
+abbé of St. Cyran who had sustained some ancient opinions, which seemed
+to be new, upon grace and predestination. Jansenism deserves at least
+a passing word especially on account of the character of the men who
+defended it. The most illustrious of them, the great Arnauld, Lemaistre
+de Sacy, Nicole, and Lancelot, retired to the ancient Cistercian abbey
+of Port-Royal des Champs, near Versailles, when Pascal also joined them
+in 1654, and there, leading a solitary life, these Catholic puritans set
+the world an example of assiduous works of the hands and the intellect,
+of lively piety, and of austerity which went as far as asceticism. They
+wrote, for the most part in common, some excellent works which are still
+in use; they had some illustrious pupils, among others Racine; they won
+over to a great part of their doctrine almost the entire magistracy.[c]
+
+The Jesuits then monopolised the authority and influence of the church,
+whose spirit and moral code they attempted to modify, and adapt to
+the present courtly and despotic times. The studious, reasoning, and
+ascetic brethren of Port-Royal saw the tendency of the Jesuit preaching,
+the false and worldly basis of their creed. It was on the subject of
+Jansenism that the Jesuits had declared themselves, and had come forth
+in the arena of argument. The pious wits of Port-Royal seized the
+opportunity, took up a cause sufficiently absurd in its fundamental
+dogmas, but which they were enabled to support by battering the still
+more absurd outworks of the Jesuits. The latter won the pope to their
+side, and obtained from the head of the church a condemnation of
+the tenets of Jansenius. The polemic writers of Port-Royal bowed to
+his holiness, confessed that he was infallible as a high priest, in
+condemning such and such belief, but most fallible as a critic, since
+not one of these propositions, so lustily condemned, were to be found
+in Jansenius. This ingenious effrontery succeeded; for, under colour of
+disputing about such abstractions, Pascal and Arnauld attacked their
+enemies in more vulnerable points--in their moral laxity, their sophistic
+logic, their worldliness, courtliness, and servility. Louis XIV took the
+Jesuit side. Many of the courtiers, who dared no longer draw the sword
+in rebellion, ventured to move the tongue, and exercise thought at least
+in independence. Amongst the most distinguished sectaries of Port-Royal
+was the duchess de Longueville, sister of Condé, the famous partisan of
+the Fronde, and mistress of La Rochefoucauld. Her hôtel, once the resort
+of the coadjutor [de Retz] and his party, of the hot cavaliers that
+drove the court from Paris, was now the lurking-place and concealment of
+the Jansenists. She braved the royal authority at all times, whether in
+the cause of the noblesse or of religion; gallant and dissolute in the
+Fronde, in Jansenism rigid and devout. “She was Jansenist in truth and
+heart,” says Brienne, “just as she had indulged her gallantries with the
+same sincerity, and always drums beating” (the expression means openly
+and boldly): “a princess of the blood need fear nothing; and Madame de
+Longueville marched on her way with head erect.” Although the Jansenism
+of Pascal and of Arnauld was the protestation of reason, common sense,
+and deep religious feeling, against the corruptions of the Jesuits,
+that of Madame de Longueville and her class must be considered as a
+kind of covert opposition to the court, and to the despotic will of
+the sovereign. The froward love of independence, that could no longer
+exercise itself in political intrigue, found more harmless vent in
+criticism and polemics.[k]
+
+The outcome of the Jansenist disputes was that in 1709 the king caused
+the buildings of Port-Royal des Champs to be levelled to the ground.[118]
+The bodies of the inoffensive solitaires were disinterred, and dogs were
+seen quarrelling over them.
+
+[Illustration: CANNON USED IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+
+THE POLICE
+
+The police was the creation of Louis XIV. In 1687 he appointed a
+magistrate to oversee the Paris police, Nicholas de la Reynie, who was
+succeeded in 1697 by the marquis d’Argenson--these were the first two
+_lieutenants de police_. They established order, decency, and security in
+the city. Now commenced the system of public lighting; from the 1st of
+November to the 1st of March, lanterns, burning candles, were placed at
+the ends and in the middle of every street. There were five thousand of
+these lights in Paris. The watch was augmented and reorganised. Firemen
+replaced the Capuchins in the fire Service. The narrow streets, often
+cut up and always filthy, were cleaned, widened, and paved; coaches and
+cabs for the public were introduced; Pascal even devised the omnibuses,
+which did not succeed at that time. The custom of going about Paris on
+horseback was no longer kept up except by a few obstinate representatives
+of the olden times.
+
+The police attended to other things; it censured all writings,[119] it
+held up the post, and read in what was afterwards called the _cabinet
+noir_, all suspected correspondence, and to relieve the government of too
+slow methods of justice it multiplied the _lettres de cachet_[120] which
+removed all guarantee of personal liberty to citizens. The new power
+charged with the overseeing of persons and opinions, thus became like
+an ever-open eye, always defiant of royalty. Thus were all the orders
+of state, all the existing authorities, all the conditions--parliament,
+nobility, bourgeois, clergy, and dissenters--reduced and dominated.
+Vauban, Catinat, and Fénelon resisted the contagion. Condé himself, in
+spite of his rank, his services, and his spirit, became a courtier.
+Turenne alone managed to keep a position from which he could tell the
+king many truths which others dared not repeat.[c]
+
+
+THE COURT OF THE GRAND MONARCH
+
+Louis XIV put so much brilliancy and magnificence into his court that the
+smallest details of its life seem interesting to posterity, to such an
+extent were they an object of curiosity to all the courts of Europe and
+to all his contemporaries. The splendour of his government shone on his
+pettiest actions.
+
+That is why no historian has failed to write of the early affections of
+Louis XIV for the baroness de Beauvais, for Mademoiselle d’Argencourt,
+for the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who was married to the count de
+Soissons, the father of Prince Eugene, and above all for Marie Mancini,
+her sister, who afterwards married the constable Colonna.
+
+The court, after the triumphant return of Mazarin after the Peace of the
+Pyrenees, busied itself with games, and the ballet, with comedy, which,
+being only new born, had not yet become an art, and with tragedy, which
+had become a sublime art in the hands of Pierre Corneille. A _curé_
+of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, who inclined to the rigorous ideas of the
+Jansenists, had often written to the queen against these spectacles, ever
+since the first years of the regency. He claimed that a person would
+be damned for being present at them. He even had this anathema signed
+by seven doctors of the Sorbonne, but the abbé de Beaumont, the king’s
+preceptor, provided himself with more approbations of doctors, than the
+strict _curé_ had with condemnations. He thus quieted the scruples of the
+queen, and, when he became archbishop of Paris, he gave his authority to
+the opinion he had supported as abbé.
+
+There had been one continual succession of fêtes, entertainments, and
+gallantries since the marriage of the king. Interrupted by the death of
+Mazarin, they were redoubled on the marriage of Monsieur, brother of the
+king, with Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II [which took place
+twenty days after Mazarin’s death]. After the cardinal’s death the court
+became the centre of amusements and the model for other courts. The king
+prided himself on giving fêtes which should cast those of Vaux into
+oblivion.
+
+[Illustration: ROCROY]
+
+The good taste of society had not yet received its full perfection
+at court. The queen-mother, Anne of Austria, began to be fond of
+retirement.[121] The reigning queen could scarcely speak French and
+her goodness was her only merit. The princess of England, the queen’s
+sister-in-law, brought to court the attraction of a kindly and animated
+style of conversation, which was soon seconded by her reading of good
+works and her sure and fine taste. She perfected herself in the language,
+which she still wrote poorly at the time of her marriage. She inspired a
+fresh mental stimulus, and introduced graces and a politeness into court,
+of which the rest of Europe had scarcely an idea. Madame had all the wit
+of her brother Charles II, embellished by the charms of her sex, by the
+talent and the desire to please. The court of Louis XIV breathed forth
+a gallantry which a sense of propriety made more piquant. That which
+reigned at the court of Charles II was bolder, and too much grossness
+disfigured its amusements.
+
+There was at first between Madame and the king a great deal of sprightly
+coquetry and a secret understanding, which was shown in little attentions
+often repeated.[122] The king sent her verses; she answered them. It
+chanced that the same man was at once the confidant of the king and of
+Madame in this ingenious intercourse. This was the marquis of Dangeau.
+He conducted the correspondence for both king and princess; thus serving
+both of them without letting one suspect what he was doing for the other.
+
+
+_Mademoiselle de la Vallière_
+
+These pastimes gave way to the more serious and more protracted passion
+which the king had for Mademoiselle de la Vallière, maid of honour to
+Madame. He experienced with her the rare pleasure of being loved solely
+for himself. She was for two years the hidden object of all the gallant
+amusements, all the entertainments which the king gave. A young _valet
+de chambre_ of the king, named Belloc, composed several recitals which
+were interspersed between dances, sometimes in the queen’s, sometimes in
+Madame’s apartments, and these recitals expressed with an air of mystery
+the secrets of their hearts, which soon ceased to be a secret.
+
+All these public entertainments which the king gave were so many homages
+to his mistress. In 1662, a tournament (_carrousel_) was held opposite
+the Tuileries in a large enclosure which has retained its name from this
+event, Place du Carrousel. There were five _quadrilles_. The king was at
+the head of the Romans; his brother of the Persians, the prince of Condé
+of the Turks, the duke d’Enghien, his son, of the Indians, the duke of
+Guise of the Americans.
+
+The queen-mother, the reigning queen, the queen of England, widow of
+Charles I, forgetting for the moment her misfortunes, were under a
+dais to see this spectacle. The count de Saulx, son of the duke de
+Lesdiguières, took the prize and received it from the hand of the
+queen-mother. These fêtes reanimated more than ever the taste for devices
+and emblems, which tourneys had formerly made the fashion, and which had
+lasted after them.
+
+In 1662, an antiquarian called D’Ouvrier designed for Louis XIV the
+emblem of a sun darting its rays on a globe, with the words: _Nec
+pluribus impar_. The idea imitated somewhat a Spanish device made for
+Philip II, and which was more appropriate for the Spanish king, who owned
+the best part of the New World and so many states in the old, than for
+a young king of France who as yet gave only hopes. This device had a
+prodigious success. The _armoires_ of the king, the crown furniture, the
+tapestries, the carvings, were decorated with it. The king never wore it
+in his tournaments.
+
+The fête of Versailles, in 1664, surpassed that of the carrousel by its
+originality, by its magnificence, and by the pleasures of mind which,
+being joined to the splendours of these diversions, added an attraction
+and graces which no fête before had ever had. Versailles began to be a
+charming place of abode.
+
+The 5th of May the king came there with the court, composed of six
+hundred persons, who, together with their suites, were entertained
+at his expense, as well as all those who assisted in preparing the
+entertainments. Nothing was ever lacking at these fêtes except buildings
+especially constructed for giving them, such as were raised by the Greeks
+and Romans. The quickness, however, with which theatres, amphitheatres,
+and porticoes were erected, and ornamented with as much magnificence
+as good taste, was a marvel which added to the illusion and which,
+diversified since in a thousand different ways, increased the charm of
+these exhibitions.
+
+There was first a sort of tournament. Those who were to take part
+appeared on the first day as in a review; they were preceded by heralds
+at arms, by pages and equerries who carried their devices and their
+shields. On the shields were written verses composed by Périgny and
+Benserade. This latter especially had a singular talent for those gallant
+verses in which he always made delicate and piquant allusions to the
+character of the persons, to the personages of antiquity or of fable
+which were represented, and to the passions which animated the court.
+The king represented Roger; all the crown diamonds glittered on his coat
+and on the horse he rode. The queens and three hundred ladies, under
+triumphal arches, watched this entrance.
+
+[Illustration: MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIÈRE
+
+(1644-1710)]
+
+The king with all eyes fastened upon him distinguished only those of La
+Vallière. The fête was for her alone; she enjoyed it hidden in the crowd.
+The cavalcade was followed by a gilded car, 18 feet high, 15 feet wide,
+and 24 feet long, representing the chariot of the sun. The four ages, of
+gold, silver, bronze, and iron, the signs of the zodiac, the seasons, the
+hours, followed this car on foot. Everything was in character. Shepherds
+carried pieces of the barrier which were adjusted to the sound of
+trumpets, followed at intervals by bagpipes and violins. Certain persons
+who followed Apollo’s car came first to the queens to recite verses
+appropriate to the place and time, to the king and the ladies. When the
+races were finished and night was come, four thousand great torches lit
+up the space wherein fêtes were given. Tables were served by two hundred
+persons, representing the seasons, fauns, sylvan creatures, dryads,
+together with shepherds, vintagers, harvesters. Pan and Diana advanced
+on a moving mountain from which they descended to place on tables the
+most delicious products of field and forest. Behind these tables in the
+half circle, a theatre filled with performers arose. The arcades which
+surrounded the tables and theatre were ornamented with five hundred green
+and silver chandeliers, holding candles; a gilded balustrade shut in
+this vast enclosure. These fêtes, so far superior to those invented in
+romances, lasted for seven days. The king carried off the prize of the
+games four times, and then let other cavaliers contest for the prizes
+he had gained, which he abandoned to them. The comedy of the _Princesse
+d’Élide_, although not one of Molière’s best, was one of the most
+agreeable attractions of these entertainments, on account of an infinity
+of fine allegories on the customs of the times and by the apposite
+observations which form an agreeable feature of such entertainments, but
+which lose their point for posterity.
+
+The chief glory of these entertainments, which in France perfected good
+taste, good form, and talent, came from the fact that they detracted
+nothing from the continual labours of the monarch. Without these labours
+he would have been able only to hold a court, he would not have known how
+to reign; and if the magnificent amusements of this court had increased
+the misery of the people, they would have been only odious; but the
+same man who had given these fêtes had also given the people bread
+in the famine of 1662. He caused grain to be brought, which the rich
+bought at a low price, and which he gave to poor families at the gate
+of the Louvre. He had returned three millions of taxes to the people;
+no part of the interior administration had been neglected.[b] Yet it
+cannot be overlooked that bad economics underlay most of these financial
+measures,--as, indeed, of all Colbert’s work.[a]
+
+The legate Chigi, sent by Pope Alexander VII, arrived at Versailles in
+the midst of all these enjoyments to render satisfaction to the king
+for the assault of the papal guards.[b] This attack had taken place on
+August 20th, 1662, at Rome. It precipitated a quarrel very similar to
+that which had taken place in London the preceding year. The liveried
+servants of the duke de Créqui, the ambassador, had a fight with the
+Corsican guard; one of them was killed, the duke was insulted and his
+coach fired upon. Louis XIV demanded reparation. The court of Rome
+attempted, according to the custom of the times, to gain time; the king
+insisted, sent the papal nuncio to the frontier under escort, occupied
+the county of Venaissin, sent troops into the duchies of Parma and Modena
+in Italy, and finally threatened war. Alexander VII, seeing that these
+menaces were serious, gave in (1664). His own brother, the legate Fabio
+Chigi, brought in person the desired satisfaction. Louis XIV then gave
+back Avignon and Venaissin.[e] This visit of the papal delegate revealed
+to the court a new spectacle. The grand ceremonies were fêtes for the
+public. The honours paid him made the satisfaction more brilliant. Seated
+under a dais, he received the greetings of the superior courts, of the
+municipal courts, and of the clergy. He entered Paris to the sound of
+cannon, having the great Condé at his right and the son of that prince
+at his left; and in this manner he came to humiliate himself, Rome, and
+the pope, before a king who had not yet drawn a sword. After the audience
+he dined with Louis XIV, and the chief thought of all was to treat him
+magnificently and give him pleasure.
+
+[Sidenote: [1669-1679 A.D.]]
+
+All this gave to the court of Louis XIV an air of grandeur which affected
+all the other courts of Europe. The king wanted this _éclat_, which
+was attached to his person, to reflect on all that surrounded him. To
+distinguish his principal courtiers he invented blue cassocks embroidered
+with gold and silver. The permission to wear them was a great favour
+to men influenced chiefly by vanity. They were sought after almost like
+the collars of the order. We may mention here, since we are speaking of
+details, that it was the fashion then to wear cassocks over a doublet
+ornamented with ribbons, and over this cassock passed a shoulder band to
+which the sword was attached. A kind of lace band was worn around the
+neck and on the head a hat decorated with two rows of feathers. This
+fashion, which lasted until 1684, became that of all Europe with the
+exception of Spain and Poland. Almost everywhere people prided themselves
+on imitating the court of Louis XIV.
+
+Louis established order in his household, regulated ranks and factions,
+and created new offices in connection with his person, such as that of
+the grand-master of his wardrobe. He re-established the tables instituted
+by Francis I, and augmented them. There were twelve for the officers
+of the king’s household, which were served with as much niceness and
+profusion as those of many sovereigns. He wanted all strangers to be
+invited to them, and this attention lasted during all his reign. There
+was another attention which was even more select and polite. When he had
+the pavilions of Marly built in 1679, all the ladies found a complete
+toilet-set in their apartments; nothing which belonged to commodious
+luxury was forgotten. Whoever was on a journey could give repasts in his
+apartments, and was served there with the same delicacy as the master.
+These little things acquire value only when they are sustained by greater
+ones. In everything which the king did might be seen splendour and
+generosity. He made a present of 200,000 francs to the daughters of his
+ministers on their marriage.
+
+One can easily imagine the effect which this magnificence had in Europe.
+The French were not the only ones who praised him: twelve panegyrics were
+pronounced on Louis XIV in different towns of Italy--an homage rendered
+neither from fear nor hope of favour, which the marquis Zampieri sent to
+the king.
+
+He continued to extend his patronage to letters and to the arts. Proofs
+of this are the particular gratuities of about 4,000 livres to Racine,
+the fortune of Despréaux, that of Quinault, and above all that of Lully
+and of all the artists who consecrated their work to him. The king danced
+in ballets until the year 1670. He was then thirty-two years old. The
+tragedy of _Britannicus_ was played before him at St. Germain; he was
+struck by these verses:
+
+    _Pour mérite premier, pour vertu singulière,_
+    _Il excelle à traîner un char dans la carrière,_
+    _A disputer des prix indignes de ses mains,_
+    _A se donner lui-même en spectacle aux Romains._
+
+After that he never again danced in public: the poet had reformed the
+monarch. His union with La Vallière still continued in spite of his
+frequent infidelities to her. These infidelities cost him little trouble.
+He never found women who resisted him, and he always came back to the
+one who, by the sweetness and goodness of her character, by her sincere
+affection, and even by the chains of habit, had subjugated him without
+the aid of art. But beginning with the year 1669, La Vallière perceived
+that Madame de Montespan was gaining the ascendency; she fought against
+it with her usual sweetness; she supported for a long time, and almost
+without complaining, the pain of being the witness of her rival’s
+triumph; she still thought herself happy in being even thought of by the
+king, whom she continued to love, and in seeing him without being loved
+by him.
+
+Finally in 1675 she embraced the resource of tender souls, which need
+deep and intense sentiments to subjugate them. She thought that God
+alone could succeed her lover in her heart. Her conversion became just
+as celebrated as her affection. She became a Carmelite at Paris and
+persevered in her resolve. To wear haircloth, to walk with bare feet, to
+fast rigorously, to sing at night in chorus in an unknown tongue--all
+this did not repulse the delicacy of a woman accustomed to so much glory,
+luxury, and pleasure. She lived this austere life from 1675 to 1710,
+under the simple name of Louise de la Miséricorde.
+
+It is known that when Sister Louise de la Miséricorde was told of the
+death of the duke de Vermandois, whom she had borne to the king, she
+said: “I ought to weep for his birth more than for his death.” One
+daughter was left to her, who resembled the king the most of all his
+children. She married the prince Armand de Conti, nephew of the Great
+Condé.
+
+
+_Madame de Montespan_
+
+[Sidenote: [1670-1675 A.D.]]
+
+In the meantime the marquise de Montespan was enjoying the king’s favour
+with much _éclat_ and authority. Athénaïs de Mortemar, wife of the
+marquis de Montespan, her elder sister the marquise de Thiange, and her
+younger sister, for whom she obtained the abbey of Fontevrault, were
+the most beautiful women of their day, and all three joined to this
+distinction singular attractions of mind. The duke de Vivonne, their
+brother, and marshal of France, was also one of the men at court who had
+the most good taste and was best read. It was to him that the king said
+one day: “But what is the good of reading?” The duke de Vivonne, who
+was stout and red faced, answered: “Reading does for the mind what your
+partridges do to my cheeks.”
+
+These four persons were universally popular by a singular style of
+conversation mingled with pleasantry, naïveté, and wit, which was known
+as _l’esprit de Mortemar_. They all wrote with an ease and grace peculiar
+to them.
+
+[Illustration: MADAME DE MONTESPAN
+
+(1641-1707)]
+
+Madame de Montespan’s triumph burst forth during a journey which the
+king made to Flanders in 1670. The ruin of the Dutch was prepared
+on this journey in the midst of entertainments. It was a continual
+fête, accompanied with great pomp. The king, who made all his war
+expeditions on horseback, made this one for the first time in a closed
+carriage. Postchaises had not yet been invented. The queen, Madame,
+her sister-in-law, and the marquise de Montespan were in this superb
+equipage, followed by many others, and when Madame de Montespan was alone
+she had four bodyguards at the doors of her carriage. The dauphin came
+next with his court. Mademoiselle with hers; it was before the fatal
+event of her marriage; she took part in all these triumphs in peace and
+saw with complaisance her lover, the king’s favourite, at the head of his
+company of guards. The most beautiful crown furniture was carried to the
+towns where they slept. In every city they found a masked or dress ball,
+or fireworks. All his military retinue accompanied the king and all his
+household retinue followed or preceded him. The tables were kept as at
+St. Germain. In this pomp the court visited all the conquered cities. The
+principal ladies of Brussels, of Ghent came to see this magnificence. The
+king invited them to his table. He made them very handsome presents. All
+the officers of the garrison troops received gratuities. His liberality
+cost the king several times fifteen hundred gold louis a day.
+
+All the honour, all the homage was for Madame de Montespan, except
+what duty gave to the queen. Nevertheless this lady did not share the
+secrets of state. The king knew how to distinguish affairs of state from
+pleasure. The unfortunate experience of a maid of honour to the queen in
+1673 gave rise to a new court order. The danger attached to the position
+of a young girl in a gallant and voluptuous court caused twelve ladies
+of the palace to be substituted for the twelve maids of honour, who
+had graced the court and the queen’s presence. After that the queens’
+households were composed in that manner. This arrangement made the court
+larger and more magnificent, by establishing in it the husbands and
+families of these ladies, which increased the society and spread greater
+opulence.
+
+
+_Poisoning: The Brinvilliers Case_
+
+[Sidenote: [1670-1685 A.D.]]
+
+About 1670 the crime of poisoning began to be prevalent in France. This
+revenge of cowards had not been employed during the horrors of the civil
+war, but, by a singular fatality, had infected France in the time of
+glory and of the pleasures which softened manners, even as it found its
+way into ancient Rome in the fairest days of the republic.
+
+Two Italians, one of whom bore the name of Exili, worked for a long time
+with a German apothecary called Glaser, in quest of the philosopher’s
+stone. In this enterprise the two Italians lost the little they had and
+endeavoured, by crime, to repair the harm done by their folly; they
+secretly sold poisons. Confession, the greatest curb to human wickedness
+but which is abused in the idea that one may perform the crimes one is
+sure of expiating, was the means of informing the grand penitentiary
+of Paris that certain persons had died of poison; he apprised the
+government. The two Italians were suspected, and put in the Bastille; one
+of the two died there; Exili remained there without being convicted; and
+from the depths of his prison he spread through Paris those dark secrets
+which cost the lives of the civil lieutenant D’Aubrai and his family, and
+which finally led to the establishment of the Chamber of Poisons, called
+the _Chambre Ardente_.
+
+Love was the prime source of these horrible tragedies. The marquis of
+Brinvilliers, son-in-law of the civil lieutenant D’Aubrai, had in his
+house Sainte-Croix, the captain of his regiment, a man with too handsome
+a face: his wife warned him of the consequences; the husband persisted
+in letting the young man remain in the house with his wife, a young,
+beautiful, and susceptible woman. What might have been expected happened:
+they fell in love with each other. The civil lieutenant, father of the
+marquise, was harsh and imprudent enough to solicit a _lettre de cachet_
+and get the captain, who needed only to be returned to his regiment,
+sent to the Bastille. Sainte-Croix was unfortunately put in a room with
+Exili: this Italian taught him how to revenge himself; the results make
+one shudder. The marquise did not attempt the life of her husband, who
+had had some indulgence for a love of which he was himself the cause,
+but the fury of her vengeance induced her to poison her father, her two
+brothers, and her sister. Amidst so many crimes she was religious; she
+often went to confession, and when she was arrested at Liège a general
+confession was even found written in her handwriting, which served not as
+a proof against her but as presumptive evidence. It is not true that she
+tried her poisons in the hospitals as the people said, and as written in
+the _Causes célèbres_, the work of a briefless barrister (François Gabot
+de Pitaval) and made for the people; but it is true that she as well as
+Sainte-Croix had secret connections with persons afterwards accused of
+the same crimes. She was burned in 1676 after having had her head cut
+off. But from 1670, when Exili had begun to make poisons, down to 1680
+this crime infected Paris. It cannot be concealed that Penautier, the
+receiver-general of the clergy and a friend of this woman, was accused
+some time afterwards of having put his secrets in practice and that it
+cost him half his wealth to suppress the indictment.
+
+The Bavarian princess, wife of Monseigneur,[123] at first added
+brilliancy and vivacity to this court. The marquise de Montespan still
+attracted the principal attention but finally she ceased to please, and
+the violent transports of her grief did not bring back a heart that was
+forsaking her. However, she still kept her place at court, through her
+high position, being superintendent of the queen’s household, and with
+the king through habit and through her authority. The youth and beauty
+of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, a son she had borne to the king in 1680,
+the title of duchess she had received, kept Madame de Maintenon away from
+the first place, to which she did not then dare to aspire but which she
+afterwards obtained. The duchess de Fontanges, however, and her son died
+in 1681.
+
+The marquise de Montespan, although she no longer had an open rival, none
+the less did not possess the heart tired of her and of her complaints.
+When men are no longer in their youth they almost all have need of the
+society of an agreeable woman. Above all the weight of affairs makes
+this consolation necessary. The new favourite, Madame de Maintenon, who
+felt the secret power she was gaining every day, bore herself with that
+art so natural to women and which is never displeasing to men. She wrote
+one day to Madame de Frontenac, her cousin, in whom she placed an entire
+confidence: “I always send him away dissatisfied but never discouraged.”
+During this time, when her favour was increasing and Madame de Montespan
+was nearing her fall, these two rivals saw each other every day, now with
+a secret bitterness, now with a passing confidence which the necessity
+of speaking to each other and the weariness of constraint sometimes put
+into their interviews. They agreed to write, each from her point of
+view, memoirs of all that happened at court. The work never went very
+far. Madame de Montespan took pleasure in reading selections from these
+memoirs to her friends, in the last years of her life. The pious devotion
+which was joined to all these secret intrigues further strengthened the
+favour of Madame de Maintenon and weakened that of Madame de Montespan.
+The king reproached himself for his attachment to a married woman and
+felt this scruple still more since he had begun to feel no more love
+for her. This embarrassing situation continued until 1685, a year made
+memorable by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Very different scenes
+were to be seen at that time--on one side the despair and flight of a
+part of the nation, on the other new fêtes at Versailles; Trianon and
+Marly built; nature in all these places forced with delights, and gardens
+in which every art was exhausted. The marriage of the grandson of the
+Great Condé with Mademoiselle de Nantes, daughter of the king and Madame
+de Montespan, was the last triumph of this mistress who began to retire
+from court.
+
+
+_The Retirement of Montespan_
+
+[Sidenote: [1685-1707 A.D.]]
+
+The king afterwards gave in marriage two other children he had had by
+her: Mademoiselle de Blois to the duke de Chartres, and the duke du Maine
+to Louise Benédicte de Bourbon, granddaughter of the Great Condé and
+sister of Monsieur le Duc,[124] a princess celebrated for her wit and
+liking for the arts.
+
+Before the celebration of the marriage of Monsieur le Duc with
+Mademoiselle de Nantes, the marquis de Seignelay in honour of that event
+gave the king a fête worthy of that monarch in the gardens of Sceaux,
+which had been planted by Le Nôtre with as much taste as those of
+Versailles. The idyll of Peace composed by Racine was performed on that
+occasion. At Versailles there was a new tournament and after the marriage
+the king displayed a singular magnificence, for which Cardinal Mazarin
+had given the first idea in 1656.
+
+Four booths were put up in the salon at Marly, filled with the richest
+and most select products of the industry of Parisian workmen. These four
+booths were at the same time so many splendid decorations representing
+the four seasons of the year. Madame de Montespan presided over one with
+Monseigneur. Her rival, Madame de Maintenon, was in another with the duke
+du Maine. The newly married couple each had charge of one: Monsieur le
+Duc with Madame de Thiange; and Madame la Duchesse, whom propriety did
+not permit to have one with a man on account of her extreme youth, was
+with the duchess de Chevreuse. The so-called gentlemen and ladies _du
+voyage_ drew lots for the jewels with which the booths were decorated.
+The king then made presents to the whole court in a manner worthy of a
+king. Cardinal Mazarin’s lottery was less ingenious and less brilliant.
+These lotteries had been formerly put into fashion by the Roman emperors,
+but not one of them ever relieved its magnificence with so much gallantry.
+
+After the marriage of her daughter Madame de Montespan did not again
+appear at court. She lived a very dignified life at Paris. She had a
+large income, but it was a life annuity, and the king always paid her
+a pension of 1,000 gold louis a month. She went every year to take the
+waters at Bourbon, and there married off the girls of the neighbourhood,
+whom she endowed. She was no longer at the age when the imagination,
+affected by lively impressions, sends one to the Carmelites. She died at
+Bourbon in 1707.
+
+One year after the marriage of Mademoiselle de Nantes with Monsieur le
+Duc, the prince of Condé died at Fontainebleau, at the age of sixty-six,
+of an illness which was hastened by his desire to go to see Madame la
+Duchesse, who had smallpox.
+
+
+_Madame de Maintenon_
+
+Meanwhile, after the marriage of Madame la Duchesse, after the total
+eclipse of the mother, the victorious Madame de Maintenon achieved such
+an influence and inspired Louis XIV with so much tenderness and such
+scruples, that the king, by the advice of Père Lachaise, married her
+secretly in the month of January, 1686,[125] in the small chapel in the
+apartments occupied afterwards by the duke of Burgundy. There was no
+contract, no stipulation. The archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Chanvalon,
+pronounced the benediction, the confessor assisting. Montchevreuil and
+Bontemps, first valet de chambre, were the witnesses. Louis XIV was
+at the time in his forty-eighth year and the woman he espoused in her
+fifty-second. This sovereign, crowned with glory, desired to combine
+with the fatigues of governing the innocent joys of private life; this
+marriage bound him to nothing incompatible with his rank; it was always
+a problem to the court. Since Madame de Maintenon was really married, it
+respected her as the king’s choice, without treating her as queen.
+
+[Illustration: MADAME DE MAINTENON
+
+(1635-1719)]
+
+She was of an old family, granddaughter of Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné,
+gentleman of the chamber to Henry IV. His father, Constant d’Aubigné,
+wishing to establish himself in business in the Carolinas, applied to
+the English government, and was thrown into the prison of the château
+Trompette, from which he escaped with the assistance of the daughter of
+the governor of the prison, a gentleman from Bordeaux named Cadillac.
+Constant d’Aubigné married his benefactress in 1627 and took her with
+him to the Carolinas. Returning with her to France after several years,
+both were imprisoned at Niort in Poitou, by order of the court. In this
+prison was born, in 1635, Françoise d’Aubigné, destined to know all the
+greatest hardships of life as well as the highest favours of fortune.
+Taken at the age of three to America (Martinique), brought back an
+orphan of twelve years, brought up with the greatest severity by Madame
+de Neuillant, mother of the duchess de Navailles her relative, she was
+only too glad to marry in 1651 Paul Scarron, who lived near her in the
+rue d’Enfer. Scarron came of an old family of parliament, distinguished
+by its important matrimonial alliances; but his profession of burlesque
+poet lowered him while making him popular. It was nevertheless a stroke
+of fortune for Mademoiselle d’Aubigné to marry this man, deformed in
+mind and body, and with very modest means. She abjured Calvinism, her
+own religion as well as that of her ancestors, before this marriage.
+Her beauty and wit soon made her distinguished. She was eagerly sought
+after by the best society of Paris, and this time of her youth was no
+doubt the happiest period of her life. After the death of her husband,
+in 1660, she was for a long time unable to obtain from the king a modest
+pension of 1,500 livres which Scarron had enjoyed. Finally, after several
+years, the king granted her one of two thousand, saying, “Madame, I
+have made you wait a long time, but you have so many friends that my
+only distinction could be in not being one of them.” Meanwhile it is
+proved, by the letters of Madame de Maintenon, that she owed to Madame
+de Montespan the slight assistance she received to relieve her poverty.
+It was remembered several years later, when it became necessary to
+bring up secretly the duke du Maine, son of the king by the marquise de
+Montespan, born in 1672. The duke du Maine was born with a deformed foot.
+The chief physician, D’Aquin, who was in the secret, decided that the
+child should be taken to the baths at Barèges. It was necessary to find a
+confidential person to be intrusted with this charge. The king suggested
+Madame Scarron. Louvois went secretly to Paris to propose this journey to
+her. From that time on she was in charge of the education of the duke du
+Maine--chosen for this duty by the king and not by Madame de Montespan,
+as has erroneously been said.
+
+She wrote directly to the king; her letters pleased him greatly. This
+was the origin of her good fortune--her shrewdness did the rest. The
+king, who at first did not like her, passed from aversion to confidence
+and from confidence to love. The letters which we have of hers are of
+much greater importance than they would seem: they show that mixture of
+religion and gallantry, of dignity and weakness, which are often found in
+the human heart, and which certainly were in that of Louis XIV. Madame
+de Maintenon seemed to be filled at the same time with an ambition and
+a devoutness which never appeared to conflict. Her confessor, Gobelin,
+approved equally of both: he was spiritual guide as well as courtier; his
+penitent, having become ungrateful towards Madame de Montespan, always
+dissembled this feeling. Her confessor encouraged her in her aspirations.
+She called religion to the assistance of her waning charms to supplant
+her benefactress, now become her rival.
+
+This strange mixture of love and scruple on the part of the king, of
+ambition and devoutness on the part of the new mistress, seemed to have
+lasted from 1681 to 1686, the date of their marriage. Her elevation was
+for her only a seclusion. Shut up in her apartments, which were on the
+same floor as those of the king, she limited herself to the society
+of two or three ladies, retiring like herself--she saw even them very
+rarely. The king came to her apartments every day after supper, and
+remained until midnight. There he worked with his ministers, while
+Madame de Maintenon read, or occupied herself with needlework; she
+never attempted to speak on affairs of state, seemed often to ignore
+them, putting far from her any appearance of intrigue or plotting; much
+more occupied in humouring him who governed than seeking to govern, in
+managing her income, and expending it with the greatest cautiousness.
+
+Louis XIV in marrying Madame de Maintenon gained only an agreeable and
+submissive companion. The sole public distinction which testified to her
+secret elevation was, that during mass she occupied one of those small
+gilded stalls which were supposed to be only for the king and queen.
+Beyond that, no display, no grandeur. The devoutness with which she had
+inspired the king and which had led to her marriage, became gradually a
+true and profound sentiment, which age and ennui served to strengthen.
+She already posed at the court and before the king as a foundress by
+gathering together at Noisy several young girls of the nobility; and the
+king had already set apart the revenues of the abbey of St. Denis for
+that budding community. St. Cyr was built at the foot of the park of
+Versailles in 1686.
+
+On the death of the king she retired for life to St. Cyr. What is
+surprising, is that the king left her almost nothing. He simply
+recommended her to the duke of Orleans. She asked for a pension of only
+24,000 livres, which was scrupulously paid her, until her death on April
+15th, 1719.[b]
+
+Turning now from this survey of the court, let us examine the effect of
+Louis XIV’s policy on the nation at large.
+
+
+EFFECT OF LOUIS XIV’S POLICY ON THE NATION
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]
+
+Louis XIV’s reign falls into two parts, easy to distinguish, the one
+from the other; the first covers from 1661 to 1683, the second, and much
+the longer, from 1683 to 1715. In the first period, Louis XIV found four
+men of genius, who were also scrupulously honest men, to uphold and even
+direct him in everything concerning the internal government, diplomacy,
+warfare, and defence of the kingdom. In an equal degree Colbert, Lionne,
+Turenne, and Vauban exercised a salutary and fruitful influence over
+the king’s mind, never divorcing the welfare of the kingdom from that
+of the king, and seeking before all else the greatness or the security
+of the empire by adopting the best of the measures which had proved so
+successful under Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin. The profound reverence
+which Colbert, more especially, had for the memory of Richelieu, whom he
+wished the king to take as his model, provoked Louis’ jests. “When any
+important matter was under discussion,” says a contemporary chronicle,
+“the late king would often exclaim, ‘Colbert there will tell us: Sire,
+the great Cardinal Richelieu.’ Which, however, did not prevent Colbert
+from pursuing his object, and moulding the king in Richelieu’s likeness.”
+
+In the second period, Louis, prematurely aged, disillusioned, and ill,
+reduced to a stern performance of his duties as a man and a Christian
+by the froward influence of an obstinate and ambitious woman, drew
+inspiration from none but narrow ideals, applying the most fatal maxims
+to home government and foreign policy. He yielded to the advice of
+persons whom he had for long encouraged to flatter his prejudices, and
+who urged him along a path of bloody repressions. Louvois, Madame de
+Maintenon, Chamillard, and Villeroi were the real wielders of authority.
+They sacrificed the well-being of the kingdom to their own interest,
+which they sought to confound with the interests of the crown. They
+prepared the way for the ruin of the state by the most disastrous home
+measures, while they ruined the prestige of France abroad by changing the
+character of her policy.[m]
+
+The trouble was not only in the royal household; it also threatened to be
+in the state; for Louis, violating all laws civil and religious, placed
+the legitimated princes side by side with the princes of the blood.
+He forced the court to pay equal respect to both; and public morality
+received a blow from which it was slow to recover. The lessons in scandal
+which came from the throne were not lost, and the corruption, which was
+fermenting in spite of the apparent austerity of the last years, was to
+break out under the new reign without restraint and without shame. Those
+dukes of Orleans and Vendôme, given up to filthy debauches, that duke
+d’Antin surprised in a flagrant act of theft, and so many others who
+contrived at play to correct the chances of fortune; those princesses
+of the blood who at Marly within two steps of the king and Madame de
+Maintenon, send for such strange pastimes[126]--that court in fine which,
+according to Saint-Simon,[i] “sweated hypocrisy,” all shows, under a
+king who plays the devotee, when he is no longer able to do otherwise,
+that human morality, conscience, and dignity can never be violated with
+impunity. Already, even in the very heart of Versailles, a premonitory
+cry is heard. In face of these gilded lives La Bruyère writes: “The great
+have no soul; I would be of the people.” It was at Versailles that the
+French nobility ruined themselves. There official ennui led to secret
+debauches; the habit of receiving everything from the monarch led to the
+belief that all was due not to services but to servility.
+
+One irrefutable witness of the wretchedness of this period has been
+left to us--the memorials which the king demanded of the intendants on
+the condition of their provinces in order that his grandson the duke of
+Burgundy might by studying them become acquainted with the affairs of
+the administration. At every page these distressing words recur, “War,
+mortality, the continual quartering and passage of the soldiers, the
+militia, the great prerogatives, the withdrawal of the Huguenots have
+ruined this country.” Bridges, roads were in a deplorable state and
+commerce was annihilated. The frontier provinces were further crushed by
+requisitions and the pillage of the soldiers who, receiving neither pay
+nor food, helped themselves. In the generality of Rouen, out of 700,000
+inhabitants 650,000 had a bundle of straw for their beds. In certain
+provinces the peasant was returning to a state of savagery: living for
+the most part on herbs and roots like the beasts; and, wild as they were,
+he fled if one approached. “There is no nation more savage than these
+people,” the intendant of Bourges says of those under his administration;
+“sometimes troops of them are to be seen in the country, seated in a
+circle in the middle of a field and always far from the roads; if one
+approach the band immediately disperses.”[c]
+
+We have seen Louis XIV at home; let us now turn to his relations with
+other countries.[a]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[111] Table of the direct ancestors of Louis XIV for four generations,
+showing birthplace of each ancestor. It will be noted that Ferdinand I
+and Anna of Hungary appear twice in the fourth generation column. The
+actual number of persons, therefore, is twenty-eight instead of thirty.[a]
+
+                         THIRD GENERATION        FOURTH GENERATION
+
+                             Anthony  +-Charles, d. of Vendôme      France
+                  SECOND    de Bourbon|
+                GENERATION +----------+
+                           |  France  |
+                   Henry IV|          +-Françoise d’Alençon         France
+                  +--------+
+           FIRST  | France |  Jeanne  +-Henry II, K. of Navarre     France
+        GENERATION|        | d’Albret |
+                  |        +----------+
+            Louis |           France  |
+            XIII  |                   +-Marguerite d’Angoulême      France
+          +-------+
+          |France |                   +-Cosmo I, G. D. of Tuscany    Italy
+          |       |         Francesco |
+          |       |        I, Grand D.|
+          |       |        of Tuscany |
+          |       |        +----------+
+          |       | Marie  |   Italy  |
+          |       |d’Medici|          +-Leonora of Toledo            Spain
+          |       +--------+
+          |         Italy  |  Joanna  +-Emp. Ferdinand I             Spain
+          |                | Arch., D.|
+          |                +----------+
+          |                   Austria |
+ Louis XIV|                           +-Anna of Hungary            Hungary
+   France |
+ 1688-1715|                           +-Charles V      Spanish Netherlands
+          |                 Philip II |
+          |                +----------+
+          |         Philip |   Spain  |
+          |          III   |          +-Isabella                  Portugal
+          |       +--------+
+          |       | Spain  | Anne of  +-Maximilian II              Austria
+          |       |        | Austria  |
+          |       |        +----------+
+          |Anne of|          Austria  |
+          |Austria|                   +-Maria (d. Emp. Ch. VI)       Spain
+          +-------+
+            Spain |          Charles, +-_Emp. Ferdinand I_          _Spain_
+                  |         D. Styria |
+                  |        +----------+
+                  |        | Austria  |
+                  |Margaret|          +-_Anna of Hungary_         _Hungary_
+                  +--------+
+                   Austria | Maria of +-Albrecht V                 Bavaria
+                           |  Bavaria |
+                           +----------+
+                              Bavaria |
+                                      +-Anne (d. Emp. Ferdinand I) Austria
+
+[112] There were in Louis XIV’s day three councils: (1) The supreme
+council, to which the king summoned the secretaries of state and
+sometimes the princes of the blood. It had the general direction of the
+governmental policy and important affairs. It judged appeals from the
+state council. (2) The state council, placed beneath the ministry but
+above the higher courts. It was the great administrative body of the
+realm, meeting four times a week, the chancellor presiding. On one day it
+read and discussed the reports of the provincial governors; on another
+it discussed financial questions; on another it listened to complaints
+on taxation; on another it adjudged differences between the courts. The
+state councillors were eighteen in number. (3) The grand council, which
+occupied itself with cases covering the bishoprics and the benefices at
+the king’s disposal. It judged the edicts of the sovereign courts and
+the conflicts between the parliament and the lower courts. Its decisions
+were executive throughout the whole kingdom, while the sentences of each
+parliament applied only to its own territory.
+
+[113] [Voltaire is wrong here, says Martin:[d] “Fouquet had spent about
+nine millions” (almost eighteen nowadays and perhaps forty-five in
+relative value).]
+
+[114] [Louis XIV had little love for Paris and created Versailles, or
+rather greatly enlarged the old château of Louis XIII, by making immense
+additions, and by constructing the fine façade on the park side which,
+with its extended wings, made it the most superb and vast abode in the
+world.[e]]
+
+[115] [The above mentioned _régime des classes_.]
+
+[116] [If the words were not uttered the thought was certainly present.
+Louis XIV is known to have written on one occasion, “The nation does not
+constitute a body in France; it resides entirely in the person of the
+king.”]
+
+[117] [In 1680 the Paris _corps de ville_ solemnly conferred on the king
+the title of Louis the Great, which, hitherto used sometimes on medals,
+now became _de rigueur_ in official language.[d]]
+
+[118] In 1669 the sister house of Port-Royal de Paris was placed under
+Jesuit management. It was to this house that Clement XI ordered the
+transference of the property of Port-Royal des Champs, the year before
+the buildings were destroyed. The aged sisters were dispersed.
+
+[119] In 1694 a printer and a publisher were hanged for libel, by
+sentence of De la Reynie. Several persons were interrogated or died in
+the Bastille for the same reason. The author of the pamphlet against the
+archbishop of Rheims was imprisoned in an iron cage at Mont St. Michel.
+
+[120] These were letters written by order of the king, countersigned
+by a secretary of state, and sealed with the king’s seal, by virtue of
+which the police arrested a citizen, and imprisoned him without trial, as
+long as it pleased the government, without his being seen or allowed to
+receive letters from anyone.
+
+[121] [Anne of Austria died of cancer January 20th, 1666.]
+
+[122] [Madame’s husband, Philip duke of Orleans, who had assumed that
+title on the death of Gaston in 1660, was a man of licentious habits,
+and although he distinguished himself in war, as we shall see, his
+effeminacy was of a most marked type. There is no doubt that Monsieur
+was most indifferent to his wife, and many historians, including
+Michelet,[l] believe that Louis XIV was the father of her children. Of
+these, two daughters arrived at maturity--Marie Louise, who married
+Charles II of Spain, and Anne Marie, who married Victor Amadeus of Savoy,
+afterwards king of Sardinia. Madame died 1670, under circumstances
+which will be related in the next chapter, and which were open to the
+suspicion of poison. The following year Monsieur married the princess
+palatine--Charlotte Elizabeth. She was the mother of the duke of Orleans,
+regent of the realm, and died in 1722.]
+
+[123] [By this title was known the “grand dauphin” Louis, only child of
+Louis XIV and his queen, born in 1661. The dauphin married in 1680 the
+princess Marie Anne Christine Victoire of Bavaria.]
+
+[124] [Louis de Bourbon-Condé, who was the father of Louis XV’s prime
+minister.]
+
+[125] [The queen Maria Theresa had died July 30th, 1683, quite suddenly.
+She held so little place at court that the event was scarcely noticed.[e]]
+
+[126] Monseigneur played late in the salon. On withdrawing to his own
+apartments he went up to the princesses (the duchesses de Chartres and de
+Bourbon) and found them smoking with pipes which they had sent for from
+the Swiss guardhouse. Monseigneur made them stop this diversion, but the
+smoke betrayed them. Next morning the king administered a rough rebuke.[i]
+
+The duchess de la Ferté assembled her purveyors at her house and played a
+kind of lansquenet with them. She whispered in my ear, “I cheat them but
+they rob me.” _Mémoires_ of Madame de Staal.[o]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. LOUIS XIV, SPAIN, AND HOLLAND
+
+    I doubt whether any human being ever enjoyed, in greater
+    perfection, the blessing of nerves toned to habitual energy,
+    and exempt from all morbid sensitiveness. Heat, cold, pain,
+    fatigue, and hunger seemed to have no power over him. Not only
+    his delicate courtiers but his hardy veterans admired the
+    stoicism of their invulnerable king; and his mental composure
+    was on a level with his bodily hardihood. No provocation could
+    excite him to unseemly anger, and no calamity could depress him
+    to unmanly dejection. If he was often the victim, he was never
+    the slave of appetite or passion. Though constantly exposed to
+    the allurements of the most exquisite flattery, and the most
+    fascinating caresses, he never yielded himself to the guidance
+    of any favourite, male or female; but adhered, with immutable
+    constancy and calmness, to the ministers whom he had either
+    trained or chosen.--STEPHEN.[n]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1679 A.D.]]
+
+The foreign situation in 1661 was most favourable. If it was necessary
+to wind up the affairs of Mazarin, all that had to be done abroad was to
+gather the fruits and enjoy the glory acquired. Europe was basking in
+a peace so profound that not a cloud seemed to threaten it. The powers
+were all occupied in reorganising their forces, some like England in
+reconstructing their government. Louis XIV was one of the freest of
+sovereigns; he was the most powerful, thanks to Mazarin; and he became
+the wealthiest, thanks to Colbert.
+
+He desired them to preserve peace and give no offence to Europe.
+Nevertheless he had inherited from Mazarin a fixed plan, and certain
+projects in harmony with the spirit of his government. His ambition was
+to invalidate the renunciation of Maria Theresa, in such a manner as to
+create a right for himself or his sons to the Spanish succession, or at
+least to the Netherlands.[127]
+
+He charged the archbishop of Embrun, his ambassador at Madrid, to demand
+that the renunciation be revoked. He maintained that it was not _ipso
+facto_, the infanta not having renounced her rights and the court of
+Spain having itself thus decided; that in all respects it had failed to
+obtain the necessary ratification; finally that the condition on which
+it had been made, the payment of a dowry of 500,000 crowns, had not been
+complied with. He offered, in case his plea was accepted, to ally himself
+the more closely with Spain, and even abandon all claims to Portugal in
+her favour; but Philip and his ministers eluded the question and refused
+to give an opinion.
+
+[Sidenote: [1661-1662 A.D.]]
+
+During the negotiations a serious affair occurred in London, where the
+baron de Vatteville, the Spanish ambassador, claimed precedence over
+the count d’Estrades, the ambassador of France. On October 8th, 1661,
+the Swedish envoy, the count de Brahé, was to be presented to the king
+of England. As the procession was about to start, D’Estrades tried to
+make his coach pass first, and a troop of armed men under orders from
+Vatteville stopped it. The Londoners took the part of the Spaniards;
+there was a fight--some were killed and wounded. In the end the French
+were obliged to retire.[b]
+
+At this news Louis XIV ordered the Spanish ambassador to leave France,
+and the French ambassador to Spain to demand the punishment of Vatteville
+and a reparation which should make such affairs henceforth impossible.[c]
+
+Philip IV granted this without much difficulty. Vatteville was recalled;
+and March 22nd, 1662, the marquis de Fuentes declared at the Louvre
+before the assembled court that the Spanish envoys would claim no
+precedence over those of France, except at the court of Vienna where they
+had long been accustomed to occupy the first place on account of the
+close ties which united the two branches of the house of Austria.
+
+Meanwhile Spain still refused to recognise the rights of the infanta, and
+Louis XIV continued to uphold the Portuguese;[128] he even assisted in
+bringing about the marriage of Charles of England to a princess of the
+house of Braganza, who received Tangier, Bombay, and a considerable sum
+as dowry. Charles II sought, as did Cromwell, to develop English commerce
+and the navy, but he was needy, extravagant, and he feared the parsimony
+of parliament. Louis XIV advanced him money in secret and offered to buy
+back Dunkirk and Mardyck.[129] The bargain was concluded November 27th,
+1662, and France recovered the two towns which Mazarin had turned over to
+Cromwell with regret.
+
+By this acquisition Louis XIV took a first step towards the Netherlands,
+the object of his whole ambition. He awaited the moment when the
+question of Philip IV’s successor should be opened to uphold the rights
+of the infanta in the Belgian provinces, even though the determination
+of these rights was still a matter of debate. He wavered between the
+desire to reunite the major part of the Spanish Netherlands to France,
+giving the rest to Holland, or to occupy only a few places and erect the
+ten Belgian provinces into a republic or a neutral state. The latter
+plan was the less brilliant, but the easiest to carry out; and a state
+thus constituted would oppose a barrier to foreign invasion. Louis XIV
+negotiated in secret to obtain the eventual concurrence of Holland in
+his plans, but in spite of the efforts of the grand pensionary, the
+celebrated Jan de Witt, he could not obtain this. The Dutch understood
+too well that a Belgian republic would be dependent on Louis and would
+not oppose his ambitions.[b] Besides this the Dutch had a cause for
+complaint in the tax of 50 sous a ton, placed by Fouquet in 1659, upon
+foreign ships trading in French ports. After long debates this tax was
+reduced by half for Dutch ships and a defensive and commercial treaty was
+signed in 1662 in which France and Holland agreed to protect each other’s
+rights on land and sea.[a]
+
+The duchies of Lorraine and Bar had been returned to Duke Charles IV in
+1661 only on condition that he would not rebuild the ramparts of the
+towns, that he would only maintain one fortress, Marsal, and that French
+troops should have the right of passing through his territory. These
+conditions were not fulfilled. Louis lost patience and sent an army corps
+to Marsal. The duke bent before the necessity, and gave up Marsal on
+condition that he might hold the rest of his estates according to the
+terms of the treaty of 1661.[c]
+
+Louis, admirably counselled by Lionne, took care in preparing the
+execution of his designs against the Netherlands not to arouse the
+defiance of Europe. He managed only ostensibly to sustain the Portuguese;
+simply authorising them to take into their service Marshal de Schomberg
+and a body of French volunteers which helped them defend their
+liberties.[130]
+
+[Sidenote: [1663-1665 A.D.]]
+
+While Louis was feeling his strength he eagerly seized any opportunity
+for military enterprise which would give a high idea of himself and
+serve his policy.[b] In spite of his rough treatment of the head of the
+church in 1662-1664, he displayed zeal for the interests of Christianity
+against its great enemy the Turks, who continued to press the siege of
+Crete[131] and extend their conquests in Hungary and to desolate by
+piracy the entire coast of the Mediterranean. Divers plans were proposed
+in the king’s council for attacking the Ottoman power on the Barbary
+coasts and repressing the pirates. A squadron commanded by the duke de
+Beaufort, the former hero of the Fronde, landed 5,000 picked soldiers at
+Jijelli, a small Algerian port between Bougie and Bona. Jijelli was taken
+without difficulty (July 22nd, 1664), but discord arose between Beaufort
+and his officers. They were soon hard pressed by the Turks of Algiers,
+reinforced by numerous Arab and Kabyle bands, while Beaufort cruised in
+front of Tunis instead of making a diversion against Algiers, as the
+king had ordered. The military resources of the Algerians and especially
+their artillery were greater than the French had imagined; discord broke
+out, and after having repelled a few attacks the French were compelled to
+re-embark in such haste that they left their cannon behind.
+
+But the successes of Beaufort’s squadron, which the famous Chevalier
+Paul commanded, soon wiped out the stigma of this reverse; two Algerian
+flotillas were annihilated during the course of the year 1665.[c]
+
+A touching example of self-sacrifice was an incident of this war. The dey
+of Algiers had among his captives an officer from St. Malo, named Porcon
+de la Barbinais; he sent him to offer to the king proposals of peace,
+making him promise to return in case his mission failed. The lives of 600
+Christians were dependent upon his keeping his word. The propositions
+were not accepted. Porcon knew it. He went to St. Malo, regulated his
+affairs, then returned to Algiers, certain of the fate which awaited him.
+The dey had him decapitated. This man was the equal of Regulus, yet he is
+little known to fame.[d]
+
+Reasons and pretexts for war with the porte were not long wanting. In
+1664 some acts of bad faith on the part of the viziers were taken as an
+excuse for sending 6,000 men under the orders of Coligny-Saligny into
+Hungary, which the Turks were invading. This was a means of dissipating
+the religious clouds which the threats against the pope had raised at
+Rome and elsewhere. Louis XIV had still another reason. He had undertaken
+in obtaining a [three years’] prorogation of the league of the Rhine
+(1663) to furnish a contingent to his imperial allies in case the empire
+should be threatened. He attached the highest importance to maintaining
+a league whose principal object would be to close the road to the
+Netherlands to Austrian troops if ever war should break out between
+France and Austria, and he believed it all the more easy to play the rôle
+of protector in Germany since the emperor’s power there had sensibly
+declined since the Treaty of Westphalia.
+
+Coligny-Saligny joined the Austro-German army commanded by Montecuculi;
+the French took a considerable part in the combat at Körmend, and
+especially in the battle of St. Gotthard (August 1st, 1664), where they
+paid dear for the principal honour of the victory. But the emperor and
+Austria, grateful though they were, could not pardon the French for
+having claimed to have saved the empire. Leopold hastened to treat with
+the Turks, and was as eager to deliver himself from his auxiliaries as he
+was from his enemies.[b]
+
+Indeed the emperor was alarmed, and not without reason, to encounter the
+hand of Louis everywhere. A defensive alliance was concluded in August,
+1663, between France and Denmark, as the result of a commercial treaty,
+advantageous to the French marine. A secret negotiation of the very
+highest importance was, about the same time, entered upon with Poland.
+Since 1661 that republic had taken Louis XIV as arbiter in its quarrels
+with Moscovy. In 1663, King John Casimir Vasa, discouraged by Poland’s
+constant woes, determined to lay down the crown: his wife, a princess of
+that branch of the Gonzagas which had long been established in France,
+entered into communication with Louis XIV to bring about the election of
+the duke d’Enghien, son of the Great Condé, to the Polish throne. With
+regret Louis saw Poland plunging to her own ruin, and decided to arrest
+the disaster by doing again that in which Henry III had so disgracefully
+failed--infusing French spirit into the land of the Jagellons. Colbert
+pushed the king to the same policy.[c]
+
+
+THE WAR OF THE QUEEN’S RIGHTS (1667-1668 A.D.)
+
+Meanwhile Louis XIV had not succeeded in having Maria Theresa’s act
+of renunciation revoked, and he now thought of compelling Madrid to
+recognise the right of devolution.
+
+Such was the name given in Brabant and some of the other Belgian
+provinces to the law, by virtue of which, when there were children of
+two different marriages, those of the first inherited in preference to
+those of the second. Louis XIV claimed Brabant and its annexes, in the
+name of Maria Theresa. Philip IV rejected this new claim, which was
+most contestable, since if the rule of devolution really existed in
+the above-mentioned provinces, it had to be proven that it applied to
+the succession of princes as well as to those of private individuals.
+Moreover all the acts emanating from Spanish sovereigns since Charles V
+were manifestly contradictory of this. Nevertheless both parties remained
+on pacific terms until the death of Philip IV and Anne of Austria. The
+king of Spain expired after a lingering illness September 17th, 1665.
+The queen-mother, his sister, died of a cancer January 20th, 1666, after
+constant efforts to maintain peace between the two crowns.
+
+Philip IV directed in his will that the 500,000 crowns constituting Maria
+Theresa’s dowry should be paid, but he regulated the succession in such
+a manner as to confirm the renunciation of that princess and to exclude
+all pretensions of the house of France to any portion whatsoever of his
+estates. He left the throne of Spain to a sickly infant scarcely able to
+walk, and who nobody believed would live. Foreseeing the contingency by
+which the death of this child, the young Charles II, would extinguish the
+male line, he stipulated that the throne should pass in that event to his
+second daughter Margaret and her children. Margaret was then fourteen
+years of age; she was betrothed to the emperor Leopold, and did in fact
+marry him the following year.
+
+The reign of an infant under the regency of a foreigner, his mother,
+Maria Anna of Austria, the exhausted condition of the Spanish realm on
+account of the Portuguese war, offered a magnificent opportunity for
+Louis XIV’s ambition, but he waited until 1667 before declaring his
+project. Impatient as he was, a maritime war between England and Holland
+retarded the execution of his plans.
+
+Under Charles II, as under Cromwell, England had in Holland a rival in
+commerce and the marine. Charles II, who was desirous of flattering
+public sentiment and who had the same reason as the Protector to seek in
+foreign war a diversion to calm restless spirits, entertained, moreover,
+a profound antipathy for De Witt and other leaders of the republican
+government at the Hague. He wished to re-establish the stadholdership to
+the profit of the young William of Orange, his sister’s son.[132] In this
+state of feeling it only required a hostile meeting between some Dutch
+and English ships off the African coast to precipitate the two navies
+into a fearful war.
+
+The Dutch convinced themselves that they were the attacked party and
+demanded assistance of Louis XIV in fulfilment of the guarantee he
+had given them in 1662. At first Louis refused, alleging that it was
+not proved that the English were the aggressors, and he offered his
+mediation. His desire was to act cautiously with regard to England and
+not drive her to an alliance which Spain was seeking. As to the Dutch, he
+was beginning to regard them with distrust. The grand pensionary De Witt
+joined to his fine qualities a shrewdness, a proud reserve, and a talent
+for making advances without committing himself, which were little to the
+taste of the French agents. D’Estrades, ambassador to the Hague in 1665,
+considered an English alliance more desirable for France than one with
+Holland.
+
+[Sidenote: [1665-1667 A.D.]]
+
+The offer of mediation was declined. Louis XIV tried at least to confine
+his struggle to a naval war, for he did not wish to see the English
+on the continent. Meanwhile the states-general were insisting on the
+complete execution of the guarantee treaty. Louis ended by deciding
+to declare war on England. He gave out that he wished to convert the
+world to the religion which kept him to his word. But he informs us
+himself that there were still other reasons; he wished to keep Holland
+from carrying out her projects against the Netherlands, and prevent a
+reconciliation with England that might some day be a serious danger to
+France. He therefore upheld her, but he kept as much as possible to
+the rôle of a looker-on, and let the English and Dutch fleets almost
+annihilate each other in the four great combats of two campaigns. The
+duke de Beaufort and the Brest squadron never left the Channel. The
+French never fought the English except in the West Indies, where they
+captured a portion of the island of St. Christopher.
+
+[Illustration: HENRI DE LA TOUR D’AUVERGNE
+
+(1611-1675)]
+
+In the beginning of 1667 Louis XIV supported Sweden’s offer of mediation,
+and Breda was chosen as the seat of a congress. Besides the war, England
+was suffering from another scourge--the plague of 1666. Charles II was
+satisfied with France’s promise of a personal subsidy and with the
+restitution of St. Christopher without indemnity. The treaty was signed
+July 31st. Louis XIV did not await this moment to enter Flanders. He
+based his aggression on the formal refusal of all his demands by the
+court of Madrid, declaring that, having exhausted all peaceful means of
+obtaining justice, he was now going to take possession of what belonged
+to Maria Theresa.[b]
+
+The league of the Rhine assured Louis of at least the neutrality of
+Germany; the emperor was not prepared for war; Europe, favourable or
+intimidated, beheld with astonishment King Louis XIV take the field in
+the month of May, 1667. He had collected an army of fifty thousand men
+carefully armed and equipped under the direction of Turenne, whom Louvois
+still obeyed with docility. This fine army was not unequal to the task of
+vindicating the queen’s rights to the duchy of Brabant, the marquisate of
+Antwerp, Limburg, Hainault, the county of Namur, and other territories.
+“Heaven not having established a tribunal on earth from which the kings
+of France may demand justice, the most Christian king can expect it only
+of his arms,” said the manifesto sent to the court of Spain. Louis XIV
+set out with Turenne. Marshal de Créqui was commissioned to keep a watch
+on Germany.
+
+The Spaniards were caught unprepared; Armentières, Charleroi, Douai,
+and Tournay had but inadequate garrisons and succumbed almost without a
+blow. While the army was occupied with the siege of Courtrai, Louis XIV
+returned to meet the queen at Compiègne; the whole court followed him to
+the camp. “I brought the queen to Flanders,” said Louis XIV, “to show her
+to the people of that country, who indeed received her with all the joy
+imaginable, showing that they were sorry there had not been more time
+to prepare themselves to receive her more worthily.” It was at Courtrai
+that the queen took up her residence. Marshal de Turenne had gone in
+the direction of Dendermonde, but the Flemings had opened their sluices
+and the country was inundated; he was obliged to fall back on Oudenarde;
+the town was taken in two days. The king, still followed by the court,
+laid siege to Lille. Vauban, already celebrated as an engineer, formed
+his lines of circumvallation. Créqui’s army rejoined that of Turenne; an
+effort on the part of the governor of the Netherlands to relieve the town
+was anticipated; the Spanish troops sent for that purpose arrived too
+late and were defeated as they retired; the citizens of Lille had forced
+the garrison to capitulate; Louis XIV entered the place on the 27th of
+August, ten days after the trenches were opened. On the 2nd of September
+the king set out on the way back to St. Germain; Turenne also took the
+town of Alost before going into winter quarters.
+
+
+THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE
+
+[Sidenote: [1667-1668 A.D.]]
+
+The first campaign of Louis XIV had been merely a warlike game almost
+without danger or bloodshed; it had nevertheless sufficed to alarm
+Europe. Scarcely had peace been concluded at Breda before another
+negotiation was secretly entered into between England, Holland, and
+Sweden. It was in vain that King Charles II was personally inclined to an
+alliance with France; his people had their eyes open to the dangers which
+Europe incurred from the arms of Louis XIV. On the 23rd of January, 1668,
+the celebrated Treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed at the Hague.
+The three powers requested the king of France to grant the Netherlands
+a truce till the month of May, in order to give time to treat with
+Spain and obtain from her, as France demanded, the final cession of the
+places conquered or of Franche-Comté in exchange. In reality the triple
+alliance was resolved to protect helpless Spain against France; a secret
+article pledged the three allies to take arms to restrain Louis XIV and
+if possible to bring him back to the position fixed by the Treaty of
+the Pyrenees. At the same moment Portugal made peace with Spain, which
+recognised her independence.
+
+The king refused to concede the prolonged armistice which had been
+demanded of him: “I grant it till the 31st of March,” he had said, “as
+I do not wish to miss the season for taking the field.” The marquis
+of Castel Rodrigo laughed at this: “I am content,” he said, “with the
+suspension of arms which winter imposes on the king of France.” The
+governor of the Netherlands was mistaken; Louis XIV was about to prove
+that his soldiers, like those of Gustavus Adolphus, did not know what
+winter was. He had confided the command of his new army to the prince of
+Condé, who had been amnestied nine years before but had hitherto been a
+stranger to the royal favours.[g]
+
+Under pretext of being in Burgundy for the estates, Monsieur le Prince
+had made careful note that Franche-Comté was without troops and
+unsuspecting, because the inhabitants did not doubt that the king would
+grant them neutrality as in the last war, since they had sent to him to
+demand it. He kept up the delusion.[e]
+
+The gaieties of St. Germain were at their height, when in the depth of
+winter in the month of January, 1668, all were astonished to see troops
+marching in all directions, coming and going on the roads of Champagne
+and in the Three Bishoprics--trains of artillery, wagons of munitions
+stopping under various pretexts in the roads which lead from Champagne
+to Burgundy. That part of France was filled with movement of which the
+cause was unknown. The uninitiated out of interest, and the courtiers out
+of curiosity, exhausted themselves in conjectures; Germany was alarmed;
+the object of these preparations and peculiar actions was a mystery to
+everybody. The secrets of conspiracies were never more closely guarded
+than in this enterprise of Louis XIV.
+
+Finally, on February 2nd, the king left St. Germain with the young duke
+d’Enghien, son of the Great Condé, and several courtiers; the other
+officers being at the rendezvous with their troops. He travelled on
+horseback by long stages and arrived at Dijon. Twenty thousand men,
+assembled by twenty different routes, found themselves on the same day in
+Franche-Comté, several leagues from Besançon, the Great Condé at their
+head.[f] Besançon and Salins surrendered at sight of the troops. When
+the king arrived he went to Dôle and caused counterscarps and demilunes
+to be set up. Four or five hundred men were killed here. The amazed
+inhabitants, seeing themselves surrounded by troops and without hope of
+succour, surrendered on Shrove Tuesday, February 14th. The king at the
+same time marched to Gray. The governor made as though he would defend
+himself, but the marquis d’Yenne, governor-general under Castel Rodrigo,
+who was of the country and had all his property there, came to surrender
+to the king and, going to Gray, persuaded the governor to surrender. The
+king entered Gray on Sunday, the 19th of February, and there caused a _Te
+Deum_ to be sung, having the governor-general at his right hand and the
+governor of the town itself on his left; and the same day he set out to
+return. Thus in twenty-two days of the month of February he had started
+from St. Germain, had been to Franche-Comté, taken complete possession
+of it, and returned to St. Germain.[e] The king was back at St. Germain
+preparing enormous armaments for the month of April; he had given the
+prince of Condé the government of Franche-Comté.
+
+
+_Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668 A.D.)_
+
+War seemed imminent. The last days of the armistice were at hand. “The
+opinion of peace which prevails in France is a malady which is becoming
+widespread,” Louvois wrote in the middle of March; “but we shall soon
+be cured, since the time to take the field is drawing near. You must
+give out everywhere that the Spaniards will not have peace.” Louvois was
+uttering a shameless falsehood; the Spaniards were without resources,
+but they had still less courage than resources; and consented to the
+abandonment of all the places in the Netherlands conquered in 1667.
+
+A congress was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle and was presided over by the
+nuncio of the new pope Clement IX, who was as favourable to France as
+his predecessor Innocent X had been to Spain--“a phantom arbitrator
+between phantom plenipotentiaries,” says Voltaire. The real negotiations
+took place at St. Germain. “I did not only take care,” writes Louis
+XIV, “to profit by the present conjuncture, but also to put myself in
+a position to turn to good account those which seemed likely to ensue.
+Amid the great augmentations which my fortune might receive, nothing
+seemed to me more necessary than to acquire for myself, among my smaller
+neighbours, a reputation for moderation and probity which might quiet in
+them those emotions of terror which all naturally feel at the aspect of
+too great power. I must not lack the means of breaking with Spain when
+I wish to do so; Franche-Comté which I surrendered might be reduced to
+such a condition that I could be master of it at any time, and my new
+conquests, well secured, would open me a surer entry to the Netherlands.”
+Determined by these wise motives, the king gave the order to sign;
+and the 2nd of May, 1668, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded.
+Before surrendering Franche-Comté the king gave orders to demolish the
+fortifications of Dôle and Gray; at the same time he commissioned Vauban
+to fortify Ath, Lille, and Tournay. The triple alliance was triumphant,
+the Dutch especially.[g]
+
+
+PROJECTS AGAINST HOLLAND (1668-1672 A.D.)
+
+The first period of the diplomatic and military history of Louis XIV
+closes with the treaty that ended the War of the Queen’s Rights. A new
+era is about to open in which Louis will cast aside the compass that was
+so safely directing the ship of France to follow no other guides than his
+passion and his fortune.
+
+Recent events had succeeded in crushing the old French sympathies for
+Holland, much weakened since the Dutch defection of 1648. Resentment
+against the unfaithful ally, very keen in the active and military element
+of the nation, had reached a point of exasperation with the king, who was
+not unaware of the secret clauses of the Treaty of the Hague.[133] Louis,
+who had laid down his arms much less for the confederates of the Hague
+than for the sake of the future Spanish succession, bore a grudge against
+Holland, not so much for having really arrested his progress [by having
+formed the triple alliance] as for having boasted of doing so. Pride had
+turned the head of the little republic, which plumed itself on having
+laid colossal Spain low, saved Denmark from the blows of Sweden, beaten,
+or at least quit even with England, set a limit on French conquests, and
+drawn into its hands three-quarters of European commerce and sea trade.
+
+But wounded pride was far from being the only motive that turned Louis
+XIV against Holland. He was convinced that he must crush her in order to
+get Belgium, and consequently he must appear, momentarily, to forget the
+end in order to remove the obstacle. He might then, strictly speaking,
+imagine to himself that he was still pursuing his old plans, and was
+only changing the means of French policy; but passion might easily make
+him take the means for the end. This passion, generated by diplomatic
+disappointments, was nourished and envenomed by the dissimilarity
+between the institutions, principles, and beliefs of the French and
+Dutch governments. Holland was not only an unfaithful ally--she was a
+republican and Protestant nation, the home of religious and political
+liberty, which Louis hated with a growing hatred as his monarchy became
+more clearly outlined in his head.
+
+After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the ruin of Holland became the
+king’s fixed idea. It was no longer a question of the commercial war
+so ably conducted by Colbert with his tariffs and his differential
+rights--it was a war of invasion and conquest that Louis was planning.[c]
+
+The resolution taken, he adjourned its execution until such time as he
+had completed the organisation of his sea forces, which were not then on
+a level with those of the land, and until he could assure himself that
+Europe would not interfere with his plan. The able and indefatigable
+Lionne consecrated the last three years of his life (he died in 1671) to
+performing diplomatic wonders to acquire this certitude.
+
+While he was waiting, Louis XIV neglected no opportunities that presented
+themselves to feed warlike passions and provide employment for his
+unengaged officers and troops. In 1669 he sent a volunteer corps to
+Crete to assist the Venetians, threatened in the capital of that island.
+Beaufort disappeared in a combat, and Vivonne ineffectually bombarded the
+grand vizier’s camp. But this was only a diversion from more important
+projects. Louis XIV wished to isolate Holland, and for that reason to
+break the triple alliance. He began by trying to detach England from it.
+
+[Sidenote: [1669-1670 A.D.]]
+
+The English were not less jealous than the Dutch of France’s maritime
+progress; they were not less frightened at Louis’ ambitions. But
+Charles II did not share these feelings. Although he had experienced
+all the hazards of fortune, the vicissitudes of his life had in nowise
+elevated his character. After the Treaty of Breda, he signed that of the
+Triple Alliance and united with the Dutch, as a concession to national
+sentiment. But he did not like parliament, and felt an especial aversion
+for the Presbyterian spirit, and the religious passions which had
+brought about the English Revolution. Finally, about 1670, he resolved
+to become a Catholic, perhaps through real conviction, perhaps through
+the influence of his brother, the duke of York, a secret convert to
+the church of Rome, who was animated by the true ardour of a neophyte;
+perhaps because he hoped to find in Catholicism a more solid support for
+his throne and his royal prerogative than in Anglicanism.
+
+To realise his object a French alliance was indispensable. France alone
+could provide him with the money he needed; his court was wasteful and in
+debt, and parliament measured out subsidies with jealous parsimony. If
+France demanded the sacrifice of Holland, he was ready to make it.
+
+Under these conditions he readily lent ear to the overtures of the French
+ambassadors, Ruvigny and Colbert de Croissy, the minister’s brother. He
+did not delay to let Louis XIV into the secret of his plans. Louis asked
+nothing better than to grant much on condition that England would join
+him in war on Holland. Nevertheless the negotiations dragged on account
+of the precautions necessary to secrecy, and it took more than a year
+to arrive finally at an understanding. When all was arranged Charles II
+demanded that his sister, the duchess of Orleans, should come to England
+and sign the treaty.[b]
+
+
+_The Treaty of Dover: Death of Madame (1670 A.D.)_
+
+On the 24th of May Madame Henrietta suddenly left the court which was at
+Lille and embarked at Dunkirk for Dover where Charles II was awaiting
+her. She persuaded Charles to sign the treaty without delay (June 1st).
+The English monarch led his sister to hope that he would consent that
+the attack on Holland should precede his declaration of Catholicism.
+This is what Louis XIV most wished for. The treaty, however, far from
+committing Charles to this course, stipulated that after Charles should
+have made “the said declaration,” Louis might choose the moment of attack
+on Holland.[134] Louis was to give Charles two millions, payable two and
+three months after the exchange of ratification and was to assist him
+with six thousand foot soldiers, if the return to Catholicism should
+excite trouble. Charles was to furnish Louis at least four thousand foot
+soldiers against Holland, Louis to reinforce the English fleet by thirty
+vessels, of at least forty guns, and to pay Charles an annual subsidy
+of three millions during the continuation of the war. The island of
+Walcheren (with Sluys and Causand at the mouth of the Schelde) were to go
+to England.
+
+[Sidenote: [1670-1672 A.D.]]
+
+An unforeseen catastrophe fell now like a thunder-clap upon the two
+royal families which had just sealed the pact of Dover. The household of
+Louis XIV’s brother had long been disturbed by domestic tempests. The
+amiable and brilliant Henrietta, adored by the court, esteemed by the
+king, who confided to her the most secret springs of his policy, inspired
+nothing but antipathy in her husband, an effeminate prince, as mediocre
+in mind as in heart, whose childish and strange habits have given rise
+to suspicion of shameful practices. The king had recently intervened in
+the family quarrels by imprisoning and afterwards exiling the chevalier
+de Lorraine, Monsieur’s favourite. After this the king had had great
+difficulty in compelling his brother to allow Madame Henrietta to go to
+Dover.
+
+She returned in triumph; leaving Dover on the 12th of June, she appeared
+for a moment at St. Germain where the court was established; the 24th of
+June her husband took her to St. Cloud, where she had scarcely arrived
+when she complained of pains in her stomach and side. For several
+days she lingered, and on the 29th, after having drunk a glass of
+chicory-water, she was seized with a violent pain in the side; the next
+day before daybreak she was dead. In her last agony she repeated several
+times that she was dying of poison.
+
+An outbreak of terrible suspicion against her husband and his people
+occurred at once. The king had an autopsy performed by the most
+celebrated physicians and surgeons of Paris, who agreed that death was
+due to natural causes, and that it was a wonder the princess had lived so
+long with her lungs and liver so gravely affected. The question, however,
+has remained a question of controversy among historians to this day.[135]
+The news of this tragic event made a great stir in England; but the real
+sorrow expressed by Louis XIV and the report of the physicians calmed
+Charles II and his court.[c]
+
+
+_Treaties with Other Powers (1670-1672 A.D.)_
+
+Already, as early as 1667, Louis XIV had privately provided for the
+neutrality of the empire by a secret treaty regulating the eventual
+partition of the Spanish monarchy. In case the little king of Spain
+should die without children, France was to receive the Netherlands,
+Franche-Comté, Navarre, Naples, and Sicily; Austria would keep Spain
+and the Milanese. Accordingly the emperor Leopold turned a deaf ear
+to the solicitations of the Dutch, who would have persuaded him to
+join the triple alliance; and a new agreement between France and the
+empire, signed secretly November 1st, 1670, reciprocally bound the two
+princes not to give help to their enemies. The German princes were
+more difficult to win over; they were beginning to be alarmed at the
+pretensions of France. The electors of Treves and Mainz had already
+assembled troops on the Rhine; and the duke of Lorraine seemed disposed
+to give them assistance. Louis XIV took as a pretext the erection of
+some fortifications contrary to the Treaty of Marsal; on the 23rd of
+August, 1670, he sent Marshal de Créqui into Lorraine; in the beginning
+of September the duchy was entirely subdued and the duke a refugee. To
+the emperor’s protest, the king responded that he did not want Lorraine
+for himself, but that he would never surrender it to anyone’s petitions.
+Brandenburg and Saxony alone refused neutrality point-blank; France
+had renounced the Protestant alliances in Germany, and the Protestant
+electors recognised the danger which threatened them.
+
+Sweden also recognised it, but Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna were no
+longer there; the memory of former alliances with France alone remained;
+the Swedish senators, one after another, allowed themselves to be bought.
+The treaty was signed the 14th of April, 1672; for an annual subsidy of
+600,000 livres Sweden pledged herself to offer armed opposition to the
+princes of the empire who should attempt to succour the United Provinces;
+a space was being cleared round Holland.[136]
+
+In spite of the secrecy which surrounded the negotiations of Louis
+XIV, De Witt was filled with anxiety; always favourable to the French
+alliance, he had sought to calm the irritation of France which imputed
+the triple alliance to the Dutch. Jan de Witt negotiated everywhere;
+Charles’ treaty with France had remained a profound secret, and the Dutch
+thought they could count on the good will of the English nation. They
+effaced the arms of England on the _Royal Charles_, a vessel taken by
+Tromp in 1667, and hid from sight a picture in the town hall of Dordrecht
+which represented the victory of Chatham with the _ruart_[137] Cornelis
+de Witt leaning against a cannon. These concessions to the pride of
+England were not made without a contest.
+
+
+THE WAR WITH HOLLAND BEGINS (1672 A.D.)
+
+The apprehensions of the grand pensionary were not without foundation; in
+the spring of 1672 all the negotiations of Louis XIV had been successful;
+his armaments were complete; he was at last about to crush the little
+power which had so long presented an obstacle to his designs. The king
+wrote in an unpublished memoir: “Amidst all my prosperity in my campaign
+of 1667, neither England nor the empire, both convinced of the justice of
+my cause, opposed themselves to the rapidity of my conquests, whatever
+interest they may have had to stop them. I found in my path only my good,
+faithful, and old-time friends, the Dutch, who instead of identifying
+themselves with my fortune as with the foundation of their state, sought
+to dictate to me and to compel me to peace, and even dared to threaten
+violence in case I refused to accept their interference. I confess that
+their insolence stung me keenly and that I was ready, at the risk of what
+might happen to my conquests in the Spanish Netherlands, to turn all my
+forces against this haughty and ungrateful nation; but having summoned
+prudence to my aid and considering that I had neither the number of
+troops nor the allies requisite for such an enterprise, I dissimulated
+and concluded peace on honourable conditions, resolved to postpone the
+punishment of this perfidy to another time.” The time had come; to the
+last effort at conciliation attempted in the name of the states-general,
+by De Groot, son of the celebrated Grotius, the king answered with a
+haughty threat: “When I heard that the United Provinces were endeavouring
+to corrupt my allies, and were urging kings, my relatives, to enter into
+offensive leagues against me, I sought to put myself in a position to
+defend myself, and I raised some troops; but I intend to have still more
+towards the spring, and I will then use them in the manner which I may
+judge the best adapted for the welfare of my states and for my glory.”[g]
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS II DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
+
+(1621-1686)]
+
+A public treaty had just been signed between France and England (February
+12th), and the English, according to their custom, attacked without
+declaration of war. On March 23rd an English squadron assailed a Dutch
+merchant fleet returning from Smyrna off the isle of Wight. The Dutch
+defended themselves so well that the aggressors after two days of
+fighting were only able to capture two or three merchant ships and one
+man-of-war. Charles II’s declaration of war was published March 29th,
+six days after this fight. That of Louis XIV was launched on the 6th of
+April.[c]
+
+“The king sets out to-morrow, my daughter,” writes Madame de Sévigné[i]
+to Madame de Grignan on the 27th of April; “there will be 100,000 men
+outside Paris, the two armies will join hands; the king will give orders
+to Monsieur, Monsieur to Monsieur le Prince, Monsieur le Prince to M. de
+Turenne, and M. de Turenne to the two marshals, and even to the army of
+Marshal de Créqui.”[g]
+
+Ninety thousand men were gathered from Sedan to Charleroi; the bishop
+of Münster, the bishop of Cologne, and other German princes furnished
+about 20,000 more. The king led this magnificent army in person; Condé,
+Turenne, Luxemburg, Chamilly, were in command under him. Vauban was to
+take the towns, Pellisson to record the victories. What had Holland to
+bring in opposition to such an enemy? She had a formidable navy; two
+admirals, regarded to this day as the greatest of their century, Tromp
+and De Ruyter; rich colonies, and an immense commerce; but she had
+neglected her land-forces, so often dangerous in a republic; she could
+hardly count upon 25,000 militia, badly equipped and wholly without
+discipline, and 20,000 men promised by the elector of Brandenburg were
+at the same time very insufficient and very far away. The intestine
+struggles also enfeebled her; there were two parties, the one led by Jan
+de Witt, and entirely devoted to the cause of ancient liberty. The other
+aimed at the restoration of the young prince of Orange to the heritage
+of his ancestors, and profiting by the present danger nominated him
+captain-general at the age of twenty-two.
+
+
+_The Passage of the Rhine (June, 1672 A.D.)_
+
+Meanwhile Louis XIV advanced along the Maas, upon the lands of the bishop
+of Liège, his ally, in order not to invade Spanish territory, thence
+along the right bank of the Rhine from Wesel to Toll-Huys. There the
+inhabitants informed the prince of Condé that the dryness of the season
+had made the river fordable. Crossing was easy. On the other shore only
+400 to 500 cavalry were to be seen and two feeble regiments of infantry
+without cannon. The artillery mowed down their flank. While the king’s
+household and the crack regiments of cavalry, in number about 15,000
+men, were crossing in safety, the prince of Condé went beside them in
+a copper-bottomed boat. A small number of the Dutch cavalry rode into
+the river to give at least a semblance of resistance, but took flight
+immediately before the approaching multitude. Their infantry laid down
+their arms and begged for their lives. The French lost in that passage
+only the count de Nogent, and several cavalrymen who strayed from the
+ford and were drowned. No one would have been killed on that day had it
+not been for the imprudence of the young duke de Longueville. It was
+said that, being intoxicated, he fired his pistol at the enemy, who were
+begging on their knees for their lives, crying, “No quarter for that
+rabble!” One of their officers was killed by his shot. The Dutch infantry
+despairingly resumed their weapons for a moment and fired a charge which
+killed the duke de Longueville. A captain of cavalry, who had not taken
+flight with the others, ran to the prince of Condé who was mounting
+his horse, and pressed his pistol against the prince’s head, who by a
+movement turned aside and had his wrist shattered by the bullet. This was
+the only wound Condé ever received. The French, exasperated, charged upon
+that infantry, which took flight in all directions. Louis XIV crossed on
+a pontoon bridge with his infantry (June 12th, 1672).[d]
+
+Such was the passage of the Rhine, celebrated ever after as one of
+the great events which should occupy the memories of men. That air of
+greatness with which the king surrounded all his actions, the fortunate
+rapidity of his conquests, the splendour of his reign, the idolatry of
+his courtiers, finally the tendency the French, above all the Parisians,
+have towards exaggeration joined to their ignorance concerning war which
+ruled in the idle life of the large cities--all this caused the passage
+of the Rhine to be regarded as a prodigious achievement whose fame
+continued to be exaggerated. The common belief was that the whole army
+had crossed the river swimming, in the face of a thoroughly entrenched
+army, and in spite of the artillery of an impregnable fortress called
+Tholus (Toll-Huys). It was very true that nothing could have been a more
+imposing sight to the foe than this passage, and if there had been a
+corps of serviceable troops on the other side the enterprise would have
+been very perilous.[f]
+
+Fifteen years later Bossuet said in his funeral oration of the prince of
+Condé, “Let us leave the passage of the Rhine the prodigy of our century
+and of the life of Louis the Great.” But Bossuet was not writing history
+in his funeral orations. Neither does Napoleon in his _Mémoires_ share
+the enthusiasm of the sacred orator: “The passage of the Rhine is a
+military operation of the fourth order, since in that place the river is
+fordable, impoverished by the Waal, and moreover was defended by only a
+handful of men.” “I have seen a woman,” says Voltaire, “who crossed the
+Rhine twenty times at that place to defraud the customs.” The Toll-Huys
+was exactly what its name indicates.
+
+
+THE FRENCH IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY (1672-1673 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1672-1673 A.D.]]
+
+With the Rhine crossed, Holland was open to invasion. The provinces of
+Overyssel, of Gelderland, and Utrecht submitted without trying to defend
+themselves; there were very few hours during the day in which the king
+did not receive news of some victory. An officer wrote to Turenne: “If
+you will send me fifty cavalrymen I will take two or three fortresses
+with them.”
+
+Four soldiers became in a few moments masters of Muiden, the key to
+Amsterdam, because the sluices by which the country surrounding the
+capital could be flooded were in this village. The generals called to
+council were anxious to march at once upon Amsterdam, Louvois thought it
+better to garrison the forts; the army was in this manner enfeebled and
+its operations retarded. Upon this the Dutch took courage once more, and
+concentrating the state forces into the hands of one man, raised William
+of Orange to the stadholdership (July 6th, 1672). This prince was to
+save the independence of his country.[d] Soon afterward an infuriated
+populace slaughtered the illustrious chiefs of the republican party, Jan
+and Cornelis de Witt. French historians charge William with complicity in
+these murders. Burnett, however, says that William “always spoke of it to
+me with the greatest horror possible,” and there seems no good ground to
+doubt that this sentiment was genuine. To suppose otherwise would seem to
+belie the character of this far seeing, cautious, unconquerable man.[a]
+
+The military dictatorship confided to the prince of Orange gave a new
+aspect to the situation; he had the dykes cut, flooding all the country
+surrounding Amsterdam, and forced the French to retreat before the
+inundation.[d]
+
+The French king, in the meantime, in answer to the Dutch deputies who
+sought for peace (De Groot was of the number), demanded for himself the
+limit of the Rhine, and the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in
+Holland, besides satisfaction to the demands of the English. The Dutch
+magnanimously refused such terms. The capital was for this year secure
+behind its waters; the French army being weakened by garrisoning so many
+towns. Condé pressed the monarch to dismantle these towns, and unite
+the army to reduce Amsterdam; but Louvois, minister-at-war, biased by
+his peculiar pursuits, would not consent to the demolition of a single
+bulwark. The consequence was that nothing more could be effected, and
+Louis returned, to enjoy the congratulations of his capital and the
+flatteries of his court.[j]
+
+
+THE NEW COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1673 A.D.)
+
+This is an epoch of great importance. The state system of the treaty
+of Westphalia was really upset by Louis’ aggressions, _e.g._ the
+German states making common cause with Emperor; and the fear of French
+predominance acted from now on through the Dutch war and the War of the
+Spanish Succession as a new and dominant force in European politics, much
+as the pre-eminence of the Hapsburgs had acted before Westphalia. From
+now to the treaty of Utrecht, European history is on another track, and
+the treaty of Utrecht, which closes the foreign policy of Louis XIV, is
+the real end of the chapter of history we are now beginning.[a]
+
+Neither Spain nor Germany could remain indifferent spectators of Louis
+XIV’s progress and Holland’s peril. Although Spain had not pronounced
+herself, Monterey, the governor of Brussels, had furnished the
+prince of Orange some auxiliary troops. The elector of Brandenburg,
+Frederick William--“the Great Elector”--promised his assistance to the
+states-general by a secret treaty. He also agitated the north German
+courts and that of Vienna, representing to them the necessity of a
+coalition. Austria, more reserved, was none the less exasperated in
+spite of the arrangement to which she had consented, and concluded a ten
+years’ defensive alliance with the great elector. The emperor likewise
+concluded another treaty with the states-general, promising auxiliary
+troops for a subsidy.
+
+Louis XIV, warned by these events, gave these princes the most solemn
+assurances of his intention to respect the Treaty of Westphalia as well
+as the imperial territory. But as these assurances had no effect, he
+finally declared that the continuation of their armed condition would
+be regarded as an act of hostility against his allies of Cologne and
+Münster, and he declined the responsibility of any war that might ensue.
+
+Montecuculi [the imperial general] and the great elector united their
+forces, which with the German contingents amounted to 40,000 men. Louis
+XIV gave orders to Turenne to leave to Luxemburg the protection of the
+conquered towns in Holland, and to betake himself with 16,000 men to
+the lower Rhine, keeping the Germans from crossing, and to protect the
+territories of Cologne and Münster. Condé was charged with covering the
+upper Rhine and Alsace with an equal number of troops. The Germans’
+plan was to march upon the Maas, to establish themselves there, and
+then to bring thither the prince of Orange and cut off in this manner
+communication between France and the French garrisons in Holland. But
+Turenne, stationed at Andernach, kept them a long time on the banks of
+the Rhine. They tried to cross higher up; Condé had destroyed the bridge
+at Strasburg, but after several weeks they succeeded (on November 23rd)
+in building a bridge of boats near Mainz. Turenne doubled on his track
+to cover the Maas. The Germans spread themselves over the electorate of
+Treves and the Palatinate; but this country being already ruined they
+could find no sustenance, and they recrossed the Rhine to live on the
+lands of Cologne and Münster. Turenne followed them.
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIER, TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+Meanwhile Orange rallied a Spanish corps commanded by Marchin; he drove
+off Duras who was guarding the Maas with several French regiments, and
+conceived the bold idea of occupying Charleroi. He undertook the siege
+on the 15th of December, but he did not have sufficient material and had
+to retire before the arrival of Condé’s troops and the Flemish garrisons
+which Louis XIV ordered to Charleroi. [Notwithstanding the lack of
+troops, withheld through the jealousy of Louvois, these are said to have
+been Turenne’s most brilliant campaigns.]
+
+By March, 1673, Turenne had driven the Germans across the Weser, and
+Frederick William, convinced of his powerlessness, and discontented with
+his allies, asked for peace. Louis XIV was eager to grant it, for he
+was in a hurry to dissolve the coalition, and simply imposed conditions
+that the elector should not assist Holland, or maintain troops beyond
+the Weser. Louis consented to withdraw his own troops from Frederick’s
+territory except from the towns in the duchy of Cleves, which he
+intended to hold until peace should be declared. This treaty was made
+definite the 6th of June, 1673, at Vossem, and Louis XIV almost at the
+same time signed two others with the duke of Hanover and the elector
+of Cologne, assuring defensive and offensive alliances on the part of
+France. Henceforth he regarded himself as delivered from all fear on the
+side of northern Germany.
+
+Louis was not willing to submit to a mediation purposed by the emperor
+with arms in his hand. In the month of December, 1672, he accepted that
+which the Swedes offered. The mediation of Sweden was accepted by the
+other belligerents; it was agreed that a congress should be held at
+Cologne, but various delays postponed the first _pourparlers_ until June,
+1673.
+
+Louis XIV in agreeing to this congress had attached little importance to
+it and counted in reality upon war alone. For the campaign of 1673 he
+disposed of 800,000 men without counting the garrisons of Roussillon,
+Pinerolo, and Lorraine. In the month of June he sent Turenne into Hesse
+to watch the imperials who were reorganising their army. He gave Condé
+the command of the Dutch garrisons and placed Luxemburg under him. He
+himself went to besiege Maestricht with 45,000 of his best troops. He had
+no desire to declare war upon the Spaniards although Monterey had upheld
+the Dutch; nevertheless he traversed their territory and made a false
+demonstration upon Brussels in order to deceive them.
+
+The 10th of June he arrived before Maestricht. He had reserved for
+himself the chief command, which he wished to share with no one. But
+Vauban was with him and alone conducted and directed the work of
+approach. This was begun on the 17th and on the 29th the miner was under
+the town. The next day the garrison, although strong and well commanded,
+was obliged to capitulate.
+
+If the taking of Maestricht was a brilliant success, the king really
+sacrificed to it the campaign in the Netherlands, which had an
+unfortunate ending. The Anglo-French fleet had, on its side, appeared
+in the arena. It numbered 90 ships of the line of which 30 were French.
+Parliament had voted a subsidy, but as it suspected King Charles’ project
+of becoming a Catholic, it had made a condition that a declaration of
+conformity to the Anglican church should be imposed upon all officers of
+the crown. The duke of York was unwilling to submit to the obligation
+of the “test” and had been dismissed from the admiralty. De Ruyter took
+command of the Dutch fleet with Tromp second in command, and advanced
+against the enemy, giving two battles on the 7th and 14th of June which
+remained undecided. The Anglo-French fleet having put back into the
+Thames for repairs embarked the troops under Schomberg’s command and set
+sail for the shores of the Netherlands. De Ruyter on the 21st of August
+gave a more decisive battle, in that it prevented the landing of the
+forces, and compelled the fleet to retire.
+
+The Dutch, emboldened by this success, raised little by little their tone
+and their claims at the congress of Cologne. They cut down greatly the
+concessions they were offering France and reduced to almost nothing those
+they consented to grant the king of England, the elector of Cologne, and
+the bishop of Münster. They intended to make no sacrifice essential to
+keeping their rank as a great power. Louis XIV held out for a long time
+and obtained nothing; finally, on the 30th of September, he reduced his
+claims to Aire, St. Omer, Cambray, Ypres, and their dependencies and
+the two castellanies of Bailleul and Cassel. As these places belonged
+to Spain, he demanded that Spain should be indemnified by the United
+Provinces, which would have recovered all that they had lost. This
+proposition was rejected like the others.
+
+Holland was now counting on more important alliances than those of 1672.
+She no longer feared England, where the reawakening of the Protestant
+spirit would reduce Charles II to powerlessness. She had signed on the
+30th of August three treaties, with Spain, with Austria, and with the
+duke of Lorraine. Spain had not declared war on Louis XIV, as she did
+not wish to enter the arena except with a European coalition; but now,
+having procured resources by extraordinary taxation and having succeeded
+in overcoming the irresolution of the court of Vienna, she made a
+twenty-five-years’ treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the
+republic, promising to furnish 8,000 men.
+
+Austria, assured of Spain and the military co-operation of several
+German states, among others Saxony, resolved to recommence her preceding
+campaign. She made a point of war of Turenne’s presence on the right bank
+of the Rhine and demanded the restitution of the places of the empire,
+that of Lorraine for Duke Charles IV, and the abandonment of France’s
+claims to the fiefs of Alsace and the Three Bishoprics. On Louis XIV’s
+refusal, Leopold addressed a declaration to the diet of Ratisbon, making
+known his intentions, and signed with Holland a ten-years’ treaty of
+offensive and defensive alliance, enjoining himself for a subsidy to
+furnish 30,000 men. As for the duke of Lorraine, he put, on consideration
+of a subsidy, his sword and his troops at the service of the Dutch. Thus
+the latter were paying for the war, and the war under these conditions
+was changing its character, becoming European, and little by little
+withdrawing from their territory.
+
+Louis XIV recalled Condé to Flanders, where he left him with but few
+troops. He gave Luxemburg the supreme command of the Dutch garrisons,
+and he planned himself to lead the army which had taken Maestricht to
+the Rhine, to occupy the bridges, and to support Turenne. Up to the
+last minute he refused to believe in the coalition, but when he saw
+it an accomplished fact he resolved to face it. Treves was occupied
+August 26th; Louis XIV then visited Alsace and Lorraine, strengthening
+fortifications without taking into consideration the privileges the
+towns enjoyed from the Treaty of Münster. Montecuculi, at the head of
+the imperials, left Bohemia in September and marched towards the Rhine.
+Turenne tried without success to stop him at the Tauber and at the
+crossing of the Main. He turned north, crossed the Rhine on a bridge of
+boats near Mainz, and finally marched upon Bonn, before which he joined
+the 25,000 Spanish and Dutch troops led by the prince of Orange, at the
+end of October.
+
+Orange had taken the offensive, and captured Naerden in six days
+(September), crossed the Spanish Netherlands, where Condé had not
+sufficient force to stop him, and gained the electorate of Cologne, to
+join hands with the imperials. [This juncture of imperial and Dutch
+troops constituted an important success for the coalition.] United they
+attacked Bonn and took it on November 12th.
+
+The taking of Bonn detached Germany from Louis XIV. Louvois had already
+a few days before given Luxemburg orders to evacuate Utrecht and the
+more distant places, keeping only those on the Maas, Waal, and Rhine, to
+destroy as far as possible abandoned fortifications, to reduce garrisons
+to 20,000, and to send home 30,000; but these orders took time to
+execute, and their execution, being compulsory, was a fresh subject of
+triumph for Holland and Europe.
+
+The winter stopped hostilities, without ending the reverses; for Louis
+XIV now saw himself abandoned by England and the whole empire aroused
+against him.[b]
+
+
+_Defection of England and the Imperial Allies (1674 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1674-1675 A.D.]]
+
+The Protestant inquietude of the English parliament had not yielded to
+the influence of the marquis de Ruvigny, French ambassador to London, and
+the nation wanted peace with the Dutch. Charles II yielded in appearance
+at least to the wishes of his people. On February 21st, 1674, he went to
+parliament to announce to the two houses that he had concluded with the
+United Provinces a prompt, honourable, and, he hoped, durable peace, as
+they had asked for. At the same time he wrote to Louis XIV asking him to
+pity rather than accuse him of a consent that had been dragged from him.
+The English and Irish regiments remained, without remark, in the service
+of France, and the king did not withdraw his subsidy from his royal
+pensioner.
+
+Thus, link by link, the chain of alliance which Louis XIV had cast around
+Holland was coming apart. In her turn France was finding herself alone.
+The congress of Cologne had dissolved. None of the belligerents was
+looking for peace.[g]
+
+The bishop of Münster, who could no longer count on the help of the
+French, had already secretly approached the emperor, and in April, 1674,
+agreed to defend by arms the decisions of the diet of Ratisbon, and
+restore all that he had taken from the Dutch. The electors of Treves and
+Mainz concluded an offensive pact with the emperor. So did the elector
+palatine, that eternal enemy of Austria. As early as January, Denmark,
+seeing Sweden inclined towards France, had thrown herself on the side of
+the emperor. The dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg promised auxiliaries to
+Leopold for a subsidy. In May the elector of Cologne treated with the
+United Provinces, and then gave them back the places he had taken. Like
+the king of England, in abandoning France he at least left the soldiers
+he had furnished. On the 28th of May the Germanic diet finally pronounced
+against France and declared that the emperor’s war was a war of the
+empire. The great work of French politics was destroyed; Austria had
+regained, thanks to Louis XIV’s excesses, the supremacy and the direction
+of Germany against France.[c]
+
+
+OPERATIONS IN FRANCHE-COMTÉ; TURENNE IN ALSACE (1674-1675 A.D.)
+
+With the war thus become European, Louis XIV changed its object with a
+decision that did him honour. He abandoned Holland, which he was not
+strong enough to retain, and turned all his forces against Spain, the
+weakest of the states of the league. With 20,000 men and Vauban, he took
+the direction of Franche-Comté. The second conquest was almost as rapid
+as the first; Besançon was taken in nine days, and the entire province in
+six weeks (May, 1674).
+
+The allies had planned for this year a double and formidable invasion of
+France by way of Lorraine and through the Netherlands. Turenne was to
+stop the one, Condé the other. But the enemy was so slow in beginning
+operations that the conquest of Franche-Comté was finished before
+they had decided on their movements. Turenne was thus enabled to take
+the offensive: he crossed the Rhine at Philippsburg with 20,000 men,
+destroyed with fire the whole Palatinate in order to prevent the enemy
+from subsisting there, and fought a number of unimportant engagements
+at Sinsheim and at Ladenburg in July, 1674, where he showed resources of
+tactics unheard of until then.[d] To this day numberless ruins of castles
+along the Rhine bear witness to the savage work of Turenne.[a]
+
+[Illustration: A CAPTAIN, TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+The imperials numbered 40,000 men. Moreover it was known that the elector
+of Brandenburg, Frederick William, was coming with all haste at the head
+of 20,000 men to assist Bournonville [who replaced Montecuculi, who was
+ill, in the command of the imperial troops], and to crush the French by
+superiority of numbers. This juncture once effected, the French would be
+done for. Already in Germany they spoke of nothing less than marching on
+Paris itself. Many princesses accompanied the elector, saying they would
+“make the acquaintance of the French ladies, to learn manners from this
+polite nation.”
+
+Fortunately Turenne was on the watch. To prevent the two armies
+joining, he began by attacking that which was nearer. He approached
+Bournonville by a forced march of forty hours, and, without even giving
+his soldiers time to rest, fell on the surprised imperialists at Enzheim
+and forced them to retire under the walls of Strasburg in the greatest
+disorder (October 4th, 1674). It was a great victory, but the numerical
+inferiority of his troops hindered his reaping its full fruits. Ten days
+after this victory the elector of Brandenburg in his turn passed the Kehl
+bridge and joined his 20,000 men to Bournonville’s army. Turenne received
+scarcely sufficient reinforcements to repair his losses at Enzheim. The
+situation became more and more serious. How could it be thought that
+the genius of a single man could compensate for such an overwhelming
+disparity of forces--how believe that 20,000 Frenchmen could hold their
+own against 60,000 Germans? No one doubted that the nation would soon be
+swallowed up in defeat. Fear gained ground in the northeast provinces;
+peasants abandoned their fields and flocked into the towns to seek
+shelter from the enemy. Even at Paris great anxiety prevailed. It seemed
+as if the capital of France would soon be at the mercy of the German army.
+
+Alsace comprises the country between the Rhine and the Vosges, forming,
+from Hüningen or Belfort at the south, to Weissenburg on the Lauter at
+the north, a long band of territory of almost constant breadth. The river
+and mountain which serve for limits for this province in the east and
+west run nearly parallel one with the other. The Vosges separate Alsace
+from Lorraine. After the juncture of the two armies near Strasburg on the
+14th of October, Turenne retired slowly in good order in the direction
+of the defiles which assured communication between Alsace and Lorraine.
+The Germans followed the same route in this retrograde march. By this
+time November had arrived with its cold and snow. The German generals,
+reassured by Turenne’s retreat, thought the campaign over. So they
+postponed military operations until the following spring, as well as the
+invasion of Lorraine or Franche-Comté, and thought of wintering quietly
+in Alsace. To get more supplies, they spread their troops all through the
+province and installed them in quarters separated one from the other.
+Seventy thousand imperials or Brandenburgers thus took up quarters
+from Strasburg to Belfort in upper and lower Alsace. Frederick William
+installed himself at Colmar, where his wife and court joined him. The
+only thought now was how to speed the cold and rainy season by the help
+of _fêtes_.
+
+Meanwhile Turenne was quietly marching on Lorraine with his troops. On
+the 29th of November the last French soldier left Alsace by the defile
+of Lützelstein, in the north of Zabern. The news reached Paris. The
+court murmured; Louvois let loose his wrath against the marshal who had
+failed to save Alsace; the people, who had had a momentary hope after the
+success at Enzheim, gave themselves up again to despair.
+
+Turenne, not condescending to reassure public opinion--an opinion clearly
+against him--began to put into execution the admirable plan he had
+conceived. He divided his army into many detachments, placed them under
+the direction of experienced officers, to whom his only instructions
+were that they should defile from north to south along the western
+slopes of the Vosges; and reunite on a given day in the neighbourhood
+of Belfort. Thus, while the enemy dispersed itself imprudently in its
+winter quarters, the French army, concealing its intention by means of
+the Vosges chain, concentrated itself in upper Alsace. Issuing from
+the province near Zabern in the north, it re-entered at forty leagues
+from there, near Belfort in the south. Success complete, unheard of,
+crowned this splendid stroke of genius. Such was the devotion of the
+French soldiers to their chief that they accepted without murmuring the
+necessity of marching in the depths of winter, in a country without
+roads, covered with snow and intersected with torrents. From the 5th
+to the 27th of December, the army, at the cost of incredible fatigue,
+marched from Lützelstein to the pass of Belfort. There the marshal
+reassumed in person the command of the troops, which he had divided up to
+facilitate the march. On the 29th of December he came upon the first body
+of the enemy, near Mülhausen, and destroyed it. Horrified at this sudden
+appearance, in upper Alsace, of an army they had thought to be encamped
+in Lorraine, near Nancy or Metz, the German generals realised the mistake
+they had made in dispersing their forces. They tried to repair the fault
+by sending orders for concentration in every direction.
+
+It was too late. Turenne advanced with lightning speed. From Mülhausen,
+the place of his first victory, he went northwards. Near Colmar, by
+Türkheim, the imperials showed fight. He attacked them furiously on the
+5th of January, 1675, and put them to flight. The remnant of the enemy
+retired on Schlettstadt. The marshal pursued them without giving them
+any rest. From Schlettstadt he pursued them at the sword’s point to
+Strasburg, making an immense number of prisoners and carrying off cannon
+and standards. On the 11th of January the small number of Germans who had
+not been put _hors de combat_, killed, or taken, during this terrible
+campaign, recrossed the bridge of Kehl in the greatest disorder (1675).
+Alsace was delivered. A formidable invasion was spared to France.[k]
+
+This campaign prepared with such secrecy, executed with an adroitness so
+prudent, was ended in less than six weeks, and excited the enthusiasm of
+the whole of France; Louis XIV wrote to the marshal: “I hope you will
+soon return, as I am most impatient to see you to demonstrate to you by
+word of mouth how much I appreciate the great and important services you
+have rendered me, in the last victory you have gained over my enemies.”
+On the entire route the inhabitants whom Turenne had saved from the
+ravages of war turned out filled with admiration and gratitude, so that
+his return was a march of triumph until he reached St. Germain.
+
+
+CONDÉ IN THE NETHERLANDS
+
+While Turenne was victorious in foiling the invasion from the east, Condé
+arrested that of the north. He prevented 90,000 Spaniards and Dutch from
+invading Champagne. He entrenched himself at Charleroi, with the Sambre
+behind him, in a position where the prince of Orange dared not attack
+him. Condé, who did not voluntarily prolong the war of defence, pursued
+the enemy to his retreat and attacked the rearguard at Seneffe, near Mons
+(August, 1674), routing it completely, broke through the centre, and
+attacked and threw into disorder the remainder of the army, which was
+drawn up in a very strong position. When night came, he had had three
+horses shot under him, and the victory was still undecided. “He now,”
+says an eye-witness, La Fare,[l] “ordered new battalions to advance and
+cannon to be brought forward to attack the enemy at daybreak. All who
+heard this order trembled, and it was very evident that he was the only
+one who still desired to continue the battle.” The following day, the two
+armies separated with an equal loss of from seven to eight thousand men.
+
+The prince of Orange, in order to prove that he had not been defeated,
+besieged Oudenarde. Condé proved himself the victor, and forced him to
+abandon this enterprise; but Grave, the last of the French conquests in
+Holland, opened its gates. Chamilly had defended it ninety-three days,
+and caused the loss of 16,000 men to the assailants.
+
+
+LAST CAMPAIGNS OF TURENNE AND CONDÉ (1675 A.D.)
+
+In the early summer (June, 1675) Turenne returned at the head of his
+army of the Rhine. He moved into the Palatinate. The emperor opposed him
+with Montecuculi, who passed for a consummate tactician. They took six
+weeks to follow and observe each other, and their reputations which had
+seemed to have reached their apogee were still more augmented by these
+actions. Finally they decided to come to battle near the village of
+Salzbach in a place chosen by Turenne; where he believed himself certain
+of victory, when the marshal on examining the position of a battery was
+struck by a stray shot, which also tore off the arm of Saint-Hilaire,
+lieutenant-general of the army (July 27th, 1675). The latter’s son burst
+into tears. “It is not for me that you should weep,” said Saint-Hilaire
+to him, “but for this great man.” Turenne’s death was truly a national
+calamity. Louis XIV, in order to show honour to the greatest military
+leader of his century, had him interred at St. Denis, in the royal
+sepulchre. But in time, the memory of the services of Turenne grew
+fainter, at least at court, and his reputation appeared overestimated.
+In 1710 in the midst of the distress of the War of the Succession, his
+family built a mausoleum for him in the chapel of St. Eustace. By order
+of the king, the ornamentations and armorial bearings were destroyed,
+under the pretext that they were not suitable to such a sacred spot.
+
+[Sidenote: [1675-1676 A.D.]]
+
+The death of Turenne undid the whole result of an able campaign. The
+French, discouraged and seemingly seized with a panic of terror, fled in
+the direction of the Rhine. Montecuculi penetrated into Alsace by the
+bridge of Strasburg. At the same time the duke of Lorraine, Charles IV,
+hastened to besiege the city of Treves with 20,000 men. Créqui tried
+to come to his assistance, but was beaten at Consarbrück. He rushed
+into the town, and after several weeks of heroic defence was obliged to
+capitulate through the cowardice of the garrison (September, 1675). “His
+misfortune,” says Condé, “made him a great general.” Condé was right.
+
+After the death of Turenne, Condé was sent to Alsace to arrest the
+progress of Montecuculi and to reanimate the confidence of the troops.
+He forced the imperials to raise the sieges of Zabern and Hagenau,
+and to recross the Rhine. This was his last victory; he never again
+appeared at the head of the armies, but retired to Chantilly, where he
+lived thereafter in the society of men of letters and philosophers.
+During the campaign in Holland, he sought an interview with Spinoza,
+and when Malebranche published his _Recherche de la vérité_ he sought
+to meet the author. He enjoyed holding erudite conversations as much as
+fighting battles, taking part in them with intelligence, with ardour, and
+sometimes, says La Fontaine, took reason, like victory, by the throat! If
+in conversations on literature he was sustaining a good cause he spoke
+with much grace and gentleness, but if he upheld a bad one it was not
+wise to contradict him. Boileau was once so astonished, relates Louis
+Racine, by the fire of his eyes in a dispute of that nature, that he
+prudently yielded, and said in a low voice to his neighbour, “From now
+on I shall always agree with the prince whenever he is in the wrong.”
+Bossuet says, “What a charming picture is presented to us in the avenues
+of Chantilly, where the fountains play unceasingly by day and by night,
+and our greatest poets debate with one of our greatest warriors.”
+
+
+EVENTS OF 1676; AFFAIRS IN SICILY
+
+In the following year (1676) the same campaign of sieges of which Louis
+was so fond was recommenced. Condé and Bouchain were taken; Maestricht,
+besieged by the prince of Orange, was delivered; but the Germans
+re-entered Philippsburg, which Fay defended three months and did not give
+up until he ran out of powder. An unexpected victory, however, consoled
+France for these slight successes and reverses. The inhabitants of
+Messina, in Sicily, revolting against Spain, had placed themselves under
+the protection of Louis XIV in 1675. He sent them a fleet commanded by
+the duke de Vivonne, brother of Madame de Montespan, who had Duquesne
+under him. This illustrious sailor, born at Dieppe in 1610, had begun
+life as a privateer and pirate; after which he had entered the service
+of Sweden, where he acquired some reputation. Returning to France in
+order to enter the royal navy, he passed through all grades, became
+lieutenant-general, but could not rise any higher as he was a Protestant.
+On the coasts of Sicily his adversaries were De Ruyter and the Spanish.
+The first battle fought near the island of Stromboli was undecided
+(1676); a second combat off Syracuse was a complete victory; De Ruyter
+was killed there.
+
+Louis XIV ordered military honours to be paid by all French ports to the
+vessel which transported to Holland the remains of that great naval hero.
+Finally Duquesne, Vivonne, and Tourville, in a last encounter at Palermo,
+crushed the hostile fleets. France had for a time the control of the
+Mediterranean (1676).
+
+[Sidenote: [1676-1678 A.D.]]
+
+The Dutch had taken Cayenne in that same year, and ravaged the French
+Antilles. The vice-admiral D’Estrées armed, at his own expense, eight
+ships with which the king intrusted him, in consideration of reserving
+half the prizes. He retook Cayenne and destroyed ten ships of the enemy
+in the harbour of Tobago where they had thought themselves to be in
+security. In 1678 he took the island itself and all the Dutch factories
+in Senegal. The French flag now floated over the Atlantic as it did over
+the Mediterranean.[d]
+
+In spite of the sufferings of his kingdom Louis XIV persisted in 1676
+in the conditions he wished to impose on England and the empire, and
+which these two powers were unwilling to accept. He was still flattering
+himself over being able to keep England in the neutrality [she had
+committed herself to by the treaty of peace with Holland in 1674].
+England’s neutrality was indeed what concerned him most. He gave money to
+Charles II and gave orders to the ambassadors, Ruvigny and Courtin, to
+distribute more money, among such ministers, courtiers, and members of
+parliament as they could win over. But the English desired that, at any
+price, Louis should return his conquests or that Charles II should join
+the Dutch to crush him. Parliament demanded the recall of those English
+troops which Churchill was commanding in the army of the Rhine.
+
+Charles himself was only desirous of satisfying public opinion, and
+of conciliating that satisfaction with what he had promised Louis. He
+believed he would do this by assuming the rôle of a mediator. He started
+the idea of a congress that it was difficult for the powers to reject,
+and which was particularly pleasing to Holland, overcome by the burden of
+maritime war. During the preliminary negotiations of the congress, for
+which the town of Nimeguen was chosen, Charles signed a new secret treaty
+with Louis XIV (February, 1676), the two kings reciprocally engaging to
+make no separate peace with the Dutch. Louis XIV on his side overwhelmed
+the prince of Orange with offers that would detach him from Spain. All
+was useless.
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIER, TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+The campaign of 1677 was preceded like that of 1676 by several attempts
+at negotiations in England and Holland. Courtin, who had replaced Ruvigny
+in England, wrote to Louis XIV that it was absolutely necessary to detach
+the prince of Orange from his allies, which might be accomplished by the
+intervention of Charles II. In consequence the king renewed to Orange and
+the states-general his former offers. He proposed to abandon the places
+necessary to cover Ghent and Brussels, to make a commercial treaty with
+Holland, and to conclude with her an eight years’ truce which would give
+Spain the time to reflect. If, on the expiration of the delay, Spain
+persisted in sustaining other claims, France and Holland would divide
+the Netherlands between them. William did not absolutely repel these
+conditions, but replied that he could not abandon his allies without
+dishonour.
+
+In order to have some faith placed in his pretended moderation, Louis
+signed with Charles II, on February 24th, a commercial treaty which
+offered some advantage to the English. Charles II insisted that France
+should make peace. He represented that Holland would not separate from
+her allies, that in the end he would be obliged to uphold her, and that
+he could not continually go against the sentiments and interests of his
+subjects.
+
+The enterprises in Sicily had brought England’s uneasiness to a climax.
+She already saw the ruin of her trade with the Levant, and Charles II
+proposed a project of peace, the basis of which was that France should
+keep Franche-Comté and a part of the places conquered in the Netherlands;
+that she should grant the Dutch a barrier and a commercial treaty; that
+she should indemnify the duke of Lorraine and abandon Sicily; but it
+remained to come to an understanding on a number of particular points
+and on the determination of the places that should remain to Louis XIV.
+The latter wished to give up only three--Charleroi, Ath, Oudenarde;
+and he demanded that Spain should cede him Ypres, Charlemont, and
+Luxemburg in exchange. He was all the more obstinate because he knew
+the states-general were tired of war and the damage inflicted upon
+commerce. He hoped to separate them from the prince of Orange, through
+the establishment of a barrier and some tariff concessions, but these
+concessions were so weak that the Dutch only laughed at them. As for the
+congress of Nimeguen, where the discussion of the propositions between
+the plenipotentiaries of the various countries began on the 6th of May,
+1677, it would necessarily take too much time to put a stop to military
+events.[b]
+
+
+CAMPAIGN OF 1677; NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE
+
+Créqui had succeeded Turenne in Germany, Luxemburg replaced Condé in the
+Netherlands. The former made amends for his defeat at Consarbrück by a
+campaign worthy of Turenne. By a succession of quick marches, which kept
+him constantly between the enemy and the French frontier, he covered
+Alsace and Lorraine against an adversary superior in numbers, defeated
+him at Kochersberg, between Strasburg and Zabern (October 7th, 1677),
+and took Freiburg from him, thus taking the war to the right bank of
+the Rhine. Luxemburg, who resembled more the victor of Rocroi, captured
+Valenciennes in conjunction with the king, where the musketeers raised
+formidable works in broad daylight, then Cambray, and with Monsieur,
+against the prince of Orange, fought the battle of Cassel, near St. Omer,
+which capitulated (April, 1677).[d]
+
+The coalition was now seriously shaken. Orange was everywhere accused
+of small ability for leadership. At Brussels and at Ghent the people
+broke loose against the Dutch. Even in Holland the peace party began
+to be demonstrative. Louis XIV reduced his tariff by half, in October,
+1677, in order to stimulate the pacific desires of the Dutch. The
+latter, exhausted and tired of continually paying useless subsidies to
+their allies, complained that the Spaniards were always behindhand in
+fulfilling their engagements, that the Germans never left Germany, and
+that the prince of Orange never found provisions or stores in Belgium.
+
+William and his partisans replied to these complaints that the honour of
+the country was at stake, that the United Provinces could not abandon the
+allies to whom they owed their salvation, and he had still one resource.
+This was to force England, which according to him was alone capable of
+doing it, to call a halt to the armies of Louis XIV. He went to London,
+where Charles II not only authorised but desired his presence, believing
+that it would be a convincing response to the defiances and murmurs of
+the nation. Scarcely had the prince arrived when he asked the hand of
+Mary, daughter of the duke of York. The king, who had long judged this
+alliance necessary, hastened to grant it. The marriage was celebrated on
+the 15th of November.
+
+Charles II believed that Louis XIV would now raise no obstacle to
+accepting the proposals of peace: but he was mistaken--Louis rejected
+them, as going too far beyond those he had proposed himself, and which he
+already considered too moderate. The other powers, Spain and the empire,
+also declined them and preferred to continue the war. Charles II, having
+signed a treaty with the states-general on January 10th, 1678, found
+himself compelled to go further than he wished. He was obliged to recall
+the English troops serving in the French army and to prepare armaments.
+
+Louis XIV took little notice of these demonstrations, strengthened the
+remainder of his armies, and decided to strike a great blow in the
+Netherlands, where Vauban had just retaken St. Ghislain in the depths of
+winter.
+
+At the opening of the campaign of 1678, France could count on 219,000
+men under arms, of whom half, it is true, were only fit for garrison
+service. Louvois was resolved to capture Ghent, and deceived the enemy
+by false demonstrations on other places, which led them to reduce the
+garrison at Ghent. When this had been done, he suddenly appeared under
+the walls of the town on the 1st of March. In less than two days 70,000
+men were assembled and the siege was begun. Louis XIV, who had gone on
+a journey to Metz and the borders of the Maas to outwit the Spaniards,
+suddenly changed his direction and arrived on the 4th. The queen and the
+court followed closely, but stopped at Tournay. Four marshals, Humières,
+Luxemburg, Schomberg, and Lorges, assisted the king, Vauban pressed the
+works. The town, in spite of its siege and the number of watercourses and
+canals protecting it, was promptly surrounded. The 500 men forming the
+garrison declined to defend it. It surrendered the 9th, and on the 11th
+the castle capitulated. The army now marched upon Ypres, which it took
+on the 25th after eight days of entrenchment and in spite of a bloody
+resistance. The king, after this rapid campaign and its two important
+acquisitions, returned to St. Germain on the 7th of April.
+
+Louis XIV now believed himself secure in imposing his conditions. He
+sent them the 9th of April to Nimeguen and to London: they were the same
+as before the taking of Ghent and Ypres. He allowed his plenipotentiary
+a month to have them accepted, but this term was further extended to
+the 10th of August. The latest successes of the French had had the
+effect that Louis XIV hoped for, that of strengthening the peace party
+in Holland. Amsterdam and the large towns refused to prolong these
+sacrifices. Charles II hastened to approve the French conditions. The
+Dutch, ready to agree to Louis’ commercial stipulations, did not find
+his proposed restitution of places sufficient to form such an efficient
+barrier that they could oblige Spain to accept. Suddenly Villa-Hermosa
+(successor of Monterey in the governorship of the Spanish Netherlands)
+received the order from his court to lay down his arms. The Madrid
+cabinet, divided and exhausted, had resigned itself to the abandonment
+of that which had been lost, from fear of losing that which was still
+retained. This decision relieved the states of Holland of their last
+scruples. Louis XIV then put forward a condition which was nearly the
+ruin of everything. He declared that, in engaging to restore Maestricht
+and the other places on the Maas of which he was master, he intended to
+maintain garrisons in them until his ally Sweden should have recovered
+that which Denmark and Brandenburg had taken from her. This exigence
+aroused the Spaniards, disconcerted the Dutch, exasperated the English,
+and drove Charles II to despair. They gave up all hope of ending the war.
+On July 26th, Charles II signed a treaty of defensive alliance with the
+states-general.
+
+Louis XIV realised the necessity of getting out of this hole, and as he
+did not wish to recede, he engaged Sweden to ask the withdrawal of this
+condition, which Charles XI generously did. The Dutch plenipotentiaries
+at Nimeguen, Van Beverningk, Odyk, and Van Haren asked on August 7th for
+a conference with the French plenipotentiaries, D’Estrades, D’Avaux,
+and Colbert. They debated together for more than twenty-four hours, and
+finally, before midnight on the 10th, they signed a treaty of peace and a
+treaty of commerce with France.[138]
+
+
+LOUIS XIV SETTLES WITH THE COALITION (1678-1679 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1678-1679 A.D.]]
+
+The first treaty returned to the states-general Maestricht and the little
+towns which Louis XIV had kept in the vicinity and in Limburg, on sole
+condition that free exercise of the Catholic religion should be allowed.
+The second re-established freedom of commerce and navigation between the
+two peoples.
+
+D’Estrades brought in person the news of the treaty to Marshal de
+Luxemburg, encamped on the plateau of Casteaux not far from Mons, which
+a detachment of his troops was blockading. The prince of Orange, who had
+come face to face with the French army with almost equal forces (45,000
+men), knew of the Peace of Nimeguen, but had not yet received official
+notice. He began a sharp attack upon Luxemburg, and the battle raged for
+six hours around the abbey of St. Denis. It was a hard fight. A regiment
+of French refugees fighting under the Dutch flag was literally hacked
+to pieces. The day remained undecisive; and on the next the courier
+announcing the peace arrived in the Dutch camp, and the two armies
+separated.
+
+The Dutch having signed the peace were assailed with violent
+recriminations on the part of their German allies, especially the elector
+of Brandenburg, the king of Denmark, and the bishop of Münster. But
+the great point for them was to obtain the definite adhesion of Spain.
+The latter country, exhausted and ill-governed, had long shown a great
+repugnance to making peace. But as soon as Charles II had attained the
+age of fourteen, his majority, the great personages of the kingdom
+forced the queen to drive Valenzuela out; then they compelled her to
+accept exile herself. Don John took the title of prime minister and
+seized the government (June 20th, 1677). As the emperor insisted on the
+re-establishment of his sister, Maria Anna, Don John, almost embroiled
+with the court of Vienna, was compelled to lend his ear to pacific
+propositions.
+
+The treaty between France and the court of Madrid was finally signed
+September 17th, 1678. Louis XIV restituted Courtrai, Oudenarde, Ath,
+and Charleroi, which the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had given him; also
+Binche, St. Ghislain, Ghent Leuw, and Puigcerda in Catalonia, which
+Marshal de Navailles had taken that same year. On his side he retained
+with definite title St. Omer, Cassel, Aire, Bailleul, Poperinghe,
+Ypres, Wervicq, Warneton, Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, Condé, Bavay,
+Mauberge, and the whole of Franche-Comté. The treaty of 1668 had in
+reality only been a truce, giving France advance posts in the heart
+of Belgium and leaving Spain with other places, isolated spots in the
+midst of French possessions, particularly on the borders of the Schelde.
+The treaty of 1678 established a much more regular border, by assuring
+France a series of strongholds bound one to the other, and closing all
+avenues to the kingdom from Dunkirk to the Maas, and leaving the Spanish
+Netherlands another series of places which offered the same advantages
+though in a less degree. The Treaty of Nimeguen was, in spite of a few
+restitutions demanded by Europe as a guarantee of peace, one of the most
+glorious and most advantageous that France had ever signed.
+
+The emperor and the empire remained to be reckoned with. They were
+left out of the Dutch and Spanish treaties. They began by protesting
+and continuing the war. The imperial army, without stopping at the
+negotiations of Nimeguen, undertook, under the duke of Lorraine, to
+retake Freiburg in Breisgau, and to penetrate into Alsace. In May it
+appeared on the Rhine between Offenburg and Wilstett. Créqui was again
+charged with protecting Freiburg; and conducted a campaign which was
+as fortunate as it was able, and which placed a seal upon his fame.
+The Germans, reduced to powerlessness at every turn, quickly ended the
+campaign. The emperor, abandoned by the Dutch and embroiled with the
+Spaniards, ended by desiring peace. The possession of Philippsburg
+indemnified him for the loss of Strasburg. The princes of the empire,
+with the exception of a few in the north, refused to pursue the now
+objectless war. The subsidies of Spain and Holland had ceased. Leopold
+consented to a treaty which was signed January 15th, 1679, between the
+emperor, the empire, and France. The whole difficulty centred around
+the allies, whom Austria refused to abandon and for whom she demanded
+satisfaction. The king made a few concessions; but he would not give up
+Lorraine to Duke Charles except in retaining Nancy and four military
+routes. The duke rejected these conditions. Louis XIV also reserved to
+himself the right of passage through eight towns of the empire, to join
+the duchy of Cleves, and to continue the struggle with the elector of
+Brandenburg.
+
+The imperial princes, interested in keeping their conquests over the
+Swedes, were the only ones who would not lay down their arms. They did
+not have to wait long to see themselves forced to do so, for Louis XIV
+was not willing at any price to abandon unfortunate allies whose actions
+had been of service to him. Pecuniary indemnity served to interest the
+dukes of Brunswick, Lüneburg, and the bishop of Münster. The elector
+of Brandenburg refused this sort of compensation. Créqui entered the
+duchy of Cleves, occupied the county of Mark, [the two possessions of
+the elector by the Rhine] and the town of Lippstadt beyond the Rhine,
+and advanced as far as the Weser, whose passage he forced June 30th,
+near Minden. The elector, incapable of continuing this unequal struggle,
+had on the eve of that day made his submission. His envoy signed at St.
+Germain a treaty by which he restored to the Swedes that which he had
+taken from them, stipulating a rectification of the Pomeranian frontier,
+and an indemnity of 300,000 crowns which France paid. The king of Denmark
+was the last to treat. He restored the towns he had taken, but received
+no pecuniary indemnity. These successive treaties, consequent upon those
+of Nimeguen, re-established things in Germany almost upon the footing of
+the Treaty of Westphalia.
+
+[Sidenote: [1680 A.D.]]
+
+All the powers had been weakened in the eight years’ war. Holland
+alone escaped almost intact from the storm which had threatened to
+destroy her. As for Louis XIV, he emerged from the struggle aggrandised
+and triumphant. He triumphed all the more in that he owed nothing to
+anyone--not even to the king of England, who, having shown himself
+equally incapable of making war or peace, now raised against himself
+as much scorn in France as hatred in his own state. If France had
+suffered considerably from a prolonged struggle which demanded enormous
+sacrifices, she had displayed resources superior to those of any other
+power, although Holland had shown herself the richer in proportion.
+France had struggled single-handed against the empire. The king’s proud
+device, “_Nec pluribus impar_,” was justified. The courtiers and the
+soldiers were unanimous in granting him the title of Louis the Great; an
+equestrian statue representing him in the costume of a Roman emperor was
+raised a short time after in Paris in a square which was called the Place
+des Victoirés.[b]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[127] [See Volumes X and XIII.]
+
+[128] [Richelieu’s interference in Portuguese affairs will be recalled.]
+
+[129] [The price paid was five millions.]
+
+[130] [These 4,000 veterans under Marshal de Schomberg assisted in 1665,
+by the battle of Villaviciosa, to settle the house of Braganza on its
+throne.]
+
+[131] [Louis aided the Venetians to defend Crete. Between 1665 and 1669
+more than fifty thousand men went there at different times.[d]]
+
+[132] [In 1650 a violent attempt of the young William II of Nassau
+against the states-general had failed and the stadholder died a few
+months after, leaving an unborn son who was to become the famous William
+III. The stadholdership had been abolished and the grand pensionary
+of the province of Holland became the first personage of the United
+Provinces, like the president of the states-general. Jan de Witt had
+been filling these high functions since 1653. Elected at the age of
+twenty-five, he showed at once the ripeness of a great statesman and
+the devotion of a great citizen. With a mind at once practical and
+philosophic, loving letters and the arts as much as affairs, a wise
+administrator and skilful diplomat, he was not unlike the last great
+men of Greece; and a contemporary--a very competent judge, the count
+d’Estrades--has compared his mind to that of Richelieu.[c]]
+
+[133] [By these secret articles England and Holland agreed to make war on
+Louis XIV if he went back on his word, and they proposed to compel him to
+make peace without including Portugal, if Spain was determined on this
+point.]
+
+[134] It was afterwards decided to defer the execution of the attack on
+Holland until 1672. A new treaty was signed at Dover, December 31st,
+1670, modifying the first in several points.
+
+[135] [The chevalier de Lorraine and a maître d’hôtel of Monsieur,
+Morel by name, were among those suspected of poison. We have seen in
+the preceding chapter how epidemic that crime became about that time.
+However, the theory of natural death, the result of an abscess of the
+liver, hastened by domestic troubles, is now generally accepted as the
+cause of Madame’s death. Dareste[b] says it was due to cholera morbus.
+Madame was only twenty-six years old.]
+
+[136] [This was an important departure from the old policy of Francis I
+and of Richelieu, who, for political reasons, made Protestant alliances
+abroad, though upholding Catholicism at home.]
+
+[137] Ruart means inspector of the dykes.
+
+[138] [The commercial party (the old one of De Witt) was attracted by
+Louis’ offering commercial advantage, and thus forced the peace against
+the will of William of Orange.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. THE HEIGHT AND DECLINE OF THE BOURBON MONARCHY
+
+    Louis had many royal qualities--a noble presence; manners
+    full of grace and dignity; an elocution at once majestic
+    and seductive; unwearied assiduity in business; a luminous
+    understanding; an instinctive taste for whatever is magnificent
+    in thought or action; and a genuine zeal for the welfare of his
+    people. But for the high office of moulding and conducting the
+    policy of the greatest of the nations of the civilised world,
+    he wanted three indispensable gifts--an education so liberal
+    as to have revealed to him the real interests and resources
+    of his kingdom; the faculty by which a true statesman, in the
+    silence of all established precedents, originates measures
+    adapted to the innovations, whether progressive or immediate,
+    of his times; and that dominion over passion and appetite which
+    is the one essential condition of all true mental independence.
+    Without such knowledge, such invention, and such self-control,
+    Louis could not really think, and therefore could not really
+    act for himself.--_Stephen._[j]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1679-1715 A.D.]]
+
+After Nimeguen, Louis XIV was at the climax of his fortunes. He had no
+equal among the other sovereigns of Europe. If he had not realised all
+his ambitions, if he had made political mistakes and military mistakes
+he had none the less shown a vigour, a spirit of continuity, a power of
+calculation and often a rectitude of judgment which placed him far above
+contemporary princes. He was served by great men, and he had always known
+how to direct them and appropriate their work to himself, although he
+had sometimes conceded too much to Louvois, and yielded too much to the
+desire to display in war the brilliance of his court. He continually saw
+everything and did everything himself in order to train himself by work,
+and, as he said, by this means to complete his ideas.
+
+[Sidenote: [1679-1680 A.D.]]
+
+In 1679 France, instead of returning to her ancient peace footing,
+preserved an effective force of 140,000 men, part of which was so
+organised as to be able to take the field immediately. The maintenance
+of this armament had for its object the support of certain pretensions
+relative to the regulation of the frontiers. At Nimeguen the territories
+ceded on either side had not been delimited in a definite manner. Louis
+XIV and Louvois calculated on profiting by this circumstance to make new
+acquisitions. Louvois was ambitious of deriving as much advantage from
+peace as from war.
+
+Louvois no longer directed military affairs alone. For a long time he
+had been encroaching on the office of the secretary of state for foreign
+affairs. Pomponne, who complained of this and who lacked the authority
+and energy necessary to resist him, was disgraced. His successor was
+Colbert’s own brother, Colbert de Croissy, formerly ambassador to London
+and plenipotentiary to the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle and Nimeguen; but
+Louvois’ influence in diplomacy remained none the less preponderant.
+
+
+ACQUISITION OF FRONTIER PLACES (1679-1681 A.D.)
+
+The regulation of the frontiers on the side of the Spanish Netherlands
+was debated in a conference which was opened at Courtrai in the month of
+December, 1679. During the long discussions which occupied it Louvois’
+ambition was particularly directed towards the eastern frontier, where
+he could proceed by other means than diplomatic arguments. As early as
+1679 he occupied Homburg and Bitche, dependencies of Lorraine which had
+been pledged by Duke Charles IV to the electors of Treves and Mainz.
+He made the parliament of Besançon pronounce two decrees, the one of
+September 8th, 1679, which declared the reunion to Franche-Comté of the
+castellanies of Clermont, Châtelet, and Blamont--that is to say, more
+than eighty villages, forming part of the principality of Montbéliard,
+the property of the dukes of Würtemberg; the other, dated the 31st of
+August, 1680, declared the reunion of the principality itself.
+
+At the parliament of Metz Louis instituted a _chambre de réunion_,
+intended to search out all the dependencies of the Three Bishoprics, that
+is to say, the territories which might be claimed as their fiefs by any
+title whatsoever. This question of dependencies had been the subject of
+old disputes between France and the empire. Louvois resolved to settle
+them finally by simple judiciary decrees and without beginning vexatious
+lawsuits with the empire and the German princes. He drew up himself, or
+caused to be drawn up under his own eyes, detailed instructions for the
+king’s _procureur_ of the _chambre de réunion_ at Metz. The result of
+this inquiry was to reunite to France about eighty fiefs. The county of
+Zweibrücken was vacant and several competitors were disputing for it;
+Louvois seized it in virtue of a very ancient feudal right found in the
+title deeds of the bishopric of Metz. The king of Sweden, Charles XI, one
+of the principal claimants, protested; he was offered a sum of money to
+indemnify him. He refused to sell his rights and abandoned France, whose
+ally he had been in the late wars, to throw himself on the side of her
+enemies.
+
+Another dispute--less old, since it dated only from the Treaty of
+Westphalia, but not less important--had for object the empire’s
+jurisdiction in Alsace and the territories of ten towns reunited to
+France in 1648. Louis XIV had never recognised this jurisdiction; he had
+imposed oaths on the towns of Alsace which reserved his own rights and
+had taken little account of their privileges when these inconvenienced
+his armies. He had contented himself with conceding them, after the war,
+certain abatements of taxes under the name of compensation. In 1680
+the sovereign council of Alsace, instituted by Mazarin at Ensisheim
+and afterwards transferred to Breisach, decreed the suppression of all
+imperial jurisdictions in the province and proceeded to reunions of
+territories, similar to those of the Three Bishoprics.
+
+The reunion of Strasburg which was the most considerable was accomplished
+in another fashion. Strasburg, a free imperial city, had given good
+grounds for complaint, inasmuch as she had observed her neutrality
+but ill during the last war; she had on several occasions delivered
+the bridge over the Rhine to the imperial troops. Louvois began by
+withdrawing certain neighbouring territories from the jurisdiction of
+Strasburg; then, eluding the vigilance of the imperial troops, he sent
+into Alsace 35,000 men, whom he scattered, but in such a manner as to be
+able to assemble them again at a given point. He watched for a favourable
+opportunity. The arrival in the city of an officer of the emperor having
+furnished him with the pretext he was seeking, he caused the approaches
+and the passage of the Rhine to be suddenly occupied by his troops during
+the night of the 27-28th of September, 1681. The inhabitants, taken
+by surprise, demanded explanations. The French resident knew nothing;
+the officer who led the troops referred them to Montclar, the military
+commandant of Alsace. The latter informed them that he had orders to
+obtain their recognition of the sovereignty of France; but that otherwise
+their municipal, religious, and other privileges would be preserved.
+
+[Illustration: FRANÇOIS MICHEL LE TELLIER, MARQUIS DE LOUVOIS
+
+(1641-1691)]
+
+[Sidenote: [1680-1681 A.D.]]
+
+The magistrates wrote to the diet and to the emperor to notify them of
+the extremity to which they found themselves reduced; their letters were
+intercepted. As they were not in a position to offer the least resistance
+they demanded to be allowed to consult the people. This consultation
+could be only a matter of form; acquiescence was a matter of necessity.
+On the 30th the city capitulated. Louvois’ first act was to restore the
+cathedral to the Catholic clergy, whilst guaranteeing religious liberty
+to the Protestants. Without loss of time the construction of a citadel,
+barracks, and entrenched cantonments was taken in hand, less for security
+against the inhabitants than to oppose a powerful bulwark to the empire.
+On the 24th of October Louis XIV came to make a triumphal entry into his
+new acquisition.
+
+On the 30th of September, 1681, the day of the entry of a French
+corps into Strasburg, another entered Casale. Louvois had long aimed
+at dominating Piedmont and through Piedmont Italy. Casale, added to
+Pinerolo, should furnish him the means. Casale was a possession of
+the duke of Mantua. This duke was a debauched and prodigal prince, in
+pressing need of money.
+
+On the 8th of July, 1681, a treaty was secretly signed at Mantua, between
+the duke and a French agent who had no official character, the abbé
+Morel. Some troops had been collected in Dauphiné and at Pinerolo. A
+passage for these troops was requested of the duchess of Savoy [widow of
+Charles Emmanuel and regent for the infant duke], with the threat that it
+would be insisted on. Finally, on the 30th of September, Catinat, who had
+been at Pinerolo incognito for several months, took possession not only
+of the citadel but of the castle and town of Casale in the name of Louis
+XIV.
+
+[Illustration: MARQUIS ABRAHAM DUQUESNE
+
+(1610-1688)]
+
+Henceforth Piedmont was shut in between two French fortresses and Louvois
+assumed towards her the tone of a master. But the regent of Savoy
+resisted with extreme vigour; it was almost necessary to employ violence
+to obtain from her a free passage for the French troops passing from
+Pinerolo to Montferrat. Finally, in order to save the independence of
+Savoy, she accepted the condition of marrying her son to Mademoiselle
+d’Orléans, Monsieur’s daughter (in 1684). Louis XIV thought that this
+marriage would complete the deliverance into his hands of Piedmont and
+secure him the entrance into Italy. He believed that the other Italian
+states were now condemned to submit to his dictation. The contrary
+was the case. Italy kept silence; but as soon as Victor Amadeus found
+an opportunity of escaping from France, which he detested, he had no
+difficulty in raising the peninsula against her.
+
+The reunions declared in the Three Bishoprics and Alsace, and the
+occupation of Strasburg and Casale, did not make Louvois forget the
+conferences of Courtrai. The Spaniards showed in these conferences as
+much ill-will as weakness and sought to prolong them. They had pledged
+themselves to hand over Charlemont in exchange for Dinant, which was to
+be restored to them. They did not do so until 1681 after an infinite
+amount of chicanery. Louvois profited by these delays; he had the address
+to negotiate with the bishop of Liège, to whom Dinant belonged, a direct
+cession of that town to France and made use of this cession as an
+authority for not surrendering it to Spain. Almost immediately afterwards
+he occupied the little county of Chiny in Luxemburg, in virtue of an
+ancient title of the bishopric of Metz. He sent troops thither to make
+what was called a “pacific execution”; the country was reunited to the
+crown, and the work of hunting up his dependencies was taken in hand.
+
+At last, on the 4th of August, 1681, Louis XIV notified the conference
+of Courtrai of his claims. They comprehended the castellany of Alost,
+the towns of Grammont, Ninove, Lessines, and various territories. He
+offered, it is true, to exchange those towns and territories which might
+be necessary for the defence of Brussels, in return for “equivalents.”
+The Spaniards protesting against these pretensions, Louvois increased
+the French troops of the county of Chiny, established a sort of blockade
+round Luxemburg, seized the first difficulty which arose in consequence
+as a _casus belli_, pressed the blockade still closer during the winter,
+and made every preparation to make himself master of the place in the
+spring.
+
+Nothing was more popular in France than this policy of aggrandisement.
+Men took little trouble to find out whether it were just or safe. It was
+enough that it should flatter national feeling and the military passions
+then greatly over-excited.
+
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR A SECOND COALITION (1681-1682 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1681-1682 A.D.]]
+
+But if France thus made herself the accomplice of the enterprises and
+the ambition of the king, it was not possible for Europe to content
+herself with being a passive spectator. Whilst Spain was discussing
+and protesting at Courtrai, Germany was discussing and protesting at
+Ratisbon and Frankfort. Sweden was irritated, Italy discontented, Holland
+embarrassed. All the powers showed themselves attentive and anxious. None
+was strong enough to struggle alone; the question was whether, after
+a coalition dissolved at Nimeguen they would succeed in again drawing
+together and coming to an understanding.
+
+Louis XIV had reason to fear it. Therefore, in spite of the disdainful
+majesty of his diplomacy, he endeavoured to make some of them advances
+of a nature calculated to flatter. The year which followed the Treaty
+of Nimeguen he married the eldest of his nieces, a very young girl, the
+eldest daughter of Monsieur and of Henrietta of England, to the king of
+Spain, Charles II. The young princess Marie Louise was the victim of
+policy and obliged to accept a union repugnant to her. The same year the
+dauphin, aged scarcely eighteen years, married a princess of Bavaria. The
+king was eager to secure the elector of Bavaria, who had been faithful
+to him since 1670; he hoped to strengthen himself in Germany by this
+alliance. The marriage of Monsieur’s second daughter to the duke of
+Savoy, Victor Amadeus, which was concluded soon after, in 1684, had for
+object the extension of French influence in Italy.
+
+Dutch patriotism had been on the watch against the ambition of Louis XIV.
+William had no difficulty in seizing the weapons the king gave him. He
+denounced French policy to Europe in a host of pamphlets which circulated
+everywhere. The answers which Louis XIV in his turn circulated, the
+language which he dictated to his envoys, did not bring reassurance.
+
+The prince of Orange believed that in order to form another stronger and
+more solid coalition it was needful to provide a centre and a head. The
+centre should be Holland; the head himself. He began by joining with
+the king of Sweden, Charles XI, who, despoiled of his pretensions to
+the duchy of Zweibrücken, was the more irritated against France because
+he had been her ally. Sweden and Holland signed a treaty at the Hague,
+September 30th, 1681, to guarantee those of Westphalia and Nimeguen.
+The two princes solicited adhesions everywhere; they obtained that of
+the emperor on the 28th of February, 1682. Louis XIV did not choose to
+wait till the coalition should have grown or till William had succoured
+Luxemburg. In March he gave his troops the order to withdraw from the
+positions they occupied before the town and abandoned his claims. That
+the coalition was formidable is proved by the fact that Spain entered
+into it on the second of May and that this example was followed in the
+course of the year by an infinity of German princes, even by the elector
+of Bavaria.
+
+In 1682 Louis XIV had stopped his progress before Luxemburg and had
+submitted his claims to the arbitration of the king of England who had
+already been mediator at Nimeguen. He had recoiled before the threat of a
+coalition and the indignation of the Germans, although in this direction
+he had secured the alliance of the elector of Brandenburg and of the king
+of Denmark, both recently his enemies but disposed to serve him since he
+was on bad terms with Sweden. In spite of the generosity he affected he
+seized an opportunity which presented itself to make the prince of Orange
+feel his vengeance. William had a lawsuit with the duchess de Nemours;
+the king gave the order to occupy his principality. The town of Orange
+was dismantled and its sovereignty declared to have devolved on the crown
+(August, 1682).[139] The prince sent Heinsius (the grand pensionary)
+to make complaint at Paris; he could obtain nothing and preserved keen
+resentment in consequence.
+
+[Sidenote: [1682-1684 A.D.]]
+
+The empire through the diet at Ratisbon and the congress of Frankfort
+claimed various restitutions from France. However, Germany being then
+greatly threatened by the Turks, the majority of the princes restrained
+their irritation; they had even tried to obtain the king’s support and
+assistance. Louis XIV held out hopes to them, but solely for the purpose
+of resuming in the empire the influence which he had had there at the
+time of the league of the Rhine, and in order to play the part of saviour.
+
+In 1683 Louis organised practice camps in Flanders, on the Saar, in
+Alsace, and on the Saône. On the 1st of September, just as Vienna was
+thought to be on the point of succumbing [to the Turks], 35,000 men
+entered Belgium. The Spaniards protested, retaliated by occupying
+French territories in their turn, and on the 26th of October launched a
+declaration of war. The French invested Courtrai which was dismantled,
+entered both it and Dixmude without difficulty and bombarded Luxemburg.
+In March, 1684, Humières bombarded Oudenarde. In April Créqui,
+accompanied by Vauban, besieged Luxemburg which, strong in natural
+fortifications, was also heroically defended; but the genius of Vauban
+and the great resources of which he disposed triumphed over these
+difficulties and this resistance. On the 4th of June the garrison
+surrendered. Créqui then marched on Treves and filled up the town moats,
+in defiance of the elector’s protest. At the same time Schomberg assisted
+the elector of Cologne, an ally of France, to restore his authority at
+Liège, which had shaken it off. Finally a French division under the
+command of Marshal de Bellefonds was sent into Catalonia.
+
+Meantime Spain, in no condition to continue the war alone, was asking the
+Dutch and the emperor for their support or mediation. The struggle which
+the Germans were continuing in Hungary against the Turks compelled the
+powers to postpone their plans for a coalition. The Dutch assumed the
+character of mediators. Louis XIV again assumed an attitude of generosity
+and accepted their proposals on condition that they should recall a body
+of troops furnished by them to the governor of the Spanish Netherlands.
+A twenty years’ truce was signed at Ratisbon--with Spain on the 11th of
+August, with the empire on the 15th. France kept Luxemburg, Beaumont,
+Bouvines, and Chimay, on consideration of restoring Courtrai and Dixmude.
+The empire recognised all the reunions effected, even that of Strasburg
+and of Kehl, on the sole condition that Louis XIV should abandon Tökely
+and the Hungarian rebels.[140]
+
+
+RELATIONS WITH TURKS AND BERBERS
+
+[Sidenote: [1681-1685 A.D.]]
+
+During this time the Turks were again beginning to threaten Europe. Led
+by the Köprilis, viziers who were also great men, they had fallen on
+Poland, whose divisions seemed to deliver her up to them as a prey; and
+as they were suzerains of Transylvania they incessantly fomented revolts
+in Hungary against Austria. Louis XIV, in order to keep the empire’s
+forces in check, took care to constantly favour the disturbances in
+Hungary and to maintain good relations with the porte.
+
+The Turks were too proud and too distrustful; commercial privileges,
+annulled or evaded by the hostility of the pashas, were nothing but
+a cause of perpetual dispute. The piracies committed by the Berbers,
+tributaries of the grand seignior, were another. In 1681 some corsairs
+of Tripoli, pursued by Duquesne, took refuge under the protection of the
+pasha of Chios. Duquesne required that they should be delivered up to
+him and on the pasha’s refusal cannonaded the town. The sultan sent his
+fleet to Chios; the French ambassador, Guilleragues, only succeeded in
+appeasing him by considerable presents. The following year Louis XIV,
+displeased with the divan, gave orders to Duquesne to punish the pirates
+of Algiers.
+
+A shipbuilder of Bayonne, Renau, had just conceived the idea of a new
+form of vessel for use in bombardments. Duquesne made trial of it at
+Algiers and the trial was a complete success. The town was bombarded a
+first time August 30th, 1682, then twice more in June and August, 1683.
+The Algerians by way of reprisals set the European prisoners at the mouth
+of their cannons; the dey, who would have yielded, was put to death
+and replaced by one of his officers. The lack of ammunition, for these
+maritime bombardments were extremely costly, compelled Duquesne to retire
+before he had brought the enemy to terms. However, the Algerians ended by
+negotiating. Tourville, whom the admiral had left to cruise about with a
+squadron in sight of their port, signed the peace April 25th, 1684. The
+Algerians made reparation, restored the merchandise and captives they had
+carried off, engaged not to countenance other pirates, and gave all the
+guarantees required of them. Morocco had not expected to be attacked. In
+1682 it had granted all the stipulations desirable, renewed the treaty
+of 1631, and consented to the institution or reorganisation of French
+consulates.[b]
+
+Meanwhile a Christian city had been treated as though it were a den of
+pirates. The Genoese had sold arms and powder to the Algerians, and had
+built in their shipyards four war vessels for Spain, which had none of
+her own. Louis XIV forbade the Genoese to equip these ships; and, on
+their refusal, Duquesne and Seignelay in a few days threw 14,000 shells
+into the city, destroying a number of the palaces of Genoa la Superba
+(May, 1684). The doge had to come to Versailles to implore the king’s
+pardon, in spite of an ancient law requiring the chief magistrate never
+to absent himself from the city. He was asked what was the strangest
+thing he saw at Versailles: “To see myself there,” he replied.[c]
+
+The significance of this humbling of Genoa is that this power was forced
+to abandon Spain, with which it had so long been in alliance, and become
+dependent upon France. Such a turn of affairs on the Mediterranean, added
+to the aggressions already made on the frontier, made war inevitable;
+but the old ally of Francis I, the Turk, was again the friend of the
+most Christian king. The emperor was too busy on his eastern frontier
+to pay attention to the west; and the accession of James II in England
+made William of Orange hesitate to act. In another year, however, the
+situation had changed.[a]
+
+
+SECOND COALITION: THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG (1686 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1686-1689 A.D.]]
+
+In the first months of 1686 various treaties were signed between Holland
+and Sweden, Sweden and Brandenburg, Brandenburg and the empire. All these
+states pledged themselves to guarantee the treaties of Westphalia, of
+Nimeguen, and of Ratisbon, and protested against the reunions effected by
+Louis XIV. On the 9th of July the emperor, Spain, and Sweden as members
+of the empire, the elector of Bavaria, the circles of Bavaria and of
+Franconia, the princes of Saxony and others besides, formed at Augsburg
+a secret league, ostensibly for the preservation of the twenty years’
+truce, in reality to put an army of 60,000 men into the field against
+France. The league was to last for three years unless it were prorogued,
+and the command was to be given to the elector of Bavaria. The reason or
+pretext was the claim brought forward by Louis XIV to some territories
+which he maintained should belong to Madame as the heritage from her
+father, the elector palatine, who had died the preceding year.
+
+William of Orange was again the soul of this coalition, although for
+the moment he affected to remain outside it; the king of Sweden was its
+principal promoter. The league was soon completed by the adhesion of
+Victor Amadeus and the other princes of Italy, though this was secret.
+The league in spite of very heterogeneous elements acquired a cohesive
+force which was quite new and held itself in readiness to take the
+offensive as soon as required.
+
+Louis had flattered himself on converting the twenty years’ truce into
+a definite peace, but the diet of Ratisbon formally refused this in
+January, 1687. He felt that he could not take a step without unchaining
+the tempest. Nevertheless he braved the pope and picked a quarrel with
+him.[b]
+
+The Catholic ambassadors at Rome had stretched the right of asylum and
+immunity assumed from all time, and with reason, for their residences to
+the quarter in which they lived. Innocent XI wished to abolish this abuse
+which turned half the city into a den of criminals. He obtained without
+difficulty the consent of the other kings, but Louis, irritated against
+the pontiff on account of the _régal_ (see chapter XIX) replied with
+haughtiness, that he had never acted on the example of others, and that
+it was for him to serve as an example. He sent the marquis de Lavardin
+with 800 armed _gentilshommes_ to maintain himself in the possession of
+this unjust privilege. The pope excommunicated the ambassador; the king
+seized Avignon.
+
+The matter was straightened out under Innocent XI’s successor, but
+this pontiff conceived an intense dislike for him that was not without
+influence in the war of 1688. The occasion of this war was indeed the
+pope’s opposition to France’s candidate for the archiepiscopal see of
+Cologne, the cardinal von Fürstenberg who had thrown open the gates of
+Strasburg. He was elected by a majority of the chapter, fifteen votes
+against nine for his opponent, Clement of Bavaria. Nevertheless Innocent
+gave the latter the investiture.[c] Louis XIV had the papal nuncio put in
+prison and the Venaissin occupied by one of his officers, La Trousse, who
+expelled the vice-legate.
+
+War was now begun against Europe and against the pope. Louis resolved
+to occupy Kaiserslautern and the cities of the Rhine. The dauphin, then
+twenty-six years old, was put at the head of the army of Germany. To
+assist him he was given Marshal de Duras, nephew of Turenne, and as
+lieutenant-generals Catinat, Montclar, Vauban, and Chamlay. “In sending
+you to command my army,” Louis XIV said to him, “I give you opportunities
+of exhibiting your merit; go and show it to all Europe, so that when I
+come to die it may not be noticed that the king is dead.”
+
+Open preparations had been avoided, but the dispositions had been so well
+taken that a few days sufficed to collect the troops before Philippsburg.
+The necessary artillery was drawn from Strasburg and Breisach, and the
+siege began the 27th of September; whilst Humières occupied the district
+of Liège with a first division, Bouffiers with a second invaded the
+Cis-Rhenish Palatinate and seized Kaiserslautern, and finally Huxelles
+entered Speier with a third. Philippsburg was defended by the graf von
+Starhemberg. Vauban pressed the siege with his usual prudence and vigour
+in spite of the difficulties offered by the marshes which formed a girdle
+round the place. These difficulties were still further augmented by
+continual rains and a disastrous season.
+
+Louvois requested the electors of Mainz and Treves to allow him to occupy
+Mainz and Coblenz. He had no idea of using moderation. The elector of
+Mainz admitted a French garrison into the capital. The markgraf of
+Baden-Durlach surrendered Durlach and Pforzheim. Heilbronn and Heidelberg
+opened their gates. But the elector of Treves refused to allow Coblenz to
+be occupied. The town was bombarded by Bouffiers under Louvois’ orders;
+the elector persisted in his refusal. Philippsburg capitulated on the
+29th of October. The siege was murderous, especially for the engineers
+whom Vauban calls the “martyrs of the infantry.” The siege of Mannheim
+was proceeded to without delay and occupied only a few days; the ill-paid
+soldiers of the elector palatine forced the governor to deliver up the
+town and citadel. Frankenthal surrendered in less than forty-eight hours
+and the French beheld themselves complete masters of the Palatinate.
+
+Hitherto the French had had only inadequate garrisons to contend with.
+The only hostile force which had appeared was a corps of 3,000 men from
+Brandenburg which had entered Cologne under the orders of Schomberg,
+one of the refugee French Protestants. But Louvois permitted himself no
+illusions: all Germany was to be agitated in the ensuing campaign and if
+William of Orange, the soul of the league of Augsburg, had not taken the
+field, it was because he was at that very moment (November, 1688) taking
+possession of the throne of England. On the 26th of November war was
+declared between France and Holland. It did in fact exist between France
+and the emperor and the empire, although the official declaration of the
+diet of Ratisbon did not take place till somewhat later, the 24th of
+January, 1689.
+
+
+THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND (1688 A.D.)
+
+The English Revolution gave the greatest hopes to the league of Augsburg
+and the European coalition. Charles II had died in 1685. James II (the
+duke of York), who succeeded him, joined to the courage of a tried
+soldier more pride and decision of character. But his mediocrity, which
+afterwards impressed everyone in France, was early pointed out by the
+French envoys to the court of London. He resumed the projects formed
+before the Treaty of Dover--that is to say, he aimed at restoring
+Catholicism in his dominions, giving himself a permanent army, and
+suppressing the laws, such as that of _habeas corpus_, which seemed to
+encroach on his prerogative. These plans obliged him to seek the alliance
+of Louis XIV.
+
+Now this alliance harmed more than it served him. The revocation of
+the Edict of Nantes alarmed the English Protestants, who believed, or
+affected to believe, that with a Catholic sovereign allied to Louis XIV
+their faith was in peril. James II addressed to all the foreign courts,
+as well as to his own subjects, declarations in which he blamed the
+persecution of the Huguenots; nowhere did he obtain credence.[b]
+
+[Sidenote: [1689-1690 A.D.]]
+
+The Revolution which overthrew this “tyranny,” and gave William III
+the throne of James II, was more than a mere substitution of royal
+personages. It changed royalty by divine right into royalty by consent,
+and founded the English constitutional or parliamentary monarchy. A new
+right, that of peoples, now arose in modern society, in the face of the
+absolute right of kings, which for two centuries had ruled them, and
+which was now finding in France its most glorious personification. There
+was nothing astonishing in the fearful struggle which now broke out
+between France and England. There was something more than two opposing
+interests; there were two different political ideas. In the sixteenth
+century, France had defended Protestantism and the liberties of Europe.
+In the seventeenth she threatened the conscience of the people and the
+independence of the states.
+
+The rôle which France abandoned England now took up; she was to be
+the centre of all the coalitions against the house of Bourbon, as
+France had been the centre of resistance to the house of Austria. This
+political change upset all the conditions of war. While Louis was keeping
+England neutral by pensioning her kings, France had no one to fear on
+the continent, for, protected by the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the sea,
+she could face the Rhine and fight with both hands, without having to
+look behind. England now openly joined the league (1689). It was now
+necessary, not only to have armies on the Schelde, the Rhine, and in the
+Alps, but also fleets on the ocean, and in the most distant seas. It was
+the double effort that exhausted France.[c]
+
+
+WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG (1688-1697 A.D.)
+
+War was declared on France by the diet of the empire, in the month of
+January, 1689; by England and Holland, in March; in April, by the elector
+of Brandenburg, and in May by Spain.[b]
+
+Louis had, to oppose the coalition, 350,000 soldiers and 264 vessels
+or frigates. Single-handed against these princes, badly united among
+themselves, and obeying each other but badly, he mapped out a plan at the
+same time simple and bold. To overthrow William III would end the war at
+one stroke. Louis XIV intrusted a fleet to James II to aid him to remount
+his throne. Spain and Savoy were the two most feeble states of the
+league; the king turned against them the majority of his forces. On this
+side he attacked; on the Rhine, the whole of whose left bank almost to
+Coblenz he was occupying, he assumed the defensive, calculating that the
+Turks, whom he had just succeeded in inducing to break off negotiations
+with the emperor, would give that prince so much occupation on the lower
+Danube that France would have no fear of his sending a large force to
+the Rhine. Turenne, Condé, and Duquesne were dead; but Louis found able
+leaders to replace them--Luxemburg, Catinat, Boufflers, Lorges, and
+Tourville.
+
+
+_Attempts to restore James II (1689-1692 A.D.)_
+
+The war in favour of James II was fortunate at first. A squadron of
+thirteen large vessels carried the prince in May, 1689, to Ireland,
+Catholic like himself, and always groaning under the yoke of England.
+Convoys of troops, arms, and munitions left Le Havre, Brest, and
+Rochefort, protected by Château Renaud, D’Estrées, and Tourville. The
+English and Dutch attempted to head them off. Château Renaud defeated
+one of these fleets in Bantry Bay; Tourville with 78 sail attacked their
+fleet off Beachy Head on the Sussex coast. Sixteen of the enemies’ ships
+were sunk or burned on the shore, July 10th, 1690. This brilliant victory
+gave the empire of the ocean to Louis XIV for some time. But James II did
+not know how to follow it up. He had lost precious time at the siege of
+Londonderry, and William III attacked him on the Boyne, July 11th, 1690.
+The Irish, with their king, fled at the first attack; the French alone
+made some resistance. A regiment of Calvinist refugees under Marshal
+de Schomberg were especially prominent in routing the French. James II
+returned to France.
+
+[Illustration: ANNE HILARION DE COTENTIN, COMTE DE TOURVILLE
+
+(1642-1701)]
+
+[Sidenote: [1690-1692 A.D.]]
+
+Louis XIV now prepared a descent on England itself; 20,000 men were
+assembled between Cherbourg and La Hogue; 300 transports were made ready
+at Brest. Tourville was to escort them with the 44 vessels he commanded
+and 30 others which D’Estrées was bringing him from Toulon. But the wind
+changed, and the Mediterranean fleet could not arrive in time. Louis XIV,
+accustomed to force a victory, and reckoning that a number of the English
+captains would pass to him, ordered his admiral to go seek the enemy, 99
+sail strong. This was the battle of La Hogue, May 29th, 1692. Although
+there was no defection, Tourville held his own victoriously, for ten
+hours, against the Anglo-Dutch, who in spite of their numbers were more
+badly battered than the French. But it was impossible the next day to
+renew this heroic temerity: Tourville would at least have made a glorious
+retreat if he had had a port behind him; the breakwater at Cherbourg
+was not built at that time. He gave the signal to retire to Brest and
+St. Malo. Seven of his vessels gained the former port; the rest of the
+fleet entered the navigable channel off the Cotentin shore; twenty-two
+passed through the race at Blanchard and arrived at St. Malo, but the
+tide reached low ebb, and the rest were prevented from following. Three
+stopped in front of Cherbourg and their captains, unable to defend them,
+set them on fire. Twelve took refuge in the harbour of La Hogue, which
+was no better prepared to offer shelter.
+
+Tourville landed his guns, his stores, and his fittings, and on the
+approach of the English applied the torch to the hulls of his ships.
+The enemy could not boast of having taken a single one. This was the
+first blow dealt to the French navy, but it is not true, as has often
+been said, that it was its tomb, for the next year France was able to
+oppose equal if not superior fleets to the English and the Dutch. At
+any rate the re-establishment of the Stuarts in England was becoming an
+impossibility and the most important part of Louis XIV’s plan had fallen
+through.[c]
+
+
+DEVASTATION OF THE PALATINATE (1688-1689 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1688-1689 A.D.]]
+
+The attention of Louis XIV and Louvois was especially directed to
+the side of Germany where France would have to face the coalition.
+Philippsburg and the Palatinate having been occupied, Louvois wished to
+remain on the defensive. France was already secured by a girdle of towns,
+of which the principal were Hüningen, Belfort, Landau, Philippsburg, and
+Mont-Royal, an important position on the Moselle which had been occupied
+and fortified after having been taken under various pretexts from the
+elector of Treves. Louvois resolved to demolish all the towns beyond it
+and to ravage the country for a great distance so as to oppose a desert
+to the enemy.
+
+Louvois according to his custom kept his plan a profound secret. He began
+by giving Montclar orders to blow up the walls of Heilbronn and ravage
+Würtemberg as far as the Danube (November and December, 1688). This order
+being executed he gave one to destroy the castle and town of Heidelberg;
+432 houses, delivered over to the flames, were demolished or suffered
+enormous damage. Mannheim was likewise razed.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF HEIDELBERG CASTLE
+
+(Destroyed by order of Louvois)]
+
+Devastation, savage and systematic, such as had not been seen even in the
+Thirty Years’ War, was spread over the Palatinate and the territories of
+the three ecclesiastical electors. The sinister glow of conflagrations
+lighted the passage of the French troops. Trees and vines were cut down;
+palaces, temples, convents, and hospitals were destroyed. At Heidelberg
+the castle of the elector palatine, was destroyed like the rest. At
+Mannheim the very stones of the ruins were thrown into the Rhine. A crowd
+of unfortunates dying of cold and hunger and reduced to expatriating
+themselves streamed along the snow-covered roads. The greater part,
+refusing the shelter offered to them in Alsace or Lorraine, went to beg
+from the enemies of France and still further to raise their indignation
+against her. This treatment was meted out to the elector palatine without
+any scruple.
+
+There was at first some hesitation to sacrifice Speier and Worms, but
+Duras and Chamlay represented that it was important not to spare them.
+In consequence Worms and Oppenheim were burned on the 31st of May,
+1689, and Speier on the 1st of June. Bingen also had its turn. The fire
+spared neither churches nor palaces. All, say the memoirs of the times,
+was burned and reburned. The cathedral of Speier contained the tombs
+of eight emperors; the tombs were burned and the ashes they enclosed
+thrown to the winds. Treves had been condemned; Louis XIV withdrew the
+order as though frightened at the general cry called forth by this work
+of destruction. A concert of recriminations rose against him. Whilst
+he accused the Catholic princes of supporting the Protestant states,
+Europe reproached him for allying himself with the Turks and carrying on
+a war more cruel and more barbarous than the Turks themselves. English
+caricatures called him the Most Christian Turk.[b]
+
+The king’s discontent with these actions might have been the prelude of a
+disgrace had not Louvois died of apoplexy in July, 1691. He was replaced
+by his son, Barbezieux, who, with many more deficiencies, had none of his
+good qualities. The duke de Lorges, Turenne’s nephew, and successor to
+Marshal de Duras in 1691, contented himself with covering Alsace against
+the imperials, who finding themselves as in a desert in the Palatinate
+could not subsist there. Therefore the war remained defensive on the
+Rhine, and the great blows were struck elsewhere.
+
+
+_The War in Savoy and Piedmont (1689-1693 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1689-1693 A.D.]]
+
+Catinat was now commanding in Italy. This general, without birth, had
+raised himself by force of merit. Like Vauban, whose friend he was, he
+joined civic virtues to military qualities and by his wise and methodic
+tactics resembled, although slightly, Turenne. He was opposed by Victor
+Amadeus, duke of Savoy. In order to bring his adversary to decisive
+action before the arrival of the German troops, Catinat devastated the
+fields of Piedmont, cut the trees, tore up the vines, and burned the
+villages. Victor Amadeus could not contain himself in the face of these
+ravages, and gave battle at Staffarda near Saluzzo on August 18th, 1690.
+He lost 4,000 men while the French numbered scarcely 500 killed. Savoy,
+Nice, and the greater part of Piedmont found themselves in the power of
+the French. But a relative of the duke, Prince Eugene, whose services
+Louis XIV had refused and who then had offered them to Austria, arrived
+with strong reinforcements. The French returned to France, whither
+the Piedmontese followed them. Dauphiné suffered a cruel retaliation
+for the burning of the Palatinate and the ravages in Piedmont (1692).
+Catinat, however, recrossed the Alps and a second battle took place
+near Marsaglia, a few leagues from Staffarda, on October 4th, 1693. It
+was as disastrous for Victor Amadeus as the first had been. Nothing now
+remained to him but Turin, and Catinat would have taken this also if the
+ministry had not reduced his forces. All that he could do was to keep his
+conquests.
+
+
+_The War in the Netherlands (1690-1692 A.D.)_
+
+Luxemburg, posthumous son of that count de Bouteville whom Richelieu had
+had decapitated, began his military career under the Great Condé, whom
+he resembled in boldness and accuracy of prompt decision. In 1690, he
+found himself near Fleurus in front of the prince of Waldeck. By a bold
+and skilful manœuvre he carried his right wing across a small stream
+which covered the hostile army. The prince suddenly attacked in his
+flank, made a backward movement. Luxemburg took advantage of this, came
+upon him suddenly in the midst of a disorderly march, killed 6,000 of
+his men, captured 100 flags, his guns, his baggage, and 8,000 prisoners.
+This was the first French victory of Fleurus, July 1st, 1690. Master of
+the region, Luxemburg invested Mons, the capital of Hainault. Louis XIV
+assisted at the siege.
+
+William III, rid of James II, hastened thither with 80,000 men, but was
+unable to prevent the capitulation of the city in April, 1691, after nine
+days of entrenchment. The following year Luxemburg besieged Namur, the
+strongest place in the Netherlands and at the confluence of the Sambre
+and the Maas, and took it, again under the eyes of Louis XIV and the
+army of the enemy (June, 1692). This was one of the great sieges of the
+seventeenth century. Vauban’s rival, Coehoorn, defended the place, a
+part of whose fortifications he had built. But William, always beaten,
+never gave in. On August 3rd, 1692, he surprised Luxemburg at Steenkerke
+(Steinkirk) in Hainault.[c]
+
+
+_Steenkerke and Neerwinden (1692-1693 A.D.)_
+
+A spy whom the French general had in William’s ranks was discovered;
+he was forced, before being put to death, to write a false despatch to
+Marshal de Luxemburg.[d] The latter was thrown off his guard, persuaded
+by the false despatch that William had a totally different plan than to
+take the offensive on that day.[e]
+
+The sleeping army was attacked at daybreak, and a brigade was already
+in flight before the general knew what was happening. Without an excess
+of diligence and bravery all would have been lost. Luxemburg was lying
+ill--a fatal circumstance at a moment demanding strong activity: but
+the danger gave him strength; prodigies were necessary to be kept from
+being beaten, and he performed them. To change his position, to give a
+battle-field to the army which had none, to re-form the right wing where
+all was confusion, to rally the troops three times, to charge three times
+at the head of the household cavalry, was the work of less than ten
+hours. Luxemburg had in his army Philip, duke de Chartres, the future
+duke of Orleans and regent, who was just eighteen years of age. He could
+not be useful in striking a decisive blow, but it was a great thing to
+spur the soldiers on that a grandson of France should be charging with
+the king’s household troops, be wounded in the fight, and return again to
+the charge in spite of his wound.
+
+A grandson and a grand-nephew of the Great Condé were both serving as
+lieutenant-generals--the one, Louis de Bourbon, commonly addressed
+as Monsieur le Duc, and the other François Louis, prince of Conti,
+his rival in courage, spirit, ambition, and reputation. The prince of
+Conti was the first to restore order, rallying some of the brigades and
+making others advance. M. le Duc accomplished the same manœuvre without
+need of emulation. The duke de Vendôme, grandson of Henry IV, was also
+lieutenant-general in the army, where he had been serving since the age
+of twelve, and although he was forty he had never been given a leading
+command. It was necessary for all these princes, with the duke de
+Choiseul, to put themselves at the head of the household troops, to drive
+off a body of English who were holding an advantageous position upon the
+possession of which the success of the battle depended.
+
+The household troops and the English were the finest soldiers in the
+world and the carnage was great. The French, encouraged by the number
+of princes and young nobles who fought around their general, finally
+carried the position. The Champagne regiment routed King William’s
+English guards, and when the English were beaten the rest had to give
+in. Boufflers, afterwards marshal of France, rushed up at this moment
+from another part of the battle-field with the dragoons and completed
+the victory. King William, having lost about 7,000 men retreated in as
+fine order as he had attacked; and always beaten, though always to be
+feared, still kept up the campaign. The victory due to the valour of the
+young princes and the finest scions of the nobility created an effect at
+the court, in Paris, and in the provinces which no victory had ever done
+before.
+
+[Sidenote: [1693-1695 A.D.]]
+
+M. le Duc, the prince of Conti, Vendôme, and their friends found, on
+returning, the roads lined with people; the acclamations and joy mounted
+to frenzy; all the women were eager to attract their glance. The men were
+wearing at that time lace cravats which were arranged at the expense of
+much time and trouble; but the princes, who had jumped into their clothes
+for the battle, twisted their cravats carelessly around their necks.
+Women now wore ornaments in imitation of this; they were called _Stein
+Kerques_. All novelties of ornament were _à la steinkerque_.[d]
+
+The following year Louis XIV had a fine opportunity to conquer, perhaps,
+the Netherlands and make peace. William ventured close to Louvain with
+only 50,000 men. Louis was in the neighbourhood with more than 100,000.
+The whole army believed that a great blow would be struck; but it was
+represented to the king that he could not commit his person to the
+hazards of a battle, and in spite of Luxemburg, who, it is said, threw
+himself on his knees, he declared the campaign at an end and returned to
+Versailles. From that day he never appeared with the army. His reputation
+suffered much from this abroad; biting satires paraphrased Boileau’s
+famous verses:
+
+    _Louis, les animant du feu de son courage,_
+    _Se plaint de sa grandeur qui l’attache au rivage._
+
+Nevertheless it was not personal courage that was wanting. His conduct
+in camp was perfectly conventional--no particular recklessness, but no
+timidity. He exposed himself sufficiently. At the siege of Namur, if
+Dangeau is to be believed, men behind him were wounded. The victories of
+Namur and Steenkerke had delivered Hainault and the province of Namur
+into Luxemburg’s hands; he penetrated into southern Brabant but found
+William, strongly entrenched in the village of Neerwinden between Liège
+and Louvain opposing him, July 29th, 1693. Few days were more murderous;
+Neerwinden was carried in two assaults by the infantry which, the first
+time, made a stout bayonet charge, an example which Catinat’s regiments
+followed two months later at Marsaglia. For four hours the French cavalry
+were under the deluging fire of 80 pieces of cannon; and William, who
+observed them waver only to close up their ranks as the rows were mowed
+down, exclaimed in admiration and vexation, “Oh the insolent nation!”
+
+There were about 20,000 dead, of which 12,000 were on the side of the
+allies. After this success it might have been possible to march upon
+Brussels and dictate terms of peace, but the French were content to
+besiege and take Charleroi. It is true that by doing this they held
+the important line of the Sambre, whence an army might dominate the
+Netherlands and make most perilous any attempt of the enemy against
+Flanders or Artois.
+
+
+_Last Years of the War; Treaty with Savoy (1693-1696 A.D.)_
+
+The victory of Neerwinden was the last triumph of Luxemburg, “the
+upholsterer of Notre Dame,” as he was called by the prince of Conti on
+account of the many banners with which he had decorated that cathedral.
+The following campaign was uneventful, and he died in the month of
+January, 1695. His successor, the duke de Villeroi, did not accomplish
+very much, in spite of an army of 80,000 men; he did not even prevent
+the prince of Orange from retaking Namur (August, 1695). But in Spain
+Vendôme entered Barcelona (August, 1695), after a memorable siege and
+a victory over the army of relief. The year 1695 passed without any
+military events. The allies destroyed the French stores gathered together
+at Givet, and the two armies of the Netherlands had enough to do to
+exist, without thinking of attacking.
+
+[Sidenote: [1695-1696 A.D.]]
+
+On the sea Tourville had avenged in 1693 the disaster of La Hogue, by a
+victory in the bay of Lagos near Cape St. Vincent. During the following
+years the great armaments were suspended, because Seignelay was dead;
+but the corsairs, Jean Bart, Duguay-Trouin, Pointis, Nesmond, destroyed
+the commerce of the English and the Dutch, who to revenge themselves
+attempted to land on the French coasts, and trained engines of war
+against St. Malo, Le Havre, Dieppe, Calais, and Dunkirk--vain and ruinous
+threats which terminated “in breaking windows with guineas.” Dieppe alone
+suffered from them. In America the count de Frontenac bravely defended
+Canada, by taking the offensive always, although the province had not
+above eleven or twelve thousand inhabitants and the English colonies had
+ten times as many. Hudson’s Bay, and nearly the whole of Newfoundland
+were conquered.
+
+Meanwhile the war languished; everybody was exhausted. An attempted
+assassination of William, which would have been followed by a French
+invasion, having failed, Louis proposed peace. Charles II of Spain was
+near death, this time in real earnest; he was leaving no child, and the
+question of the Spanish succession began to be raised. It was important
+to the king that the European coalition should be dissolved before this
+great event. He showed an unaccustomed moderation; in the first place
+detaching from the league the duke of Savoy (1696), he gave back to him
+all his towns, not excepting Pinerolo, and proposed to him the marriage
+of his daughter with the young duke of Burgundy, son of the Grand
+Dauphin. In return the duke had to promise the neutrality of Italy, and
+in case of need to join his forces with those of France.[c]
+
+[Illustration: JEAN BART
+
+(1651-1702)]
+
+After the treaty with Savoy Louis XIV made the concessions which had
+hitherto been most repugnant to his pride. He consented to accept the
+treaties of Westphalia and Nimeguen as bases of the negotiations, taking
+into consideration certain reservations with regard to Luxemburg and
+Strasburg, and to recognise William III as king of England. Henceforth
+the war had no further object. Commerce between France and Holland was
+re-established October 1st, 1696. Preliminary _pourparlers_ between
+France and the maritime powers took place at the Hague. Sweden obtained
+acceptance of the mediation she had proposed several years before and
+a congress was agreed upon which was to be held at Ryswick, a country
+house belonging to William and situated between the Hague and Delft.
+Caillères, Crécy, and Harlay were designated to represent France.
+
+[Sidenote: [1696-1697 A.D.]]
+
+The king intended to bring pressure to bear on the deliberations of the
+congress of Ryswick, to render the empire and Spain more tractable and
+to bring the maritime powers to abandon them or force their hands. He
+counted the more on this since William III, a mark for the recriminations
+of his allies, was already replying to them with acrimony and a deserved
+haughtiness.
+
+France made for the campaign of 1697 the same preparations as in other
+years. One hundred and fifty thousand men, forming three armies under
+the orders of Villeroi, Bouffiers, and Catinat, entered Belgium,
+whilst two other armies under Choiseul and Vendôme were carrying on
+campaigns in Germany and Catalonia. All that was done in the Netherlands
+reduced itself to the taking of Ath which Catinat and Vauban forced to
+capitulate on June 7th; a demonstration was made against Brussels but
+William hurried up and covered the town. In Germany, the opposing armies
+contented themselves with watching one another. It was otherwise in
+Catalonia. Louis XIV had long meditated the taking of Barcelona but he
+could only execute this project on condition of being master of the sea.
+He took advantage of the circumstance that this year the Anglo-Dutch
+fleet did not appear in the Mediterranean. The Toulon squadron, commanded
+by Vice-admiral D’Estrées and the bailli de Noailles, surrounded the
+harbour. Vendôme, who had 30,000 men, repulsed a relieving army and
+forced Barcelona to surrender, August 10th, fifty-two days after the
+trenches had been opened and after two assaults.
+
+Shortly before, a squadron composed of ships belonging to the state
+but equipped at the expense of private persons and commanded by an
+experienced sailor, Pointis, had made a successful and brilliant cruise
+in America. Pointis attacked Cartagena de las Indias, in New Granada, the
+principal _entrepôt_ of the trade of Spain with Peru. He took possession
+of the town and carried thence bullion to the value of nine millions,
+besides rich merchandise. He had the address to escape the enemy’s fleets
+which set out in pursuit of him and to return safely to France with his
+prize.
+
+
+THE TREATY OF RYSWICK (1697 A.D.)
+
+The congress which had begun at Ryswick May 9th, 1697, proceeded with
+the usual slowness. On the 10th of September three treaties were signed
+with Holland, England, and Spain. By the first two France on the one
+side, Holland and England on the other mutually restored all that they
+had taken on the continent, on the seas, and in the colonies. The most
+important of these restitutions were that of Pondicherry, which the
+English had taken from France in 1693, and that of Orange which was
+surrendered to William. Liberty of trade was completely re-established.
+Louis XIV recognised William as king of England. A reciprocal amnesty
+was granted to the French and English who had borne arms against their
+own country, but Louis XIV refused to recall the banished Calvinists
+to France; he maintained that questions of religion were questions of
+the internal government of each state and he would not allow even a
+discussion of this point.
+
+By the treaty with Spain France restored her conquests in Catalonia, the
+town and duchy of Luxemburg, with the county of Chiny, Charleroi, Mons,
+Ath, Courtrai, with their dependencies, and the dependencies of Namur.
+She surrendered Dinant to the bishop of Liège. She retained only a small
+number of towns or villages dependent on Charlemont and Maubeuge.
+
+On the 30th of October a fourth treaty was signed between France and the
+empire and the emperor. Louis XIV surrendered all that he had occupied
+in Germany except Strasburg, which was ceded to him in full sovereignty.
+Kehl, Hüningen, and the forts of the Rhine were to be razed so as to
+secure the free navigation of the river which had now become a frontier
+from Hüningen to Landau. It was the same with Trarbach and Mont-Royal on
+the Moselle. Louis XIV restored Lorraine to Duke Leopold on the terms of
+the treaty of 1670, that is to say, while retaining Marsal and a right
+of passage, besides Longwy and Saarlouis. It was agreed that the duke
+should marry a daughter of Monsieur. Prince Clement of Bavaria remained
+in possession of the electorate of Cologne; but Cardinal von Fürstenberg
+recovered his titles and his confiscated property. The claims of Madame,
+duchess of Orleans, on the heritage of her father, the former elector
+palatine, were compounded for in money. The official gazettes and the
+panegyrics still vaunted the glory acquired by ten years of struggle
+against Europe in coalition, the brilliance of the captures of cities,
+and that of victories. But if these are noble subjects of pride or rather
+of consolation, the majesty with which Louis XIV effected to give peace
+rather than to submit to it created no more illusion in France than
+in the rest of Europe. No one could believe in his moderation or his
+generosity. Those most disposed to admire his policy imagined that he had
+had a deep laid scheme and a secret design.
+
+In reality Louis XIV had been obliged to go back to the year 1679 or at
+least to 1681. The necessity for making restitutions had always been
+admitted but there was no idea that they would have to be so complete. On
+the whole, if the Peace of Ryswick saved the honour of the country, it
+was impossible not to see in it the final check and condemnation of the
+policy pursued since Nimeguen.[b]
+
+
+LOUIS XIV AND THE POLISH THRONE (1697 A.D.)
+
+While Louis was arranging the Peace of Ryswick, the throne of Poland
+became vacant. This was the only one in the world which at that time was
+elective--citizens and even foreigners might aspire to it.
+
+The abbé de Polignac, afterwards cardinal, had the ability to incline
+the suffrage in favour of that prince of Conti, known for his valourous
+actions at Steenkerke and at Neerwinden. He balanced with eloquence and
+promises the money which Augustus, elector of Saxony, lavished for the
+same purpose.
+
+The prince of Conti was elected king by a majority, June 27th, 1697, and
+proclaimed by the primate of the realm. Augustus was elected two hours
+later by a much smaller vote, but he was a sovereign and powerful prince,
+and had troops ready on the Polish frontier. The prince of Conti was
+absent, without money, without troops, and without power; he had nothing
+in his favour but his name and Polignac. It was necessary that Louis XIV
+should either prevent Conti from accepting the throne or provide him the
+means of taking it from his rival. The French ministry took the stand
+that they had already done too much in sending the prince of Conti,
+and too little in giving him only a feeble squadron and a few letters
+of credit with which he arrived in the harbour of Dantzic. The prince
+was not only not received at Dantzic, but his letters of credit were
+protested. The intrigues of the pope, those of the emperor, the money and
+troops of Saxony already assured the crown to his rival. Conti returned
+with the glory of having been elected. France had the mortification of
+letting it be seen that she had not enough strength to create a king of
+Poland.[d]
+
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (1697-1700 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1697-1700 A.D.]]
+
+Immediately the Peace of Ryswick was signed, the attention of the powers
+became fastened on the uncertainties of the Spanish succession. Charles
+II had, since his infancy, gone entirely against all the unfavourable
+prophecies inspired by his frail and sickly constitution. He had grown
+to manhood and even married. Louis XIV had made him, in 1679, wed, as we
+have seen, a daughter of the duke of Orleans in the hope of fortifying
+French influence at Madrid and circumventing the designs of Austria;
+for the emperor was leaving nothing undone to assure to himself the
+alliance of Spain for the present and the succession for the future. The
+indefinite treaty of partition, signed in 1669 between the courts of
+Versailles and Vienna, had been entirely abandoned. Leopold, uneasy at
+the thought of the influence a French queen might acquire, insisted that
+one of his own sons, the archduke Charles, be accorded the title of heir
+presumptive at Madrid as long as Charles II had no children; but France
+succeeded in preventing this.
+
+Marie Louise of Orleans, queen of Spain, succumbed in 1689, like
+her mother, to a sudden illness and at the same age. Charles II
+remarried--this time a German princess, Maria Anna of Neuburg, the
+empress’ sister. The new queen, vain, pretentious, and extremely hostile
+to France, never ceased to favour the wishes and schemes of Austria at
+Madrid.
+
+Two things were very necessary to Spain--that the heir to the crown
+should be designated in advance, and that the already enfeebled monarchy
+should not be dismembered. Charles II adopted the electoral prince of
+Bavaria and by will declared him his heir.
+
+It is necessary to enumerate here the claimants and give an idea of their
+relationship. Philip III had two daughters--Anne of Austria married to
+Louis XIII, and Maria Anna married to the emperor Ferdinand III. Philip
+IV had married his two daughters in the same fashion--Maria Theresa to
+Louis XIV and Margarita Theresa to the emperor Leopold. The Spanish
+princesses married in France were the elder in their generations, but had
+renounced the succession. The question was whether these renunciations
+were valid. Louis XIV claimed that they were not, at least as regards
+Maria Theresa. In this case the closest heirs to the Spanish crown were
+the dauphin and his three sons, the dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri.
+If, on the contrary, the French branch was outlawed, the succession
+passed to the German line. Leopold had had a single daughter by his
+marriage with Margarita Theresa, Maria Antonia-Josepha, the wife of the
+Bavarian elector; who in turn had one son, still a child, whom Charles II
+designated his heir.
+
+But Leopold, although maternal grandfather of the young Bavarian
+prince, raised another claim. On marrying his daughter he had imposed
+a renunciation upon her, and henceforth he claimed that he himself was
+the nearest heir through his mother Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III;
+and his scheme was to transmit his personal rights to the sons of his
+second marriage with Elizabeth of Neuburg. As the elder of these princes,
+Joseph, elected king of the Romans in 1690, would succeed him in the
+empire, Leopold aspired to make the second, the archduke Charles, king
+of Spain--a combination which, without confounding the empire and Spain,
+would perpetuate the rule of both branches of the Austrian house in these
+two countries and recommence the work of Charles V.
+
+Count von Harrach, Leopold’s envoy at Madrid, obtained with the queen’s
+aid the annulment of the will in favour of the Bavarian prince. But he
+wanted more, and insisted that the archduke Charles be declared heir
+presumptive. The unfortunate king, worn out with these insistances, and
+believing at moments that he had a new hold on life, announced that he
+would await the day when the viaticum should be brought him before again
+appointing his successor.
+
+Louis XIV sent the marquis d’Harcourt to Madrid in the month of December,
+1697, with instructions to keep watch on Charles’ court and to obstruct
+the emperor’s plots; but knowing that he would obtain nothing directly
+from the court of Madrid, he thought the surest and wisest plan was to
+negotiate the bases of a partition with England and Holland, which would
+be a means of proving his pacific disposition to Europe and would also
+bear upon the emperor and the empire. Consequently Pomponne, whom he
+had recalled to the head of foreign affairs, and Torcy, son of Colbert
+de Croissy, invested with the office of secretary of state since 1689,
+in March, 1699, made overtures to Lord Portland (Bentinck), English
+ambassador at Paris. Tallard was sent to London to come to an agreement
+with William III directly.
+
+The negotiations, embarrassed by conflicting claims, lasted six months.
+Finally a first treaty of partition was signed at the Hague on October
+11th by Tallard and Briord, ambassadors of France to England and Holland.
+It was agreed that the dauphin should have Naples, Sicily, the Spanish
+towns on the coasts of Tuscany, the marquisate of Finale and Guipuzcoa,
+that the archduke should have the Milanese, and that the electoral prince
+of Bavaria should reign over Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands. As
+this last prince was only four years old and might die, it was decided
+that in that event the elector, his father, should succeed him.
+
+Charles II was not long in hearing that the succession had been regulated
+without consulting him. He therefore convened an extraordinary council,
+and to prevent the dismemberment of his state he constituted the prince
+of Bavaria his sole heir (November, 1698) in spite of the fact that the
+elector, father of the young prince, had consented to the treaty of
+partition. This decision, in cutting short the dispute, was of a nature
+to satisfy neither France nor Austria, and the death of the young prince
+of Bavaria, which occurred unexpectedly at Brussels, on the 8th of
+February, 1699, reopened the question. It annulled not only the will of
+the king of Spain, but also the signed treaty of partition between France
+and the maritime powers.
+
+Louis XIV immediately undertook negotiations for a second treaty with the
+powers, only more secretly, in order to be considerate of the last days
+of Charles II and not to wound the susceptibilities of the Spaniards.
+Tallard demanded that the Milanese should be added to the dauphin’s
+portion, in consideration of which he offered to let the archduke rule
+over Spain and the Indies, and to allow England and Holland the choice
+of a sovereign for the Netherlands. Louis XIV hoped to attain with the
+help of the maritime power the adherence of the emperor, if necessary, by
+force, if Leopold made war.
+
+Villars had left for Vienna in June, 1699, with the title of envoy
+extraordinary and a suite of unusual splendour. But to his vague
+overtures he received even more vague replies. Leopold had a rather
+undecided character, and he was convinced that he would obtain from
+Charles II a will in favour of the archduke Charles. He contested the
+fundamental principles of the arrangement proposed by France, and finally
+formally declined the acceptance of any treaty whatever (October, 1699).
+
+Louis XIV then resolved to go further, and a second treaty was signed in
+London and at the Hague, the 13th and 25th of May, 1700. It was agreed
+that the dauphin should have all that had been assigned to him in the
+partition treaty of 1698, plus the duchy of Lorraine; that the duke of
+Lorraine should have the duchy of Milan, and that the remainder of the
+Spanish monarchy, comprising Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands,
+should pass to the archduke Charles. Three months were given to the
+emperor to accept this arrangement; if at the close of that time he had
+not consented, another prince was to be substituted for the archduke.
+
+[Sidenote: [1700-1701 A.D.]]
+
+Rarely had Louis XIV shown himself as wise, as prudent, and as able, as
+in forming these last combinations. He restored Lorraine to the crown,
+with one stroke of the pen and without striking one blow--an important
+province, and one which had been French for a long time. As for Naples
+and Sicily, he offered them to Victor Amadeus in exchange for Nice and
+Savoy, which would procure for France the natural barrier of the Alps and
+repair the set-back of Ryswick.
+
+In spite of the precautions which ought to have assured its secrecy, the
+second treaty of partition was known in Madrid as quickly as the first
+had been, and produced the same effect there. The king was much affected,
+the queen became so enraged that, according to one story, she broke the
+furniture of her apartment. The nation, wounded that the treaty should
+have been concluded without consulting it, burst into recriminations
+against the maritime powers; the thought only of dismemberment aroused
+its pride.
+
+The unhappy king then resolved to make a new will, the third. He
+consulted jurists, theologians, the pope himself--to quiet his
+conscience, alarmed by the thought of disinheriting the house of Austria.
+Restrained by his scruples, he again feared that Louis XIV would not
+accept a will made in favour of a French prince, and would prefer to
+hold to the treaty of partition. Finally, feeling the approach of death,
+he signed his third last will and testament, on the second of October.
+He could not have put it off much longer, for he died on the first of
+November.
+
+The will was at once made public; Charles II declared the Spanish
+monarchy to be indivisible. Recognising the rights of Maria Theresa and
+her children, he designated as his successor the second of the grandsons
+of Louis XIV, the duke of Anjou; and pending the arrival of the young
+prince he confided the government to a junta, or council of regency,
+presided over by the queen his widow. In case of non-acceptance of the
+duke of Anjou, he substituted for him his brother the duke de Berri,
+third son of the dauphin, and the duke of Savoy successively.[b]
+
+The only doubt now remaining was whether Louis XIV would accept the will
+of the late king of Spain in favour of his grandson, or whether he would
+adhere to the treaty of partition. There was a long debate respecting
+this in his council, which council consisted of but three ministers, the
+chancellor Pontchartrain, the duke de Beauvilliers, and Torcy. They were
+divided in opinion; but the dauphin, “drowned as he habitually was in
+apathy and fat,” says Saint-Simon,[h] gathered warmth and energy on this
+occasion, and spoke eloquently in behalf of his son’s rights. Madame de
+Maintenon, who had also a voice in this council, adopted the same views;
+and Louis decided.[f]
+
+
+ACCESSION OF THE BOURBONS IN SPAIN
+
+The duke of Anjou took the title of Philip V and left on the 4th of
+December to live among his new subjects. Louis XIV wished that the
+departure of his grandson should take place amid extraordinary solemnity.
+It is at this time the celebrated phrase, “There are no more Pyrenees,”
+is attributed to him.[141] The young prince travelled with the customary
+pomp and slowness of royal cortèges. On the 21st of April, 1701, he
+was received at Madrid, by the noisy acclamation of the Spaniards, who
+flattered themselves with having saved the integrity of their monarchy.
+
+In the whole of Europe the surprise was the same. Holland and
+England believed that they had been duped, that Louis XIV had had an
+understanding with Charles II, and that for the last two years he had
+been playing a continuous comedy. However, they contained themselves and
+made no manifestations. William contented himself with saying to Tailard,
+“It is well. I recognise the loyalty of your master.” In Austria, where
+until the last moment there was hope of a will in favour of the archduke,
+there was both despondency and irritation. The emperor protested against
+the will of Charles II, against its acceptance by France, and sent his
+agents in hot haste to the different courts in order to resuscitate the
+coalition; at the same time making preparations for a war of which he
+resolutely counted the duration and extent.[b]
+
+France had two great interests. The first was that Spain should be her
+friend, to assure peace on the southern frontier; the second that the
+northeastern frontier should be as far as possible from Paris and that
+the Netherlands should at least be her ally. The first point seemed
+gained by the advent to the throne of Charles V, of a Bourbon whom the
+people received with enthusiasm, and whom the other states recognised.
+The emperor protested and armed, but alone he could do nothing.
+
+The second end was more difficult to attain, for neither England nor
+Holland was willing to see the French at the mouth of the Schelde. To
+get there much tact and prudence was necessary. The king unfortunately
+unmasked his plans too quickly and braved Europe as if it was his
+pleasure to do so. In spite of the formal clauses of Charles II’s will,
+Louis did not exact from Philip V a renunciation of the French throne,
+and by letters patent issued in December, 1700, preserved to him his
+hereditary rank between the duke of Burgundy and the duke de Berri. This
+would make possible a union of the two monarchies and show an alarmed
+world France and Spain one day governed by the same king, which would not
+have been a good thing for either country, and still less so for Europe.
+A little later Louis drove the Dutch from the places they occupied in the
+Netherlands by virtue of the Treaty of Ryswick, and replaced them with
+French garrisons.[142] Finally on the death of James II he acknowledged
+the prince of Wales, his son, as king of England, Ireland, and Scotland,
+in spite of the advice of all his ministers. This insult to the English
+people and to William III made war inevitable.
+
+
+THE GRAND ALLIANCE OR THIRD COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1701 A.D.)
+
+[Sidenote: [1701-1702 A.D.]]
+
+A third coalition was formed in September, 1701. This was the grand
+league of the Hague into which England, Holland, Austria, and the
+empire entered, and a little later Portugal, which became an enemy of
+France[143] since a French prince was king of Spain, and especially since
+French ports had been closed to her products. No allies in the whole of
+Europe remained to Louis but the elector of Bavaria,[144] to whom the
+Netherlands were secretly promised, and the dukes of Modena and of Savoy,
+who were however soon to change sides. Spain was with him, but having no
+soldiers or money or ships was, as Torcy said, “A body without a soul
+whom France must nourish and sustain at her own expense.”
+
+William III scarcely saw the opening of the war. He died in the month of
+March, 1702, but his policy survived him because it was a national one.
+Three men, famous for their hatred of France, Heinsius, Marlborough, and
+Prince Eugene, replaced in close union the leader of the league. Heinsius
+was grand pensionary of Holland, and he directed the republic with the
+authority of a monarch when the stadholdership was abolished on the death
+of William.
+
+[Illustration: CLAUDE LOUIS HECTOR, DUC DE VILLARS
+
+(1653-1734)]
+
+Churchill, duke of Marlborough, received his first taste of war under
+Turenne. He governed Queen Anne through his wife, parliament through his
+friends, the ministry through his son-in-law Sunderland, secretary of
+state for war, and through the great treasurer Godolphin, father-in-law
+of one of his daughters. Prince Eugene, born in France about 1663, of the
+count de Soissons and a niece of Mazarin, that Olympe Mancini whom Louis
+had for one moment favoured, belonged to the house of Savoy. Destined to
+an ecclesiastical career he preferred the profession of arms, and, at the
+age of nineteen, demanded a regiment of Louis XIV, who refused to make a
+colonel of the “Savoyard abbé.”[c] Disappointed in his hopes of obtaining
+a command in the armies of France, he turned to the Empire and became its
+greatest protector against the ambition of his former sovereign. During
+one campaign of 1692 he had foiled Catinat in Italy and by a bold raid
+from Piedmont into France had spread alarm far into the kingdom.[a] After
+the Peace of Ryswick he resisted the Turks who had invaded Hungary and
+won at Zenta, in 1697, a signal victory which placed him in the opinion
+of his contemporaries by the side of Sobieski, the saviour of Vienna. Now
+appointed president of the council of war and planning as a minister the
+expeditions which he was to carry out as a general, he had a decisive
+influence on the events which were to follow. By his good understanding
+with Marlborough he was about to give the European coalition that thing
+which it had always lacked--union.
+
+To triumph over such adversaries France would have had to have the great
+men of the preceding generation. But Louis had used them up. However,
+some of the leaders that France still had, Villars, Catinat, Boufflers,
+and Vendôme, deserved confidence and freedom. It is true that such as
+Villeroi, Tailard, Marchin, and La Feuillade had every need of good
+counsel and guidance, but it was not by holding these generals by the
+leash that they were prevented from inflicting irreparable disaster upon
+the French arms.
+
+To Louis XIV’s idea the war should be defensive at all points except in
+Germany, whither the elector of Bavaria summoned the French. Boufflers
+was sent to the Netherlands to oppose Marlborough, who commanded the
+Anglo-Batavian army; Catinat to Italy to shut the entrance to the
+Milanese upon Prince Eugene and the imperials; Villars to Germany to join
+the elector and march upon Vienna.[145]
+
+
+WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION: THE FRENCH VICTORIES (1701-1704 A.D.)
+
+For three years (1701-1704) the successes balanced each other. However,
+Marlborough penetrated, in 1702 into the Netherlands in spite of
+Boufflers, who with two armies on his hands did not know how to manœuvre
+between them and abandoned without combat the places on the Maas as far
+as Namur; at least he saved Antwerp the following year by the victory of
+Eeckeren over the Dutch. In 1701 Prince Eugene descended into Lombardy
+in spite of Catinat, who had a superior force, but who, badly obeyed and
+perhaps betrayed by some Spanish officers, did not prevent him swooping
+down from the Tyrol. Eugene threatened the whole line of the Adige, and
+crossed that river without resistance at Castelbaldo on the plain, while
+Catinat was waiting for him at Rivoli in the mountains. He forced the
+passage of the Blanc canal in a fight at Carpi, July 9th, when Catinat
+might again have stopped him; but the marshal, confused by manœuvres
+as bold as they were able, retired behind the Mincio and further still
+behind the Oglio which opened the Milanese to the enemy. The court
+degraded him and gave his army to Villeroi.
+
+This protégé of Madame de Maintenon was a good courtier but a bad
+general. From the very first he wanted to take the offensive. He
+recrossed the Oglio hoping to surprise Eugene at Chiari, but the duke of
+Savoy kept the imperials informed of all his movements, and Villeroi,
+surprised himself, was beaten in 1701.
+
+However, the enemy could advance no farther, so long as it did not
+have the stronghold of Mantua. Villeroi let the count de Tessé make a
+brilliant defence there and took up winter quarters in Cremona. Once
+while he was sleeping in supposed security he was awakened by sudden
+firing. He dressed in haste, rushed from his lodging, and fell among
+an Austrian squadron. It was Eugene, who was making a sudden attack on
+Cremona. He would have succeeded had it not been for a regiment which
+since four o’clock in the morning had been assembled for review by the
+colonel. The enemy, arrived in the centre of the town, were driven back
+through the gates; but they took the marshal with them (February, 1702).
+[Ballads were sung in the streets of Paris to celebrate the double stroke
+of fortune,--Cremona saved and Villeroi captured.] Vendôme replaced him
+and for two years carried on a successful warfare against the imperials.
+At first he forced them to retreat beyond the Mincio, which delivered
+Mantua, then by a rapid march he went to seize their stores at Luzzara,
+on the right bank of the Po (1702), so that he might approach the Tyrol.
+At this moment the concealed treasons of the duke of Savoy changed to
+open defection, the Bourbons having refused, very stupidly, to cede him
+the Milanese in exchange for Savoy (1703). It was necessary for Vendôme
+to turn against him to assure communication with France. He seized
+the greater part of Piedmont and threatened Turin, but he no longer
+threatened Austria.
+
+[Sidenote: [1702-1703 A.D.]]
+
+The same success in Germany. Catinat, called to the Rhine, did not
+re-establish the reputation he compromised in Italy. He had allowed the
+prince of Baden to cross the river and take Landau, Weissenburg, and
+Haguenau. A diversion of the elector of Bavaria recalled the imperials to
+Germany. Catinat, urged to follow them, dare not do so; but one of his
+lieutenants, Villars, did. He attacked the prince of Baden in the Black
+Forest near Friedlingen, and won his marshal’s baton on the field of
+battle (October, 1702).[c] The victory was as absurd as that of Charles
+the Bold at Montchery. The French infantry drove back the German and
+then broke and fled in a panic. Villars was swept back with his men, and
+was in utter despair when an officer rode up to say that the cavalry had
+saved the day. It was not much to be proud of, for the German troops were
+still in good order as they withdrew, but it gave the court its chance to
+honour its favourite.[a]
+
+The most decisive blow was struck at sea. Sir George Rooke and the duke
+of Ormond made amends for an unsuccessful attack upon Cadiz, by forcing
+the port of Vigo, and capturing and destroying the fleet of the enemy,
+together with the galleons containing the treasures from South America.
+
+The year 1703 passed in Flanders without any action of importance.
+Marlborough took Bonn and Luxemburg, and manœuvred with a view to
+capture Antwerp and Ostend, without success. More important movements
+were taking place on the Rhine, where Villars commanded. The object of
+the French king’s pushing the war into Germany, contrary to his usual
+practice, was to succour his ally, the elector of Bavaria, who was so
+sorely pressed by the imperialists that it was feared he would be obliged
+to abandon the alliance of France. Villars employed the winter months
+advantageously in making himself master of Kehl, opposite Strasburg. In
+the spring he succeeded fully in breaking through the imperialist lines,
+and joining the elector of Bavaria at Ratisbon; thus transferring the
+seat of war from the Rhine to the Danube. If we are to credit Villars
+himself, he conceived the idea of marching by Passau upon Vienna. The
+elector, of a more sober school of tactics, could not share the French
+general’s ardour. A difference of opinion, and subsequent coolness,
+sprang up betwixt them. Even the more sage advice of Villars, to pass
+the Danube and attack the imperialists before they could be joined by
+an approaching army, was but reluctantly followed. The marshal was
+obliged to shame his ally by threatening to make the attack alone. It
+took place near Donauwörth, between Höchstädt and Blenheim (September,
+1703), and the French were here victorious on a field which was destined
+to be so fatal to them in the ensuing year. Unable to bring the elector
+into his designs, Villars agreed to a plan to invade the Tyrol, and
+open a communication through that country with the duke de Vendôme, who
+commanded in Italy. The scheme was unsuccessful. Vendôme was kept in
+check, not only by Prince Eugene, but by the duke of Savoy himself, and
+the Tyrolese drove the elector from their valley. He made loud complaints
+against Villars, and that able general in disgust threw up his command.[f]
+
+[Sidenote: [1703-1704 A.D.]]
+
+In November, 1703, the imperialists suffered a bloody defeat near Speier,
+which gave Landau back to France. The victor was Tallard. He wrote to the
+king, “Sire: Your army has taken more standards and flags than it has
+lost common soldiers.”
+
+
+THE CAMISARDS
+
+This victory put an end to France’s success. Louis XIV sent Villars
+against the revolting Protestants of the Cévennes, the _camisards_. These
+unfortunate people had just seen Pope Clement XI renew the preaching of a
+crusade against them (the bull of May 1st, 1703). Bewildered with terror
+they accepted the help of England and the duke of Savoy, who were anxious
+to foster civil war in the heart of France; and as they had been cruelly
+treated, they revenged themselves in turn with similar cruelties.
+
+Villars had it at heart to save the province and bring back these
+exasperated men. “They are,” he said, “Frenchmen, very brave and very
+strong--three qualities to be considered.” He used force against those
+who persisted in fighting and was indulgent to those who put faith in his
+word. He won over one of their leaders, Cavalier, and one campaign was
+almost sufficient to re-establish peace in these provinces; but 100,000
+men had perished in this horrible war.[c]
+
+
+WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION--FRENCH REVERSES (1704-1713 A.D.)
+
+The elector of Bavaria, however, remained master of the whole course of
+the Danube as far as Passau. The small army of 20,000 men brought by
+Villars, but now commanded by Marshal de Marchin [Marsin], swelled his
+force, whilst Marshal Tallard, with 40,000 men on the Rhine, was ready
+to march in the spring of 1704 and join Marchin and the elector. These
+prospects made the court of Vienna tremble. That government was at the
+same time pressed by the Hungarian insurgents, so that even the recall of
+Prince Eugene from Italy with all the troops that could be spared from
+keeping the duke of Vendôme in check, might not prove sufficient for
+defending the Austrian capital--to such distress was the emperor reduced
+in the spring of the year 1704.
+
+It was then that Marlborough conceived the bold and generous design
+of abandoning Flanders, that beaten field, so known and trodden by
+commanders, so thickly sown with fortresses and cut with lines of defence
+as to render decisive actions impracticable, and of marching on the
+Danube, to the relief of the empire. Concealing his intentions, the duke
+crossed the Rhine at Bonn, the Main near Frankfort, and marched towards
+Bavaria.[f] At Mondelsheim near Heilbronn he had a conference with Eugene
+and together they agreed upon the plan of campaign which was to bring the
+victory of Blenheim and one of the greatest epochs in English military
+history. The plan was Marlborough’s; he had laid it before William III
+before his death and it had been rejected by the great Dutchman. Now
+he staked all upon it and executed it in the face of the opposition of
+England and Holland. From this time on, the greatest triumvirate of
+Marlborough, Eugene and Heinsius direct the fortunes of the allies.[a]
+
+The French had in the meantime mustered another army on the Rhine under
+Villeroi. Him Prince Eugene undertook to observe, whilst Marlborough,
+seconded by the prince of Baden, undertook to pass the Danube, penetrate
+into Bavaria, and either force the elector to abandon the French
+alliance, or punish him for his hostility to the empire. Marlborough lost
+no time in manœuvring or counter-marches, but advanced straight against
+the French and Bavarians, who were entrenched at Schellenberg, before
+Donauwörth, a town that commands a bridge on the Danube. Marlborough’s
+attack was decisive. The entrenchments were forced, the enemy were
+defeated and fled, leaving many thousand men and several generals on
+the field, as well as the passage of the Danube free. The English and
+imperialists instantly poured over the river, crossed the Lech, and,
+whilst the elector took refuge in Augsburg, until Marshal de Tallard
+could reinforce him, Marlborough overran Bavaria to the gates of Munich,
+ravaging and punishing the country for the hostilities of its chief. This
+wretched and cruel system of warfare did not bring the elector to terms.
+It irritated him, however, and drove his temper to seek vengeance in a
+general engagement.
+
+Unable to subsist south of the Danube in a country which he could not
+occupy, and which he purposely ravaged, Marlborough withdrew to the
+north of that river. Hoping to draw the enemy after him, he caused the
+prince of Baden to lay siege to Ingolstadt. What he sought, took place.
+The elector of Bavaria, anxious for revenge, and Tallard, who had joined
+him, sharing his ardour, they passed the Danube, and posted themselves at
+Höchstädt, on the very spot where Villars and the elector had in the last
+year been victorious. Prince Eugene at the same time contrived to deceive
+Villeroi, quitting his position, in front of that general, so as himself
+to arrive with his army in time to join in the action, whilst Villeroi
+remained perplexed or engaged in uncertain and tedious pursuit.
+
+
+_The Battle of Blenheim_
+
+On the morning of the 13th of August, 1704, the French and Bavarians drew
+up before their camp. Their armies did not mingle, but remained separate,
+that of Tallard on the right touching the Danube, that of Marchin and
+the elector in continuance of the line on the left. Before the front of
+Tallard was the village of Blenheim, on a rising ground, occupied by his
+infantry. At some distance in advance of the French and Bavarians ran
+a rivulet with marshy banks, on the other side of which were drawn up
+the imperials, the Dutch and English; Marlborough commanding the latter
+next the Danube, Prince Eugene the former. The elector committed a
+capital fault in not posting his army near to the rivulet, so as either
+to dispute its passage or to attack the enemy when they had partially
+crossed it. But he did not suspect an intention to fight on the part
+of Marlborough. Eugene began the action by attacking the elector and
+Marchin, from whom he met with a stubborn resistance. Marlborough in
+the meantime crossed the rivulet, and formed a strong body of infantry
+opposite the centre of his antagonists. This centre was composed of
+cavalry; for Tallard and the elector, remaining separate, had each drawn
+up his army, according to rule, with its horse upon the wings.
+
+But these wings, united, formed the centre of the combined army. And thus
+a body of cavalry, destined by its nature to act offensively, was posted
+in the principal, the central, the fixed position of the army. Tallard
+no doubt reckoned that Marlborough would attack Blenheim, and, as Condé
+would have done, spend a world of lives and heroic efforts to master the
+position. Tallard knew this would cost hours; and he accordingly rode off
+to the left to see how the elector was faring, whilst his antagonists
+were drawing up, after having crossed the rivulet. Marlborough in the
+meantime did despatch troops to attack Blenheim, with the view of
+distracting Tallard from the principal movement. This was his advance
+upon the centre, the weak, divided centre of cavalry. In fact it made
+no resistance. Marlborough rushed in betwixt the elector and Tallard,
+cutting the French and Bavarian line in two. This manœuvre decided the
+victory. The elector with Marchin, taken in flank, gave up the advantage
+they had gained over Eugene, wavered, retreated, fled; whilst Tallard,
+hemmed betwixt the English and the Danube, ended by laying down their
+arms and surrendering. As for the marshal himself, he was taken whilst
+endeavouring to return from the elector’s division of the army to his
+own. The entire glory of this victory was Marlborough’s; and he enhanced
+it by that modesty and those attentions towards the vanquished which
+had so redounded to the fame of the Black Prince after Poitiers. From
+French writers we learn that Marlborough first set the example of
+treating prisoners not only with clemency but with the politeness due
+to misfortune; a trait that redeems those ravages in Bavaria which the
+custom of war had unjustly sanctioned. The battle of Blenheim, in which
+about 60,000 French and Bavarians against 52,000 of the allies were
+engaged, cost to the vanquished 12,000 men killed, besides a greater
+number made prisoners. The quantity of cannon, colours, and other
+trophies, was immense. But its effects were greater than all. The French
+armies were obliged to evacuate Germany altogether, abandon Bavaria, and
+retire behind the Rhine. Marlborough proved to Vienna another Sobieski.
+His victory re-established the imperial throne; nor was the house of
+Austria ungrateful. [It created him a prince of the empire, while Queen
+Anne made him a duke.]
+
+[Sidenote: [1704-1706 A.D.]]
+
+War was in the meantime raging in the Spanish peninsula. The archduke
+Charles had been enabled by England to land with a respectable force in
+that country, which he continued to dispute against Philip, the grandson
+of Louis. Portugal had been won over to the side of England and the
+archduke, and her aid proved of the greatest importance. It was singular
+to observe in this campaign the armies of France and Spain commanded
+by an Englishman, the duke of Berwick, while Ruvigny, created earl of
+Galway, a native of France and a Huguenot _émigré_, commanded the English
+forces. Sir George Rooke took Gibraltar in the same year in which the
+victory of Blenheim was won.
+
+Marlborough had delivered Germany from the French, and driven them
+beyond the Rhine: he then turned his attention to the north, and aimed
+at expelling them from those provinces of Spanish Flanders which they
+had taken possession of in the beginning of the war. During the entire
+campaign of 1705, the duke manœuvred in vain to attain this object by
+bringing the French to action. A signal victory could alone enable him
+to reduce a host of strong towns by a single blow; long watching for
+this opportunity, it did not offer till the spring of the year 1706.
+Marshal de Villeroi took the command in Flanders, and with orders to give
+battle. Louis was weary of the tedious war, so many enemies besetting
+him; the mere expense of resisting on every side being sufficient to
+crush the monarchy. He was no longer in a condition to await the effect
+of Louvois’ preparations, or Turenne’s manœuvres. Experience, sagacity,
+skill no longer presided over either his councils or his armies: Louis
+cried out for something decisive--for battle; like the gamester, whom
+prudence has deserted, and who is anxious to stake all in a decisive
+throw, which may relieve or ruin him. He bade Villeroi, therefore, give
+battle. Had he even selected Villars for the important task! But Villars
+was an indifferent courtier, being rude, independent, and proud. The
+“short-geniused and superb Villeroi” was preferred, and despatched on the
+difficult errand of giving battle to Marlborough.
+
+
+_The Battle of Ramillies, 1706_
+
+The French army, of about 80,000 men, reached the banks of the Mehaigne
+near Ramillies, about half distance betwixt Namur and Tirlemont, on the
+23rd of May, 1706. Despite the king’s order and his own ardour to fight,
+it was Marlborough who marched to the attack. Villeroi was waiting to be
+joined by Marchin; but, knowing himself to have a force stronger than the
+English general, he resolved to await the attack, drawing up his army
+in the position that chance had placed it, at an acute angle with the
+Mehaigne. The French right wing was near this river, with the village
+of Ramillies on a rising ground in front of it, precisely as Blenheim
+had been with respect to the French army in the action called by that
+name. Villeroi’s left was here covered by a little marshy river called
+the Gheete, which rendered it unassailable indeed, but also rendered it
+useless unless as supporting his right.
+
+Marlborough did not arrive with his army till it was already past noon;
+he reconnoitred, drew up in line corresponding to the French, and the
+cannonade began. The duke in an instant had perceived that the Gheete
+covering the enemy’s left rendered engagement on that side impossible; he
+therefore drew all his force from that side, and drafting it in the most
+concealed manner possible behind the troops about to attack Ramillies and
+the French right, he concentrated his force on this point. This manœuvre
+took a long time to execute, and yet Villeroi took no step to defeat it.
+When Marlborough advanced, the French household cavalry charged him with
+such impetuosity and valour as to break the attacking battalions, and
+to endanger the duke himself; but the English, rallying in front, and
+allowing these rash enemies to pass to the rear, where there was force
+enough to deal with them, pushed on both upon Ramillies and upon the
+French line behind it. The English, being in much superior numbers on
+this point, owing to the inactivity of the French right, formed in one
+unbroken line and charged, numbers breaking in between the intervals of
+the French, who were drawn up in separate battalions, and taking them in
+flank. Their rearguard failed to support those in front: the baggage,
+it was said, impeded them: at all events the battle, though begun late,
+proved ere sunset a decisive victory on one side and rout on the other.
+The pursuit lasted the whole night, the fugitives suffering greatly in
+their passage through the defile of Judoigne, which was blocked with
+cannon and wagons. Here the day of Blenheim was renewed, the loss of
+the French in killed and captive not being, however, so great. The
+consequences were not less important; being the loss to France of all the
+Spanish Netherlands, including Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Brussels,
+Mechlin, and Louvain. The fortresses of Menin and Dendermonde surrendered
+also. Namur and Mons remained, the only towns unconquered.
+
+The court was struck with consternation on learning of this second
+defeat, of which the details were for a long time unknown. No courier
+arrived, so that Louis was obliged to despatch Chamillart himself,
+his minister, to Flanders. Villeroi was distracted, and had lost all
+self-possession; everyone condemned a general whose imprudence had
+placed the kingdom “within two fingers of its ruin.” Still Louis was
+generous to his unfortunate general, and wrote him to give in his
+resignation, in order to avoid the harshness of deprival. The duke
+de Vendôme was recalled from Italy to take the command in Flanders;
+and the duke of Orleans, the king’s nephew, succeeded Vendôme. This
+last appointment surprised the court, which was aware of the extreme
+repugnance felt by Louis to employ any of the princes of the blood; but
+so unfortunate had proved his choice of late that the monarch resolved at
+last to trust the defence of the kingdom to the zeal of his family.[f]
+
+[Sidenote: [1706-1707 A.D.]]
+
+Orleans found the army in Italy in great disorder, the generals divided
+and insubordinate; Turin was besieged according to the plans of La
+Feuillade [the most frivolous and incompetent of the favourites of
+Louis], contrary to the advice of Vauban; the prince in irritation turned
+over his powers to Marshal de Marchin. Prince Eugene, who had effected
+his junction with Victor Amadeus, encountered the French army between the
+Dora and Stura rivers. Orleans was seriously wounded at the battle of
+Turin, September 7th, 1706; Marchin was killed and discouragement seized
+the generals and the troops. The siege of Turin was raised and before the
+end of the year almost all the places were lost and Dauphiné threatened.
+Victor Amadeus refused to agree to a special peace and in March, 1707,
+the prince of Vaudemont, governor of the Milanese for the king of Spain,
+signed a capitulation at Mantua and sent back to France the troops
+that still remained there. The imperials were masters of Naples. Spain
+possessed nothing more in Italy.
+
+Philip V had been threatened with the loss of Spain as of Italy. In the
+past two years the archduke Charles of Austria under the name of Charles
+III, with the support of England and Portugal, disputed the crown with
+the young king. Philip V had lost Catalonia and had just failed in an
+attempt to retake Barcelona, which had surrendered to Lord Peterborough.
+The road to Madrid was cut off; the army was obliged to pass through
+Roussillon and Béarn to resume the campaign. The king shut himself up in
+the capital whither he was conducted by Marshal Berwick, a natural son
+of James II; but Philip could not remain in Madrid, threatened by the
+enemy. He betook himself to Burgos. The English entered the capital and
+proclaimed Charles III.
+
+But this was too much. The Spaniards could not allow an Austrian king
+to be imposed upon them by heretics and the Portuguese. The cities
+arose; a handful of cavalry was sufficient to enable Berwick to regain
+possession of Madrid, and the king returned on the 4th of October amid
+the acclamations of the people. Charles III now held only Aragon and
+Catalonia in Spain. The French garrison, unoccupied since the evacuation
+of Italy, came to the assistance of the Spaniards.
+
+Louis XIV had made his grandson understand that a great sacrifice would
+be necessary to obtain the peace he believed would soon be due to their
+peoples. The Dutch refused their mediation. The campaign of 1707 was
+signalled in Spain by the victory of Almansa, won on the 15th of April
+by Marshal Berwick over the Anglo-Portuguese army and by the taking
+of Lerida which surrendered on November 11th to the duke of Orleans.
+In Germany Villars drove the enemy from the banks of the Rhine,[146]
+advanced into Swabia, and ravaged the Palatinate, levying contributions
+on the country of which he openly kept a part for himself.
+
+[Sidenote: [1707-1708 A.D.]]
+
+The inexhaustible elasticity and marvellous resources of France had
+somewhat revived hopes in 1707. An invasion of Provence by Victor Amadeus
+and Prince Eugene, a check before Toulon and their retreat, precipitated
+by a rising of the peasants, had irritated the allies. Attempts at
+negotiation at the Hague undertaken by the king remained without
+result.[i]
+
+But the emperor made a treaty of neutrality for Italy, and that brought
+to the Rhine frontier the soldiers in Italy.[a] The allies hoped to
+reduce the king lower; and certainly the prospects of France were never
+more gloomy. The finances were in the greatest disorder. Chamillart had
+the management of both war and finance departments: the exertion, united
+with ill success, was too much; it was killing him. He wrote a piteous
+letter to this effect, tendering his resignation to the king: Louis
+read it, and writing on the margin of the letter, “Well, we will perish
+together,” sent it back to the minister. One active genius, nevertheless,
+was employed at this time to provide a remedy for the poverty of the
+government, and a reform in the financial system: this was Vauban, the
+celebrated engineer. The product of his labours was a plan for abolishing
+the numerous and intricate branches of taxation, and substituting in its
+place one uniform tax on property. He proposed to take a tenth of its
+yearly value, which he called a _dîme royale_. This simple mode would
+have proved the ruin of the financiers, the farmers of the revenue, and
+the pensioners, that were paid out of divers intricate receipts ere they
+reached the treasury. The scheme of Vauban was set aside; and paper
+money now made its appearance in France for the first time.[f] The use
+of credit was not understood, however, in France as it was being learned
+in England. The establishment of the Bank of England, which enabled the
+small kingdom to use all her resources without undue strain or present
+exhaustion, had no parallel in France, where finances were managed
+in secret councils of the king, and the nearest approach to national
+banking was to anticipate future revenues to the utmost limit. To meet
+or guarantee these anticipations, more imposts must be levied; more
+distress and suffering resulted. In England the war furnished people with
+a safe and new means of investment. In France the absence of a regular
+institution of credit prevented that use of its resources which was to be
+the astounding achievement of the Bank of France two centuries and a half
+later.[a]
+
+Despite his distresses, Louis was not inactive. He fitted out an
+expedition for the pretender to Scotland, which failed. Funds were
+wanting to supply the armies. Desmarets, who had succeeded Chamillart,
+told the monarch that it was impossible to obtain money, except from
+Samuel Bernard the banker. Louis saw Bernard, asked him to Marly, and
+showed him the wonders of the place with a condescension that made the
+courtiers stare. Bernard was so set beside himself by the honour, that
+he declared he would rather see himself ruined than the empire of so
+gracious a monarch in want; and the loan was instantly effected.
+
+Villars commanded with his usual activity and success on the Rhine
+in 1708, whilst the duke of Burgundy, grandson to Louis, aided by
+Vendôme, commanded against Marlborough in Flanders. The allies had
+not troops sufficient to garrison the numerous towns which they had
+taken in Flanders, and which were far more inclined to French rule
+than to the Dutch and English. Ghent and Bruges were, owing to these
+causes, surprised. Emboldened by success, the French pushed across the
+Schelde towards Brussels with rather uncertain intentions. Hearing
+that Marlborough was approaching, they retired, and invested Oudenarde,
+which intercepted the passage on the Schelde betwixt the French towns
+and Ghent. They hoped to take it ere Marlborough could arrive. But that
+general making forced marches, the French at his approach decamped from
+before Oudenarde to retire to Ghent. The duke reached them on their
+retreat, and a partial action took place, in which the French were
+routed, and driven, with great loss, back to Ghent. The dukes of Vendôme
+and Burgundy had a serious difference and quarrel on the field. Whilst
+the commanders were squabbling, their army was beaten. The prince Eugene
+then invested Lille, a bulwark not yet reduced. Lille surrendered in
+October, 1708: with it fell Ghent and Bruges; and, with the exception of
+one or two towns, the frontier of France lay completely open. [This was
+the darkest hour for Louis XIV. Even the capital seemed no longer safe.]
+
+[Sidenote: [1708-1709 A.D.]]
+
+The year 1709 commenced by one of the most rigorous winters ever known.
+The populace began to clamour under present sufferings, and with the
+prospects of still greater. Seeing the disastrous and disturbed state
+of the population, the parliament thought proper to assemble in the
+great chamber, to consider the state of things. It was proposed to
+appoint deputies to visit the provinces, buy corn, and watch over the
+public peace. It was a bold attempt under Louis XIV. He reprimanded the
+parliament, and told them that they had as little to do with corn as with
+taxation. The magistrates obeyed, and were silent.
+
+In such a state of threatened famine, aggravated by the oppression of
+war, commerce remained at a stand: money was no longer forthcoming.
+Bernard, the great banker, became a bankrupt. Even the insufficient
+revenue could not be collected; and an adulteration of the coin was
+had recourse to as the only expedient. Louis despatched the president
+Rouillé to Holland to sue for peace; and soon after the marquis de Torcy,
+minister, he might be called, of foreign affairs, was sent on the same
+humiliating errand. The states of Holland, or their agents, here repaid
+the French king all his past insults and pride. His envoys and his offers
+were slighted, yet these last were sufficiently ample. Louis consented
+to abandon his grandson the king of Spain, reserving for him merely
+Naples. The states refused even Naples. Torcy offered them towns to form
+a barrier in the Netherlands. In this nothing less than Lille and Tournay
+would content them. They demanded Strasburg and Landau, tantamount to
+Alsace, and the demolition of Dunkirk. Louis consented to demolish the
+port of Dunkirk, as also the fortifications of Strasburg. In short, the
+demands of the allies went not only to reduce France to what it was at
+the accession of Louis, but prince Eugene claimed to keep possession
+of his conquests in Dauphiné. Moreover, the allies insisted not only
+upon the French king’s abandoning his grandson, but upon his aiding to
+dethrone him. “If I am to continue warring,” replied Louis, “I had rather
+fight my enemies than my children.”
+
+The negotiations were thus broken off. The monarch gained much by them.
+He showed his sincere desire for peace; and now making known, in a
+printed appeal to his subjects, the terms that he had offered and that
+had been rejected, the national feeling was roused to indignation.
+The rich sent their plate to the mint, the king and royal family not
+excepted; the poor hurried to the armies; and Louis was in a condition to
+face his inveterate foes. The obduracy of Marlborough, of Prince Eugene,
+and of the Dutch was certainly impolitic; for Spain might in one campaign
+have been reduced, the French remaining neutral. France, herself, offered
+to make every fair concession; and the commanders, in refusing, might
+well incur the reproach of being actuated by selfish views, if the state
+of distress in France had not warranted any hopes or pretensions on
+their part. A great portion of the court of Versailles itself was for
+abandoning Philip V, and withdrawing the troops from Spain; a measure
+which did take place in part, owing, however, to a quarrel betwixt Madame
+de Maintenon and the princess Orsini.
+
+Meantime the allies had entered the field, well supplied from the copious
+magazines of Holland. The French army, in a state of starvation and
+nudity, opposed them. Its commander was the marshal de Villars. He was
+indignant at the arrogance of the confederates, and the despondency of
+the court: it was he who roused the drooping spirits of Louis and of his
+ministers, and who alone preserved a confidence in the French soldiery
+and in the fate of arms. Villars appears to be one of the truest and
+finest specimens of the French soldier: he was ardent, bold, and valiant;
+qualities which he enhanced by an air and habit of boasting. Full of
+resources, he never lost confidence in himself, firmly believing that
+neither Marlborough nor any other general could contend with him. At the
+same time he was blunt and rude; could not brook to be commanded; too
+independent to be a courtier, all ministers hated him and the butterflies
+of the court joined them. “I am going to fight your enemies,” said he to
+the monarch, as he was departing for a campaign; “I leave you amongst
+mine.”
+
+
+_The Battle of Malplaquet (1709 A.D.)_
+
+The duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene had taken Tournay, and now
+menaced Mons. Villars advanced by the road from Valenciennes to succour
+it, and posted himself to the right of the road, in an interval betwixt
+two woods, near Malplaquet. By advancing, he might have routed Prince
+Eugene, who was at first inferior in numbers; but Marlborough coming up,
+the two generals determined to attack Villars, who on his side, anxious
+to measure himself with them and secure an advantage, had covered his
+strong position by entrenchments and _abatis_, or trees felled and thrown
+with their branches towards the enemy. The envoys of the Dutch states
+dissuaded Marlborough from fighting; and they were right. Mons was in the
+rear of the allied army, and Villars was in no condition to disturb its
+siege, without at least quitting his entrenchments. Marlborough, however,
+accustomed to conquer, somewhat undervalued his enemies, and resolved on
+the attack.
+
+The battle of Malplaquet was fought on the 11th of September. Each wing
+of the French was in a wood, covered and entrenched, whilst the centre,
+occupying the interval, had taken scarcely less care to cover itself.
+Opposite the French centre, however, was a farm and a little wood, which
+Prince Eugene occupied, and filled with troops that did not appear. The
+action began on the wings, Marlborough charging Villars and driving him
+back after a struggle. To support himself, Villars drew reinforcements
+from the centre, and was making fresh head against the English, when
+a ball struck his knee, and incapacitated him from commanding. Prince
+Eugene, watching his opportunity, seized the moment that Villars had
+weakened his centre, and, leading his infantry from the farm and wood,
+rushed on the centre, and broke it, carrying their entrenchments. This
+was victory. In the meantime, the Dutch attack on the other wing, where
+Boufflers commanded, was defeated. Despite the valour of the young prince
+of Orange, he could not establish himself in the wood or within the
+entrenchment; and he was driven back.
+
+[Sidenote: [1709-1711 A.D.]]
+
+But the success of Boufflers was to no purpose. The French left and
+centre were broken; and all that its victorious right could accomplish
+was to cover the retreat, and prevent Malplaquet from being converted
+into the same rout as Ramillies. The allies lost a prodigious number of
+men in the attack of the woods and entrenchments. The number of French
+slain was much less. Villars, in consequence, was as proud as if he had
+gained the battle. “If God should grant us another such defeat, our
+enemies would be destroyed,” wrote he to Louis. He afterwards boasted
+that but for his wound he would have won the victory: Voltaire, who
+was present, remarks that few believed the boast. Mons surrendered
+immediately. This was the last victory of Marlborough.
+
+In the next campaign, indeed, he showed his decided military superiority
+to Villars, by breaking through lines that the marshal had declared
+impregnable, and this without losing a man. But whilst France, with
+the languor of an exhausted but still valiant combatant, was warding
+off these blows, which the Dutch, in their anxiety for capturing towns
+and forming a barrier, prevented from being straightforward and vital,
+fortune was pleased to prostrate Marlborough, and rescue Louis from ruin
+by the means of a canting clergyman and an obscure woman, who rose to
+court favour. Sacheverell and Mrs. Masham effected what all the warriors
+and statesmen of Versailles despaired to do. Marlborough was overthrown,
+and with him England’s inveteracy and force.
+
+Previous to affairs taking this unexpected turn, the situation of Louis
+was desperate. Again he sent envoys to sue for peace, and they were
+treated with the same contempt. Sympathy is here excited for the monarch,
+struggling bravely not for his conquests but for his crown and country.
+Louis on this occasion showed a spirit that more entitled him to the
+name of Great, than all his early triumphs. What were his intentions, in
+case of the war’s continuing, and of Marlborough’s invading France? He
+has himself recorded them in a letter to Villars: “I reckoned,” said he,
+“on going to Péronne or St. Quentin, gathering there every disposable
+troop, wherewith to make a last effort with you, that we might perish
+together; for never could I remain a witness of the enemy’s approaching
+my capital.” This, indeed, breathes the pride of Louis XIV, but at the
+same time his magnanimity and heroism. The battle of Villaviciosa, gained
+by the French over the Austrian party in Spain, revived his hopes; the
+disgrace of Marlborough, and the blunted hostilities of England, restored
+him to security and confidence.
+
+[Sidenote: [1711-1712 A.D.]]
+
+Whilst the clouds in the political sky were thus clearing up for Louis, a
+mass of private misfortune, almost unexampled, fell upon him. His pride
+had been brought low. He was now stricken in his nearest affections: his
+only son, the dauphin, died of the smallpox, April 14th, 1711. The son
+of this prince became, in consequence, heir-apparent to the crown. The
+greatest hopes were entertained of this youth. He had been the pupil
+of Fénelon. Though naturally most violent and extreme in his passions
+and temper, a sense of religion had worked a reformation in him, and he
+became forbearing, pious, just. His reign promised to be a golden one for
+France. Such was the young duke of Burgundy. His duchess [Marie Adelaide
+of Savoy] was of a character as rare. With the most buoyant spirits
+and the aptest wit, she was the delight of her royal grandfather, who
+could not take a journey without her; and with him she took all kinds of
+liberties. It was she who remarked, on hearing him speak of the triumphs
+of Queen Anne’s reign, that “queens reigned more prosperously than kings;
+because under a queen men governed, and women under a king.”
+
+This prince and princess were both carried off suddenly by some unknown
+disease [the former on February 18th, the latter on February 12th, 1712];
+possibly by the smallpox, which was then universally prevalent and fatal:
+but none of the external marks of that malady appeared on them. The title
+of dauphin fell, within a very short time, upon a third head [the duke of
+Brittany]; and it too was carried to the grave on March 8th. The second
+child of the late duke of Burgundy, the duke of Anjou, was then at nurse,
+and about two years old. The same malady seized it; and it was saved,
+probably, by its superintendent, who would not permit either bleeding
+or emetic to be employed--the favourite remedies of the time for every
+ailment. This infant lived, and soon after became Louis XV.
+
+Popular belief could not assign so many deaths of such important
+personages to the cause of nature or disease. They were attributed to
+poison; and the physicians, either through alarm and ignorance, or to
+excuse their want of skill, corroborated, all save one blunt man, the
+same opinion. Who could be guilty of such crimes? All eyes turned towards
+the duke of Orleans, nephew of Louis. His life was profligate, his
+character reckless, and his pride seemed to be to brave public opinion.
+The king, with his wonted jealousy, had kept the prince from all high or
+martial employ, except on one or two occasions. In Italy he had shown
+courage. In Spain, contemning the dullness of Philip V, who at that time
+had meditated retiring to the Indies, he had intrigued, it was averred,
+to take his place. This put him in disgrace at court.
+
+Even his studies gave handle to calumny. Chemistry was what he most
+delighted in, and in this pursuit he was said to be actuated by an unholy
+curiosity to read and influence his future destinies. Of a sarcastic
+spirit, that despised and mocked humanity, the duke perhaps encouraged
+these opinions of him in order to cater to his own amusement. The cry of
+suspicion was now serious. The court entertained it. The people clamoured
+about the Palais Royal, and were only prevented by the police from
+breaking in and tearing the “poisoner” in pieces. To such accusers the
+duke scorned to justify himself. He sought, however, an interview with
+the king, who, worn with sorrow and tormented with suspicion, granted it.
+Orleans demanded to be sent to the Bastille, confronted with witnesses,
+and tried. Louis for answer could but shrug his shoulders. The monarch’s
+mind was paralysed with his misfortune. The duke’s teacher of chemistry
+was arrested, and there the matter ended. Posterity seems to have
+acquitted Orleans of the crime; but his contemporaries, more credulous,
+were far from resigning themselves to the same opinion. Some indeed
+accused the house of Austria; and the absurdity of this supposition,
+upheld by many creditable persons, has the effect of invalidating the
+other. But none at that time dared to doubt the agency of poison.
+
+
+_Battle of Denain (1712 A.D.)_
+
+[Sidenote: [1712-1714 A.D.]]
+
+Conferences for peace had opened at Utrecht in the commencement of
+1712. It was no longer Marlborough but the duke of Ormonde, who now
+commanded in Flanders. He concluded a suspension of hostilities with the
+French; and Villars, delivered from the English, undertook to strike
+a blow against the prince Eugene. That commander besieged Landrecies,
+communicating with his magazines through the entrenched camp of Denain.
+Villars, pretending to assault the besieging army round Landrecies, made
+a side march suddenly, broke into the fortified lines, called arrogantly
+by the imperials the road to Paris, and advanced upon Denain. His
+officers cried for fascines to fill up the ditch. “Eugene will not allow
+you time,” cried Villars, “the bodies of the first slain must be our
+fascines.” They advanced, stormed the camp, which was commanded by Lord
+Albemarle, a Dutch general, and carried it ere the prince could arrive.
+This gallant action roused the spirits and fortunes of the French, and
+gave weight to their efforts at Utrecht. By their own writers Denain is
+almost swelled into comparison with Ramillies; its success is said to
+have saved the kingdom. The defection of the English, under their tory
+minister, from the grand alliance was, however, the true and only cause
+of their safety. Without it Villars could not have won the day of Denain,
+nor Louis made peace at Utrecht on any terms less than the abandonment of
+the crown of Spain by the house of Bourbon.
+
+
+TREATIES OF UTRECHT AND RASTATT (1713-1714 A.D.)
+
+In April, 1713, the plenipotentiaries of France signed the Treaties
+of Utrecht with England, Holland, and Savoy. The former country was
+gratified by the demolition of the port of Dunkirk, the cession of
+Gibraltar and Minorca, together with Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and
+the island of St. Christopher’s. Spain remained to Philip V on his
+renouncing forever all right of succession to the crown of France.
+The English ministry endeavoured to render this unwelcome part of the
+treaty palatable to the parliament by a number of advantages stipulated
+in favour of British commerce, which, however, as savouring of free
+trade, and inimical to the connection with Portugal, failed of being
+well received. The duke of Savoy, in addition to his paternal dominions
+already recovered by him, had Sicily thrown into his lot.
+
+The treaty with Holland was but provisional till the following year.[f]
+The emperor and the empire alone remained outside the general peace.
+War was resumed in Germany and on the Rhine. Villars seized Speier and
+Kaiserslautern, and laid siege to Landau. Landau capitulated August 20th,
+and on September 30th Villars entered Freiburg; the citadel surrendered
+November 13th. The imperials now began to make pacific overtures;
+Villars and Prince Eugene were charged with the negotiations. The peace
+was finally signed at Rastatt March 6th, 1714.[i] The Rhine was here
+acknowledged the frontier line on the side of Alsace. The elector of
+Bavaria was restored to his dominions. The emperor, in lieu of Spain,
+received Naples, Milan, and Sardinia, together with Spanish Flanders,
+in which, however, the Dutch retained the right of garrisoning the
+principal towns, forming, as it was called, the barrier against France.
+Namur, Tournay, Menin, and Ypres were amongst these. Lille and French
+Flanders remained to Louis. He retained this important conquest, as well
+as Alsace; advantages which the triumphs of Villars materially tended to
+gain. The title of the king of Prussia was acknowledged, and a certain
+accession of territory procured to him. The Protestant succession to the
+throne of England was also guaranteed by France.
+
+One of the principal difficulties of the treaty was to procure from the
+kings of France and Spain a valid renunciation of their mutual rights
+to either crown, so as to obviate the possibility of their being united
+upon one head. The verbal renunciation, or even the oath of the monarch,
+was found insufficient, and not without reason, seeing how lightly the
+declaration of Louis XIV on his marriage had been set aside. The English
+required the guarantee of a national assembly corresponding to their
+parliament, that, in short, of a states-general. Louis was, however,
+more indignant and hurt at this suggestion than at the most arrogant
+demands of the allies. He represented the nullity of the states, and his
+own omnipotence. Still his sovereign word was not sufficient. Different
+modes were suggested. Saint-Simon advised the calling of an assembly of
+dukes to affix their signatures. Others proposed the entire peerage:
+but Louis was as jealous of noble as plebeian, and could not tolerate
+the aristocracy except in the garb and in the submissive office of a
+courtier. All the guarantee he could give was the solemn registry of
+the renunciation in his parliament or assembly of legists; and even to
+this he took care to invite the peers with less than the ordinary form
+and solemnity.[f] The treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt mark a distinct
+epoch in European history. The age of the Habsburg supremacy, which had
+ended in the great Peace of Westphalia, was succeeded by that of Bourbon
+predominance; and Utrecht and Rastatt mark its fall as decisively as the
+Peace of 1648 had ended the dreams of Habsburg ambition. For a while the
+French monarchy still stands erect, and by the splendour of its show it
+still imposes upon the eye. But its tottering structure is doomed when
+the first great shock of revolution is felt. From now till 1789 the
+main interest in the history of France is the trend toward the new era
+which was to replace the old, worn, battered, and ruined edifice of the
+absolute monarchy with a reconstructed society.[a]
+
+[Illustration: EUROPE AFTER THE TREATIES OF UTRECHT AND RASTATT
+
+(1713-1714)]
+
+Louis now began to feel his health seriously decay. The hour of his
+dissolution could not be distant. The future fate of his family and
+kingdom occupied his thoughts. Of his legitimate descendants but one
+feeble infant remained, with the exception of the king of Spain, who
+by his renunciation was set aside from inheriting the crown of France.
+The duke of Orleans thus filled the place of heir presumptive, and
+from his station aspired to the regency. Louis dreaded to trust the
+infant Louis XV to the keeping of this prince, who bore the worst of
+characters. Though unconvicted, suspicion still rested upon him of having
+poisoned his relatives. Louis did him more justice in calling him a
+_fanfaron de crimes_, a braggard of crimes. But still the objection in
+the royal breast was not removed. Actuated by these motives, as well
+as by tenderness for the children born to him of Madame de Montespan,
+Louis issued a decree, giving to the illegitimate princes the full
+rights of the legitimate blood, calling them in succession to the
+throne immediately after the young dauphin. Nothing marks the extreme
+submissiveness of the parliament more than their registry of this
+decree. But this obsequiousness was evidently owing to the inutility of
+disturbing the last moments of the monarch. Louis completed this attempt
+in favour of his illegitimate children by a testament which gave to the
+duke du Maine, the eldest of these princes, the command of the household
+troops and the chief power during the minority.[f]
+
+
+DEATH OF LOUIS XIV
+
+[Sidenote: [1714-1715 A.D.]]
+
+Since the summer of 1714 Louis XIV, already cruelly shaken in health in
+1712, had been gradually failing. His chief physician, Fagon, himself
+enfeebled by age, did not perceive in time the slow fever which was
+undermining the king’s health and did not take advantage of the resources
+still offered by that powerful constitution. After the 11th of August,
+1715, Louis XIV did not again leave the château of Versailles. The fever
+increased, sleep vanished. On the 24th one of the king’s legs which
+had been causing him acute pain showed marks of gangrene. The next day
+Louis received the sacrament with calm and firmness. He manifested some
+scruples respecting what he had been made to do in regard to the bull
+_Unigenitus_.[147] He would have liked to see his archbishop, Noailles,
+once more, and to be reconciled to him; means were found to prevent this.
+On the 26th he bade farewell in moving terms to the principal personages
+of his court. He also took leave of the prince and princesses, addressed
+kindly words to the duke of Orleans as though to banish evil designs from
+his heart if he should have conceived any, and then sent for the dauphin,
+a beautiful child of five years of age, sole relic of all his legitimate
+line in France.
+
+“My child,” he said to him, “you will soon be the king of a great realm.
+Never forget your obligations towards God; remember that you owe him all
+that you are. Try to preserve peace with your neighbours. I have been too
+fond of war. Do not imitate me in that, nor in the too great expenditure
+which I have made. Lighten the burdens of your people as soon as you can
+and do that which I have had the misfortune not to do myself.”
+
+Touching, but vain words! The successor of Louis XIV was not reserved
+for a work of reparation but for a work of dissolution and ruin. On the
+morning of the 28th the king said to Madame de Maintenon that in leaving
+her he was consoled by the hope that they would soon meet again. She
+did not respond to this idea of meeting in eternity and appeared to see
+in this sign of affection only a token of egoism. Thinking the end was
+near, she set out that very evening for St. Cyr; the next day Louis,
+being still fully conscious, asked for her; she returned, but only to
+leave again finally on the evening of the 30th, thus abandoning on his
+death-bed the man who had so constantly loved her. Her excuse was in
+her extreme weariness of the existence which Louis had imposed on her.
+He had overwhelmed her with his absorbing personality; for more than
+thirty years she had not had a single day to herself; the necessity of
+perpetually finding new resources to occupy and interest this active but
+infertile mind, accustomed to live, so to speak, on the substance of
+others, had exhausted and crushed her.
+
+Louis was now only conscious at moments. The day of the 31st of August
+passed in this manner: the gangrene was gaining on him. In the night
+Louis revived to recite with the clergy the prayers for the dying. He
+repeated several times in a firm voice: “_Nunc et in hora mortis--Mon
+Dieu, aidez moi!_” then he entered on a long death-agony. On the 1st of
+September, at a quarter past eight in the morning, the king drew his last
+breath. He had lived seventy-seven years, reigned seventy-two, governed
+fifty-four. It was the longest as well as the greatest reign in the
+history of France. It was not one man, it was a world that was ended.
+
+Before descending, in the train of feudalism, into that night of the
+past in which one after another the perishable forms of eternal society
+are plunged, the monarchy, that symbolic form of national unity, had
+been manifested in a supreme personification which will remain forever
+engraved in the memory of peoples. Louis XIV is, and will remain, the
+king, the royal type, for foreign nations as well as for France. All that
+monarchy, after having brought under one yoke the divergent elements of
+the multiplex world of the Middle Ages, succeeded in producing in the
+fullness of her power, she produced in Louis the Great. Flourishing in
+her prime with the Great King, she grew old with him. The signs of decay
+multiplied; the gangrene was manifested in her as in him and, if monarchy
+did not die the same day as the monarch, the silent work of decomposition
+was no longer to be arrested in her organs. We are about to watch the
+dissolution of that vast frame until the day in which the real unity, the
+sovereign nation, shall for the first time break through the worn-out
+covering in its own true essence, without figure and without symbol.
+
+France prospered under Louis XIV so long as he continued in the ideas
+of Richelieu; she suffered, then declined, when she became unfaithful
+to them. He himself condemned the excess of his wars and expenditure;
+his expenditure on luxury and art, though doubtless very considerable,
+has been much exaggerated by tradition; as to his wars, they were, some
+justifiable, others excusable in their principle, but not in the inhuman
+character which he allowed to be imprinted on them, nor, at times, in
+the fashion in which they were conducted politically. France desired her
+natural completion, and, in the respective condition of the nations,
+the action of France to achieve her retransformation into the larger
+territory of Gaul was enough to overthrow the equilibrium of Europe and
+to provoke coalitions. Louis XIV committed the error of claiming to be
+able to do still more, and, above all, of making the claim believed.
+The two gravest charges which he merited are not those on which he
+condemned himself; they were: in economics, that of having wrought harm
+and rejected the remedy, ruined the finances and refused the radical
+reform which might have restored them; in religion, that of having
+destroyed the great work of Henry IV which Richelieu had continued. But
+the responsibility of the revocation may well be divided: the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes was the logical consequence of monarchy according
+to Bossuet, and this great crime against the state condemns the monarchy
+still more than the monarch. The more we blame the monarchical theory
+as contrary to the true ends of man and of the citizen, the more we are
+disposed to indulgence towards the prince who was carried away by this
+theory as by an almost irresistible fatality.
+
+When the New Era, which opened amid the tempests [of the eighteenth
+century], shall have found its shape and position; when society, free
+and democratic, shall be definitely founded and recognised; when parties
+cease to seek weapons in history, the name of Louis XIV will no longer
+excite the anger of the French people, as the expression of a hostile
+principle; and his statue, alternately adored and broken, will finally
+repose amid the great images of the national Pantheon. If the French
+people do not forget the culpable and fatal errors of Louis, they will
+also remember that Louis has deserved to be identified with the most
+brilliant century yet seen in modern civilisation. France pardons
+willingly, too willingly perhaps, all those who have loved her, even with
+a selfish and tyrannical love--all those who have made her glorious,
+even at the expense of her happiness; she is only implacable towards the
+memory of those leaders who have degraded her.[e]
+
+[Illustration: LOUIS XIV AT THE DEATH-BED OF JAMES II]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[139] [It must be remembered however that the great opponent of France
+took his title from the principality of Orange, which is now in the
+department of Vaucluse by the Rhone, in southern France.]
+
+[140] [Tökely was a Hungarian magnate--a Calvinist, who, implicated in a
+conspiracy, had aroused a portion of Hungary against the emperor. Louis
+XIV supported him in his war.]
+
+[141] [As to the saying, “There are no more Pyrenees,” its history is
+this. The ambassador to Spain, as reported by Dangeau, spoke these words:
+“The journey became easy and presently the Pyrenees melted away,” which
+the _Mercure_ on the following day rendered as follows: “What joy! There
+are no more Pyrenees, they are levelled, and we are one.” However, the
+phrase well expresses the situation and the aim of Louis XIV. If it did
+not fall from his lips, it was in the minds of all.[c]]
+
+[142] [This was done by Marshal de Boufflers in February, 1701, and
+effected with the help of the elector of Bavaria, governor of these
+provinces. Holland took fresh alarm at this act.]
+
+[143] [Louis XIV at first won Portugal to his side, and, in return for
+certain advantages, a treaty was signed with France and Spain on June
+18th, 1701. But the provisions were not kept. Dom Pedro entered the
+coalition in May, 1703.]
+
+[144] [The elector Maximilian believed himself ill used by Austria, and
+deserted the allies he had supported in the League of Augsburg. The
+second treaty with France was signed March 9th, 1701. The elector of
+Cologne, in spite of the trouble of 1688, also treated with Louis, and
+threw open her territory to French troops. So did the bishop of Münster
+and three other powers of the empire.]
+
+[145] [Duclos calls the War of the Spanish Succession “The only _just_
+one that Louis ever undertook.”]
+
+[146] Villars’ achievements had been noteworthy for some time. In 1706
+he raised the blockade of Fort Louis on the Rhine. In 1707 he forced
+the lines of Stollhofen which, extending from Philippsburg to the Black
+Forest, were regarded as the rampart of Germany.
+
+[147] [The enemies of the Jansenists obtained a decree from the king,
+interdicting a work entitled _Réflections Morales sur le Nouveau
+Testament_ by Father Quesnel, which Cardinal de Noailles had already
+approved of. Clement XI launched the bull _Unigenitus_ condemning one
+hundred and one propositions extracted from the _Réflections Morales_.
+Eight prelates headed by Noailles protested against the bull. The king’s
+confessor, Le Tellier, urged the king to have Noailles deposed. The
+affair dragged a long time at Rome. The king was about to bring the
+affair to his bed of justice when he fell ill.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV:[148] ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION
+
+    Augustus, Leo X, Louis XIV appear to us in the illumination of
+    art and poetry. Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon are greater, but
+    have they such a divine cortège?--ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE.[f]
+
+
+[Sidenote: [1610-1715 A.D.]]
+
+That development of French civilisation and letters which attained its
+apogee in the second half of the seventeenth century, the progress
+of science and the taste for art, was not the work of Louis XIV. The
+movement was begun; Louis XIV had only to support it and give it a
+particular direction.
+
+In order to seek and determine the causes, it is necessary to go further
+back. They will be found in the language, which became polished through
+the aspiration of society, which was reformed after the religious
+wars, in a better education which had reacted on manners, in a more
+general education and one more appropriate to the time--in fact, in
+the development of all the moral energies of France since Henry IV and
+Richelieu. Those great and independent geniuses, Richelieu, Corneille,
+and Descartes, gave the impulse, aroused writers or thinkers, and
+inspired the best society with that love, that admiration of the
+beautiful, which elevates the soul of a nation.
+
+The cares of war and of power were far from engrossing all the attention
+of Richelieu. He completed the construction of the Palais Cardinal, which
+was one of the most sumptuous dwellings ever seen, and which during his
+lifetime he bequeathed to the king, with the sole proviso that only a
+prince should ever inhabit it. He likewise embellished his house at Ruel,
+and his château at Richelieu in Touraine. He patronised Simon Vouet,
+recalled Poussin from Rome, bought paintings of Lesueur and Philippe de
+Champagne. He established the royal printing house, and tried, although
+with little success, to re-establish the royal manufactures established
+under the preceding reign and almost abandoned since then.
+
+
+FOUNDATION OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY
+
+In 1635 Richelieu conceived the idea of founding an association whose
+mission should be the perfecting of the language, and which should be
+the highest authority in the criticism of literary works submitted by
+their authors. Boisrobert, Conrart, Chapelain, Rotrou, and the great
+Corneille are counted among the founders of this association, which was
+the Académie Française. The men of letters, until then placed only too
+often in the “domesticity” of the great--a name then far removed from
+the sense given to it to-day--by means of this association acquired more
+independence and influence. Formerly they had flattered the powerful;
+now they began to develop a power of their own and to be flattered in
+their turn. The parliament made some difficulty about the incorporation
+of the academy, because it had an invincible distrust of the cardinal’s
+ideas, whose works seemed to it always despotic, and because it feared
+the new company might be invested with too great privileges and with
+jurisdiction. It was far from imagining that the academy was to become
+one of the glories of France, in a time when Corneille led the list of
+great French writers, when Descartes wrote the _Méthode_, when French
+society was the most polished in Europe, when Europe already borrowed the
+language of France, and took France for a model in everything.[b]
+
+
+THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM
+
+In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century royalty did not yet
+seek to exercise any influence in intellectual matters. Richelieu is the
+first to have had the idea of offering royal patronage to the “Nurselings
+of the Muses.” He distributed a few pensions.[c]
+
+Of all styles of literature the drama was most encouraged by Richelieu.
+Until then it had hardly been more than a popular amusement; it now
+became that of the most refined and most polished society. Doubtless,
+the talent of Rotrou and the genius of Corneille bore the principal part
+in this, but Richelieu aided them. His wish was to replace the ballets
+and other ordinary diversions of the court by amusements of a nobler
+sort, by tragedies and comedies of intrigue. He had a theatre in the
+Palais Cardinal and another in his mansion at Ruel. He often had plays
+represented there whose plan had been submitted to him. He gave advice to
+authors, worked with them, and even wrote himself.
+
+His patronage extended also to tuition and studies. An important
+transformation was taking place in the schools. The reform of the
+university under Henry IV had had the effect of substituting the study of
+the great authors for that of scholasticism. Since then the teaching of
+theology had been renewed; it is well known what brilliancy it gave to
+the seventeenth century. The teaching of literature was not long delayed,
+and it is not to be doubted that a more healthful direction of men’s
+minds had largely contributed to prepare the intellectual superiority of
+this century over those preceding it. Richelieu built the Sorbonne. He
+favoured competition between the university and the Jesuits and showed
+his usual superiority in discussing questions of education.
+
+He thought moreover that liberal education was not for everybody, and
+that the greatest number of families ought to prepare their children for
+trade or for war. Therefore he founded at his own expense an academy,--a
+military college for the education of the young nobility.
+
+However, until the end of the Fronde, the court, filled with soldiers,
+or given up to ambitious rivalries of the noble, full of intrigues
+with Marie de’ Medici, of sadness with Louis XIII, of suspicions with
+Richelieu, of agitations under Anne of Austria, could not assume to be
+the supreme regulator of taste, the theatre of the arts, and impose rules
+or regulations upon genius. After the Fronde it was different. The
+refined elegance and magnificence of Mazarin, the brilliant festivities
+of the first years of the personal reign of Louis XIV, the transformation
+of the great into courtiers, the spirit of subordination substituted
+for a spirit of independence, increased the importance of the court.
+Gradually one became accustomed to look to it alone. It surrounded
+royalty like a luminous circle, and its brilliancy made all else pale. It
+became even a means of government. It contributed by its preponderance to
+annul parliaments and other national bodies.
+
+Louis XIV, who instinctively sought everywhere for aids to his grandeur,
+understood how to nourish the brilliant society which surrounded the
+persons and the works of the great writers and artists. He offered the
+latter a magnificent theatre and unparalleled publicity. He united the
+scattered forces into a mighty group, displaying their talents in a
+strong light, making of them a majestic whole. He had all the qualities
+necessary for this--disposition, taste, the feeling for the beautiful,
+and particularly the sense of rule and harmony. He established a sort
+of concert of the great writers, in the same manner as he put the great
+ministers in harmony with each other.
+
+From this time, with the striking uniformity, regularity, and discipline
+which was the character of letters and arts under his reign, the men
+of genius had full sway, nothing held them back. But their place was
+determined in the great ensemble, and they felt they were obeying a law.
+A great and noble harmony was established among literary efforts of the
+most diverse character, as among the arts destined to compete in the
+grandeur of the same edifice.
+
+Less spontaneous, less audacious, perhaps even less original than in the
+time of the preceding generation, literature attained a perfection under
+Louis XIV which it never had to such a degree in any other epoch. It
+attained this perfection because it addressed itself less to the king and
+sovereign than to the flower of society grouped around him. The highest
+society had never before formed such a public. Bred in a grand school
+of admiration and surrounded by masterpieces, it evinced the greatest
+interest in matters of intellect. Conversation was an art and a talent,
+the literary taste an affectation of fashion, in fact a point of honour.
+The women took part in the movement, and to such a degree that it is
+to one of them that we owe most of our appreciation of it. Madame de
+Sévigné[h] in her correspondence, so well named written conversation,
+immortalised the society of the great century in painting it from life.[b]
+
+Colbert took up the idea of pensions with more liberality and amplitude
+than did Richelieu. He created the _feuille des pensions_, which was
+a sort of pendant to the _feuille des bénéfices_. It was started in
+1663 partly on the suggestion of Chapelain. Among those on the list
+was Chapelain, who called himself “the greatest French poet that
+has ever lived, and the one with the soundest judgment,” but whom
+Boileau simply characterises as “the wealthiest of all the _beaux
+esprits_”; also some of the great names of literature--Molière, the two
+Corneilles, Racine, Fléchier, Mézeray, Quinault, Charles Perrault, later
+Boileau himself, besides many mediocrities. Along with Frenchmen were
+foreigners--Graziani, the littérateur; the jurisconsult Conring; Ferrari,
+professor of oratory at the University of Padua; the erudites Böklerus,
+Gevartius, Heinsius, and Vossius; mathematicians and astronomers,
+such as Cassini of Bologna, Viviani of Florence, Huygens of the Hague
+and Helvelius of Dantzic. Louis XIV did more than pension some of the
+artists. He ennobled Lully, Le Nôtre, Mansart, and Lebrun. To the savants
+Colbert gave not only money but means of working; for them he created
+new chairs in the Jardin du Roi, built the Observatory of Paris, and
+subsidised missions and scientific expeditions. He was the founder of the
+_Journal des Savants_ which exists to-day.[149]
+
+The Renaissance was above all things a period of freedom. The age of
+Louis XIV is characterised by order and monarchical discipline. The
+historians soon perceived that the king was a more exacting protector
+than the lords of olden times. The latter, provided their families were
+eulogised, left their clients perfect liberty in other matters, but the
+history of Louis XIV’s ancestors was the history of the whole country,
+and as his glory reached out in all directions, the historian was no
+longer free in anything. Colbert let Mézeray know that if he wished
+to keep his pension of 4,000 livres he would have to speak with more
+discretion of the _gabelle_ and the _taille_ and to abstain from too
+free reflections on the policies of former kings. Mézeray only half
+understood, and half his pension was suppressed.
+
+Assuredly the royal protection had its good effect, but there was caprice
+in the king’s favours. For a sovereign to control letters and art
+without making mistakes, he would have to be infallible and with a mind
+to embrace and understand everything. But Louis XIV did not understand
+everything and was often mistaken. When, in 1667, he forbade the funeral
+eulogy of Descartes did he know that the latter was the most eminent
+thinker of the age?
+
+
+LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS
+
+In the literary history of the seventeenth century a division must be
+noted. Voltaire[i] has neglected it when he introduces into what he calls
+the _Siècle de Louis XIV_ such dissimilar geniuses as Corneille and
+Racine, Bossuet and Fénelon. But even while retaining this time-honoured
+expression, it should be applied only to that period during which Louis
+XIV’s personality, the prestige of his glory and the action of his laws
+and institutions were predominant. Now during an entirely earlier period
+of more than sixty years a whole group of writers was absolutely outside
+his influence. Régnier, Rotrou, Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal, to
+speak only of the greatest ones, had accomplished their labours before
+the personal government of Louis XIV began. On the contrary Racine,
+Bossuet, La Fontaine, and Boileau, and for the greater part of his work
+Molière, belong to the generation which saw the splendour of Louis XIV,
+and which disappeared from the scene before the decadence of the monarchy
+had commenced. Finally La Bruyère, Fénelon, Vauban, and Bois-Guilbert,
+without mentioning the great Protestant writers of France, are the
+products of an entirely different period. In reality the true “century”
+of Louis XIV did not last more than a quarter of that time, from 1661 to
+1685.
+
+The seventeenth century may thus be divided into three periods which
+present certain common characteristics, and are also distinguished by
+special characteristics. All three are equally a continuation of the
+sixteenth-century Renaissance. The charm of antiquity revealed by the
+humanists is still felt. The gods of the _littérateur_ are those of
+Greece, or rather Greek gods under Roman names. If the French literature
+of the seventeenth century had perished in some great cataclysm, and if
+after a score of centuries some erudite Australian or American had found
+some of its fragments, he might have believed that the contemporaries
+of Louis XIV worshipped the same gods as the Athenians and the Romans.
+However, the French, so smitten with antiquity, knew little about it.
+They were, after all, so original, so French, and so steeped in their own
+age that they showed a singular inability to imagine what was really the
+civilisation of Athens and of Rome. Louis XIV’s contemporaries studied
+Demosthenes, Plato, and Plutarch to no purpose; they got from them
+nothing but a deification of the monarchy. They read the ancient authors
+with keen pleasure, but it did not occur to them to do so in the light
+of the conditions of ancient life, and they applied to them the same
+rules of criticism as to the authors of their own day. Since journeys
+to the East were at that time most infrequent, and no archæological
+research had yet been undertaken, the age had no idea as to what were
+the architecture, the furnishings, the costumes, and the manners of
+antiquity. The French dramatic poets give the title of “prince” to
+Agamemnon or Theseus, and addressed Phædra or Andromache as “madame,” as
+though these personages had been their contemporaries.
+
+In spite of the cult, well or ill understood, of pagan antiquity, no
+century was so profoundly Christian as the seventeenth. The absence
+of the marvellous, from a Christian point of view, in literary works
+is explained not by indifference for Christianity, but by respect and
+scruple. Corneille wrote _Polyeucte_ and other sacred pieces; but let
+his _Cid_ be compared with those of the Spaniards; all the supernatural
+is banished to such a degree that the type of the Castilian champion
+is transformed and almost mutilated. Santiago no longer appears on the
+battle-field to revive the hero’s courage. One of the rules of taste in
+the seventeenth century is precisely to avoid a mixture of the sacred and
+the profane.
+
+Seventeenth-century literature chose its subjects from antiquity, from
+contemporaneous society, from human psychology, but almost never from
+nature. The world of letters no longer lived in the field as in the
+sixteenth century; it lived in the cities, especially in Paris, or at
+the court. Malherbe boasts of going to learn the real French language on
+the place Maubert; Régnier, Chapelle, Bachaumont, and many others were
+habitués of the Parisian _cabarets_, and in the narrow streets of the
+capital formed, as we say nowadays, a literary Bohemia. Racan and some
+others claimed to have composed _idylles champêtres_, but what is their
+background? It is no more the French countryside than their shepherds and
+shepherdesses are French peasants.
+
+A strophe of Malherbe on the banks of the Orne, a few laboured
+alexandrines of Boileau upon his country house and its trees; one fine
+page of Honoré d’Urfé upon a valley of Forez--this is almost all that
+Louis XIV’s contemporaries have to say about nature. They looked too much
+into their ancient authors and too much at themselves to see it well. It
+is for the same reasons that Le Nôtre was able to create that strange
+and unreal nature in the gardens of Versailles, and that in painting the
+genre of pure landscape is almost unknown in the seventeenth century.
+
+As for the special characteristics in the first period--an Italian and
+Spanish influence is perceptible. Corneille takes from Spanish history
+the story of the _Cid_, and Molière that of _Don Juan_. After Louis XIV
+assumed the government, the French borrowed almost nothing from their
+neighbours. French taste is formed; it is original; it is exquisite.
+
+The first period is a period of freedom; it continues the sixteenth
+century. Literature has not yet felt the yoke of literary rules. All
+forms are attempted--tragedy, comedy, and burlesque, and the three are
+even combined without scruple.
+
+The theatre, the Christian pulpit itself, have singular license.
+Descartes creates a philosophy and Pascal polemics. On the contrary the
+first twenty years of Louis XIV’s government are signalled at once by
+the domination of rules and by the apotheosis of the king. Parnassus
+has a legislator, Boileau, and a sort of Congregation of the Index, the
+French Academy.[c]
+
+
+SCIENCE
+
+The seventeenth century was one of the great scientific ages of humanity.
+It saw the birth of analytical geometry and of the infinitesimal
+calculus, the formulation of the astronomical laws of Kepler and
+Newton, and the workings of astronomical discovery. It witnessed the
+first great stride of physics, the progress of optics and acoustics,
+the invention of the barometer, the thermometer, the manometer,
+the air-pump, the electrical machine; the first rudiments of the
+steam-engine; the first researches on plant life, and the first attempt
+at botanical classification. Anatomy and physiology were revolutionised
+by the discovery of the circulation of the blood, of the chyliferous
+and lymphatic systems, by the beginning of histology and microscopic
+research. Medicine made progress in all its branches and was enriched by
+new medicaments.
+
+But much of this was accomplished outside of France. In mathematics the
+French may place the names of Descartes, Pascal, and Fermat alongside
+of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Leibnitz; but the great Keplerian and
+Newtonian laws of universal gravitation; the great Leibnitzian theories
+on the formation of our globe; the astronomic discoveries of Galileo,
+Huygens, and Helvelius surpassed the work of Gassendi, Picard, Cassini,
+Bouillaud, and Cassegrain. In physics, Pascal, Descartes, Mariotte, and
+Denis Papin upheld the French name, but they have but one zoölogist[150]
+(Claude Perrault also a physician and architect) to place alongside with
+those of Italy, England, and especially Holland; in botany Tournefort let
+himself be outdistanced by the English; in geology the French had but
+Descartes and Maillet; in the medical sciences they had only Pacquet,
+Duverney, and a few skilful practitioners. This comparative inferiority
+of French science to art and letters proves that it needs an organisation
+for work, and a liberality on the part of the public powers which at
+that time it did not have. The yoke of authority, so harmful to free
+research, was heavier in France than in the Protestant countries, where
+scientific progress especially manifested itself. The French superiority
+in mathematics is due perhaps to the fact that mathematics never had and
+cannot have an Aristotle. Finally we must take into account the bent of
+the French mind in that period when the people were above all artists,
+orators, and moralists. “The physical sciences,” said Dacier at a later
+date, “were little cultivated in an age which seems to find no charm but
+in literature.” We might correct wherein this judgment goes perhaps too
+far by this appreciation of Cuvier: he says that Francis I was the first
+to make erudition flourish in France, Richelieu literature, and Louis XIV
+science.
+
+René Descartes, descendant of a noble family, was born in La Haye,
+Touraine, in 1596. In 1612 he terminated his studies with the Jesuits at
+La Flèche. The period between 1612 and 1629 was spent in travel, which
+was followed by his stay in Holland. Just one year after the appearance
+of the masterpiece of Corneille, _The Cid_, Descartes gave to the
+world, in 1637, the _Discourse on Method_. This and his _Metaphysical
+Meditations_ (1641) are his two chief works. In 1644 appeared his third
+great work, _Principles of Philosophy_, in which is propounded his theory
+of the world and the doctrine of Vortices. Descartes never married. In
+1647 the French court granted him a pension; and shortly after he went to
+the Swedish court, where he had been visited by Queen Christina.[a]
+
+[Illustration: RENÉ DESCARTES
+
+(1596-1650)]
+
+France held it an honour to have given birth to René Descartes. While
+still very young he solves certain famous mathematical problems; writes,
+under the name of D’Abrégé, a treatise on music; and shuts himself up for
+twenty years in a sort of retreat in Holland, where he devotes himself
+with admirable assiduity to the research of truth, and composes those
+works which are to have such an influence on the future progress, not
+alone of science, but of civilisation. In 1629 he promulgates the law
+of refraction, aspires to make clear the cause of celestial movements,
+already demonstrated by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, by reducing
+them all to a mechanical system. He conceives the idea of whirling
+clouds of rarefied matter, in the centre of which he places the sun
+and planets, supposing that the movement of the planets carries around
+with them the satellites, and that planets and satellites are in turn
+swept in a circular orbit round the sun. His theories seize upon the
+popular imagination, and arouse keen enthusiasm; by what he calls his
+system of “methodical doubting” he points out to humanity the true road
+that leads to the intuitive perception of nature’s laws, and succeeds
+in so impressing his lessons upon all minds that the absolute empire
+given by the Arabs and their imitators to the theories of Aristotle--an
+empire that would have been disavowed by that immortal man himself--is
+completely destroyed. One of his aims is also to obtain command over
+the human heart, that he may thereby fortify the basis of morality all
+over the world, and to this end he gives forth his meditations on the
+existence of God and the immortality of the soul.[q]
+
+Meanwhile the theories of Descartes were invading France and all Europe.
+In 1650, when occurred the death at Stockholm, at the age of fifty-four,
+of the man who had given back to the modern world Pythagoras, Socrates,
+and Plato, victory was assured, the science of philosophy was founded.
+There are gaps and imperfections in the system which may expose it to
+temporary eclipse, but as a whole it will never perish.[g]
+
+Of the fifty-four years which Descartes thus passed on earth, more than
+thirty were spent in a state of self-abnegation such as no anchorite
+has ever emulated. It was little that his sleep and diet and exercise
+were exactly regulated by the single purpose of securing, to the utmost
+possible extent, the independence of his soul on his body. His mental
+appetites were subjugated to a still more rigid discipline. To secure
+to his reason an undisputed supremacy over all his other faculties, he
+laboured, not only to cast down every idol of the cavern, but to consign
+to oblivion all the interests, the sentiments, and the events with
+which either his heart or his imagination had ever been occupied. He
+even attempted to emancipate himself from the memory of those deceptive
+languages, Greek and Latin, in which such subtle disguises have been
+found for so many mental illusions. That he might ascend to the sanctuary
+of truth, he thus aspired to become a pure abstraction of defæcated
+intellect.
+
+“_Cogito, ergo sum_” is the massive foundation stone of the colossal
+edifice erected by Descartes. That famous proposition, though really
+“the well-ripened fruit of long delay,” may perhaps sound not only as a
+truism, but as of all truisms the most meagre. Such a judgment would,
+however, prove nothing except the ignorance and incompetency of the judge.
+
+“I think, therefore I exist,” is not the fragment of a syllogism which
+might be reconstructed thus: “Whatever thinks, exists. But I think.
+Therefore I exist.” It is rather an enthymeme--that is, an immediate
+sequence of two propositions, of which the second is the necessary
+offspring of the first. “I think”--that is, I am conscious of the act
+of thinking. Myself and my thoughts are a plurality, not a unity. They
+are the objects of which I am the subject. My consciousness of them is
+my adjudication that such objects exist. Or suppose that I can doubt
+even the existence of my own thoughts. Well, even so; that very doubt
+is itself a thought of which I am conscious. Let my scepticism be so
+absolute, and so universal, as to involve in uncertainty every other
+conceivable position, yet that very scepticism is the affirmation of
+myself as a thinking being.
+
+Here, then, the naked reason has at length set her foot upon one
+resting-place, narrow, if you will, but yet firm and immovable. Here is
+one truth which cannot be assailed, even by doubt itself; or, rather,
+here is a truth which doubt itself does but verify and confirm. Nor
+is this a barren position. It is rather a ground which, when duly
+cultivated, is prolific of results of the highest moment to every
+thinking being.
+
+Francis Bacon was not more the founder of rationalism in England, than
+René Descartes was the founder of it in France. Nor was he content to
+vindicate the rights of reason. He laboured, also, to determine and
+enforce her obligations. In Descartes the characteristic logic of the
+French understanding attained its perfection, as, in his writings, it
+found its model.
+
+Blaise Pascal was a Cartesian. Like Descartes he began with doubt,
+in order that he might end in certainty. Like him he renounced all
+allegiance to merely human authorities, however exalted, and however
+venerable. In the spirit of his master, he received what was passing in
+the microcosm of his own mind, as being, at least to himself, the primary
+and indispensable witness of truth. As a true disciple of that severe
+school, he not only revered his own reason as the supreme earthly judge
+of every question so brought under his cognisance, but conducted all
+such investigations by the aid of the same geometrical logic by which
+Descartes himself had been guided.
+
+But here the similitude ended, and the divergence began. Descartes
+impersonated the “Pure reason,” sojourning among men, to occupy herself,
+not with the business of their lives, but with the mysteries of their
+nature. Pascal impersonated human sympathy, yearning over the world
+from which he had withdrawn, and still responding to all the sorrows by
+which it was agitated. Lofty as was the range of his thoughts, they were
+never averted from that great human family to which he belonged. Every
+afflicted member of it had in him a fellow-sufferer.[g]
+
+[Illustration: BLAISE PASCAL
+
+(1623-1662)]
+
+Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand (1623), and died at Paris (1662).
+He was, like Descartes, a universal scientist. His health, naturally
+feeble, was still more injured by his intense thought. He was deeply
+religious, and saw Christianity in Jansenism. A carriage accident, which
+occurred on the Neuilly bridge, and which endangered his life, caused
+him to become rigorously devout. He even became subject to visions and
+hallucinations, and finally withdrew to Port-Royal, where he lived in
+retirement. He devoted the last years of his life to collecting material
+for a great work, destined to prove the truth of the Christian religion.
+The fragments of this great work, notes, pieces of paper, strung together
+without order or system, were found after his death. His friends at
+Port-Royal made selections from these, and published them in 1670,--the
+first edition, very incomplete, of his _Thoughts_ (_Pensées_). This book
+of thoughts is above all a history of a great soul, tormented by doubt,
+terrified, at the same time attracted, by the mysteries of the faith.[c]
+_The Provincial Letters_ (1656), considered by many his masterpiece,
+was a biting satire on the Jesuits. The greatest French critics,
+including Voltaire and D’Alembert, agree in the statement that this work
+contributed more than any other composition to form and polish the French
+language. His ascetic life tended to shorten his life. He died in Paris,
+aged 39.[a] After his death, appeared also two other little tracts, one
+of which is _Equilibrium of Fluids_, the other _The Weight of the Mass of
+Air_. To err on the side of rigour, is not the usual fault of genius: but
+Pascal was in all respects singular, and differed, not only from ordinary
+men, but from other men of genius. With every deduction that can be made
+for a few errors arising out of his education, Pascal was undoubtedly
+one of the ornaments of human nature; and if a few have rivalled him in
+talents, no man of equal eminence, perhaps, can be found who lived so
+innocently as Pascal.[r]
+
+
+POETRY: BOILEAU
+
+The writings of Descartes and Pascal, the doctrines of the French Academy
+and of Port-Royal, had perfected the art of prose writing. This had not
+been done for poetry nor yet for the art of writing in verse, which
+constitutes the perfection of poetry. On this head much still remained to
+be done, after the time of Malherbe, to consolidate his work. This was
+the task of Boileau. To the glory of Port-Royal must be added that of
+having enlightened, both by precept and example in the art of writing in
+prose, the poet who best understood and perhaps best practised the art of
+writing in verse.
+
+For two centuries Boileau has been a bugbear, whom all poets fear. All
+of them, in fact, find him on their road, threatening with innumerable
+difficulties, with fatigue and labour, who so would aspire to the
+glory of verse. The dramatic poet, the lyrist, the elegist, the
+writer of comedies, and even the writer of sonnets, must take him
+into consideration. They are all tormented by the ideal of style
+which Boileau has set up, and by that other ideal of perfection of
+language--indispensable to all styles, and without which nothing lasting
+can be written.[d]
+
+The taste of the great and the noble--in one word, the particular taste
+of Louis XIV--dominated everything. Gallic and burlesque literature
+disappeared. The admiration of Louis was universal, profound, and of such
+sincerity that it excluded, in the grossest flatteries, all reproach of
+flattery; love of the king was confused with love of the country, and
+one would not have been believed more of an adulator in glorifying the
+king than he would be to-day in glorifying France. The great care of
+writers was studied elegance and perfection of form. Never was literature
+so completely and exclusively literary and, with the exception of a few
+works, especially those of Molière, one might say that it was void of
+new ideas. The ideas which antiquity or Christian tradition furnished,
+the great general ideas which belong to all ages and all countries, the
+commonplaces of morality and human psychology were sufficient. It was on
+this foundation that Racine pushed the analysis of passion to perfection,
+that La Bruyère[j] struck off, as clean-cut and brilliant as medals from
+the mint, his _Caractères_, and La Rochefoucauld[k] his _Maximes_.[c]
+
+
+ORATORY: BOSSUET
+
+The moral and social side of this great literature showed itself above
+all in works of another kind. La Rochefoucauld wrote the thoughts of a
+courtier, Nicole those of a director of consciences. The Christian pulpit
+rose with Bossuet to an unparalleled greatness to keep with Bourdaloue
+in that middle course, calm and regular, where wisdom tempers strength,
+and dignity never lowers itself. Bourdaloue was the ordinary preacher
+of the king and the court, and made for his audience as his audience
+was made for him. In the pulpit he had the nobility and perfection of
+Racine. As to Bossuet, he is above all comparison. If he does not for
+one instant lose sight of rule and law, without which strength cannot be
+sure of itself, he obeyed less the spirit of his time than he dominated
+it. While leading the funeral cortège of all the grandeurs of the age,
+he surrounded it with an incomparable lustre, which still retains the
+illusion, by the majesty of his eloquence.
+
+Bossuet has not treated of political subjects any more than Nicole or
+Bourdaloue. He viewed society only from the heights of Christianity. If
+he exalts the splendours of the court and the king, it is to humiliate
+them all the more profoundly under the hand of God. The root of his
+eloquence is in religion, as the form of it is in the Bible, the language
+of which he applied so marvellously to the things of his time. He touched
+on history and politics in only two works,[l] written for the dauphin.
+Even there it is the preacher who speaks. He unrolls before the dauphin
+the sequence of the purposes of God. He demonstrated to him according
+to the Bible the sacredness of royalty, and if he deduced from this
+sacredness the duty of obedience for subjects, he also deduced corelative
+duties for kings. He recognises the fundamental law that kings should
+be respected; he warns them against the danger of their passions, above
+all against the mania for conquests which ruin the people. The clergy
+of the seventeenth century ruled the court and the world because it
+was disinterested. It took the temporal government of France, such as
+Louis XIV had made it, and strove to raise it to a Christian ideal. The
+government had a panegyrist of another disposition--Louis XIV himself.
+Louis XIV was not content to be the author or inspirator of the acts
+of his reign, he was also its first, one might say its only political
+writer. His _Mémoires_,[m] of which the basis belongs to him, and of
+which it matters little that the style has been polished by Périgny or
+Pellisson, explain his conduct admirably. It is drawn there with the
+fidelity which he himself admired and which he hoped would win so much
+public admiration, that there was nothing to hide.[b]
+
+[Illustration: JACQUES BÉNIGNE BOSSUET
+
+(1627-1704)]
+
+
+THE THIRD PERIOD
+
+The third period has an entirely different aspect. Royalty has so much
+abused its principle that it is being discussed. The Revocation, whose
+aim was to complete the reign of silence at home, caused an outbreak of
+a thousand rebellious voices beyond the frontiers which had its echoes
+in France. The war which Louis XIV waged for one idea brought back
+the reign of ideas. That confusion of king and country which hitherto
+had been complete suddenly ceased. Formerly everything was admired;
+everything was well. The plaints which arose from devastated fields and
+ruined industries dealt a blow to this optimism. La Bruyère in a few
+lines paints a terrifying picture of the French peasant. Fénelon in a
+letter to Louis XIV judges with mournful severity both the government
+and the character of the king. Now everything is not all right and other
+things are sought for. Vauban proposes tax reform; Bois-Guilbert, a
+whole new economic system. To this desolate reality Fénelon opposes in
+his _Télémaque_ a Utopia, an ideal city--the Salento of King Idomeneus.
+To the perpetual warfare the abbé de Saint-Pierre[n] would substitute
+his project for perpetual peace, which appeared in 1713, and to the
+government by one man a government by several. Finally in a room in his
+hôtel at Versailles a man, a duke and a peer, every evening--his day as
+a courtier over--shuts himself up and with what he has seen and heard
+still vivid in his mind, adds a few pages to that colossal monument known
+as the _Mémoires de Saint-Simon_.[o] It is from this that posterity,
+disabused of eulogy and panegyric, will learn to know another king,
+another Versailles from those which Racine and Bossuet have shown it.
+In that period of French literature what is uppermost are new ideas.
+What matters it now whether the form be elegant and harmonious as with
+Fénelon, energetic and incorrect as with Saint-Simon, diffuse and dull
+as with the abbé de Saint-Pierre? The interest no longer lies here; the
+day of marvellous style and the time of art for art’s sake is past.
+Henceforth the great writers will write only to uphold a thesis, propose
+a reform, or prepare a revolution. Their greatness will be measured by
+their success. The eighteenth century has begun.
+
+
+THE DRAMA: TRAGEDY
+
+The sixteenth century handed down, in France, two forms of dramatic
+poetry, the mystery plays--that is to say, the religious drama--and the
+tragedy, a so-called imitation of the ancient form. Mystery plays were,
+in 1548, forbidden in Paris; the ancient tragedy had become sterile. The
+real French theatre remained to be founded.[c]
+
+
+_Corneille_
+
+At last Corneille appears. _Mélite_ is the play given and the public
+applauds it with transports under which there seems to lurk premonition
+of the glory to which dramatic art is later to attain in France.
+Corneille surpasses rather than falls short of this expectation. Having
+made a deep study of the ancient tragic writers and the dramatic authors
+of modern times, he weighs carefully all the rules which he observes them
+to have used, and, while slavishly following none, adopts those which
+he finds most conformable to his own needs. With the ease of one who is
+their superior, or at least their equal, he reveals the inmost workings
+of the minds and hearts of the famous men whom he introduces on the
+stage; breathes into them, as it were, his own enthusiasms, raises them
+up to his own high stature. He presents his characters with the fidelity
+of history, but in proportions that would alone command admiration. He
+paints portraits of a resemblance so striking that they seem to have come
+from the hand of the subtlest of political writers, the most consummate
+of statesmen, or the greatest of military leaders. To his astonished
+and enraptured countrymen he gives _The Cid_, _Les Horaces_, _Cinna_,
+_Polyeucte_, _Pompée_, _Rodogune_, and _Héraclius_, and may be said to
+create French comedy when he writes _Le Menteur_. This genius seems the
+more sublime when it is compared with the simplicity and modesty of his
+private life. In his old age his head is crowned with laurels, and it
+is of him that the great Racine says, “It is not easy to find a poet
+who unites such a number of talents, so many excellent manifestations
+of art, force, judgment, wit. We cannot too greatly admire the nobility
+and economy of his subjects, the vehemence of his passion, the depth and
+gravity of his sentiments, and the dignity as well as the prodigious
+variety of his characters.”[q] Pierre Corneille was born at Rouen, 1606,
+and according to a time-worn chronicle,[151] “of considerable parents,
+his father holding no small places under Louis XIII.” He was brought up
+to the bar but soon deserted it. His great success brought upon him the
+enmity of his rivals, even Richelieu entering into this cabal. He was
+chosen a member of the French Academy. His private life was uneventful,
+due perhaps to the fact that his manners were simple and he was never
+successful in paying court to the great. He died in Paris in 1684,
+leaving several children. Corneille’s works consist of thirty plays,
+tragedies and comedies.[a]
+
+The drama of Corneille preserves a certain freedom of manner that is
+not found in the succeeding generation. Thus he chooses sacred as well
+as profane subjects; he restores Christianity to the theatre whence the
+prejudices of a good society had banished it; from the acts of the
+martyrs he borrowed the subject of _Polyeucte_ and _Théodore_. In such
+works as _Nicomède_ or _Don Sanche_ the comic element mingles with the
+tragic. Above all he finds it difficult to conform to the prescriptions
+of Aristotle’s _Poetics_ to the rule of the three unities. Now Chapelain
+had just discovered the _Poetics_; he had recommended its precepts to
+Mairet for his _Sophonisbe_, Leagued with the Academy against the success
+of the _Cid_, he tried to impose them on Corneille. Being commissioned
+to draw up “the sentiments of the Academy” concerning this play, he did
+not fail to denounce the author’s violations of the unity of time and
+the unity of place. Corneille defended his tragedies. Finally, seized
+with scruples and intimidated by this phantom of a system of poetics made
+for a theatre wholly different from the French, Corneille submits. He
+writes plays following all the rules, such as _Pertharite_, _Agésilas_,
+_Attila_; but it is just these which are his weakest.[c]
+
+
+_Racine_
+
+[Illustration: JEAN BAPTISTE RACINE
+
+(1639-1699)]
+
+Racine, who rose when Corneille declined, founded his dramas on a very
+different principle. With him the great motive is passion, and passion
+no longer arrested by the conflict of duty. His characters are as though
+carried away by their frenzies. The type of Racine’s tragedy is indeed
+the drama of passion. What he excels in painting is love, furious
+and cruel with Hermione, Roxane, Phædra; plaintive and resigned with
+Iphigenia or Junia; grave and ready for sacrifice with Monima; full of
+tears and of gentle reproaches with Bérénice.
+
+This man, who divided with Corneille the glory of French classical
+tragedy, was born in Ferté-Milon (1639) of bourgeois parents. He received
+his education at the college of Beauvais and at Port-Royal. Becoming
+disgusted with theology, which study he had entered into, he went to
+Paris, where he formed his friendships with Molière and Boileau. It was
+his ode on the marriage of Louis XIV, for which he received a pension,
+which first brought him into prominence. Of a sensitive disposition and
+inclined to melancholy, the criticisms and intrigues of the court made
+him renounce dramatic composition. However after his marriage in 1677
+he became reconciled with the gentlemen of Port-Royal and was appointed
+historiographer by Louis XIV. At the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon he
+wrote _Esther_ and afterward, _Athalie_. His tragedies are _Andromaque_,
+_Britannicus_, _Bérénice_, _Mithridate_, _Iphigénie_, and _Phèdre_. “I
+avow,” says Voltaire,[i] “that I regard _Iphigénie_ as the chef-d’œuvre
+of the stage.” Racine was admitted to the Academy in 1673. The ill
+reception of his _Athalie_ caused him to entirely renounce poetry. Hurt
+by a disapproving criticism of the king on a memorial he had written,
+“he conceived dreadful ideas of the king’s displeasure: and indulging
+his chagrin and fears, brought on a fever, which surpassed the power of
+medicine, for he died of it, after being grievously afflicted with pains,
+in 1699.”[152][a]
+
+With Racine French classical tragedy is finally constituted. It is a
+quite peculiar species of literature, and one which could have arisen
+only at one particular period of French history. It differs from Greek
+tragedy for it dispenses with the accompaniment of music and does not
+admit choruses.[153] It is the antipodes of the Shakespearian drama. The
+latter journeys freely through time and space, multiplies characters,
+allows the interposition of the crowd, mingles the comic with the tragic,
+speaks alternately in the most poetic and the most trivial language,
+evokes spectres from the tomb, brings shipwrecks, battles, murders,
+executions on the scene. French tragedy makes the entire action take
+place in a period which, according to the precepts laid down, must
+not exceed twenty-four hours; it never changes the scene and to avoid
+difficulties everything generally takes place in the vestibule of a
+palace or the square of a city; it admits no more than three or at most
+four characters, to whom are added confidants whose mission is to listen
+to what the chief personages have to say to the public; when a valiant
+army or an immense crowd is to be indicated an accessory character is
+made to follow the principal actor. It never unbends, never exhibits
+either a buffoon or a poltroon, it seldom takes its subjects from
+elsewhere than Greek and Roman antiquity; it brings on the stage only
+noble personages, gods, demigods, heroes, emperors, kings, or princes,
+or servants who are not less dignified and who know how to keep their
+places. It speaks the noblest and purest language; it leaves the spectres
+in their vaults, and reduces the fantastic element to the recital of
+some dream; all murders, the assassination of Pyrrhus, the poisoning
+of Britannicus, the strangling of Monima, the execution of Haman or of
+Athaliah are relegated behind the scenes, out of sight of the spectator.
+If the actor cannot do otherwise than kill himself on the stage, he kills
+himself neatly with a poniard or sword of a temper peculiar to tragedy,
+for they do not draw blood. There is no action on the stage: we only see
+the impression which the action produces on the characters, and hear the
+reflections with which it inspires them.
+
+This mould of classical tragedy maintained itself intact for nearly two
+centuries. It contented the contemporaries of Louis XIV, of Louis XV,
+of Robespierre and of Napoleon successively. The neighbouring nations
+hastened to adopt it: even England herself did so though she continued to
+play Shakespeare.
+
+
+COMEDY
+
+French comedy, during more than half the seventeenth century, was feeling
+her way. She was hesitating between two types--antique comedy, so
+difficult to transport to the French stage, and naturally cold because it
+represented manners so very different from those of France; and Italian
+comedy, in which under the most diverse names there incessantly recur
+the old good-man who is deceived, the shrewd ward, the bold lover, the
+cunning valet, or the complaisant soubrette. Most of the comedies on
+which Corneille tried his hand and the first which came from Molière
+belong to the Italian type.
+
+When, in 1659, Molière put the _Précieuses ridicules_ on the stage,
+there was a surprise almost equal to that which had been occasioned by
+the _Cid_. After French tragedy, French comedy was now revealing itself.
+The comical element proceeded not from some flimsy plot, a hundred times
+repeated, but from the lively painting of contemporary manners. Molière
+was to rise higher still and to paint not the absurdities of a day but
+the eternal characters of humanity. Those whom he brings before us in his
+great comedies--the hypocrite and dupe of his _Tartuffe_, the Alceste,
+the Philinte and Célimène of his _Misanthrope_; the Harpagon of his
+_Avare_; the vain _roturier_ of his _Bourgeois gentilhomme_, his _Femmes
+savantes_, his _Malade imaginaire_--are so far as concerns their main
+characteristics, of all times and all countries. Yet these personages,
+though they are universal types, are quite specially of the time and
+country in which Molière lived. Molière’s destiny required that he should
+have to please three sorts of public: the court, the men of letters, and
+the people. For the king he wrote _Amphitryon_ and the comic ballets; for
+the literary men he drew his immortal types; for the people he returned
+to the comic elements of the Italian theatre and the theatres at the
+fairs and he raised them to the level of high art. If any one of these
+three very diverse influences had been exercised alone upon the genius of
+Molière, it might have refined, or ennobled, or vulgarised him to excess;
+but by a happy combination he owed to the one that elegance and nobility,
+to one that depth and knowledge, to the third that overflowing _verve_,
+that power at once comic and dramatic, which are the characteristics of
+his genius. He was not exclusively either the poet of the court or of
+the Academy or of the crowd; this is why he has been and will remain the
+national poet _par excellence_.[c]
+
+Molière, whose true name was Jean Baptiste Pocquelin, was born at Paris
+about 1620. He was both son and grandson to _valets de chambres_ on one
+side, and tapestry-makers on the other, to Louis XIII and was designed
+for the latter business, with a view of succeeding his father in that
+place. But the grandfather being very fond of the boy, and at the same
+time a great lover of plays, used to take him often with him to the hôtel
+de Bourgogne; which presently roused up Molière’s natural genius and
+taste for dramatic representations, and created in him such a disgust
+to the trade of tapestry-making, that at last his father consented to
+let him go, and study under the Jesuits, at the college of Clermont. He
+finished his studies there in five years’ time, in which he contracted an
+intimate friendship with Chapelle, Bernier, and Cyrano. Chapelle, with
+whom Bernier was an associate in his studies, had the famous Gassendi
+for his tutor, who willingly admitted Molière to his lectures, as he
+afterwards also admitted Cyrano. It was here that Molière deeply drank
+of that sound philosophy, and stored himself with those great principles
+of knowledge, which served as a foundation to all his comic productions.
+When Louis XIII went to Narbonne, in 1641, his studies were interrupted;
+for his father, who was grown infirm, not being able to attend the court,
+Molière was obliged to go there to supply his place. Upon his return to
+Paris, however, when his father was dead, his passion for the stage,
+which had induced him first to study, revived more strongly than ever;
+and if it be true, as some have said, that he, for a time studied the
+law, and was admitted an advocate, he soon yielded to the influence of
+his stars, which had destined him to be the restorer of comedy in France.
+
+What became of him from 1648 to 1652 we know not, this interval being
+the time of the civil wars, which caused disturbances in Paris; but it
+is probable, that he was employed in composing some of those pieces
+which were afterwards exhibited to the public. La Béjart, an actress of
+Champagne, waiting, as well as he, for a favourable time to display her
+talents, Molière was particularly kind to her; and as their interests
+became mutual, they formed a company together, and went to Lyons in 1653,
+where Molière produced his first play, called, _L’Étourdi_, or _The
+Blunderers_. In 1663, Molière obtained a pension of a thousand livres;
+and, in 1665, his company was altogether in his majesty’s service.
+
+His last comedy was _Le malade imaginaire_, or _The Hypochondriac_; and
+it was acted for the fourth time, February 17th, 1673. Upon this very day
+Molière died.
+
+
+ARCHITECTURE
+
+The fine arts, even more than literature, bear the impress of the period,
+because a government has more means to act on them. If it cannot create
+them, nor supply individual inspiration, it can at least impress a
+certain direction by the nature of the works it orders from artists, and
+the nature of the patronage which it affords them. For instance, Louis
+XIV had a passion for building. His architectural constructions are of a
+style apart, in harmony with his tastes, the needs of his court, and the
+characteristics of his royalty.[b]
+
+The French architecture of the Renaissance happily blended the elements
+of ogival art and those of ancient art recovered in Italy. The
+seventeenth century broke more completely with the national past. One of
+the latest cathedrals is that of Orleans, constructed under Henry IV and
+his successors, but which had been designed in the sixteenth century. The
+ogival style was no longer in fashion; it was freely regarded as a relic
+of ancient barbarism, and it was branded with the epithet of “Gothic.”
+Numerous acts of vandalism were committed on the most venerable monuments
+of the past. In 1699 Robert de Cotte, under the pretext of “restoring”
+the interior of Notre Dame de Paris, destroyed the close, pulled down
+the rood-loft, burned the wooden stalls, tore out the tombs and stone
+effigies, and broke the coloured glass windows.
+
+[Illustration: FRANÇOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE-FÉNELON
+
+(1651-1715)]
+
+The dominating influence of the age was that of the Italian monuments,
+not only of the first epoch of the Renaissance but also that of its
+decadence. However, French artists did not limit themselves to imitation;
+and under the inspiration of those ideas of grandeur and majesty which
+are the cachet of the seventeenth century, they created a truly original
+art, as characteristic of Louis XIV’s reign as was its literature.
+
+To obtain more imposing façades, instead of dividing them up as in
+the preceding epoch into almost equal stories, each distinguished by
+a different ornamentation, now only one principal story was admitted.
+Below, it rests on a ground floor which sometimes is almost a basement;
+above, it is surmounted by an attic which was only half or two-thirds
+the height of the principal story. Everything is sacrificed to the
+latter. To enhance still further the desired impression of unity
+and grandeur the ornamentation is greatly reduced. None of those
+architectural accidents, those happy caprices, or that ingenious
+variety which in sixteenth century monuments interested the eye and the
+mind--nothing but great sober lines severe to monotony. This is what is
+called the colossal style and what might be called the Louis XIV style.[c]
+
+Versailles is the indestructible monument of the royalty of Louis XIV.
+One is struck at first by its large proportions; it is above all its
+majestic regularity which produces such imposing effects. All is in
+harmony with the habits of the court of the great king. One may criticise
+the arrangements, and Saint-Simon[o] without being an artist has done so
+with humour, sometimes with truth. But the ensemble leaves a profound
+impression of admiration, almost of respect. One feels that Versailles,
+to-day a vast solitude, was built to be peopled by an immense court,
+where Louis XIV lived in the midst of a France made in his image.
+Versailles, with its grandeur, its regularity, its majestic and classic
+ornamentation, merits to be the type of an architecture truly royal. If
+nobility is one of the principal conceptions of the ideal of beauty,
+this ideal has never been attained in an equal degree. Also, even as the
+court of Louis XIV gave the tone to the greater part of European courts,
+Versailles has become the type and model of the greater part of royal and
+foreign châteaux and gardens.
+
+Other châteaux, like those of St. Cloud and Marly, were built almost
+in the same style by Mansart and Le Nôtre, the one the architect of
+the palace, and the other of the gardens of Versailles. St. Cloud was
+the residence of Monsieur, brother of the king. Marly, which was begun
+after Nimeguen, could offer a sort of retreat to the court fatigued by
+magnificence. Meudon, Sceaux, Choisy, built for princes, princesses, or
+ministers, produced in their more restricted proportions the essential
+characteristics of this royal architecture.
+
+Paris has kept fewer traces of Louis XIV; he rarely made long sojourns
+there. The principal monuments he raised there were the triumphal arches
+at the portes du Trône, St. Antoine, St. Bernard, St. Denis, and St.
+Martin, monuments erected to celebrate his re-entry into Paris after the
+Peace of the Pyrenees, or his victories during the war with Holland.
+Meanwhile he also joined the Louvre to the Tuileries by means of the
+magnificent colonnade designed by Perrault. To this reign also belongs
+the northern boulevards arranged as great avenues, the Champs-Élysées,
+and finally the garden of the Tuileries.[b]
+
+
+SCULPTURE AND PAINTING
+
+The taste for statuary did not revive until the time of the Italian
+regent Marie de’ Medici. Puget (1622-1694) was an independent. The
+other sculptors of the time bent themselves to monarchical discipline.
+They entered academies of sculpture and painting and placed themselves
+under the direction of Lebrun, for at that time it seemed natural to
+subordinate sculpture to painting. The sculpture of the great epoch of
+Louis XIV shows the influence of the vigorous studies the artists made
+from the antique. It is a diversified sculpture, but skilful and strong.
+
+The Renaissance had been in France more brilliant for architecture and
+even sculpture than for painting. The French had still much to learn
+from the Italians and the Flemish. They had a few painters, but they had
+no French school. Besides it was in Italy that the first generation of
+French artists of the seventeenth century was formed. Lesueur is perhaps
+the sole great painter who did not leave France. Of these illustrious
+travellers, some preferred to apply themselves to imitation of the severe
+design of the Roman school; others stopped in the Venetian cities and
+sought to worm from the canvases of Titian and Paul Veronese the secret
+of their admirable colouring and obtain a knowledge of the science of
+composition on a large scale. Whence comes the great variety in the
+French school. But all got the feeling of classical beauty, from the
+brilliant sky, the living types, and the magnificent antiquities of
+Italy. Moreover the French artists found a hospitable welcome in the
+peninsula; at a time when their kings were not rich enough to furnish
+artists means of support, work was ordered of them by the popes,
+cardinals, sovereigns, and great lords of Italy. Colbert’s foundation of
+the Academy of Rome was to assure the education of French genius, for
+centuries, by the genius of antiquity and of Italy.
+
+In France the painters were organised as a corporation which was known as
+the Academy of St. Luke, and into which no one was received, as in the
+corporation of joiners or hatters, until he had served an apprenticeship
+or had produced a masterpiece. The academy was all powerful in the
+art-world until in 1648 it was confronted with a rival that eclipsed
+it--the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. We must not forget that in
+1673 the first exhibition of painting took place in the court of the
+Palais Royal. Hitherto there had been open-air exhibitions--a kind of
+picture fairs, as for example that held in the place Dauphine. In 1699
+the exposition was held in the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre.
+
+As in political and literary history, the history of painting in the
+seventeenth century may be divided into three periods. The first sixty
+years are years of artistic freedom; with the personal government of
+the king the rule of Lebrun over the fine arts was established. At the
+latter’s death a transformation took place. When the regent Marie de’
+Medici wished to decorate the vast galleries of the Luxembourg palace,
+she believed that she could not do better than to summon the great
+Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens. But she soon became better acquainted
+with the artistic resources of France, and sent for a number of Frenchmen
+to collaborate in the decoration of the Luxembourg. Among them were Simon
+Vouet (1590-1649), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), and Philippe de Champagne
+(1602-1674). If we examine the dates of the deaths of these artists and
+others, such as Claude Lorraine (1600-1682), Lesueur (1616-1655), or
+better, perhaps, the most brilliant period of their productiveness it
+will be admitted that Louis XIV and Lebrun had no influence over them
+whatever.
+
+In the second period, Charles Lebrun of Paris (1619-1690) was the leader
+of the French school. He might have, as has been said, paraphrased the
+saying attributed to the king and have said “_L’Art, c’est moi_.” He was
+the Louis XIV of the fine arts. The artist, whose genius sympathised so
+completely with that of his sovereign, was nevertheless a very great
+painter. He possessed the sacred fire; at the age of fifteen he had
+produced two paintings that attracted attention, and he developed his
+natural gift by arduous labour and incessant study. He went to Rome
+and received instruction from Poussin. He painted for Louis XIV those
+immense canvases representing the exploits of Alexander--the _Crossing
+the Granicus_, the _Battle of Arbela_, the _Defeat of Porus_, and the
+_Entrance into Babylon_--which form an epic series. Lebrun pushed
+perfection of detail so far as to have horses sketched in Syria, so that
+they would be typically Asiatic.
+
+
+MUSIC AND THE OPERA
+
+It is easy to count the musicians that France produced in the sixteenth
+century; the true home of their art was then in Italy. Nevertheless the
+French court acquired a taste for lyric representations, and the kings,
+to free the art from religious domination, founded troops of lay artists,
+and at the head of their singers and instrumentalists they placed a
+superintendent of music.
+
+These representations which the French called _ballets_ or _mascarades_
+were an incoherent mixture of the three arts of poetry, music, and
+dancing which the modern opera has brought into harmony. A ballet
+was divided into _parties_ or acts, and the _parties_ into _entrées_
+or scenes, both of variable number. There was no fixed plan for
+the composition--or rather there was no composition. In front of a
+great canvas the king and the nobles who were taking part in the
+_divertissement_ composed or had composed the words at their fancy,
+accommodated them to or made them accommodate familiar airs, putting the
+words into the hands of the ladies, in order that they might follow the
+piece, abandoning themselves in the end to the _boutade_, that is to say
+to the inspiration.
+
+Music was considered such an inferior art that the instrumentalists were
+recruited from among the lackeys, and to be a violin player was almost a
+sign of servitude. The airs were vulgar; the instruments were reduced to
+lutes and viols, the dances were slow and monotonous like the _bourrée_
+of the peasant of central France. Such was the court ballet, such, for
+example, the ballet of the _Délivrance de Renaud_ danced by Louis XIII
+and his courtiers in 1614. The court was lost in admiration and it was
+declared that Europe had never heard anything so ravishing.
+
+Mazarin tried to revive the fashion by bringing dancers, singers, and
+musicians from Italy, obtaining the libretti and the music from composers
+of the same country. The courtiers admired in order to please the
+cardinal and the queen-regent, but Madame de Motteville[p] admits in all
+frankness that these representations seemed to her mortally long and
+tiresome. It is probable that French ears were not yet trained to Italian
+music and that Madame de Motteville, like Molière’s Alceste, would have
+given all the operas for one of the old popular airs like “_J’aime mieux
+ma mie, au gué_.”
+
+The taste of the court was too frivolous, the actors in their quality
+of king or noble too unruly for opera thus conceived to raise itself to
+the level of a serious art. Therefore the public but privileged theatres
+succeeded to the aristocratic or court theatre. The abbé Perrin, a
+prolific writer of _livrets_, although a most mediocre poet, associated
+himself with Cambert, the most distinguished of French composers and with
+the marquis de Sourdéac, who understood scenery and stage mechanism. He
+obtained letters patent on June 28th, 1669. Thus was founded the Royal
+Academy of Music, which has nothing in common with the learned academies
+of the age; for the Italian word _accademia_ signifies simply concert.
+The first result of this association was the representation of _Pomone_,
+in 1671, words by Perrin; music by Cambert. The associates were preparing
+to mount another opera when misunderstandings broke out among them. Lully
+took advantage of this and through Madame de Montespan’s influence was
+given the privilege. Cambert in vexation went to England where, although
+he was well received by Charles II, he died of chagrin. Lully [himself
+an Italian], who had claimed that it was impossible to write an elegant
+score to French words, now became director of the first French National
+Theatre of Music (1672).
+
+Lully created a music distinctly French in spirit and his influence
+extended over his contemporaries and successors, but his was the only
+original work that appeared at the Academy. Its organisation was too
+authoritative to lend itself easily to innovations. A large portion of
+the public was not interested in that solemn monotonous music which only
+concerned itself with mythological tragedies. Already in the seventeenth
+century (1640) the _Comédie des Chansons_, sometimes attributed to
+Timothy de Chillac and sometimes to Charles Beys, had furnished the type
+of a kind that resembles both vaudeville and the French _opéra-comique_.
+It was called the _comédie à ariettes_ and became universally popular.
+In 1678 at the St. Laurent fair Allard and Maurice Vanderberg presented
+the _Forces of Love and Magic_, which had a great success. This irritated
+Lully, and invoking the privilege of the Academy he had an order served
+upon these two itinerant directors to reduce their orchestra to four
+violins and one oboe. The Academy decided however to sign a contract with
+Catherine Vanderberg, permitting her to give pieces with song, orchestra,
+and dance. Such was the origin of the _opéra-comique_, a term first
+employed by Le Sage, in 1715.
+
+
+RAPID DECLINE OF THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV
+
+One characteristic of this age was that the efflorescence of arts and
+letters was of short duration. The age was great so long as Louis was
+surrounded by men whose talent had already seen the light when he began
+to protect them; but new geniuses were not born and when that generation
+was exhausted another did not arise to replace it.
+
+The personal government presents but a single and very short period
+of literary and artistic splendour. The last great work of secular
+literature, _Athalie_, dates from 1691. If Bossuet, Fénelon, Bourdaloue,
+and Massillon--that is to say the group of churchmen--were not there;
+if Saint-Simon were not secretly writing his accusing _Mémoires_, one
+might say that not a single work of high literary value was written in
+France after the Peace of Ryswick (1697). The same observation may be
+made of the arts. Many of the great painters of the seventeenth century
+owed nothing to Louis XIV, for Le Valentin died in 1632, Lesueur in 1655,
+Laurent de Lahire in 1656, Poussin in 1665. Claude Lorraine and Philippe
+de Champagne, who died, the one in 1682, the other in 1674, were already
+in the fullness of their genius when the king began to govern. Of the
+four great architects of the age, Mansart, Claude Perrault, Blondel, and
+Bruant, none lived to see the year 1697. Puget, the great sculptor, died
+in 1694, Lully in 1687. The poet Quinault, who usually furnished the
+latter the libretto of his operas, died the following year. After these
+there is certainly a wide gap in the history of French art.[c] Indeed,
+as Buckle says: “At the moment when Louis XIV died, there was scarcely a
+writer or an artist in France who enjoyed European reputation.”[e]
+
+
+A FRENCH VIEW OF THE EFFECT OF THE AGE
+
+But it had been a royal epoch! Louis XIV had the rôle of a demi-god.
+His Olympus was only a theatre, his _fêtes_ were only fairy-like scenes
+and masquerades, but all was on a grandiose scale. Before his time the
+king of France lived in a strong castle. He was, even after the time
+of Francis I, a mighty baron shut up behind his battlements, his thick
+walls, his deep moats. One can see the gloomy shadow of the monarch
+flitting from window to window in the vast halls of the Château de Blois,
+isolated, cold, imprisoned, anxious. Spies, guards, armed men; courts
+where echoed the tread of sentinels; secret staircases where men charged
+with dark errands mounted and descended--all proclaimed a shadowy king
+watching with his hand upon his sword, spying out all, sharing the fear
+which he inspired in others. But under Louis XIV all was changed. The
+staircases widened, air and light circulated in the royal house; _fêtes_
+replaced the gloomy official receptions; courtiers succeeded soldiers.
+This time royalty was sure of victory. It trod on laurels, as half a
+century later it walked on roses, without dreaming that either the
+laurel- or the rose-strewn path would lead to the scaffold.[f] On that
+splendid horizon of the seventeenth century great storm clouds appeared
+one by one, lightning still unaccompanied by thunder flashed through
+space; but the eyes of the multitude, blinded by the royal sun, did not
+perceive these threatening gleams. Intoxicated France abandoned herself
+to the contemplation of her present glory, without thinking to seize or
+to understand the true reasons of that glory, and did not realise that
+she was being dragged to a yawning chasm.
+
+Never was error more excusable. How resist that seduction which all
+realised, but which all contributed to exercise? Society is like an
+immense concert all of whose parts mingle together to form, by their
+divers accents, a universal harmony. Every class, every man, gave all
+that he had to give to the work of common grandeur. The mass of the
+people, confident in the good intentions of their prince, comforted
+by the good order of the administration, bore their burden the more
+lightly, and patiently awaited from the future a still greater relief.
+The clergy, more worthy and more enlightened than in any other epoch of
+French history, instructed and guided the society it no longer governed.
+The nobility, which had gained in discipline not less than in polish what
+it had lost in independence, furnished the majority of the warriors;
+the third estate furnished almost all the rest, especially the great
+administration and the great writers. By means of intellectual and
+moral energy, of practical sense, of inventive and active force, the
+French bourgeoisie reached the highest degree of its development--what a
+bourgeoisie, to have produced within a half century Colbert, Corneille,
+Pascal, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, Bourdaloue,
+Arnauld, Nicole, Domat, Fabert, Poussin, Lesueur, Lorraine, Lebrun, the
+Perraults, and Puget, without counting those men as powerful and more for
+evil than for good--Fouquet and Louvois!
+
+Marvellous assemblage of the most highly developed and complete society
+that has appeared in the world since ancient times; vast and living
+picture whose aspect produced on those who regarded it an enduring
+fascination! All peoples admired and imitated it. The language, the
+fashions, the ideas of France invaded Europe. Literary styles, like the
+styles of costume, like the styles of objects of art and of luxury, like
+the habits of life, formed themselves, at least in the upper classes, and
+for long, after the French. It was not the breath of a momentary fancy,
+but it was an atmosphere which enveloped little by little all objects and
+all beings, a medium outside of which it became impossible for man to
+live.[g]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[148] By this term is meant the period covering the reigns of Louis XIII
+and Louis XIV (1610-1715 A.D.).
+
+[149] [Colbert’s foundation of learned academies is described in chapter
+XIX.]
+
+[150] An anecdote will show how much the science of zoölogy was still
+in its infancy. In 1613 some fossil bones, probably those of a mammoth
+or some other prehistoric quadruped, were exhumed near the Château of
+Langon in Dauphiné. A surgeon, Habicot by name, recognised them as the
+bones of the giant Teutobochus, king of the Teutons, and published a
+ridiculous poem entitled _Gigantéostologie_. A physician named Riolan
+suspected that they might be the bones of an elephant, but as that animal
+was then unknown in France he searched for a description of it in the
+Greek authors; then he abandoned this trail, which was the right one, and
+came to believe that these bones were simply stones to which a caprice
+of nature had given extraordinary forms. At that time the custom was to
+explain thus what could not be understood.
+
+[151] _Biographical Dictionary_, London, 1798, 15 vols.
+
+[152] _Biographical Dictionary_, London, 1798, 15 vols.
+
+[153] [Except in _Esther_ and _Athalie_; but these two sacred dramas are
+not, for Racine, dramas for the theatre.]
+
+
+
+
+BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS
+
+[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS
+
+[b] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire de France_.
+
+[c] THÉOPHILE LAVALLÉE, _Histoire des Français depuis le temps des
+Gaulois jusqu’à nos jours_.
+
+[d] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _Histoire de France depuis les
+origines jusqu’à nos jours_.
+
+[e] JAMES WHITE, _History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848_.
+
+[f] THEODOSE BURETTE, _Histoire de France_.
+
+[g] EYRE EVANS CROWE, _History of France_.
+
+[h] HENRI MARTIN, _Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés
+jusqu’en 1789_.
+
+[i] ORDERICUS VITALIS, _Historia ecclesiastica_.
+
+[j] _Chronique de St. Denis._
+
+[k] RICHER, _Chronique_.
+
+[l] ADHÉMAR CHABANNES, in _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_, Scriptores iv.
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY
+
+[b] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[d] ÉMILE DE BONNECHOSE, _Histoire de France depuis l’invasion des Francs
+sous Clovis jusqu’à l’avénement de Louis Philippe_.
+
+[e] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[f] JULES MICHELET, _History of France_.
+
+[g] ORDERICUS VITALIS, _op. cit._
+
+[h] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _Collections des Mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de
+France_.
+
+[i] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _Histoire des Français_.
+
+[j] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[k] SUGER, _Vie de Louis VI_.
+
+[l] G. H. LEWES, _Biographical History of Philosophy_.
+
+[m] HASTINGS RASHDALL, _The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_.
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY
+
+[b] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Âge depuis la chute de l’empire
+d’occident jusqu’au milieu du XVᵉ siècle_.
+
+[d] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[f] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire de France_.
+
+[g] HENRY HALLAM, _View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages_.
+
+[h] H. WALLON, _St. Louis et son temps_.
+
+[i] JEAN DE JOINVILLE, _Vie de St. Louis_.
+
+[j] MATTHEW PARIS, _Chronica Majora_.
+
+[k] WILLIAM LE BRETON (William of Armorica), _Histoire des gestes de
+Philippe Auguste_.
+
+[l] GEOFFROY DE BEAULIEU, _Vie de St. Louis_.
+
+[m] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _History of Civilisation in Europe_.
+
+[n] S. ASTLEY DUNHAM, _History of Europe during the Middle Ages_.
+
+[o] ABEL FRANÇOIS VILLEMAIN, _Cours de Littérature Française_ (Table du
+Moyen Âge).
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS
+
+[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[c] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[d] E. BOUTARIC, _La France sous Philippe le Bel_.
+
+[e] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[f] SAUVAGE, _Chronique traditionnelle continuée_.
+
+[g] CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, _Chroniques des rois de France_.
+
+[h] DANTE ALIGHIERI, _Paradiso_, Canto XIX.
+
+[i] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[j] PHILIP DE BEAUMANOIR, _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_.
+
+[k] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[l] GUILLAUME DE NOGARET, in _Chronique de St. Denis_.
+
+[m] GIOVANNI VILLANI, _Istorie Fiorentini_.
+
+[n] THOMAS WALSINGHAM, _Historia Anglicana_.
+
+[o] _Chronique de St. Denis._
+
+[p] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _Histoire de France_.
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR
+
+[b] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, _op. cit._
+
+[d] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[e] JOHN FROISSART, _Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and Adjoining
+Countries_.
+
+[f] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[g] V. DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[h] _Chronique de St. Denis._
+
+[i] HENRY KNIGHTON, _Chronica_.
+
+[j] THOMAS WALSINGHAM, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE
+
+[b] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[c] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[d] CONTINUATOR OF GUILAUME DE NANGIS, _op. cit._
+
+[e] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[f] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Âge_.
+
+[g] JOHN FROISSART, _op. cit._
+
+[h] SIMON LUCE, _Histoire de la Jacquerie_.
+
+[i] F. T. PERRENS, _La Démocratie en France au Moyen Âge_.
+
+[j] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[k] PIERRE ROBIQUET, _Histoire Municipale de Paris_.
+
+[l] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire de France_.
+
+[m] M. LEBER, _Essai sur l’appréciation de la fortune privée au Moyen
+Âge_.
+
+[n] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[o] JEAN LEFEBVRE (Sieur de Saint Rémy), _Chronique_.
+
+[p] CHRISTINE DE PISAN, _Le livre des faicts et bonnes mœurs du sage roy
+Charles V_.
+
+[q] MATTEO VILLANI, continuation by Jean Villani, _Istorie Florentine_.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE BETRAYAL OF THE KINGDOM
+
+[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[c] JOHN FROISSART, _op. cit._
+
+[d] _Chronique de St. Denis._
+
+[e] EUDES DE MÉZERAY, _Histoire de France_.
+
+[f] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[g] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[h] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[i] JUVÉNAL DES URSINS, _Histoire de Charles VI_.
+
+[j] JEAN LEFEBVRE (Sieur de Saint Rémy), _op. cit._
+
+[k] JEAN DE VAURIN, _Recueil des croniques et anciennes histoires de la
+Grant Bretaigne_.
+
+[l] TITUS LIVY, _Vita Henrici Quinti regis Angliæ_.
+
+[m] THOMAS WALSINGHAM, _op. cit._
+
+[n] ENGUERRAND DE MONSTRELET, _Chronique_.
+
+[o] BARON BRUGIÈRE DE BARANTE, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne_.
+
+[p] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[q] LE BOURGEOIS DE PARIS, _Journal_.
+
+[r] THOMAS RYMER, _Fœdera_.
+
+[s] J. ENDELL TYLER, _Henry of Monmouth: or Memoirs of the Life and
+Elevation of Henry the Fifth as Prince of Wales and King of England_.
+
+[t] A. F. VILLEMAIN, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE RESCUE OF THE REALM
+
+[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[c] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[d] GEORGES CHASTELAIN, _Chronique de Normandie_.
+
+[e] ENGUERRAND DE MONSTRELET, _op. cit._
+
+[f] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[g] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[h] _Chronique de la Pucelle._
+
+[i] JULES QUICHERAT, _Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de
+Jeanne d’Arc_.
+
+[j] LAVISSE ET RAMBAUD, _Histoire générale du IVᵉ siècle à nos jours_.
+
+[k] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _Histoire de France depuis les
+origines jusqu’à nos jours_.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE CONVALESCENCE OF THE REALM
+
+[b] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[d] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[f] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[g] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[h] JEAN CHARTIER, _Histoire de Charles VII_.
+
+[i] LE BOURGEOIS DE PARIS, _op. cit._
+
+[j] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[k] GEORGES CHASTELAIN, _Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne_.
+
+[l] PIERRE DE BOURDEILLES (Seigneur de Brantôme), _Vie des dames
+galantes_.
+
+[m] OLIVIER DE LA MARCHE, _La Parement et le Triomphe des dames
+d’honneur_.
+
+[n] G. DU FRESNE DE BEAUCOURT, _Histoire de Charles VII_.
+
+[o] HENRI BAUDE, _Éloge ou portrait historique de Charles VII_ (in Jean
+Chartier’s _Chronique de Charles VII_).
+
+[p] ALFRED RAMBAUD, _Histoire de la civilisation française_.
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI
+
+[b] GEORGES CHASTELAIN, _Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne_.
+
+[c] PHILIPPE DE COMMINES, _Mémoires_.
+
+[d] NICOLO MACCHIAVELLI, _Le Prince_.
+
+[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[f] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[g] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _op. cit._
+
+[h] OLIVIER DE LA MARCHE, _Mémoires_.
+
+[i] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[j] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[k] URBAIN LEGEAY, _Histoire de Louis XI_.
+
+[l] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[m] CHARLES P. DUCLOS, _Histoire de Louis XI_.
+
+[n] ALEXIS BELLOC, _Les Postes Françaises; Recherches historiques sur
+leur origine_.
+
+[o] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[p] CONTINUATOR OF MONSTRELET.
+
+[q] E. DE MONSTRELET, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. CHARLES VII AND LOUIS XII, THE INVASION OF ITALY
+
+[b] PIERRE DE B. BRANTÔME, _Vie des hommes illustres et grandes
+capitaines français_.
+
+[c] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[d] PH. DE COMMINES, _op. cit._
+
+[e] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[f] SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER, _La Vie de Bayard_.
+
+[g] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[h] CLAUDE DE SEYSSEL, _Louanges de Louis XII_.
+
+[i] PIERRE L. ROEDERER, _Louis XII et François I_.
+
+[j] HENRY HALLAM, _op. cit._
+
+[k] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. IMPERIAL STRUGGLES. FRANCIS I AND HENRY II
+
+[b] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[c] _Mémoires du Chevalier de Bayard._
+
+[d] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _op. cit._
+
+[e] LUCIEN A. PRÉVOST-PARADOL, _Essai sur l’histoire universelle_.
+
+[f] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[g] GUILLAUME DU BELLAY, _Mémoires_.
+
+[h] F. A. M. MIGNET, _Rivalité de François I et de Charles Quint_.
+
+[i] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[j] MARTIN DU BELLAY, _Mémoires_.
+
+[k] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[l] ROSSEEUW ST. HILLAIRE, _Histoire d’Espagne_.
+
+[m] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[n] JULIA PARDOE, _Court and Reign of François I_.
+
+[o] GABRIEL HENRI GAILLARD, _Histoire de François I_.
+
+[p] PIERRE DE BOURDEILLES BRANTÔME, _Œuvres complètes_.
+
+[q] MARGUERITE DE VALOIS, _L’Heptameron_.
+
+[r] JEAN MAROT, _Le Recueil de Jehan Marot de Caen_.
+
+[s] LEOPOLD VON RANKE, _Französische Geschichte_.
+
+[v] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[w] H. FORNERON, _Les ducs de Guise et leur époque_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS
+
+[b] BERNARD DE LACOMBE, _Catherine de Medici_.
+
+[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[d] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[e] P. DE B. BRANTÔME, _op. cit._
+
+[f] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[g] MICHEL DE CASTELNAU, _Mémoires_.
+
+[h] MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE, _Essais_.
+
+[i] HENRI-CATHERIN DAVILA, _Histoire des guerres civiles de France depuis
+la mort de Henri II jusqu’à la paix de Vervins_.
+
+[j] MAXIMILIAN DE BÉTHUNE (Duc de Sully), _Mémoires_.
+
+[k] W. S. BROWNING, _The History of the Huguenots_.
+
+[l] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[m] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[n] THÉODORE AGRIPPA D’AUBIGNÉ, _Histoire Universelle_.
+
+[o] PIERRE DE L’ESTOILE, _Journal_.
+
+[p] M. CAVALLI, _Relation de Marino Cavalli_ (Ambassador to France from
+Venice).
+
+[q] FRANÇOIS DE LA NOUE, _Mémoires_.
+
+[r] MARGUERITE DE VALOIS (La Reine Margot), _Mémoires_.
+
+[s] H. FORNERON, _op. cit._
+
+[t] A. SORBIN, _Histoire contenant un ibrégé de la vie, mœurs et vertus
+du Roy très chrétien et débonnaire, Charles IX_.
+
+[w] J. STEPHEN, _Lectures on the History of France_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. HENRY OF NAVARRE, THE FIRST OF THE BOURBONS
+
+[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[d] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[e] T. A. D’AUBIGNÉ, _op. cit._
+
+[f] H. C. DAVILA, _op. cit._
+
+[g] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _op. cit._
+
+[h] CHARLES MERCIER DE LACOMBE, _Henri IV et sa politique_.
+
+[i] M. E. DE MONTAIGNE, _op. cit._
+
+[j] C. F. LENIENT, _La Satire en France_.
+
+[k] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[l] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[m] G. W. KITCHIN, _History of France_.
+
+[n] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[o] FRANÇOIS DE BASSOMPIERRE, _Mémoires_.
+
+[p] M. DE BÉTHUNE (Duc de Sully), _op. cit._
+
+[q] FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE, _Le siècle de Louis XIV_.
+
+[r] J. STEPHEN, _Lectures on the History of France_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+[b] A. F. VILLEMAIN, _op. cit._
+
+[c] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._
+
+[d] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[e] G. E. SAINTSBURY, article on “Rabelais” in the _Encyclopædia
+Britannica_.
+
+[f] MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII
+
+[b] J. MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[c] DAVID HUME, _Histoire naturelle de la religion, 1752_.
+
+[d] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[e] ARMAND DU PLESSIS (Cardinal de Richelieu), _Mémoires_.
+
+[f] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[g] FLORIMOND RAPINE, _Relation des États de 1614_.
+
+[h] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[i] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[j] CHARLES SEIGNOBOS, _Scènes et épisodes de l’histoire nationale_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU
+
+[b] J. MICHELET, _op. cit._
+
+[c] E. DE BONNECHOSE, _op. cit._
+
+[d] THÉOPHILE LAVALLÉE, _op. cit._
+
+[e] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[f] _Mémoires de Pontis 1630_ (Journal de Bassompierre).
+
+[g] FRANÇOIS DE BASSOMPIERRE, _op. cit._
+
+[h] J. B. RAYMOND CAPEFIGUE, _Richelieu, Mazarin, La Fronde et le règne
+de Louis XIV_.
+
+[i] FRANÇOISE BERTAUT DE MOTTEVILLE, _Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire
+d’Anne d’Autriche_.
+
+[j] J. WHITE, _op. cit._
+
+[k] L. D’ASTARAC DE FRONTRAILLES, _Relation des choses particulières de
+la cour pendant la faveur de M. de Cinq-Mars_.
+
+[l] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[m] ARMAND DU PLESSIS (Richelieu), _Testament Politique_.
+
+[n] J. F. PAUL DE GONDI (Cardinal de Retz), _Mémoires_.
+
+[o] CH. DE SECONDAT DE MONTESQUIEU, _Pensées diverses_.
+
+[p] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[q] PIERRE ET JACQUES DUPUY, _Traité des droits et libertés de l’Église
+Gallicane, avec les Preuves_.
+
+[r] JULES CAILLET, _L’Administration en France sous le ministère du
+Cardinal Richelieu_.
+
+[s] CORNEILLE.
+
+[t] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[u] V. DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[v] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._
+
+[w] G. W. KITCHIN, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN
+
+[b] JULES MICHELET, _Richelieu et la Fronde_.
+
+[c] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[d] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[e] A. RENÉE, _Les Nièces de Mazarin_.
+
+[f] ADOLPHE CHÉRUEL, _Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis
+XIV_.
+
+[g] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[h] V. DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[i] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._
+
+[j] PAUL DE GONDI (Cardinal de Retz), _op. cit._
+
+[k] FRANÇOISE BERTAUT DE MOTTEVILLE, _op. cit._
+
+[l] FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _Maximes_.
+
+[m] FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _Mémoires sur le règne d’Anne
+d’Autriche_.
+
+[n] CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH DE BAVIÈRE (Princesse Palatine, Duchesse
+d’Orléans), _Correspondance_.
+
+[o] G. W. KITCHIN, _op. cit._
+
+[p] _Les Carnets de Mazarin._
+
+[q] G. W. KITCHIN, article on “France” in the Ninth Edition of the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI
+
+[b] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] V. DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[d] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[f] LOUIS XIV, _Mémoires_.
+
+[g] MARIUS TOPIN, _L’Homme au masque de fer_.
+
+[h] M. N. BOUILLET, _Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et de géographie_.
+
+[i] L. DE ROUVROY (Duc de Saint-Simon), _Mémoires de Louis XIV_.
+
+[j] THÉOPHILE LAVALLÉE, _op. cit._
+
+[k] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[l] JULES MICHELET, _Louis XIV et la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes_.
+
+[m] J. B. PAQUIER, _Histoire de l’unité politique et territoriale de la
+France_.
+
+[n] PIERRE LE PESANT DE BOISGUILLEBERT, _Detail de la France sous Louis
+XIV_.
+
+[o] LA BARONNE DE STAAL, _Mémoires_.
+
+[p] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._
+
+[q] G. W. KITCHIN, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. LOUIS XIV, SPAIN AND HOLLAND
+
+[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[d] V. DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[e] OLIVIER D’ORMESSON, _Journal_.
+
+[f] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._
+
+[g] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[h] F. MIGNET, _Négotiations relative à la succession d’Espagne_.
+
+[i] MME. LA MARQUISE DE SÉVIGNÉ, _Lettres_.
+
+[j] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[k] GEORGES DURUY, _Vie de Turenne_.
+
+[l] LE MARQUIS DE LA FARE, _Mémoires sur Louis XIV_.
+
+[m] LOUIS RACINE, _Mémoires sur la Vie de J. Racine_.
+
+[n] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. THE HEIGHT AND DECLINE OF THE BOURBON MONARCHY
+
+[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] V. DURUY, _op. cit._
+
+[d] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._
+
+[e] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[f] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._
+
+[g] MME. LA COMTESSE DE LA FAYETTE, _Œuvres_.
+
+[h] DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, _op. cit._
+
+[i] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._
+
+[j] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV
+
+[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._
+
+[c] A. RAMBAUD, _op. cit._
+
+[d] D. NISARD, _Histoire de la littérature française_.
+
+[e] HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE, _History of Civilisation in England_.
+
+[f] ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE, _La Régence_.
+
+[g] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._
+
+[h] MME. DE SÉVIGNÉ, _op. cit._
+
+[i] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._
+
+[j] JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE, _Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce siècle_.
+
+[k] FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _op. cit._
+
+[l] JACQUES BÉNIGNE BOSSUET, _Discours sur l’histoire universelle_.
+_Politique tirée de l’écriture sainte._
+
+[m] LOUIS XIV, _op. cit._
+
+[n] CHARLES CASTEL (Abbé de Saint Pierre), _Projet de paix perpétuelle._
+_Discours sur la Polysynodie._
+
+[o] DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, _Mémoires_.
+
+[p] FRANÇOISE BERTAUT DE MOTTEVILLE, _op. cit._
+
+[q] BERNARD GERMAIN ÉTIENNE DE LA VILLE DE LACÉPÈDE, _Histoire de
+l’Europe, Paris_, 1833.
+
+[r] _A New and General Biographical Dictionary_, London, 1798, 15 vols.
+
+[s] J. STEPHEN, _Lectures on the History of France_.
+
+[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE DATES OF INCORPORATION OF THE PROVINCES
+INTO THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE.]
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77058 ***
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+    margin-bottom: 5em;
+}
+
+.x-ebookmaker img {
+    max-width: 100%;
+    width: auto;
+    height: auto;
+}
+
+.x-ebookmaker .centered {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 1.5em;
+}
+
+.x-ebookmaker .blockquote {
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 5%;
+}
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77058 ***</div>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+
+<p>Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the original,
+some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries in the
+reference-lists, and vice versa.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[i]</span></p>
+
+<h1>THE HISTORIANS’
+HISTORY
+OF THE WORLD</h1>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[ii]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[iii]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="460" height="650" alt="">
+<p class="caption">MARTIN</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">THE HISTORIANS’<br>
+HISTORY<br>
+OF THE WORLD</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations<br>
+as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of<br>
+all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished<br>
+board of advisers and contributors,<br>
+by<br>
+<br>
+HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.</p>
+
+<div class="titlepage" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100" height="117" alt="(decorative,
+publisher’s mark) PRIUS PLACENDUM QUAM DOCENDUM">
+</div>
+
+<p class="titlepage">IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">VOLUME XI—FRANCE, 843-1715</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 30em;">
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 14em;">
+
+<p class="titlepage">T<sup>he</sup> Outlook Company<br>
+New York</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 14em;">
+
+<p class="titlepage">T<sup>he</sup> History Association<br>
+London</p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="center smaller clearboth">1905</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1904,<br>
+By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center smaller"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">Press of J. J. Little &amp; Co.<br>
+New York, U. S. A.</p>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span></p>
+
+<h2>Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="container">
+<div class="centered">
+
+<ul>
+<li class="i1">Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.</li>
+<li class="i2">Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.</li>
+<li class="i3">Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.</li>
+<li class="i4">Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.</li>
+<li class="i5">Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.</li>
+<li class="i6">Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.</li>
+<li class="i7">Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.</li>
+<li class="i1">Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.</li>
+<li class="i2">Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.</li>
+<li class="i3">Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.</li>
+<li class="i4">Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.</li>
+<li class="i5">Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.</li>
+<li class="i6">Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.</li>
+<li class="i1">Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.</li>
+<li class="i2">Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.</li>
+<li class="i3">Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.</li>
+<li class="i4">Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.</li>
+<li class="i5">Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.</li>
+<li class="i6">Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.</li>
+<li class="i1">Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.</li>
+<li class="i2">Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.</li>
+<li class="i3">Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.</li>
+<li class="i4">Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.</li>
+<li class="i5">Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.</li>
+<li class="i6">Dr. John P. Peters, New York.</li>
+<li class="i1">Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.</li>
+<li class="i2">Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.</li>
+<li class="i3">Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.</li>
+<li class="i4">Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.</li>
+<li class="i5">Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.</li>
+<li class="i6">Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.</li>
+<li class="i7">Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.</li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span></p>
+
+<h2 id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table class="contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">VOLUME XI</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">FRANCE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><span class="allsmcap">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><span class="smcap">The Later Carlovingians</span> (843-987 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Charles the Bald, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>. The Northmen, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>. Edict of Mersen, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>. The Northmen’s
+    allies, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>. Beginning of the great fiefs, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>. Edicts of Pistes and Quierzy, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>. Louis II
+    to Carloman, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>. Charles the Fat, king and emperor, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>. The feudal régime, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>. The
+    church, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>. Capetians and Carlovingians, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>. The last Carlovingians, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><span class="smcap">The Foundation of the Capetian Dynasty</span> (987-1180 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Henry I, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>. Deeds of the great barons, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>. Philip I, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>. Louis the Fat and
+    Louis the Young, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>. Battle of Brenneville, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>. The abbot Suger, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>. Emancipatory
+    movements after the Crusades, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>. The communes, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>. Philosophy and thought;
+    Abelard and St. Bernard, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>. Abelard and the university, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>. The position of
+    woman, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><span class="smcap">The Development of the Absolute Monarchy</span> (1180-1270 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Prince Arthur of Brittany, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>. The Albigensian Crusade, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>. League against
+    Philip Augustus, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>. The battle of Bouvines, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>. Last years and influence of Philip
+    Augustus, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>. Louis VIII, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>. Louis IX, called St. Louis, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>. First Crusade of St.
+    Louis, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>. Last years and death of St. Louis, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>. Hallam’s estimate of St. Louis, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.
+    Piety and christianity of St. Louis, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>. Progress of the monarchy under St. Louis,
+    <a href="#Page_67">67</a>. Aspects of thirteenth-century civilisation, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><span class="smcap">Philip III to the House of Valois</span> (1270-1328 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Philip (III) the Bold, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>. Philip (IV) the Fair, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>. New war with Flanders, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.
+    The quarrel between Philip and Boniface VIII, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>. Sentence of the Templars, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.
+    Philip’s fiscal policy, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>. Execution of Jacques de Molay, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>. Political progress in
+    Philip’s reign, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>. Louis (X) the Quarrelsome, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>. Philip (V) the Tall, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>. Charles
+    (IV) the Fair, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>. Aspects of civilisation, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>. The great fairs, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER V</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><span class="smcap">The Opening of the Hundred Years’ War</span> (1328-1350 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Edward III claims the throne of France, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>. The battle of Sluys or L’Écluse,
+    <a href="#Page_104">104</a>. The war in Brittany, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>. Joan de Montfort defends Hennebon, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>. Philip’s
+    financial difficulties, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>. Renewal of the war with England, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>. Edward returns
+    to France, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>. Froissart’s description of Crécy, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>. Michelet on the results of
+    Crécy, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>. The siege of Calais, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>. Suspension of the war, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>. Territorial
+    acquisition, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><span class="smcap">John the Good and Charles the Wise</span> (1350-1380 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Trouble with Charles of Navarre, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>. The states-general of 1355, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>. The
+    battle of Poitiers, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>. The states-general of 1356-1357, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>. The dauphin repudiates
+    the <i>Grande Ordonnance</i>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>. The Jacquerie, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>. Death of Marcel, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>. Peace
+    negotiations; Edward in France, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>. The story of Le Grand Ferré, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>. The
+    Treaty of Bretigny, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>. The last years of King John, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>. Charles the Wise, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.
+    Early exploits of Bertrand du Guesclin, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>. End of the Breton War; battle of
+    Auray, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>. Du Guesclin leads the free companies into Castile, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>. The Peace of
+    Bretigny is broken, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>. The English invasion, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>. Last years of Charles V and
+    of Du Guesclin, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><span class="smcap">The Betrayal of the Kingdom</span> (1380-1422 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">War in Flanders; battle of Roosebeke, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>. Insurrections in Paris and Rouen,
+    <a href="#Page_157">157</a>. The King assumes the rule, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>. Hatred of the nobles for the ministry, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.
+    The king goes mad: the princes return to power, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>. Domestic troubles and scandals,
+    <a href="#Page_165">165</a>. Civil war, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>. Henry V invades France; a French view, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>. Michelet’s
+    account of the battle of Agincourt, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>. Massacre of the Armagnacs in Paris, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.
+    The duke of Burgundy master of Paris, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>. Siege of Rouen, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>. Henry and John
+    the Fearless, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>. The Treaty of Troyes, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>. Henry’s struggle with the dauphin,
+    <a href="#Page_180">180</a>. Woes of the people; the <i>Danse Macabre</i>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>. The University of Paris and
+    the council of Constance, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><span class="smcap">The Rescue of the Realm</span> (1422-1431 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Monstrelet describes the siege of Montargis, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>. The siege of Orleans, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>. The
+    “battle of the Herrings,” <a href="#Page_191">191</a>. The Maid of Orleans (La Pucelle), <a href="#Page_194">194</a>. Joan at the
+    court, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>. The deliverance of Orleans, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>. Joan of Arc leads the king to Rheims,
+    <a href="#Page_200">200</a>. Joan defeated at Paris, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>. Capture of Joan of Arc, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>. Trial of Joan of
+    Arc, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>. The Twelve Articles, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>. The findings of the faculty, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>. The sentence
+    and its execution, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>. The rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>. The British
+    estimate of Joan’s services, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><span class="smcap">“The Convalescence of France”</span> (1431-1461 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">The Treaty of Arras, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>. The French return to Paris, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>. The Pragmatic
+    Sanction, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>. The atrocious crimes of the barons, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>. Gilles de Retz, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>. Charles
+    begins the work of reform, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>. Agnes Sorel; the Praguerie, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>. Effective progress
+    against England, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>. Expedition to Switzerland and Lorraine, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>. The battle
+    of Sankt Jakob, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>. Military and financial reforms, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>. The close of the
+    Hundred Years’ War, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>. The battle of Castillon, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>. The last years of Charles
+    VII, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>. Quarrels with Burgundy and with the dauphin, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>. Death of Charles
+    VII; the influence of his reign, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER X</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><span class="smcap">The Reign of Louis XI: The Triumph of the Crown</span> (1461-1483 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Relations with the Church, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>. The war of the Public Weal, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>. The battle
+    of Montlhéry and the Treaty of Conflans, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>. Political intrigues, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>. The struggle
+    with Charles the Bold, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>. Comines describes the visit to Péronne, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>. The
+    storming of Liège, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>. The return of Louis to France, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>. Edward IV of England
+    aids Charles the Bold, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>. Gold and diplomacy make Louis the victor, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.
+    Last deeds of Charles the Bold, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>. Mary of Burgundy, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>. War with Maximilian,
+    <a href="#Page_270">270</a>. Last years and death of Louis, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>. Martin’s estimate of Louis XI, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.
+    Louis’ influence on civilisation, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>. Establishment of posts in France, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><span class="smcap">Charles VIII and Louis XII—The Invasion of Italy</span> (1483-1515 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Charles VIII, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>. The rule of Anne de Beaujeu, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>. The struggle with the
+    duke of Orleans, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>. Charles VIII in Italy, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>. Death of Charles VIII, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.
+    Louis XII, “the father of his people,” <a href="#Page_293">293</a>. Marriage with Anne of Brittany, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.
+    Foreign affairs, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>. Internal affairs, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>. Last years of Louis XII, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><span class="smcap">Imperial Struggles of Francis I and Henry II</span> (1515-1559 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_306">306</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Critical survey of Francis I and his period, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>. A brilliant campaign in Italy,
+    <a href="#Page_308">308</a>. The Concordat, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>. Strife between Francis I and Charles V, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>. Meeting
+    of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>. Francis I and
+    Charles V at war, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>. Defection of the duke de Bourbon, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>. A disastrous campaign
+    in Italy; the battle of Pavia, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>. Francis captive in Spain; the Treaty of
+    Madrid, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>. Further dissensions and the “Ladies’ Peace,” <a href="#Page_322">322</a>. Internal affairs,
+    <a href="#Page_325">325</a>. The French Renaissance, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>. War again between Francis I and Charles V,
+    <a href="#Page_332">332</a>. Last years and death of Francis I, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>. Gaillard’s estimate of Francis I, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.
+    Character and policy of Henry II, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>. Court favourites, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>. Religious persecutions
+    and royal marriages, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>. War with Charles V and his successor, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>. The
+    siege of Metz, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>. Minor engagements; the abdication of Charles V, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>. Battle and
+    defence of St. Quentin, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>. The retaking of Calais, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>. The Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis,
+    <a href="#Page_348">348</a>. The last days of Henry II, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><span class="smcap">Catherine de Medici and the Religious Wars</span> (1559-1589 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_351">351</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Francis II, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>. Religious parties, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>. Death of Francis II, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>. The accession
+    of Charles IX, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>. Civil war, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>. The Edict of Amboise and its results, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>. The
+    Second Religious War, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>. The Third Religious War, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>. Admiral Coligny; the
+    Peace of St. Germain, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>. A troubled peace; the marriage of Henry of Navarre,
+    <a href="#Page_365">365</a>. The attack on Coligny, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>. Preparing for the massacre, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>. The Massacre
+    of St. Bartholomew, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>. Effects of the massacre, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>. Last years, death, and character
+    of Charles IX, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>. The accession of Henry III, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>. Political conditions, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.
+    The Holy League, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>. The war of the Three Henrys, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>. The battle of Coutras,
+    <a href="#Page_386">386</a>. The Day of the Barricades and the Treaty of Union, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>. The meeting of the
+    states-general, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>. The assassination of Henry, duke of Guise, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>. Death of
+    Catherine de Medici, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>. The siege of Paris and the death of Henry III, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><span class="smcap">Henry of Navarre, First of the Bourbons</span> (1589-1610 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_395">395</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Henry’s struggle for the crown, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>. The battle of Ivry, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>. The duke of
+    Parma and the Spaniards, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>. Henry IV and the league, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>. Opposition of the
+    pope and Philip II, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>. The Edict of Nantes, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>. Reorganisation of France with
+    the aid of Sully, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>. Amours and second marriage of Henry IV, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>. Intrigues of
+    De Biron, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>. The last years of Henry’s reign, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>. Grand design of Henry IV;
+    his death, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>. Character and policy of Henry IV, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>. Martin’s estimate of Henry
+    IV, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>. Stephen’s characterisation of Henry IV and his times, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><span class="smcap">The Literary Progress of France in the Sixteenth Century</span></a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_422">422</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Calvin, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>. Montaigne, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><span class="smcap">The Early Years of Louis XIII and the Rise of Richelieu</span> (1610-1628 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_432">432</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">The regency of Marie de Medici, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>. Disgrace of Sully, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>. First revolt of
+    the lords, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>. Last assembly of the states-general, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>. Majority of Louis XIII;
+    marriage with Anne of Austria, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>. Richelieu appears, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>. Assassination of
+    Marshal d’Ancre, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>. The ministry of Luynes, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>. The Huguenot uprising; the
+    siege of Montauban, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>. Death of Luynes, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>. Richelieu’s return to the ministry,
+    <a href="#Page_449">449</a>. Conspiracy of the court against Richelieu, <a href="#Page_450">450</a>. The siege of La Rochelle described
+    by Seignobos, <a href="#Page_452">452</a>.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><span class="smcap">The Dictatorship of Richelieu</span> (1629-1643 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_457">457</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Richelieu and the king, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>. Richelieu enters the European arena, <a href="#Page_460">460</a>. Enmity
+    of Marie de’ Medici against Richelieu, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>. The Day of Dupes, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>. Exile of Marie
+    de’ Medici, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>. The revolt of Gaston and the execution of Montmorency, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>. Foreign
+    affairs, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>. Wars with Austria, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>. Attempt to assassinate the cardinal, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>.
+    Character of Louis, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>. Revolt of the count de Soissons, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>. Caillet’s estimate of
+    the administration of Richelieu, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>. The church and the state under Richelieu, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>.
+    The conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, <a href="#Page_478">478</a>. Recovery and triumph of Richelieu, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>. The
+    last days of Richelieu, <a href="#Page_482">482</a>. Stephen’s estimate of Louis XIII and of Richelieu, <a href="#Page_484">484</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVIII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><span class="smcap">The Supremacy of Mazarin</span> (1643-1661 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_487">487</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Battle of Rocroi, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>. The <i>importants</i>, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>. The education of the young king,
+    <a href="#Page_493">493</a>. Military glory, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>. Treaty of Westphalia, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>. Mazarin’s domestic policy,
+    <a href="#Page_497">497</a>. First insurrection of the Fronde, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>. The Day of the Barricades, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>. Second
+    act of the Fronde; arrest of Condé, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>. Resistance of Bordeaux, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>. Disgrace
+    and exile of Mazarin, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>. Condé in power, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>. Return of Mazarin, <a href="#Page_509">509</a>. The last
+    phase of the Fronde, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>. Battle of St. Antoine, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>. Second exile of Mazarin, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>.
+    Mazarin again in power, <a href="#Page_515">515</a>. War with Spain continues, <a href="#Page_516">516</a>. Alliance with Cromwell;
+    war in Flanders, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>. Last years and death
+    of Mazarin, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIX</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">“<i class="allsmcap">L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI</i>” (1661-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_525">525</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">The ministers, <a href="#Page_528">528</a>. The man with the Iron Mask, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>. The ministry of Colbert,
+    <a href="#Page_531">531</a>. Reorganisation of the finances, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>. Michelet’s estimate of Colbert, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>.
+    Louvois, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>. Vauban, <a href="#Page_539">539</a>. Séguier, legislative works, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>. Lionne, foreign
+    affairs and diplomacy, <a href="#Page_541">541</a>. Triumph of the absolute monarchy, <a href="#Page_541">541</a>. Submission
+    of Parliament, <a href="#Page_542">542</a>. Submission of the nobility, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>. The third estate, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>. Louis
+    XIV and the church, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>. The Protestants, <a href="#Page_545">545</a>. Revocation of the Edict of
+    Nantes, <a href="#Page_546">546</a>. The Jansenists, <a href="#Page_548">548</a>. The police, <a href="#Page_549">549</a>. The court of the grand monarch,
+    <a href="#Page_550">550</a>. Mademoiselle de la Vallière, <a href="#Page_551">551</a>. Madame de Montespan, <a href="#Page_555">555</a>. Poisoning:
+    the Brinvilliers case, <a href="#Page_556">556</a>. The retirement of Montespan, <a href="#Page_558">558</a>. Madame de
+    Maintenon, <a href="#Page_559">559</a>. Effect of Louis XIV’s policy on the nation, <a href="#Page_561">561</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XX</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><span class="smcap">Louis XIV, Spain, and Holland</span> (1661-1679 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_563">563</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">The war of the Queen’s Rights, <a href="#Page_566">566</a>. The Triple Alliance, <a href="#Page_569">569</a>. Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
+    <a href="#Page_570">570</a>. Projects against Holland, <a href="#Page_571">571</a>. The Treaty of Dover; death of
+    Madame, <a href="#Page_572">572</a>. Treaties with other powers, <a href="#Page_573">573</a>. The war with Holland begins, <a href="#Page_574">574</a>.
+    The passage of the Rhine, <a href="#Page_575">575</a>. The French in Holland and Germany, <a href="#Page_576">576</a>. The
+    new coalition against France, <a href="#Page_577">577</a>. Defection of England and the imperial allies,
+    <a href="#Page_581">581</a>. Operations in Franche-Comté; Turenne in Alsace, <a href="#Page_581">581</a>. Condé in the Netherlands,
+    <a href="#Page_584">584</a>. Last campaigns of Turenne and Condé, <a href="#Page_584">584</a>. Events of 1676; affairs in
+    Sicily, <a href="#Page_585">585</a>. Campaign of 1677; negotiations for peace, <a href="#Page_587">587</a>. Louis XIV settles with
+    the coalition, <a href="#Page_589">589</a>.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXI</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><span class="smcap">The Height and Decline of the Bourbon Monarchy</span> (1679-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_592">592</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Acquisition of frontier places, <a href="#Page_593">593</a>. Preparations for a second coalition, <a href="#Page_596">596</a>.
+    Relations with Turks and Berbers, <a href="#Page_598">598</a>. Second coalition; the league of Augsburg,
+    <a href="#Page_599">599</a>. The Revolution in England, <a href="#Page_600">600</a>. War of the league of Augsburg, <a href="#Page_601">601</a>.
+    Attempts to restore James II, <a href="#Page_601">601</a>. Devastation of the Palatinate, <a href="#Page_603">603</a>. The war in
+    Savoy and Piedmont, <a href="#Page_604">604</a>. The war in the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_604">604</a>. Steenkerke and Neerwinden,
+    <a href="#Page_605">605</a>. Last years of the war; treaty with Savoy, <a href="#Page_606">606</a>. The Treaty of Ryswick,
+    <a href="#Page_608">608</a>. Louis XIV and the Polish throne, <a href="#Page_609">609</a>. The question of the Spanish succession,
+    <a href="#Page_610">610</a>. Accession of the Bourbons in Spain, <a href="#Page_612">612</a>. The Grand Alliance or third coalition
+    against France, <a href="#Page_613">613</a>. War of the Spanish Succession; the French victories, <a href="#Page_615">615</a>.
+    The <i>camisards</i>, <a href="#Page_617">617</a>. War of the Spanish Succession; French reverses, <a href="#Page_617">617</a>. The
+    battle of Blenheim, <a href="#Page_618">618</a>. The battle of Ramillies, <a href="#Page_620">620</a>. The battle of Malplaquet, <a href="#Page_624">624</a>.
+    The battle of Denain, <a href="#Page_626">626</a>. Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt, <a href="#Page_627">627</a>. Death of Louis
+    XIV, <a href="#Page_629">629</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XXII</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><span class="smcap">The Age of Louis XIV: Aspects of its Civilisation</span> (1610-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_632">632</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdmore" colspan="2">Foundation of the French Academy, <a href="#Page_632">632</a>. The patronage system, <a href="#Page_633">633</a>. Literary
+    characteristics, <a href="#Page_635">635</a>. Science, <a href="#Page_637">637</a>. Poetry: Boileau, <a href="#Page_640">640</a>. Oratory: Bossuet, <a href="#Page_641">641</a>.
+    The third period, <a href="#Page_642">642</a>. The drama; tragedy, <a href="#Page_643">643</a>. Corneille, <a href="#Page_643">643</a>. Racine, <a href="#Page_644">644</a>.
+    Comedy, <a href="#Page_645">645</a>. Architecture, <a href="#Page_647">647</a>. Sculpture and painting, <a href="#Page_648">648</a>. Music and the opera,
+    <a href="#Page_650">650</a>. Rapid decline of the age of Louis XIV, <a href="#Page_651">651</a>. A French view of the effect of
+    the age, <a href="#Page_651">651</a>.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="top-pad"><a href="#REFERENCES"><span class="smcap">Brief Reference-List
+     of Authorities by Chapters</span></a></td>
+    <td class="tdr top-pad"><a href="#Page_653">653</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p class="titlepage">PART XVI</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">THE HISTORY OF FRANCE</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">A. ALISON, ALEXIS BELLOC, L. P. E. BIGNON, LOUIS BLANC, JULES CAILLET, J. B. R.<br>
+CAPEFIGUE, THOMAS CARLYLE, FRANÇOIS R. CHÂTEAUBRIAND, ADOLPHE<br>
+CHÉRUEL, JOHN WILSON CROKER, E. E. CROWE, C. DARESTE DE LA<br>
+CHAVANNE, BRUGIÈRE DE BARANTE, A. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC,<br>
+PHILIP DE COMMINES, JURIEN DE LA GRAVIÈRE, LE COMTE DE<br>
+TOCQUEVILLE, JEHAN DE VAURIN, VICTOR DURUY, GABRIEL<br>
+HENRI GAILLARD, FRANÇOIS GUIZOT,<br>
+C. P. M. HAAS, ERNEST HAMEL, LUDWIG HÄUSSER, KARL HILLEBRAND, G. W.<br>
+KITCHIN, LACRETELLE, A. LAMARTINE, T. LAVALLÉE, P. E. LEVASSEUR, J.<br>
+MALLET-DUPAN, HENRI MARTIN, JULES MICHELET, F. A. MIGNET,<br>
+MONSTRELET, C. PELLETAN, VICTOR PIERRE, JULES QUICHERAT,<br>
+ALFRED RAMBAUD, J. E. ROBINET, DUC DE SAINT-SIMON,<br>
+J. R. SEELEY, C. SEIGNOBOS, J. C. S. DE SISMONDI,<br>
+ALBERT SOREL, H. M. STEPHENS, H. VON SYBEL,<br>
+H. TAINE, M. TERNAUX, A. THIERS,<br>
+F. AROUET DE VOLTAIRE</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">TOGETHER WITH AN ESSAY IN FOUR PARTS</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF FRANCE</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">BY</p>
+
+<p class="center">ALFRED RAMBAUD</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">J. AMBERT, MARQUIS D’ARGENSON, A. ARNETH AND M. A. GEFFROY, JULES BARNI,<br>
+E. BERTIN, PAUL BONDOIS, A. BOUGÉART, M. N. BOUILLET, E. BOUTARIC,<br>
+H. T. BUCKLE, T. BURETTE. F. CANONGE, HIPPOLYTE CASTILLE, H.<br>
+CARNOT, SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER, CHRONIQUE DE ST. DENIS,<br>
+CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, OLIVIER<br>
+D’ORMESSON, C. A. DAUBAN, A. DE BEAUCHAMP,<br>
+G. AND M. DU BELLAY, MAXIMILIAN DE<br>
+BÉTHUNE, DUC DE SULLY, ÉMILE DE<br>
+BONNECHOSE, MARQUIS DE CHAMBRAY, MARQUIS DE FERRIÈRES, PIERRE DE<br>
+L’ESTOILE, CHARLES MERCIER DE LACOMBE, BERNARD DE LACOMBE,<br>
+FRANÇOIS DE LANOUE, LA BARONNE DE STAËL, DU FRESNE<br>
+DE BEAUCOURT, H. FORNERON, C. A. FYFFE, BERNARD<br>
+GERMAIN, ABBÉ GIRARD, HENRI GIRARD, SAINT-MARC<br>
+GIRARDIN, HENRY HALLAM, HERMANN HETTNER,<br>
+VICTOR HUGO, W. H. JERVIS, J. B. F.<br>
+KOCH, H. LEBER, U. LEGEAY, G. H.<br>
+LEWES, L. DE LOMÉNIE,<br>
+O. DE LA MARCHE, SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, MARQUIS OF NORMANBY, E. DE<br>
+MÉZERAY, COUNT VON MOLTKE, WILHELM MÜLLER, DAVID MÜLLER, W. F. B.<br>
+NAPIER, J. B. PAQUIER, JULIA PARDOE, A. RASTOUL, P. ROBIQUET,<br>
+C. ROUSSET, ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, D. SAUVAGE, MAURICE DE<br>
+SAXE, EDMOND SCHÉRER, F. C. SCHLOSSER, SIR WALTER<br>
+SCOTT, A. SORBIN, J. L. SOULAVIE, SAINT<br>
+RENE-TAILLANDIER, EUGÈNE TÉNOT, J. E.<br>
+TYLER, MAURICE WAHL, JAMES WHITE,<br>
+E. F. WIMPFFEN, HENRY SMITH<br>
+WILLIAMS, R. T. WILSON</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1904,<br>
+By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center smaller"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-1.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I. THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>CHARLES THE BALD (843-877 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[843-877 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Up to the present we have told the history of the Gauls, the Gallo-Romans,
+and the Franks; with the Treaty of Verdun we begin the history
+of the French people. There now existed in France, except the Northmen,
+who already were beginning to appear on its coast and who established
+themselves there only in small numbers, all the races of which her people
+are formed, and all the elements, Celtic, Roman, Christian, and Germanic,
+whose combination goes to make up her civilisation. The medley is even
+already too sufficiently advanced for one to distinguish any longer the Gallo-Roman
+from the Frank, the civilised man from the barbarian. All have
+the same customs and almost all the same tongue. The French idiom
+showed itself officially in the Treaty of Verdun. Law ceases to be personal
+and becomes local; national custom replaces the Roman or barbaric codes;
+there are scarcely any slaves; there are but few free men—we shall soon
+see nothing but serfs and lords.</p>
+
+<p>But this France has no longer the extent of Gaul; the Treaty of Verdun
+has confined it to the Schelde and the Maas, the Saône and the Rhone, and
+the population within these narrow limits finds them still too broad; they
+wish to live apart, for themselves alone, and not to sustain a vast dominion
+which is crushing them and which they do not understand.</p>
+
+<p>The son of Judith and Louis le Débonnaire, Charles the Bald, king of
+France since 840, was nothing but an ambitious man of the people. Length
+of days was generously bestowed upon him, as it had been with Charlemagne,
+for he reigned thirty-seven years—but he knew how to do nothing
+with his life. Difficulties, it is true, were great. The same year when the
+destinies of the empire were moulded at Fontenailles, Asnar, count of Jaca,
+helped himself to the sovereignty of Navarre, and the Northmen burned
+Rouen—in 843 they pillaged Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux. At the same
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>time the Aquitanians rose up for a national king. The Bretons had found
+theirs in Noménoë, whom Charles had excommunicated by the bishops, but
+who defeated his lieutenants; and Septimania had its chief in Bernhard.
+The Saracens and the Greek pirates ravaged the south while the Northmen
+devastated the north and the west. And as if to fill the cup of misfortune
+of which this age was the bearer, the Hungarians, successors of the Huns and
+Avars, were putting in an appearance in the east.</p>
+
+<h3>THE NORTHMEN</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[843 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>These dreaded pirates, the Northmen, were the men whom hunger, thirst
+for pillage, and love of adventure drove each year from the sterile regions of
+Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In three days an east wind brought their
+two-masted ships to the mouth of the Seine. The fleet obeyed a <i>kuning</i> or
+king. “But,” says Augustin Thierry, “he was king only at sea and in battle;
+for when the banquet hour arrived the whole troop sat at the same table, and
+the beer-filled horns passed from hand to hand without there being a first or
+a last. The sea-king was followed everywhere with fidelity and obeyed with
+zeal, for always he was reputed the bravest of the brave, like him who had
+never drained a cup at a protected fireside.</p>
+
+<p>“He knew how to handle ships as a good knight his horse, and to the
+ascendency of courage and skill there was added the power that superstition
+gave him. He was initiated in the sciences of the Runes. He knew the
+mysterious characters which, graven on swords, would procure victory, and
+those which inscribed on the stern or on the oars would prevent shipwreck.
+All equal under such a chief, supporting lightly their voluntary submission
+and the weight of mailed armour which they promised themselves to
+exchange for an equal weight of gold, the Danish pirates gaily travelled the
+‘path of the swans,’ as their ancient national poetry called it. Now they
+hugged the shores and watched their enemy in the narrow straits, bays,
+and little anchorage grounds, from which they got their name of vikings,—children
+of the bays and creeks,—now they hurled themselves forth in
+pursuit of him across the ocean. The violent storms of the North Sea
+scattered and crushed their frail ships. There were always some missing
+when from the chief’s ship came the signal to gather together, but those
+who survived their shipwrecked companions had no less confidence and no
+more concern. They laughed at the winds and the waves which could not
+destroy them. ‘The might of the storm,’ they sang, ‘aids the arms of our
+oarsmen—the tempest is at our service; it throws us where we would go.’”</p>
+
+<p>Some of them often, in the midst of the clash of arms and the sight of
+blood, became possessed with a sort of mad fury which redoubled their
+strength and made them insensible to wounds—as if they saw revealed
+to their eyes the palace of their god Odin and the shining hall of Valhalla.
+Others showed an irresistible courage under torture, and sang their
+death-song in the agonies of torment. Thus the famous Lodbrog, when
+thrown into a ditch filled with vipers, flung proudly back these words to
+his enemies:</p>
+
+<p>“We have fought with the sword. I was still young when in the East,
+under the stars of Eirar, we dug a river of blood for the wolves and invited
+the yellow-legged bird to a great banquet of corpses: the sea was red like a
+fresh-opened wound and the ravens swam in blood.</p>
+
+<p>“We have fought with the sword. I have seen near Aienlane (England)
+numberless bodies filling the decks of the ships; we continued the fight for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>six whole days and the enemy did not give in; the seventh, at sunrise, we
+celebrated the mass of swords. Valthiof was forced to bend under our arms.</p>
+
+<p>“We have fought with the sword. Torrents of blood rained from our
+swords at Partohyrth (Pesth). The vulture could find no more in the
+bodies; the bow thrummed and arrows buried themselves in coats of mail;
+sweat ran over the sword blades. They poured poison into the wounds and
+harvested the warriors like Odin’s hammer.</p>
+
+<p>“We have fought with the sword. Death seizes me. The bite of the
+vipers has been deep. I feel their teeth at my heart. Soon, I hope the
+sword will avenge me in the blood of Ælla. My sons will rage at news of
+my death—anger will redden their visages; besides, brave warriors will
+take no rest until they have avenged me.</p>
+
+<p>“I must cease—behold the Dysir whom Odin sends to lead me to his
+joyful palace. I go thither with the Ases, to quaff hydromel at the seat of
+honour. The hours of my life have run out and my smile braves death.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[837-847 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Religious and warlike fanaticism are here joined together—these pirates
+loved to shed the blood of priests and stable their horses in the churches.
+When they had ravaged a Christian land: “We have sung them,” they said,
+“the mass of spears; it began at early morn and lasted till the night.”
+Charlemagne felt these terrible invaders from afar; under Louis le Débonnaire
+they grew bolder. Some of them set up abodes, in 837, on the island
+of Walcheren, and made tributary the river lands of the Maas and the
+Waal. After 843 they came every year. From the mouth of the Schelde,
+the Somme, the Seine, the Loire, and the Gironde, they ascended into the
+interior of the country. A number of towns, even the more important, as
+Orleans and Paris, were taken and pillaged by them without Charles being
+able to make any defence. From the Rhine to the Adour, from the ocean
+to the Cévennes and the Vosges, all was devastated. They even acquired
+the habit of not returning home during the winter and settled down on the
+island of Oissel—above Rouen, at Noirmoutiers at the mouth of the Loire
+and on the island of Bière, near St. Florent. It was thither they carried
+their booty and thence they set out on new expeditions.</p>
+
+<h3>EDICT OF MERSEN (847 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Chroniclers not understanding that apathy of the Frankish nation once
+so brave, who now let themselves be pillaged by a handful of adventurers,
+could only explain these things on the supposition that there had been a
+tremendous massacre at Fontenailles (Fontenay).</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>La peri de France la flor</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Et des baronz tuit li meillor</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ansi troverènt Haenz terre</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Vinde de gent, bonne a conquerre.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">[There perished the flower of France</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And the best of all the barons died</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">And thus was the land of Haenz</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Void of the brave—easy to conquer.]</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is some truth in these words. Charlemagne’s fifty-three expeditions
+had used up the Frankish race, and his conquests, where always some
+of his warriors were left behind to rule, had spread it over three kingdoms.
+The dissensions of Louis le Débonnaire’s sons completed this dissemination.
+Now there were no longer free men to be found, because of the terrible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>results of so many wars, because in the midst of growing anarchy almost all
+the free men had renounced an independence which left them in isolation
+and consequently in danger, to become the vassals of men able to protect
+them. The Edict of Mersen (847) says, “Every freeman may choose a lord,
+either the king or one of his vassals, and no vassal of the king will be obliged
+to follow him in war unless against a foreign enemy.” With the subjects
+thus disposing of their obedience, the king in civil war remained unarmed
+and powerless, and as he was as incapable of making the great obey him as
+he was of protecting the small, the latter gathered around the former. The
+king’s vassals diminished; those of the great lords increased. On all sides
+national interest was forgotten in solicitude for that of the individual.
+Rouen troubled itself little about the misfortunes of Bordeaux, Saintes, and
+Paris, and that is why in this age, as in the last days of the Roman Empire,
+and for the same reason, namely the absence of that common and spirited
+sentiment known as patriotism, a few small bands could ravage a great
+country. Charles tried to send them back by giving them gold; but this
+was the surest means to attract them. The Roman Empire had done the
+same thing with the barbarians, and we know with what result.</p>
+
+<h3>THE NORTHMEN’S ALLIES</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[843-850 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The number of true Northmen must have been comparatively few, since
+they came from afar and over the sea. “But,” as a chronicler of the time
+remarks, “many inhabitants of the country, forgetting their regeneration in
+the holy waters of baptism, plunged into the dark errors of the pagans: they
+ate with these pagans the flesh of horses sacrificed to Thor and Odin, and took
+part in their atrocious crimes.” And these renegades were the most to be
+feared. They acted as guides to the invaders, they knew how to foil the
+ruses their countrymen adopted to cheat the greed of the barbarians, and
+showed even less respect and mercy than the latter for the religion and the
+people they had abandoned. Sometimes even some of the powerful nobles
+were paid by the Northmen, with money raised by the pillage of France, so
+as not to be disturbed in their expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>The most dreadful of these pirates was Hastings, who ravaged the banks
+of the Loire from 843 to 850, sacked Bordeaux and Saintes, threatened
+Tours, which still celebrates to-day, on the 21st of May, a victory won from
+him, circumnavigated Spain and, robbing and burning the while, reached
+the shores of Italy. He had been drawn by the great name and wealth of
+the capital of Christendom; but he mistook Luna for Rome. Hastings sent
+word to the count and the bishop that his companions, conquerors of France,
+wished no harm to the people of Italy and only wished to repair his storm-battered
+ships, and that he himself, wearied of his roving life, wished to
+seek repose in the bosom of the church. The bishop and the count refused
+him nothing; Hastings even received baptism; but the gates of the town
+remained shut. Some time after the camp was filled with lamentations;
+Hastings was dangerously ill. Messengers came with the news and declared
+at the same time that the dying man intended to leave all his booty to the
+church provided his body might be interred in consecrated ground. The
+Northmen’s cries of grief soon announced the death of their chief. They
+were permitted to bring his body into the town, and the funeral ceremony
+was prepared in the cathedral itself. But when they had set down the
+corpse in the middle of the choir, Hastings suddenly rose up and struck
+the bishop down, while his companions, drawing their concealed arms,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>massacred both priests and soldiers. Master of Luna, Hastings perceived his
+mistake. He was made to understand that Rome was a long way off, and
+could not be so easily captured, so he set sail with his booty and at the
+end of several months reappeared at the mouth of the Loire.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/p005.jpg" width="350" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Ancient French Doorway</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[850-882 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Charles the Bald had reunited one part of the country, between the Seine
+and the Loire, under command of Robert the Strong, ancestor of the Capetians,
+in order to oppose a more
+efficacious resistance to the
+Northmen and the Bretons,
+a great number of whom had
+joined the pirates. Robert
+gained two victories over
+the Bretons and defeated a
+body of Northmen loaded
+with the booty of Brie and
+of the town of Meaux. This
+was the valiant leader whom
+Hastings encountered on his
+return from Italy. He had
+just sacked Le Mans when
+Robert and the duke of
+Aquitaine caught up with
+him at Brissarthe (Pont-sur-Sarthe)
+near Angers.
+The barbarians numbered
+but four hundred, half
+Northmen, half Bretons;
+and at Robert’s approach
+they betook themselves to
+a church and barricaded
+it. It was evening, and the
+French put off the attack
+until the next day. Robert
+had already taken off his helmet and coat of mail, when the Northmen, suddenly
+opening the doors, threw themselves upon the dispersed troops. Robert
+rallied his men, drove the enemy back to the church, and tried to follow them
+in. But he fought with bared head and breast and on the threshold was
+mortally wounded. Duke Rainulf of Aquitaine fell by his side (866). Hastings,
+delivered of his dread adversary, ascended the Loire and made his way
+as far as Clermont-Ferrand. No other means could be found of ridding
+France than by giving him, in 882, the county of Chartres. But he even
+abandoned this at the age of nearly seventy, to resume his life of adventure.</p>
+
+<h3>BEGINNING OF THE GREAT FIEFS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[848-877 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Northmen were the greatest but not the only one of Charles’ troubles;
+the Breton Noménoë repelled all his attacks, crowned himself king, and
+left the title to his son Hérispoë. The Aquitanians elected as leader the son
+of their late king, Pepin II, whom Charles the Bald had deposed. Driven out
+on account of his vices, Pepin allied himself with the Northmen and Saracens
+to pillage his former subjects, but he was captured and shut up in a
+cloister. Charles recovered, for the time, Aquitaine, lost it, recovered it
+again and gave it to one of his sons. But the true masters of the country
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>were Raymond, count of Toulouse, who also ruled over Rouergue and Quercy;
+Walgrin, count of Angoulême; Sancho Mitara, duke of Gascony, whose
+capital was Bordeaux; Bernhard, marquis of Septimania; Rainulf, duke of
+Aquitaine and count of Poitiers; Bernard Plantevelue, count of Auvergne;
+all of whom founded hereditary houses. To the north of the Loire, Charles
+had been constrained in the same way to constitute, for Robert the Strong, the
+grand duchy of France, from which sprang the third line of kings. North
+of the Somme it had been the same thing with the county of Flanders, given
+to the king’s son-in-law, Baldwin Bras de Fer (Iron Arm), and between
+the Loire and Saône, the powerful duchy of Burgundy for Richard the Judge.
+Thus under Charlemagne’s grandson not only was the empire divided into
+kingdoms, but the kingdoms themselves were dismembered into fiefs.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<h3>EDICTS OF PISTES AND QUIERZY</h3>
+
+<p>Charles made, however, more and more the effort to retain in his service
+and that of the state the class of freedmen. In 863, the Edict of Pistes
+ordered a census of the men bound to military duty. The most severe penalties
+were pronounced against those who deprived these men of their horses
+and their arms, and also against the artful ones who sought to avoid military
+duty by giving themselves to the church.</p>
+
+<p>This prince, so weak at home, wished nevertheless to aggrandise himself
+abroad. The king who could not wear his own crown undertook to acquire
+others. At the death of the emperor Lothair, in 855, the inheritance was
+shared between his three sons. The eldest took Italy, the second Lorraine,
+and the third Provence. The last only lived until 863, and the king of Lorraine
+until 869, and neither had any children. Charles the Bald tried, on
+their death, to lay hands on their dominions. His plans miscarried in 863,
+but succeeded in 870, when he shared Lorraine with his brother, Louis the
+German. In spite of the weakness and dishonour of his reign, Charles
+the Bald brought together again, at least on one side, the France which
+the Treaty of Verdun had broken up.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of continuing this policy Charles sought for the imperial crown,
+left once more without a wearer in 875. He sought it in Rome from the
+hands of the pope, took on his return to Milan that of the Lombard kingdom,
+and as his brother, Louis the German, had died, he attempted to annex the
+latter’s dominions to his own—that is, Germany to France. At this moment
+the Northmen took Rouen from him. He was beaten on the Rhine; Italy
+likewise escaped him.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1b1"><a href="#endnote_1b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Unity existed only in the ambitious fancy of the feeble Charles. In spite
+of his titles and his crowns, his power in Italy, Lorraine, and Provence was
+as much a cipher as it was in Gaul; the dismemberment of the kingdoms into
+duchies and counties, and of the latter into viscounties, <i>sireries</i>, and <i>seigneuries</i>,
+still continued; and, at the very moment when he was dreaming
+of his grandfather’s empire, he was finally completing his own destruction by
+changing the feudal system from a custom into a law.</p>
+
+<p>Before going to Italy in 877, he assembled a diet at Quierzy to formulate
+rules for the government of Gaul by his son, and there was delivered that
+famous capitulary from which we may date the feudal revolution: “If one of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>our trusty subjects,” runs this capitulary, “inspired by the love of God, desire
+to renounce the world, and if he have a son or some other relative capable of
+serving the state, he is free to transmit to him his privileges and honours
+at pleasure. If a count of this kingdom dies, we desire that the nearest
+relatives of the deceased, the other officers of the county, and the bishops of
+the diocese provide for its administration until such time as we shall be able
+to intrust his son with the honours with which he was invested.”</p>
+
+<p>This capitulary effected no change in the existing state of things, it only
+confirmed accomplished facts and legalised a revolution which had its origin
+in the customs of the Germans even before their entry into Gaul, that is
+to say the transformation of fiefs into freeholds and the acquisition of hereditary
+rights in duchies and counties. From this time the distinction between
+<i>allods</i> and <i>feods</i> had no longer either reality or importance; as the son of
+the count inherited not only the domains but also the offices of his father, the
+distinction between the magistrate sent from the king and the lord of
+the manor was done away; and the titles of duke and count no longer
+expressed merely an office, an honour, or a dignity, but sovereign rights.
+The feudal system was thus inscribed in the law.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1c"><a href="#endnote_1c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[877-879 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Such was the condition in which Charles the Bald left France when,
+in 877, he went to Italy, to fulfil the obligations he had contracted on receiving
+the imperial crown. Pope John VIII had begged him to drive the
+Saracens from the peninsula, and repress the aggressions of his nephew
+Carloman, king of Bavaria, a pretender to the empire. It is astonishing, the
+persistence with which Charlemagne’s descendants, in taking arms against
+each other, not only hastened the disorganisation of their own states, but
+accomplished the rapid ruin of their house in Italy, Germany, and even
+France, where it lasted three or four generations longer than anywhere else.
+The campaign of 877 bore no result. Charles’ only idea after he got to Italy
+seems to have been to pillage the imperial domains. Abandoned for the
+most part by his vassals, he was obliged to return to France, fell ill during
+the return, and died the 6th of October, a few days after he had crossed the
+Mont Cenis.</p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS II TO CARLOMAN (877-884 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Louis the Stammerer, given a share in the throne during his father’s lifetime,
+was crowned by Hincmar at Compiègne in presence of most of the
+great vassals. By the advice of Hincmar the new king pledged himself to
+disturb no man in the possession of his benefices or offices and to respect the
+liberty of the churches. He was also obliged to make a distribution of lands,
+abbeys, and counties “to whoever,” says one chronicle, “demanded them first.”</p>
+
+<p>Charles the Bald had worn four crowns, those of France, the empire,
+Italy, and Lorraine. His son inherited the first only. The imperial crown
+and the crown of Italy passed to the head of a Carlovingian prince of the
+Germanic branch. Ludwig of Saxony contended with Louis the Stammerer
+for that of Lorraine and the two claimants came to terms by dividing the
+kingdom on the bases of the treaty of 870. This treaty was renewed in 878
+at Fouron on the Maas. The south was troubled by the revolt of Bernhard,
+marquis of Gothia, who took arms and formed a league of malcontents. But
+Bernhard, count of Auvergne, and Boson, duke of Provence, took from him
+successively Gothia and several counties which he possessed in Burgundy.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p008.jpg" width="300" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis III and Carloman</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[879-885 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis the Stammerer, having fallen into a decline, died in 879 at Compiègne
+leaving two sons, Louis and Carloman, of whom the eldest was sixteen
+years old. The seigneurs were divided; some wished to proclaim the young
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>French princes, others to give the crown to the German prince, Ludwig of
+Saxony. But the party of French princes was the most numerous and the
+abbot Hugo, who was its leader, hastened to crown the two brothers.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1d1"><a href="#endnote_1d">d</a></span> Two
+victories over the Northmen, notably
+that of Saucourt in Vimeu, gave a little
+glory to these princes. But these
+advantages did not prevent the recommencement
+of brigandage. In 885 the
+famous Hastings gave up the county
+of Chartres, and Carloman paid the
+others of his race to take themselves
+off. “They promised peace,” says the
+chronicler sadly, “for as many years
+as we could count them one thousand
+pounds’ weight of silver.” The two
+kings died by accident, Louis in 882,
+Carloman in 884. One had governed
+the north of France, the other Burgundy
+and Aquitaine.</p>
+
+<h3>CHARLES THE FAT, KING AND EMPEROR (884-887 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>These two had a brother, Charles
+the Simple, but the nobles preferred
+a grandson of Louis le Débonnaire,
+Charles the Fat, then emperor and
+king of Germany. The whole heritage of Charlemagne was now reunited
+in Charles the Fat’s hands. But times had changed. This man weighted
+down with so many crowns could not even inspire terror in the Northmen.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[885-887 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Charles had already ceded Friesland to one of their chiefs. Another,
+the famous Rollo, a kind of giant who, as legend tells us, always went
+about on foot because no horse could be found for his mount, had recently
+taken Rouen and Pontoise and killed the duke of Le Mans. At the
+approach of his countrymen, the new count of Chartres, the former pirate
+Hastings, hastened to meet them and all marched upon Paris, which had
+already three times submitted to the sack. But Paris had recently been
+fortified. Great towers covered the bridges (Petit-Pont and Pont-au-Change)
+which connected the island of the city of Paris with the two
+shores. The Seine was then barricaded with seven hundred huge barges in
+which the Northmen intended to voyage into Burgundy, a region they had
+not yet visited. The inhabitants, encouraged by their bishop Gozlin and by
+Count Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, held out for one year. The attack
+began November 26th, 885. The tower of the Grand-Pont, on the right
+bank, not being finished, the Northmen assailed it. For two days they
+fought there with great fury and Bishop Gozlin was wounded by a javelin.
+The Northmen were driven back and intrenched themselves in a camp
+around the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, where deserters soon taught
+them all the knowledge of Roman military science that had survived the
+ages. The invaders first built a three-storied rolling tower, but when they
+tried to bring it up to the walls, the Parisians killed with arrows those who
+were moving it. Then they advanced with battering-rams, some under
+portable screens covered with raw leather for protection from fire, and some
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>under shields in the form of the Roman testudo. When they came to the
+edge of the moat they began to fill it up with earth, fascines, whole trees,
+and even the bodies of captives whom they put to death before the very
+eyes of the besieged. While those farthest away drove off the defenders of
+the battlements with a hail-storm of arrows and leaden ball, those close to the
+tower hammered it with the rams; but all in vain. The Parisians poured
+streams of boiling oil, wax, and molten pitch upon the enemy; their catapults
+hurled huge rocks which crushed the assailants’ screens and shields,
+and let down iron hooks which tore away the coverings and made the enemy
+a target for their arrows. Three blazing ships floated down to the bridge,
+were stopped by the abutting stone piles, and could not set it on fire.</p>
+
+<p>This hopeless resistance had lasted for more than two months when a
+sudden rise of the river carried away, on the night of February 6th, 886,
+a portion of the “Petit-Pont.” The Northmen immediately rushed upon
+the tower on the left bank, now cut off from the city. Only twelve men
+were stationed there, but they held out for a whole day and then retired,
+still fighting, to the wreckage of the bridge. Finally they surrendered on
+the promise that their lives would be saved, but as soon as the barbarians
+got hold of these brave men they put them to death. One of them, of
+gigantic frame, appeared to be a chief, and the Northmen decided to spare
+him; but he begged to share the fate of his companions. “You will never
+get ransom for my head,” he told them, and so forced them to kill him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile reports of the Parisians’ courage had spread over the land
+and others were emboldened to emulate their example. Several pirate bands
+which had left the siege were beaten; the counsellor of the emperor Charles,
+Duke Henry, succeeded even in getting relief into the besieged town, but
+the pagans still maintained the blockade. Misery became extreme in the
+city and many people died. Bishop Gozlin and the count of Anjou “passed
+to the Lord.” The brave count Eudes managed to make his way out and
+went to hasten the emperor’s arrival, and when he saw the latter started,
+went back to his besieged people. The promised relief finally appeared,
+Duke Henry at its head. Wishing to reconnoitre the situation himself the
+duke advanced too near, and his horse fell into one of the Northmen’s pits.
+Here he was killed and those who had come with him were disbanded.
+Paris was once more left to its fate. The Northmen now believed that
+despair reigned there, and that they could have the people at little cost.
+They began a general attack, but the walls covered with valiant defenders
+proved insurmountable. They then tried to fire the door of the great tower,
+by heaping up against it a great wooden pile, but the Parisians made a sudden
+sortie and drove back the assailants and the fire at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of long months, Charles finally arrived with his army on
+the heights of Montmartre. The Parisians, filled with ardour, awaited the
+signal of combat, when the news came to them that the emperor had bought
+with money the withdrawal of their half vanquished enemy and given the
+barbarians permission to “winter” in Burgundy, that is to say, to ravage
+that province. They at least refused to be a party to this shameful agreement,
+and when the Northmen’s ships presented themselves at the bridges
+they refused to let them pass. The pirates had to drag their boats upon the
+shore and made a wide detour in order to avoid the heroic city (November,
+886). The brave people of Sens imitated the courage of the Parisians and
+resisted the Northmen for six months.</p>
+
+<p>In that year Paris gloriously won its title of capital of France; and its
+chief, the brave count Eudes, laid the foundation of the first national
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>dynasty. The contrast between the courage of the little city and the cowardice
+of the emperor turned everyone against the unworthy prince.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1b2"><a href="#endnote_1b">b</a></span> On
+all sides he was accused of indolence and incapacity. A great weakness of
+body and spirit had come over him. The vassals wanted an able and active
+king.</p>
+
+<p>Those of Germany and Lorraine, assembled at Tribur, near Mainz, in
+887, pronounced Charles’ deposition “because he was lacking,” says the
+<i>Annals</i> of St. Waast, “in the necessary strength to govern the empire.”
+The feeble and unfortunate emperor suffered the fate of the “do-nothing”
+Merovingian kings. He was shut up in the monastery of Reichenau, on
+Lake Constance, and died in about two months.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1d2"><a href="#endnote_1d">d</a></span> The empire of Charlemagne
+was irrevocably dismembered; its pieces served to form seven kingdoms—France,
+Navarre, Cisjurane Burgundy, Transjurane Burgundy,
+Lorraine, Italy, and Germany.</p>
+
+<h3>THE FEUDAL RÉGIME</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[843-887 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But it was not only the empire that was dismembered; it was also the
+realm and royalty itself. At the close of Charlemagne’s reign, feudalism
+was not yet founded, but it was almost completely established at the death
+of Charles the Bald a half century afterwards. And this was because the
+progress of feudal institutions was singularly hastened by the historical
+events we have just been studying.</p>
+
+<p>Royal authority at the end of Charles the Bald’s reign was ruined, as it
+had been under the later Merovingians, for the same reasons and in the same
+fashion. The king had no more money and he had no more land to give
+away. He tried to take from the church, but the church resisted. The
+bishops assembled in council at Meaux and at Paris in 846, in the early years
+of the reign, advised Charles the Bald to send <i>missi dominici</i> to make a thorough
+investigation of the lands of the royal fisc, which had been usurped.
+“You must not,” they told him, “let a state of poverty, which does not
+accord with your dignity, push your magnificence to do things you would
+not wish to do. You cannot have attendants to serve you in your house,
+unless you have the means to pay them.” Here we see royalty reduced to
+indigence. The king himself recognised it. “We wish,” he said, one day,
+“to determine, with the advice of our faithful, how we may live in our court
+honourably and without poverty, as our predecessor did.”</p>
+
+<p>Since the reign of Charles the Bald, public authority had disappeared.
+The kingdom, ravaged by the Northmen, the Bretons, and the Aquitanians,
+was in the throes of brigandage. Brigandage had sunk so deeply into the
+customs of the country that oaths were exacted from freemen not to attack
+houses or to conceal robbers. In his twenty-third capitulary (857) the king,
+after speaking of the infinite evils caused not only by the incursions of the
+pagans, but also by the vagabondage of some of his own royal subjects, orders
+the bishops, counts, and <i>missi</i> to call together general meetings which everyone
+without exception must attend. The bishop was to read to the gathering
+the precepts of the Gospels, the fathers, and the prophets against brigandage.
+The capitulary itself furnished quotations from Christ, the prophet Isaiah,
+St. Augustine and St. Gregory. If these were not sufficient the bishop was
+to add all those he might find himself. He was also to threaten all hardened
+sinners with anathema, and to explain to them what a terrible punishment it
+was. On their own side the counts and missi were to read the laws of Charles
+and of Louis against brigandage.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span></p>
+
+<p>If these readings had no effect the guilty man was threatened with the
+sentence of the bishops and the prosecution of the judges. If he showed contempt
+for the one or the other he could be summoned to the king’s presence.
+If he refused to come he would be excluded from the holy church, on earth
+as well as in heaven. He would be pursued until driven from the realm.
+But to this there must be a public force, and such existed no longer; and this
+is why the king was compelled to replace it with sermons and threats of hell.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/p011.jpg" width="400" height="575" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Ruins of a Norman Church, France</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In no age of history did the weak have more need of protection than in
+the tenth and eleventh centuries, and this is why the last freemen disappeared
+throughout a large portion of Gaul, especially north of the Loire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></p>
+
+<p>After having fled for a long time at the approach of the pagans to the
+forest, among the wild beasts, some stout-hearted had turned their heads
+and refused to abandon all they had without some attempt at defence. Here
+and there in mountain gorges, at river fords, or on the hill overlooking the
+plain, walled strongholds were raised up where the brave and the strong held
+their own. An edict of 862 directed the counts and the king’s vassals
+to repair their old castles and to build new ones. The country was soon
+covered with these strongholds against which invaders often flung themselves
+in vain. A few defeats taught these bold people prudence, and they
+dared not venture so far amid these fortresses which had sprung out of the
+ground on all sides, and the new invasion, now made hazardous and difficult,
+came to an end in the following century. The masters of these castles
+became later the terror of the country side they had helped to save. Feudalism
+so oppressive in its age of decadence had its legitimate term. All
+power is raised up by its good services and falls by its abuses. These
+hedged and walled-in castles were places of refuge from the Northmen, but
+often also they became nests of brigands. However, little by little, out of
+the chaos came a new order of things.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen how the king and his nobles assured themselves of the
+services of a greater or less number of men by giving them benefices or
+rather taking these men under their protection by making them their
+vassals. One might be a beneficiary without being a vassal or a vassal
+without being a beneficiary; in the days of Charles the Bald there were
+vassals who held no land. These were the <i>vagi homines</i>, so often mentioned
+in the prince’s edicts—brigands in search of fortune and who transferred
+their loyalty from one noble to another at their pleasure. It was to remedy
+these disorders and to organise these unruly members of society that Charles
+the Bald ordered every freeman to choose a lord and remain faithful to him.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless it happened more often than otherwise that the man who
+received a piece of land made himself a vassal of the man who gave it to him,
+but the two states finally became much confused. One might be at the
+same time both beneficiary and vassal, and take upon himself the very
+narrow obligations of one and the other condition. Indeed after a property
+had been held for several generations by men who inherited their obligations
+together with the land, it seemed as if the fief carried its rights and
+duties with it and communicated them to those that held it. In the end
+the property, which always remained, was considered rather than the men,
+who came and went. It was no longer the weak man who bound himself to
+the strong one but the little acreage to the great domain, and certain formalities
+symbolised this new relation. The land became his in a manner to
+replace itself in the hands of the great landlord, in the shape of a clod of
+sod or the branch of a tree, which the petty proprietor brought himself.
+This land, so burdened with obligations, was the fief.</p>
+
+<p>When France became covered with fiefs each property had its own
+organisation; it had its lord, great or small, and there was no land without
+its lord. Whoever had no land had no condition, for there was no lord
+without his land. Certain relations were established between the different
+fiefs—there were some which were dominant and others which were dominated.
+The dominant fiefs were those of the dukes and the counts, who
+assumed all the power which royalty had delegated them and who ruled as
+petty kings over their duchies and counties. Their vassals and the latters’
+sub-vassals depended upon them before depending upon the king. As for
+the dukes and counts, they were the vassals of the king, but as the feudal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>hierarchy developed, the obligation of the vassal became, as a matter of fact,
+less strict. The duke of Burgundy’s vassals obeyed him; of course the
+duke of Burgundy would not make the mistake of disobeying the king.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the great revolution accomplished at the end of the ninth and in
+the tenth century. After the deposition of Charles the Fat appeared the great
+fiefs whose names we find over and over again throughout the whole of French
+history. The duke of Gascony owned all the country south of the Garonne,
+and the counts of Toulouse, Auvergne, Périgord, Poitou, and Berri, the district
+between the Garonne and the Loire. To the east and north of the latter
+river everything belonged to the count of Forez, the duke of Burgundy, the
+duke of France, and to the counts of Flanders and Brittany who exercised
+their royal rights over the land. To the kings remained only a few towns
+which he had not yet been constrained to give away in fiefs.</p>
+
+<h3>THE CHURCH</h3>
+
+<p>In the ninth century royalty fell and feudalism arose; the former had
+lost its strength, the latter had not yet acquired that which it was soon to
+have. The church alone had all the power. She wanted nothing—the
+authority in knowledge and morality, the ardent faith of the people, rich
+domains—in fact, while everything was breaking up and civil and political
+society going to pieces, the ecclesiastical body showed its unity and its healthy
+condition in the fifty-six councils which were held in the reign of Charles the
+Bald alone. The bishops, reasoning on the right of the church to interfere
+in the conduct of every man guilty of sin in order to correct and punish him,
+arrived logically at the pretension that they could depose kings and dispose
+of their crowns. They were not only the ministers of religion, but participated
+at the time in the administration of public affairs. Since Charlemagne,
+who brought them into the government of his empire, they may be found taking
+part in all affairs and speaking everywhere with authority. These were
+they who degraded and re-established Louis le Débonnaire, who told at
+Fontenailles on which side justice lay. In 859 Charles the Bald, threatened
+with deposition by some of the bishops because he violated his own laws,
+could find nothing further to reply to this assumption of authority than that
+“having been consecrated and anointed with the holy chrism, he could not
+be overthrown on his throne, nor supplanted by anyone without being heard
+and judged by the bishops who had crowned him king.” This right Archbishop
+Hincmar, of Rheims, the most illustrious personage of his day, had
+haughtily claimed.</p>
+
+<p>This power of the church was a fortunate thing in these days, when might
+made right, for she alone found herself in a position to keep alive the idea
+that justice was above strength; and to oppose the aristocratic principle of
+the feudal organisation, she put forward that of the brotherhood of man. In
+place of hereditary primogeniture which prevailed in civil society, she practised
+election for herself and proclaimed the rights of the intellect. If the
+prerogative of deposing kings which she claimed was a usurpation of temporal
+authority it must be recognised that the latter had no antidote but the sacerdotal
+power, and the weak and oppressed no other security than the protection
+of the churches. When Lothair II, king of Lorraine, put away without
+reason Queen Thietberga in order to marry Waldrada, Pope Nicholas I took
+up the poor, betrayed, outraged woman’s cause, and at the risk of persecution
+established her rights. While law was impotent and opinion without strength,
+it is well that somewhere there existed an avenger of outraged morality.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1b3"><a href="#endnote_1b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CAPETIANS AND CARLOVINGIANS (887-936 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[887-911 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Eight kings shared in the division of the empire through the deposition
+of Charles the Fat. In France it was Eudes, count of Paris, who had just
+defended that town against the Normans and whose glory was heightened by
+contrast with the ignominious conduct of Charles the Fat.</p>
+
+<p>The accession of Count Eudes was an important fact, although overestimated
+perhaps, if one wishes to regard it as a bridge between Gaul and
+France and between the Franks and the French. It was not the beginning
+of a revolution of which he was the consummation; nor yet a point of departure,
+for it was Frenchmen rather than Angevins who fought with Robert the
+Strong at Brissarthe. However, apart from the fact itself, the reign of the
+first French king was certainly important. The Normans, turned loose upon
+Burgundy by Charles the Fat, had gone still further; they threw themselves
+upon Champagne which they were proceeding to ruin with fire and sword
+when the new king attacked them in the defiles of the Argonne, near Montfaucon.
+A brilliant victory made a worthy beginning to his reign, but that
+was all. Wearied by the fruitless struggle, occupied elsewhere by the anxieties
+which Aquitaine gave him where through race jealousy his “usurpation,”
+as the monks of that time and the seventeenth century historians called it,
+had not been recognised, and at a time when they placed at the head of acts,
+<i>Christi regante: rege nullo</i> (“in the reign of Christ and absence of the
+king”). Eudes finally adopted the Carlovingian policy and drove the Normans
+back with his purse. What brought about his ruin was that he broke
+too abruptly with the feudalism that made him king. His cousin Vaucher
+rebelled against royal authority. Eudes could not understand that this
+authority was no longer anything but a phantom, even in his hands, and he
+had his cousin’s head cut off after obtaining his submission. The people
+deplored the light-hearted nonentity of a Carlovingian king, but a faction
+which formed in favour of young Charles the Simple, youngest son of Louis
+the Stammerer, waxed in strength until the former count of Paris was obliged
+to capitulate. He admitted his rival to a sort of partnership and at his death
+the kingdom of France returned to Germanic dominion, if we can admit, that
+it is still possible to recall the Austrasian origin of Charles the Simple (898).</p>
+
+<p>Under this reign the people were finally delivered from the long Norman
+invasion, which stopped of its own accord, and by act of the invaders rather
+than resistance of the invaded. Since the time the Norman vassals collected
+at the mouth of the Seine, the country round about had been nothing
+but a desert, towns abandoned, villages in ashes; one could travel whole
+leagues without even hearing a dog bark. Since there was nothing more
+to be got they ran the risk of dying by hunger. The Normans finally perceived
+with their positive spirit that it was better to take possession of the
+land than to pillage its ruined inhabitants, and that it was worth more to
+make these rich territories valuable than to get sustenance from their ruins.
+Thenceforth everything was changed. The fleets from the north brought
+colonists instead of pirates, and the peasants found in their midst a protection
+which they could not have gotten anywhere else.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[911-923 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The new plan had been in operation for some time when a great emigration
+was determined upon in the north, owing to the subjection of all the
+chiefs under one head. The movement set out in the direction of Neustria
+under the leadership of Rollo, the famous sea-king—one of those who had
+assisted at the siege of Paris in the days of Charles the Fat, and had established
+a fixed home in that country. For some years the new-comers kept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>up their old practises. They burned St. Martin of Tours, and went to
+Bourges and killed the bishop. Rollo reappeared before the towers of the
+châtelet. Finally he came to an understanding with Charles the Simple,
+who gave him his daughter Gisela in marriage and raised him to the rank of
+the feudal barons, by legalising his seizure of Neustria. Rollo became duke
+of Normandy, and the king of France’s vassal, not without making the latter
+often feel that he troubled himself little about the nominal suzerainty.
+When the time for doing homage came and they wished him to do it in the
+Carlovingian manner, by kissing the sovereign’s foot, “No, by God,”
+exclaimed the proud sea-king, and he signed to one of his soldiers to kiss the
+royal foot for him. But the soldier, not less proud, seized Charles’ foot and
+put it to his lips without kissing it. The king fell back and his people
+remained dumb and motionless amid the laughter of Rollo and his companions<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+(912). The barbaric traits of the Normans did not prevent their
+quickly assimilating the semi-civilisation they found in their new country.
+Normandy was soon the most prosperous and best policed province in the
+kingdom. As Ordericus Vitalis<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1i"><a href="#endnote_1i">i</a></span> says, a child could have crossed it in safety,
+a purse full of gold in his hand. There runs a tale that one day while hunting
+Rollo hung his gold bracelets on a tree and they remained there two
+years without anyone’s daring to touch them.</p>
+
+<p>Charles the Simple lost no time in indemnifying himself for the cession
+of Neustria by the acquisition of Lorraine which became his on the death of
+Louis the Child, son of the emperor Arnulf; but he did not profit long
+by this addition to his realm. He had made a favourite of a person of low
+degree, a man named Haganon. Haganon, more solicitous than his master
+to uphold the royal dignity, soon displayed the desire of raising it, to his own
+profit, from the state of subjection in which it was kept by the powerful
+nobles. Two of the latter presented themselves four days in succession
+to speak with the king and waited in vain at the door of his bed-chamber.
+They finally went away thoroughly angry, saying that Haganon would soon
+be king with Charles, or Charles a man of low condition with Haganon.
+Of these two noblemen, one was Henry the Fowler, or the Saxon, king of
+Germany, and the other Robert, duke of France, brother of the late king
+Eudes.</p>
+
+<p>In 920, at a court held at Soissons, the nobles assembled together, all
+broke the blades of straw and threw them on the ground at the feet of
+Charles the Simple, declaring that they disowned him as their king. Each
+took his departure at once, and Charles remained alone on the spot where
+the assemblage had met. There followed two years of hesitation, at the end
+of which Robert, duke of France, caused himself to be proclaimed king in
+the cathedral of Rheims by his vassals and those of his son-in-law, Rudolf
+of Burgundy. Charles having retired to Lorraine, the new king prepared
+to seek him as far as the foot of the Ardennes. He did not anticipate any
+resistance, but Haganon purchased the services of a band of Normans, living
+along the Maas, which Charles led in person into Robert’s domains.
+A battle took place on the plain of St. Médard (Soissons) near the Aisne
+(923). Robert, throwing his long white beard over his coat of arms, seized
+his banner and flung himself into the mêlée. He fell upon Fulbert, his
+rival’s standard-bearer, when Charles cried out, “Take care, Fulbert.” The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>standard-bearer, turning, dodged the blow which Robert was aiming, and
+cleft the duke’s head with his sword. Charles the Simple gained nothing
+by this. Robert’s son, Hugh, hastened up with his brother-in-law, Héribert
+de Vermandois, and remained to the end master of the battle-field, strewn
+with eighteen thousand dead.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[923-927 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Of the two men who had claimed the title of king that morning, one lay
+cold in death, the other was dethroned by defeat. Robert’s son sent to
+consult his sister Emma, wife of Rudolf of Burgundy, to know what he
+should do with the crown on
+his hands. Emma replied that
+she would prefer to kiss the
+knees of her husband rather
+than those of her brother, and
+Rudolf was made king (July
+13th, 923).</p>
+
+<p>The aged Rollo was now
+minded of the homage which
+he had formerly held so cheaply,
+and as faithful vassal loudly
+declared himself the protector
+of the vanquished king. Doubtless
+he preferred such a sovereign
+as Charles the Simple to
+a connection with that powerful
+house of the dukes of France,
+who moved everything at their
+pleasure. Unfortunately he did
+not have the king in his hands.
+Charles had taken refuge at
+Bonn with the king of Germany,
+the same Henry the Fowler
+whom he had once kept waiting
+at his own door. He wished
+now to make use of the services
+of Héribert of Vermandois, who
+swore to replace him on the throne. The king sought Count Héribert at the
+gates of St. Quentin, where the latter knelt and kissed the king’s knee.
+The count’s son refused to do the same and Héribert took him by the neck
+and forced him to kneel. Then he conducted the king into St. Quentin and
+entertained him with great magnificence. But the next day he had him
+seized in the night and conducted to Château Thierry, whence they carried
+him to the tower of Péronne. Héribert then marched with Rudolf against
+the Normans, who were with great difficulty driven back from the Île-de-France
+and Beauvoisis. Rudolf believed himself mortally wounded during
+an encounter in Artois and the inhabitants of Laon saw him carried into their
+city on a barrow. Rollo died a short time afterwards, leaving as successor
+his son, William Longsword.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p016.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Rudolf, King of France</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[927-942 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The count of Vermandois had not undertaken this piece of treachery for
+nothing, and had already obtained the archbishopric of Rheims for his son,
+a child of five years. They placed the boy on a table in the presence of the
+bishops, and after stammering a few words of catechism, he was consecrated
+with the approbation of the onlookers. But even this did not satisfy the
+father’s ambition, who demanded the county of Laon for himself. Rudolf,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>who was finding his restless and dangerous auxiliary too powerful, feared
+perhaps the fate of Charles the Simple, and met the demand with a refusal.
+Thereupon Héribert dragged Charles from prison, clothed him in rich raiment,
+and took him to the court of William Longsword, who saluted him as king.
+This was all that was needed to decide Rudolf, who ceded the county of Laon,
+and Charles was put back in Péronne. But when Héribert tried to commence
+the same game again, Rudolf this time took up arms and pressed him
+so hotly that he was obliged to flee to Germany. There now remained to
+him nothing but Péronne, but Henry the Fowler, the count of Flanders, and
+the duke of Lorraine interfered; Rudolf gave him back his possessions
+and died soon after without a male heir (936). Charles the Simple had
+preceded him by a few years to the tomb (929). The vacant throne was
+for a second time at the disposition of the duke of France, who did not want
+it, since he found it much pleasanter to remain peacefully in real possession,
+pre-eminent as he was among the feudal lords, than to plunge himself into
+interminable controversies by placing on his head a crown which had become
+the target for so much contention. Rudolf’s enemies, of whom we have
+mentioned but a small part, had much reason to support the duke in this
+resolution. Hugh now remembered that at the time of the fall of Charles
+the Simple the latter’s wife Odgiwe had taken to England their son Louis,
+then a child, but now, after thirteen years of exile, entering upon his sixteenth
+year. Hugh congratulated himself on his great mind and went after him.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS (936-987 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Louis IV, surnamed Louis d’Outre-Mer on account of his long sojourn
+on the other side of the Channel, occupied the throne eighteen years, but
+his reign was one long humiliation. Hugh exploited his generosity to the
+king, as Héribert had done about his treachery, and scarcely got him to
+the shores of France than he dragged him to the duchy of Burgundy
+and made Louis invest him with it; and moreover Louis had the chagrin
+of seeing that his act was useless. Hugh the Black, Rudolf’s brother,
+bravely defended his heritage. The royal signature served nothing
+to the duke of France who, armed as he was, could only snatch a
+few shreds from the duchy of Burgundy. Thwarted in his ambition
+he turned to other things and demanded the county of Laon. Following
+Rudolf’s example, Louis refused this demand, but for a still more
+powerful reason. The county of Laon was the sole domain left the crown
+through the usurpations of feudalism. Louis, who would have been nothing
+more than a stranger in his kingdom if this were taken from him, preferred a
+one-sided struggle. Fortunately for him, the emperor Otto came to his
+rescue, but not before he was besieged in his own city, and deserted by his
+most faithful partisans. The presence of the imperial army saved him from
+disaster, but Otto when he went home did not leave him any the stronger.
+Incapable of holding his own so close to the duke of France, Louis appeared
+before the people of Aquitaine, always favourably disposed towards the Carlovingian
+kings, since they had nothing to fear from them and had shown
+no more preference for the kingship of Duke Rudolf than they had for that
+of Count Eudes. Well received everywhere, Louis nevertheless encountered
+but a sterile compassion, and must have thought himself fortunate in that
+the duke of France, become more formidable than ever since the death of
+Héribert de Vermandois, was willing to await an occasion of revolt or rather
+of war.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p018.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis IV</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[942-948 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile William Longsword had met a tragic end, assassinated by
+Arnulf, count of Flanders, after an interview on one of the islands of the
+Somme, in December, 942. He left one
+son named Richard, only ten years old.
+The moment was now favourable for Louis
+to assert the royal authority, inactive in
+his hands. He appeared at once in Rouen,
+received the homage of the young Richard,
+and made himself the child’s guardian.
+The people nearly besieged the house in
+which he lodged when they learned that
+he intended to take the boy back to Laon,
+but a few tactful words calmed everything.
+But once he had the young duke in his
+palace he used no more caution. The child,
+separated from all his Norman attendants,
+even from his tutor, found himself in truth
+a captive. The people who looked after
+him were severely reprimanded on one
+occasion for having taken him outside
+the city on a hunt for birds. Evidently the
+king’s intention was to strengthen the
+royal crown by putting it under the protection
+of the ducal crown of Normandy.
+Osmond, Richard’s tutor, cut this dream
+short by a bold stratagem. Disguised as
+a groom he managed to get near his pupil,
+enveloped him in a bale of hay, and carried
+him thus on his shoulders to the outskirts
+of Laon, where horses were waiting.
+Touched to the quick Louis d’Outre-Mer appealed to the ambition of Hugh
+of France and proposed to share Normandy with him if he would help get
+it back. Hugh agreed, but scarcely was Louis established in Normandy than
+he forgot his promises and sent the duke back to Paris. But the king paid
+dearly for this breach of faith. At news of the subjection with which their
+Neustrian brothers were threatened, the Northmen sent a large fleet under
+the command of Harold, the Dane. A battle took place on the banks of the
+Dive, not far from Rouen, in which the French were completely routed (945).
+Louis, wandering swordless through the country at the will of his horse,
+whose bridle had been cut by sword-blows, met a soldier from Rouen who,
+anxious for the king’s safety, concealed him on an island in the Seine, where
+however he was discovered. The king’s liberty was negotiated with great
+show by Hugh of France, who finally got him out of the Normans’ hands.
+Great was the surprise when the end of this fine devotion became known.
+From his Norman prison Louis entered another which Hugh was determined
+he should not leave until he gave up the city and county of Laon. After this
+last misfortune Louis seemed less a king than a ruined lord. He filled the
+German court with his plaints, wrote to the pope, and summoned councils.
+Councils, pope, and emperor all failed before Hugh’s will. Finally tired of
+the fight, and knowing well that Louis would be none the more formidable
+with it, Hugh gave the county back to the king, who did not enjoy it for long.
+Four years later, while pursuing a wolf on the road from Rheims to Laon,
+Louis’ horse threw him and he died from the fall (954).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[948-980 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Hugh had obtained a part of Burgundy on the return of Louis d’Outre-Mer;
+he now made use of the accession of Louis’ son Lothair, to have Aquitaine
+given him. But this time again, the royal sanction was powerless.
+William, duke of Aquitaine, received the invader in arms, and the war
+lasted for two years, when the duke of France died. He had named two
+kings and permitted a third to reign. Hugh Capet, his eldest son, inherited
+the duchy of France, and at the same time his father’s great influence, which
+he used in more moderate fashion.</p>
+
+<p>He never came into hostility with Lothair throughout the latter’s whole
+reign. He looked on quietly while the king was active in the east, west,
+and north, trying to get his hands on Normandy, seizing some territory from
+the count of Flanders, which he had to give back, and making military
+excursions into Lorraine as far as the borders of Germany. This fruitless
+activity, this restless desire to attempt hopeless conquests, was in singular
+contrast with Hugh Capet’s power of repose. One would have said that the
+latter divined the future and that he disdained to forestall fortune by a
+single step in the belief of what would come to him.</p>
+
+<p>In all this empty reign there is but one event that offers anything of
+interest. During an expedition in Lorraine (978), the principal object of
+his covetousness, Lothair came unexpectedly upon Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle),
+where Otto II was then staying. The emperor was about to sit down to
+table when the arrival of the king of France forced him to flee, and Lothair
+ate the dinner prepared for Otto. Otto swore to sing to him beneath the
+walls of Paris such a Halleluiah as the king had never heard; and what
+seemed like an angry piece of bravado was really carried out. The emperor
+appeared with sixty thousand men upon the heights of Montmartre after
+having ravaged the country around Rheims, Laon, and Soissons, and caused
+to be intoned by a number of clerks the Halleluiah with which he had threatened
+Parisian ears, and in the chorus of which this whole army joined.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>
+Paris was avenged for this din; for in crossing the Aisne, swollen by storms,
+on his return, Otto lost his booty, baggage, and all his rearguard (980). It
+is true that he carried away with him the remembrance of the most formidable
+psalmody of which history makes mention, and the honour of having planted
+his lance in one of the gates of Paris; but these were rather frivolous achievements
+for the son of Otto the Great, and his Halleluiah would certainly have
+produced much more effect had he taken his sixty thousand men to sing it at
+Rome.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1f"><a href="#endnote_1f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The campaign, however, was successful in having raised mutual disgust
+between Lothair and Hugh Capet, the latter finding himself exposed to
+incursions and ravage from the idle ambition and provocation of Lothair,
+who was unable to support him by any force; while Lothair, on his side,
+saw that Hugh merely protected his own territories, without caring for Laon
+or Lorraine. Lothair, therefore, became reconciled to Otto, held a meeting
+with him on the Maas, and, as the price of the emperor’s friendship, waived
+his pretensions to Lorraine, at which his followers’ hearts <i>corda Francorum</i>,
+says the Chronicle of St. Denis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1j"><a href="#endnote_1j">j</a></span> were much saddened. If the descendant of
+Charlemagne gave up his claims upon Lorraine to Otto, it was idle for Hugh
+Capet to remain in hostility with the German emperor. The latter, after
+his pacification with Lothair, had gone to Italy; thither Hugh Capet sent,
+proffering friendship and alliance with Otto. The reply was an invitation
+to the duke to visit the emperor in Italy: a request with which Hugh Capet
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>complied, to the great anxiety and suspicion of Lothair, who, according to
+Richer,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1k1"><a href="#endnote_1k">k</a></span> used every effort to have Hugh’s return intercepted. The latter
+felt it necessary to pass the Alps in the disguise of a groom, and thus
+returned to his duchy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[980-987 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Otto II expired in 982. Henry of Bavaria claimed the throne, setting
+aside the right of the future Otto III, a boy of but five years of age; and
+Lothair, alive to every opportunity of gaining Lorraine, leagued with Henry,
+and undertook an expedition to the Rhine. The people of the country were,
+however, hostile to him, and he retreated with some difficulty. In the following
+year he was more fortunate; aided by Héribert of Troyes, he succeeded
+in winning possession of the strong town of Verdun, from the walls
+of which he repelled all the efforts of the Lorraine chiefs to expel him.
+A gleam of prosperity thus shone upon Lothair, when death carried him off
+in 986. His eldest son, who had been crowned by anticipation several years
+previous, succeeded to the hopeful position of his father. Even Hugh Capet
+seemed inclined to restore his friendship and protection, as the first act of
+the young king was, in concert with the duke, to march to the reduction
+of the archiepiscopal town of Rheims.</p>
+
+<p>It is considered by M. Thierry, who has been in general followed by
+modern French historians, that the principal cause which about this time
+led to the enthronement of Hugh Capet as king of France or of the French,
+in place of the Carlovingian princes, was the antipathy of race, and especially
+that of French against Germans, which prompted the chiefs and the population
+of the central provinces to throw off the yoke of the Germans, which
+the Lorraine or Belgian princes were to a certain degree. A study of the
+records and chronicles of the time does not lead to this conclusion. On the contrary,
+they prove beyond a question that the personages and the party which
+were most influential in awarding the crown definitively to Hugh Capet
+were precisely Belgian or Lorraine, and attached moreover to German interests.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto the Carlovingian princes had maintained their hold and influence
+in their own circumscribed territories by the support of the archiepiscopal
+church of Rheims, which maintained its jealousy both of the duke of
+Paris and of the German emperor, labouring at the same time to save and
+to recover its church property, as best it might, from the counts ever ready to
+despoil it.</p>
+
+<p>Adalbero, son of Godfrey, count of the Ardennes, had been promoted to
+that see, and had laboured to reform and restore it. The prelate Adalbero
+was not what his predecessor had been, a devoted partisan of the Carlovingian
+princes. He saw that they were too weak to protect the church,
+especially that of Rheims, which, situated between the frontiers of two great
+nations, was continually the spoil of both. Adalbero, connected with all the
+German noblesse and princely families of Lorraine, was for preserving that
+province for the young emperor Otto; and his letters of exhortation written
+by Gerbert, addressed to all the prelates and counts of the border region,
+entreat them to resist all the efforts of Lothair and Louis, whilst recommending
+that they make a friend of Hugh, duke of France.</p>
+
+<p>Policy so hostile to them on the part of the prelate of Rheims excited
+the inveterate enmity of the Carlovingian princes; and, at length, Louis
+marched to reduce Rheims with an army that Adalbero could not for the
+moment resist, for he gave hostages to answer for his conduct before an
+assembly that was to be convened. The prelate did this, apparently, in
+connivance with Hugh Capet, between whom and Adalbero there was in all
+probability an early agreement to aim at the setting aside of the Carlovingians,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>and the division between the German emperor and Hugh Capet
+of the countries between France and Lorraine. The great obstacle to the
+completion of such a scheme, young king Louis, was at this very time
+carried off.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1g1"><a href="#endnote_1g">g</a></span> As the result of a fall from a horse “he was seized with a great
+pain in his liver and a burning fever; much blood flowed from his nose
+and throat”; he died May 21st, 987. Such is the simple account of the
+contemporary, Richer.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1k2"><a href="#endnote_1k">k</a></span> But if Adhémar de Chabannes<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1l"><a href="#endnote_1l">l</a></span> and other more recent
+chroniclers are to be believed Louis died “the same death as his father,
+of a poisoned draught given by his wife.” This more dramatic tradition
+has prevailed with the greatest number. The multitude were not
+willing to believe that so famous a dynasty could have come to an end by a
+burning fever or a commonplace accident. Both father and son died most
+opportunely for Hugh Capet, and what we know of the moral tone of that
+century allows us to suspect anything: but the testimony of Richer lends
+all the more weight to Hugh’s justification, since the monk of Rheims is a
+partisan of the ancient dynasty and not of the Capets.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1h"><a href="#endnote_1h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The meeting of chiefs and prelates already summoned at Compiègne to
+hear Louis’ accusation of Adalbero took place. But no accuser appeared.
+Charles the uncle of Louis held aloof. By his conduct as lord of Cambray,
+which dignity he had accepted under the suzerainty of the emperor, he had
+alienated the clergy, the French or Franci, both of Laon and of the duchy
+of France, as well as public opinion in general. He had made a lowly
+marriage, lived a dissipated life, and had, in fine, but few friends. Hugh
+Capet took upon himself to absolve Adalbero of the crime laid to his charge,
+that crime being treason to the Carlovingian family, which was then in
+the thoughts and purposes of all. It was, however, judged right to defer the
+final decision, and to appoint another meeting at Senlis, where, after due
+reflection and deliberation, a solemn resolve might be made. In the interval
+between the assemblies, Charles came to remonstrate with Adalbero. The
+prelate repelled him as one given to the worst vices and the worst associates.
+When the second meeting took place at Senlis, Adalbero represented Charles
+as unworthy of the crown, which he declared had never been hereditary.
+And no doubt Adalbero, as archbishop of Rheims, had in view the example
+of Hatto, archbishop of Mainz, who, on the extinction of the German Carlovingians,
+had rendered the crown of the empire elective, and attributed to
+the church and its metropolitan the chief influence in the election. Hugh
+Capet was therefore unanimously declared king in the midsummer of 987,
+and was solemnly crowned soon after at Noyon.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1g2"><a href="#endnote_1g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-1.jpg" width="500" height="150" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> [The gradual re-absorption of these fiefs or provinces into the royal domain is the story of the
+development of the French monarchy. They were annexed at different periods by conquest,
+purchase, voluntary or forced cession, confiscation, forfeiture, inheritance, marriage, or treaty.
+The reader is referred to the chronological table for the dates and manner of these annexations.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> [“In this unseemly manner,” says White,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_1e"><a href="#endnote_1e">e</a></span> “the pirate of the Baltic, and worshipper
+of the almost forgotten Odin, took his place among the Christian chivalry of Europe as duke of
+Normandy and one of the twelve peers of France.” On his conversion Rollo took the name
+of Robert.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> [It must be stated that this incident, though related by many historians, is based solely
+upon tradition.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-2.jpg" width="500" height="150" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[987-1180 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The period of 240 years—from the accession of Hugh Capet
+to that of St. Louis—is described by Sismondi<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2i1"><a href="#endnote_2i">i</a></span> as “a long interregnum,
+during which the authority of king was extinct, although the name continued
+to subsist.” A history of France, during this period, is a history not of its
+monarch but of its nobles. And as yet these details are neither heroic nor
+important enough to be interesting. A duke had sprung up in Aquitaine, a
+king in Provence. The establishment of the Norman princes has already
+been narrated. Betwixt them and Aquitaine, Anjou obeyed a warlike count.
+To the north, the first Baldwin possessed the county of Flanders betwixt the
+Somme and the Maas. The duchy of Burgundy was formed in the east;
+whilst that of Lorraine was altogether independent of France, and held by
+tongue as well as régime to the empire of Germany. Taking away these
+provinces from the map of France, a central portion will be found to remain
+betwixt the Loire and the Flemish border. Even here, however, the last
+Carlovingians possessed scarcely a castle which they could call their own. The
+counts of Paris possessed that city, as well as Orleans. The counts of Vermandois,
+whose capital was St. Quentin, at this time ruled Champagne also; but
+soon after that province came to increase the territories of the counts of Blois.
+The only town that obeyed the last reigning descendants of Charlemagne
+was Laon, and here they usually resided, unless when obliged to take refuge
+at Rheims, under the protection of the archbishop, against the attacks of the
+surrounding nobles.</p>
+
+<p>Charles of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis V and sole heir of the Carlovingians,
+though thus prevented of his rights, was neither friendless nor vanquished.
+He soon took forcible possession of Laon and of Rheims, from which Hugh
+Capet was unable to drive him by force of arms. He adroitly, however,
+contrived to attach to his interests Ascelin, bishop of Laon, whom Charles,
+somewhat mistrusting, kept with him at Rheims. A conspiracy, formed by
+Ascelin, was attended with complete success. Charles was seized in his bed,
+and, together with his nephew, the archbishop of Rheims, delivered over to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>Hugh Capet. That monarch placed his prisoners in confinement at Orleans,
+where the competitor, Charles of Lorraine, soon after died (991).</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[991-996 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>These, if we except a long quarrel respecting the archbishopric of Rheims,
+are the sole events of the reign of Hugh Capet, which is supposed to have
+occupied nine years. Some modern historians regard the founder of the third
+dynasty of French monarchs as a hero and a master spirit, whose talents won
+for him a crown. Others, amongst whom is Sismondi,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2i2"><a href="#endnote_2i">i</a></span> represent him as a
+pious sluggard, indebted solely to fortune
+for his elevation. Both are in extreme.
+We see no proof of his heroism. But his
+was an iron age, in which the exertions of
+individuals had slight power in changing
+the course of events. Nor does it follow
+that, because he was pious, he was pusillanimous.
+He made war on the count of
+Montreuil, to recover the relics of St.
+Riquier, which that count had stolen.
+Hugh Capet compelled him to surrender
+them, and himself bore the memorable
+remains on his royal shoulders to the abbey
+of the saint. Such is the account of the
+chroniclers. But if we observe that Hugh
+at the same time built and fortified Abbeville,
+the monarch will not seem altogether
+sunk in the superstitious votary.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p023.jpg" width="250" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Robert II, King of France</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Who made thee count?” demanded
+Hugh Capet of a refractory noble, supposed
+by some to be Talleyrand, count of
+Angoulême. “The same right that made
+thee king,” was the bold reply. Such was
+the measure of the new monarch’s authority.
+The great feudatories, in consenting
+to place the crown on one of their own body, thought less of his elevation
+than of humbling the throne. Their views were sound, if they considered
+but themselves—short sighted, if they looked forward to posterity. Feudality
+ascended the throne with Hugh Capet; and, despite the precautions or
+intentions of the founders, the head of so powerful a system could not long
+remain powerless himself. Organised as society now was in regular and
+successive gradations of inferior and superior, a supreme chief became necessary
+to complete the whole. There was something wanting to crown the
+structure. The nobles imagined to adorn it with the lifeless image of royalty.
+But their statue, like Pygmalion’s, took life as it became the object of veneration,
+and grew at length to wield its sceptre with a muscular arm.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[996-1035 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Hugh Capet had taken the precaution to have his son crowned and consecrated
+during his own lifetime. Thus, on the demise of the former, Robert II
+found himself the undisputed king of France. The young monarch was
+one of those soft, domestic tempers which fate so often misplaces on a throne.
+He had married Bertha, the widow of the count of Blois, and was tenderly
+attached to her. The spouses had the misfortune to be distantly related, and
+Robert had been godfather to one of Bertha’s children by her former husband.
+The pope considered these circumstances sufficient to render the marriage
+incestuous; and he accordingly issued a command to Robert, desiring him
+to put away Bertha, under pain of excommunication. The popes had erected
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>themselves into the censors of princes, and they were especially rigid in prohibiting
+the marriage of cousins. Such unions, they said, drew down divine
+vengeance, and were to be avoided, lest they should produce national calamities.
+Nor was this mere superstition on their part: it had its policy. It
+was chiefly by intermarriages that the great aristocracy at this time increased
+their territories and influence. Every obstacle thrown in the way of these
+alliances consequently checked the growth of their exorbitant might; every
+difficulty or scruple, being in the power of the pontiff alone to remove,
+brought considerable advantage, both in revenue and respect, to the holy see.
+Robert struggled for four or five years in behalf of his legitimate wife, against
+the terrors of excommunication; but he was at length compelled to yield, to
+chase poor Bertha from his presence, and to take another wife, Constance,
+the daughter of the count of Toulouse. With her, a woman of more spirit
+than her predecessor, Robert was less happy. The monarch dreaded her, and
+was even obliged to do his alms in secret for fear of her reproof. His chief
+amusement was the singing and composing of psalms, to which the musical
+taste of that age was confined. In a pilgrimage to Rome, Robert left a sealed
+paper on the altar of the apostles. The priesthood expected it to contain a
+magnificent donation, and were not little surprised and disappointed to find
+it to contain but a hymn of the monarch’s composition. The piety of Robert
+was most exemplary. He was anxious to save his subjects from the crime
+of perjury; the means he took were to abstract privately the holy relics from
+the cases which contained them, and on which people were sworn. He substituted
+an ostrich’s egg, as an innocent object, incapable of taking vengeance
+on the false swearer.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the facts which we have to relate of a reign of nearly thirty-five
+years. The good king Robert slumbered on his throne, with a want of
+vigour and capacity that would have caused a monarch of the first two races
+to totter from his seat, or at least would have transferred his authority to
+some minister or powerful duke. The Capetians as yet, however, unlike
+the Carlovingians, had neither power nor prerogative to tempt the ambition
+of a usurper. The very title of king was unenvied. And whilst the
+sovereign led the choir at St. Denis, France was not the less vigorously
+governed by its independent and feudal nobility.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2b1"><a href="#endnote_2b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>HENRY I (1031-1060 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1031-1060 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Robert’s son and successor, Henry I, had first of all to sustain a family war
+against his mother, Constance, who put his young brother Robert on the
+throne. The church declared for Henry, and the famous Robert the Magnificent,
+more commonly known as Robert le Diable, duke of the Normans, lent
+him the support of his sword and secured the crown upon Henry’s head.
+Henry vanquished his brother, pardoned and granted him the duchy of Burgundy,
+the first house of which was founded by Robert. During this reign
+a famine made terrible ravage among the French and in several places men
+ate one another. Following this scourge, troops of wolves devastated the
+country, and the lords, more terrible than wild beasts, carried on their
+barbaric wars in the midst of this widespread desolation.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/fp1.jpg" width="650" height="460" alt="">
+<p class="caption">EXCOMMUNICATION OF ROBERT THE PIOUS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The clergy with difficulty husbanded their anger in calling the vengeance
+of heaven upon this state of affairs and in affirming a multitude of miracles,
+and finally, in councils, ordered everyone to lay down his arms. They put
+forward the “Peace of God” in 1035, and threatened excommunication to
+those who violated so holy a decree. When the council in each province had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>formulated this peace deacons made it known to the people assembled in the
+churches. After the Gospel had been read the deacons mounted the pulpits
+and launched against infractors of the peace the following malediction:
+“Cursed be they who aid in doing evil; cursed be their arms and their
+horses! may they be banished with Cain, the fratricide, with Judas the
+traitor; with Dathan and Abiram, who descended living into hell. May
+their joy be extinguished at the sight of the holy angels as are these flames
+before your eyes.” At these words the
+priests who were holding lighted tapers
+threw them down and put them out, while
+the people, seized with fear, repeated with
+one voice, “May God thus extinguish the
+joy of those who will not accept peace and
+justice.”</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p025.jpg" width="250" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Henry I</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old engraving)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But passions were too rampant and ambitions,
+too indomitable for evil thus to be
+rooted out entirely. The Peace of God only
+multiplied perjurers without diminishing assassins.
+Five years later another law known
+as the “Truce of God” was substituted for
+it. The councils which proclaimed this
+did not try to stop the flow of all human
+passions but to control them and regulate
+war according to laws of honour and humanity.
+Recourse to force was no longer
+forbidden to those who could invoke no
+other law, but the employment of this means
+was submitted to wise restrictions. All
+military attack and all shedding of blood
+was forbidden from sunset Wednesday evening
+to sunrise Monday morning, as well as on all fast and feast days. A
+perpetual inviolability was accorded the churches, unarmed clerics, and monks,
+while the protection of the truce was extended to the peasants, their flocks,
+and implements of tillage. Promulgated first in Aquitaine, this wise and
+beneficial law was adopted throughout almost all Gaul, where the lords swore
+to observe it; and although it was often violated and soon fell into desuetude,
+it did much good in softening the manners of the nation and was the finest
+work of the mediæval clergy. Rumour spread that a horrible malady known
+as the “sacred fire” would punish infractors of the truce. The weakling
+king Henry, through “unreasonable pride,” was almost the only one to refuse
+to recognise it within his estates, giving as a pretext that it was an encroachment
+of the clergy upon his authority.</p>
+
+<p>This king has left no creditable impression upon history.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2d1"><a href="#endnote_2d">d</a></span> Save for a few
+expeditions into Normandy, most of which were unfortunate, he did nothing.
+In 1046 he refused the homage of the duke of Upper and Lower Lorraine,
+and even allowed the count of Flanders to declare for the emperor of Germany
+as suzerain.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2c1"><a href="#endnote_2c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is said that from fear of unwittingly marrying a wife who might be
+allied to him by ties of blood, he sought one at the extremities of Europe,
+and married for his third wife the princess Anne, daughter of the grand duke
+Yaroslaff of Russia. Henry had three sons by this marriage, of whom he
+caused the eldest, Philip, to be made joint king in the last year of his life.
+He died in 1060 after a reign of twenty-nine years.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2d2"><a href="#endnote_2d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Deeds of the Great Barons</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1028-1054 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king did nothing, but the great lords accomplished much. Three
+especially filled France with the noise of their ambitions and their wars.
+Robert, surnamed the Magnificent by the nobles and the Devil by the people,
+had usurped the ducal crown of Normandy by poisoning his brother Richard
+III and his chief barons at a feast (1028). By force of energy and courage
+he crushed the opposition which his crime aroused and, uncontested sovereign
+of Normandy, interfered with all his neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>He upheld King Henry I against his brother, for which he received
+the French Vexin in return. He set out to oust Canute the Great from the
+throne of England for the profit of the sons of Ethelred, his cousin; but a
+storm having driven his fleet from the English coast upon that of Brittany,
+he invaded this country and forced the duke Alain to do him homage (1033).
+In 1035 struck with remorse he went to seek peace of conscience at Jerusalem.
+While returning he died in Asia Minor. Below Rouen, in one of the
+most beautiful positions in Normandy, you may see a hill covered with shapeless
+ruins. These are the remains of Robert le Diable’s castle, which, according
+to tradition, was haunted by evil spirits. The place is not far from the
+spot where John Lackland is said to have stabbed his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>The son and successor of Robert the Magnificent was William the Bastard,
+who had much to do to obtain the obedience of his vassals: the battle
+of Val-des-Dunes, near Caen (1046), finally rid him of his adversaries. King
+Henry, his suzerain, who fought that day on his side, soon found the young
+duke too powerful, and formed an alliance of all his enemies. This was
+the cause of numerous encounters between the Normans and the French
+(inhabitants of the Île-de-France), the latter in every event sustained by
+the Angevins and the Bretons. The bloodiest of these combats was that
+fought at Mortemer in 1054. The king supported by the count of Anjou
+had entered Normandy through the county of Évreux, while his brother
+Eudes penetrated the Pays de Caux with horsemen from Picardy, Champagne,
+and Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>Duke William met this double invasion with two armies—that which
+marched against Eudes encountered, near Mortemer, the French, dispersed,
+and engaged in pillaging. The Normans killed some, took others, and put the
+rest to flight. Swift messengers bore the good news to the duke. “When
+night had come he despatched one of his men who climbed a tree near the
+king’s camp and began to utter loud cries. The sentinels asked why he
+thus cried aloud at an unseemly hour. ‘My name is Raoul de Ternois,’
+he replied, ‘and I bring you bad news. Take your wagons and carts to
+Mortemer to carry away your friends who are dead, for the French came
+against us to test the Normans’ chivalry, and they have found it much greater
+than they liked. Eudes, their standard-bearer, has been put to flight in
+shame; and Guy, count of Ponthieu, has been taken. All the others have
+been made prisoners or are dead, or have had great difficulty in saving themselves
+by rapid flight. Announce at once this news to the king of the
+French, on the part of the duke of Normandy.’” The frightened king
+retired in all haste, and Geoffrey Martel was obliged to abandon to William
+the sovereignty of Maine.</p>
+
+<p>Eudes II, count of Blois, desired to seize the kingdom of Provence and
+afterwards Lorraine, and to this reconstructed Lorraine he hoped to add the
+crown of Italy. But a battle in Barrois ended the schemes of the turbulent
+baron. Eudes was defeated and killed (1037); his wife alone was able to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>recognise his body among the corpses which strewed the field, and pay the last
+honours to his remains.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[987-1066 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A prince against whom Eudes often fought, Fulk (Foulques) Nerra—or
+the Black—count of Anjou, was even more renowned. Thrice did he make
+pilgrimages to the Holy Land. On the last he caused himself to be drawn
+on a sledge, naked, and with rope around the neck, through the streets of
+Jerusalem, whipped the while with great blows by two valets, and crying
+with all his might, “Lord have mercy on the traitor, the perjurer Fulk.”
+Then he attempted to return on foot, but died on the way (1040). Fulk
+had indeed many crimes to expiate. Queen Constance was his niece. One
+day she complained to him of one of her husband’s favourites, and Fulk
+immediately despatched twelve knights with orders to stab the favourite
+wherever they might find him. Of his two wives, he had one burned to
+death, or according to other accounts stabbed her himself after she had been
+rescued from a precipice over which he tried to throw her; the other he
+compelled by ill treatment to retire to Palestine. His son Geoffrey Martel
+was also a fighter. He tried by force of arms in 1036 to compel his father
+to cede him the county of Anjou, but the old Fulk defeated and made him
+undergo the punishment of the <i>harnescar</i>. The rebel son had to travel
+several miles on all fours, a saddle on his back, to reach the count’s feet and
+implore his pardon.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey Martel, jealous of the duke of Normandy’s power, united with
+Henry I against him. His successors kept up this policy and the kings of
+France found the Angevin counts useful allies against the Norman duke—now
+become kings of England, at least until the moment the counts
+inherited the English crown themselves. It is related that Geoffrey Martel’s
+wife was fond of reading, but such was the scarcity of books that she was
+obliged to give two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and as much rye
+and millet for a manuscript of the homilies. The beautiful cathedral of
+Angers was begun under Fulk Nerra.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2c2"><a href="#endnote_2c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PHILIP I (1060-1108 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Philip I at the age of eight succeeded his father under the regency
+of Baldwin V, count of Flanders. The most important event of Philip’s
+minority, and one in which he took no part, was the conquest of England.
+The Norman knights were distinguished above all others by their immoderate
+desire for warlike adventure and their brilliant exploits. Some of them,
+landing sixty years before as pilgrims on the south coast of Italy, had helped
+the besieged inhabitants of Salerno to drive off a Saracen army. Inspired
+by the success of their compatriots, the sons of a petty nobleman, Tancred
+de Hauteville, followed by a band of adventurers, wrested Apulia from
+the Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs, and sustained with success a most
+unequal struggle against the German and Byzantine emperors, who joined
+forces to exterminate them. They made prisoner the German pope Leo IX,
+devoted to the family of the emperor Henry III; and, humbling themselves
+before their captive, obtained permission to hold their conquest as a fief
+of the church. Robert Guiscard completed the subjection of Apulia and
+Calabria, and his brother Roger conquered Sicily, and it was thus the
+Normans founded the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the pope obtained
+suzerainty over it.</p>
+
+<p>Norman valour was the talk of Europe, when William the Bastard, son
+of Robert the Magnificent, began to assemble an army for the conquest of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>England. Warriors, full of confidence in his destiny, rushed from all directions
+to his standard.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> It was several hundred years since Britain had been
+conquered by the Saxons, and the country was now under the rule of King
+Harold, whom a storm had once wrecked, before he was king, upon the coast
+of Normandy. As William’s prisoner, Harold was compelled to cede the
+Norman his rights to the throne; and when free at this price no longer
+considered himself bound by an oath extracted under compulsion. It was
+the custom in those days to consider shipwrecked persons as delivered
+by the judgment of God to the lord of the shore on which the storm had cast
+them. They could be held captive
+and even put to torture for the sake
+of ransom. William recalled to
+Harold his promise, especially invoked
+the will of Edward the Confessor,
+the last king of England, and
+declared his willingness to abide by
+the decision of the church. The consistory,
+assembled at the Lateran,
+pronounced in William’s favour, and
+at the instigation of the monk Hildebrand
+awarded him the kingdom of
+England and sent him, together with
+a blessed standard, a diploma as sovereign
+of the country. A great
+battle fought between the two rivals
+near Hastings in 1066 decided the
+issue. Harold lost his life; and England,
+after a desperate struggle, became
+the conquest of the Normans.
+William divided the country into
+fiefs for his barons and knights, and
+thenceforth feudalism spread over
+England the network it had already
+fastened upon France, Germany, and Italy.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p028.jpg" width="300" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Philip I</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This great event inflamed people’s spirits and disposed them to adventurous
+expeditions in distant lands. It was the forerunner of the Crusades;
+although the latter had a nobler motive than the others, springing, as they
+did, from the enthusiasm of exalted piety.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1066-1073 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A great revolution was taking place at this time in the church.
+Nicholas II occupied the pontifical chair at this moment. He had for
+counsellor a monk who deplored the vices of the clergy and the degradation
+of the church as much as the encroachments of the temporal upon spiritual
+authority. This monk, this man so celebrated in ecclesiastical history, was
+Hildebrand. He resolved to deprive the princes and lords of every source
+of influence over the clergy, to strengthen the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and
+to raise the pope above the kings of the earth, hoping thus to regain for the
+church her virtue, her splendour, and all her power. Such a project of
+universal domination, which would seem like madness to-day, was in Hildebrand’s
+age a conception of genius. It was Hildebrand’s glory to have
+wished to free the church’s spiritual authority from all temporal bonds; it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>was his mistake to have listened too much to his own ambition in trying to
+enslave the political government of the princes to ecclesiastical authority.
+In 1073 Hildebrand was chosen by the people and clergy of Rome as successor
+to Pope Alexander II. He took the name of Gregory VII.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1071-1099 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Philip of France was leading a life filled with scandal and violence. To
+satisfy his unbridled desires he, like Henry IV of Germany, was carrying on,
+in contempt of Gregory’s prohibition, the most shameful traffic in clerical
+benefices. The angered pontiff threatened Philip with excommunication.
+The colossal structure raised by the pontiff did not perish with him; his
+successors bound it together. He founded the universal monarchy of the
+popes upon a durable basis and on the ruling spirit of the time, and this
+domination reached a century after him, its highest point. The Crusades
+contributed powerfully to hold it together. Gregory conceived the plan of
+these, but it was not given to him to carry it out. The first of these memorable
+events took place in the time of Philip I and in the pontificate of
+Urban II. Philip was not associated with the First Crusade; he took no
+part in any of the great enterprises which marked the age in which he lived,
+and his reign offers nothing worthy of remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>In 1071 the widow of his guardian, Count Baldwin of Flanders, was
+robbed by the latter’s brother, Robert the Frisian, and she had recourse to
+Philip. The king took up arms in her behalf and marched against Robert,
+but suffered a shameful defeat at Cassel.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> He also fought a twelve years’
+war with William the Conqueror, but it was a war marked by no memorable
+event. William seduced Philip’s counsellors and partisans by offering
+them great domains in England. Philip on his side promised protection to
+the discontented element among the Normans and took the part of William’s
+eldest son Robert, in revolt against his father. After a truce and during an
+illness of the duke, the king made fun of the former’s extreme fatness by
+inquiring when he expected to be brought to bed. William heard of this
+and, furious, swore to bring the king the candles for the churching. He
+assembled a formidable army and was setting out to ravage Philip’s estates
+when he fell ill at Rouen and died there in 1087. When he was scarcely
+cold the lords who were with him departed in haste for their castles; his
+servants pillaged his effects, taking everything but the bed he lay on, and
+left the body of the conqueror naked on the mattress. A poor knight
+found it in this state and moved to pity covered it, at his own expense, with
+mourning robes and prepared to bury it. He had spoken the funeral service
+and the body was in the grave when a Norman named Asselin came forward and
+said, “This ground belongs to me; the man whose eulogy you have just
+pronounced robbed me of it. On this spot stood my father’s house, this
+man seized it against all justice and without paying a price for it. In
+God’s name I forbid you to cover the robber’s body with earth that is mine.”
+This is a memorable example of the vanity of an existence full of greatness
+and iniquity—a striking sign of the forerunner of the judgment which
+threatened, on the threshold of the other life, him who had founded his
+power on rapine and the extermination and misery of a people. This
+William, conqueror of a great realm and ravisher of immense domains in a
+foreign land, only obtained a resting-place in his native soil through pity;
+those who assisted at his funeral had to lay the price of it upon his coffin.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1087-1108 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>None of his three sons paid him his last duties, but waged fierce war for
+his heritage.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2d3"><a href="#endnote_2d">d</a></span> William Rufus succeeded to the throne in England, and his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>brother Robert Courte-Heuse (Court-Hose or Short-Hose) in Normandy.
+But William was not content with his portion. He invaded Normandy in
+1090, and also disturbed the peace of the French monarchy by a vigorous
+claim on the French Vexin and a war on the count of Maine. When
+Robert joined the First Crusade he mortgaged his duchy to his brother, who
+occupied it. But William’s tenure was short. An arrow in the New Forest
+ended his life (1100). Robert Courte-Heuse hastened home and resumed
+his rule, but Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son who succeeded William
+Rufus in England, thirsted likewise for the paternal dominions. In 1104
+he appeared in Normandy and two years later the struggle was over. At
+the battle of Tinchebray Robert lost his lands and his liberty. Normandy
+passed to the English crown.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The death of the Conqueror was a great cause of joy to Philip and
+enabled him to continue his indolent and scandalous career. He had married
+Bertha, daughter of Count Florent of Holland, but tired of her and shut
+her up while he eloped with Bertrade, wife of Fulk le Réchin, count of
+Anjou, and married her. Pope Urban ordered the dissolution of this marriage,
+and on the refusal to obey a council assembled at Autun in 1094
+excommunicated the king. Philip no longer wished to wear the external
+marks of royalty; he was afflicted with grievous infirmities, which he recognised
+as the chastisement of God; so in 1100 he associated his son Louis
+with the crown, and thenceforth reigned only in name. A terrible fear of
+hell seized upon him. In humility he renounced burial in the sepulchre of
+the kings at St. Denis, and died in 1108 in the habit of a Benedictine
+monk.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2d4"><a href="#endnote_2d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS THE FAT AND LOUIS THE YOUNG (1108-1180 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Feebleness and inertness mark the reign of the first four Capetians. In
+the successor of Philip the race began to partake in the general activity
+of the age.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Louis VI, better known as Louis le Gros, or the Fat, began
+in the lifetime of his predecessor. He was the first French monarch that
+entertained any settled maxim of government, or whose ideas reached a system
+of policy. His predecessors had been the creatures, the followers, of
+events. Louis knew how to control these. The whole effort and aim of his
+reign was to reduce the barons of the duchy of France to obedience. His
+views did not extend to the kingdom. He prudently limited his exertions
+to the counties within or bordering upon his power. History may disdain to
+recount minutely the wars carried on by Louis against the barons of Montmorency,
+whose castle rose within view of his capital, or against the lords
+of Puiset, of Montlhéry, or of Coucy, possessors of strongholds within a few
+leagues of Paris, from whence they were wont to sally forth to the plunder
+of travellers and merchants. And yet, of all the wars that adorn or sully
+the French annals, none was more wise in aim, more useful or important in
+consequences, than these petty enterprises of Louis.</p>
+
+<p>His first attempt was against the Burchards, lords of Montmorency, who
+were continually in quarrel with the abbaye of St. Denis; and, if we are to
+believe the chronicles of the day, written for the most part in that famous
+convent, the Montmorencys were impious spoliators and enemies of the
+church. Louis stood forth the champion of the clergy, and brought the
+Burchards to reason. His next efforts were directed against the château
+of Montlhéry and its rapacious owners, who interrupted all communication
+betwixt the royal towns of Paris and Orleans, greatly to the detriment
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>of commerce and the annoyance of the townsfolk. Louis here took care to
+have a pretext also. He did not assert his royal authority and arm
+to avenge it. It was as the ally of the clergy that he subdued the Montmorencys;
+it was as the friend of commerce, and the avenger of the plundered
+burgesses, that he besieged Montlhéry. Louis XI did not use more policy
+and feint in his undermining of the aristocracy than did Louis VI; the
+latter, unfortunately for his own fame, having only the smaller sphere
+of action (1101).</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p031.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis VI</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old engraving)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1101-1119 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the name of Louis the Fat stands connected with one of the
+most important revolutions in the civil history of France, <i>viz.</i>, the enfranchisement
+of the <i>communes</i> or commons, as
+the early municipalities were called. From
+him towns received their first charters;
+from his reign their first liberties date.
+In some towns the bishops favoured, in
+some they opposed, the enfranchisement
+of the commons. The barons were, in
+general, averse. The king was obliged to
+wage a tedious war against the family
+of Coucy, which, by means of a fortress,
+kept possession of the town of Amiens.
+He at length took and razed it; and the
+seigniory of the De Coucys merged in
+the township of Amiens.</p>
+
+<p>It was not merely by military exploits,
+and by the elevation of the <i>tiers état</i> or
+third estate, that the royal authority
+progressed during the reign of Louis VI.
+The judicial authority attributed to the
+monarch by the feudal system, and exercised
+by him in his court or council of
+peers, made him the arbiter of disputed
+successions. It was thus that Philip I had
+extended his influence over the province
+of Berri. His son Louis interfered in the
+quarrels of the house of Bourbon, where a
+minor struggled against the usurpation of his uncle. Louis entered the Bourbonnais
+with an army in 1115, took Germigny, the principal fortress of
+Aymon de Bourbon, and compelled him to submit. Not since the early
+Carlovingians had the banners of a king of France been seen so far from his
+capital.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1119-1127 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The continued rivalry betwixt the Normans, or English, and the French
+excited and kept alive the warlike spirit of both nations. Henry I reigned
+in England, and also in Normandy, which he had usurped from his brother
+Robert. Louis took the part of the latter, as well as of his son William Clito;
+and mutual wars, or rather ravages, were frequent, with intervals of peace,
+betwixt the nations.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2b2"><a href="#endnote_2b">b</a></span> The principal feud between Henry and Louis was
+produced by accident.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Battle of Brenneville</i></h4>
+
+<p>On the 20th of August, 1119, Louis and Henry found themselves unexpectedly
+face to face on the plain of Brenmule or Brenneville, three leagues
+from Les Andelys. Henry descended from the height of Verclive with his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>sons Richard and Robert, five hundred men-at-arms, and some infantry.
+Louis, seeing that what he had long desired was now approaching, marched
+straight at the enemy at the head of four hundred knights, accompanied by
+William Clito, who had taken arms to deliver his father from a long captivity
+and to win back the heritage of his ancestors. William de Crespigny, a Norman
+knight on Clito’s side, charged first with eighty men-at-arms, penetrated
+as far as King Henry himself, and smote him such a blow on the head
+as, but for his cap of mail, must have split his skull; but Crespigny was
+instantly thrown from his horse and made prisoner with most of his followers.
+The knights of the Vexin and the rest of the French then fell
+impetuously on the Anglo-Normans, and at first caused them to give way,
+but Henry’s soldiers, closing up their ranks, pressed between them and overthrew
+the assailants, who were thrown into disorder by the sheer force of
+their charge. King Louis, seeing his followers in disarray and anxious
+to effect a retreat in order to avoid an irreparable loss, fled at full gallop,
+leaving his royal banner and 140 of his knights in the hands of the conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>“Of nine hundred knights who were present at this battle,” says Ordericus
+Vitalis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2g1"><a href="#endnote_2g">g</a></span> “there were only three killed; for they were completely cased
+in iron and, moreover, mutually sparing one another as much from the fear of
+God as for the sake of brotherhood in arms. They concerned themselves less
+to kill the flying than to take them prisoners.”</p>
+
+<p>The king of the French, divided from his companions in his fright, lost his
+way in a forest (that of Lyons) where a peasant, who did not know him,
+guided him to Les Andelys in the hope of a large reward. King Henry
+bought the silver standard of Louis for forty marks from a man-at-arms, who
+had seized it and kept it as a witness of his victory; but the next day
+he sent back to King Louis his horse with its saddle, its rein, and all the royal
+trappings (Louis had apparently changed horses that he might fly without
+being recognised). And William Ætheling had sent back to his cousin,
+William Clito, the palfrey which the latter had lost in the battle, with other
+presents which King Henry had thought needful for an exile.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2e"><a href="#endnote_2e">e</a></span> After this
+defeat Louis had to abandon William Clito’s cause. Pope Calixtus II
+arranged a peace and Henry I embarked for England with his family and his
+court. The journey is memorable for the loss of the “White Ship” (<i>Blanche
+Nef</i>) in which the most renowned knights and the heirs of the most illustrious
+house of the Norman race, including the two sons and a daughter of the king,
+perished. One child alone remained to the bereaved monarch, Matilda or
+Maud, the wife of the emperor Henry V but afterwards married to Geoffrey
+Plantagenet, count of Anjou.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1127-1149 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Another enterprise of Louis, in the year 1121, marks the rapid increase of the
+king’s influence. A few years since he had established his authority in
+the Bourbonnais: now he extended it to Auvergne. In a quarrel betwixt the
+count and the bishop of Clermont, the latter appealed to Louis, who summoned
+the count to his supreme court, and, on his refusal to appear, marched
+with an army and subdued him, as he had previously the lord of Bourbon.
+The counts of Anjou and of Nevers aided him in the expedition. They felt
+no reluctance in carrying into effect the decrees of that court of peers of
+which they formed a part. Louis was not so fortunate in his treatment of
+Flanders as in his subjugation of Aquitaine. The Flemings, indeed, proved
+always intractable to French treatment whether of amity or hostility. The
+count of that province, perplexed and curbed by the frowardness of the
+townsfolk and the middle class, sought to taunt the family of Van der Straten
+by asserting they were serfs. One of them replied by cleaving the young
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>count’s skull as he knelt at prayers. There being no heir to the family of
+Flanders, Louis sought to give the county to William Clito (1127). This
+unfortunate prince soon after fell in an engagement; and Flanders passed to
+Theodoric of Alsace, a descendant of Robert the Frisian (1129). Louis
+VI died in 1137. It is strange that history could find for this monarch
+no epithet save that of the Fat, at the same time that it records innumerable
+proofs of a talented mind, of an active and enterprising spirit.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p033.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis VII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Towards the conclusion of this monarch’s reign, fortune came to reward
+and crown his efforts for the extension of the royal authority. William,
+count of Poitiers, about to undertake a pilgrimage, from which he had the
+presentiment that he never should return,
+offered his daughter Eleanor in marriage
+to Louis the Young, son of Louis the Fat.
+She was the heiress of her father’s possessions,
+which surpassed in extent and
+importance those of the king of France
+himself, comprising Guienne and Poitou—all
+the country, in fact, betwixt the
+Loire and the Adour. The marriage
+was celebrated at Bordeaux; and soon
+after it arrived tidings of the deaths both
+of the king and of the count of Poitiers.
+Thus Louis VII, or the Young, succeeded
+to dominions and authority infinitely
+more ample than those which his father
+had inherited. But the want of talent
+in the son did away with all these advantages.
+Nevertheless he commenced his
+reign with spirit. He chastised several
+refractory nobles, and resolved to support
+the queen’s rights to the county of Toulouse.
+Louis besieged that town. He
+failed in taking it, indeed; but the king
+of France, at the head of an army, made his name and power known for the
+first time to the inhabitants of the south. During a war carried on about
+the same time against Thibaut, count of Champagne, an accident occurred
+which had a marked effect upon the future conduct and character of Louis
+the Young. He had taken by storm the castle of Vitry, and set fire to it.
+The flames chanced to catch the neighbouring church, into which the population
+had crowded, to preserve themselves from the fury of the soldiery.
+It appears that they had no means of escape. Thirteen hundred men,
+women, and children perished in the conflagration. Louis was horror-struck
+on beholding the mass of half consumed bodies, and the weight of the remorse
+hung ever after upon him, and weighed down his spirit. It was the chief
+cause that induced him to receive the cross, and to lead that expedition to
+Jerusalem which is known in history as the Second Crusade.</p>
+
+<p>Not a single feat of arms marked the stay of Louis in Palestine, where he
+lingered till 1149, ashamed to return. The ignominy of this ill success, and
+the desertion of his followers, fell upon King Louis; and he felt it, not to
+rally and redeem his character, but to sink under the shame. He abandoned
+the feelings of the monarch and the warrior for those of the pilgrim; refused
+at first to undertake any enterprise against the infidels, and stole from Antioch
+to Jerusalem like a craven. If his subjects were discontented with such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>weakness in their sovereign, Eleanor of Aquitaine was still more disgusted
+with such a husband: she refused longer to remain on any friendly terms with
+him.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2b3"><a href="#endnote_2b">b</a></span> On his return the king repudiated his wife, who had so displeased
+him during the crusade. [Queen Eleanor at once petitioned the
+pope for a divorce. In 1152 the pope granted her wish.] Shortly afterwards
+a new marriage transferred her duchy of Guienne to Henry Plantagenet,
+count of Anjou, duke of Normandy and heir to the English crown.
+When, two years later, Henry entered into possession of his heritage, and
+afterwards added Brittany, through the marriage of one of his sons with
+the only daughter of the count of that country, he found himself master of
+almost the whole of western France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2c3"><a href="#endnote_2c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1103-1180 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Hence dates the rivalry betwixt the kings which fills up the rest of their
+reigns. But in that age war tended more to mutual annoyance than to conquest:
+it was a livelihood to the needy, a portion to the powerful; and
+neither were very serious or bent upon the destruction of an enemy. Feudal
+rights and supremacy were also held in high respect; and the name of suzerain,
+though but a name, often supplied to Louis the place of the armies
+of his vassal Henry. In time the church came to fling itself into the scale.
+The persecution and murder of Thomas à Becket roused all the clergy in
+enmity to Henry, and Louis took advantage of their aid. Later still, the
+French monarch used the more unworthy expedient of exciting the sons of
+Henry to rebel against their parent; and throughout he contrived to supply
+by intrigue what he wanted in martial spirit, activity, and power. Louis
+VII married Alix of Champagne, after the divorce; he was long without a
+son, and at length, so the story goes, he obtained one by dint of prayer.
+When the life of the prince was threatened by a fever, the anxious parent
+undertook a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to the tomb of Thomas à Becket,
+for his recovery. The young Philip recovered; but Louis, on his return,
+was struck with a palsy, under which he lingered for the space of a year, and
+died in 1180.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2b4"><a href="#endnote_2b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Abbot Suger</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1081-1149 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>On his return from the crusade, Louis found his country in a most
+peaceful and flourishing condition owing to the skilful administration of his
+preceptor the abbot Suger, whom he had left in charge of affairs.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> Suger is
+indubitably the most illustrious, perhaps, even, the only historian who has a
+place in the general history of France, and who really influenced her destinies.
+Such a fame cannot be usurped; whoso possesses it merits it.</p>
+
+<p>No great and lasting memorials were raised in France by Suger and his
+master, Louis the Fat; they made no great conquests, established no memorable
+laws; it is even a mistake to ascribe to them the honour of being the
+first to enfranchise the communes. This enfranchisement had preceded
+them; it arose from causes beyond their control, fulfilled its destiny without
+their aid, and was as often opposed as seconded by them. But Louis
+the Fat and Suger, the one as king, the other as minister, were the first
+since Charlemagne to have a true and just perception of their position and
+mission, and to bind themselves to act upon it. This great idea, without
+which there can be nothing of state or king, the idea of a public authority,
+devoted to the maintenance of public order, called to something higher than
+ministration to the interests and personal caprices of its temporary holder,
+had been conceived by the giant mind of Charlemagne, but, despite his
+genius and a long reign, it was not for him to put it into action, to found a
+throne and a nation. Certain customs of unity, of regularity, of government,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>in short, existed indeed in the earlier years of Louis le Débonnaire’s
+reign, but they soon vanished, society and authority alike fell into decay,
+and for two centuries there was neither king, kingdom, nor nation, Frank
+nor French.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Capet, in taking the title of king, laid the first stone of a new
+monarchy in the very heart of feudalism. But it was no more than a title
+of vague meaning and no import under him. He had not the force of character,
+nor is there anything to indicate that he had the design, to raise the
+sovereignty above suzerainty and reunite in one body the scattered members
+of the nation. Under his immediate successors the power of the throne
+drooped more and more. In the reigns of Robert, Henry I, and Philip I,
+one can scarcely discern any traces of national and monarchical unity. Isolation
+and independence waxed stronger, not only in the case of powerful
+or distant feudatories, but also among the nearest and humblest vassals of
+the crown. Only the feudal tie continued in force, a real and precious tie
+since it still maintained a show of confederation under a leader and prevented
+the utter dismemberment of the government and the country; but
+its influence, always more moral than political, yielded at the least shock
+and seemed even on the point of disappearance. With Louis the Fat a new
+era begins; the extent of his power, even the sphere of his activities, is still
+very restricted; the results of his endeavours are, for the present at least,
+of little value. It is almost always in the outskirts of Paris, against the
+simple squires, for the securing of a route, for the protection of merchants,
+that his courage and wisdom are exercised. Nevertheless in these small
+undertakings, and in certain others more remote, we can see a definite design
+of central and regular government; sovereignty separates itself from suzerainty,
+and in its own name claims, though timidly, rights of another sort.
+It presents itself to us as a power general and superior, called to maintain
+justice and order, to the advantage of all, and against all comers—a power
+all too weak for such a task, but awake to a perception of its dignity and its
+mission, and to a dawning of the same in the mind of its subjects. Such is
+the true character of the reign of Louis the Fat; he did little for the liberties
+of the public, much for the forming of the state and national government.
+He guided sovereignty in its first steps out of a feudal régime, gave
+to it other principles, placed it in a different attitude; and it is in this work,
+the development of which decided the lot of France, that Suger rendered
+powerful assistance during twenty five years’ administration.</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem marked out by birth for so great things, his father,
+Hélinand, being only a man of the people, living, according to the most
+probable supposition, at St. Omer, where Suger was born in 1081. But even
+at that date the church busied herself in searching out and welcoming,
+even from among the lowest ranks, men capable of serving and honouring
+her. Everywhere present and active, in touch with all the social conditions,
+associating alike with poor and rich, dwelling with the humble as with the
+great, she went forward to meet even childhood on its way, studying its
+varying dispositions, surrounding its earliest days, unfolding to it a brilliant
+career, the only one which invited development of its intellectual faculties,
+in which every reward was accessible to merit, and, finally, in which principles
+of equality and co-operation reigned. The monastery of St. Denis
+received and brought up the young Suger; he passed ten years in the
+dependent priory of Lettrée, and when, in 1095, Philip intrusted the education
+of his son, Louis the Fat, to the monks of St. Denis, Abbot Adam
+recalled Suger into the abbey itself that he might become the companion of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>the young prince. Thus sprang up between the children the intimacy which
+was to bind them together all their lives. In 1098, Louis returned to his
+father’s house, and Suger went to complete his studies in the monastery of
+Florent-de-Saumur, where the sciences of the day flourished under Abbot
+William. In returning to St. Denis in 1103 he speedily became the confidant
+of Abbot Adam, who, not content with employing him in all matters
+relating to the monastery, frequently took him to court where Prince Louis,
+who now for four years had had a share in the throne, knit yet more closely
+the bonds that had bound him to his childhood’s friend. From this date
+there is no further need to trace the life of Suger; it is part of history and
+nearly all the details that have come down to us are to be found either in his
+<i>Vie de Louis VI</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2k"><a href="#endnote_2k">k</a></span> or in the <i>Panegyric</i> written upon him by the monk William,
+his secretary.</p>
+
+<p>Before his elevation to the dignity of abbot of St. Denis, when charged
+with diverse missions either to ecclesiastical gatherings or to the court at
+Rome, or even called upon to defend with mailed fist certain domains belonging
+to St. Denis against the brigand nobles who ravaged them, he displayed
+in turn the tact of the ecclesiastic and the courage of the knight. Later
+on, when Louis had constituted him his most intimate adviser, it seems that
+so much power temporarily dazzled Suger. St. Bernard speaks of his pomp
+and pride, and of the disorder introduced into his abbey. “The interior of
+the monastery,” he says, “is filled with knights, sometimes it is even open to
+women; one hears business of all sorts being transacted there; there quarrels
+break out; lastly it is there that that which is Cæsar’s is rendered unto
+Cæsar, without deduction or delay, but never unto God that which is God’s.”
+Whether it be that St. Bernard’s warnings aroused Suger from this first
+intoxication of power, or whether he perceived of himself the harm the
+scandal would do him, he did not delay putting an end to it. In 1127
+he introduced drastic reforms into his abbey, compelled his monks to
+submit to them, and scrupulously conformed himself, and very shortly his
+power in the court was but more firmly established by this episode. Proud of
+the austerity of his morals, whilst at the same time profiting by his influence,
+the church cried him up on all occasions, and bishops and abbots of the
+most celebrated monasteries contemplated with equal pride the gorgeous
+church rebuilt by him at St. Denis, and the humble cell, barely fifteen feet
+long by ten feet wide, where he applied himself in solitude to religious exercises.
+After the death of Louis the Fat his power increased yet more; the
+indolent and incompetent Louis the Young shifting to his shoulders the whole
+weight of the government.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1147-1149 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Suger’s regency during this king’s crusade, from the year 1147 to the year
+1149, is the most brilliant period of his career. He firmly upheld the
+royal authority, rebuked the usurpations of the vassals, established some
+degree of order wherever his influence attained to, met the king’s expenses
+in Palestine by his excellent administration of the crown revenues, and
+the advancement of his domains, and, finally, won such fame throughout the
+length and breadth of Europe that persons from Italy and England came
+to study the salutary results of his government, and the title of “the Solomon
+of the century” was bestowed upon him by foreigners contemporary
+with him. Hitherto only illustrious bishops, or learned and subtle theologians
+had attained this European distinction by their authority in the
+church or by their writings; no other man had ever won it on the sole merit
+of his political conduct, and from the ninth to the twelfth century Suger
+remains the first example of a minister who won admiration for his skill and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>wisdom from beyond the mountains and over the seas. He did not show
+any anxiety to retain this absolute power which the king’s absence conferred
+on him, and, by a rare unselfishness, the interests of the state preoccupied
+him more than his personal ambitions. He was himself opposed to a crusade
+from which he foresaw dangers, and had only yielded at the instance of
+St. Bernard’s ardent entreaties, the pope’s orders, and the prevailing opinion
+of the day. When certain of the nobles, Robert de Dreux, his brother,
+among them, who had accompanied Louis, abandoned him in Palestine and
+returned without him to France, Suger never ceased from urging his immediate
+return to his dominions.</p>
+
+<p>“The disturbers of the public peace,” he wrote, “have returned, whilst
+you, under bond to defend your subjects, remain as it were captive in a foreign
+land. Of what are you thinking, sire, thus to leave the flock intrusted
+to you at the mercy of the wolves? How
+can you disguise from yourself the perils with
+which the robbers who have outstripped you
+menace the state? No, it is not permissible
+for you to remain any longer so far away from
+us. Everything here craves your presence.
+Therefore we pray your highness, we exhort
+your piety, we call upon your goodness of heart,
+finally we conjure you by the faith which binds
+reciprocally prince and subject, not to prolong
+beyond Easter your sojourn in Syria, lest a
+longer delay render you guilty in the eyes of
+the Lord of disregarding the oath which you
+swore on assuming the crown. You will, I
+think, find cause for contentment in our conduct.
+We have placed in the hands of the
+knights Templar the money which we had
+intended to send you. We have further repaid
+to the count of Vermandois the £3,000 which
+he had lent us for your use. At the present
+time your land and your people enjoy a happy
+peace. We lay in store against your return
+the broken victuals for the fiefs dependent on
+you, the tallage and victuals which we levy
+from your domains. You will find your houses
+and palaces in good preservation owing to the
+care we have taken in doing repairs. I have
+now reached the decline of life, but I dare venture
+to say that the works I engaged to do from love to God and devotion
+to your person have hastened my old age. With regard to the queen, your
+wife, I advise that you conceal the dissatisfaction she causes you till such
+time as, restored to your realm, you can quietly deliberate over that and other
+matters.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p037.jpg" width="250" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">An Officer of the King, Twelfth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Louis kept them waiting for him yet a long time. Suger had to fight
+against the pretensions and plottings of Robert de Dreux and his party. He
+realised that single-handed he would not be able to hold his own, and boldly
+summoned to Soissons an assembly of the bishops and principal barons of the
+realm. This generous appeal to the opinions and the liberties of the times
+had the result he anticipated: the assembly sided with him and strengthened
+him against his enemies. Defeated in their purpose in France, they made
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>an attack on him in Palestine, this time within the mind of the king himself,
+who, frivolous and credulous, at first believed all their accusations. But on
+passing through Italy on his return to his dominions Louis received through
+Pope Eugenius III, friend and admirer of Suger, a completely different impression,
+in which he was fully confirmed on arriving in France by the good
+order which he there found established, the resources husbanded for him by
+Suger, and the eagerness shown by the regent to hand over to the king his
+rightful authority.</p>
+
+<p>Other ideas were at work in the old man’s brain. He had disapproved of
+his master’s crusade as fatal to the interests of the kingdom; but the misfortunes
+to the Christians in the East, and regret at seeing the Holy Land on
+the point of once more falling into the hands of the infidels, preoccupied his
+mind continually. He conceived the idea of himself attempting a fresh
+expedition to Palestine, of raising an army at his own expense, of devoting
+all his wealth and influence to the cause, of inducing the leading bishops to
+follow his example, and of personally heading an undertaking by which he
+hoped Jerusalem would be saved without imperilling France and his king.
+In the narrative of William, his biographer, we can see with what ardour and
+perseverance he threw himself into this project, even after illness forbade him
+to hope for the glory resulting from it. He had already chosen the leader
+whom he deemed most competent to replace him and had presented him with
+the sums of money collected for carrying out the scheme, when death overtook
+him, January 12th, 1151, at the age of seventy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2h"><a href="#endnote_2h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>EMANCIPATORY MOVEMENTS AFTER THE CRUSADES</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1000-1151 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The grand movement of the crusade having for a while withdrawn men
+from local servitude, and led them abroad through Europe and Asia, they
+sought Jerusalem and found freedom. That liberating trumpet of the archangel,
+which was thought to have been heard in the year 1000, sounded a
+century later in the preaching of the crusade. The village awoke at the foot
+of the feudal castle, whose shade hung heavy over it. The pitiless man who
+descended from his vulture’s eyrie only to despoil his vassals, now himself
+armed them, led them, lived with them, suffered with them. Communion in
+misery softened his heart. Many a serf could say to the baron, “My lord, I
+found you a draft of water in the desert; I shielded you with my body at
+the siege of Antioch, or Jerusalem.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Communes</i></h4>
+
+<p>Humanity, then, began again to honour itself, even in its most miserable
+conditions. The first communal revolutions preceded, or closely followed,
+the year 1100. They began to think that every man was entitled to dispose
+of the fruits of his own labour, and to give away his own children in marriage;
+they emboldened themselves to think that they had a right to come
+and go, to buy and sell, and they suspected, in their presumption, that it
+might very possibly be that men were equal.</p>
+
+<p>Until then, that formidable thought of equality had not come forth in a
+very precise and tangible form. We are told, indeed, that the peasants of
+Normandy revolted in the year 1000, but they were easily put down; a
+few knights ravaged the country, dispersed the villeins, cut off their feet
+and hands, and there was an end of the matter. The peasants, in general,
+were too much isolated from each other; their <i>jacqueries</i> were always unsuccessful
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>throughout the Middle Ages. Unhappily, too, it must be owned,
+they were too degraded by slavery, too brutalised by the excess of their
+woes; their triumph would have been that of barbarism. It was especially
+in the populous boroughs, grouped round the castles, and, above all, round
+the churches, that ideas of emancipation fermented. The lay, or ecclesiastical
+lords had encouraged the population of those boroughs by concessions
+of land, being desirous of augmenting their own strength and the number of
+their vassals. These towns were not large and commercial cities, like those
+of the south of France and Italy, but they had some rude branches of trade,
+some blacksmiths, many weavers, butchers, and innkeepers, in the towns of
+transit. Sometimes the lords invited skilful workmen to settle in their
+towns, such, at least, as could embroider a stole, or forge armour; it was
+absolutely necessary to leave those men a little liberty, for, otherwise, as they
+carried their all in their hands, they would have left the country.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of freedom, then, was destined to commence by the central
+towns of France, which, obtaining their franchises by fair means or by force,
+received the name of privileged towns, or communes. The occasion of this
+result was, generally, the defence made by the inhabitants against the oppression
+and robbery of the feudal lords, and, in particular, the defence of the
+Île-de-France against Normandy, the feudal country <i>par excellence</i>. “At
+this period,” says Ordericus Vitalis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2g2"><a href="#endnote_2g">g</a></span> “popular communality was established
+by the bishops in such wise that the priests accompanied the king to siege or
+battle, with the banners of their parishes and all their parishioners.” According
+to the same historian, it was a Montfort (an illustrious family, which
+was, in the following century, to destroy the liberties of the south of France,
+and to lay the foundation of those of England), it was Amaury de Montfort,
+who advised Louis the Fat, after his defeat at Brenneville, to employ against
+the Normans the men of the communes, marching under the banners of their
+parishes (1119). But when these communes returned within their own walls,
+they became more urgent in their demands; it was a mortal blow to their
+humility, to have once seen the great war-steeds and the noble knights flying
+before their parochial banners; to have put an end, with Louis the Fat, to
+the highway robberies of the Rocheforts; to have harried the lair of the De
+Coucys. They said, with the poet of the twelfth century: “We are men
+as well as they; our hearts are as great; we are as capable of endurance as
+they.” They all wanted some franchise, some privilege, and for this they
+offered money—which they contrived to find, indigent and wretched as
+they were. Poor artisans, blacksmiths, or weavers, allowed, as a matter of
+favour, to set themselves down at the foot of a castle; fugitive serfs, who had
+taken refuge round a church, such were the founders of liberty; they stinted
+themselves of bread to obtain them, and the lords and the king were eager to
+sell diplomas so well paid for.</p>
+
+<p>This revolution was accomplished everywhere, under a thousand forms,
+and with little noise; it was only prominently remarked in some towns of
+Oise and Somme, which, being placed in less favourable circumstances, divided
+between two lords, lay and ecclesiastical, applied to the king to obtain a solemn
+guarantee for concessions often violated, and which maintained a precarious
+liberty at the cost of many centuries of civil war. It was upon these towns
+that the name of “communes” was more particularly bestowed. These wars
+are a small, but dramatic incident in the great revolution which was taking
+place silently, and under various forms, in all the towns of the north of France.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the valiant and choleric Picardy, the communes of which had
+so well beaten the Normans; it was in the country of Calvin, and so many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>other revolutionary spirits, that these explosions took place.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2f1"><a href="#endnote_2f">f</a></span> Le Mans in
+1066, then Cambray in 1076, gave the signal, followed by Noyon, Beauvais,
+St. Quentin, Laon, Amiens and Soissons. All wrested communal charters
+from their lords, mostly of the ecclesiastical order. In 1112 the bishop of
+Laon attempted to repeal the communal charter he had granted, somewhat
+under compulsion, three years before. His house was surrounded; the
+nobles who came to his assistance were killed, and the prelate himself fell
+under the blows of an axe. The king came and the commune was abolished.
+But before sixteen years had passed the communal party regained the ascendancy.
+In 1128 the king ratified a new charter granted by the bishop.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2c4"><a href="#endnote_2c">c</a></span>
+Great or small, the Picard communes were heroic, and bravely did they
+fight. They too had their belfry, their tower, not inclined and faced with
+marble, like the <i>miranda</i> of Italy, but furnished with a sonorous bell, that
+summoned the citizens, not in vain, to battle against the bishop or the lord.
+Women went forth to these fights, against men. Eighty women insisted on
+taking part in the attack upon the castle of Amiens, and were wounded
+there.</p>
+
+<p>So, likewise, Joan Hachette fought afterwards, at the siege of Beauvais.
+A sprightly and laughter-loving population it was, of impetuous soldiers
+and merry story-tellers, a country of light manners, of smutty <i>fabliaux</i>,
+of good songs. It was their delight, in the twelfth century, to see the
+count of Amiens, mounted upon his big horse, venturing beyond the pont-levis,
+and caracoling clumsily; thereupon the innkeepers and the butchers
+planted themselves boldly at their doors, and startled the feudal animal with
+their loud laughter.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the king founded the communes, but the reverse is,
+rather, the fact—it was the communes that founded the king; without them
+he could not have repulsed the Normans. Those conquerors of England and
+of the Two Sicilies would, probably, have conquered France; it was the
+communes, or, to employ a more general and more exact word, it was the
+<i>bourgeoisies</i> which, under the banner of the parish saint, achieved the security
+of public peace between the Oise and the Loire; and the king, mounted on
+horseback, carried the banner of the abbey of St. Denis, at the head of the
+lords. A vassal, as count of Vexin, abbot of St. Martin de Tours, canon of
+St. Quentin, defender of the churches, he waged holy war against the brigandage
+of the lords of Montmorency and Puiset, and against the execrable
+ferocity of the Coucys. He had upon his side the nascent <i>bourgeoisie</i> and the
+church; feudalism had had all the rest, all the strength and the glory;
+the poor helpless king was smothered between the vast dominations of his
+vassals.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Philosophy and Thought; Abelard and St. Bernard</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1079-1115 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The chain of free-thinkers, broken, it would seem, after Johannes Scotus,
+had its links reunited by the great Gerbert, who became pope in the year
+1000. Educated at Cordova, and admitted a master at Rheims, Gerbert had
+for disciple Fulbert of Chartres, whose pupil Bérenger [Berengarius] of
+Tours affrighted the church by the first doubt cast upon the Eucharist.
+Soon after, the canon Rosselin of Compiègne dared to touch upon the question
+of the Trinity. He taught, moreover, that general ideas were but words:
+“The virtuous man is a reality; virtue is but a sound.” This bold reform
+gave a violent shock to all poetry, to all religion; it accustomed men to
+see nothing but personifications in those ideas that had been regarded as
+real things; it was nothing less than a transition from poetry to prose.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>This logical heresy inspired the contemporaries of the First Crusade with
+horror; nominalism, as it was called, was stifled for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Champions were not wanting to the church against the innovators. The
+Lombards, Lanfranc and St. Anselm, both of them archbishops of Canterbury,
+combated Bérenger and Rosselin. St. Anselm, an original genius,
+anticipated the famous argument of Descartes, for the existence of God:
+“If God did not exist, I could not conceive him.” It was a great delight for
+him to have made this discovery, after a long fit of sleeplessness. Another
+conflict of an intellectual kind, and one of a much graver nature, was about
+to begin, so soon as the question should have come down from politics to
+theology and morals, and the very morality of Christianity should have been
+brought in question. Thus, Pelagius came after Arius, and Abelard after
+Bérenger.</p>
+
+<p>The church seemed at peace; the school of Laon and that of Paris were
+occupied by two pupils of St. Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm of Laon, and
+William of Champeaux. Great signs and tokens, however, were appearing;
+the Vaudois had translated the Bible into the vulgar tongue; the <i>Institutes</i>
+were also translated, and law was taught, simultaneously with theology, at
+Orleans and at Angers. The mere existence of the school of Paris was an immense
+innovation and danger. The ideas which, till then, had been dispersed,
+and exposed to close inspection in the various ecclesiastical schools, were
+about to converge to a centre. The conquests of the Normans and the First
+Crusade had carried that potent philosophic idiom everywhere—into England,
+into Sicily, into Jerusalem. This circumstance alone gave France,
+especially central France and Paris, an immense attractive force. The
+French of Paris became gradually proverbial; feudalism had found its
+political centre in the royal city, and that city was now about to become the
+capital of human thought.</p>
+
+<p>He who began this revolution was not a priest; he was a handsome young
+man, of brilliant and engaging qualities, and of noble race. No one, like
+him, could write love verses in the vulgar tongue, and he sang them himself;
+then his erudition was extraordinary for the times—he was the only man
+who knew Greek and Hebrew.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Perhaps he had frequented the Jewish
+schools (there were many of them in the south), or the rabbis of Troyes,
+Vitry, or Orleans. There were then two principal schools in Paris; the
+old episcopal school of Notre Dame, and that of St. Geneviève, on the mountain,
+where William of Champeaux was in the zenith of his fame. Abelard
+became one of his pupils, laid his doubts before him, puzzled his master, made
+sport of him, and put him to silence. He would have done the same with
+Anselm of Laon, had not the professor, who was a bishop, expelled him
+from his diocese. Thus did the knight-errant of dialectics go about
+unhorsing the most famous champions. He says himself that he renounced
+the other kind of tilting, that of the tournaments, only from his love for the
+war of words. Thenceforth, victorious and unrivalled, he taught at Paris
+and at Melun, where Louis the Fat resided, and where the lords were
+beginning to gather in great numbers. These knights encouraged a man
+of their own order, who had beaten the priests upon their own ground, and
+who put the most self-sufficient of the clerks to silence.</p>
+
+<p>The whole body of Christianity was at stake; it was attacked at its base.
+If original sin, as Abelard said, was not a sin, but a penalty, that penalty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>was unjust, and redemption was useless. Abelard defended himself from
+such a conclusion; but he justified Christianity by means of such feeble
+arguments, that he rather did it more damage by declaring that he had no
+better answer to give. He suffered himself to be brought to a stand by
+means of the <i>argumentum ad absurdum</i>, and then he appealed to authority
+and faith. And so, then, man was no longer guilty; the flesh was justified
+and restored to honour; all the sufferings with which men had immolated
+themselves were superfluous. What became of so many voluntary martyrs,
+so many fastings and mortifications—the vigils of monks, the tribulations
+of hermits, the countless tears shed before God? All was vanity—mockery.
+God was an amiable and easy God, who had nothing to do with all this.</p>
+
+<p>The church was then under the sway of a monk, a simple abbot of Clairvaux,
+St. Bernard. He was of noble birth, like Abelard, a native of Upper
+Burgundy. He had been brought up in the puissant house of Cîteaux, the
+sister and rival of Cluny, which sent forth so many illustrious preachers, and
+which, half a century afterwards, made the crusade against the Albigenses.
+But St. Bernard thought Cîteaux too splendid and too rich: he went into
+needy Champagne, and founded the monastery of Clairvaux in the “Valley
+of Wormwood.” There he was free to lead that life of sorrows that was
+needful to him: nothing could win him from it; never would he hear of
+being anything else than a monk, though he might have become archbishop
+and pope. Constrained to reply to all the kings who consulted him, he
+found himself all-potent in spite of himself, and condemned to govern Europe.
+A letter from St. Bernard made the army of the king of France withdraw
+from Champagne. When schism broke out, by the simultaneous elevation
+of Innocent II and of Anacletus, St. Bernard was appointed by the church of
+France to choose between them, and he chose Innocent. But these were
+not his greatest affairs, as his letters inform us; he lent, not gave, himself to
+the world; his love and his treasure were elsewhere. Living in the inward
+life, in prayer and sacrifice, no one could make himself more alone in the
+midst of bustle; the senses no longer spoke to him of the world. He walked
+a whole day, says his biographer, along the Lake of Lausanne, and in the
+evening he asked where the lake was. He drank oil for water, and took clotted
+blood for butter. He could hardly support himself erect, and yet he found
+strength to preach the crusade to a hundred thousand men. The multitude
+thought it was a spirit, rather than a man they saw, when he appeared thus
+before them, with his red and white beard, his fair and hoary hair; meagre
+and weak, with but a scarcely visible indication of life upon his cheeks.
+His sermons were terrible; mothers kept their sons away from them, and
+wives their husbands; they would else have all followed him to the monasteries.
+As for him, when he had sent forth the breath of life over the multitude,
+he returned with speed to Clairvaux, reconstructed his little hut of
+boughs and foliage near the convent, and assuaged a little his love-sick soul
+in writing the exposition of the “Song of Songs” which employed his
+whole life.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine with what grief such a man must have heard of Abelard’s success—of
+the usurpations of logic over religion; the prosaic victory of
+reasoning over faith; the flame of the sacrifice becoming stifled and extinguished
+in the world. It was robbing him of his God. St. Bernard was
+not to be compared with his rival as a logician; but the latter himself
+wrought his own downfall. He undertook to deduce its consequences from
+his doctrine, and he applied it to his conduct in life. He had reached that
+excess of prosperity in which the infatuation common to our nature plunges
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>us into some great fault. Everything succeeded with him; men held their
+peace before him; women all regarded with looks of love an engaging,
+invincible young man, beautiful in face and all-powerful in mind, who had a
+whole people for his followers. “I had reached such a pass,” he says, “that
+honour what woman I would with my love, I had no refusal to fear.”
+Rousseau says precisely the same thing in his <i>Confessions</i> in relating the
+success of the <i>Nouvelle Héloïse</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1115-1140 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Héloïse of the twelfth century was the niece of the canon Fulbert,
+very young, beautiful, learned, and already celebrated; she was intrusted by
+her uncle to the teaching of Abelard, who seduced her. This fault had not
+even love for its excuse; it was deliberately, in cold blood, by way of
+pastime, that Abelard betrayed the confidence of Fulbert. We know that
+he was cruelly punished by mutilation for his crime; he renounced the
+world, and became a Benedictine at St. Denis, about the year 1119. Thither
+he was pursued by ecclesiastical persecutions, and he found no rest there.
+The archbishop of Rheims, the friend of St. Bernard, assembled a council
+against him at Soissons; Abelard was like to have been stoned by the
+people; he was frightened, shed many tears, burned his books, and said
+whatever they pleased. He was condemned without inquiry, his enemies
+alleging that it was enough that he had taught without the authority of the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>Shut up at St. Médard de Soissons, and afterwards a refugee at St. Denis,
+he was obliged to fly from that asylum. He had presumed to doubt that
+St. Denis, the Areopagite, had ever visited France.<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> To impugn that legend
+was to attack the religion of the monarchy; and from that moment the court
+withdrew its protection from him. He fled to the dominions of the count
+of Champagne, and hid himself in a desert place on the Ardusson, two
+leagues from Nogent. Reduced now to poverty, and having but one clerk
+with him, he built a hut of reeds and an oratory in honour of that Trinity
+he was accused of denying, and named his hermitage the Comforter, the
+Paraclet. But his disciples, having learned where he was, flocked round
+him; they built them huts, and a town rose in the desert, dedicated to
+science and to liberty. A little more, and he would once more have appeared
+as a public teacher; but he was compelled again to hold his peace, and to
+accept the priory of St. Gildas de Ruys in Brittany, the language of which
+he did not understand. It was his fate to find no rest; his Breton monks,
+whose habits he endeavoured to reform, endeavoured to give him poison in
+the chalice. Thenceforth, the unfortunate man led a wandering life, and
+even thought, it is said, of taking refuge in some land of the infidels; but
+first he would once measure his strength against that of the terrible adversary
+who everywhere pursued him with his zeal and his sanctity. At the instigation
+of Arnold of Brescia, he challenged St. Bernard to a logical duel before
+the Council of Sens. The king, the counts of Champagne and Nevers, and
+a host of bishops were to be present, and to judge of the hits. St. Bernard
+repaired to the rendezvous reluctantly, conscious as he was of his inferiority.
+But the threats of the people and the timidity of his rival relieved him from
+all embarrassment. Abelard durst not defend himself, but contented himself
+with appealing to the pope. Innocent II owed everything to St. Bernard,
+and hated Abelard for the sake of his disciple, Arnold of Brescia, who was
+then roaming over Italy, and summoning the towns to freedom. He ordered
+Abelard to be shut up; but the latter had anticipated him by voluntarily
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>taking refuge in the monastery of Cluny. The abbot, Peter the Venerable,
+answered for Abelard, who died there two years afterwards. Such was the
+end of the restorer of philosophy in the Middle Ages—the son of Pelagius,
+the father of Descartes, and a Breton like them. From another point of
+view, he may be regarded as a precursor of the humane and sentimental
+school, which was revived in the persons of Fénelon and Rousseau.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1140-1142 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>There is no memory more popular in France than that of Abelard’s
+mistress. The fall of the man made the grandeur of the woman; but for
+Abelard’s misfortune, Héloïse would have been unknown; she would have
+remained obscure and in the shade, she would have desired no other glory
+than that of her spouse. At the period of their separation, he made her
+take the veil, and built for her the Paraclet, of which she became the abbess.
+There she held a great school of theology, Greek, and Hebrew. Many
+similar monasteries rose around the Paraclet, and some years after the death
+of Abelard, Héloïse was declared head of an order by the pope. But her
+glory consists in her love, so constant and so disinterested—a love to which
+Abelard’s coldness and hardness of heart give a new lustre. Let us compare
+the language of the two lovers:</p>
+
+<p>“Fulbert,” says Abelard, “gave her up, without reserve, to my control,
+so that, upon my return from the schools, I should apply myself to her
+instruction, and, if I found her negligent, should chastise her severely. Was
+not this giving full license to my desires, so that, if I did not succeed by
+caresses, I might compass my end by threats and blows?”</p>
+
+<p>This dastardly brutality of a pedant of the twelfth century is in strange
+contrast with the exalted and disinterested sentiments expressed by Héloïse.
+“God knows, in thee, I sought but thee; nothing of thee but thyself; such
+was the sole object of my desire. I was ambitious of no advantage, not even
+of the bond of wedlock; I thought not, thou well knowest, of satisfying
+either my own wishes or my own pleasure, but thine. If the name of spouse
+is more holy, sweeter to me seemed that of thy mistress, that (be not angry)
+of thy concubine (<i>concubinæ vel seorti</i>). The more I humbled myself for
+thee, the more I hoped to gain in thy heart. Yes, though the master of the
+world, though the emperor had been willing to honour me with the name of
+his spouse, I would rather have been called thy mistress than his wife and
+his empress (<i>tua dici meretrix, quàm illius imperatrix</i>).” She accounts in a
+singular manner for her having long refused to be the wife of Abelard:
+“Would it not have been an unseemly, a deplorable thing, that one woman
+should appropriate and take for herself alone, him whom nature had created
+for all mankind? What mind, intent upon the meditations of philosophy or
+of sacred things, could endure the crying of children, the prating of nurses,
+the disturbance and tumult of serving-men and women?”</p>
+
+<p>The mere form of the letters that passed between Abelard and Héloïse
+shows how little the passion of the latter was returned. Abelard divides
+and subdivides his mistress’s letters; he replies to them methodically, and
+by chapters. He heads his own: “To the spouse of Christ, the slave of
+Christ”; or “To his dear sister in Christ, Abelard her brother in Christ.”
+Héloïse’s tone is very different: “To her master, nay, father; to her husband,
+nay, brother; his handmaid, his spouse, nay, his daughter, his sister;
+Héloïse to Abelard.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2f2"><a href="#endnote_2f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Abelard and the University</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1100-1150 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Hasting Rashdall describes the relations between Abelard’s influence in
+Paris and the ultimate development of the University of Paris as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The less imaginative historians of the University of Paris have generally
+been contented with tracing its origin to the teaching of Abelard. And it
+was undoubtedly to the intellectual movement of which Abelard is the most
+conspicuous representative that the rise of the university must ultimately be
+ascribed. But there was nothing in the organisation of the schools wherein
+Abelard taught to distinguish them from any other cathedral schools which
+might for a time be rendered famous by the teaching of some illustrious
+master. In the age of Abelard there were three great churches at Paris
+more or less famous for their schools. In the first place there was the cathedral
+(Notre Dame), whose schools were presided over by William of Champeaux.
+Then, on the left bank of the Seine, there was the collegiate church
+of St. Geneviève; and there was the church of the Canons Regular of St.
+Victor’s, where a school for external scholars was started by William after
+his retirement from the world. St. Victor’s became the head-quarters of the
+old traditional or positive theology, and it had ceased to exist, or ceased to
+attract secular students, before the first traces of a university organisation
+begin to appear. With both the secular schools of Paris, Abelard was at one
+time or other connected. Denifle’s repudiation of the old view that the
+university arose from a junction between the arts schools of St. Geneviève
+and the theological schools of Notre Dame goes slightly beyond the evidence,
+but in the main he is unquestionably right in contending that it was the
+cathedral schools which eventually developed into the university.</p>
+
+<p>“It was the fame of Abelard which first drew to the streets of Paris the
+hordes of students whose presence involved that multiplication of masters
+by whom the university was ultimately formed. In that sense, and in that
+sense only the origin of the University of Paris may be connected with the
+name and age of Abelard. Of a university or a recognised society of masters
+we hear nothing; nay, the existence of such an institution was impossible
+at a time when the single master of the cloister school seems to have been as
+a rule the only recognised master in or around each particular church.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2m"><a href="#endnote_2m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Position of Woman</i></h4>
+
+<p>Abelard had propounded the ideal of pure and disinterested love in his
+writings, as the consummation of the religious soul. Woman rose up to it,
+for the first time, in the writings of Héloïse; but still indeed referring it to
+man, to her spouse, to her visible God.</p>
+
+<p>The restoration of woman, which had begun with Christianity, took place
+chiefly in the twelfth century. A slave in the East, even in the Greek
+gynæceum a recluse, emancipated by imperial jurisprudence, she was recognised
+by the new religion as man’s equal. Still Christianity, but just liberated
+from pagan sensuality, continued to fear and distrust woman; men
+knew themselves to be weak and fond, and they repudiated her all the more
+strongly, the more they felt how they sympathised with her in their hearts.
+Hence, the harsh, and even contemptuous expressions with which they labour
+to fortify themselves. Woman is usually designated by the ecclesiastical
+writers, and in the Capitularies, by that degrading, but most expressive
+phrase, “the weaker vessel” (<i>vas infirmius</i>). When Gregory VII wished to
+free the clergy from its double bond, woman and land, there was a new outburst
+of invective against that dangerous Eve whose seduction wrought
+Adam’s ruin, and who evermore pursues him in his sons.</p>
+
+<p>A quite opposite movement began in the twelfth century. Free mysticism
+undertook to raise up what sacerdotal harshness had trampled under
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>foot. It was especially a Breton, Robert d’Arbrissel, who fulfilled this mission
+of love. He reopened the bosom of Christ to women, founded asylums
+for them, built them Fontevrault, and there were soon Fontevraults all over
+Christendom. The enterprising charity of Robert applied itself, by preference,
+to great sinners of the female sex. He taught the clemency of God,
+and his immeasurable mercy in the vilest haunts. It was a curious thing to
+see the blessed Robert d’Arbrissel holding forth day and night amidst a crowd
+of disciples of both sexes, all resting together around him. The bitter sarcasms
+of his enemies had no effect upon the charitable and courageous Breton,
+nor even the scandals to which these meetings gave occasion; he covered all
+with the wide mantle of grace.</p>
+
+<p>As grace prevailed over the law, a great religious revolution took place.
+Piety became converted into an enthusiasm of chivalric gallantry; the
+mystical church of Lyons celebrated a festival of the Immaculate Conception
+(1134), thus exalting the ideal of maternal purity precisely at the period
+when Héloïse was expressing the pure disinterestedness of love in her famous
+letters. Woman reigned in heaven; she reigned also upon earth. We see
+her interfere, and with authority, in the affairs of this world. Bertrade de
+Montfort ruled at once over her first husband, Fulk of Anjou, and her
+second, Philip I, king of France. Louis VII dates his acts from the coronation
+of his wife Adela. Women, natural judges in poetical contests, and in
+the courts of love, sat also as judges in grave matters, and upon an equality
+with their husbands. The king of France expressly recognises this right.</p>
+
+<p>In the first half of the twelfth century women were everywhere restored
+to that right of inheritance from which they had been excluded by feudal
+barbarism in England, Castile, Aragon, Jerusalem, Burgundy, Flanders,
+Hainault, Vermandois, Aquitaine, Provence, and Lower Languedoc. The
+rapid extinction of male heirs, the softening of manners, and the progress of
+equity, restored the right of inheritance to women. They brought sovereignties
+with them into foreign houses; they linked and bound the world together,
+accelerated the agglomeration of states, and prepared the way for the centralisation
+of the great monarchies.</p>
+
+<p>One royal house alone, that of the Capets, did not recognise the right
+of women; it remained safe from the mutations which transferred the other
+states from one dynasty to another; it received and it did not give. Foreign
+queens might come; the female, the movable element, might be renewed,
+but the male element did not come to it from without, it remained always
+the same, and with it remained an identity of spirit and a perpetuity of system.
+This fixity of the dynasty is one of those things which have most
+contributed to insure the unity and the personality of this mobile country.
+The common characteristic of the period following the crusade, is an attempt
+at emancipation. The crusade in its immense movement had been an occasion—an
+impulse; when the occasion came, the attempt took place, an
+attempt for the emancipation of the people in the communes, for the emancipation
+of women, for that of philosophy and of pure thought. This echo of
+the crusade, like the crusade itself, was to display all its potency and its
+effect in France, among the most sociable of nations.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2f3"><a href="#endnote_2f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> [Contemporaries assign very varied and incoherent numbers for the size of William’s
+army. One of them, Hugues de Fleury, estimates it at 150,000 men. Modern historians have
+cut this down to about 60,000, which is still regarded by some as too high.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> [The trouble with Robert did not end until 1076, when a treaty was made and the king
+received the homage of Flanders.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> [She (Héloïse) was perfect mistress of Latin and knew enough Greek and Hebrew to form
+the basis of her future proficiency. He (Abelard) knew nothing of Greek or Hebrew, although
+all his biographers except M. Rémusat assume that he knew them both.—<span class="smcap">G. W. Lewes.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_2l"><a href="#endnote_2l">l</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> [A legend had identified St. Denis who flourished in the third century with Dionysius the
+Areopagite who was converted by St. Paul.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-3.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Almost at the moment that the Crusades broke out, an institution
+commenced its aggrandisement which has, perhaps, contributed more
+than any other to the formation of modern society, and to the fusion of
+all the social elements into two powers, the government and the people,—the
+institution of Royalty.—<span class="smcap">Guizot.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3m1"><a href="#endnote_3m">m</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1180-1270 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Philip Augustus, Louis’ son and successor, who was about fifteen years
+of age when he began to reign, was already the nursling of court adulation
+and homage. His predecessors had not attained dignity sufficient to expose
+them to this bane of the royal nature. Congratulations, couched in the language
+of oriental hyperbole, had greeted his birth. He was styled the <i>Dieu-donné</i>,
+“the God-given”; and self-constituted laureates began already to
+celebrate the majesty of the monarch of the French. Formerly, the surrounding
+nobles had disdained to dispute court favour or influence; but the
+first years of Philip’s reign were taken up with the rivalry of the houses of
+Flanders and Champagne, which each sought to be the masters and ministers
+of the young sovereign. Henry II of England gave his support to the
+counts of Champagne, and the partisans of Flanders were obliged to retire from
+Paris. They formed a league, and menaced war; but Philip, with the
+English monarch’s aid, easily overcame the malcontents. Henry showed
+generosity on this occasion. Instead of profiting by the divisions of the
+French, and keeping them alive, he frankly supported the young king
+against his refractory barons. He was king himself, and sympathised with
+royalty. Philip ill repaid this kindness: he imitated his father’s policy in
+seducing the sons of the English monarch from their allegiance; and their
+frequent ingratitude at length broke the heart of the sensitive and passionate
+monarch. Richard, duke of Aquitaine, known as Cœur de Lion, and his
+father’s successor on the throne, was the especial friend and ally of Philip in
+these quarrels; and for a long time the princes shared the same tent and
+the same bed.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime a third crusade began to be preached. This prevalent enthusiasm,
+like the rebellions of an oppressed yet brave people, was sure to
+arouse itself and reawaken as soon as time had elapsed sufficient to allow
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>the disasters of the past to be forgotten. Saladin had recently taken
+Jerusalem. Fugitives instantly filled Europe with the dismal tidings. The
+cry for a crusade became general: it was no longer, however, the church
+that called a council to debate and decide upon the question; another
+power had arisen to rob the clergy of their initiative. The king called a
+parliament (<i>parlement</i>) of his barons at Gisors, and there a third crusade
+was determined upon. Cœur de Lion was the first to assume the cross; and
+king Philip, only hurt at being anticipated, followed his example. Frederick
+Barbarossa also took the same resolution.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1190-1194 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In June of the year 1190, Philip Augustus received the pilgrim’s scrip
+and staff from the hands of the abbot of St. Denis. Richard received his at
+Tours; and it was remarked, as
+an omen, that, as he leaned on the
+staff, it broke under his weight.
+In order to avoid the disasters
+of former crusades, they were to
+proceed to Palestine by sea. The
+two kings wintered in Sicily on
+their voyage thither, and there
+laid the foundation of their future
+jealousy and hate. The crusaders
+found the barons of Syria engaged
+in the siege of Acre. Their arrival
+hastened its surrender, and
+at the same time marked it with
+crime. Richard caused upwards
+of two thousand captives to be
+massacred in cold blood, and
+Philip was guilty of a similar
+piece of cruelty. The monarchs,
+indeed, had some slight breach
+of stipulations to allege, or might
+excuse their conduct as a reprisal
+for that of Saladin, who put to
+death many of the prisoners whom
+he made at the battle of Tiberias,
+more especially all those whose
+tonsure marked them to belong
+to the order of the Templars. It
+was thus that the ferocity of
+oriental manners came to alloy the more generous spirit of chivalry. In
+Palestine the French learned to be merciless towards their religious enemies,
+and hence it was that the fair page of their history was soon afterwards stained
+by the massacre of those whom they called heretics at home.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p048.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Philip Augustus</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1194-1200 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Philip Augustus could not long endure the superior renown and prowess
+of Cœur de Lion. He seized the pretext of an illness to quit Palestine and
+abandon the field of glory to his rival. Returning home, he besought the
+pope to release him from the oath which bound him to respect the rights
+and territories of a brother crusader. The pontiff refused; but Philip
+felt himself sufficiently absolved by the Macchiavellian law of monarchical
+policy: and fortune, in making Richard fall captive to the duke of Austria,
+on his return from the Holy Land, seemed to favour the envious designs of
+the French monarch. Philip no sooner was informed of Richard’s captivity,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>than he leagued with his brother John, and invaded Normandy. He took
+several towns and castles, but was repulsed from before Rouen. At length
+Richard was released, or, as Philip wrote to his confederate, “the devil
+broke loose.” We expect on this occasion to read of a furious war betwixt
+the sovereigns. And yet no brilliant feat, no general engagement, marked
+that which ensued. Petty treason and short truce, varied by a skirmish or
+a marauding party, were all the effects produced by the envy of Philip and
+the resentment of the lion-hearted king. The death of the latter by an
+arrow-shot, as he besieged a castle in the Limousin, left a less formidable
+rival to Philip in the person of King John (1199). The writer of fiction
+never imagined a baser character than that of John. His cowardice and
+meanness form a phenomenon and an exception in the feudal ages. The
+nullity of such a rival converted Philip Augustus from the powerless
+intriguer to the conqueror and the hero.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3b1"><a href="#endnote_3b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PRINCE ARTHUR OF BRITTANY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1200-1204 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Although Richard on his death-bed declared John to be his heir, the
+crown of England descended by right of primogeniture to the young prince
+Arthur, son of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany and the elder brother of John;
+the latter seized it. But Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, weary of English
+domination, declared for Arthur, and invoked Philip’s protection. The
+king of France took up Arthur’s cause and then abandoned it (1200),
+after obtaining from John the advantage his political selfish policy was
+seeking.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3c1"><a href="#endnote_3c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Arthur had been accepted by the Bretons at his birth as a liberator
+and avenger. Old Eleanor, alone, held out against her grandson, for her
+son John, and for the unity of the English realm, which the accession of
+Arthur would have divided. Arthur, in fact, held that unity very cheap.
+He offered the king of France to cede Normandy to him, provided he might
+have Brittany, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. John
+would have been reduced to the possession of England alone. Philip
+willingly assented to this, put his own garrisons in Arthur’s best fortresses,
+and demolished them when he had no hope of maintaining his position in
+them. John’s nephew, thus betrayed by his ally, turned once more to his
+uncle; then he came back to the party of France, invaded Poitou, and
+besieged his grandmother, Eleanor, in Mirebeau. It was nothing new in
+that family to see the sons armed against their parents. Meanwhile, John
+came to the rescue, delivered his mother, defeated Arthur, and took him
+prisoner with most of the great lords of his party. What became of the
+captive? This has never been clearly ascertained. Matthew Paris<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3j1"><a href="#endnote_3j">j</a></span> alleges
+that John treated him well at first, but was afterwards alarmed by the
+threats and the obstinacy of the young Breton. “Arthur disappeared,”
+he says, “and God grant that it may not have been as malicious rumour
+reports.” But Arthur had excited too many hopes to allow of the popular
+imagination resigning itself to this uncertainty. It was confidently affirmed
+that John had caused him to be put to death, and it was soon added that he
+had killed him with his own hand. The chaplain of Philip Augustus relates,
+as if he had seen it with his own eyes, that John took Arthur in a boat,
+stabbed him twice with a dagger, and threw him into the river three miles
+from the castle of Rouen. The Bretons placed the scene of the tragedy in
+their own country near Cherbourg, at the foot of those ill-omened cliffs that
+present a line of precipices all along the ocean. Thus the tradition went on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>enlarging in details, and in dramatic interest, and at last Shakespeare makes
+Arthur a helpless young child, whose gentle and innocent words disarmed
+the most brutal assassin.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3d1"><a href="#endnote_3d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Philip was in the meantime checked in his projects by the court of Rome,
+which had laid an interdict upon him, on account of his divorce from Ingeborg
+(Ingeburge) of Denmark. And the preaching of a fifth crusade,<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> which
+eventually led to the establishment of the Frankish empire of Romania, about
+the same time took from him the interest and the aid of many nobles and
+chevaliers. He was, during the same interval, engaged in the conquest of
+Normandy, which the imbecility and cowardice of John delivered to his arms
+without defence. Roger de Lascy held the fortress of Les Andelys for several
+months against the French, and was the only valiant servitor of an unworthy
+monarch. The barons and warriors of England disdained to fight under his
+banner. There was as yet none of that rivalry which afterwards sprang up
+betwixt the nations. The monarchs of both were French princes, speaking
+the French tongue; and, although subsequent historians have given a national
+colour to the combats and conquests of Philip, the struggle was almost purely
+personal. Rouen, the capital of Normandy, surrendered to him (1204), without
+John’s making a single effort to preserve it. And thus a few years of
+the reign of one weak prince more than counterbalanced the long-established
+superiority of the monarchs of England.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1204-1208 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It has been seen what use the French monarchs made of their courts of
+peers, and of the judicial supremacy allowed them, in extending their authority
+over barons heretofore independent. Philip dared to apply the same
+principle to the dukes of Normandy, which his father had successfully done
+with regard to the counts of Bourbon and Auvergne. He summoned John
+before his suzerain court, to answer for the murder of Arthur and other
+crimes. Henry II, or Richard, would have given fit answer to such a summons.
+The Norman princes always held their homage to be that by parade
+or courtesy, not <i>homage-liège</i>. But John had neither the sense of his dignity,
+nor the spirit to maintain it. He allowed the jurisdiction of Philip’s
+court, though he feared to obey his summons; and he thus seemed to allow a
+legal right to the usurpations of Philip. The latter, indeed, appeared to feel
+the want of dignity in the assessors of his court. All nobles holding their
+lands directly of the king were peers in his parliament; and thus the petty
+lords of the counties of Paris and Orleans ranked equally with the dukes of
+Burgundy or the counts of Flanders. Philip remedied this, by appointing
+twelve great peers, or rather by pretending that such a number had always
+existed since the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. Of these, six were clerics,
+six laics; the latter being the dukes of Normandy, of Aquitaine, of Burgundy,
+the counts of Toulouse, of Flanders, and of Champagne. This division
+of the aristocracy in the high and low nobility, was, however, as yet but
+nominal; the lesser barons still continued to consider themselves as the
+peers of the greater, and to have an equal voice in the royal courts. It is
+important for the reader to mark the rise of this feudal institution, and
+equally so to mark the difference of its fate and progress in France and in
+England. In the former country, the parliament became amalgamated
+with lawyers, and preserved to the last its judicial functions, whilst its
+legislative authority became but a shadow. In England, on the contrary,
+it guarded the more precious privilege of legislation, abandoning a considerable
+portion of its judicial rights.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span></p>
+
+<p>By the discomfiture of John, Philip Augustus united to the monarchy of
+France not only Normandy, but the provinces of Maine, Anjou, Touraine,
+and Poitou. Artois he had acquired as the dowry of his wife, Isabella of
+Hainault. The counties of the south remained still independent of his
+sway. They looked to the king of Aragon as their suzerain; and there
+existed far more congeniality of feelings and habits betwixt the Spaniards
+and Provençals, than betwixt the Provençals and French. Certain events
+of the reign of Philip, which we are about to relate, destroyed the independence
+of the people of the south, as well as their connection with the
+Aragonese, and extended the authority of the French monarch to the Mediterranean
+and the Pyrenees.</p>
+
+<h3>THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE</h3>
+
+<p>While Philip Augustus adroitly wrested Normandy and its dependencies
+from the hands of John, a series of events took place in Languedoc which
+had the effect of destroying its independence, and of bringing that fine
+region not only nominally, as it had hitherto been, but really under the
+dominion of the kings of France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3b2"><a href="#endnote_3b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At this period the southern part of France held but distant relations
+with the north. Two powerful houses, that of Barcelona and that of Toulouse,
+shared dominion over it, with the exception of Aquitaine, which
+extended to the Pyrenees. This isolation naturally gave the south a separate
+existence, character, and interest. The tongue, that of the Limousin or
+of Provence, resembling more the Aragonese than the French of Paris, had
+become, thanks to the troubadours, a literary language. The cities contained
+a large bourgeois element, which had become wealthy through commerce.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the midst of this people, active, ardent, isolated from most of
+their neighbours by political as well as natural barriers, corrupted moreover
+by the refinements of an equivocal civilisation and by the enervating literature
+of the troubadours, that there broke forth, at the end of the twelfth
+century, the Albigensian heresy, a powerful one, that having long undermined
+the ground, ended by being a menace to Catholic beliefs, the church,
+and society itself.</p>
+
+<p>Several heretical sects dating from the early Christian time had not
+ceased to have their obscure upholders in France. Such were the Manichæans
+or Paulicians who believed in the co-existence of a principle of good
+and a principle of evil. It was the Paulicians who were condemned to be
+burned at Orleans by King Robert (1022). During the time of the crusaders,
+the sect, revived by frequent intercourse with the Orient where it
+had originated, spread all over the centre of France. It is thought that this
+extension was the work of the emigrants who arrived from Bulgaria; at
+last the heretics received the name of Bulgarians or Boulgres, and it was
+rumoured that they had a mysterious chief, or, as they said, a resident pope
+in that country. They were called Albigenses because they were especially
+numerous in the vicinity of Albi, and by this last name they have been preserved
+in history.</p>
+
+<p>Some of their doctrines are known: they regarded the devil, or principle
+of evil, as the first author of the creation; they rejected the sacraments;
+they interpreted the Scriptures in a different way from the Catholic tradition.
+Also they possessed a kind of sacerdotal college whose members, called “the
+perfect ones,” performed special rites. It is very difficult to form any idea
+of their dogmas as a whole, for they had no theologian, no teacher, and they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>have left no writings. One can judge the basis of this heresy, and the sects
+belonging to it, only indirectly by the writings of the authors and teachers
+who fought them. These writers have attacked above all the strangeness of
+their practices and the vulgarity of their superstitions.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1208-1209 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But the dominant character of all these sects was their hatred of the
+church. They pretended to re-establish the primitive simplicity of the religion,
+which the church had corrupted, and among themselves they were
+known as <i>cathares</i>, or “the pure ones.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3e"><a href="#endnote_3e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For a long time the holy see seemed not alive to the importance of
+this sect. It was Pope Innocent III who first perceived its dangerous
+tendency, and who took certain steps for its
+destruction. He issued interdicts against
+such princes as should favour them, and
+offered the spoil of the heretic to whoever
+should subdue and slay him. The principal
+lord of the south of France was at that time
+Raymond VI, count of Toulouse; and he at
+least tolerated the Albigenses, as those primitive
+reformers were called, aware of their
+moral purity and sincere devotion. Peter of
+Castelnau, the pope’s legate, reproached the
+count of Toulouse with his want of zeal, and
+was indignant at his forbearance to extirpate
+the new opinions by fire and sword. The
+legate used no measured language; he not only
+excommunicated Raymond, but insulted him
+in his court, and then took his departure.
+The count of Toulouse expressed his indignant
+feelings before his followers as Henry II
+did after the insolence of Thomas à Becket,
+and with the same fatal effect. On the day
+after, Peter of Castelnau fell under the dagger
+of a gentleman of the count, in a hostelry on
+the Rhone, where he had stopped.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p052.jpg" width="200" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">An Officer of the King’s Household, Thirteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Pope Innocent was driven to transports of
+rage on learning the assassination of his legate.
+He not only excommunicated the count of
+Toulouse, but promulgated a crusade against
+him. He called on all the nobles of France,
+on its princes, and its prelates, to join in the
+“holy” war, to assume the cross, as being
+engaged against infidels. And the same privileges and indulgences were
+granted to the crusader of this civil war, that previously were bestowed on
+those who embarked fortune and life in the perilous attempt to rescue the
+Holy Land from the Saracen. Spoil, wealth, and honour in this world,
+together with certain salvation in the next, were now offered at too cheap a
+rate to be refused. Crowds of adventurers flocked to the standard; and
+a formidable army was assembled at Lyons in the spring of 1209, under the
+command of the legate commander, Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux. The pope
+at the same time created a new ecclesiastical militia for the destruction of
+heresy. The order of St. Dominic, or of the friars inquisitors, was instituted;
+and these infernal missionaries were let loose in couples upon the hapless
+Languedoc, like bloodhounds, to scent their prey and then devour it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1209-1217 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Raymond, count of Toulouse, had neither the force nor the courage to
+oppose so formidable an invasion. He repaired to the crusaders’ army,
+delivered up his fortresses and cities, and suffered the humiliating penance
+of a public flogging in the church of St. Giles. The count’s relative and
+feudatory, Raymond Roger, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, regions
+infected with the heresy of the Albigenses, came also to make submission.
+The abbot of Cîteaux, who was prudent enough to accept that of the count
+of Toulouse, feared to lose all his prey. He refused to admit the exculpation
+of the viscount of Béziers, and plainly told him that his only chance was to
+defend himself to the utmost. The young viscount courageously accepted
+the advice. He summoned the most faithful of his vassals, abandoned the
+open country as well as towns of lesser consequence to the enemy, and
+restricted his efforts to the defence of Béziers and of Carcassonne. He shut
+himself up in the latter. The fury of the crusaders fell first upon Béziers:
+they had scarcely sat down before the unfortunate town, when a sally of the
+garrison was repulsed with such vigour that the besiegers entered the town
+together with the routed host of the citizens. Word of this unexpected
+success was instantly brought to the abbot of Cîteaux, and his orders were
+demanded as to how the innocent were to be distinguished from the guilty.
+“Slay them all,” exclaimed the legate of the vicar of Christ; “the Lord will
+know his own.” The entire population was in consequence put to the
+sword; nor woman nor infant was spared. Upwards of twenty thousand
+human beings perished in the massacre—the sanguinary first-fruits of modern
+persecution. Carcassonne was next invested, bravely attacked, and as
+valiantly defended; the young viscount distinguishing himself in defence
+of his rights, while Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was the most prominent
+warrior of the crusaders. At length the legate grew weary of the
+viscount’s obstinacy, and offered him terms. He gave him a safe-conduct,
+sanctioned by his own oath and that of the barons of his army. Raymond
+Roger came with three hundred of his followers to the tent of the
+legate. “Faith,” said the latter, “is not to be kept with those who have no
+faith”; and he ordered the viscount and his friends to be put in chains.
+The inhabitants of Carcassonne found means to fly. In a general assembly
+of the crusaders, the lordships of Béziers and Carcassonne were given to
+Simon de Montfort, in reward of his zeal and valour; and to make the gift
+sure, it was accompanied with the person of his rival. The unfortunate
+viscount, the victim of the legate’s perfidy, soon after perished in prison.</p>
+
+<p>The victory of the crusaders was of course followed by executions at the
+stake and on the scaffold. The friars inquisitors of the order of St. Dominic
+did not relax their zeal. A general revolt against De Montfort was the
+consequence, in which the people of Toulouse joined. The Provençal army
+was headed by Pedro king of Aragon, the uncle of the late viscount of
+Béziers. It was he who had persuaded the unfortunate viscount to trust
+himself to the legate, and to him in consequence fell the duty of taking
+vengeance. The cross, however—the profaned cross—was still successful.
+The Provençals were routed by Simon de Montfort at the battle of Muret,
+and the king of Aragon was slain. This victory seemed to establish the
+power of De Montfort in Languedoc. He took possession of all the provinces
+of his rival, even of the town of Toulouse; and an assembly of prelates
+sanctioned the usurpation. But the cruel spirit of De Montfort would not
+allow him to rest quiet in his new empire. Violence and persecution marked
+his rule; he sought to destroy the Provençal population by the sword or the
+stake, nor could he bring himself to tolerate the liberties of the citizens
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>of Toulouse. In 1217 the Toulousans again revolted, and war once more
+broke out betwixt Count Raymond and Simon de Montfort. The latter
+formed the siege of the capital, and was engaged in repelling a sally, when
+a stone from one of the walls struck him and put an end to his existence.
+The death of De Montfort was of course considered a martyrdom by the
+clergy, and his fame in their chronicles far outshines that of Godfrey de
+Bouillon or of Richard the Lion-hearted.</p>
+
+<h3>LEAGUE AGAINST PHILIP AUGUSTUS</h3>
+
+<p>King Philip was in the meantime pursuing his darling object, the humbling
+the power of the princes of England. He had already driven John
+from the west of France. That monarch, at variance with his barons, and
+at the same time excommunicated by the church, seemed an easy prey to
+Philip. The French king meditated the conquest of England. He leagued
+with the malcontents of that country, and formed a powerful army for the
+purposes of invasion. John, to ward off the blow, not only became reconciled
+to the Roman see, but made himself and his kingdom feudatory to the pope.
+A papal legate immediately took John under his protection; and the French
+monarch, rather than risk a quarrel with the church, turned his armies
+towards Flanders, which he wasted and plundered impitiably, from hatred to
+its count.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor Otto, then in alliance with King John against France,
+came to the relief of the Flemings; and thus, for the first time since the
+accession of the new dynasty, the armies of France and Germany found
+themselves arrayed against each other in national hostility, each commanded
+by its respective monarch. The rival hosts met at Bouvines, in the month
+of August, 1214. Twenty thousand combatants on either side, together with
+the presence of two monarchs, gave gravity and importance to the meeting.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3b3"><a href="#endnote_3b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Bouvines (1214 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1214 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The two armies remained for a time a short distance apart, not daring
+to begin operations; and the French were retreating over the bridge of
+Bouvines to march upon Hainault, when the enemy, attacking the rearguard,
+obliged them to turn about.</p>
+
+<p>The chaplain, William le Breton,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3k"><a href="#endnote_3k">k</a></span> who during the action remained beside
+the king singing psalms, says: “Philip was resting under a tree near a
+chapel, his armour laid aside. At the first sound of combat he entered the
+church for a short prayer, armed hastily, and mounted his steed with as great
+enthusiasm as though on his way to a wedding or a feast. Loud shouts
+resounded from the field: ‘To arms, men of war, to arms!’ together with
+the blare of trumpets. The king rode to the front, not waiting for his
+banner—the oriflamme of St. Denis, a flag of scarlet silk, that day carried
+by Gallon de Montigny, a brave man. The bishop-elect of Senlis, Guérin,
+ordered the battle so that the French had the sun behind them, while the
+enemy fought with the sun in their eyes. Three hundred mounted peasants
+of Soissons, vassals of the abbot of St. Médard, opened action on the right
+wing, boldly charging the Flemish cavalry. The latter hesitated to engage
+with their inferiors, but the cry, ‘Death to the French!’ raised by one
+among them proved decisive; and the Burgundians, led by their duke,
+arriving to reinforce those of Soissons, there was a furious combat. On
+this side Count Ferrand of Flanders fought.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/fp2.jpg" width="650" height="460" alt="">
+<p class="caption">THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p>
+
+<p>When the battle began the militia had already crossed the bridge;
+they recrossed in haste, rallied under the royal standard, and took position
+in the centre in front of the king and his guard. The German cavalry,
+among whom rode the emperor Otto, charged and penetrated their ranks,
+and had almost reached the king when they were checked by the prompt
+action of his officers. In the midst of this encounter arrived the German
+infantry. These dragged Philip from his horse, and before he could recover
+his feet attempted to thrust at him through the visor of his helmet or a flaw
+in his armour. Montigny, who carried the colours, waved his banner frantically
+for assistance; some horse- and foot-soldiers hastened up. These
+rescued the king, set him on his horse, and he again plunged into the mêlée.</p>
+
+<p>Otto in his turn was near to being captured. William des Barres, the
+bravest and ablest of the French cavaliers, the fortunate adversary of Richard
+the Lion-hearted, whom he had twice overcome, had the emperor by the helmet,
+and was thrusting at him furiously when overwhelmed by a torrent of
+the enemy. Unable to make him loose his hold or to close with him, they
+killed his horse under him; but disentangling himself he succeeded, alone
+and on foot, in clearing with his sword and his poniard an ample space
+around him. Otto escaped.</p>
+
+<p>On the right Ferrand, count of Flanders, had fallen wounded into the
+hands of the French; in the centre the emperor and his German princes had
+taken to flight: but on the left Renaud de Boulogne and the English held
+firm. They had overcome the men of Dreux, of Perche, of Ponthieu, and
+of Vimeu. “Whereupon,” says the poet-chronicler, “Philip de Dreux, bishop of
+Beauvais, happening to have in his hand a club, and forgetting in his rage and
+grief the dignity of his office, struck down the English commander and with
+him many others, spilling no blood but breaking many bones. He enjoined
+upon those about him the necessity of taking upon themselves the credit of
+this deed, that he might not fall under reproach for violating the traditions
+of his office.”</p>
+
+<p>The English were soon completely routed with the exception of Renaud
+de Boulogne, who had drawn up a double circle of infantry bristling with
+spears. He charged therefrom as from a fort, and there returned for refuge and
+to recover breath. At last his horse was wounded; he fell and was captured.
+Five other counts and twenty-five knights-banneret had been taken.</p>
+
+<p>The return of the king to Paris was a march of triumph. All along the
+route the churches dispersed indulgences, and the hymns of the choirs
+mingled with the clash of war implements. The houses were hung with
+draperies; the roads strewn with branches and fresh flowers. Men and
+women, children and old people ran to the crossroads to see the count of
+Flanders who, wounded and in chains, was carried in a litter; some among
+them crying: “Ferrand, bound and in irons (<i>ferré</i>), no longer shalt thou
+kick against the pricks and hurl defiance at thy masters.”</p>
+
+<p>At Paris the townspeople, with a multitude of clerks and students, burst
+into songs and hymns on the arrival of the king. The day not sufficing for
+the jubilation, they festooned the dark with innumerable lanterns, so that the
+night was brilliant as the day. The students kept holiday for a week. In
+the midst of these rejoicings the troops, which had comported themselves so
+creditably in the strife, delivered to the provost of Paris the prisoners in their
+charge. The king left them a certain number to be ransomed and imprisoned
+the rest. Ferrand was lodged in the new tower of the Louvre, where
+he remained for thirteen years. Near Senlis was built Victory Abbey, whose
+ruins are still to be seen.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3c2"><a href="#endnote_3c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span></p>
+
+<h3>LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1214-1224 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The brilliant success of Bouvines seems to have contented and allayed
+the hitherto restless ambition of Philip. In a year or two after, the barons
+of England, discontented with John, offered their crown to Louis, the son of
+Philip Augustus. The old monarch hesitated; he dreaded the anathema
+with which the pope threatened him, if he attacked his vassal, John of England.
+Prince Louis was obliged to undertake the expedition with but scanty
+aid from his parent. He was at first successful. Almost all England owned
+his sovereignty. The castle of Dover alone held out. But the death of
+John, and the proclaiming of his son, Henry III, soon obliged the French
+prince to abandon his claim and his conquests in England.</p>
+
+<p>In the south, Philip Augustus showed himself equally dead to enterprise
+and lost in spirit. Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, offered to cede to the
+king all his rights in Languedoc, which he was unable to defend against the
+old house of Toulouse. Philip hesitated to accept the important cession, and
+left the rival houses to the continuance of a struggle carried feebly on by
+either side. He at length expired, in 1223, after a reign of forty-three
+years. This period of half a century was one of uninterrupted progress to
+the French monarchy, and to its sovereign power. Though much of this was
+due to the age, to circumstances, and to the natural development of the country’s
+political system, still much remains due to the personal character of
+Philip—to his activity, his prudence, foresight, and courage. The mere list
+of the provinces which he subdued and united to the monarchy forms the
+fittest monument to his fame. These were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine,
+and Poitou, wrested from John; Picardy and Auvergne, won in the
+commencement of his reign; Artois, acquired by his marriage with Isabella
+of Hainault; and, finally, the influence over Languedoc which the crusaders
+brought him, and which nothing but Philip’s age and declining strength
+prevented him from converting into sovereignty. In minor matters the
+active spirit of Philip Augustus equally displayed itself. He put the police
+on an efficient footing; he walled and paved Paris and the principal towns
+under his sway; he built and fortified; he encouraged literature by the
+foundation of professorships; improved the discipline of the army; and,
+with all his enterprises and expenses, so ordered his finances as to leave a
+considerable treasure at his death.</p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS VIII (1223-1226 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>When Louis VIII succeeded his father Philip on the throne, it was
+remarked with joy by the lovers of legitimacy that he was descended by his
+mother, Isabella of Hainault, from Charles of Lorraine, the last prince of
+Charlemagne’s blood, and that he thus united the rights of Carlovingian and
+Capetian. He was feeble in person, and is said not to have been endowed
+with much capacity; but the sage policy of Philip Augustus, together with
+the impulse he had given to affairs, continued to direct them, and to render
+France triumphant over her enemies. Henry III lost the towns of Niort
+and La Rochelle, and was driven by Louis from Poitou; yet so little did the
+English feel the loss of this province, that it is scarcely noticed by the historians
+of the island. The barons were so much occupied with jealousy of
+their sovereign and of his power, that Henry could procure or send no
+aid to his French provinces. A feeble expedition was at length fitted out,
+which preserved Gascony to England, but recovered nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span></p>
+
+<p>A singular cause of contention arose about this time in Flanders. Baldwin,
+its last count, had been one of the leaders of the Fifth Crusade, which, in
+the commencement of the century, took Constantinople from the Greeks.
+He had been elected emperor of Romania, and had been the first of the
+Latin dynasty which reigned over it. Soon after, in the year 1205, he had
+been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and had not since been heard of. His
+daughter Joan succeeded to the county of Flanders, and had married Ferdinand
+(Ferrand), prince of Portugal, who had opposed Philip Augustus, and
+who was taken prisoner by that
+monarch at the battle of Bouvines.
+Joan took no steps to liberate her
+husband, or to pay his ransom, when
+an aged man appeared in Flanders,
+calling himself Count Baldwin, and
+giving an account of his long captivity
+and recent escape from the Bulgarians.
+Joan denied the identity
+of this person with her father; Louis
+VIII was of her opinion; while
+Henry III treated and allied himself
+with him as the veritable Baldwin.
+The self-entitled count appeared
+before King Louis at Péronne, offering
+proofs of his identity; but
+unfortunately he could not recall
+the place where he had done homage
+to Philip Augustus, nor the place
+where he had been knighted, nor
+yet the place and day of his marriage.
+Whether he really could not
+make answer to these questions,
+or whether age had troubled his
+memory, the old man was condemned
+as a pretender, and the
+countess Joan soon after caused him
+to be hanged. The common people
+still persisted in giving credit to
+his identity with Count Baldwin,
+and looked on Joan as the murderer
+of her father. Henry III in no way supported this his unfortunate ally.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p057.jpg" width="300" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis VIII</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1204-1226 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The sovereignty over Languedoc was still undecided. King Louis was
+anxious to undertake a crusade in that country, with all the indulgences and
+advantages of a warlike pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The hostilities with
+England and the fickleness of the pope delayed the execution of this purpose.
+Both obstacles were removed at length. Amaury de Montfort
+being driven from the conquests of his father by the sons of Count Raymond,
+reanimated the zeal of the pope and the old crusaders. Amaury
+retired to Paris, and made cession of his claims to King Louis, who, in
+return, promised him the office of constable. A new crusade was preached
+against the Albigenses; and Louis marched towards Languedoc at the head
+of a formidable army in the spring of the year 1226. The town of Avignon
+had proffered to the crusaders the facilities of crossing the Rhone under her
+walls, but refused entry within them to such an host. Louis, having arrived
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>at Avignon, insisted on passing through the town: the Avignonais shut
+their gates and defied the monarch, who instantly formed the siege. One
+of the rich municipalities of the south was almost a match for the king of
+France. He was kept three months under its walls, his army a prey to
+famine, to disease, and to the assaults of a brave garrison. The crusaders
+lost twenty thousand men. The people of Avignon at length submitted, but
+on no dishonourable terms. This was the only resistance that Louis experienced
+in Languedoc. Raymond VII dared not meet the crusaders in the
+field, nor durst one of his towns or châteaux remain faithful to him. All
+submitted. Louis retired from his facile conquest; he himself, and the
+chiefs of his army, stricken by an epidemy which had prevailed in the conquered
+regions. The monarch’s feeble frame could not resist it: he expired
+at Montpensier in Auvergne, in November, 1226.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3b4"><a href="#endnote_3b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS IX, CALLED ST. LOUIS (1226-1270 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1226-1236 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Now we come to the true hero of the Middle Ages, a prince pious as he
+was brave; who was devoted to feudalism and yet struck it the most telling
+blows; who venerated the church yet knew how to resist its head; who
+respected law yet placed justice above it; a frank and gentle soul and loving
+heart filled with Christian charity, yet one that condemned to torture the
+body of the sinner for the salvation of his soul; who on earth looked only
+towards heaven and made of his kingly office a magistracy of order and
+equity. Rome has canonised him, and the people still see him seated under
+the oak of Vincennes dispensing justice to all comers. This saint, this man
+of peace, did more in the simplicity of his heart for the advancement of
+royalty than the most subtle counsellors or ten fighting monarchs, because
+the king, in after time, appeared to the people as the incarnation of Justice.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>For more than a century the sword of royalty, so far as it pertained to
+France, had been valiantly carried. But the son of Louis VIII was a child
+of eleven years. A coalition of the most powerful vassals was formed at
+once to profit by his minority. The regent, his mother, Blanche of Castile,
+won to her side one of the confederates, Thibaut, the powerful count of
+Champagne, sent the royal army to save him from the attack of his former
+allies and obtained from him, when he inherited the kingdom of Navarre,
+the important counties of Blois, Chartres, and Sancerre. A treaty, signed in
+1229, assured to one of the king’s brothers the succession of the county of
+Toulouse and a marriage arranged between a second brother of St. Louis
+and the heiress of Provence prepared the way, at a future date, for the union
+of that country with France. Already the royal seneschals were established
+at Beaucaire and Carcassonne, by which the king found himself master,
+through himself or his brothers, of a large part of southern France. The
+king’s majority was proclaimed in 1236, but the wise regent still held the
+greatest influence over her son and the direction of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>The great pontificate of Innocent III had given new energy to the church
+and to religious sentiment. The spirit of the Crusades which had been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus with Richard Cœur de
+Lion and John Lackland was rekindled. In 1235 preaching the “holy war”
+was recommenced in France, and, as on too many other occasions, the movement
+was begun by the massacre of those whose ancestors had nailed the
+sainted victim to the cross of Golgotha. Everywhere the Jews were
+slaughtered, until the Council of Tours was obliged to take these unhappy
+people under their protection. Heretics found even less mercy. Thibaut
+of Champagne burned 183 of them on Mount Aimé near Vertus. This crusade,
+in which Thibaut himself, the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany took
+part, was not successful. The crusaders were beaten at Gaza in Palestine,
+and those who returned brought back with them nothing but the honour of
+having broken a few lances in the Holy Land.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1236-1259 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Up to his war with England St. Louis gave little sign of activity; but
+in 1241 the emperor Frederick II detained the French prelates who had gone
+to Rome to attend a council, and Louis demanded with great firmness that
+they be set at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>“Since the prelates of our realm have for no reason deserved their detention,”
+he writes the emperor, “may it please your grace to set them at
+liberty. You will thus appease us, for we regard their detention as an
+insult, and our royal majesty would lose respect if we could keep quiet
+under such circumstances. May your imperial prudence not go so far as to
+allege your power or your will, since the kingdom of France is not so weak
+that it will resign itself to be trampled under your feet.” The emperor
+released his prisoners. Some time before Louis, on behalf of himself and
+one of his brothers, refused the imperial crown of Frederick II which the
+pope had offered him, and he had also refused the pontiff’s request to modify
+a royal ordinance of 1234 restraining the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical tribunals—a
+necessary measure, since these courts had come to judge many
+more civil cases than the lay tribunals.</p>
+
+<p>This man who spoke so firmly acted in the same manner when forced to
+take up arms. Attacked in 1242 by the English, who sustained several of
+his rebellious barons, St. Louis beat them at Taillebourg and at Saintes. Perhaps
+he would have been able to drive them out of France, but he refused
+to push his victory. Acquisitions made in the last half century had tripled
+the extent of the royal domain, but they seemed to him tainted with violence
+because they were the gain of two confiscations. Through conscientious
+scruples he left the king of England, in a treaty which he did not sign
+until his return from the crusade in 1259 [The Treaty of Abbeville], the
+duchy of Guienne, that is to say Bordeaux, Limoges, Périgueux, Cahors,
+Agen, Saintonge to the south of the Charente, and Gascony, on condition of
+homage to the crown. And to prevent perjury he obliged the lords who
+held fiefs from both crowns to choose between the two sovereigns. The
+limits of the kingdom were equally uncertain on the south; he fixed them
+at a convention with the king of Aragon, and the county of Barcelona
+ceased to be dependent on the French crown.</p>
+
+<p>In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, driven out of Italy by the emperor Frederick
+II, took refuge at Lyons and there held in the cathedral church of St.
+John of that city the thirteenth ecumenical council at which 140 bishops
+assisted. The pope solemnly deposed the emperor and exhorted all Christian
+princes to march to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of the Crusades, which had been extinguished during the
+rivalry of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion, was rekindled. The
+Spaniards had their crusade against the Moors, the Germans against the Slavs,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>and the knights of Italy fought against the cities; but in France, in spite
+of the great satiety of war from the Albigensian troubles, there remained
+sufficient martial spirit to undertake new crusades. In 1239 many had gone;
+we know with what success. Jerusalem, which Frederick II had bought
+back from the hands of the infidels (1229) had now come again under the
+power of Khwarismian barbarians (1239).</p>
+
+<h4><i>First Crusade of St. Louis (1248-1254 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>St. Louis had not listened to the appeal of the Fathers of the Council of
+Lyons to assume the cross, but during an illness which, in 1244, brought
+him to the edge of the grave, he made a vow to go to the Holy Land. His
+mother and counsellors struggled
+in vain against this imprudent
+resolution. Louis left his power
+again in the hands of Queen
+Blanche and embarked at Aigues-Mortes,
+a little city which at that
+time was joined to the Mediterranean
+by a canal across the swamps
+and salt marshes. The king
+bought it from the monks of Psalmodi
+Abbey in order to have a
+port of his own upon that sea, for
+Marseilles belonged to his brother
+the count of Provence. Many
+crusaders embarked at the latter
+city, among them the king’s friend
+the seneschal of Champagne and
+the sire de Joinville, who, with
+Villehardouin, is the first in point
+of date, as in merit, of the old
+French prose writers. It was not
+without many misgivings that he
+determined to follow his master.
+In setting out to join him he passed
+near his own castle, “but,” he said,
+“I dare not turn my face towards
+Joinville, for fear that my heart
+would fail me in leaving my two
+children and my fine castle which
+are so dear to me.” On the
+banks of the Rhone he saw the ruins of a castle which the king had had
+destroyed because its lord had a bad name for stripping and robbing all the
+merchants and pilgrims who passed by.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p060.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight, Thirteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1249-1270 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>St. Louis had been collecting for two years a large store of provisions on
+the island of Cyprus. The army left there in eighteen hundred ships, large
+and small, for Egypt. Damietta, at one of the mouths of the Nile, was captured
+(June 7th, 1249), but precious time was lost before marching upon
+Cairo. Five months and a half of delay stoutened the hearts of the mamelukes.
+The crusaders took a month to cover the five leagues which separated
+them from the town of Mansurah. A badly directed fight at the same place
+cost the lives of a large number of knights and of St. Louis’ brother the count
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>of Artois. When the prior of the Hospital, says Joinville,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3i1"><a href="#endnote_3i">i</a></span> came to ask of
+St. Louis if he had any news of his brother, the king replied that he had,
+that he knew his brother was in heaven. The prior tried to comfort him in
+praising the valour the prince had always shown and the glory he had
+gained that day, and the good king replied that God was adored in all that he
+had done. And then he began to shed great tears, at which many people who
+were looking on were oppressed by grief and compassion (February, 1250).</p>
+
+<p>Soon the army was surrounded by enemies and decimated by pest. Joinville
+was stricken down, and equally so his poor chaplain. One day it happened
+that he was chanting mass before the seneschal’s bedside; when the
+priest was at the sacrament Joinville perceived him to be so ill that with his
+own eyes he saw him faint. The seneschal got up and ran to raise him and
+then he managed to finish the mass, but never said it again, and died. The
+retreat was disastrous and finally they had to surrender. “The good, saintly
+man, the king,” did honour to his captivity by his courage and inspired even
+his enemies with respect for his virtues. They released him for a large ransom.
+Once free he made his way to Palestine and stayed there three years,
+employing his influence and zeal in maintaining harmony among the Christians
+and his resources in repairing the fortifications of the places they
+still occupied.</p>
+
+<p>The news of these disasters only served to increase the king’s popularity
+in France. The people would not see his faults and thought only of the
+virtues he had shown. The prelates and lords had deserted and betrayed
+him, they said; it would take the humble people to rescue him, and an immense
+crowd of serfs and peasants gathered together to cross the sea and go
+to the king’s help. This was the Shepherds’ Crusade. These people lived,
+on the way, by pillage—even murders were committed. It was necessary
+to deal harshly with them, and they were scattered like wild beasts.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the regent’s death (December, 1252) recalled Louis at last to
+France. In passing Cyprus the king’s galley grazed a rock, which carried
+away fully eighteen feet of her keel. Louis was advised to change ships,
+and according to Joinville<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3i2"><a href="#endnote_3i">i</a></span> said, “If I leave the ship, five or six hundred
+people who are on it and who value their life as I do mine will be afraid to
+stay behind and will land at Cyprus with no hope or means of ever returning
+to their own country. I prefer to place myself, my wife, and children in
+danger under the protection of God, than to bring such misfortune on so
+many people.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>Last Years and Death of St. Louis</i></h4>
+
+<p>It was after his return to France that St. Louis made treaties with England
+and Aragon to determine definitely the boundaries of the three kingdoms.
+He hoped in making substantial sacrifices to strengthen his hold on the
+provinces he kept for himself and to prevent the war so frequently provoked
+by uncertainty with regard to frontiers. This solicitude to do justice to all
+caused him to be chosen as arbitrator between the king of England and his
+barons in the controversy over the provisions of Oxford (1264). Louis pronounced
+in favour of the king, and this time was not successful, for the barons
+did not hold to his decision, and deposed Henry III. More fortunate elsewhere,
+he settled a dispute of succession which delivered Flanders from civil
+war. In the year 1270 St. Louis undertook another crusade in which his
+faithful Joinville this time refused to engage.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3f1"><a href="#endnote_3f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1270 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A pacific expedition which should merely intimidate the king of Tunis
+and induce him to become a convert was not what suited the Genoese in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>whose vessels St. Louis was making his passage. Most of the crusaders preferred
+violence; it was said that Tunis was a rich town, the pillage of which
+might indemnify them for their dangerous expedition. The Genoese, regardless
+of the voice of St. Louis, began hostilities by seizing the vessels they
+found before Carthage. The landing took place without obstacle. The
+Moors only showed themselves to provoke the Christians, and make them
+waste their strength in fruitless pursuits. After spending some weary days
+on the burning shore, the Christians advanced towards the castle of Carthage.
+All that remained of the great rival of Rome was a fort guarded by two
+hundred soldiers, and the Saracens who had retreated into the vaults or subterranean
+chambers were butchered or suffocated by smoke and flames. The
+king found the ruins full of corpses, which he had removed, that he might
+take up his quarters there with his followers. He had to wait at Carthage
+for his brother, Charles of Anjou, before marching on Tunis.</p>
+
+<p>The greater part of the army remained under the African sun, tormented
+by the thick dust swept from the desert by the winds, and surrounded by
+the festering remains of the dead. The Moors prowled all around, continually
+cutting off some stragglers. There were no trees, no vegetable food;
+for water there was nothing but fetid marshes and cisterns full of disgusting
+insects. In eight days the plague had broken out. The counts of Vendôme,
+de la Marche and Viane, Walter de Nemours, marshal of France, the sires de
+Montmorency, Piennes, Brissac, St. Briçon, and d’Apremont were already
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>The legate soon followed them. The survivors being no longer able
+to bury them, they were thrown into the canal, till they covered the whole
+surface of the water. Meanwhile, the king and his sons were attacked by
+the malady; the youngest died in his vessel, and it was not till eight days afterwards
+that the confessor of St. Louis took on himself to acquaint him with
+the mournful event. The deceased was the most beloved of his children, and
+his death announced to a dying father was, to the latter, one tie less to earth,
+a call from God, a temptation to die. Accordingly, without perturbation or
+regret, he accomplished that last work of a Christian life, making the
+responses to the litanies and the psalms, dictating a noble and affecting
+instruction for his son, and receiving even the ambassadors of the Greeks,
+who came to entreat his intervention in their favour with his brother Charles
+of Anjou, whose ambition menaced them. He spoke to them with kindness,
+and promised to exert himself with zeal, if he lived, to keep them in peace;
+but the next day he himself entered into the peace of God.</p>
+
+<p>That last night of his life he desired them to raise him from his bed and
+lay him on ashes; and so he died, with his arms constantly folded in the
+form of a cross. “And on Monday the blessed king stretched his folded
+hands towards heaven, and said, ‘Good Lord God, have mercy on this people
+that here remaineth, and lead it into its country, that it fall not into the
+hand of its enemies, and that it be not constrained to renounce thy holy
+name!’ In the night before he deceased, whilst he was reposing, he sighed,
+and said in a low voice, ‘O Jerusalem! O Jerusalem!’”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3d2"><a href="#endnote_3d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In his lifetime the contemporaries of St. Louis suspected in their simplicity
+that he was already a saint, and more saintly than the priests. Says the
+king’s confessor, Geoffrey de Beaulieu:<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3l"><a href="#endnote_3l">l</a></span> “Whilst he lived a word might be
+said of him which is said of St. Hilary, ‘O most perfect layman whose life
+priests even desire to imitate.’ For many priests and laymen desired to be
+like the blessed king in his virtues and his morals; for it is even thought
+that he was a saint in his lifetime.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3d3"><a href="#endnote_3d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span></p>
+
+<p>The French during this reign accomplished a great achievement without
+the help of royalty. Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, summoned by
+the pope against King Manfred, son of the emperor Frederick II, conquered
+the kingdom of Naples in 1266. But the Latins had five years before lost
+Constantinople which the Greeks had taken possession of. It was to the
+interested advice of Charles of Anjou that was due the direction taken by the
+last crusade, since the submission of the king of Tunis would free Sicily from
+the constant attempts of the Saracens upon that island.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3f2"><a href="#endnote_3f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Hallam’s Estimate of St. Louis</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1226-1270 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis IX had methods of preserving his ascendency very different from
+military prowess. That excellent prince was perhaps the most eminent
+pattern of unswerving probity and Christian strictness of conscience that
+ever held the sceptre in any country. There is a peculiar beauty in the
+reign of St. Louis, because it shows the inestimable benefit which a virtuous
+king may confer on his people, without possessing any distinguished genius.
+For nearly half a century that he governed France, there is not the smallest
+want of moderation or disinterestedness in his actions; and yet he raised the
+influence of the monarchy to a much higher point than the most ambitious
+of his predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>To the surprise of his own and later times, he restored great part of his
+conquests to Henry III, whom he might naturally hope to have expelled from
+France. It would indeed have been a tedious work to conquer Guienne,
+which was full of strong places, and the subjugation of such a province
+might have alarmed the other vassals of his crown. But it is the privilege
+only of virtuous minds to perceive that wisdom resides in moderate counsels;
+no sagacity ever taught a selfish and ambitious sovereign to forego the
+sweetness of immediate power. An ordinary king, in the circumstances of
+the French monarchy, would have fomented, or at least have rejoiced in the
+dissensions which broke out among the principal vassals; Louis constantly
+employed himself to reconcile them. In this, too, his benevolence had all
+the effects of far-sighted policy. It had been the practice of his last three
+predecessors to interpose their mediation in behalf of the less powerful
+classes—the clergy, the inferior nobility, and the inhabitants of chartered
+towns. Thus the supremacy of the crown became a familiar idea; but the
+perfect integrity of St. Louis wore away all distrust, and accustomed even
+the most jealous feudatories to look upon him as their judge and legislator.
+And as the royal authority was hitherto shown only in its most amiable
+prerogatives, the dispensation of favour, and the redress of wrong, few were
+watchful enough to remark the transition of the French constitution from
+a feudal league to an absolute monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps fortunate for the display of St. Louis’ virtues that the
+throne had already been strengthened by the less innocent exertions of
+Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. A century earlier, his mild and scrupulous
+character, unsustained by great actual power, might not have inspired
+sufficient awe. But the crown was now grown so formidable, and Louis was
+so eminent for his firmness and bravery, qualities without which every other
+virtue would have been ineffectual, that no one thought it safe to run wantonly
+into rebellion, while his disinterested administration gave no one
+a pretext for it. Not satisfied with the justice of his own conduct, Louis
+aimed at that act of virtue which is rarely practised by private men, and had
+perhaps no example among kings—restitution. Commissaries were appointed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>to inquire what possessions had been unjustly annexed to the royal domain
+during the last two reigns. These were restored to the proprietors, or, where
+length of time had made it difficult to ascertain the claimant, their value was
+distributed among the poor.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p064.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Page, Time of Louis IX</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It has been hinted already that all this excellence of heart in Louis IX
+was not attended with that strength of understanding which is necessary,
+we must allow, to complete the usefulness of a sovereign. During his minority,
+Blanche of Castile, his mother, had filled the office of regent with great
+courage and firmness. But after
+he grew up to manhood, her influence
+seems to have passed the
+limit which gratitude and piety
+would have assigned to it; and,
+as her temper was not very meek
+or popular, it exposed the king to
+some degree of contempt. He submitted
+even to be restrained from
+the society of his wife Marguerite,
+daughter of Raymond, count of
+Provence, a princess of great virtue
+and conjugal affection.</p>
+
+<p>But the principal weakness of
+this king, which almost effaced all
+the good effects of his virtues, was
+superstition. It would be idle to
+sneer at those habits of abstemiousness
+and mortification which were
+part to the religion of his age, and,
+at the worst, were only injurious
+to his own comfort. But he had
+other prejudices, which, though
+they may be forgiven, must never
+be defended. No man was ever
+more impressed than St. Louis
+with a belief in the duty of exterminating
+all enemies to his own
+faith. With these he thought no
+layman ought to risk himself in the
+perilous ways of reasoning, but to
+make answer with his sword as stoutly as a strong arm and a fiery zeal could
+carry that argument. Though, fortunately for his fame, the persecution
+against the Albigenses, which had been the disgrace of his father’s short
+reign, was at an end before he reached manhood, he suffered a hypocritical
+monk to establish a tribunal at Paris for the suppression of heresy, where
+many innocent persons suffered death.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3g"><a href="#endnote_3g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Piety and Christianity of St. Louis</i></h4>
+
+<p>The natural piety of St. Louis but strengthened with his growth. His
+Christian life, or to reduce the statement to its simplest terms, his daily
+Christianity, which edified his own century, might very easily fill ours with
+a sense of shock. But whatever it may leave of such an impression, the
+history would be incomplete which passed over in silence, or only vaguely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>indicated, that which filled so large a part in his life. Let us not, therefore,
+endeavour to build up for ourselves a St. Louis in accordance with our
+present-day tastes. Nothing is beautiful but the true, and that truth which
+the saintly king sought in all things is alone worthy to retrace the likeness
+of him which should endure.</p>
+
+<p>According to those of his historians who were most intimate with him—the
+chaplain who accompanied him on one and another of the Crusades, the
+confessor whom he kept beside him for twenty years, the confessor of his
+wife Marguerite—he seemed to live for God alone. The offices were read
+in the king’s chapel; almost it might have been the chapel of a monastery
+or the choir of a cathedral. There he had the Hours sung to him, the Office
+for the Dead being added by his command. He heard two masses, sometimes
+three or four; and when the grandees grumbled at his wasting so
+much time on masses and sermons, he retorted that if he were to lose twice
+as much time over gaming and hunting no one would complain: a remark
+which scarcely silenced the murmurs; the barons made no complaint against
+thus wasting their time with him.</p>
+
+<p>The holy Scriptures and the Fathers were his study. Marguerite’s confessor
+tells us that he caused a candle three feet or thereabouts in height to
+be lighted, and so long as it lasted read the Bible. He remained for so
+long a time upon his knees that sometimes his sight and his wits became
+confused, and, rising up quite dazed, he would ask: “Where am I?” Led
+back to his room, he would go to bed, but at midnight he was up again and
+had matins sung by his chaplains (it was no sinecure being king’s chaplain in
+those days!). He would, however, grant to his attendants the repose he
+refused for himself. So softly did he rise that on several occasions they did
+not hear him, or, awakened too late, ran after him barefoot.</p>
+
+<p>Every Friday he made his confession, after which he made his confessor
+administer “the discipline” to him. This discipline was composed of five
+small iron chains, which he enclosed in an ivory box and carried about
+with him. He had similar boxes made, with similar contents, and presented
+them to his children and his friends, counselling them to make use of them.
+When his confessor struck him too lightly, he urged him to use more force.
+This advice was not always needed. He had one confessor so full of zeal
+(<i>solicitus sibi</i>) who struck the king in such a manner as to terribly lacerate
+his flesh, which was extremely delicate. St. Louis, however, held his peace;
+he never mentioned the matter so long as the confessor lived, but afterwards
+he spoke of it laughingly to another. His confessors, one should add, were
+not commonly so zealous, and they reprimanded him for austerities which
+threatened his delicate health, and urged him to substitute for them alms,
+which, as a fact, the king did not stint; and they ended by forcing him to
+renounce the hair-shirt which he wore during Advent and Lent and on the
+vigils of certain feasts. He renounced it only to wear occasionally a girdle
+of horse-hair next his skin.</p>
+
+<p>On Good Friday he would visit all the churches barefoot; to keep up
+appearances he wore shoes from which the soles had been removed. For the
+adoration of the cross he removed his upper garments, retaining only
+his vest and coat. With bare feet and uncovered head he advanced a short
+distance on his knees, bowed himself in prayer, then advanced a little further,
+and the third time arrived at the cross, prostrated himself as though
+he too were crucified, and kissed it, bathed in tears. Fervently did he
+desire the gift of tears. When in singing the litanies the verse was reached:
+“Grant us a fountain of tears” (<i>Ut fontem lacrymarum nobis dones</i>), he used
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>to say: “Lord, I dare not ask of thee a fount of tears, but only a few drops
+to refresh my parched and sterile heart.”</p>
+
+<p>Are all these details, which have perhaps provoked the pitying smiles of
+more than one reader, the marks of a feeble intelligence, or do they rather
+bear witness to a powerful mind that has perfected self-control by keeping
+the senses in sternest bondage? One can only truly judge of things by
+their results. His singleness of speech and his aversion to coarse or equivocal
+language bore eloquent witness to the
+purity of his heart. Not only did he detest
+the licentiousness of contemporary poetry,
+he was also filled with loathing for the popular
+songs, and innocently recommended one
+of his equerries who sang them to learn
+instead the <i>Ave Maris Stella</i>. His modesty
+was excessive. The purity of his youth had
+never been shadowed by the slightest hint
+of license, and marriage only served to throw
+his chastity into higher relief. He demanded
+moral uprightness from all in his household,
+and banished without mercy whoso offended
+against a virtue so dear to his heart.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p066.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight of the Thirteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On feast days he would bid to his palace
+two hundred beggars, and himself serve them
+at table. On the Wednesdays, Fridays, and
+Saturdays of Advent and Lent, and every
+Wednesday and Friday throughout the year,
+he would send for thirteen of them into his
+own or a neighbouring room and give them
+food with his own hand, without disgust at
+their dirtiness. If one among the number
+was blind the king would give the piece of
+bread into one of his hands, and guide the
+other to the bowl containing his portion. If
+this consisted of fish, he would remove the bones, dip it in the sauce and
+place the morsel in the blind man’s mouth. Before the meal he gave to
+each person twelve deniers or more according to his need; and if a mother
+was there with her child, he added more for the little one. On Saturdays
+he would choose three of the most decrepit, most miserable among the poor,
+and leading them into his dressing-room, where towels and three basins of
+water were in readiness, he washed their feet. With reverence he would
+dry and kiss those feet, whatever their deformity, however hardened by
+daily contact with the ground; then, kneeling, he would offer them water
+to wash their hands, give to each forty deniers, and kiss their hands. Nor
+was this all. Every day, in all weathers, he sent for thirteen other beggars
+and from among them chose out the three most repulsive, whom he seated
+at a table drawn up close beside his own.</p>
+
+<p>On many of these points he would not to-day have won the same universal
+approbation. It is, however, difficult for us to reinvest his figure
+with the atmosphere by which it must be surrounded before we can form a
+just judgment; it is far more difficult to place ourselves at the necessary
+point of view from which we can see him clearly. The modern historian is
+ofttimes reduced to pleading extenuating circumstances for the saints; for
+the saints, and St. Louis among them, have this much in common with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>Saviour, that in more than one case they could say with him: “Blessed is
+he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3h"><a href="#endnote_3h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>St. Louis built the asylum of the Quinze Vingts for the blind, several
+hospitals, and the church of Vincennes. To provide a place for the crown
+of thorns which the Venetians had turned over to his keeping, he had built
+by Pierre de Montereau within the precinct of his palace, now the Palais de
+Justice, the Sainte Chapelle, a shrine of open-work stone. His confessor
+Robert de Sorbon founded a community under the title of <i>Congrégation des
+pauvres maîtres étudiants en théologie</i>. This congregation became the Sorbonne,
+the theological faculty so famous throughout the entire Christian
+world that Mézeray calls it “the permanent council of the Gauls.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>Progress of the Monarchy under St. Louis</i></h4>
+
+<p>The house of Capet had made such progress that no lord now dared say
+to his vassal, “Come fight under my banner against the lord, our king,” much
+as this anarchial privilege was still recognised in the so-called “Establishments”
+of St. Louis, a compilation of customs in vogue in Orleans. The
+counts of Flanders and of Brittany and the duke of Guienne, were about the
+only ones who had not degenerated to the condition of docile vassals; yet
+feudalism still preserved some immense prerogatives and St. Louis attacked
+these in the name of justice and religion.</p>
+
+<p>In holding to a strict execution of the ordinances of <i>quarantaine-le-roi</i><a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> and <i>asseurement</i>
+    (inviolability) he suppressed nearly all private wars. As a
+Christian he did not approve of these wars which sent to God so many souls
+ill-prepared to appear before him. As a prince he wished to stop the devastation
+throughout the country, “the fires and the obstacles placed in the ways
+of tilling the fields.” He forbade in his domains the <i>duel judiciare</i> which gave
+over the settlement and right to the chances of skill and strength. The
+king’s justice usurped the place of individual violence, and proof by witnesses
+and procedure by writ replaced justice by battle, for “battle is not the path
+of right.”</p>
+
+<p>The lords still dispensed justice throughout their domains. The villein
+could not escape this judgment, but the vassal had the rights of appeal to the
+sovereign from the judgment of his lord “in default of right,” when
+the lord refused to render justice; for “false judgments” when the condemned
+believed himself to have been injured by an unjust sentence. Now
+the king favoured the custom of direct appeal to his court, which subordinated
+the lord’s justice to that of his own which was final; “for,” says
+Beaumanoir,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3j2"><a href="#endnote_3j">j</a></span> “since he is sovereign, his court is sovereign”; and the
+“Establishments” explain why there could be no appeal from the royal decision:
+“There is no one who can have this right, since the king gets his power
+from no one but God and himself.” The duke of Brittany also retained the
+final appeal. When a case brought to the justice of the lords interested the
+king, in whatever way it may be, the bailiff raised the “conflict” as we would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>say nowadays and laid claim to the judgment, the king not being under the
+jurisdiction of a lord. These cases were the “royal cases.” Legists were
+most careful to define them so as not to deprive the king’s officials of any
+pretexts for interfering in trials before the feudal courts. It was easy to
+multiply these at that time and the officials did not fail to do so—taking
+as much as possible from the province of the lord’s justice and adding it to
+the king’s.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the king’s <i>bourgeoisie</i> was established. An inhabitant
+of a piece of seigniorial land might under certain conditions of establishment
+and residence in a royal city acquire the condition of “king’s bourgeois.”
+“I am a king’s bourgeois” was equivalent to “I am a Roman citizen.” The
+Roman citizen could only be judged at Rome. The king’s bourgeois could
+not be tried except by the king’s officials.</p>
+
+<p>The king’s court was on this account much more occupied than formerly.
+It continued to accumulate every possible prerogative. It was a court of
+exchequer, and, if it pleased the king, a political council; but it was above all
+things, in the days of St. Louis, a court of justice. The royal finances
+were always of a very simple nature; in case of crusades, captivity of the
+king, knighthood conferred upon the king’s eldest son or his marriage, feudal
+aid was demanded. The revenues of the domain, if well administered, were
+quite sufficient for royalty to live upon. When it had greater needs and it
+was necessary to increase revenues of all sorts, the financial prerogatives of
+the court became more important. The office of the exchequer was detached
+from it; but in the time of St. Louis justice was the court’s business.</p>
+
+<p>But even in this court considerable changes were taking place. The rôle
+of the great vassals and the crown officials was diminishing, that of the legists
+was beginning. Now, since judgment was pronounced on written procedures,
+it was not the knights who had sufficient knowledge and application of mind
+to deal with the stability of proof and the obscurities of the black-book.
+The lawyer was necessary to them. At first the barons disdainfully made
+these plebeian personages sit at their feet, on stools. But in the meeting
+of ignorance and knowledge the latter quickly asserted its sovereignty.
+The baron, who had nothing but nonsense to talk, kept quiet before the
+learned counsellors, and upon these latter soon devolved the direction of
+judgment; and the fate of the guilty, even of the noblest station, lay in their
+hands. The king’s court, which was always held at Paris, had regular
+sessions, usually four times a year; and it kept a record of its deliberations
+which under the name of “Olim” was the beginning of royal jurisprudence.</p>
+
+<p>In the administration of the provinces, St. Louis protected his own power
+and that of his subjects against any abuses his officials might practice. He
+forbade bailiffs and seneschals to make presents to the members of the council
+or receive money from those dependent on them or to loan such any, or
+to take part in sales, markets, or leases held in the king’s name. They
+were forbidden to purchase any property within their jurisdiction or to marry
+their sons and daughters without the king’s permission. If they disobeyed
+they were punished both in their property and their persons. When going
+out of office they were obliged to live forty days within their territory, in
+order to reply to their successors or to royal inquiries in any charge of
+misconduct that might be brought against them.</p>
+
+<p>St. Louis sent into the provinces commissioners or royal inquirers, a custom
+adopted from Charlemagne. These inquirers defended the king’s rights
+and those of his subjects as well. The care which they took to protect the
+latter against exaction, won them the name of <i>enquesteurs aux restitutions</i>.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>In all these measures can be recognised the influence of the legists and
+echoes of Roman administration.</p>
+
+<p>We have noted the organisation of provostships. That of Paris demanded
+large funds. Therefore several officials joined together to farm it out, and
+these provosts, according to Joinville, trampled upon the people, sustained
+their families by the “outrages” they committed, let themselves be corrupted
+by the rich, and took no notice whatever of the robbers and malefactors who
+infested Paris and its vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>The king resolved to give in the future “great and high wages to those
+who should look after his provostship,” and sought for someone “who would
+give good and stiff justice.” He chose Étienne Boileau who maintained so
+well the provostship that no malefactor, robber, or cut-throat dared come to
+Paris but he was at once hanged and exterminated; and neither lineage,
+gold, nor silver could save him. Justice and policing were the principal
+functions of the provost of Paris, who commanded the watch and presided
+at the tribunal of the Châtelet.</p>
+
+<p>St. Louis struck hard blows at feudalism by the suppression of judiciary
+duels, the interdiction of private wars, and the establishment of appeal; but
+he was not for all this a revolutionary king in the sense of Philip the Fair.
+He repeated constantly that none must “take away any one’s rights; but it
+is,” so he said at the head of an ordinance, “the duty of royal power to
+assure peace and happiness to our subjects.” Besides he had that same
+spirit of justice that is found in Roman law, and which united so well with
+the principles of Christianity. When he condemns, for example, the duel,
+he does it because “battle is not the way to determine right”—here is the
+Roman spirit; and because it “criminally tempts God”—here is the spirit
+of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>He expected that all would submit to what it seemed to him he was
+charged by God to establish. His brother the count of Anjou, had, on trial,
+condemned a knight; and the latter, on appealing to the king’s court, was
+imprisoned by the count. The king let his brother know that there was but
+one king in France and although Charles was his brother, he would not be
+treated in any different ways as regarded justice. The count of Anjou had
+to release his prisoner and came in person to oppose the appeal at the king’s
+court, which, however, was decided in favour of the knight.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most powerful lords of the realm, the lord of Coucy, caused
+three young men to be hanged for offence against the hunting laws, and
+although all the barons pleaded for him he was ordered a heavy fine. A lord
+cried with irony, “If I were king I would hang all the barons; for the first
+step taken, the second costs nothing.” The king heard and called him back.
+“How, Jean, you say that I should hang all my barons. Certainly I shall
+not do it, but I will punish them if they do wrong.” We have seen how
+the reputation for equity of the good king was so well established that the
+English barons in revolt against their king chose Louis as arbitrator, an
+example followed by the counts of Bar and Luxemburg.</p>
+
+<p>The right of coinage belonged to more than eighty lords who sometimes
+made bad money. St. Louis decided that his own should have circulation
+throughout the entire kingdom and alone should be legal tender in the royal
+domain and those whose lords had not the right of coinage; that the
+seigniorial coinage should only be legal in the province of the lord who
+issued it and that this lord could only strike off the <i>tournois</i>, and <i>parisis</i>,<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>other coins whose legal value was fixed by relation to the <i>tournois</i> in the
+ordinance. Thus the king ruled, in absolute power, in his own domain.
+He recognised elsewhere seigniorial rights, but limited them in the interest
+of the subjects whose protector he was. His money circulated everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>It only remained for the king to coin better <i>parisis</i> and better <i>tournois</i>
+than those of the lords; which he did. His money, like his justice, was
+worth more than his vassal’s. Another measure was extremely useful to
+commerce. It made the lords responsible for the policing of the roads
+through their domains. In Paris he established the royal watch and had
+drawn up by the provost, Étienne Boileau, the ancient rules concerning the
+hundred trades which existed in the town, in order to infuse peace and order
+into industry as he had done in the country. These trades grouped themselves
+into great corporations; in the fifteenth century all the Parisian
+merchants formed six bodies of “arts and trades.”</p>
+
+<p>St. Louis showed a respectful firmness towards papal authority; we have
+seen that he did not recognise the pope’s right to dispose of crowns. There
+has even been attributed to him a pragmatic sanction, the foundation of the
+liberties of the Gallican church, which would have confirmed the liberty of
+canonical elections, restrained to the most urgent necessities the impositions
+which the court of Rome could levy upon the French churches and contained
+the king’s vow that they should be established. This ordinance is not
+authentic, but its principles are those of the government. When the bishops
+demanded that the king force the excommunicated to submit, he declared
+that he could not do so without knowing the reasons for excommunication,
+which made him a judge of the bishops.</p>
+
+<p>St. Louis’ lively faith assured him against all fear of the church’s wrath;
+and led him besides to severe practices which seem to us of to-day barbaric.
+“No one,” he said, “unless he be learned clerk or perfect theologian, should
+dispute with the Jews, but may do so with the layman who is heard to slander
+the Christian faith, and defend it not only with words but with his good
+drawn sword, striking the miscreant across the body or even letting it cut
+him.” He punished blasphemers by running red-hot irons through their
+tongues.</p>
+
+<p>He loved to recall that on one occasion during his minority, when pursued
+up to the very walls of Paris by rebel vassals, he had been saved by
+the city soldiers who came to his rescue. He always took great interest in
+the welfare of the large towns, but without sacrificing to them the new
+needs of society. He conferred a number of charters, and amended others.
+Communal independence never seemed to him better than feudal liberties,
+and he favoured the transformation of the communes into royal cities which
+were dependent on and watched over by the supreme power, while their
+internal affairs were attended to by officials chosen in free election. An
+ordinance of 1256 prescribes that the communes name four candidates among
+themselves from whom the king shall choose a mayor who shall come to
+Paris once a year to give account of his stewardship.</p>
+
+<p>Thus little by little was established the principle that it was the king’s
+prerogative to deal with the communes and that all owed him allegiance
+above everyone else. Thus the communes gradually disappeared and with
+them the proud sentiments, the strong ideas of right and liberty which sustained
+the men who had founded and defended them. The “third estate”
+was beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Through his undermining of feudal and communal independence, and
+through his strong ruling with regard to the church, St. Louis pointed the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>way of absolute power to French royalty. He rendered it still another
+service. The remembrance of his virtues did not perish with him. Venerated
+in his lifetime as a saint, he was canonised after death. He put the
+seal of sanctification, so to speak, upon French royalty, and his descendants
+were fond of invoking at the head of their decrees the name and example
+of “Monsieur St. Louis.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3f3"><a href="#endnote_3f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>ASPECTS OF THIRTEENTH CENTURY CIVILISATION</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1100-1270 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In proportion as the Middle Ages advanced, national individuality took
+more definite shape. Intellectual life had been during a protracted period
+confined almost exclusively to religious circles, and had been given expression
+in the universal language—Latin. Accordingly the beginning of the thirteenth
+century saw only three active established literatures—in Germany,
+in the north and in the south of France; the last having preceded the others
+and served them as models. This was the literature of the <i>langue d’oc</i>, also
+called Provençal, which overflowed the Pyrenean borders into Christian
+Europe, passed over the Alps into the whole of Italy, and awakened the muse
+that lay sleeping on the banks of the Ebro, as on those of the Po and the
+Arno. Brilliant, sonorous, harmonious, full of imagery and movement, it
+was unexcelled as the language of love and battle songs. Bernard de Ventadour,
+Bertram de Born, and Richard Cœur de Lion moulded it with a skill
+and ardour worthy of Tyrtæus. The songs of Bertram de Born, above all,
+were like swords, dazzling and penetrating; the passion of war flamed in
+them like fire. This language of the south, into which something of the
+Arabian accent has passed, lent itself gracefully to the requirements of
+the courts of love presided over by ingenious tribunals of noble dames.</p>
+
+<p>But the continued development of the north of France gave the preponderance
+to its idiom. The Normans carried it into Italy, where it failed to
+establish itself; and to England, where it prevailed during three centuries.
+By the crusaders it was everywhere disseminated. While the intellectual
+fame of Paris attracted there the eminent minds of the whole Catholic world,
+the vulgar tongue which the doctors disdained extended its empire well
+beyond the frontiers. We must add also that French genius, so often accused
+of epic sterility, poured over into the adjacent countries a flood of great
+poetry. The troubadours had been mute since the Albigensian crusade had
+drowned in blood the civilisation of the <i>langue d’oc</i>; and no more were heard
+the virile accents of Bernard de Ventadour or of Bertram de Born, nor the
+melodious lyrics of the <i>jeux partis</i>.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> But north of the Loire the <i>trouvères</i>
+still composed heroic songs—veritable epics, which were translated or imitated
+in Italy, England, and Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But these epic cycles were exhausted: the heroic ode disappeared.
+Robert Wace, “clerk of Caen,” composed about 1155 the <i>Roman de Brut</i>, a
+legendary history of Britain. Christian de Troyes, who wrote after 1160,
+spun out a diluted version of the Arthurian legend in a long poem in lines
+of eight syllables, while the same tale was given a religious twist by another
+school of poets by adding the history of the Holy Grail. The aspect of the
+times was mirrored in the poem with its double face—chivalry and piety.
+The naïve inspiration of the song of Roland was lost; the new school
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>subtilised, ran after novelties, or rummaged among the classics. The story of
+Ulysses and that of the Argonauts, borrowed from <i>The Thebaid</i> of Statius,
+furnished tales which could not fail to please those Christian Ulysseses whom
+the Crusades had sent wandering in Asia. The Trojan War, the sorceress
+Medea, and Alexander, attracted the <i>trouvères</i> of this period. They had
+already begun to imitate the style of the ancients. Thus the nature of the
+epic was altered and a transition took place from primitive composition to
+the diverse styles of advanced civilisation. The epic was divided: the elements
+dealing with the passions were blended into allegorical romance; the
+narrative elements, into prose history. Analysis and realism took the place
+of spontaneous and poetic inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, began the famous <i>Roman de la
+Rose</i>, whose personages were abstract qualities—Reason, Good-will, Danger,
+Treason, Baseness, Avarice. Jean de Meun continued it later, after another
+transformation had given birth to satire. The fable flourished already,
+having derived its origin from that very romance: animals played the rôles
+of passions, of social conditions; and the tale of <i>Renard</i>, developed in its
+turn from the others, made its appearance, in 1236, as the comedy of the
+period. Rutebœuf offers the first example of the professional poet, ill remunerated,
+perishing with cold, agape with hunger; yet, in the depths of
+this misery, gay, daring, caustic, he wrote upon all sorts of subjects in the
+frank, open style which heralded Villon. Language acquires in his hands
+skill and power; it is more mellow and more tender than that of Guillaume
+de Lorris or from the lips of the famous count of Champagne or of Marie of
+France.</p>
+
+<p>The most noteworthy event in French literature in the thirteenth century
+was the appearance of prose. The first prose writers were not, be it understood,
+professional historians, but two noblemen, both involved in the events
+they depicted. Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, has left
+us the history of the Fourth Crusade in the <i>Conquête de Constantinople</i>, in
+which he himself figured. He writes as a soldier, his style being firm and
+brief, not without a touch of military stiffness; he invents little, goes straight
+ahead, from one attack to the next, with a brief exclamation when encountering
+some object which astonishes him. The lord of Joinville, also seneschal
+of Champagne, exhibits in his <i>Mémoires</i> a greater suppleness of style, a more
+marked refinement of mind; he observes, reflects, and talks upon all subjects,
+discussing his personal sentiments as freely as the events of war. He was
+the foreshadowing of Froissart, as only the councillor and friend of the pious
+and excellent Louis IX could be.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3c3"><a href="#endnote_3c">c</a></span> “In point of time,” says Villemain, “the
+narrative of Joinville is perhaps the first monument of genius in the French
+language,—a work of genius being, as I understand it, one having a high
+degree of originality of diction; a characteristic and expressive physiognomy;
+in short, a work that has been done by one man and that could not have been
+done by another. Such is the book of Joinville.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3o"><a href="#endnote_3o">o</a></span></p>
+
+<p>France was indebted to St. Louis for the multiplication of manuscripts.
+It is remarkable that he should first, while in the East, have resolved to
+establish a library at Paris. Hearing that the soldan of Egypt was indefatigably
+collecting from all parts, and causing to be transcribed or translated,
+the works of the ancient philosophers, “he was afflicted,” says a chronicler of
+the times, “to perceive more wisdom in the sons of darkness than in the
+children of light.” He began to collect manuscripts of the Old and New
+Testaments, and of the fathers, which he caused to be multiplied by transcription;
+all these he placed in the royal chapel at Paris, making them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>accessible to professors and students. The same liberality was shown by the
+Dominicans of Toulouse, by the bishops of Beauvais and Paris, by the archbishop
+of Narbonne, by many chapters, and by more monasteries. The professors
+of the University of Paris, too, were eminent enough to draw students
+from all parts of Europe: in fact, such names as Alexander de Hales, Albertus
+Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Buonaventura, would have conferred splendour
+on any establishment. With inferior fame, but probably with equal
+utility, the universities of Bourges, Toulouse, Orleans, and Angers—foundations
+of this century—imitated the example of the capital.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3n"><a href="#endnote_3n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The thirteenth century marks the triumph of the style of architecture so
+improperly called Gothic. Its characteristic is the arch. This form, at no
+other time and in no other country employed with such profusion and prominence
+as in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, has been attributed
+primarily to the Goths, whence its name; afterwards, with as little justification,
+to the Arabs. Undoubtedly pilgrims to the Orient, among them
+many ecclesiastics, brought back from their travels impressions and souvenirs
+which left their traces upon Christian edifices; numerous churches were
+built after the pattern of the Holy Sepulchre. Mosaic and colour alternation
+appear also to be importations from the East. As to the arch, if it is much
+in evidence in the Arabian style, it is also prominent in that of the Byzantines;
+it is of all times and all countries, from the tomb of Atreus and the
+gates of the Pelasgian cities in Italy to the constructions of the savages of
+Nubia and America. It is simply an elementary form and easy to construct
+in building vaulted roofs, which require more precision than science.</p>
+
+<p>Vulgar and irregular at first, the arch became monumental little by little—by
+natural progression, by a gradual refinement of line, by a greater
+diversity of ornament, by the ribs and columns which began to adorn it. It
+lent itself marvellously, moreover, as a delineation of the celestial vault, to
+the mysticism of the Christians and to the passionate soaring of their souls
+toward heaven: thus soared the mass of Gothic columns, straight, bold, fearfully
+light, and appearing higher in proportion as the vaulted roof was less
+open. It was not in the formal Roman <i>Midi</i>, it was in the mystic North that
+the Gothic spread and attained perfection.</p>
+
+<p>The new style, born north of the Loire, crossed the Channel, the Rhine,
+and the Alps; and the colonies of French artists transplanted it to Canterbury,
+to Utrecht, to Milan, to Cologne, to Strasburg, to Ratisbon—even into
+Sweden. A crude but ingenuous statuary adorned portals, galleries, and
+cloisters; and the art of glass-painting possessed, for the production of magic
+effects on glazed windows, secrets which we are only just beginning to
+recover. Miniature paintings adorned the missals, and the books of Hours
+have preserved to us some exquisite masterpieces.</p>
+
+<p>Astrology was one of the fads of this period; it reached its highest
+development in the sixteenth century, and was not wholly extinguished till
+the seventeenth. The astrologers pretended to read in the stars the destiny
+of human lives. Another folly was the search of the alchemists for the philosopher’s
+stone—that is to say, the method of creating gold by the transmutation
+of metals. These dreams, however, led to happy results: the
+astrologers from much star-gazing discovered the laws that governed
+the movements of those bodies; the alchemists found in their crucibles—not
+gold, indeed, but new substances, or new properties of those already known.
+So were discovered the process of forming salts by distillation, powerful
+acids, enamels, and convex glasses leading to the making of spectacles.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3c4"><a href="#endnote_3c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> [This is called by many historians the Fourth Crusade.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> [“St. Louis,” says Guizot,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_3m2"><a href="#endnote_3m">m</a></span> “was above all a conscientious man, a man who before acting
+weighed the question to himself of the moral good or evil, the question as to whether what he was
+about to do was good or evil in itself, independently of all utility, of all consequences. Such men
+are rarely seen and still more rarely remain upon the throne. Truly speaking, there are hardly
+more than two examples in history, one in antiquity, the other in modern times: Marcus Aurelius
+and St. Louis. These are, perhaps, the only two princes who, on every occasion, have formed
+the first rule of their conduct from their moral creeds—Marcus Aurelius, a stoic, St. Louis, a
+Christian.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> [Custom had permitted that when anyone had murdered, wounded, or beaten another the
+victim or his relatives might immediately avenge themselves by killing, wounding, or beating
+the offender or any of his relatives, even if the latter were ignorant of what had occurred. The
+ordinance of <i>quarantaine-le-roi</i>, forbade the injured to attack any of the offender’s family until
+after the lapse of forty days (<i>une quarantaine</i>). During the interval the offender himself was
+alone held answerable for his action. Furthermore, if either victim or offender chose to submit
+his cause to his suzerain he could secure inviolability (<i>asseurement</i>), for his goods and person,
+until a judicial decision had been given. When this inviolability had been demanded its breach
+was punishable by death.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> [The livres of Tours and of Paris; their values being 20 and 25 sous respectively.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> The disquisitions of the <i>troubadours</i> or the <i>trouvères</i> on questions of gallantry were called
+<i>jeux partis</i>; whence grew those “courts of love” in which were tried, before tribunals of noble
+ladies, complicated cases and subtle questions. These “courts of love” were of course but a
+poetical fiction, never a serious or permanent institution.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-4.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV. PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Of all epochs of French history, the second half of the thirteenth
+century appears to be that in which the subordination (of the people to
+the crown) was most complete.—<span class="smcap">Dareste.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4k1"><a href="#endnote_4k">k</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>PHILIP (III) THE BOLD (1270-1285 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1270-1285 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Little is known of the reign of St. Louis’ eldest son in spite of its
+length of fifteen years. It began under the walls of Tunis whence Philip
+III brought home his father’s body, after forcing a treaty upon the Mohammedans
+in which they recognised themselves tributary to the king of Sicily
+and agreed to pay the costs of the war. One can, however, still follow the
+ascending march of royalty under this prince, who, without any new war,
+and by extinction of several feudal lineages, reunited to his domain Valois,
+Poitou, and the counties of Toulouse and Venaissin. But Philip gave up to
+the pope this last fief and half of Avignon. The count of Foix, vanquished
+and a prisoner in his own capital, was compelled to promise faithful obedience
+and cede a portion of his territory. The dominion of the king of France
+thus approached the Pyrenees; and it finally crossed them. Philip made
+a match between his eldest son and the heiress of Navarre and if he did not
+succeed in placing on the throne of Castile a prince subservient to his influence,
+or in setting the crown of Aragon on the head of his second son Charles,
+at least he showed his arms in Catalonia where he took the stronghold of
+Gerona. Thus the Capetian dynasty, triumphant at home since the days
+of Louis VI, tried to become so abroad. But the time for this was not ripe.</p>
+
+<p>The expedition to Catalonia, which turned out badly, had no other motive
+than that of family interest. Philip wished to punish Don Pedro, king of
+Aragon, for his support of the rebellious Sicilians against Charles of Anjou
+after the massacre of all the French citizens in the island, which had taken
+place during vespers on Easter Monday. (“The Sicilian Vespers,” 1282.)</p>
+
+<p>An ordinance of Philip III, drawn up in 1274, obliged the advocates in
+the royal courts to take oath each year that they would defend none but just
+cases. The first example of a commoner made noble by the king will be
+found in the letters of ennoblement issued by Philip III to his silversmith
+Raoul, in 1272, if the fact is absolutely certain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span></p>
+
+<h3>PHILIP (IV) THE FAIR (1285-1314 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1285-1300 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Philip IV, surnamed the Fair, was but seventeen when he succeeded his
+father in 1285. He ridded himself, as far as possible by treaties, of futile
+wars, and occupied himself in place of conquest with increasing his domains
+by acquisitions within his reach. His marriage with the heiress of Navarre
+and Champagne had only been worth two great provinces to him. A decree
+of parliament which despoiled the heirs of Hugh de Lusignan secured him
+La Marche and Angoumois. Then his
+second son married the heiress of Franche-Comté;
+thus through marriage, escheat,
+or conquest all France came little by
+little into the royal domain. But powerful
+vassals still remained—the duke of
+Brittany, the count of Flanders, and
+especially the duke of Guienne. Philip
+began by attacking the last. He was a
+formidable adversary since he was at the
+same time king of England.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately Edward I, who had just
+subdued the Welsh and was now threatening
+the independence of Scotland, was
+too much occupied in his own island to
+come over to the continent, and owing
+to this the royal army was able to make
+rapid progress in Guienne. A French
+fleet went to pillage Dover; and another
+army led by the king in person made its
+way into Flanders, where the count had
+declared for the king of England, and
+beat the Flemings at Furnes (Veurne)
+(1297). The intervention of Pope Boniface
+VIII established a peace between the two kings which was sealed by a
+marriage. A daughter of Philip the Fair wedded the son of Edward I and
+gave the English house rights to the throne of France which Edward III in
+due time asserted (1299). By this peace the two kings gave up their allies,
+Philip the Scotch, and Edward the count of Flanders. The latter in terror
+hastened to place himself under the protection of Philip and Flanders was
+reunited to the domain (1300).</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p075.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Philip III</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1300-1302 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The whole French court went to visit the new acquisition. It was
+received with great pomp; the Flemings, to do honour to their noble visitors,
+donned their best attire and displayed all their riches. The entrance into
+Bruges was especially magnificent. The bourgeois wives showed such gold
+and jewels in their toilets that the queen felt her woman’s vanity wounded.
+“I thought,” she said, “there was but one queen of France; now I see six
+hundred.” Flanders was in truth the richest country in Europe because it
+was there that the people worked hardest. In that fruitful land men had
+sprung up like crops, towns were numerous, and the population active and
+industrious, devoted, like the Guienne towns—especially Bordeaux, because
+the English bought their wines—to England, whence came the wool necessary
+to their manufactures. Flemish cloth sold throughout the whole of
+Christendom as far as Constantinople, and the towns of the Low Countries
+formed the market where the productions of the north from the Baltic were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>exchanged for those of the south brought from Venice and the east of Italy
+down the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>On a soil which it had taken a thousand canals to rescue from the sea,
+among the scores of stoutly walled cities, with a population accustomed to
+hard work, but none the less proud of its numbers, strength, and wealth,
+chivalry had had small chance to play its game, and there was little feudalism
+in Flanders. Every town had its privileges and it was not safe to tamper
+with them.</p>
+
+<h4><i>New War with Flanders (1302-1304 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Philip had appointed James de Châtillon governor of Flanders—a man
+who did not know how to treat a conquered people, especially such a rich one.
+The people, rather intolerant and accustomed to more consideration from
+their counts, rebelled. In Bruges alone three thousand French were put
+to death. Philip sent Robert of Artois with a large army to avenge this deed.
+Twenty thousand Flemings awaited it bravely behind a canal near Courtrai.
+Before the fight the Flemings confessed their sins, the priest said high mass,
+and all, bowing down, took some earth and put it in their mouths, swearing
+thus to fight to the death for their country’s freedom. This gathering of a
+whole army usually augurs badly for its assailants. The latter advanced in
+bad order, sure of victory and not giving those common people the credit
+of believing that they would dare look them in the face. In vain the constable
+Raoul de Nesle cautioned prudence. He was asked if he was afraid.
+“Sir,” he replied to Count Robert, “if you come where I go, you will be
+well in the front,” and he spurred his horse forward at all speed. They
+did not even take the precaution to reconnoitre the Flemings’ position.
+The first ranks of the heavy columns of knights, advancing at full speed, had
+no sooner fallen into the canal that covered the enemy’s lines than those just
+behind pressed by the rear were precipitated upon them, and then the Flemings
+had only to plunge their long lances into the confused mass of men and
+horses to kill with perfect safety to themselves. A sortie which they made
+from the two ends of the canal completed the rout. Two hundred nobles
+of high degree and six thousand soldiers perished. And what was most
+humiliating was that the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Saint-Pol and
+Clermont, with two thousand hauberts, fled, leaving the constable, count of
+Artois, and so many noble warriors, beaten, maimed, and killed in the hands
+of the common people (1302).</p>
+
+<p>The battle of Mansurah had already shown the undisciplined impetuosity
+and military incapacity of the knights, but this occurred in the Orient and
+distance had helped to preserve the reputation of the vanquished; but the
+battle of Courtrai, lost by the flower of French chivalry to the common
+people, made a great sensation without, however, curing the nobility of their
+mad presumption. The defeats of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt came from
+the same causes. Stripped by royalty of its privileges, the feudal nobility
+lost on the battle-field the prestige with which it had long been surrounded
+and saw, to complete its own ruin, arise at its very side another army—that
+of the king and the people.</p>
+
+<p>Philip the Fair took energetic measures to repair the disaster of Courtrai.
+He forced nobles and bourgeois to bring to the royal mint their gold and
+silver plate, for which he paid in debased coinage. He ordered each property
+yielding 100 livres of rent to provide one horseman, every one hundred
+villein families to provide six foot-sergeants, and every commoner having
+25 livres income to serve in person. He sold many serfs their freedom and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>many commoners titles of nobility. By this means he collected in two months
+ten thousand mounted and sixty thousand men on foot. It was a royal
+effort and it was a great one, but that of the people was greater still. From
+the Flemish towns there issued this time eighty thousand fighters. With two
+such opposing armies the contest must be terrible and decisive; they felt
+this and not wishing to take any risks, the year 1302 was spent in trying to
+get thoroughly acquainted with the situation. Philip was then at the height
+of his quarrel with Boniface VIII and a new defeat would be fatal to him;
+he even let the Flemings take the offensive the following year (1303). But
+the pope died the same year and Philip attacked Flanders by land and sea.
+His fleet defeated the Flemish at Zieriksee and he himself avenged at Mons-en-Pévêlle,
+or Mons-en-Puelle, the defeat of Courtrai. He thought the enemy
+exterminated, but in a few days they were back as numerous as ever, asking
+a new battle. “But it rains Flemings,” cried the king. He preferred to
+treat rather than fight again. They promised him money and ceded Douai,
+Lille, Béthune, Orchies with all Walloon—that is to say French-speaking
+Flanders between the Lys and the Schelde. To this the king gave them
+back their count, who promised nothing more than feudal homage.</p>
+
+<p>Thus French royalty receded before Flemish democracy as did German
+royalty almost at the same period before Swiss democracy. The communes
+of France remained isolated, and succumbed; in Flanders and in Switzerland
+they united and triumphed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b1"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Quarrel between Philip and Boniface VIII</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1296-1304 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The complaints made by a certain section of the French clergy to the
+holy see in 1296, against what they designated as the exactions of Philip
+the Fair, met with a far better reception than did similar complaints from
+England, where Edward was employing much more vigorous methods than
+those of his rival to obtain subsidies from the clergy.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great opportunity for Pope Boniface VIII, and he did not let it
+slip. The bull, <i>Clericis laïcos</i> (1296), was familiar throughout Christendom.
+This bull, forbidding the clergy to pay taxes to temporal rulers, was too
+sweeping to be enforced. Boniface realised that, and forestalled the
+objections that it could not fail to raise. All that was too peremptory in
+the preceding bull was corrected in the one beginning <i>Ineffabilis amor</i>. The
+king might raise subsidies among the clergy, with the pope’s consent, who, if
+the kingdom were menaced, would order them to contribute to its defence
+even unto the selling of the sacred vessels. In the same bull Boniface demanded
+an explanation of the prohibition recently made by the king against
+exporting gold, silver, and merchandise out of the kingdom, a prohibition
+which threatened to dry up one of the principal sources of revenue of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The edict which is universally regarded as Philip’s retort to the bull
+<i>Clericis laïcos</i>, was not aimed at the pope, for it was issued in the month of
+April, a few days after the drawing up of the bull and before its contents
+could possibly have become known to the king of France. It did not apply
+solely to money, but forbade also the exportation of arms, horses, and other
+things, its object being to damage England and Flanders with which Philip
+was at war. Similar edicts were issued on several occasions during this
+reign. In this same bull Boniface threatened Philip with excommunication.
+The king and his councillors were furious at this liberty.</p>
+
+<p>In 1297, came a fresh prohibition to export gold and silver, fresh fears
+on the part of the pope, fresh explanations from Philip. In the midst of all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>this the French bishops wrote to Boniface praying him to grant the king a
+tithe on all the churches. The clergy began to realise that they could not
+abstain from contributing to the defence of the country. Abandoned by a
+portion of the French clergy, Boniface made fresh concessions. In the bull
+beginning <i>Romana mater ecclesia</i> he even granted permission to raise, in
+cases of necessity, ecclesiastical tithes, with the consent of the clergy but
+without consulting the holy see. The bull <i>Noveritis nos</i> went still farther:
+it handed over to the king, if he had attained his majority, and to his council
+if he were still a minor, the responsibility of deciding as to which were
+cases of necessity, and the right of taxing the clergy even though the pope
+had not first been consulted. It concluded by declaring that the holy see had
+never had any intention of making an attempt upon the rights, liberties,
+freedoms, and customs of the kingdom, the king, or the barons. This compliance
+on the part of Boniface VIII, his sudden sweetness, must not be
+attributed altogether to feelings of benevolence towards Philip the Fair;
+they are explained principally by the difficult position in which the pope
+found himself in his own states.</p>
+
+<p>Harmonious relations continued between the king and the pope; nevertheless
+certain incidents occurred to mar them. Boniface had summoned
+the bishop of Laon to Rome to give account of his administration; the king
+thereupon affected to consider his benefice as vacant and proceeded to
+appropriate to himself the revenues according to the royal prerogative. A
+fresh cause for reciprocal discontent was found in the complaints made by
+the bishops against the collection of the first-fruits granted to the king.</p>
+
+<p>One event to which no one attached any importance took place about
+that time, changing the already unsettled feelings of Boniface into hostility.
+This was the alliance formed at Vaucouleurs in 1299 between Philip and
+Albert, king of the Romans, who had been excommunicated for having
+dethroned Adolphus of Nassau—a very threatening alliance for the papacy.
+The news of the negotiations between Philip and Albert spread consternation
+in Rome; a false rumour announcing a rupture between them was
+received with joy. Boniface conceived the idea of holding a conference
+with the kings of France and England and the count of Flanders—the only
+means, in his eyes, by which to establish peace on a solid basis. He did not
+dream of summoning them to Rome. He knew Philip and Edward well
+enough to be aware that they would regard it simply as officious interference
+on his part. So he determined to go himself to some neutral territory. He
+had even got so far as to make overtures to Philip the Fair under these
+conditions when a serious malady, which caused him excessive pain, coupled
+with his great age, compelled him to renounce the scheme.</p>
+
+<p>The Flemish ambassadors judged this moment to be a favourable one for
+making themselves heard, by flattering the pope’s notions of supremacy and
+exciting his suspicions against Philip the Fair. They forwarded to Boniface
+a memorial in which they prayed his support and intervention, and sought
+to reassure him as to the mightiness of this sovereign power which they
+attributed to him by appeals to the holy Scriptures. Boniface was only
+too ready to listen to insinuations which fell in with his own hopes and
+ambitions.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1301-1303 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>However, causes of complaint against Philip continued to accumulate,
+among others being his usurpation of the county of Melgueil, which
+belonged to the bishop of Maguelonne, and the refusal of the viscount of
+Narbonne to do homage to the archbishop who was his over-lord. The pope
+let drop some severe remarks, and despatched Bernard de Saisset, bishop of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>Pamiers, to invite the king to restore the consecrated land. Philip, exasperated
+by the bishop of Pamiers, allowed him to return to his diocese; but he
+instituted a secret inquiry about him to which evidence was contributed by
+the bishops and barons of the south. He was accused of having purloined
+Languedoc from the crown for the purpose of re-uniting it to Aragon; his
+real offence was his hatred of the king. Bernard was arrested at Pamiers
+by the vidame of Amiens, and arraigned before the king and an assembly of
+barons at Senlis, October 14th, 1301. So haughty was his defence that the
+whole assembly rose to its feet and clamoured for his death. Within an ace
+of being massacred, he flung himself on the compassion of the archbishop of
+Narbonne, his metropolitan, who was
+present, as well as the bishops of Béziers
+and Maguelonne. The archbishop took
+him under his protection and made himself
+answerable for him. This proceeding
+of Philip was contrary to the laws of
+the church: a bishop cannot be brought
+up for judgment before a lay court; in
+the same way, the councils have not the
+right to judge him without the intervention
+of the pope, who must authorise the
+proceedings.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p079.jpg" width="300" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Ancient Church near Rouen, built in the Rock</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Philip despatched Peter de Flotte to
+Rome to demand the punishment of
+Saisset. The ambassador declared that
+his master did not wish to avail himself
+of his right to punish a man whose crimes
+rendered him unworthy of the priesthood
+and of the protection accorded to the
+clergy; but that he desired to show
+the pope a token of deference and respect
+by handing over to him the charge of
+avenging the insult offered to God as the
+author of all legitimate authority, to
+the king as a son of the church, and to the
+kingdom as a very considerable portion
+of Christendom. He further requested
+Boniface to declare Bernard stripped of
+his episcopal dignity and of all clerical privileges. It was in vain that Flotte
+urged and demanded a reply; he received none, and returned raging to
+France.</p>
+
+<p>Boniface suspended the privileges accorded by himself and his predecessors
+to the crown of France, and convoked, for November 1st, 1302, a
+general council at Rome, in order to put an end to the oppressions endured
+by the French clergy. The king was invited either to attend in person or to
+send someone to defend him. The bull <i>Ausculta fili</i> indicated the superiority
+claimed by Boniface over Philip. “God, in laying upon us the yoke of apostolic
+servitude, has placed us above kings and empires, to uproot, destroy,
+annihilate, disperse, build and plant in his name; dearly beloved son, do not
+allow yourself to be persuaded that you are not subject to the supreme head
+of the church, for such an opinion would be folly.” He further accused the
+king of tyrannising over his subjects, oppressing the church, and offending
+the nobles. In conclusion he invites him to turn his attention to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>deplorable condition of the Holy Land and to prepare a crusade. Another
+bull, <i>Secundum divina</i>, enjoined Philip to set Saisset at liberty and let him
+return to Rome. The king drove him out of France, and prepared to obtain
+a great demonstration in his own favour, in opposition to the pretensions of
+Boniface, by summoning the first states-general. By acting in this manner
+Philip was only defending his crown: his right was obvious, he needed but
+to claim it and exercise it with dignity. His cause was good, but he had
+the misfortune to sully it by falsehood and violence; in this, doubtless,
+following the advice of the lawyers who surrounded him.</p>
+
+<p>The Sunday after Candlemas (February, 1302) the king solemnly burned
+the bull <i>Ausculta fili</i>. The defeat of the French army at Courtrai, in the
+month of July, gave confidence to Boniface without disheartening Philip.
+In the month of December Philip sent the bishop of Auxerre to Rome to
+signify to Boniface that, in conjunction with the king of England, he had
+renounced his arbitration. Outwardly Philip was most deferential towards
+the pope. While all this was going on grave news came from Rome. The
+council summoned by Boniface had met on All Saints’ Day, 1302, several
+French bishops having responded to the pope’s summons, despite the king’s
+prohibitions. Philip had seized all their worldly goods, and a decree issued
+November 18th, doubtless at the instigation of the council, ratified the
+doctrine of the papal superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Boniface directed those French bishops who had not taken part in the
+council to present themselves at Rome within three months’ time. Philip
+forbade them to leave the kingdom, and set guards at all the passes into
+Germany and Italy. By the king’s wish Cardinal de Saint-Marcellin (the
+pope’s legate) summoned a council in France. Boniface recapitulated all
+his grievances against Philip, and called upon him to clear himself. He
+accused him among other things of coining false money and of burning the
+bull <i>Ausculta fili</i>. Philip’s answer was moderate and conciliatory. He
+expressed his wish to maintain, as his ancestors had done, the union between
+France and the holy see, and concluded by entreating Boniface not to meddle
+with him in the legitimate exercise of his rights; he offered to refer the
+matter to the decision of the duke of Brittany or of the duke of Burgundy,
+who were particularly agreeable to him. The pope declared this answer to
+be insufficient, and complained bitterly of it to the bishop of Auxerre and
+to the king’s brother, Charles of Valois, who for nearly two years had lived in
+Italy with the title “champion of the holy see,” and whom Philip had lately
+recalled.</p>
+
+<p>On the 12th of March, 1303, an assembly of barons, prelates, and lawyers
+was held at the Louvre in the presence of the king. William de Plasian
+(or, according to Dareste<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4k2"><a href="#endnote_4k">k</a></span> and Martin,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4c1"><a href="#endnote_4c">c</a></span> the chancellor, William de Nogaret)
+read aloud a document in which were set forth accusations against Boniface:</p>
+
+<p>“He is a heretic; he does not believe in the immortality of the soul or
+in the life everlasting: he has said that he would sooner be a dog than a
+Frenchman; he does not believe in the real presence in the Eucharist. He
+has approved of a book by Armand de Villeneuve, which book has been condemned
+and burned; he has set up images of himself in the churches to the
+end that he may be worshipped; he has a familiar spirit who advises him;
+he consults sorcerers; he has openly preached that the pope cannot be
+guilty of simony; he traffics in benefices; he sows strifes everywhere; he
+has said that the French are of the Patarins (Albigenses); he has ordered
+murders; he has forced priests to reveal confessions; he has nourished a
+bitter hatred of the king of France. Before his election he was heard to say
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>that if he did become pope he would destroy Christianity or lower the French
+pride; he has prevented peace between England and France; he has urged
+the king of Sicily to massacre all French; he strengthened the king of Germany
+on condition of his humbling the arrogance of the French, who, he
+pretended, boasted that they recognised no superior in temporal matters, in
+which they lied in their throats; that if an angel from heaven were to tell
+him that France was not subject to him, he would shriek curses against both
+him and the emperor. He has brought about the ruin of the Holy Land,
+having confiscated all the money intended for its aid, that he might give it
+to his relatives, of whom he has made marquises, counts, and barons, and for
+whom he has built castles; he has driven out the nobility of Rome; he has
+broken up marriages; he has made a cardinal of one of his nephews who is
+but an ignorant fellow and who was married, and has forced the wife to take
+the veil in a convent; he has done Celestine, his predecessor, to death in
+prison.”</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th of April Boniface declared Philip to be excommunicate if
+he persisted in not submitting himself to the holy see. He commissioned
+Nicholas de Bienfaite, archdeacon of Coutances, to bear to Cardinal de
+Saint-Marcellin the bull which cut off the king from communion with the
+church. But the king, warned of the archdeacon’s mission, had him arrested
+at Troyes and thrown into prison. His bull was taken from him; in point
+of fact it was not to have been fulminated except in the case of Philip’s
+remaining deaf to a final summons. In vain the legate protested; no one
+listened to him; the goods of all prelates absent from the kingdom were
+sequestrated. Realising that he compromised himself uselessly by remaining
+any longer, he quitted France.</p>
+
+<p>On the 31st of May Boniface, who had pardoned Albert of Austria and
+had recognised him as king of the Romans, launched a bull in which the
+nobles, churches, and <i>communes</i> of the metropolises of Lyons, Tarantaise,
+Embrun, Besançon, Aix, Arles, and Vienne, of Burgundy, Barrois, Dauphiné,
+Provence, of the county of Forcalquier, the principality of Orange, and the
+kingdom of Arles, provinces held of the kingdom, were ordered to break such
+ties of vassalage and obedience as they had been able to contract prejudicial
+to the emperor, and to release themselves from such oaths of obedience as
+they had sworn.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost equivalent to dismembering France. On the 13th of June
+a great assembly took place at the Louvre at which the king was present.
+The counts of Évreux, Saint-Pol, and Dreux, and William de Plasian,
+demanded that the church should be governed by a legitimate pope. Boniface
+was charged anew with all the old crimes and infamies. The king was
+entreated, in his capacity as “defender of the faith,” to work for the convoking
+of a general council. To this he consented. On the 24th of June,
+St. John Baptist’s Day, an immense crowd of people gathered in the palace
+gardens; there the king’s challenge to the future council was read.</p>
+
+<p>At last, on September 8th, Boniface, in the bull <i>Petri solio excelso</i>, pronounced
+against Philip the excommunication he had courted. All the world
+knows how, in defiance of public liberties, Boniface was arrested at Anagni,
+on the evening before the very day on which the excommunication of the
+French king was to have been publicly posted.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4d1"><a href="#endnote_4d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of Philip’s agents, William (Guillaume) de Nogaret whose grandfather
+had been burned as an Albigensian, had been sent to Italy. He came
+to an understanding with Sciarra Colonna, a Roman noble and the pope’s
+mortal enemy. Boniface was at that time in his native city of Anagni. By
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>dint of money Nogaret won over the chief of the military forces of Anagni,
+and one morning entered the place with four hundred mounted armed
+men and some hundreds of foot-soldiers. At the noise they made in the town
+and the cries of “Death to the pope!” “Long live the king of France!”
+Boniface believed his last hour had come. But showing in spite of his age
+(he was eighty-six years old) an uncommon degree of agility, he got into his
+pontifical robes, and seated himself on his throne, the tiara on his head, the
+cross in one hand and the keys of St. Peter in the other. Thus he awaited
+his assassins. The latter called upon him to abdicate. “Here is my neck
+and here is my head,” he replied; “betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die
+like him at least I shall die a pope.” A story ran that Sciarra Colonna
+dragged him from his throne, struck him across the face with his gauntlet,
+and would have killed him had not Nogaret interfered, saying: “Oh thou
+wretched pope, witness and consider the goodness of my lord, the king of
+France, who, far from thee as is his kingdom, guards and defends thee
+through me.” [But the story of Colonna’s violence seems quite unfounded.<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1303-1308 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Nogaret hesitated, however, about dragging the old man out of Anagni.
+The people had time to recover from their astonishment. The townspeople
+armed themselves, the peasants rushed in, and the French were driven from
+the town. The pope, fearing they had put poison in his food, remained
+three days without eating. A short time after, he died of shame and anger,
+at the humiliating insults he had received. His successor, Benedict XI,
+tried to avenge him by excommunicating Nogaret, Colonna, and all those
+who had helped them. The excommunication reached up to the king. A
+month after the publication of the bull, Benedict died, perhaps poisoned.
+This time Philip took measures to make himself master of the election of the
+new pontiff. Bertrand d’Agoust (de Goth), archbishop of Bordeaux, was
+elected after he had promised the king to comply with the royal wishes.
+The new pope, who took the name of Clement V, caused himself to be consecrated
+at Lyons, and abandoning Rome, fixed his residence in 1308 at Avignon,
+a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, where he soon found
+himself under the hand and will of the king of France. His successors
+remained there until 1376. The sojourn of the popes at Avignon, which so
+upset the church, has been called the Babylonish Captivity. This sojourn
+was memorable in connection with the history of Philip IV.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Sentence of the Templars (1307 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1307 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Villani relates a mournful scene—the ominous interview between pope
+and king in the forest of St. Jean d’Angély where one sold his tiara and the
+other bought it. This meeting did not take place, but conditions were
+certainly proposed and accepted. One of them was nothing less than the
+destruction of the military order of the Templars. The wealth of these
+warrior monks, now of no use to them since it was no longer expended
+in armament against the infidel, had tempted
+the king’s greed, always keen-scented for money,
+and their powers stood in the way of his
+despotism. There were 15,500 knights with a
+great multitude of servant knights, brothers and
+their dependents, so that if gathered together
+they could defy all the royal armies of Europe;
+and their strong organisation, under the hand
+of the grand-master, made them seem more
+formidable than did their numbers and their
+wealth.</p>
+
+<p>They possessed throughout Christendom
+more than ten thousand establishments, and a
+number of fortresses, among them the temple at
+Paris where Philip had once found a safe asylum
+from a riot which stormed and raged in vain
+around its thick walls. In the treasury of the
+order there were 150,000 gold florins not counting
+silver or precious vessels. The world never
+knew what went on in their houses. Everything
+was secret, but there were vague rumours of
+orgies, scandals, and impieties, and no profane
+eye had ever penetrated the mysteries. Knights
+had disappeared, because, it was said, they had
+threatened compromising revelations. The pride
+of the order irritated the people, who charged
+it with the most odious crimes; but they were
+guilty only of great laxity of morals, and their
+religious ceremonies were perhaps mingled in
+the East with some impure alloy and strange
+customs.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p083.jpg" width="200" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A Templar</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The 14th of September, 1307, the seneschals and bailiffs were given
+notice to hold themselves in arms for the 12th of October, and they received
+at the same time sealed letters not to be opened until the night of the 12th
+and 13th of October. The surprised knights had no time to resist or gather
+together. Torture drew from them such statements as torture always draws.
+It was Philip’s desire to associate the whole nation with this great trial, as
+he had associated it with his dispute with Boniface VIII. The states-general
+assembled at Tours; the accusations and statements were put before it and
+the deputies pronounced the knights deserving of death. Provincial councils
+likewise condemned them. That of Paris consigned to the flames in one day,
+in the faubourg St. Antoine, fifty-four Templars, who retracted what they
+had avowed under torture. Nine were burned at Senlis and there certainly
+were other executions. The pope pronounced at the Council of Vienne the
+dissolution of the order throughout all Christendom, and ordered their great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>wealth turned over to the Hospitallers (knights of Rhodes). But the royal
+fist did not readily release what it held. All the money found in the temples,
+two-thirds of the personal property, credits, and a considerable amount of
+lands remained in the hands of the king. In Italy, England, Spain, and
+Germany, the order of the Temple was abolished and its wealth in part
+confiscated by the princes. But there were no executions except in France.
+The memory of Philip IV must alone bear the burden of these atrocities.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1307-1312 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This same Council of Vienne condemned several errors, born within the
+Franciscan order—the heresy of the “Spirituels” who regarded St. Francis
+almost as a new reincarnation of Jesus; that of the “Beguins” or “Beghards,”
+who exempted mankind, perfect according to their ideas, from any
+judgment by human standards. And finally that of the Fraticelli who
+[inquisitors tell us] abolished property and declared that everything should
+be in common, family as well as property. We see these wild doctrines are
+very old.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b2"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Philip’s Fiscal Policy</i></h4>
+
+<p>Nothing satiated the royal exchequer, neither the spoils of the Templars,
+nor the tithes collected under pretext of the “holy war,” nor the taxes
+levied for the knighting of the king’s sons and the marriage of his daughter—that
+fatal marriage, from which sprang Edward III. Even the <i>maltôtes</i>
+did not suffice.</p>
+
+<p>The maltôte, an illegal exaction, which, to a certain extent placed all
+subjects in the position of serfs taxable at their owner’s will and pleasure,
+was at least openly arbitrary and illegal; but the “mutable currencies”
+were treacherously sprung upon the citizens in the midst of their transactions
+and money exchanges, and brought dismay upon society at every turn,
+doing his subjects a wrong out of all proportion to the benefit gained by
+their ruler. In all of this there was as much ignorance as perversity, and one
+has difficulty in conceiving the ineptitude shown in the government financial
+business by legal men, ordinarily so clever. Philip the Fair’s statutes
+regarding the currency are a genuine chaos: sometimes the king takes the
+paternal tone, and pretends to so contrive the rate of exchange that his subjects
+shall suffer as little as possible; sometimes he throws off the mask,
+and prohibits the testing and weighing of the royal moneys issued, on pain
+of forfeiting the coins submitted to the test and of “being both body and
+goods at the king’s disposal.” No one could obtain either silver or copper
+but at the royal mints. The importation of the Florentine golden florin
+and other foreign coins was forbidden under the same penalty (for fear of
+comparison). Next Philip withdrew from circulation half of his own current
+coins, under the pretext of their having been counterfeited and tampered
+with by others—coiners, Lombards, etc. The Jews and the Lombards were
+always convenient scapegoats for the royal iniquities. They were again
+expelled in 1311-1312, with the usual confiscations. In 1310 there was a
+grand re-coining of all the moneys; everyone was forced to give in all he
+possessed to the directors of the royal mints, who gave out in exchange new
+money, much inferior in weight and purchasing power to the value attributed
+to it. The king was anxious to gain popularity at the expense of the
+money-lenders, and issued orders that all liabilities should be discharged
+in the new money, in spite of every previous stipulation to the contrary.
+To the same end, after having fixed a maximum (15 to 20 per cent. per
+annum!) for the exorbitant interest charged on silver, he ended by prohibiting
+all usury, which is to say all interest. If the rates of usury were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>scandalous, one must lay the blame of them on the king’s persecution of
+capitalists, Jews, and Italian bankers: naturally the rate of interest increased
+in proportion to the chances of loss incurred by the lender. By these means
+Philip raised fresh barriers to trade and swelled the public discontent.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1312-1314 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A statute enacted in June, 1313, surpassed in audacity all others that
+had preceded it. The king was no longer satisfied with managing his own
+money as he would; he wished to handle that of the barons also, and
+asserted himself to be the only coiner of the realm. By friendly transactions,
+by usurpations, by every possible means, he had already reduced by
+more than half their number the nobles who minted money. In the preamble
+to his statute he now announced his intention of restoring all French moneys
+“to their ancient currency and status” (of the time of St. Louis, apparently),
+and forbade all prelates and barons to mint fresh money until further
+orders. He was acting, he said, under the advice of “the whole caboodle of
+decent people in every decent town in his kingdom,” and he looked to the
+<i>bourgeoisie</i> to uphold him against the resentment of the nobles. As a matter
+of fact, at another time the bourgeoisie would have been only too pleased
+to see the nobles deprived of the right of coining money, a right which
+they grossly abused; but under Philip the Fair, would they gain much by
+it? This very statute of June, 1313, introduced mutations more disastrous
+than any heretofore. It hit all classes of society, and all were equally irritated,
+with the exception of the lawyers and certain large tradesmen who
+constituted themselves overseers, farmers, or coiners on the king’s account.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Execution of Jacques de Molay (1314 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Philip defied public discontent by redoubling his brutalities. The smallest
+murmur was reported to the king’s spies, and punished by his tyrants.
+One saw everywhere people flogged and pilloried; every lay and ecclesiastical
+court robed itself in pitiless severity. In the Place de Grève they
+burned, in 1313, a nun of Hainault, Marguerite de la Porette, the Mystic.
+Shortly after a more celebrated execution startled Paris and the whole of
+France. For more than six years the foremost members of the order of the
+Temple, the grand-master, the “visitor” of France, and the masters of
+Aquitaine and Normandy, had languished in the king’s dungeons; they
+could not be left to die unjudged in darksome cells. At last the pope, who
+had reserved the decision of their fate to himself, appointed a commission
+consisting of the cardinal D’Albano and two other cardinals. The archbishop
+of Sens and various doctors of divinity and of canonical law joined
+them. Brought before their judges, the four captives reiterated, it is said,
+the confessions made by themselves and their comrades. It was wished to
+mark their arrest with great solemnity and to “read a lesson” to the public,
+as the saying is. The court therefore held its sitting in the open space
+before Notre Dame de Paris, upon a scaffold draped in scarlet. The four
+accused were led to the foot of the scaffold, where they repeated their confession
+before all the people. Their sentence was then pronounced—they
+were to be immured for life. “But just when,” says the continuator of
+Nangis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4g1"><a href="#endnote_4g">g</a></span> “the cardinals believed they had ended the affair, the grand-master,
+Jacques de Molay, and the master from Normandy, Guy, brother of the
+dauphin of Auvergne, suddenly retracted their confession, denying it in
+toto, and stubbornly defended themselves against the cardinal who had
+‘pointed the moral’ and the archbishop of Sens, to the immense surprise of
+everybody.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p>
+
+<p>The commission, struck dumb with astonishment and a sort of fear by
+this unlooked-for incident, did not know how to decide. They adjourned
+till the morrow to deliberate at their leisure, and handed over the grand-master
+and his companions to the guardianship of the royal warder of Paris
+till the next day. The news of what had taken place outside Notre Dame
+was promptly carried to the king, who was at that time at the Palais de la
+Cité. Philip, seized with a dread only equalled by his anger, sent in haste
+for his most trusty advisers, “without summoning the scholars” (<i>i.e.</i>, the
+commission). The determination he had arrived at was the boldest and
+most atrocious that can be imagined. At night-fall he had the two Templars
+conveyed to a small island in the Seine, “between the garden of the
+Palais de la Cité and the church of the Frères-Hermites,” and there had them
+burned together. “They helped,” says the continuator of Nangis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4g2"><a href="#endnote_4g">g</a></span> “to
+prepare the fagots with so stout and resolute a heart, persisting to the end
+in their denials with so great steadfastness, that they left those who witnessed
+their torment filled with admiration and stupefaction.” (March 11th, 1314.)</p>
+
+<p>The ecclesiastical powers swallowed this outrage as many another,
+demanding from the king no account for the double murder of two offenders
+who did not come within his jurisdiction, and whose backsliding he had
+dealt with on his own authority alone. Indeed Clement V was already failing,
+and did not long survive the unfortunates whom he had sold to their
+persecutor. He died on April 20th. An Italian historian, Ferretus or
+Fereti of Vicenza, asserts that Jacques de Molay, from the midst of his
+fagots, cited the king and the pope to appear before the tribunal of God,
+Clement within forty days and Philip within a year.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was in truth nearing the end of his sinister career. The last year
+of his reign will be seen to be the most bloody. France was horrified by
+more hideous scenes than any she had hitherto witnessed, more hideous
+even than the murder of the Templars, and this time the tragedy was
+enacted at the foot of the throne among the royal family. Philip’s three
+sons, Louis Hutin, king of Navarre, and count of Champagne and of Brie,
+Philip, count of Poitiers, and Charles, count of La Marche, had married—the
+first Marguerite, sister of Hugh V, duke of Burgundy; and the other
+two Joan and Blanche, daughters of Otto or Othelin, count of Burgundy
+or of Franche-Comté. In the spring of 1314 the young wives of the king’s
+three sons were suddenly arrested on a charge of scandalous conduct. Marguerite,
+queen of Navarre, and Blanche, countess of La Marche, were accused
+of frequent acts of adultery, “even on the most holy days,” with Philip and
+Walter d’Aulnai, young Norman knights in their service. The Aulnai
+brothers were not allowed to challenge to a duel in defence of their innocence
+and that of their mistresses; confession of guilt was wrung from
+them by torture, and the princesses, “stripped,” says the continuator of
+Nangis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4g3"><a href="#endnote_4g">g</a></span> “of all temporal honours, after receiving the tonsure, were imprisoned,
+Marguerite in Château Gaillard d’Andely, and Blanche in the abbey
+of Maubuisson, where, after strict seclusion, and deprived of all human consolation,
+they ended their days in despair.”</p>
+
+<p>The fate of their lovers was even more terrible. They were conducted
+to the place du Martroi St. Jean, in Paris, and there flayed alive and mutilated;
+they were not beheaded until every means had been exhausted that
+an infernal science could devise to prolong the victim’s sufferings without
+actually killing him.</p>
+
+<p>Joan of Burgundy, countess of Poitiers, more fortunate than her sisters
+Blanche and Marguerite of Navarre, was declared chaste and not guilty by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>a parliament in which sat the king’s brothers and the great nobles: she was
+“reconciled to her husband.” Joan of Burgundy was heiress to Franche-Comté:
+it was not possible to condemn her as an adulteress and annul her
+marriage without renouncing the wealth she had brought to the royal
+house; perhaps her riches had something to say as to her innocence.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4c2"><a href="#endnote_4c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The general oppression nearly caused an insurrection when Philip ordered
+a new tax on the sale of all merchandise. There was, from the first, a union
+between the nobles and the bourgeoisie similar to the league which in England
+laid the foundations of the people’s liberty and imposed the Magna Charta
+on John Lackland. Philip, this time, withdrew, and cancelling the obnoxious
+tax he summoned representatives of forty of the largest towns to a conference
+at Paris at which he promised to coin henceforth nothing but honest
+money.</p>
+
+<p>But this ill-starred man, this king, the harshest France had had up to this
+time, although but forty-six years of age, had already reached the end of
+his days. He expired November 29th, 1314.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b3"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span> The exact cause of Philip’s
+early demise has never been perfectly understood. The commonly accepted
+account is that it resulted from an accident that occurred during a stag hunt.
+“He saw the stag coming and drew his sword, and clapped spurs to his
+horse and thought to strike the stag; but his horse carried him so violently
+against a tree that the good king fell to the ground, and was very severely
+hurt in the heart, and was carried to Corbeil. There his malady grew very
+sore.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4f"><a href="#endnote_4f">f</a></span> But this narrative bears the date 1572. “The contemporary French
+historian” [the continuator of William de Nangis<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4g4"><a href="#endnote_4g">g</a></span>] says Michelet<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4e1"><a href="#endnote_4e">e</a></span> “does
+not speak of this accident. He says that Philip sank without fever or visible
+malady, to the great astonishment of the physicians.” Nevertheless there
+was a contemporary rumour of an accident during a hunt of the wild boar,
+for Dante<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4h"><a href="#endnote_4h">h</a></span> writing exactly at the time of Philip’s death speaks contemptuously
+of him as “The false coiner who died of a blow from a pig’s skin”
+(<i>i.e.</i>, a boar).<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Political Progress in Philip’s Reign</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1285-1314 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Whether or not Philip the Fair was a wicked man or a bad king, there
+is no denying that his reign is the grand era from which we date civil order
+in France and the foundation of the modern monarchy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4e2"><a href="#endnote_4e">e</a></span> Under this reign
+the royal domain made important acquisitions, some of which, unfortunately,
+were not lasting; the counties of La Marche, Angoumois, Champagne,
+Franche-Comté, Lectoure, a portion of Flanders (Lille, Douai, and Orchies),
+Quercy, the great city of Lyons and a part of Montpellier. The count
+of Bar had been compelled to do homage to the French crown for all his
+land situated west of the Maas.</p>
+
+<p>Vassals were bound to serve their sovereign, in his court, by their advice
+and justice. The king’s feudal court had a double character, for in it the
+king called upon his barons for advice and sentences. With the further
+evolution of royalty the functions of the king’s court developed, and a division
+became necessary; there was the political court or grand council,
+and the judiciary court or parliament. Under St. Louis the functions of the
+parliament were not yet clearly defined. Philip the Fair perfected its
+organisation. He caused this court to be held at Paris twice a year for two
+months in the Palais de la Cité, which later bore the name of the Palais de
+Justice (1303). This sovereign court of justice which claimed to exercise
+its jurisdiction over the entire kingdom was destined to be the great instrument
+employed by future kings to bring the whole of France under their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>absolute authority. Philip also established two <i>échiquiers</i><a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+    at Rouen and two
+<i>grands jours</i> at Troyes and placed these provincial courts under the control
+of the parliament. The office of public prosecutor (<i>ministère public</i>) charged
+with defending in all causes the rights of the king and society, seems to date
+from the time of Philip the Fair.</p>
+
+<p>As the king had formed the parliament from the grand council, so
+he formed the chamber of accounts (<i>chambre des comptes</i>) from the parliament
+of which it first was a part but later became a separate institution.
+Thus there were three great divisions in the high administrative department
+of the country—the judiciary parliament; the financial, chamber of accounts;
+and the political, the grand council.</p>
+
+<p>The many ordinances of Philip which have been preserved prove his
+activity in organising the new administration, which was the debt of royalty
+to the country, since it had substituted its own powers for those of the feudal
+lords. If these laws often bear the stamp of a despotic and taxing spirit,
+they sometimes show a knowledge of the true principles of government.
+One of them prohibited private war and judicial duels during wars of the
+crown. This was done to disarm feudalism.</p>
+
+<p>A most important event of Philip’s administration was the convocation in
+1302 of the first states-general. Brought by his violences face to face with
+a great peril, and ruined by his constant disastrous undertakings, the most
+despotic of the French kings was compelled [as we have seen] to call around
+him the deputies of the nation, in order to obtain the assistance of which he
+stood in need and to fortify himself in his quarrel with the pope, with the
+assent of France. But in discussing before them the prerogatives of his crown
+and of the tiara, he recognised by implication the ancient right of national
+sovereignty so deeply obscured for centuries. Philip doubtless asked nothing
+but what he was sure of obtaining, but the men who, in 1302, fought for the
+king against the pope and in 1326 disposed of the crown, would later on be
+emboldened to the attempt to lay hands on the crown itself.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b4"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The states-general consisted of a strictly national assembly which the
+barons, bishops, abbeys, provosts, and deans of chapters were invited to attend
+in person, and to which each city of the realm was invited to send two or
+three deputies or representatives. This was not the first time that the crown
+had consulted the nobles and the prelates; but it does not appear that until
+now the deputies of the third estate had taken part in such a council. If
+they had been previously consulted on rare occasions, it was in regard to
+special matters such as the regulation of the currency, and even then certain
+determinate cities were represented.</p>
+
+<p>The states-general thus called together by Philip the Fair, and which
+assembled the 12th of April, 1302, in the church of Notre Dame at Paris, was
+convoked, to be sure, with a specific aim and under extraordinary circumstances.
+Its unique object was to show the pope that the country upheld the
+king (see <a href="#Page_80">p. 80</a>). But none the less does this meeting stamp the year 1302
+as an important date in French history.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Through this representative
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>assembly France, as such, takes part for the first time in its own government;
+an intervention already necessary, and which is destined soon to become consistent
+and regular.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4k3"><a href="#endnote_4k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS (X) THE QUARRELSOME (1314-1316 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1314-1316 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Philip the Fair had mingled little with the chivalry of his time. He
+forbade tournaments, and, after the fashion of oriental despots, kept his sons
+secluded. The eldest, known as Louis X, called Hutin or the Quarrelsome,
+was fond of rude pastimes. In 1305 he had been crowned king of Navarre
+at Pamplona, and succeeded at the same time to the county of Champagne.
+His uncle Charles, count of Valois, had much influence over him, a prince
+who had shown eagerness, but not perseverance,
+to tread in the adventurous and
+ambitious path of Charles of Anjou.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p089.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis X</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charles entertained an aversion for
+all his brother’s councillors. He accused
+his chancellor Latilly, bishop of Châlons,
+with having caused the death of the king
+by means of sorcery. Latilly’s obvious
+interest had been to keep Philip alive;
+but Charles caused him, nevertheless, to
+be imprisoned and tortured under the
+accusation. Raoul de Presle, another of
+Philip’s legists, was implicated in the
+same crime, and underwent similar persecution.</p>
+
+<p>But Enguerrand de Marigny, Philip’s
+prime minister, was the chief object of
+hatred to the king’s uncle. Charles
+blamed Marigny for the depreciation of
+the coin; but for this crime, even if considered
+guilty, Louis Hutin thought him
+not worthy of punishment more severe
+than banishment to the isle of Cyprus.
+Charles seemed unable to bring against
+Marigny himself the accusation of
+sorcery; he however accused his wife of employing others to make the
+terrible images of wax. All of those thus implicated were brought, not
+before parliament, but in the presence of the king, of Charles, and of some
+barons at Vincennes. The councillors of Philip had set the example of
+creating courts of justice in whatever way suited their convenience. It
+was now the turn of the barons, and they condemned Marigny to be hanged
+on a gibbet; the king, on hearing of sorcery, abandoning his previous efforts
+to save him (1315).</p>
+
+<p>Another murder was that of Marguerite, wife of Louis, who had been
+sent to seclusion in the château Gaillard.</p>
+
+<p>The young king was beset with difficulties which required a wise head and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>an established authority to deal with them. A war threatened him already.
+Count Robert of Flanders hesitated and refused to render the homage due to
+the king of France on his accession. Philip would have avenged such frowardness
+by sequestrating the county of Nevers, held by the eldest son of the
+count of Flanders. But the prince appeared at the French court, and was
+well received. The war could only be carried on by feudal levies; when
+these were summoned, the noblesse of the different provinces sent in their
+grievances in lieu of their contingents. His legists would have counselled
+Philip the Fair to resist such demands; but his son had surrounded his
+person, not with legists, but with barons, and these remained acquiescent
+with the demands of their brother nobles. Of course what was granted to
+one could not be refused to another. But under the date of this one year,
+1315, the French statute book is filled with ordinances regranting their old
+privileges to the noblesse, and rescinding a large portion of the voluminous
+legislation [such as abandoning the ancient courts of justice, abolishing the
+judiciary duel, the right of private war, and procedure by written deposition
+which had made lawyers necessary] of the French monarchs during the
+preceding century.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4i1"><a href="#endnote_4i">i</a></span> The general demand was that the king should hold no
+relations with the barons’ men. But at the same time Louis, in order to get
+money, made a solemn statement that “according to the law of nature every
+man should be born free”; from which he concluded that all Frenchmen being
+by nature free, the serfs of the royal domain could ransom themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Serfdom began to decline from this moment, in contrast with the state
+of affairs in preceding centuries; freedom now became the prevailing condition
+amongst rural populations, as it had long been among the inhabitants
+of the towns—while serfdom was the exception.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b5"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Whilst the monarch made these large concessions to his noblesse, he
+seems to have derived from them no efficient aid in the prosecution of the
+war with Flanders. To raise money for this purpose, he was obliged to compound
+with the Lombard merchants of Paris; they consented to pay so much
+a pound on their importations. The Jews, too, were again permitted to reside
+in certain cities on the payment of a tax. Louis Hutin was the first king
+who formally borrowed money on the credit of the state, his successors being
+obliged to devote to the purpose of repayment all the sums that might
+accrue from forfeiture and confiscation.</p>
+
+<p>With an army raised at these pains and costs, Louis marched into Flanders.
+The Flemings were in the neighbourhood of Lille, and the French
+king encamped opposite to them, with a river running between the armies.
+The monarch had not an opportunity of putting his own valour and that of
+his soldiers to the proof. For the elements put a stop to hostilities, the rain
+pouring down in unusual torrents, flooding the camps, and destroying provisions
+and crops. This unsuccessful campaign flung the country into anarchy,
+the barons levying war wherever they could foresee profit from it; and those
+who had right of coinage, Charles of Valois included, making exorbitant use
+of it to enrich themselves at the expense of the country. The king suspended
+this right, but his order was set at naught; and he then strove to regulate
+the nature and fineness of the coin which each grandee might issue.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Charles of Valois was thus employed, the king despatched his
+brother, Philip, count of Poitiers, to Avignon, to hasten the election of the
+pope. He was there when tidings reached him that Louis Hutin had
+expired at Vincennes on the 5th of July, 1316. After heating himself at
+ball-playing, the king had descended to the cellar to quench his thirst, an
+imprudence that proved fatal.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p>
+
+<h3>PHILIP (V) THE TALL (1316-1322 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1316-1322 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Philip immediately hastened to Paris, and took possession of the royal
+palace. Charles of Valois thought at first of disputing the regency; but the
+armed citizens of Paris, whom Louis had enrolled for the Flemish war, with
+the constable at their head, drove Charles’ followers out of the Louvre.
+Clemence, the young widow of Louis Hutin, now announced her pregnancy.
+In addition to this posthumous child, Louis had left a daughter, Joan,
+by Marguerite of Burgundy. The duke of Burgundy, although he had
+been unable or unwilling to protect Marguerite, maintained the rights
+of her daughter, and pleaded that Philip the Fair had acknowledged her
+legitimacy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon afterwards the queen gave birth to a son, who was christened John;
+but the child lived only a few days. Philip lost no time in at once claiming
+the rank of king, and appointing no distant day in January, 1317, for his
+coronation at Rheims. Charles of Valois, who was at the head of the
+noblesse, already began to entertain well-founded hopes of the royal succession
+accruing to his own family. The duke of Burgundy was pacified by
+obtaining one of Philip’s daughters in marriage, with a considerable sum of
+money in dowry, as well as Franche-Comté. Joan, daughter of Louis Hutin,
+whose claims the duke thus abandoned, was affianced to the only son of the
+count of Évreux.</p>
+
+<p>The grounds for this exclusion of females from the throne of France are
+not to be found in any law, but in the circumstance of Joan’s mother having
+been stricken with infamy, with no staunch friend to defend her, whilst
+Philip was in possession of the royal authority, of which it would have
+required a civil war to dispossess him. With respect to the old Salic law
+afterwards invoked, it related but to fiefs and military service, and yet in fiefs
+it had been so generally set aside, that women succeeded to lands and to noble
+property in all the provinces of France. It must have been evident to the
+noblesse, as to others, that the descent of a fief, much more of the crown, to
+females weakened it for a time, and eventually rendered it liable to become
+the prey of personages, perhaps foreigners, who had not the interest of the
+kingdom at heart. The accession of Philip the Tall, therefore, and the exclusion
+of the daughters of Louis Hutin, were popular with the citizens, not
+displeasing to the noblesse, and not against the interest of the princes of the
+blood. And thus was it decided that the kingdom of France, instead of
+being considered as a patrimony that descended to direct heirs, even if female,
+was a high function which it required a prince to fill.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Philip the Tall was marked by no chivalrous enterprise or
+military feat. French and Flemings were disposed more to negotiate than
+fight. The chief object of Philip the Tall’s efforts and edicts was to organise
+a regular administration. He ordered, first, that a certain number of the
+members of the great council should be always with the king, a provision
+afterwards repeated in the order that the small or privy council (<i>l’estroit
+conseil</i>) should meet every month. [In this council cruel persecutions of the
+Jews and lepers were organised.] He established the chamber of accounts,
+and regulated the issues of the treasury, no payment to be made without the
+king’s own signature. The abuses of Philip’s predecessors are chiefly known
+by his efforts to amend them. Philip regulated parliaments, their number
+and their sitting. No prelate was to sit in that of Paris unless he belonged
+also to the king’s council. Parliament should always be attended by a baron
+or two. It was empowered to send commissioners into the provinces to judge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>causes instead of bringing the parties to Paris and thereby creating
+expenses. The king forbade (1316) nobles to sell fiefs or feudal property
+to non-nobles.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4i2"><a href="#endnote_4i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Like his grandfather Philip III, Philip the Tall gave titles of nobility to
+people of common origin, an innovation which, by renewing the aristocratic
+body, assured its longevity, but at the same time altered its character. In
+the beginning, nobility was a personal matter; feudalism had made it an
+attribute of the military fief; here were the kings separating it. It is a
+serious change; for one day these letters of nobility will be bought, and
+there will be no real nobility when all the world may be noble with the power
+of money.</p>
+
+<p>Thus threatened from above by the kings, feudalism was also threatened
+from below by the people. The development of the towns continued: that
+of the country began; the bourgeois obtained from Philip V permission to
+have their own military organisations; each town had a captain for its citizen
+companies, each bailiwick a captain-general; and it was in this century,
+if not in this reign, that the ecclesiastical parishes became civil communities.
+The country people, formerly completely isolated, were being brought more
+and more together, at first around the church and the castle under the surveillance
+of the seigniorial intendant, later under a syndic or mayor always
+appointed by the lord and who brought the people together to discuss their
+common interests.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of municipal organisation in country places.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b6"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the latest schemes of Philip, much too advanced for his time, was
+to establish but one measure and one money throughout the kingdom. He
+calculated that this could not be done without great expense, and he proposed
+taking the fifth part of the goods of all his subjects for the purpose.
+But the townsfolk objected to the tax, whilst the nobles who had the right
+of coinage persisted in retaining so profitable a privilege. Philip was seized
+in the same year with dysentery and intermittent fever, which terminated in
+languor and confined him for months to his couch. The people did not
+fail to attribute his disease to the unheard-of exactions and extortions that
+he meditated. Philip the Tall did not live to accomplish them; he expired
+in January, 1322.</p>
+
+<h3>CHARLES (IV) THE FAIR (1322-1328 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1322-1328 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>No one put forward any claim on the part of the daughters of Philip the
+Tall to the regal succession. Charles, the youngest son of Philip the Fair,
+was at once hailed as king; and so incontestably, that he seems to have
+dispensed with the ceremony of coronation. The first object with Charles,
+called, like his father, the Handsome or the Fair, was to leave an heir to the
+throne. Less cruel than Louis Hutin, he obtained a papal dispensation
+or divorce from his wife Blanche, not on account of the adultery of which
+she had been convicted, but on the plea of consanguinity. Charles immediately
+married Mary of Luxemburg, daughter of the late emperor Henry VII.
+This queen produced no heir, dying in premature childbirth within two
+years, when Charles married his cousin Joan, daughter of the count
+d’Évreux.</p>
+
+<p>The first years of the reign of Charles the Fair were chiefly marked by a
+trial in which severity was at least warranted by justice, and in which the
+king and court were above sparing culprits even of the highest connection.
+Jourdan de Lille, lord of Casaubon, in Gascony, having married the niece of
+Pope John XXII, considered himself above restraint. Accused of eighteen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>crimes each worthy of death, the king had spared him, out of consideration
+for the pope; but Casaubon resumed his old habits. No traveller or
+merchant was safe from his rapine, nor damsel nor even man from his
+violence. Summoned to appear before the court of parliament to answer
+some of these acts, the Gascon lord beat with his own mace the royal
+sergeant who bore the summons. He came to Paris, nevertheless, with a
+noble suite, bravely reckoning on impunity. He was, however, committed
+to prison, tried, condemned to death, and hanged.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4i3"><a href="#endnote_4i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Contemporary writers tell us little of the life of Charles IV, or of his
+government. We know that he paid visits to various parts of his realm, and
+that while so doing he confirmed the charters of certain cities of the south of
+France. We know, too, that in his earlier years Charles aspired to the crown of
+the Holy Roman Empire, and that for a time circumstances seemed to favour
+his ambition. He had the support of the pope and of the two most powerful
+German houses, those of Austria and of Luxemburg. But the Germans as a
+nation were opposed to the idea of a French emperor, and the negotiations to
+this end were abandoned on the death of Leopold of Austria in 1326.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4k4"><a href="#endnote_4k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It would appear from the ordinances and other acts of Charles the Fair
+that the party of the noblesse, dominant under Louis Hutin, but repressed
+under Philip the Tall, recovered full authority under Charles. The Valois,
+who put themselves forward as the representatives of the chivalry of the
+age and as the enemy of the legists, appear dominant. They led an expedition
+against Guienne, threatened Flanders, and aided Mortimer and Isabella
+in the struggle which terminated in the murder of Edward II. The
+ordinances of Charles the Fair do not interfere with the noblesse, except
+to shield them from the encroachments of the king’s <i>baillis</i>: the lords of
+Auvergne and Brittany obtained especial immunities of this kind. Although
+armies were raised from Flemish and for Gascon war, the nobles were apparently
+not called upon to contribute to them except by feudal service; whilst
+the Parisians were called upon to keep up a body of two hundred men-at-arms,
+and to levy a tax on sales to meet this expenditure. Towns which had not
+the privileges of <i>communes</i>, and were without mayors or sheriffs, were ordered
+not to pay <i>taille</i>, but, instead of it, the tax on sales, of one denier in the livre,
+which tax was not to be levied on the produce sent to market by either nobles
+or clergy. Money continued to be the great trouble and principal anxiety
+of government, the middle and civic classes being singled out as the only
+ones which could regularly furnish it, except when some rich and privileged
+body offered itself to the greed of the spoiler.</p>
+
+<p>The same fate which had carried off his brother at so young an age
+awaited Charles. Taken ill at Christmas, he expired at the end of January,
+1328. “Thus was the entire progeny of Philip the Fair, and finer was not
+to be found in the kingdom of France, completely exterminated in the space
+of fourteen years.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4i4"><a href="#endnote_4i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>ASPECTS OF CIVILISATION</h3>
+
+<p>The Middle Ages themselves at this moment, at least in France, were
+near their end, for the things they were attached to—the Crusades, chivalry,
+feudalism—were gone, or fast passing away; the papacy, scoffed at in the
+days of Boniface VIII, was captive at Avignon; the successor of Hugh Capet
+was a despot, and the sons of villeins were sitting in the states-general of the
+realm, opposite the nobles and the clergy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4b7"><a href="#endnote_4b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Two or three centuries before, France had seen a great movement accomplished
+in her midst, called the communal revolution. The greater part of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>the cities had acquired—be it pacifically, be it at the cost of struggles
+against the land-owners, or by dissensions and intestine wars—municipal
+rights combined with independent jurisdiction. Some of them had acquired a
+veritable sovereignty. At present, under King John, this sovereignty existed
+no longer. The cities had gradually returned to the royal administration,
+although each retained its charter; it may be said, in a general way, that
+they had again become dependent, since St. Louis in regard to finance, since
+Philip the Fair in regard to tribunals, and for the levying of militia since Philip
+the Tall. But, in spite of this change which took from them the character
+of independent republics, to make them members of a great state, they had
+retained considerable liberty and power of action. Their citizens formed a
+third order, having like the clergy or the nobility their own peculiar privileges
+and correlative obligations. They possessed a great and fruitful initiative for
+their commercial interests and their industries. They aspired to exercise a
+rightful influence over the government, and the states-general offered them
+an obvious means.</p>
+
+<p>The bourgeoisie was not hostile to seigneurial aristocracy as several historians
+have represented, but it had different interests and different aims,
+since it owed its wealth and power to industry and commerce. As for industry,
+it is well known that the corporations of crafts assured a monopoly more
+or less extensive to their members, of more or less regular revenues, and the
+perpetuity of hereditary influence. Nevertheless, it is necessary to recall
+how the development of these corporations was hampered by their own laws,
+and if there were already some of great wealth, like those of the butchers of
+Paris, they were the exception. Industries were restricted in their nature
+in proportion as they were reduced to the usual crafts, and this was generally
+the case. They employed only the raw materials produced in the country,
+like flax, wool, or hides. They worked in iron and other metals, but having
+no knowledge of large machinery they had little use for coal, the principal
+agent of metallic production. In general, also, they produced only enough
+for home consumption. Exportations were confined principally to the textiles
+manufactured in the south which had a market in the Levant, to the woollen
+stuffs, serges, and tapestries of Arras, to the linens of Rheims and Picardy.
+Thanks to this circumstance the towns of the latter province began to rival
+the large industrial cities of the Netherlands.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of industry was genuine, but would only follow that of commerce.
+Now it was principally the progress of commerce which amazed
+the fourteenth century. The use of the compass, of which no traces can be
+found before St. Louis, in permitting longer voyages, established connections,
+used more than formerly, between the coasts of the Mediterranean and those
+of the ocean and the English Channel. The commerce of the two seas, by
+the straits of Gibraltar, rare enough before the year 1300, took, at the beginning
+of that epoch, a rapid stride forward. On the other hand the triumph
+of Christianity and civilisation in the northern districts along the tributaries of
+the Baltic, accompanied by the establishment of German settlements along the
+coasts of that sea in Prussia and Livonia, opened to the merchants northern
+Europe, long infested by pirates and long difficult of access. Now began a
+regular exchange of the products of the north and those of the south. Amiens,
+whose ordinary commerce had long been restricted to Flanders, England,
+Scotland, and Ireland, now extended the circumference of her commerce to
+the Hanseatic countries and their towns, to the Scandinavian kingdoms and
+those of the Spanish peninsula. All these towns prospered, and following
+more or less the movement of the Flemish cities became store-houses for the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>products of northern or southern Europe and even of the merchandise of
+the Orient.</p>
+
+<p>Bruges and Antwerp were at that period markets of great importance.
+The whole world seemed to gather there; the influx of strangers was unceasing.
+The Hanseatics, the Venetians, the Genoese elbowed the English and
+the merchants of all the states of the continent. This favoured that commercial
+movement begun in the thirteenth century, and largely increased
+during the first years of the fourteenth, when the cloth industry of Flanders
+took such a rapid stride and became powerful enough to lay down the law to
+the governments, a thing which has hardly been seen before. In effect it
+gained thereby numerous markets for the sale of its products, and abundant
+capital to increase its operations.</p>
+
+<p>The commercial movement which had its centre in Flanders extended
+to a certain distance, and made itself felt in the towns of northern France.
+All these towns had treaties with the Flemish cities. Paris was even affiliated
+with the Hanseatic League, of which Bruges was the principal warehouse.
+The safety of navigation and maritime commerce preoccupied the
+French government in the fourteenth century. In order that the ownership
+of cargoes might be guaranteed to the ship-owners, Philip the Fair created
+special tribunals of <i>commissionaires examinateurs</i>, charged with judging the
+questions of flotsam and jetsam on the coasts; these tribunals were the originals
+of the admiralties. The government also undertook to fight piracy and
+restrain the usage of letters of marque. It was customary for the proprietors
+of a vessel robbed by pirates, if they could not obtain satisfaction from the
+town to which the pirates belonged, to indemnify themselves by selling for
+their own profit the property of foreigners of the same nation established
+in the realm. International conventions alone could destroy this barbarous
+custom. The maritime wars against England were far from being favourable
+to its suppression; but they helped to restrain and submit its exercise to
+regulations. Treaties to that effect were signed with several foreign rulers.
+One council, assembled in Paris in 1314, proscribed letters of marque, as
+contrary to religion and morals.</p>
+
+<p>Certain ports were opened to foreigners. Harfleur to the merchants of
+Aragon, of Majorca, Castile, and Portugal who had also free entrance into
+the Seine; Le Crotoy and Abbeville were opened to those of Castile who had
+the entrée to the Somme. Philip of Valois made the agreement to maintain
+these ports, to suppress the taxes which hindered commerce, and to accord
+various privileges to foreigners, among others that of having consuls and
+judges of their own nationality. At Harfleur the Spaniards were included
+among the inhabitants, and participated in the rights of the bourgeoisie. At
+Rouen they occupied a particular quarter. The Italians received, in 1315,
+definite privileges from Louis X, in four cities—Paris, St. Omer, La Rochelle,
+and Nîmes. The Venetian fleet, which came annually to the port of Bruges,
+stopped generally at Dieppe.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Great Fairs</i></h4>
+
+<p>The fourteenth century is the epoch of the prosperity of the great fairs.
+The fairs were then to the towns of considerable importance and for certain
+parts of France what they still are to the villages. At these fairs were bought
+and sold all such articles as were not common; these purchases and sales
+could be made only there and at certain times of the year. Since individual
+commerce offered a great deal of difficulty, and lacked the most indispensable
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>elements of security, it became necessary for the merchants to agree upon the
+transportation of their merchandise, and to unite in order to insure the fairness,
+often even the simple possibility, of transactions.</p>
+
+<p>The most important fairs in the fourteenth century were those of St.
+Denis, and the Lendit, of which the origin was in Merovingian times; those
+of Champagne, held at Troyes, Provins, Lagny, Rheims, and Bar-sur-Aube,
+protected by the regulations of Philip the Fair and Philip of Valois, those of
+Beaucaire in the south. They served as marts for the principal foreign
+productions, the linens of Holland, which were still an object of luxury; the
+woollens of England; the silks of Italy; the hides and leathers of Spain;
+the cloths of Flanders, whose superiority was recognised everywhere; the
+Italian stuffs, ornamented with embroidery and woven with gold; the wines
+of Spain, Portugal, and Greece. At Troyes were to be met the merchants of
+Germany and the countries of the north. To Beaucaire came those of the
+southern countries, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Berbers, Egyptians;
+the Genoese came to Beaucaire to buy the cloths woven at Narbonne,
+Perpignan, and Toulouse, and destined for exportation. Ordinarily the
+merchants of the same nation, sometimes those of the same town, formed a
+syndicate. At the fair of the Lendit every town had for its negotiations its
+particular place, as is the custom to-day in our great expositions.</p>
+
+<p>All the kings, from Philip the Bold, strove to attract foreign merchants
+by giving them new privileges, that is to say, in multiplying the guarantees
+which they needed. They were exempted from certain tolls. International
+treaties were made to assure the free land passage of merchandise transported
+from one realm to another. We have a remarkable example of this sort of
+treaty. It was a stipulation, signed in 1327 by the kings of France, England,
+Spain, Aragon, Sicily, and Majorca.</p>
+
+<p>The fairs of Champagne were the objects of regulations which it was aimed
+to make as definite and at the same time as favourable as possible. The tariff
+was fixed for the taxes which were collected there. Royal commissioners
+were chosen for the police, for brokers, and notaries, in order to assume the
+sincerity of transactions and of guards to certify to the quality of the merchandise
+sold. To the merchants of each nation was conceded the right to
+elect their national judges, and to submit to these judges the regulation of
+their disputes, except in case of appeal, which could be carried to the tribunal
+of fairs as a first resort, and as a second resort to the chamber of accounts.
+Guarantees were also accorded to foreign merchants against deterioration of
+money and arbitrary confiscations. In order to define the point where usury
+began, which the laws continued to fight, interest on commercial matter was
+fixed at fifteen per cent., and the stipulations of private persons were tolerated
+up to this figure. The importance of the fairs, and the pains taken
+by the government to make them popular, could not but be favourable to
+public wealth. A rich and enlightened bourgeoisie was founded in the large
+cities, at Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, Troyes, Orleans. All these towns and
+others enlarged their areas, raised façades of cut stone in their principal
+streets, constructed arcades, galleries, porticoes, and municipal buildings; but
+Paris already dominated them all. Her population rose to two or three
+hundred thousand souls. She already possessed some sort of a monopoly for
+the fabrication of articles of luxury.</p>
+
+<p>Paris had grown with the monarchy. To the advantage of a very considerable
+commerce, of extended and special industries, were joined others
+not less important. It was an ecclesiastical and literary centre. A whole
+quarter was occupied by the population of the schools. Her universities, at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>the same time French and European, could not fail to play an important rôle
+in the revolutions of the country and in the discussion of the great interests
+of the church. Finally, Paris was the seat of parliament, that of the highest
+administration, the centre of government, and the residence of the court.
+The greater part of the provinces possessed in the quarter of the Louvre or
+the quarter of St. Paul, hôtels, where they lived surrounded by guards and
+numerous servitors, which very often occupied vast spaces with their gardens
+and out-houses. Ever since then the merchants from the interior or from
+foreign countries, able workmen, clerks, writers, the nobility, have thronged
+into the great capital. The bourgeoisie of Paris had more learning, more
+wealth, and also more pretensions than those of other towns. Their chief
+and natural representative, the provost of merchants, was one of the powers
+of the state.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of a national representation, with fixed conditions and attributes,
+is a modern one, and was almost unknown in the Middle Ages. There were
+no written constitutions in existence, except civic charters, which had a
+purely local character. The government on its part, without being absolute,
+admitted of no binding control. In the meantime, public opinion was being
+consulted, as it became necessary to reckon with it, and the independence
+which asserted itself everywhere. In the thirteenth century deputies from
+the cities were convoked and consulted separately; in the fourteenth they
+were combined with those of the clergy or the nobility of the provincial
+estates or the states-general. But no fixed rule was followed. It was the
+king and his officers who determined each time the conditions and the forms
+of the election.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4k5"><a href="#endnote_4k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-4.jpg" width="500" height="225" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> [Boutaric,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4d2"><a href="#endnote_4d">d</a></span> who has made a special study of the reign of Philip the Fair, bases his account
+of the remarkable events at Anagni on the narratives of Rinaldo de Supino and of Nogaret<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4l"><a href="#endnote_4l">l</a></span> himself
+rather than on those of Giovanni Villani<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4m"><a href="#endnote_4m">m</a></span> and Walsingham,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4n"><a href="#endnote_4n">n</a></span> the source of most modern
+historians. Nogaret’s alleged speech is from the chronicle of St. Denis.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4o"><a href="#endnote_4o">o</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nogaret says that Philip had sent him to Rome to demand the summoning of a council, but
+Boniface in fear of the hostile population had retired to his native Anagni. Nogaret learned
+of the impending excommunication of his master and determined to prevent it at all costs. The
+Ghibellines of Romagna listened to his plan, and Rinaldo de Supino, their leader and his friend,
+agreed to accompany Nogaret to Anagni and bring Boniface to terms.</p>
+
+<p>But Nogaret was compelled to take full leadership and promise the protection of France, from
+all consequences, temporal or spiritual, to his allies. Sciarra Colonna, the pope’s mortal enemy,
+now joined the scheme. All of this would indicate that Nogaret acted on his own responsibility
+in the matter of the descent on Anagni, wishing only to protect the king of France from the
+curse of excommunication, and that the latter was in no way connected with the conception of
+the affair. As to the events at Anagni, Boutaric says:</p>
+
+<p>“There are fables that Colonna struck the pope in the face with his gauntlet; that he was
+tied to a donkey with his face toward its tail and paraded through Anagni in the midst of insults;
+but all these stories should be rejected. It seems certain that the person of Boniface was
+respected. Nogaret contented himself with holding him captive and pestering him to consent
+to the convoking of the council. Boniface was immovable; Nogaret was at his wits’ end. After
+a lapse of three days the people, ashamed of their treachery, came to demand Boniface. Nogaret
+was obliged to flee.” Dareste<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4k6"><a href="#endnote_4k">k</a></span> holds Colonna guiltless of violence but thinks that others might
+have injured the pope but for Nogaret.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> The <i>échiquier</i> of Rouen was the ancient feudal court of the dukes of Normandy; it was
+held alternately at Rouen, Falaise, and Caen. Philip the Fair put royal magistrates at its head
+and fixed it at Rouen, where it met twice a year at Easter and Michaelmas, whence the expression
+<i>les deux échiquiers</i>. The <i>grands jours</i> were presided over by a judicial commission appointed
+by the king, but like the <i>échiquier</i> of Rouen it was a local institution that had already long
+existed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> [Perhaps Guizot’s<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_4p"><a href="#endnote_4p">p</a></span> slightly dissenting view is worth quoting. He says: “It has often been
+asserted that Philip the Fair was the first who called the third estate to the states-general of the
+kingdom. The phrase is too grand, and the fact was not new. Under St. Louis deputies of
+towns were called around the king to deliberate upon certain legislative acts. There are other
+examples of this. Philip the Fair, then, had not the honour of the first call; and, with regard to
+assemblies of this kind which occur under his reign, far too great an idea of them is formed.
+These meetings were very brief, almost accidental, without influence upon the general government
+of the kingdom, and deputies of towns held but a very inferior place in them. Nevertheless
+under Philip the Fair they became more frequent than before.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-5.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V. THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Great enterprises and deeds of arms were achieved in these wars; since
+the time of good Charlemagne, king of France, never were such feats
+performed.—<span class="smcap">Froissart.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e1"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1328-1350 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Although France was little prepared for a great national war, a king
+mounted its throne who was almost certain to provoke one. The princes of
+the family of Valois had always represented the ideas and the interests
+of the noblesse during the preceding reigns, when reasons of state, maxims of
+law, and necessities of finance had led the government to look to other councillors
+and undergo other influence. With the accession of Philip of Valois,
+the noblesse recovered that ascendency of which they had been so long deprived.
+And this influence they displayed with a petulance and a pride
+which could not but provoke what they most loved, a war.</p>
+
+<p>“Charles the Fair having expired, the barons assembled to take into consideration
+the government of the kingdom. The queen was pregnant, and
+until the sex of her issue was known, the title of king could not be assumed.
+The only question was to whom, as nearest in blood, the government of the
+kingdom should be committed, especially as in France a female could not
+succeed to the crown. The English said that their king, the son of Philip
+the Fair’s daughter, and consequently nephew of the late monarch, was, as
+nearest of kin, more entitled to the regency and to the throne, if the queen
+did not bring forth a prince, than Philip of Valois, who was but the cousin
+of the deceased monarch. Many learned in the civil and canon law were of
+this opinion. Isabella, the daughter of Philip the Fair, might, they alleged,
+be set aside on account of her sex; but one of the right sex, and of the
+nearest affinity, ought to succeed. The men of France, incapable of suffering
+the idea of becoming subjects of an English prince, replied, that Edward
+could only succeed by the right of his mother; and when the mother had no
+right, the son could have none. This opinion being accepted as the most
+sensible, was approved by the barons, and the government delivered to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>Philip of Valois. He accordingly received the homage due to the crown
+of France, but not that due to the crown of Navarre, which the count of
+Évreux claimed by right of his wife, daughter of Louis Hutin.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1328-1330 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This narrative, by the continuator of Nangis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5c1"><a href="#endnote_5c">c</a></span> is sufficiently correct.
+Navarre was given to the count of Évreux, he consenting to receive
+pecuniary compensation for the counties of Champagne and Brie. In April
+the queen was confined of a daughter; Philip instantly assumed the title of
+king, and gave orders for his coronation at Rheims. At the same time, by
+a letter dated Northampton, the 16th day of May, 1328, Edward appointed
+two bishops as procurators to make good his claim to the kingdom of France.
+At the close of the same month Philip was solemnly crowned at Rheims.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p099.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Philip VI</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The first act of the new king as regent seems to have been to order the
+treasurer of the late monarch, Peter Remi, to be tortured—thus compelled
+to confess treason, and finally hanged. He also summoned his barons to
+support him in a military expedition into Flanders. Count Louis was
+obstructed in his government, and especially
+in his levy of taxes, by the people of
+Bruges, Ypres, and other cities; those
+of Ghent alone remaining true to him
+and to France. Louis demanded aid of
+Philip. The greater part of the barons
+were of opinion that the season was too
+far advanced to admit of an expedition
+that year; but Philip, anxious to signalise
+his reign, turned to the constable, Walter
+de Châtillon, and asked his advice. “The
+brave heart finds all times opportune
+for fighting,” replied the constable. The
+king accordingly summoned his lieges to
+meet him at the feast of the Madeleine
+in July, at Arras. “But the good towns,”
+says the chronicle of St. Denis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5h1"><a href="#endnote_5h">h</a></span> “did not
+attend, giving their money instead, and
+staying at home to mind their cities.”</p>
+
+<p>The king’s army was most numerous,
+divided into ten divisions or battles, the
+nobles from every quarter hastening to
+evince their loyalty by attending the first
+summons of a new and chivalrous king.
+The citizens of West Flanders alone mustered to oppose the French, and not
+more than twelve thousand of them, according to Froissart, took post under
+Colas Zannequin on the hill of Cassel. They were confident, however, and
+hung out a flag with a cock painted on it, and an inscription saying, that this
+cock would crow, ere the upstart king, the <i>roi trouvé</i>, would find his way
+into Cassel.</p>
+
+<p>The Flemings remained tranquil for several days, with the French
+encamped before them. At last at the hour of vespers when the latter were
+preparing supper, the Flemings marched out in three bodies, fell upon them,
+and penetrated into their camp. Philip, like his namesake at Mons-en-Pévêlle,
+was obliged to withdraw, and it was his chaplains who helped him
+to put on his armour. When the king showed himself with the <i>oriflamme</i>,
+the knights rallied round him from all quarters, the foot, who were more
+numerous, continuing their flight. The Flemings had failed in mastering
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>as well as surprising Philip’s camp, and now assailed by the French cavalry
+(having none of their own), they stood firm and fought for a long time a
+defensive battle. At last a charge made a breach in their solid phalanx, the
+French knights poured in, and the Flemings were routed and slaughtered.
+One of the divisions regained the hill of Cassel, but all alike perished. The
+king estimated the loss of his enemies at twenty thousand.</p>
+
+<p>He entered the several towns one after the other in triumph, took a
+thousand citizens of Bruges as hostages, tore down the bells, levelled the
+walls, and proscribed municipal liberties. When Philip delivered the county
+of Flanders, thus humbled and mutilated, to its lord, he addressed him, as the
+continuator of Nangis<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5c2"><a href="#endnote_5c">c</a></span> records, in the following words: “Count, I come
+hither at your request, and in all probability because you were too negligent in
+executing justice. I could not have come, as you know, without great expense;
+yet, out of my liberality, I restore you your land quiet and pacified, and I forgive
+you the expense. But another time take care. Let me not be obliged
+to return by your over-clemency, for if I do, it shall be for my own profit.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus exhorted, adds the chronicler, Count Louis so exerted himself that,
+within three months, he had put ten thousand persons to various kinds of
+death. In this manner was signalised the triumph of the French noblesse
+over the citizens of West Flanders.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1328-1335 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Meantime, in England, affairs were somewhat unsettled. Edward III
+cannot be considered to have undertaken the government of that country
+until the death of Mortimer and the imprisonment of the queen-mother
+in October, 1330. In the first year after Philip’s accession, Isabella seemed
+inclined to dispute his title, and steps were taken to conclude alliances against
+France. But the success of Philip in the Flemish war, and the hostile attitude
+of the English barons, as well as the discontent of the English people with
+the concessions made to Scotland, precluded the idea of prosecuting the
+quarrel with France.</p>
+
+<p>Edward, therefore, at his mother’s bidding, proceeded to Amiens in the
+spring of 1329, and did homage to Philip, maintaining his rights to those
+portions of his possessions in the south of France which the French king
+still retained. But this act of submission led to disputes, one monarch pretending
+that it was homage simple, the other that it was homage <i>liège</i>. Philip
+thought the opportunity favourable for invading Guienne, the power of
+Isabella and Mortimer being paralysed by their many enemies. The king
+levied an <i>aide</i> upon his barons for the expedition. So far had these hostile
+intentions proceeded, that the count of Alençon, Philip’s brother, attacked
+the English in Saintonge, and took and burned the castle of Saintes. On
+the death of Mortimer, however, and the assumption of full power by
+Edward, Philip returned to more amicable sentiments, and promised to make
+amends for the affair of Saintes, as well as for several other grievances. The
+monarchs seemed to be on the most friendly terms; they spoke of proceeding
+to the Holy Land together, and even of contracting a marriage between
+their children.</p>
+
+<p>The subsequent coolness and enmity between them is universally, and
+apparently with justice, attributed to the malice of Robert of Artois, who
+for some years had been a pretender to the lordship of that county. Robert
+had undoubtedly been wronged in the judgment which took Artois from him,
+the direct heir, and gave it to a female and a collateral, merely because she
+was more closely allied to the reigning king of France. When Robert
+asserted his rights in arms, Philip the Tall was unable to reduce him; and
+if Robert submitted, and even constituted himself a prisoner, it was on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>understanding that the unjust sentence against him should be revoked, and
+the county restored to him. On this understanding, Robert married the
+daughter of Charles of Valois.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Philip the Tall and Charles the Fair evaded the demands
+and expectations of Robert, who reckoned on having his rights at last from
+his brother-in-law, Philip of Valois. Robert accordingly served the crown
+with zeal, and was one of the principal supporters of this prince’s claims to
+the throne. “Thus, on Philip’s accession, Robert became everything in
+France,” says Froissart.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e2"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span> There having been two sentences of the court
+of parliament against Robert’s claim, it was difficult to rescind them, at
+least without some new plea, some yet unproduced documents in his favour.
+Such, probably, was the remark with which Philip and his law officers met
+the demands of Robert.</p>
+
+<p>If a document existed likely to prove favourable for his claim, it must
+have fallen into the hands of those who had robbed him of the county. The
+countess Mahaut, to whom Philip the Fair had adjudged Artois, died soon
+after the accession of Philip of Valois. Her chief counsellor and confidant
+had been the bishop of Arras. He also dying, left voluminous papers, some
+of which had been secreted and carried off from Arras by a woman named
+Divion, mistress of the prelate. The countess lived long enough to endeavour,
+by law or vengeance, to get back the papers from Divion.</p>
+
+<p>Aware of these circumstances, Joan, the countess of Artois, set to work
+and procured from this woman, or caused to be forged by her, certain documents.
+One was a letter from the bishop of Arras to Robert of Artois, craving
+pardon for having purloined the documents. Another was a charter of
+Robert, count of Artois, the grandfather, settling Artois upon his son, the
+father of Robert. Michelet<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5f1"><a href="#endnote_5f">f</a></span> declares the documents, which still exist, to
+be forgeries. Robert of Artois boldly produced them, claimed by virtue of
+them to be restored to the possession of his county; and, as a proof of what
+value was men’s testimony in those days, he brought upwards of fifty witnesses
+in support of his false documents. Had the king been prosecutor,
+these, no doubt, would have been found authentic enough for the parliament.
+But Robert of Artois was no friend of the legists, and parliament remained
+firm to its first decision. The king’s <i>procureur</i> objected to the documents,
+and Robert, summoned to say whether he would stand by them, hesitated.
+The woman, Divion, was seized, put to the torture, and acknowledged her
+forgery. The parliament ordered her to be burned. Robert of Artois being
+proved so far culpable as to have plotted with her, was accused, moreover, of
+aiding her to poison the countess Mahaut of Artois. Robert fled to Brabant.
+The king caused him to be condemned for forgery, and deprived of his estates
+and honours. His wife, his sons, and relatives were imprisoned, and, the
+legists accusing him of attempting to murder and to kill the king by sorcery,
+drove Robert altogether from the continent, and compelled him to take
+refuge in England. The fugitive was well received by Edward, appointed
+of his council, and endowed with ample domains.</p>
+
+<p>Philip of Valois knew not what use to make of that absolute power, which
+the efforts of so many kings had built up. Policy, he evidently had none.
+He liked the splendour, magnificence, and pride of a court; and, consequently,
+preferred his noblesse to any other class of society. Still he
+showed, in the case of Robert of Artois, his determination not to allow
+any of them to dictate or impose upon him. He consulted his lawyers as
+in the case of church encroachments, but shrunk from ordinance or legislation
+in their favour. Abroad, Philip was generally uncertain in purpose.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1335-1337 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The monarch’s incertitude was, however, soon relieved. Edward III
+became more and more irritated at the support which the French and Flemings
+gave to the Scots: in June, 1335, he issued an order from Newcastle to
+the Cinque Ports to arm, and intercept a naval expedition fitting out at
+Calais for Scotland. In February, 1336, an edict appeared ordering all
+Englishmen, from sixteen to sixty, to be prepared to repel invasion. Still
+negotiations continued; and it was not till August of the same year that
+Edward announced to his subjects the refusal of the French king to cease
+rendering active assistance to the Scottish foe. At the same time the count
+of Flanders threw off the mask by arresting all the English traders in his
+dominions, and Edward was obliged to respond to it by a similar act.</p>
+
+<p>The following year was spent by both monarchs in preparing alliances,
+and by Edward in making the most active and unusual preparations for war.
+Philip hired large bodies of Germans, both men-at-arms and light troops. By
+marrying the heiress of the duke of Brittany to one of his relatives, he hoped
+to have secured the allegiance of that prince and family; but Philip’s attention
+was chiefly turned towards the south and the conquest of Guienne, for
+which enterprise he had the succour of the nobles of the Pyrenees as well as
+of Languedoc. He seemed not to expect to be seriously attacked on the side of
+Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was in that direction that Edward principally turned his efforts,
+spending the year 1337 in negotiations with the princes whose territories
+extended from Antwerp to Cologne. The English king had married the
+daughter of the count of Hainault, who was the first that he gained, or hoped
+to have gained; the duke of Brabant, the duke of Gelderland, and the archbishop
+of Cologne also listened to Edward’s proposals, and willingly received
+his subsidies. They might bring into the field a thousand knights. But
+Edward pushed his quest for allies still further: he engaged the duke of
+Austria to invade Burgundy, he concluded an agreement with the count
+palatine for a subsidiary force, and even obtained a promise from the emperor
+Ludwig of Bavaria that he would aid in the war against France with an
+army of two thousand knights; for this his imperial majesty was to be paid
+300,000 florins.</p>
+
+<p>These counts and knights observed to the envoy of Edward that, notwithstanding
+their own prowess, the Flemish artisans would prove far more
+potent auxiliaries against France than any number of lordly chivalry.
+Edward approved of the idea; and the bishop of Lincoln and other envoys
+proceeded to Ghent, “not sparing their money by the way.” The subjection
+of Flanders had been caused by the rich citizens of Ghent proving false
+to the national cause, supported solely by the men of Bruges and West Flanders.
+This enabled the democracy of Ghent to triumph over them, and to
+become organised under the lead of a brewer of that city, named Artevelde.
+The envoys of Edward addressed themselves to this new king or popular sovereign,
+and were well received by him. He summoned consuls or deputies
+from the other towns, and these soon came to an accord that trade should be
+carried on as usual, and wool imported from England, notwithstanding the
+prohibitions of France and the count of Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>To Edward wool was at once money and alliance. Whilst the working
+and manufacturing class of Flemings thus profited by the English, the
+chiefs and Artevelde himself received money for the occasion. Still, however
+easy to win over the Flemings to neutrality, it was difficult to induce
+them to enter upon active war with France. The French, however, and the
+Flemish aristocracy did all in their power to provoke the civic democracy;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>they enticed from Ghent almost the only personage of birth who favoured the
+popular party, and had entertained the envoys of Edward. This was a
+knight of Courtrai, father-in-law of Artevelde; when he fell into their
+hands, they decapitated him, to the great irritation of the men of Ghent.
+The Flemish knights, in order to intercept the frequent communication and
+envoys passing between England and the Low Countries, took possession of
+the isle of Cadsand, close to Walcheren, and lying in wait there for the
+English, obliged them in going or in returning home, to take the route of
+Dordrecht, instead of sailing direct from Antwerp. Edward no sooner
+learned this, than he fitted out an expedition in the Thames under Lord
+Derby and Sir Walter Manny, of six hundred knights and two thousand
+archers. These assailed Cadsand, defeated the Flemish knights, and captured
+Guy of Flanders, who, after some delay, joined the English party.</p>
+
+<h3>EDWARD III CLAIMS THE THRONE OF FRANCE</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1337-1339 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In October, 1337, Edward took the important step of laying claim to the
+throne of France by right of his mother, sister of Philip the Fair, and of
+declaring Philip of Valois, descended from a brother of that monarch, a
+wrongful usurper. This he announced in letters from Edward, king of
+France and England, to his allies in the Low Countries; and he at the same
+time appointed the duke of Brabant his vicar-general in the kingdom of
+France. The king’s allies received this solemn announcement, but do not
+seem to have acted upon it; the duke of Brabant, far from assuming the
+office of vicar-general, on the contrary assured Philip of Valois of his
+friendship.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1338, Edward embarked for Antwerp with what forces
+he could muster, hoping to make a brilliant campaign with the princes of
+the Low Countries. They showed very little alacrity, and though willing
+to receive large sums, prepared to prove themselves as little hostile to the
+French king as was consistent with their receiving the money from the English.
+The emperor, though he had promised to be ready by St. Andrew’s
+day was too anxious for a reconciliation with the pope to defeat his purpose
+by aiding in an invasion of France; and Edward was reduced to recommence
+the task of negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in 1339 before Edward was joined by his German allies. Some
+time was passed in solemnly declaring war, and then the English advanced
+to Cambray, which was garrisoned by French troops. But as it did not
+belong to the king of France, there was no profit in capturing it; Edward,
+therefore, pursued his march, against the advice of many of his allies, into
+France, upon which his relative, the count of Hainault, formally quitted his
+banner for that of Philip. Edward nevertheless advanced towards St.
+Quentin, at the head of about forty thousand men. Philip of Valois had mustered
+an army nearly double in number that of his enemy, there being forty
+thousand infantry raised by the money of the towns, and twenty thousand
+more Genoese and Italian foot; three divisions of men-at-arms were each
+fifteen thousand strong. When the armies were in presence, Edward sent
+to request the king of France to appoint a day for the battle. Philip
+eagerly fixed a day, but with all his chivalry, the monarch hesitated. King
+Robert of Sicily, skilled in the science of astrology, had written to warn the
+king of France not to engage in combat with the English whilst Edward
+was with them in person. The French monarch in consequence showed
+reluctance to engage, and the auxiliaries of both armies took the pretext to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>separate. Edward’s German allies withdrew, and Philip distributed his
+men-at-arms amongst the garrisons of the frontier.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1339-1340 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It was subsequent to this bootless campaign that Froissart fixes the time of
+Edward’s assuming habitually the title, and quartering the arms, of king
+of France with his own. This assumption of the crown of France, which
+seemed not only drawing the sword, but flinging away the scabbard, was a
+promise to the Flemings that he would wage the “great war” and chiefly
+through their means and in behalf of their interests. For this purpose he
+prepared a great expedition, whilst his Queen Philippa spent the winter at
+Ghent among the good citizens, in order to encourage and attach them to
+England. But while Edward won the Flemings, his German allies grew
+lukewarm. He had learned in the last campaign to mistrust their sincerity:
+they now offered to make peace with France; but Philip rejected their offer,
+and sent troops to ravage Hainault.</p>
+
+<p>In 1340, Edward had collected a formidable army on board a navy
+equally numerous. Philip directed his efforts to intercept this expedition,
+and to muster a fleet capable of performing so important a service. He
+took into pay great numbers of Genoese officers and seamen; granted the
+Normans several boons and privileges to induce them to fit out ships, and
+with these they surprised and burned Southampton, whilst the English
+visited Eu with equal severity. But on the other hand, the French captured
+two of their largest vessels, called the <i>Christopher</i> and <i>Edouarda</i>, in a
+naval engagement that lasted all day, and cost the lives of a thousand men.
+In June, Edward sailed from the Thames with his army for the Schelde, not
+expecting, indeed, to fight a naval combat, for there was a number of the
+ladies of his court on board.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b1"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE BATTLE OF SLUYS OR L’ÉCLUSE</h3>
+
+<p>King Edward embarked on the 22nd of June with the élite of the
+English knights and archers, and went down the Thames towards Sluys.
+The French fleet, 140 strong in large ships, “without counting the
+smaller ones,” and carrying more than forty thousand men, awaited
+them between Blankenberghe and Sluys. This naval army, under the command
+of Admiral Hugh Quiéret, the treasurer Nicholas Béhuchet, and the
+Ligurian corsair Barbavara, had for two years wrought much damage to
+English commerce, taking ships, massacring crews, and making descents on
+Plymouth, Dover, Southampton, Sandwich, and Rye. England breathed
+out vengeance, but would not have obtained it if the French fleet had been
+well commanded. This fleet, thanks to the Genoese auxiliaries, had a great
+numerical superiority, but the three commanders were at variance.</p>
+
+<p>Béhuchet was a rough bourgeois who had served his naval apprenticeship
+in the king’s exchequer, and whom Philip had been foolish enough to
+associate with the admirals; this man actually tried to teach an old sea-dog
+like “Barbevaire.” Hugh Quiéret, the titular admiral, was hardly more
+skilful than Béhuchet. They massed the fleet in a narrow creek off the
+coast of Flanders, as if the great thing for a navy was to choose a “sure
+and easily defensible” position.</p>
+
+<p>King Edward and his men, who came along with a fair wind, looked and
+beheld before Sluys so large a number of vessels that the masts seemed like
+a wood. The king was very much astonished and asked whose they could
+be. “Sire,” they said, “it is the Norman army kept by the king of France
+at sea, and which has done you so much damage and burned the good town
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>of Hantonne (Southampton), and conquered the <i>Christopher</i>, your large ship,
+and slain those who manned her.” “Oh,” said the king, “I have wanted to
+fight them for a long time, and please God and St. George, we will; for of a
+truth they have caused me so much vexation that I would avenge myself.”
+After so saying, he wisely
+and skilfully set out his
+ships, putting the strongest
+in front, and giving the
+best places to his soldiers
+and archers. And he manœuvred
+and wheeled about
+so as to get the wind and
+sun on the poop. The Normans
+thought he was tacking
+about so as to flee, but
+the leader of the Genoese
+auxiliaries was not so deceived.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/p105.jpg" width="400" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Château of Dieppe</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“When ‘Barbevaire’
+(Barbavara) saw the English
+ships approaching, he
+said to the admiral and
+Nicholas Béhuchet: ‘My
+lords, here is the king of
+England and all his navy
+coming upon us; if you
+take my advice you will
+steer for the open sea, for,
+if you stay here, while they
+have sun, wind, and wave
+in their favour, they will hem you in so closely that you will be helpless and
+unable to manœuvre.’ To this Nicholas Béhuchet, who understood accounts
+better than naval warfare, answered, ‘Let him be hanged who goes away, for
+here we will stay, and take our chance.’ ‘My lord,’ replied Barbevaire, ‘since
+you will not believe me, I will not stay to be destroyed and I shall get
+myself and my ships out of this hole’” [St. Denis.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5h2"><a href="#endnote_5h">h</a></span>] And he went off
+out of the creek with all his Italian galleys and gave all his care to his
+own fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Edward immediately attacked and began by boarding the great <i>Christopher</i>,
+the ship taken from him a year ago by the Normans. The crew were
+seized, killed, or thrown into the sea, while the fight became general all
+along the haven. “The battle was hard and fierce on both sides, archers
+and crossbow-men shot stubbornly at one another, while soldiers closed and
+fought hand to hand. That they might fight at better advantage they had
+large hooks with iron chains which they threw from one ship to another and
+attached them together.”</p>
+
+<p>Right bitterly from six in the morning till three in the afternoon did they
+fight, Béhuchet himself behaving as a true knight, but all the courage in the
+world could not repair his error. “The French ships were so entangled in
+their moorings that they were helpless.” Their numbers availed not at all;
+one after the other they were boarded by the English. Nevertheless
+the resistance was so fierce that the fate of the day could yet have been
+changed by the aid of Barbavara, who was manœuvring on the enemy’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>flanks, but a considerable reinforcement of Flemings arriving from Bruges
+and neighbouring districts by the port of Sluys, decided the fate of the
+French fleet.</p>
+
+<p>“In short, King Edward and his men gained all along the line; the Normans
+and all the other French were discomfited, dead, or drowned, none
+escaping, for if they tried to take refuge on land, the Flemings awaited them
+on the sands.”</p>
+
+<p>The English gave almost no quarter. Hugh Quiéret was, they say,
+slaughtered in cold blood after he had given himself up. Béhuchet was
+hanged from the mast of his own ship, “to spite the king of France.”
+Barbavara managed to make good his retreat and regained the open with his
+forty Genoese galleys, but the French were exterminated. It has been made
+out that their loss amounted to thirty thousand men. The English bought
+their victory dearly, but it was complete. The French navy was annihilated.
+That 24th of June, 1340, marks the naval début of the Valois dynasty.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5d1"><a href="#endnote_5d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This first naval battle between the two nations very much raised the confidence
+of the English and the alacrity of the Flemings. Edward had not
+only a larger army of his own than in the previous campaign, together with
+the troops of the German allies, but, in addition, forty thousand Flemings
+under Artevelde, besides those of West Flanders, who proceeded in the direction
+of St. Omer. This immense host, instead of marching to meet and
+overwhelm the French king, sat down before Tournay.</p>
+
+<p>Edward sent from thence a challenge to Philip of Valois, as he styled
+him, to decide their quarrel by single combat, or by an encounter of a hundred
+knights on either side. Philip replied, on the last day of July, that
+such a title could not be addressed to him; that the writer was his liege, and
+had no right to enter his dominions. He promised to cast the intruder
+out of the kingdom without loss of time; and that, as to the Flemings, he was
+confident they would rally to their own lord. Philip marched to the neighbourhood
+of Tournay with an army as formidable as that which he brought in
+the preceding year; but neither party were prepared to engage in a general
+action. The French hesitated to attack, and eleven weeks’ siege made no
+impression upon Tournay. Robert of Artois, who commanded the armed
+citizens of West Flanders, led them against St. Omer, not with the hope of
+capturing that important town, but for purposes of pillage and devastation.
+The Flemings were thus engaged in plundering one of the suburbs, when the
+French within, issuing by another gate, came round and surprised them in
+the rear, routing and slaying them as they fled, to the number of four thousand.
+This disaster made such an impression on the army of West Flanders,
+that a panic seized it on the following morning, and all fled and dispersed to
+their homes.</p>
+
+<p>If the campaign of the preceding year had taught Edward how little was
+to be expected from the Walloon or the German, he learned this year that
+even the redoubtable Flemings would not enable him either to conquer France
+or to reduce Philip to just and reasonable terms. He therefore consented
+that Joan de Valois, sister of Philip and countess of Hainault, should seek
+to bring about an accommodation. Her efforts led to a six months’ truce,
+consented to in order that plenipotentiaries from both monarchs might treat
+for the conclusion of a more definite peace.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b2"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus ended the campaign of 1340, “a year of misery and calamity,” says
+the continuator of Nangis; “although for two or three years past, the common
+people had been oppressed with very hard exactions, our misfortunes
+were much greater this time.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5c3"><a href="#endnote_5c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p>
+
+<h3>THE WAR IN BRITTANY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1340-1342 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The belligerents had scarcely suspended hostilities on the northern frontier
+of France, when a quarrel arose in another quarter, giving equal facilities
+for English interference, and offering to Edward more sincere, zealous, and
+martial allies than the Flemings had proved, whether knights or artisans.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b3"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span>
+It also brought the English king much hope.</p>
+
+<p>In 1341 hostilities were revived in Brittany where the two kings each
+sustained a different claimant for the ducal throne. The duke John III had
+just died, leaving no children. Should the duchy fall to the daughter of his
+eldest brother—whose death had preceded his own—Joan de Penthièvre, who
+had married Charles of Blois, or to his own younger brother, John de Montfort?
+The two pretendants set forth the Mosaic law, the edicts of the Roman
+empire, the Salic law, and tradition; the lawyers piled up innumerable
+authorities: but politics decided the question.</p>
+
+<p>Charles of Blois was nephew to Philip VI; with him Brittany would be
+in closer dependence upon the crown. A parliamentary act pronounced at the
+château of Conflans decided the matter in his favour. John de Montfort
+hastened to England, and agreed to recognise Edward III as king of France.
+In view of his promise as vassal loyally to aid and defend the English king,
+he was to possess Brittany in fief.</p>
+
+<p>Thus began one of those wars—marked by “engagements, sallies, gallant
+rescues, surprising feats of arms, and brave adventures”—so delightfully
+depicted by Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e3"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span> so grindingly oppressive to the people. Charles of
+Blois, supported by a numerous French army, among whom was the son of the
+king, besieged his adversary in the city of Nantes. Thirty Breton knights
+had been taken in a neighbouring castle. Charles, despite the piety which
+gained for him the name of “saint,” and Duke John, who was later to glory
+in the title “the good,” had these thirty knights decapitated and their heads
+thrown into the market-place by the ballistas. The terrified citizens capitulated;
+John de Montfort was imprisoned at Paris in the tower of the
+Louvre.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5g1"><a href="#endnote_5g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The countess Joan de Montfort was at Rennes when she heard that
+her husband had been taken. With a heart full of grief she yet bravely
+consoled her friends and supporters; and showed them her little son, named
+also John like his father, saying, “Ah, my friends, be not bowed down for
+my lord whom we have lost; he is but one man. Behold my son who shall
+be, if God so wills it, his avenger and your benefactor. I will give you
+of my wealth and will provide for you a captain who shall bring you
+consolation.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e4"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She then journeyed from Rennes to all the fortresses and towns, taking
+her son with her; she encouraged her men, reinforced her garrisons with
+troops and supplies; and came at length to Hennebon, where she wintered.
+She had chosen this place, situated as it was on the Blavet, not far from
+the sea, to have facile communication with England. With the advent of
+spring, officers and troops swarmed to Nantes to join Charles of Blois; and
+the siege of Rennes was begun. The city was taken after a valiant defence;
+and the French marched on Hennebon, which they bombarded with showers
+of stones and enormous rocks.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5g2"><a href="#endnote_5g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Joan de Montfort defends Hennebon</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1342 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The countess, who had clothed herself in armour, was mounted on a war-horse,
+and galloped up and down the streets of the town, entreating and
+encouraging the inhabitants to defend themselves honourably. She ordered
+the ladies and other women to unpave the streets,<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> carry the stones to the
+ramparts, and throw them on their enemies. She had pots of quicklime
+brought to her for the same purpose. That same day, the countess performed
+a very gallant deed; she ascended a high tower to see how her people
+behaved; and, having observed that all the lords and others of the army
+had quitted their tents, and were come to the assault, she immediately
+descended, mounted her horse, armed as she was, collected three hundred
+horsemen, sallied out at their head by another gate that was not attacked,
+and, galloping up to the tents of her enemies, cut them down, and set them
+on fire, without any loss, for there were only servants and boys, who fled
+upon her approach. As soon as the French saw their camp on fire, and
+heard the cries, they immediately hastened thither, bawling out, “Treason!
+Treason!” so that none remained at the assault. The countess, seeing this,
+got her men together, and, finding that she could not re-enter Hennebon
+without great risk, took another road, leading to the castle of Brest, which
+is situated near. The lord Louis of Spain, who was marshal of the army,
+had gone to his tents, which were on fire; and, seeing the countess and her
+company galloping off as fast as they could, he immediately pursued them
+with a large body of men-at-arms. He gained so fast upon them, that he
+came up with them, and wounded or slew all that were not well mounted;
+but the countess, and part of her company, made such speed that they arrived
+at the castle of Brest, where they were received with great joy.</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow, the lords of France, who had lost their tents and provisions,
+took counsel, if they should not make huts of the branches and leaves
+of trees near to the town, and were thunder-struck when they heard that
+the countess had herself planned and executed this enterprise; whilst those
+of the town, not knowing what was become of her, were very uneasy; for
+they were full five days without gaining any intelligence of her. The
+countess, in the meanwhile, was so active that she assembled from five to
+six hundred men, well armed and mounted, and with them set out about midnight
+from Brest, and came straight to Hennebon about sunrise, riding along
+one of the sides of the enemy’s host, until she came to the gates of the castle,
+which were opened to her; she entered with great triumph and sounds of
+trumpets and other warlike instruments, to the astonishment of the French,
+who began arming themselves, to make another assault upon the town, while
+those within mounted the walls to defend it. This attack was very severe,
+and lasted till past noon. The French lost more than their opponents; and
+then the lords of France put a stop to it, for their men were killed and wounded
+to no purpose. They next retreated, and held a council whether the lord
+Charles should not go to besiege the castle of Auray, which King Arthur had
+built and enclosed. It was determined he should march thither, accompanied
+by the duke de Bourbon, the earl of Blois, Sir Robert Bertrand, marshal of
+France; and that Sir Hervé de Léon was to remain before Hennebon with a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>part of the Genoese under his command, and the lord Louis of Spain, the
+viscount de Rohan, with the rest of the Genoese and Spaniards. They sent
+for twelve large machines which they had left at Rennes, to cast stones and
+annoy the castle of Hennebon; for they perceived that they did not gain
+any ground by their assaults. The French divided their army into two
+parts; one remained before Hennebon, and the other went to besiege the
+castle of Auray. The lord Charles of Blois went to this last place, and
+quartered all his division in the neighbourhood:
+and of him we will now
+speak, and leave the others. The
+lord Charles ordered an attack and
+skirmish to be made upon the castle,
+which was well garrisoned; there were
+in it full two hundred men-at-arms,
+under the command of Sir Henry de
+Spinefort and Oliver his brother.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p109.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Ancient Tower at Rouen</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The town of Vannes, which held
+for the countess de Montfort, was
+four leagues distant from this castle;
+the captain whereof was Sir Geoffry
+de Malestroit. On the other side was
+situated the good town of Guingamp,
+of which the captain of Dinant was
+governor, who was at that time with
+the countess in the town of Hennebon;
+but he had left in his hôtel at Dinant
+his wife and daughters, and had appointed
+his son Sir Reginald as governor
+during his absence. Between
+these two places there was a castle
+which belonged to the lord Charles,
+who had well filled it with men-at-arms
+and Burgundian soldiers. Girard
+de Maulin was master of it; and with
+him was another gallant knight, called
+Sir Peter Portebœuf, who harassed all the country round about, and pressed
+these two towns so closely that no provisions or merchandise could enter them
+without great risk of being taken; for these Burgundians made constant
+excursions, one day towards Vannes, and another day to Guingamp. They
+continued their excursions so regularly, that Sir Reginald de Dinant took
+prisoner, by means of an ambuscade, this Sir Girard de Maulin and thirty-five
+of his men, and at the same time rescued fifteen merchants and all their goods,
+which the Burgundians had taken, and were driving them to their garrison,
+called La Roche Perion; but Sir Reginald conquered them and carried them
+prisoners to Dinant, for which he was much praised.</p>
+
+<p>We will now return to the countess de Montfort, who was besieged by
+Sir Louis of Spain in Hennebon. He had made such progress by battering
+and destroying the walls with his machines, that the courage of those within
+began to falter. At that moment the bishop of Léon held a conference with
+his nephew Sir Hervé de Léon, by whose means, it has been said, the earl
+of Montfort was made prisoner. They conversed on different things, in
+mutual confidence, and at last agreed that the bishop should endeavour to
+gain over those within the town, so that it might be given up to the lord
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>Charles; and Sir Hervé, on his side, was to obtain their pardon from the
+lord Charles, and an assurance that they should keep their goods, etc.,
+unhurt. They then separated, and the bishop re-entered the town. The
+countess had strong suspicions of what was going forward, and begged of
+the lords of Brittany, for the love of God, that they would not doubt that
+she should receive succours before three days were over. But the bishop
+spoke so eloquently, and made use of such good arguments, that these lords
+were in much suspense all that night. On the morrow he continued the
+subject, and succeeded so far as to gain them over, or very nearly so, to his
+opinion; insomuch that Sir Hervé de Léon had advanced close to the town
+to take possession of it, with their free consent, when the countess, looking
+out from a window of the castle towards the sea, cried out, most joyfully,
+“I see the succours I have so long expected and wished for coming.” She
+repeated this expression twice; and the townspeople ran to the ramparts,
+and to the windows of the castle, and saw a numerous fleet of great and
+small vessels, well trimmed, making all the sail they could towards Hennebon.
+They rightly imagined it must be the fleet from England, so long
+detained at sea by tempests and contrary winds.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e5"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span> The besiegers were forced
+to retire. About this time the traitor Robert of Artois fell in an engagement
+near Vannes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1342-1345 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Little by little, the two kings found themselves drawn personally into
+the contest. In 1342 Edward went himself to Brittany and appeared at the
+siege of Vannes, of Rennes, and of Nantes. The duke of Normandy drew
+up on his side an army comprising an infinity of barons and over forty
+thousand soldiers. The two forces met near Malestroit. The English, in
+numbers less than a fourth of their enemy, were careful to obtain a strong
+position. It was in the depth of winter; provision was lacking; cold rains
+flooded the two camps and multiplied disease. The papal legates proposed
+a truce, which was accepted on January 19th, 1343, to continue till the feast
+of St. Michael, 1346.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5g3"><a href="#endnote_5g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was also agreed that each monarch was to take the pope for arbiter,
+and plead his cause at Rome. Edward empowered certain commissioners to
+fulfil this office, and negotiate concerning “the right which he had, or might
+have, to the kingdom and crown of France.” That he was prepared to insist
+upon this right, is proved by his order to the authorities in Guienne to have
+all appeals from that province to the king of France addressed to him, in that
+capacity, at his court in London.</p>
+
+<h3>PHILIP’S FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES</h3>
+
+<p>These repeated truces were not the result of any diminution of inveteracy
+or of pretensions on either side, but of the impossibility to continue the payment
+and employ of such large armies. Of Philip’s financial or political
+acts we have not ample records; but sufficient exist to show the immense difficulty
+he found in supporting the military expenses of such campaigns. If
+to find proper soldiers was no easy task, to raise wherewith to pay them was a
+difficulty still greater. In 1342, Philip VI issued an ordinance, establishing
+store-houses and gabelles of salt, a government monopoly, in fact, of this
+necessary of life. Taxes on trade, wholesale or retail, had for some time existed.
+The Italian merchants paid so much in the pound on imports and
+exports. The city of Paris, in order to pay for the men-at-arms which were
+furnished to the royal army, had been allowed to levy a duty on all sales and
+purchases in the markets. The fairs of Champagne had always paid a similar
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>tax. The king now levied this generally at the rate of five deniers the
+livre; but the chief resource was alternately debasing the coin, and raising
+its standard, until there was no ascertaining or being certain of its value for
+a month together. This incertitude put a stop to trade, and a scarcity coinciding
+with it, produced such universal distress, that partial insurrection and
+a general feeling of discontent were the consequence.</p>
+
+<h3>RENEWAL OF THE WAR WITH ENGLAND (1344 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the pope made no progress in reconciling the two monarchs,
+or passing judgment upon their differences; and a cruel act of Philip’s
+so aroused Edward’s resentment, that although the term of the truce had
+not expired, he gave orders for recommencing war. Olivier de Clisson, a
+Breton noble, had been the prisoner of the English. Edward, it seems,
+released him instead of the bishop of Léon, also his captive. This sufficed
+to inspire Philip with doubts of his fidelity, and of a sudden, De Clisson, De
+Laval, and some twelve or thirteen Breton nobles, were seized, conveyed to
+Paris, and, without form of trial, or even public accusation, decapitated.
+Several barons of Normandy were soon after seized, and as summarily slain,
+one of them, of the family of Harcourt, alone escaping. These acts were not
+more cruel and unjust than the tortures, trials, and condemnations of Philip
+the Fair; but they were worse precedents, evincing a contempt for even the
+forms of justice, and making barefaced murder and assassination one of the
+regular proceedings of government.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the decapitated nobles were at least friends of Edward. Without
+being guilty of treason, they might well have considered the rights of
+De Montfort in Brittany as superior to those of Charles of Blois. Edward
+denounced the assassinations committed by King Philip in issuing an order to
+his lieutenants to recommence the war. The French were by no means gladdened
+at this renewal of hostilities. They feared not so much the enemy as
+the tax-gatherer, and began to think that their intolerable burdens would be
+made permanent. In February, 1345, therefore, Philip found it necessary to
+issue a proclamation, stating that it was not his intention to unite the gabelle
+of salt or the tax of four deniers the livre to his domain: in other words, he
+promised that they were not to be permanent.</p>
+
+<p>Edward had hitherto neglected Guienne, against which his enemies
+directed their principal efforts. The chief men of Bordeaux and Bayonne
+and the noblesse, true to the English crown, came to the festivity which
+Edward gave on the occasion of his instituting the order of the Garter, and
+their representations made so great an impression on him, that he despatched
+Lord Derby soon after, with three hundred knights, six hundred men-at-arms,
+and a greater number of infantry, to Bayonne. The French, not in force to
+defend the country south of the Dordogne, endeavoured to prevent Lord
+Derby from passing that river at Bergerac, and marching to the recovery of
+Périgord and the districts north of Bordeaux. The English accomplished
+this, the Genoese alone withstanding their arrows, and the troops which
+the French had raised in the county flying before them.</p>
+
+<p>Derby marched into Périgord, and so well provided was he with what
+Froissart calls artillery, his engines throwing immense stones, that all the
+fortresses in upper Gascony submitted to him. The strongest of these was
+Auberoche, which fortress, as soon as Derby retired for the winter to Bordeaux,
+the nobles of the county in the French interest came to besiege.
+There were ten or twelve hundred of them, and Auberoche was hard pressed.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>Lord Derby and Sir Walter Manny instantly left Bordeaux, with three hundred
+lances and six hundred archers, and, with this small force, surprised and
+fell upon the army besieging Auberoche at the time of supper. The French
+were routed, and all the chief nobles of the district taken: every English
+soldier had two or three. The consequence of this victory was not only the
+fall of Réole and the places held by Philip north of the Garonne, but the
+capture of the important town of Angoulême by Lord Derby. The general
+submission to the English commander was not only due to his prowess, but to
+his <i>gentillesse</i>, in preventing his soldiers from pillaging and burning the towns
+and massacring the prisoners, as was then generally the custom in war.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1345-1346 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Whilst Lord Derby was reconquering Angoulême, Edward was endeavouring,
+by means of Artevelde, to turn the Flemish alliance to profit. Notwithstanding
+the English king’s assumption of the arms and title of king of
+France, the Flemings seemed not disposed to go much further than neutrality.
+Artevelde himself ruling by the democracy, with the rich citizens opposed to
+him, felt himself neither secure at home nor able to direct the forces of the
+Flemings abroad. In order to strengthen his position, he proposed making
+the son of Edward (the Black Prince) count of Flanders. The English king
+came with his fleet to Sluys, and had an interview there with the town magistrates
+of the Flemings; they could not entertain his proposal without first
+consulting their townsmen. The people of Bruges and Ypres were not
+averse to having the prince of Wales for their count; but with Ghent it was
+otherwise: there the enemies of Artevelde accused him of wishing to sell his
+country to the foreigner. They asked what had been done with all the
+money proceeding from the revenues that had been sequestered. The
+“great treasure,” they said, had been despatched to England. Artevelde
+hastened to Ghent to face his enemies, and refute them; but he had no
+sooner entered the streets than he perceived the efforts of his enemies to
+have prevailed, and the minds of his fellow-townsmen turned against him.
+He shut himself up in his hôtel; harangued and tried to move the crowd
+from one of the windows. Their reply was, “Give us an account of the great
+treasure of Flanders.” Artevelde promised that he would do this fully on
+the morrow. “No,” replied the crowd; “we must have an account of it
+immediately, lest you escape to England, whither you have already sent your
+treasure.” Artevelde then wept, and reproached them with “having made
+him what he was, and now wanting to kill him. Recollect that your trade
+was lost when I took the government, and that I recovered all for you—procured
+you abundance, and work, and peace; and for all the great good I did
+you, God knows I obtained little profit.” Such reproaches were not calculated
+to move the mob, which clamoured but the more. Artevelde tried to
+escape to a neighbouring church; but his enemies seized him in the street,
+and slew him without mercy. Edward’s first movement was to take
+vengeance on the Flemings for the death of their leader; but the towns of
+West Flanders convinced him that they regretted the act of the people
+of Ghent as much as he did.</p>
+
+<h3>EDWARD RETURNS TO FRANCE (1346 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The reverses which the French monarch suffered in Guienne had been
+thus compensated by Edward’s loss of his Flemish ally, and, at the same time,
+by the death of John de Montfort. That prince, after his escape from the
+Louvre, had led succours from England to Brittany, but was able to do little
+towards changing the aspect of affairs or the relative position of parties,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>when he died at Hennebon. All the efforts of Philip were directed towards
+repelling Lord Derby. The French king assembled his estates in the north
+and in the south, but more to appease discontent than to command succour
+or adhesion: he merely proposed continuing his present levies of money, on
+the understanding that they were to cease at the peace. An army was collected
+and sent, under the duke of Normandy, to the south. He recovered
+Angoulême, and laid siege to Aiguillon, an important fortress not far from
+Agen; but Sir Walter Manny and Lord Pembroke were within the walls,
+and infused such spirit into the garrison that during four months it defied the
+duke of Normandy and his army, said to number one hundred thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>The obstinacy of the siege as well as the defence induced the English king
+to march to the succour of his general, for Lord Derby at Bordeaux had no
+force sufficient to encounter the duke of Normandy. An expedition was
+fitted out, at Southampton, consisting of four thousand men-at-arms and ten
+thousand archers, besides the Irish and Welsh.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b4"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The English fleet set sail for the mouth of the Gironde, where a tempest
+hurled it back into the Channel. A new traitor, Godfrey d’Harcourt,
+advised landing in Normandy, and promised the aid of his vassals and the
+use of his entire province. The king landed (July 22nd, 1346), with thirty-two
+thousand men, at La Hogue St. Waast, in the Cotentin. He easily possessed
+himself of Barfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes, and St. Lô. The 26th, he
+was at the walls of Caen—a city larger than any in England excepting
+London.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants sallied forth bravely to the encounter. “But as soon as
+they beheld the approach of the English,” says Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e6"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span> “in three divisions,
+close and compact, a multitude of banners flying, and saw the archers,
+to whom they had not been accustomed, they were so frightened that they
+betook themselves to flight, and not all the world could have stopped them.”</p>
+
+<p>The English entered the city with the fugitives, slaying as they went,
+showing mercy to none. But the inhabitants recovered their courage and
+defended themselves in their homes; more than five hundred English were
+dead or wounded when Edward put an end to the fighting, promising the
+inhabitants to spare their lives.<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Louviers, which was already great, wealthy,
+and commercial, was next taken. An attempt on Rouen had miscarried.
+He returned along the left bank of the Seine, burning Pont-de-l’Arche,
+Vernon, Poissy, and St. Germain. His couriers came within sight of Paris,
+and burned Bourg-la-Reine and St. Cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon Philip assembled a large force and marched on the English.
+Edward rebuilt the bridge at Poissy and by it passed over the Seine and
+retreated to his fief at Ponthieu, to establish himself beyond the Somme.
+Philip fortified and sentinelled all the fords of that river. At that of Blanquetaque
+he posted one thousand men-at-arms and five thousand Genoese
+archers. Edward forced a passage; but realising that he could retreat
+no further he halted, and on the 27th of August disposed his army for battle
+on the slope of a hill near Crécy, his men being in good order and condition.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5g4"><a href="#endnote_5g">g</a></span>
+His knights and nobles were to fight on foot, there being but four thousand
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>The total English army must have numbered from twenty-five to thirty
+thousand combatants. Froissart evidently underestimates its size as he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>increases the total of the French force, doubtless in order to make the issue
+of the battle all the more marvellous.</p>
+
+<p>But all exaggeration aside, the disproportion was enormous. Philip
+marched at the head of at least seventy thousand men among whom were
+about ten thousand men-at-arms, and a large body of Genoese archers whose
+numbers have been placed at from six to fifteen thousand.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5d2"><a href="#endnote_5d">d</a></span> But the French
+were a disorderly and undisciplined host while the English were professional
+soldiers and old campaigners, obedient
+to their chiefs and their sovereign.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b5"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Philip had left Abbeville in the morning
+to go in quest of the enemy, then five miles
+distant. Heavy rains impeded the march.
+Four scouts sent to reconnoitre returned with
+the report that they had found the English
+waiting in the position they had chosen; and
+they counselled the king to allow his soldiers
+a night’s repose.</p>
+
+<p>Philip gave the order to halt. But the
+great lords of France, instigated by vanity,
+moved one ahead of another, to get nearer
+the enemy. Neither the king nor his marshals
+could exercise any control over the
+troops, on account of the multitude of nobles
+each striving to assert his own authority.
+These rode about, without orders and without
+discretion, until they stumbled suddenly upon
+the camp of the enemy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5g5"><a href="#endnote_5g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FROISSART’S DESCRIPTION OF CRÉCY (1346 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p114.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight of the Fourteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The English, who were drawn up in three
+divisions, and seated on the ground, on seeing
+their enemies advance, rose undauntedly
+up, and fell into their ranks. That of the
+prince<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> was the first to do so, whose archers
+were formed in the manner of a portcullis, or
+harrow, and the men-at-arms in the rear.
+The earls of Northampton and Arundel, who commanded the second division,
+had posted themselves in good order on his wing, to assist and succour
+the prince, if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>You must know that these kings, earls, barons, and lords of France did
+not advance in any regular order, but one after the other, or any way most
+pleasing to themselves. As soon as the king of France came in sight of the
+English, his blood began to boil, and he cried out to his marshals, “Order
+the Genoese forward, and begin the battle, in the name of God and St. Denis.”
+There were about fifteen thousand Genoese crossbow-men; but they were quite
+fatigued, having marched on foot that day six leagues, completely armed,
+and with their crossbows. They told the constable, they were not in a fit
+condition to do any great things that day in battle. The earl of Alençon,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>hearing this, said, “This is what one gets by employing such scoundrels, who
+fall off when there is any need for them.” During this time a heavy rain
+fell, accompanied by thunder and a very terrible eclipse of the sun; and
+before this rain a great flight of crows hovered in the air over all those battalions,
+making a loud noise. Shortly afterwards it cleared up, and the sun
+shone very bright; but the Frenchmen had it in their faces, and the English
+in their backs. When the Genoese were somewhat in order, and approached
+the English, they set up a loud shout, in order to frighten them; but they
+remained quite still, and did not seem to attend to it. They then set up
+a second shout, and advanced a little forward; but the English never moved.
+They hooted a third time, advancing with their crossbows presented, and began
+to shoot. The English archers then advanced one step forward, and
+shot their arrows with such force and quickness, that it seemed as if it
+snowed. When the Genoese felt these arrows, which pierced their arms,
+heads, and through their armour, some of them cut the strings of their crossbows,
+others flung them on the ground, and all turned about and retreated
+quite discomfited. The French had a large body of men-at-arms on horseback,
+richly dressed, to support the Genoese. The king of France, seeing them
+thus fall back, cried out, “Kill me those scoundrels; for they stop up our
+road without any reason.” You would then have seen the above-mentioned
+men-at-arms lay about them, killing all they could of these runaways.</p>
+
+<p>The English continued shooting as vigorously and quickly as before;
+some of their arrows fell among the horsemen, who were sumptuously
+equipped, and, killing and wounding many, made them caper and fall among
+the Genoese, so that they were in such confusion they could never rally
+again. In the English army there were some Cornish and Welshmen on
+foot, who had armed themselves with large knives; these, advancing through
+the ranks of the men-at-arms and archers, who made way for them, came
+upon the French when they were in this danger, and, falling upon earls,
+barons, knights, and squires, slew many, at which the king of England was
+afterwards much exasperated. The valiant king of Bohemia was slain there.
+He was called John of Luxemburg; for he was the son of the gallant king
+and emperor, Henry of Luxemburg; having heard the order of the battle,
+he inquired where his son the lord Charles was; his attendants answered
+that they did not know, but believed he was fighting. The king said to
+them: “Gentlemen, you are all my people, my friends, and brethren-at-arms
+this day; therefore, as I am blind,<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> I request of you to lead me so far into
+the engagement that I may strike one stroke with my sword.” The knights
+replied, they would directly lead him forward; and in order that they might
+not lose him in the crowd, they fastened all the reins of their horses together,
+and put the king at their head, that he might gratify his wish, and advanced
+towards the enemy. The lord Charles of Bohemia, who already signed his
+name as king of Germany, and bore the arms, had come in good order to the
+engagement; but when he perceived that it was likely to turn out against
+the French, he departed, and I do not well know what road he took. The
+king, his father, had ridden in among the enemy, and made good use of his
+sword; for he and his companions had fought most gallantly. They had
+advanced so far that they were all slain; and on the morrow they were found
+on the ground, with their horses all tied together.</p>
+
+<p>The earl of Alençon advanced in regular order upon the English, to fight
+with them; as did the earl of Flanders, in another part. These two lords,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>with their detachments, coasting, as it were, the archers, came to the prince’s
+battalion, where they fought valiantly for a length of time. The king of
+France was eager to march to the place where he saw their banners displayed,
+but there was a hedge of archers before him. He had that day made a present
+of a handsome black horse to Sir John of Hainault, who had mounted on it
+a knight of his, called Sir John de Fusselles, that bore his banner; which
+horse ran off with him, and forced his way through the English army, and,
+when about to return, stumbled and fell into a ditch and severely wounded
+him; he would have been dead, if his page had not followed him round the
+battalions, and found him unable to rise; he had not, however, any other
+hindrance than from his horse; for the English did not quit the ranks that
+day to make prisoners. The page alighted, and raised him up; but he did
+not return the way he came, as he would have found it difficult from the
+crowd. This battle, which was fought on the Saturday between La Broyes
+and Crécy, was very murderous and cruel; and many gallant deeds of arms
+were performed that were never known. Towards evening, many knights
+and squires of the French had lost their masters; they wandered up and
+down the plain, attacking the English in small parties; they were soon
+destroyed; for the English had determined that day to give no quarter, or
+hear of ransom from anyone.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the day, some French, Germans, and Savoyards had broken
+through the archers of the prince’s battalion, and had engaged with the men-at-arms;
+upon which the second battalion came to his aid, and it was time,
+for otherwise he would have been hard pressed. The first division, seeing
+the danger they were in, sent a knight in great haste to the king of England,
+who was posted upon an eminence, near a windmill. On the knight’s arrival,
+he said, “Sir, the earl of Warwick, the lord Stafford, the lord Reginald Cobham,
+and the others who are about your son, are vigorously attacked by the
+French; and they entreat that you would come to their assistance with your
+battalion, for, if their numbers should increase, they fear he will have too
+much to do.” The king replied, “Is my son dead, unhorsed, or so badly
+wounded that he cannot support himself?” “Nothing of the sort, thank
+God,” rejoined the knight; “but he is in so hot an engagement that he has
+great need of your help.” The king answered, “Now, Sir Thomas, return
+back to those that sent you, and tell them from me, not to send again for me
+this day, or expect that I shall come, let what will happen, as long as my son
+has life; and say, that I command them to let the boy win his spurs; for I
+am determined, if it please God, that all the glory and honour of this day
+shall be given to him, and to those into whose care I have intrusted him.”
+The knight returned to his lords, and related the king’s answer, which
+mightily encouraged them, and made them repent they had ever sent such a
+message.</p>
+
+<p>It is a certain fact that Sir Godfrey d’Harcourt, who was in the prince’s
+battalion, having been told by some of the English that they had seen the
+banner of his brother engaged in the battle against him, was exceedingly
+anxious to save him; but he was too late, for he was left dead on the field,
+and so was the earl of Aumarle his nephew. On the other hand, the earls
+of Alençon and of Flanders were fighting lustily under their banners, and
+with their own people; but they could not resist the force of the English,
+and were there slain, as well as many other knights and squires that were
+attending on or accompanying them. The earl of Blois, nephew to the king
+of France, and the duke of Lorraine his brother-in-law, with their troops,
+made a gallant defence; but they were surrounded by a troop of English
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>and Welsh, and slain in spite of their prowess. The earl of Saint-Pol and the
+earl of Auxerre were also killed, as well as many others. Late after vespers,
+the king of France had not more about him than sixty men, every one included.
+Sir John of Hainault, who was of the number, had once remounted
+the king; for his horse had been killed under him by an arrow; he said to the
+king, “Sir, retreat whilst you have an opportunity, and do not expose
+yourself so simply; if you have lost this battle, another time you will be the
+conqueror.” After he had said this, he took the bridle of the king’s horse,
+and led him off by force; for he had before entreated of him to retire.
+The king rode on until he came to the castle of La Broyes, where he found the
+gates shut, for it was very dark. The king ordered the governor of it to be
+summoned; he came upon the battlements, and asked who it was that called
+at such an hour? The king answered, “Open, open, governor; it is the
+fortune of France.” The governor, hearing the king’s voice, immediately
+descended, opened the gate, and let down the bridge. The king and his
+company entered the castle; but he had with him only five barons, Sir John
+of Hainault, the lord Charles of Montmorency, the lord of Beaujeu, the lord
+of Aubigny, and the lord of Montfort. The king would not bury himself in
+such a place as that, but, having taken some refreshments, set out again with
+his attendants about midnight, and rode on, under the direction of guides
+who were well acquainted with the country, until, about daybreak, he came
+to Amiens, where he halted. This Saturday the English never quitted their
+ranks in pursuit of anyone, but remained on the field, guarding their position,
+and defending themselves against all who attacked them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p117.jpg" width="500" height="275" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Ruins of a French Tower of the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The battle was ended at the hour of vespers. When, on this Saturday
+night, the English heard no more hooting or shouting, nor crying out to particular
+lords or their banners, they looked upon the field as their own, and
+their enemies as beaten. They made great fires, and lighted torches because
+of the obscurity of the night. King Edward then came down from his post,
+who all that day had not put on his helmet, and, with his whole battalion,
+advanced to the prince of Wales, whom he embraced in his arms and kissed,
+and said, “Sweet son, God give you good perseverance: you are my son, for
+most loyally have you acquitted yourself this day: you are worthy to be a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>sovereign.” The prince bowed down very low, and humbled himself, giving
+all honour to the king his father. The English, during the night, made frequent
+thanksgivings to the Lord, for the happy issue of the day, and without
+rioting; for the king had forbidden all riot or noise. On the Sunday morning,
+there was so great a fog that one could scarcely see the distance of half
+an acre. The king ordered a detachment from the army, under the command
+of the two marshals, consisting of about five hundred lances and two
+thousand archers, to make an excursion, and see if there were any bodies of
+French collected together. The quota of troops, from Rouen and Beauvais,
+had, this Sunday morning, left Abbeville and St. Ricquier in Ponthieu, to
+join the French army, and were ignorant of the defeat of the preceding
+evening: they met this detachment, and, thinking they must be French,
+hastened to join them.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the English found who they were, they fell upon them; and
+there was a sharp engagement; but the French soon turned their backs, and
+fled in great disorder. There were slain in this flight in the open fields,
+under hedges and bushes, upwards of seven thousand; and had it been clear
+weather, not one soul would have escaped.</p>
+
+<p>A little time afterwards, this same party fell in with the archbishop of
+Rouen and the great prior of France, who were also ignorant of the discomfiture
+of the French; for they had been informed that the king was not to
+fight before Sunday. Here began a fresh battle, for those two lords were
+well attended by good men-at-arms; however, they could not withstand the
+English, but were almost all slain, with the two chiefs who commanded
+them, very few escaping. In the course of the morning, the English found
+many Frenchmen who had lost their road on the Saturday, and had lain in
+the open fields, not knowing what was become of the king, or their own
+leaders. The English put to the sword all they met<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>: and it has been assured
+to me for fact, that of foot-soldiers sent from the cities, towns, and
+municipalities, there were slain, this Sunday morning, four times as many as
+in the battle of the Saturday.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e7"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>MICHELET ON THE RESULTS OF CRÉCY</h3>
+
+<p>The battle of Crécy was not merely a battle; the event involved a great
+social revolution. The whole chivalry of the most chivalrous nation was
+exterminated by a small band of foot-soldiers. A new system of tactics
+came forth from a new state of society; it was not a work of genius or
+reflection. Edward III employed foot-soldiers for want of horse. The
+issue revealed a fact of which no one dreamed till then; namely, the military
+inefficiency of that feudal world which had thought itself the only
+military world. The private wars of the barons, and of canton against
+canton, in the primitive isolation of the Middle Ages, had not disclosed
+this truth; for then gentlemen were defeated only by gentlemen. Two
+centuries of defeats, during the Crusades, had not damaged their reputation.
+All Christendom was interested in disguising the successes of the misbelievers.
+Besides, these wars were waged so far away, that there was always
+some means of excusing every disaster: the heroism of a Godefroy and
+a Richard redeemed all the rest. In the thirteenth century, when the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>feudal banners were habituated to follow the king’s, when out of so many
+seigniorial courts was formed a single one, brilliant beyond all the fictions of
+the romances, the nobles, diminished in power, increased in pride; humbled
+in their own person, they felt themselves exalted in their king. They
+valued themselves more or less in proportion as they shared in the galas
+of royalty.</p>
+
+<p>In excuse for the disaster of Courtrai, the nobles pleaded their own hare-brained
+heroism, and the Flemish ditch. Two easy massacres at Mons-en-Pévêlle
+and Cassel retrieved their reputation. For several years they railed
+at the king, who forbade them to vanquish. An opportunity was afforded
+them at Crécy; the whole chivalry of the kingdom was there assembled;
+every banner flaunted in the wind, with all those haughty blazons, lions,
+eagles, castles, besants of the Crusades, and all the arrogant symbolism of
+heraldry. Opposed to this gallant array, excepting four thousand men-at-arms,
+all the rest were the barefooted English commons, the rude mountaineers
+of Wales, and the swineherds of Ireland, blind and savage races,
+that knew neither French, nor English, nor chivalry. They aimed none the
+worse for this at noble banners; they killed but so much the more: there
+was no common tongue in which to parley. The Welshman or Irishman
+did not understand the noble baron prostrate beneath him, who offered to
+make him rich, and he made answer only with the knife.</p>
+
+<p>From that day forth there was many an unbeliever in the religion of
+nobility. Armorial symbolism lost all its effect. Man began to doubt that
+those lions could bite, or those silken dragons vomit forth fire and flames.
+The cow of Switzerland and of Wales seemed good armorial bearings too.</p>
+
+<h3>THE SIEGE OF CALAIS</h3>
+
+<p>This huge disaster only led the way to a greater one. Edward laid siege
+to Calais, and set himself down before it in fixed quarters for life or death.
+After the sacrifices he had made for this expedition he could not show
+his face to the commons until he should have accomplished his enterprise.
+Round the town he built a second town with streets, and wooden houses
+solidly and snugly constructed, to serve for residence through summer
+and winter.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman, established in good quarters, and with abundant
+supplies, let those within and without the town do what they had a mind.
+He did not even grant them battle, but preferred starving them out. Five
+hundred persons, men, women, and children, expelled from the town by the
+governor, died of cold and hunger between the town and the camp. Such,
+at least, is the statement of the English historian Knighton.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5i"><a href="#endnote_5i">i</a></span> Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5e8"><a href="#endnote_5e">e</a></span> says,
+on the contrary, that he not only let them pass through his army, but also
+gave them an abundant repast.</p>
+
+<p>Edward had taken root before Calais, nor was the pope’s mediation
+capable of forcing him from thence. News was brought him that the Scotch
+were about to invade England. He never stirred. His perseverance was
+rewarded, for he soon learned that his troops, encouraged by his queen, had
+taken the king of Scotland prisoner. The next year Charles of Blois was
+likewise taken in besieging La Roche de Rien. Edward had but to fold his
+arms and leave fortune to work for him.</p>
+
+<p>It was matter of most urgent necessity for the king of France to succour
+Calais; but so great was his penury, so inert and embarrassed was that
+feudal monarchy, that it was not until the siege had lasted ten months that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>he was able to put himself in motion, when the English were fortified and
+intrenched behind palisades and deep ditches. Having scraped together
+some money by a debasement of the coinage, the gabelle, the ecclesiastical
+tithes, and the confiscation of the property of the Lombards, he at last began
+his march with a huge army like that which had been beaten at Crécy. He
+had no way of reaching Calais except through marshes or over sand-hills.
+To take the former course would have been certain destruction, for all the
+passes were intersected and guarded. The men of Tournay, however,
+gallantly carried a castle by assault, without machines and by strength of
+hand alone.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1346-1347 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The downs on the coast of Boulogne were under the fire of the English
+fleet. Those about Gravelines were kept by the Flemings whom the king
+could not suborn. He offered them heaps of gold, and the surrender of
+Lille, Béthune, and Douai; he would enrich their burgomasters, and make
+knights and lords of their young men. Nothing could tempt them; they
+were too much afraid of the return of their count, who, after a false reconciliation,
+had again escaped out of their hands. Philip could do nothing. He
+negotiated, he challenged; Edward remained unmoved.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>Horrible was the despair in the famished town when they saw all those
+banners of France, all that great army marching away and leaving them to
+their fate. Nothing remained for the people of Calais but to give themselves
+up to the enemy if he would condescend to accept their surrender.
+It was probable enough that the king of England, who had passed such a
+tedious time before Calais, who had sat down a whole year there, and spent in
+one campaign the enormous sum for those days of nearly £400,000 sterling,
+would give himself the satisfaction of putting the inhabitants to the sword,
+whereby he would certainly have gratified the English merchants. But
+Edward’s knights told him flatly that if he treated the besieged in that
+manner his own men would never again venture to shut themselves up in
+fortresses for fear of reprisal. He gave way, and condescended to admit
+the town to mercy, provided some of the principal townspeople came, according
+to custom, bareheaded and barefoot, with ropes round their necks, and
+presented the keys to him.</p>
+
+<p>There was danger for those who should first appear in the king’s presence.
+There were instantly found in that little town, depopulated as it was
+by famine, six volunteers to save the rest. Nevertheless, the queen and the
+knights had to intercede with Edward, to prevent his hanging those gallant
+fellows.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5f2"><a href="#endnote_5f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus did Calais fall into the hands of England a year after the battle of
+Crécy. Edward, according to Walsingham,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5j"><a href="#endnote_5j">j</a></span> spent a month in the town,
+ordering and fortifying it. He sent all the knights captive to England, and
+expelled a certain number of the other French townsmen, replacing them by
+English. He induced thirty-six rich citizens of London, with their families,
+to settle there, with three hundred of lesser condition, bestowing upon them
+several privileges and advantages. He fixed at Calais the staple of tin, lead,
+and woollen cloth, and prohibited all persons from exporting or shipping
+these commodities to England, unless they took oath to unship them at
+Calais. Eustace of St. Pierre was amongst the French citizens who remained
+and recovered their property, on transferring their allegiance to the English
+king. His heirs afterwards forfeited the property by refusing this allegiance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span></p>
+
+<h3>SUSPENSION OF THE WAR (1347 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1347-1348 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The papal legates seized this opportunity of renewing their efforts to bring
+about an accommodation between the monarchs. The capture of Calais,
+indeed, rendered terms of peace more difficult to arrange; but that event,
+with the campaign which preceded it, rendered a peace desirable on both
+sides. Edward consented, although Rymer contains many proofs of his intention
+to sail again to the continent and renew the war. The truce was at first
+concluded for ten months, but was extended from time to time, the monarchs
+being occupied with other cares. It was a cessation but from great expeditions
+and large armies, for partisans on both sides did not relax in their
+schemes to surprise and their efforts to hurt. Although Scotland was included
+in the truce, Douglas would not keep the peace; neither would French or
+English in Gascony. The <i>brigands</i>, as foot-soldiers were called, associated
+in bands of thirty or forty to pillage towns, surprise castles, and then sell
+them for large sums. King Philip did not disdain to purchase the castle
+of Combourne from the brigand Bacon, for 24,000 livres. This brigand,
+says Froissart, “was as well armed and mounted as any knight in the army,
+and in as great honour with the king.”</p>
+
+<p>The truce was not even observed between the now hostile towns of Calais
+and St. Omer. Geoffrey of Charny, who commanded for Philip in the latter
+place, hearing that Edward had intrusted the command in Calais to an Italian,
+Aimery di Pavia, made offers of many thousand florins, if he would betray the
+town. Pavia pretended to consent, but warned Edward, who came with his
+son, the Black Prince, and a body of archers and men-at-arms. Pavia, by
+the king’s order, allowed a division of the French to pass the bridge and enter
+the fortifications, where they were instantly surrounded and taken prisoners.
+And then Edward and his son attacked the French under Charny, routing,
+slaying, and capturing the greater number. The king himself in the fray
+had a personal encounter with Eustace de Ribeaumont, whom he compelled
+to surrender, and to whom he afterwards presented a chaplet adorned with
+pearls, as a token of friendship and admiration.</p>
+
+<p>In Brittany the lieutenants of King Philip were not more successful than
+at Calais. Charles of Blois himself had set the truce at naught by an attack
+upon the castle La Roche de Rien. Whilst thus engaged, he was come upon
+unawares by the forces of the De Montfort party, his army routed, himself
+severely wounded, and taken prisoner (1347). From Brittany he was sent
+to England.</p>
+
+<p>A more general renewal of the war was rendered impossible by the eruption
+of the plague, which in the summer of 1348 carried off large numbers,
+first in the south of France,<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> from whence it extended to Paris and the towns
+of the north. Tumours under the arms and in the groin were the peculiarities
+of the disease, which almost always proved fatal. Out of twenty persons
+in a village, says a chronicler, not two remained. The towns of the south
+were especially depopulated, such as Marbonne, Montpellier, and Avignon.
+The Laura of Petrarch was amongst the victims. Eight hundred died each
+day in Paris, where the loss could not have been less than one hundred
+thousand. Amongst the consequences of the epidemic are mentioned a great
+scarcity of provisions and a complete suspense of education from the lack of
+teachers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span></p>
+
+<h3>TERRITORIAL ACQUISITION</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1343-1348 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Whilst France was thus ravaged by pestilence and humiliated by defeat,
+Philip succeeded in annexing to the monarchy the important province of
+Dauphiné, which lay between its possessions of Burgundy and Provence, and
+gave France the entire region westward of the Alps. The two contiguous
+principalities and dynasties of Savoy and of Dauphiné had started up and
+grown together in continued rivalry. Although the Savoy princes were defeated
+in one great battle they were still more than a match for the dauphins,
+as the princes who kept their court at Vienne were called from the arms they
+had assumed. The dauphin had recourse to the aid of the king of France;
+and, by degrees, the protection which these afforded grew into suzerainty.
+Humbert, the last dauphin, was a strange and capricious character; he
+had the misfortune to have let fall from a window of his castle his only son,
+the child being dashed to pieces as he fell. This misfortune disturbed the
+reason of the prince, who determined to proceed to the Holy Land and sell
+or mortgage his possessions in order to raise funds for the purpose. He
+began by selling lands, which he possessed in Normandy, to John, duke of this
+province. At last the dauphin consented to sell the reversion of the principality.
+He agreed to appoint the second son of Philip of Valois, Philip
+of Orleans, as his future heir, in the event of his having no children.</p>
+
+<p>This treaty, so advantageous to France, was concluded in 1343, and
+Humbert took his departure for Palestine. None ever expected to see the
+return of so witless a prince. The dauphin, however, did return, not only
+to resume the government of his paternal dominion, but to regret the reckless
+manner in which he had alienated the independence of Dauphiné. He
+began to seek to extricate himself from his engagements. Edward III tried
+to induce the emperor of Germany to confer upon Humbert the title of king;
+but, surrounded by the power and the emissaries of France, the dauphin was
+not able to shake off his dependency. He was finally (1349) induced to transfer
+his adoption to Charles, son of John, duke of Normandy, heir to the French
+throne. This was the future Charles V. Having accomplished this act,
+Humbert withdrew to a convent, whilst young Charles assumed the title of
+dauphin, which was afterwards borne by the heir to the throne, and the
+possession of that rich province.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b6"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The money spent in the purchase of Dauphiné was at least well spent for
+France. A few days after the definite treaty with Humbert, Philip made
+another useful acquisition: he bought the lordship of Montpellier from the
+last king of Majorca, James II. This prince, despoiled of the Balearic Isles,
+Roussillon, and Cerdagne, by his cousin, the king of Aragon, sold Montpellier
+in order to raise an army with which to recover his realm. Don James was
+beaten and killed; Montpellier remained to France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5d3"><a href="#endnote_5d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The plague of this year had been peculiarly fatal to princesses. The
+queen of France, Joan of Burgundy, the duchess of Normandy, wife of
+Prince John and daughter of the king of Bohemia, the queen of Navarre,
+daughter of Louis Hutin, perished under its influence. But no sooner had
+the pestilence disappeared, than marriage and its accompanying festivities
+became the order of the day. “The world,” says the chronicler, “was
+renewed, but, unfortunately, not bettered; the enemies of France and of the
+church were no fewer, nor less powerful.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1348-1350 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>King Philip espoused a young wife, daughter of the queen of Navarre,
+just deceased. This princess, Blanche by name, had been destined to the
+duke of Normandy; but the king, his father, found her beautiful, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>married her himself. The duke of Normandy married a duchess of Burgundy,
+and the dauphin, Charles, espoused a daughter of the duke of Bourbon.
+Thus were celebrated the marriages of three generations of princes.</p>
+
+<p>Philip of Valois did not long survive his marriage with Blanche. He fell
+ill, and expired at Nogent in August, 1350. The continuator of Nangis<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5c4"><a href="#endnote_5c">c</a></span>
+relates that he called his sons, the duke of Normandy, and Philip of Orleans,
+afterwards of Valois, to his bedside, and pointed out to them the validity
+of his right to the crown, and the necessity of defending it strenuously, and
+without any concession, against Edward of England, with whom the truce
+was about to expire.</p>
+
+<p>Philip of Valois was the first prince of truly chivalrous spirit that
+ascended the throne of France. Unfortunately for him, he succeeded
+at a period when chivalry was insufficient either to illustrate the warrior
+or achieve great results in war. Unfortunately, too, he derived from his
+predecessors those unscrupulous habits of wreaking vengeance and spilling
+blood, which they were taught to consider their sovereign right, as if
+royal power and descent cancelled every crime, and consecrated even the
+basest treachery and felony. French kings are lauded by their countrymen
+for having considered themselves above feudalism. Feudalism, however,
+had its laws of honour and its sense of right; with these, unfortunately,
+French kings too soon and too completely dispensed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_5b7"><a href="#endnote_5b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-5.jpg" width="500" height="200" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> [Charles intrusted the siege to Louis of Spain, a descendant of Ferdinand de la Cerda—eldest
+son of Alfonso the Learned. Ferdinand’s sons had been set aside in favour of their uncle.
+Some of this family took up their residence in France. This Louis de la Cerda was Ferdinand’s
+grandson. In 1341 he received the title of “Admiral of France.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> Lord Berners reads, “She caused damoselles and other women <i>to cut shorte their kyrtels</i>,”
+instead of “to unpave the streets,” as Mr. Johnes translates it. The words in D. Sauvage’s
+edition are “<i>dépecer les chaussées</i>,” to tear up the causeways, but when we consider that the
+streets of cities were very rarely paved at this period, Lord Berners’ version appears the more
+probable, and may be reconciled to the text if we read “<i>chausses</i>” for “<i>chaussées</i>,” which is not
+unlikely to be an error in transcribing.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> [Among the captures at Caen, was a document dated 1338, wherein the Normans offered
+Philip to reconquer England at their own cost, on condition he would reportion it among them
+after the fashion of William the Conqueror. It was used with good effect in rousing English
+spirit and continuing the wars. Some authorities regard it as a forgery.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> [Prince Edward of Wales—the famous “Black Prince.” He was but thirteen years old
+and only nominally in command of the first line under the guardianship of the earl of Warwick
+and Godfrey d’Harcourt.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> [His blindness was supposed to have been caused by poison, which was alleged to have been
+given to him when engaged in the wars of Italy.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> [According to Froissart the English reconnoitring party slaughtered 7,000 in the fog. He
+declares that more perished on this Sunday than on the day of battle. The clerks sent by Edward
+to tally the dead reported 11 princes, 80 bannerets, 1,200 simple knights, and above 30,000 common
+men.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> Edward announces in a letter to the archbishop of York that he had accepted the challenge,
+and that the fight did not take place, because Philip marched off precipitately before the
+day, after having set fire to his camp.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> [It had spread to France from Italy where its ravages were no less appalling. An extended
+notice of it is given in our history of Italy, Volume IX, where Boccaccio’s vivid description of its
+terrors may be found.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-6.jpg" width="500" height="225" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1350-1380 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The new king John was between thirty-one and thirty-two years of age.
+It was long since a king of France had ascended the throne in such critical
+circumstances. All the internal maladies which, ever since the days of
+Philip the Fair, had been undermining the constitution of the state had
+burst out at the first shock of external violence. The weakness of this
+monarchy, arbitrary without order, fiscal without finances, military without
+an army, which had failed to create for itself any other instrument or any
+other support than a body of legists; the fragility of this colossus with feet
+of clay was now revealed both to the foreigner and to France herself. A
+country desolated by plague, impoverished by a disastrous war and by a
+government more ruinous than plague and war, where the lowest depths of
+society were stirred by those dull mutterings which announce the distant
+tempest; a royalty despoiled, by deserved misfortunes, of the prestige of
+birth and grandeur which had survived its popularity; finally a war which
+set at stake not the position of some frontier but the existence of the
+dynasty and the independence of the nation: such was the inheritance
+which the first of the Valois had bequeathed to his son.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6b1"><a href="#endnote_6b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>King John inaugurated his reign by debasing the coinage to meet the
+expenses of the coronation which was celebrated at Rheims, on the 26th of
+September, 1350, with all the accustomed splendour. The brilliant train
+of princes who accompanied him drew upon themselves not only the glances
+but the hopes of the entire population.</p>
+
+<p>Treachery, however, was on all sides. Already Philip of Valois had
+attempted to deal with it outside the regular forms of judicial procedure;
+the newly made king followed in his footsteps. Raoul, count of Eu and of
+Guines, constable of France, obtained of Edward III, whose prisoner he was,
+liberty on parole, and returned to Paris to present himself at court. John
+caused him to be arrested and confined in the Louvre. A few days afterwards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>the constable was beheaded, and his property given to John of Artois,
+who assumed the title of count of Eu.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1350-1352 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The office of constable was conferred upon a certain De la Cerda, Charles
+of Spain, brother of that Louis of Spain who had upheld the party of Blois
+in Brittany. The new constable, being the personal favourite of the king,
+found many rivals at court, and thus arose contentions that were to be the
+source of further troubles. For the purpose of anticipating acts of treason
+and of strengthening the attachment and devotion to himself of the most
+powerful nobles, John created a new order of chivalry; or, as Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g1"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> says,
+“A fine company, high and noble, after the manner of the Round Table
+which existed in the time of King Artus [Arthur].” He also had another
+model, the order of the Garter, recently created by Edward III. Thus was
+instituted the order of the Star, which had for emblem a star in gold, silver,
+gilt, or pearls, and which the king bestowed on the three hundred knights
+who had proved themselves “the most valiant at arms and the most useful
+to the kingdom.” He imposed upon them an oath that they would never
+flee before the enemy to a distance of over four arpents. On the first occasion
+the king designated the recipients of the order himself, but later the
+choice was decided by the majority of the members. This was the first
+time that a court order of chivalry had been created in France. The new
+institution was destined to be of but short duration, however, as its dissolution
+immediately followed the captivity of its founder.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations were begun for a renewal of the war with England, and
+in expectation of this event John displayed great activity. Financial
+aid, which was to be a portion of the profits on the sale of beverages and
+merchandise, was voted to him by the provinces of Vermandois and Normandy,
+the city of Paris, and the bailiwick of Amiens, the assemblies stipulating
+in exchange the confirmation of certain privileges and the suppression
+of various abuses; among others the right of lodgment and of <i>prise en vertu</i>
+by which the king caused his expenses and those of his household to be
+defrayed by anyone with whom he chose to lodge.</p>
+
+<p>We can form some idea of the deplorable state of the finances from the fact
+that during the course of the year 1351 John issued no less than eighteen
+ordinances altering monetary values, although neither the help of such
+expedients nor the subsidies voted by the provinces availed to bring about
+an equilibrium between receipts and expenditures. The treasury continued,
+as in the preceding reign, to pay annually only a part of the officers’ wages
+and of the interest on the debt. There were also ordinances regulating the
+order in which the public expenses were to be met, just as to-day, in cases
+of bankruptcy, the succession in which creditors are to be paid is determined
+by law. In the case of certain outlays the government was extremely tardy
+in making payment, taking for its model the nobility, to the members of
+which great latitude was allowed. “Let no one,” said King John, “wonder
+or be ill-pleased, for we take account of the respites and delays accorded to
+the nobles in the payment of their debts, and it would not be seemly that
+we should be in a worse condition than they.”</p>
+
+<p>The truces, although renewed from year to year, were imperfectly kept;
+hostilities continued to break out from time to time at different points, and
+there was not a campaign during which special engagements did not take
+place between parties of English or French knights. There were frequent
+skirmishes during 1351 in the neighbourhood of St. Jean d’Angély, and in
+1352 between Guines and St. Omer. The war in Brittany had been kept
+up in desultory fashion since the capture of Charles of Blois in 1347, when
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>his wife, Joan de Penthièvre, took up the cause. The most celebrated of
+these minor combats was the <i>combat des trente</i>, fought in Brittany, August
+1352, on the moor of Mi-Voie, between Josselin and Ploërmel.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6c1"><a href="#endnote_6c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1352-1354 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Robert de Beaumanoir, governor of the castle of Josselin, challenged the
+English captain Richard Bamborough who commanded at Ploërmel. They
+met on the lands of Josselin each with twenty-nine companions. The sixty
+champions fought on foot with short swords. “Such a combat,” says Froissart,
+“had not been recorded for over a hundred years.” It did not cease
+until all the combatants were either killed or badly wounded—four French
+and nine English, Bamborough among them, lay dead on the field. The
+rest of the English gave themselves up to the French. But such contests
+did not help matters, and so the war dragged on.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>TROUBLE WITH CHARLES OF NAVARRE</h3>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p126.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">John the Good</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the exterior dangers with which France was menaced was now added
+the calamity of civil war. The cause for this fresh trouble was to be found
+in the pretensions held by the king of Navarre, and the jealousy which he
+conceived against the new constable, Charles of Spain. This king of Navarre
+was Charles the Bad, so named for the rigour
+with which he had put down a sedition in
+Pamplona. A prince of the royal house
+of France on the side of his father, Philip of
+Évreux, he succeeded in 1349 not only to the
+kingdom of the Pyrenees, but to the county of
+Évreux, and the possession of several fiefs
+in Normandy. He was young, ambitious,
+enterprising, as were also his two younger
+brothers, Philip and Louis; and to attach
+him more securely to his interests, John
+betrothed to him one of his daughters, then
+a child, to whom he promised as marriage
+portion an income raised from the counties
+of Angoulême and Mortain. These counties
+having been ravaged by the English,
+Charles of Navarre demanded another dowry,
+and at the same time claimed indemnity for
+Champagne and Brie, former possessions of
+his mother which had been ceded to the
+crown during the preceding reign, but by
+treaty of which all the clauses had not been
+put regularly in execution. John refused
+to acknowledge these claims, or at any rate
+was in no hurry to satisfy them, and gave Angoulême and Mortain to Charles
+of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The king of Navarre laid all the blame for this real or pretended breach
+of faith to the constable, and the two held a spirited altercation together in
+the presence of King John. With the king of Navarre was his brother
+Philip of Navarre, count of Longueville, who on being given the lie by the
+constable swore to be revenged. On leaving the scene of the quarrel he
+defied the constable and warned him to be on his guard against the infantes
+of Navarre. Charles of Spain paid so little heed to these menaces that he
+betook himself, insufficiently attended, to Laigle, the latest evidence of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>royal favour, which was situated not six leagues from Évreux, where dwelt
+his enemies. As soon as the count of Longueville learned of this move he
+left his home at night, accompanied by a troop of men-at-arms, and entering
+the hôtel of the constable, murdered the latter in his bed (1354).</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1354-1355 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The infantes of Navarre wrote letters of self-justification to several cities
+of France, and to the council of the king. At the same time they stocked
+their castles with supplies, assembled all their nobles, and opened up relations
+with the English, who were only too pleased to have a foothold thus
+established for them in Normandy. John, determined not to leave unpunished
+an act of personal vengeance that infringed seriously upon his own
+authority, marched in person against Évreux, and sent orders to the count
+d’Armagnac, his representative in Toulouse, to occupy Navarre with the
+whole strength of the southern troops.</p>
+
+<p>This civil war, breaking forth so unexpectedly, was certain to renew the
+war with England, since it offered that country an unexampled opportunity
+to re-enter the lists. In fear of this event, the princes and princesses of the
+house of France, aided by the legate cardinal of Boulogne, offered their
+mediation and succeeded in bringing about an arrangement at Nantes, the
+22nd of February, 1354. Payment of all that was due him, and the satisfaction
+of his legitimate claims were assured the king of Navarre, on condition
+that he should so far humiliate himself as to ask the king’s pardon in
+open parliament. This he consented to do, but demanded that certain hostages
+be sent him. “And in the presence of all he asked pardon of the king
+for the deed wrought upon the said constable, for he had had just and sufficient
+cause thereto, all of which he was ready to reveal to the king then or at any
+time. Furthermore he declared and swore that he had not committed the
+act out of contempt for the king nor for the office of constable, and that
+nothing would afflict him so sorely as to be in the evil graces of the king.”
+John accepted the excuse and took the offender back into favour.</p>
+
+<p>This understanding retarded further hostilities, but only for a little time.
+John, who had been unaware of the secret relations entered into with the
+English, soon learned of them; whereupon Charles the Bad, fearing for his
+own safety, retired to Avignon, where he besought protection of the pope.
+In the month of November John entered Normandy, took possession of and
+sequestrated the estates of the king of Navarre, and commanded the officers
+who were in charge of the various castles to deliver them up to him. Six
+of the defenders refused to obey, among others those in charge of the castles
+of Cherbourg and Évreux.</p>
+
+<p>The court of Avignon had not ceased its efforts to negotiate a treaty
+between England and France, and as it was necessary that this treaty should
+be a final one the king of Navarre must be included in its terms; hence the
+papal protection had not been refused him in his need. The negotiations
+were carried on actively during the winter of 1354-1355, but fell through
+like all preceding ones, and in the spring came definitely to an end. Edward
+demanded that his full sovereignty should be recognised over Guienne and
+Ponthieu, which provinces should be separated from the French crown. He
+also refused to continue to pay homage to France, and tried to stipulate for
+a semi-independence for Brittany. John refused to consider propositions so
+injurious, and in a legitimate spirit of national pride resolved to try once more
+the fortunes of war.</p>
+
+<p>On all sides preparations for war were being carried on. The king of
+Navarre, having passed through Pamplona and English Guienne, embarked
+in July, 1355, at Cherbourg, which port it was his intention to open to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>Edward III. The English sovereign manned a fleet for the purpose of
+descending upon the north coast of France; but contrary winds held him for
+a long time in the Channel, in sight of Jersey, and finally obliged him to
+return to the harbour of Plymouth.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this mischance the English remained full of ardour, and built
+great hopes upon the assistance of the Navarrese. John’s counsellors represented
+to him that he could not with safety allow his enemies to retain allies
+of such energy and power, and that at any cost the interests of Charles the
+Bad must be separated from those of Edward III. With great repugnance,
+therefore, the king consented to grant certain concessions to the king of
+Navarre, who joyfully accepted them. A second treaty was signed at
+Valognes, by the terms of which Charles the Bad was reinstated in his
+French domains on consideration that he should make formal apology for
+having allied himself with the enemies of the kingdom (September 10th,
+1355). He hastened to fulfil his promise, and for the second time came to
+the Louvre to ask public pardon of the king. His brother Philip, count of
+Longueville, could not be induced to follow his example, but remained true
+to the English side.</p>
+
+<p>By depriving the English of the Navarrese alliance King John robbed
+them of their chief support, and obliged them to change their plan of campaign.
+Edward III landed at Calais, and in October made several incursions
+into Artois; but John marched against him in person, and prevented him
+from crossing the French frontier, thus paralysing all his efforts.</p>
+
+<p>The English were more successful in the south, where they had sent a
+large army headed by the prince of Wales and the celebrated John Chandos.
+This army made a rapid and fruitful passage through Languedoc—pillaging
+Castelnaudary, Carcassonne, and a number of towns and castles—as far as
+the very gates of Montpellier without meeting with the least resistance. The
+cities were all entered, and the whole district, one of the richest in France,
+laid waste as Normandy had been in 1346. The English returned with five
+thousand prisoners and a thousand wagons laden with silver, objects of worth
+and merchandise, particularly cloths and velvets taken from Narbonne and
+Limoux. In order to transport safely all this booty to Guienne it was necessary
+to cross the Garonne at a distance of only three leagues from Toulouse.
+The count d’Armagnac, commander of Languedoc, was shut up in this town
+with forces more considerable than those of the English; he refused, however,
+to sally forth and arrest them as they passed by, in spite of the orders
+which had been brought to him by the new constable James de Bourbon,
+successor to Charles of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>To meet the needs of the war, and to provide himself with a still greater
+force for the coming campaign, John resorted to all sorts of financial expedients.
+He ordered his treasurers to adjourn all payments out of the public
+funds, be they for what purpose they might; he made treaties for subsidies
+with several provinces, Auvergne, Normandy, Maine, and Anjou, and lastly
+convened the states-general at Paris.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6c2"><a href="#endnote_6c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1355 A.D.</h3>
+
+<p>The estates of the north, or of the Languedoïl, convoked on the 30th of
+November, showed no tractable temper. It was necessary to promise them
+the abolition of that direct robbery called the right of seizure, and of the
+indirect one which was practised through the coinage. The king declared that
+the new impost should extend to all persons, and that it should be paid by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>himself, the queen, and the princes. These fair words did not reassure the
+estates. They put no trust in the royal word, or in the royal tax-gatherers.
+They required that the money should be received by themselves, through
+collectors chosen by them; that accounts should be laid before them, and
+that they should meet again on the 1st of March, and again, after the lapse
+of a year, on St. Andrew’s day.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1355-1356 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>To vote and receive taxes is to reign. No one in those days was aware
+of the full import of this bold demand of the estates, probably not even
+Étienne Marcel, the famous provost of the merchants, whom we see at the head
+of the deputies of the towns. The assembly purchased this royalty by the
+enormous concession of 6,000,000 livres parisis for the pay of thirty thousand
+men-at-arms. This money was to be raised by two imposts, on salt and on
+sales—bad imposts, no doubt, and bearing heavily on the poor; but what
+other could be devised in so pressing an emergency, when the whole south
+was at the enemy’s mercy?</p>
+
+<p>Normandy, Artois, and Picardy sent no deputies to these estates. The
+Normans were encouraged by the king of Navarre, the count d’Harcourt, and
+others, who declared that the gabelle should not be levied on their lands:
+that there should not be found a man so bold on the part of the king of
+France, who should enforce it, nor sergeant who should levy a fine, but should
+pay for it with his body. The estates gave way. They suppressed the two
+imposts, and substituted for them a tax on income: five per cent. on the
+poorest classes, four per cent. on middling fortunes, and two per cent. on
+the rich. The more one had the less he paid. The king, bitterly offended
+by the resistance of the king of Navarre and his friends, said that he should
+never have perfect joy so long as they were alive. He set out from Orleans
+with some cavaliers, rode for thirty hours, and surprised them in the castle
+of Rouen, where they were at table, having been invited by the dauphin.
+He had D’Harcourt and three others beheaded; the king of Navarre was
+thrown into prison, and threatened with death (April 16th, 1356). A
+rumour was set afloat that they had urged the dauphin to escape to the
+emperor, and make war on the king, his father.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6e1"><a href="#endnote_6e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A third session of the states-general was held in Paris on the 8th of
+May, under the shadow of these tragic events, and new subsidies from the
+revenues were granted the king. John was particular to mislead the public
+as to the causes of the recent affair at Rouen, and it was everywhere given
+out that he had seized letters that furnished evidence of a conspiracy between
+the Navarrese and the king of England. Nevertheless the people suspected
+that the “real treason” of Charles of Navarre lay in his resistance to taxation,
+and this opinion joined to the current rumours as to the harsh treatment
+the captive had received, won him the compassion and the interest of the
+masses.</p>
+
+<p>The people as a whole regarded in the same manner the captivity of the
+Navarrese, the execution of D’Harcourt, and the vengeance which King John
+took upon the authors of a revolt at Arras, which occurred almost simultaneously
+with the arrest of Charles the Bad. On the 27th of April the
+marshal D’Audeneham had entered Arras without resistance and had seized
+those guilty of rebellion. Twenty of these were decapitated in the market-place.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6b2"><a href="#endnote_6b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>King John, who had begun the campaign by seizing those strongholds of
+the king of Navarre in Normandy into which he might have introduced the
+English, at last advanced with a great army, as numerous as France ever
+lost. The whole country was covered with his runners; the English could
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>no longer find means of subsistence. Neither of the two hostile forces knew
+its own position. John thought the English were before him, and was hastening
+to overtake them, whilst they were really behind him. The prince of
+Wales, no better informed, thought the French were in his rear. This was
+the second and not the last time the English entangled themselves blindly
+in the enemy’s country. Only a miracle could have saved them, and John’s
+blundering rashness was no less.</p>
+
+<h3>THE BATTLE OF POITIERS (SEPTEMBER 18TH, 1356)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1356 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The army of the prince of Wales, partly English, partly Gascon, numbered
+2,000 men-at-arms, 4,000 archers, and 2,000 light troops, brigands hired in the
+south. John was at the head of the great feudal gathering of the ban and
+arrière-ban, making fully 50,000 men.
+There were John’s four sons, 26 dukes or
+counts, and 140 knights-banneret, with
+their banners displayed; a magnificent
+spectacle, but the army was none the
+better for all that.</p>
+
+<p>Two cardinal legates, one of whom
+was a Talleyrand, interfered to prevent
+the effusion of Christian blood. The
+prince of Wales offered to give up all he
+had taken, and to swear he would not
+serve for seven years to come against
+France. John refused the offer, as was
+natural; it would have been shameful
+to let those plunderers escape. He insisted
+that, at least, the prince of Wales
+should yield himself prisoner, with one
+hundred knights.</p>
+
+<p>The English had fortified themselves
+on the Coteau de Maupertuis, a steep
+hill near Poitiers, planted with vines,
+and flanked with hedges and thorny
+thickets. Their archers covered all the
+summit. There was no need of attacking
+them. No more was requisite than
+to keep them there; hunger and thirst
+would have quelled them in two days.
+But John thought it more chivalric to
+subdue his enemy by force of arms. There was but one narrow path by
+which access could be obtained to the English position. The king of France
+sent horsemen forward to the charge. The archers shot down clouds of
+arrows, wounded and scared the horses, and threw them in confusion one
+on the other. The English seized this moment to charge down from the hill,
+and presently all that great army was in disorder. Three sons of the king of
+France retired from the field, by their father’s command,<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> taking away with
+them an escort of eight hundred lances.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p130.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight of the Fourteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the king stood fast. He had employed horsemen to charge
+up the hill; and with equal good sense, he ordered those about him to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>dismount, and fight on foot against the English, who were coming upon them
+on horseback. John’s resistance was as injurious to his realm as the flight
+of his sons. His brethren of the order of the Star were, like himself, true to
+their vow, and did not retreat. “And they fought by troops and by companies,
+as they chanced to meet and fall in together.” But the multitude
+fled to Poitiers, which closed its gates. “So there was on the road and before
+the gate such a horrible spectacle of men slaughtered and trampled down as
+is wonderful to think of; and the French surrendered the moment they
+caught sight of an Englishman ever so far off.”</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the field was still contested. “King John himself did wonders;
+he was armed with a battle-axe, with which he fought and defended
+himself. By his side was his youngest son, who well deserved the surname
+of the Bold, who guided his blind valour, crying out to him every
+moment: ‘Look to your right, father! to your left!’ But the throng of
+assailants continually increased, all being eager to make so rich a capture.
+The English and Gascons poured in so fast on the king’s division that they
+broke through the ranks by force; and the French were so intermixed with
+their enemies that at times there were five men attacking one gentleman.
+There was much pressing at this time, through eagerness of taking the
+king; and those that were nearest to him, and knew him, cried out:
+‘Surrender yourself, or you are a dead man.’ In that part of the field was
+a young knight from St. Omer, who was engaged by a salary in the service
+of the king of England; his name was Denys de Morbeyne, who for five
+years had attached himself to the English, on occasion of his having been
+banished in his younger days from France, for a murder committed in an
+affray at St. Omer. It fortunately happened for this knight that he was at
+the time near to the king of France, when the latter was so much pulled about;
+he, by dint of force—for he was very strong and robust—pushed through the
+crowd, and said to the king in good French: ‘Sir, sir, surrender yourself.’
+The king, who found himself very disagreeably situated, turning to him,
+asked: ‘To whom shall I surrender myself—to whom? Where is my cousin,
+the prince of Wales? If I could see him, I would speak to him.’ ‘Sir,’
+replied Sir Denys, ‘he is not here; but surrender yourself to me, and I will
+lead you to him.’ ‘Who are you?’ said the king. ‘Sir, I am Denys de
+Morbeyne, a knight from Artois; but I serve the king of England, because
+I cannot belong to France, having forfeited all I possessed there.’ The king
+then gave him his right hand glove, and said: ‘I surrender myself to you.’
+There was much crowding and pushing about, for everyone was eager
+to cry out: ‘I have taken him.’ Neither the king nor his youngest son,
+Philip, was able to get forward and free himself from the throng.”</p>
+
+<p>The prince of Wales did honour to the unparalleled good fortune that had
+placed such a pledge in his hands. He took good care not to treat his captive
+otherwise than as a king; in his eyes that captive was the true king of
+France, and not John of Valois, as the English had been used to call him.
+It was of the last importance to the prince that John should be king in
+reality, so that the kingdom might seem itself taken captive in the person of
+its sovereign, and should ruin itself to ransom him. He waited on John at
+table, after the battle; and when he made his entry into London, he set
+him on a tall white horse (an emblem of suzerainty), whilst he himself followed
+on a little black hackney.</p>
+
+<p>The English were not less courteous to the other prisoners. They had
+twice as many of them as there were men to guard them, and dismissed the
+greater part of them on parole, pledging them to come at Christmas, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>pay the enormous ransoms they set upon them. The prisoners were too
+good knights to fail. In this war between gentlemen, the worst that could
+happen to the beaten party was to go and take their part in the festivities of
+the victors, to hunt and joust in England, and enjoy the courtesy of the
+English; a noble war, doubtless, which crushed none but the villein.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the dismay in Paris when the fugitives from Poitiers, with the
+dauphin at their head, brought news that there was no longer a king or
+barons in France, but all were killed or taken.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> The English, who had
+withdrawn for a moment to secure the captives, would, doubtless, speedily
+return. This time it might be expected that they would take, not Calais,
+but Paris and the realm.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6e2"><a href="#endnote_6e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1356-1357 A.D.</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1356-1357 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king a captive, the nobles prisoners or destroyed—the people alone
+remained to save France. This younger member, disinherited in the political
+family of the Middle Ages, took in hand the government of the realm,
+now falling to pieces through the incapacity of its elder brothers. It was
+not this one that had been vanquished at Crécy and Poitiers. These defeats,
+on the contrary, brought it forward, for it was evident that, scorned as it
+was by the nobility, at least it had not conducted itself worse, and perhaps
+even may have made a better show against the English archers than the
+knights. The people ruling—that was a novel and extraordinary thing.
+Nevertheless they were not, at least in their leaders, totally inexperienced
+in the conduct of affairs. Former progress had prepared them somewhat;
+the common people were in parliament, the church, and the universities;
+they had control of all commerce and had formed vast industrial corporations.
+The clergy and commerce (which was soon to become the aristocracy
+of the third estate) both furnished a leader to the new movement started
+after the battle of Poitiers—Robert Lecoq, bishop of Laon and president of
+the parliament, and Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Marcel’s first care at the news of the disaster was to finish the fortifications
+of the capital, to place cannon on them, and to barricade the streets.
+The dauphin Charles arrived ten days after the battle, but the people did
+not make much of this young prince. His conduct at Poitiers had been
+decidedly equivocal; he had been one of the first to flee. He took the title
+of lieutenant of the king of France and convoked the states-general at Paris
+for the Languedoïl, at Toulouse for the Languedoc (October 17th, 1356).
+The assembly at Paris had eight hundred members, of which four hundred
+came from the cities and towns; Marcel presided over the third estate and
+Robert Lecoq over the clergy. The nobles were few in number; their principal
+leader was John de Pecquigny, lord of Vermandois, and a friend of the
+king of Navarre. The three orders deliberated separately, but to bring
+unity into their actions nominated a mixed commission of eighty members.
+It formulated the wishes of the states-general and demanded for the reform
+of the kingdom the summons and trial, before judges nominated by the
+states-general, of the king’s chief officers of finance and justice, accused
+of having perverted and sold judgments; the deliverance of the king of
+Navarre; the establishment of a council of four prelates, twelve lords, and
+twelve bourgeois elected by the states-general, without which the dauphin
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>could give no orders and which would control the entire government. On
+these terms they granted the dauphin one and a half tenths for one year
+of the revenues of the three orders. In truth, by their revolutionary changes
+the people placed themselves on the throne and undertook the burden of
+public affairs and the public welfare. The states-general of the Languedoc,
+less radical, voted a levy of fifteen thousand men with the necessary money
+to maintain them.</p>
+
+<p>The dauphin would not listen to an agreement with these conditions. He
+played skilfully with the deputies of the third estate, in persuading them to
+consult their constituents once more, while he himself would go to ask help
+of his uncle the emperor of Germany. Charles IV was then putting forward
+his famous “golden bull” in the Diet of Nuremberg. The dauphin
+appeared there. He had strong hopes that on his return he would find the
+deputies dispersed and discouraged. Far from that, the provincial councils
+had reassembled, approved the measures of the states-general, and the whole
+country declared itself in the same fashion (1357). On the 3rd of March
+the dauphin was obliged to call a general assembly at the palace. The
+bishop of Laon acted as spokesman. He demanded that the prince dismiss
+twenty-two of his councillors or servitors and authorise the formation of a
+council of thirty-six members elected by the states-general “to provide for
+the needs of the kingdom, and which everyone would be compelled to obey.”
+Commissioners at first had to be sent into all the provinces, but the states
+finally acquired the faculty of handling the government of its own creation
+by endowing itself with the power to meet twice a year without convocation.
+As to reforms, relating for the most part to finances and justice, the dauphin
+provided for them in the “grand ordinance of reformation.” By this memorable
+charter he promised to impose no taxes without the vote of the states-general,
+to divert no money from the treasury, and to leave the levy and
+expenditure of taxes to the states-general’s delegates, to make justice impartial
+and prompt, to sell judiciary offices no longer, and not to alter the coinage
+from a model which the provost of the merchants was to furnish. The right
+of seizure, forced loans, judgments by commissioners, and alienation of the
+crown domains were some of the abuses corrected by the ordinance which at
+the end declared the members of the states-general inviolable and authorised
+armed resistance to all illegal procedure.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1357-1358 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The popular government of 1357 unfortunately did not have in its bosom
+sufficient harmony, strength, and experience to maintain the important conquest
+the people had just made. Moreover its situation was one of the most
+difficult; its credit was shaken by King John, who from his prison forbade
+the states-general to assemble and the people to pay the taxes they themselves
+had voted. The rural committees were in the most deplorable state.
+Overburdened by taxes, by the heavy ransoms which their captive lords
+extracted by torture, the peasants could no longer cultivate a land that had
+moreover been ravaged in the war. They developed into vagabonds and
+preferred to become the accomplices rather than victims of the bands
+of discharged soldiers from every country, which the war had left upon
+French soil.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6f1"><a href="#endnote_6f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the fourteenth century the name brigand was given to this licensed
+soldiery, nearly all of whom, as we are aware, fought on foot, and were, as a
+general rule, but slenderly equipped; they carried, as a part of their equipment,
+a small fine coat of mail, which took its name of brigantine from
+them. The pay of the mercenaries being stopped in time of truce or between
+the different expeditions, they turned to the daily practice of rapine and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>plunder for their means of subsistence, which brought them in more than
+their pay. A crowd of adventurers and loafers joined forces with them,
+among the number being many noblemen. As to the rest, the following
+passage from Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g2"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> sets forth vividly the methods by which the brigands
+carried on their terrible profession:</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p134.jpg" width="200" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Nobleman of the Fourteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“And the poor brigands always succeeded in sacking and pillaging
+towns and castles, and got thence such wealth as was marvellous, and some of
+them became rich, especially those who had
+made themselves leaders and captains of other
+brigands; there were among them some who
+even had as much as forty thousand crowns.
+Indeed and in truth right marvellous were the
+things they did. When—and this happened
+very frequently—they espied a large town or
+a fine castle, distant a day’s journey or two,
+twenty or thirty brigands would band themselves
+together and travel night or day by
+secret ways, and just as day broke they would
+enter the town or castle they had descried and
+set fire to a house. The townspeople, fearing
+that an army of a thousand warriors had come
+to burn their town, escaped each as best he
+might, and the brigands sacked houses, coffers,
+and libraries, seizing whatsoever they could
+find and departing laden with booty.”</p>
+
+<p>In spite of such horrors no profession was
+more lucrative or held in greater honour in the
+fourteenth century than that of the brigand.
+Even royalty, whose duty it was to protect the
+peasants, showed itself eager to make advances
+to the brigands and to reward their strange
+exploits. Philip of Valois proposed to Croquart,
+the famous chief of the brigands settled
+in Brittany, to knight him, marry him well,
+and pay him an annual income of two thousand
+pounds, if he would place himself at his disposal. This same king, hearing
+of the extraordinary cleverness by which one Bacon, a brigand who harassed
+Languedoc, had surprised the castle of Chambon in the Limousin, wished to
+keep by his side so daring and crafty a captain; so he made him his sergeant-at-arms
+and loaded him with honours. Too often the kings did not even
+attempt to protect the unhappy victims of the brigands. On the contrary
+they helped to complete the ruin of the peasants by authorising the abuse of
+<i>le droit de prise</i> (the right of seizure), and above all by arbitrarily raising or
+lowering the money standard, according to whether the question was one
+of levying taxes or of paying debts.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6h"><a href="#endnote_6h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE DAUPHIN REPUDIATES THE <i>GRANDE ORDONNANCE</i> (1358 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1358-1360 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Under such existing conditions the dauphin believed himself powerful
+enough to declare that he would no longer tolerate trustees. February
+8th, 1358, he revoked the <i>grande ordonnance</i>, and thus destroyed the popular
+government. This was a complete rupture with the states-general and the
+resumption of absolute power by the crown.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p>
+
+<p>Against the dauphin the people called Charles of Navarre, who was
+dragged from his prison. This ambitious prince, skilful and eloquent,
+became the orator of the market-places, promising to defend the country
+and letting it be understood that he was not without some claim to the
+throne of France. The dauphin hoped to balance this new kind of influence
+with the same means. He went to the Pré-aux-Clercs; and Paris, as if by
+a magical transformation, suddenly beheld herself in the midst of the Middle
+Ages adorned with two forums. But the dauphin lost again, by his unfortunate
+alteration in the coinage, the sole means indeed of raising money
+without calling the states-general together. Marcel had armed the bourgeoisie
+at once and given them, as a rallying sign, caps part red and part
+blue. At the head of a company of this militia he made his way into the
+dauphin’s palace, and had the marshals of Champagne and Normandy, the two
+principal officials, put to death; with his own hand he placed the red and
+blue cap upon the prince’s head as a pledge of security and said to him, as
+the two bodies were thrown to the crowd, “I demand that you sanction the
+deaths of these traitors, for it is by the will of the people that this has been
+done”—of a small portion of the people, it might be added—the Parisian
+bourgeoisie (1358).</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the further they went the more the revolution they undertook
+lost its general character. The provincial deputies separated from their
+constituents lost their enthusiasm, while the commune of Paris, never away
+from their own hearths, remained numerous, ardent, and popular. The states-general,
+jealous of the commune’s influence, permitted itself in part to be
+removed to Compiègne by the dauphin. The nobles gathered about the prince.
+He had seven thousand lances with whom he lived freely on the country
+between the Seine and the Marne, ravaging the whole land as far as Paris,
+which was suffering from famine. This maddened the peasantry of the
+Beauvoisis, of Brie, of Valois, Laon, and Soissons.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6f2"><a href="#endnote_6f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE <i>JACQUERIE</i> (1358 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>It is quite unnecessary to lay stress upon the sufferings of the villeins
+here. The days were no more, as we have seen, when the lords of the
+manor, although they considered themselves of different clay from their serfs,
+defended them at the peril of their lives. Of the feudal institutions,
+nothing remained but the oppression. Ruined by the love of luxury, by
+gambling, by debauchery, by the necessity of paying a heavy ransom—preferring
+to run into debt rather than to impose privations upon themselves,
+and to wrest from those around them by means of blows, imprisonment, or
+the pillory the miserable savings they had laid by for bad times rather than
+to pay their debts, which would have prevented their contracting new ones—they
+used and abused the right to command so far as to make all testaments,
+all marrying, on their estates, dependent on their express permission.
+They even scoffed at their victims, giving them the name of “Jacques Bonhomme”
+in derision, on account of their awkwardness in carrying weapons,
+and of their patience in enduring all things. “Save a villain from hanging,
+he’ll cut your throat; show a villain the steel, and he kneels,” says a proverb
+of these times (<i>Oignez vilain, il vous poindra: poignez vilain, il vous oindra</i>).</p>
+
+<p>To these permanent, and in some respects regular evils, aggravated still
+more by the caprices, the exactions of the kings, or at least, of their officers,
+were added, to render them more intolerable, the accidental evils of life
+and war. A series of bad years had brought famine and the plague. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>Navarrese of Philip of Longueville, the brigands of James Pipes, and other
+generals devastated all that the English had spared, and that a few only too
+uncommon inhabitants had not allowed to lie fallow. The Navarrese, the
+brigands, and the English inspired them with such terror that the unhappy
+villeins would leave their dwellings and fields, spend the nights on the
+islands or in boats moored in the middle of the river, and place one of their
+number in the church belfry in order that he might ring the tocsin, while
+they hid themselves in the bowels of the earth, in those subterranean places
+which were still to be found in the eighteenth century, along the Somme,
+from Péronne to its mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the hardships which nature and warfare imposed upon those living
+in country places made them more sensitive to those which their masters, if
+better advised or more humane, might have spared them. Their original
+devotedness had disappeared, as had their protection, of which they were no
+longer the object, and given place to muttered imprecations, to a vague and
+far-away desire to shake off the yoke. The hatred increased every day, but
+it still resembled a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. In order that it
+should burst forth, change into violence and activity, it was only necessary
+that a new exigency, a lesser one perhaps than many others to which they
+were subject, but more startling to their simple good sense, should arise in
+some wise to place the weapons in their hands. The occasion for movement
+was the fifth article of the ordinance, issued at Compiègne, which enjoined
+all those whom it might concern to put the strongholds in a state of defence
+at their own cost and expense. They whom it concerned were the unfortunate
+peasants, who were thus forced to pay for out of their savings, and
+to rebuild with their own hands, those citadels which when restored would
+make the oppression more intolerable than ever. This it is that caused
+a contemporary to say that the rebellion began with a protest against
+injustice.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6i"><a href="#endnote_6i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>About a hundred of the peasants met at Clermont first, and raised the
+cry of “Death to gentlemen!” They elected a leader, called William Karl,
+or Callet, and rushed to the attack and destruction of the houses of the
+nobles. These hundreds soon swelled to thousands, and there was no excess
+of which they were not guilty: they slew the nobles themselves, with their
+wives and children, first treating the women with every indignity, their
+avowed purpose being to extinguish the race. They roasted a noble before
+the eyes of his family, and sought to make its members eat the flesh of
+the victim. Saracen or Christian, says Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g3"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> never committed such
+iniquities.</p>
+
+<p>There remains a doubt as to how far the townsfolk may have excited
+their rustic brethren to this revolt; but it does not appear that any
+great town made common cause with them. They were repulsed from
+Compiègne, though they entered Senlis. Marcel endeavoured to make use
+of the Jacques in humbling the noblesse and destroying their strongholds,
+without the infamy of outraging women and slaying children. But whilst
+Marcel was politic enough to make this attempt, the king of Navarre could
+not but sympathise with the noblesse, and fly to their aid. The Jacques,
+knowing his liberal reputation, were inclined to negotiate with him, which
+enabled the king of Navarre to entice the chief and some of his officers to
+parley. While thus engaged, they were surprised, bound, and decapitated.
+This is not the last instance of a magnate betraying those who trusted, and
+massacring those who could have best supported him. Charles afterwards
+attacked the army of Jacques, and slew three thousand of them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span></p>
+
+<p>The regent, after holding the estates of Champagne and Vermandois, and
+procuring their adhesion, took his principal military post at Meaux in order
+to straiten Paris. To this place not only did his troops repair, but the ladies
+of the court—the duchesses of Normandy and Orleans, as well as the wives of
+the noblesse—betook themselves to Meaux as to a place of safety. The
+market of this town, surrounded by walls and by water, had been rendered
+a fortress by the regent. The Jacques attacked the town, in concert with a
+few Parisians, and easily made themselves masters of all save the market.
+The count of Foix, and the captal De Buch, Gascon nobles, were returning
+from a campaign with the Teutonic knights of Prussia against the pagans,
+when they heard of the peril of the noble ladies at Meaux. Though the
+captal was a subject of King Edward, he nevertheless flew with De Foix to
+the rescue of the three hundred ladies menaced by the Jacques; and these
+were routed and driven into the Maine with great slaughter. The victors
+of Meaux then attacked Senlis; there the citizens and Jacques fought
+together, and made a most obstinate resistance. But the nobles, reinforced
+by knights and nobles from Brabant, Hainault, and the Gascon hordes,
+annihilated the peasantry, notwithstanding their numbers; and the insurrection
+of the Jacques was drowned in blood.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6j1"><a href="#endnote_6j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>DEATH OF MARCEL</h3>
+
+<p>The effects of the <i>Jacquerie</i> reached Marcel; discord appeared in the
+commune. Obliged to seek outside help, the provost of the merchants
+called upon the king of Navarre and agreed to prepare the way for
+him to the throne of France. On the night of July 31st, 1358, as Marcel
+was changing the guard at the Porte St. Denis through which Charles of
+Navarre was to enter, he was massacred, together with those who were with
+him, by the alderman, John Maillart, who had discovered the plot.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> The
+dauphin returned to Paris with an army and had Marcel’s chief companions
+decapitated or exiled.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6f3"><a href="#endnote_6f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to dwell upon the memorable part played by Étienne
+Marcel and the municipality of Paris in the political and social crisis which
+followed the disaster of Poitiers and the captivity of King John. In the
+middle of this fourteenth century, so uncivilised and sombre, a man appeared
+who, by wonderful instinct, laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the
+adoption of the essential principles on which modern society is founded;
+that is, the government of the country by elected representatives, taxes
+voted by the representatives of the taxpayers, the abolition of privileges
+founded upon right of birth, the extension of political rights to all citizens,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>and the subordination of traditional sovereignty to that external sovereign
+known as the nation. Marcel was that man.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless there are blots in Marcel’s life. His siding with the Jacques
+is to be reproached against him as well as his friendship with the king
+of Navarre, “the third aspirant in the midst of the rival ambitions of France
+and England.” But it was a question of putting down an absolute, unlimited
+power. If the aim is the entire remodelling of the organisation of
+society, when the end in view is the high ambition of snatching the
+direction of public affairs from the hands of an entire class, history shows
+that such objects have never been reached without bloodshed. When, four
+centuries later, the substitution of a representative government for a monarchy
+founded upon divine right caused so many heads to fall and entailed so
+much agony, is it to be wondered at that the revolution undertaken by Marcel
+should follow the same course and suffer the same fate? After all, if the
+bold provost shed the blood of his adversaries, he was playing a losing game,
+and staking his own life against the dominion of the nobility. Which is the
+more illustrious victim, the marshal or himself? Which executioner should
+be blamed? Marcel failed apparently, because the time was not yet ripe;
+he had, by a great bound into the future, put himself ahead of his epoch.
+But he threw an external lustre over the provosts of Paris, and as an eminent
+historian said, when he demanded that statues should be raised in memory
+of Marcel, “he is the greatest personage of the fourteenth century.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6k"><a href="#endnote_6k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PEACE NEGOTIATIONS; EDWARD IN FRANCE (1359 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The dauphin had returned to Paris, but the state of the kingdom seemed
+desperate. People, however, spoke of peace. Weary of the sumptuous
+hospitality he had received at Windsor, John had treated with the king of
+England. He had abandoned to him the shores of the Channel, that is to
+say Calais, Montreuil, Boulogne, Ponthieu, and Normandy; the whole of
+Aquitaine, which included Gascony, Bordelais, Agénois, Quercy, Périgord,
+the Limousin, Poitou, Saintonge, and Aunis; also Touraine and Anjou;
+and besides this four million gold crowns for the king’s personal ransom.
+It was the greatest and best part of France, including the entrances to all
+the rivers. When the treaty was brought to Paris the dauphin refused to
+execute it, and to strengthen himself for the contest with his father called,
+at Paris on the 19th of May, 1359, the semblance of an assembly of the three
+orders, which rejected the shameful terms and added that King John must
+stay in England until it pleased God to show him the way out.</p>
+
+<p>Five months after, October 28th, 1359, Edward landed at Calais with his
+four sons, the most powerful lords of his kingdom, six thousand coats of
+iron armour, six thousand carts loaded with ammunition, ovens, mills, forges,
+tents—everything necessary to live comfortably, even to falcons and hunting-packs,
+and skiffs of rough hides for fishing. “There was such a multitude
+of armed men that all the country was covered, and so richly armed
+and bedecked that it was a marvel and great joy to see their shining armour,
+waving banners, and arranged contests. And again there were five hundred
+pages with shovels and picks who went before the wagons and opened the way
+and cut the thorns and the bushes to make the transport easier.”</p>
+
+<p>The weather did not favour the expedition, for it rained incessantly.
+On the 30th of November, the English arrived before Rheims. John de
+Craon the archbishop shut the gates upon them and valiantly repulsed all
+their attacks. Edward had announced a long time before that he wished to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>be crowned there. He passed some weeks before its walls, unable to take it
+by storm, but hoping each day that he would be attacked and win a great battle
+as Crécy and Poitiers. Finally, nobody appearing, he turned back, going
+leisurely across country to Châlons, Bar-le-Duc, Troyes, and Tonnerre; the
+duke of Burgundy obtained from the pillage some two hundred thousand
+gold crowns. Then Edward marched straight towards Paris, and established
+himself about two leagues from the town
+at Bourg-la-Reine. The English heralds
+approached to offer battle to the dauphin,
+who refused it. A knight of the enemy,
+Sir Walter Manny, advanced to the very
+ramparts, seeking for single combat, but
+Charles expressly forbade his warriors to
+go outside the barriers. He wanted none
+of this war as the nobles were conducting
+it at present.</p>
+
+<p>And so the citizens shut up in their
+towns and the nobles in their castles let
+pass the storm which could not reach them
+behind their walls. Everything fell upon
+the peasants, who dared not even defend
+themselves. But misery finally gave them
+courage and despair brought them strength.
+They came to dare to look in the face the
+iron-sheathed men before whom they used
+to tremble, and at several points the foreign
+aggressor began to meet with local popular
+resistance, more dangerous for him than the
+great battles of the feudal princes. Edward
+himself wearied of this inert but invincible
+resistance. It was said that the English
+king and his followers making their way,
+weary and discouraged across the plains of
+Beauce, encountered a terrific storm which seemed a warning from heaven,
+and that the king made a vow before Notre Dame de Chartres, to do all he
+could to re-establish peace between the two nations. The king’s heart had
+not been turned suddenly by the storm; it was the fatigues of a war that
+was bringing no glory, for there were no battles and no booty, because everything
+had been captured or hidden in the fortresses.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Story of Le Grand Ferré</i></h4>
+
+<p>One of the most curious incidents of this popular resistance is thus
+described by a chronicler of the age, the continuator of Nangis, in language
+not without charm in spite of many Latin barbarisms.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6l1"><a href="#endnote_6l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p139.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Page, Fourteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was one strong enough place, in a little Longueil village, close to
+Compiègne. The inhabitants, seeing they would be in great peril if the
+enemy should take possession of it, demanded of their ruling lord, and of
+the abbé of St. Corneille whose serfs they were, permission to fortify their
+village. After having obtained this, they collected provisions and arms,
+chose for captain a fine strong man named Guillaume des Alouettes from
+among themselves, and swore to defend their town with their last breath.
+When this was done and became known, many hastened from neighbouring
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>villages for protection. The captain had for servant a man as brave as
+he was tall and strong, known as “Le Grand Ferré” (<i>Magnus Ferratus</i>).
+In spite of his huge size and strength Le Grand Ferré had a very poor
+opinion of himself, and the captain could do with him what he liked.</p>
+
+<p>There were about two hundred of them, all labourers and accustomed to
+gain a scanty livelihood with their hands. The English, who occupied a
+strong position near Creil, on learning of these preparations for defence,
+were filled with scorn for such wretched people. “Let us drive the villagers
+out,” they said, “the place is good and strong and we will occupy it.” And
+they prepared to do as they said. Two hundred English marched thither.
+Watch was not well kept; even the gates were open, and the enemy entered
+boisterously. At the noise they made those in the houses rushed to the
+windows, and seeing so many armed men were overcome by fright. The
+captain finally appeared with some of his men, and began to strike the English
+bravely, but was soon surrounded and mortally wounded. At this misfortune
+the others including Le Grand Ferré said among themselves, “Let
+us go down and sell our lives dearly, for we may expect no mercy.” So they
+collected together and suddenly appearing from different directions threw
+themselves with redoubled blows upon the English; they struck as if threshing
+wheat on the barn floor. Arms were raised and lowered and at each
+blow an Englishman fell.</p>
+
+<p>When Le Grand Ferré reached the side of his dying captain, his grief
+overcame him and he threw himself furiously upon the enemy. As he was
+head and shoulders above his companions they could see him wielding his axe,
+striking and redoubling his blows, none of which missed a victim. Helmets
+were broken, skulls split, and arms cut off. In a short time there was a
+clear space around him, for he had killed eighteen and wounded many more.
+His encouraged comrades did marvels, and the English quit the affair and
+took to flight. Some jumped into the moat and were drowned, others flung
+themselves against the gates; but blows rained upon them thick and fast.
+Le Grand Ferré, reaching the middle of the street where the enemy had
+planted its standard, killed the bearer, and seizing the flag told one of his
+own men to go and throw it into the moat. The man however pointed with
+terror to the still thick mass of English. “Follow me,” called out Le Grand
+Ferré, and seizing his great axe in both hands he struck right and left, till
+he made a path to the moat where the others threw the enemy’s ensign into
+the mud. Le Grand Ferré stopped a moment for breath, but returned at
+once to what remained of the English. Only a very few of those who came
+to perform this deed escaped, thanks to God and Le Grand Ferré, who killed
+that day more than forty of them.</p>
+
+<p>The English were very angry and disturbed to see so many of their
+brave soldiers perish at the hands of these peasants. The next day they
+returned in greater numbers, but the people of Longueil no longer feared
+them. They went forth to meet the enemy, Le Grand Ferré at their head.
+And when the enemy saw him and felt the weight of his arm and his iron
+axe, they wished they had never come that way. They could not get back
+so fast that many were not mortally wounded, killed, or taken prisoners, and
+among these were some men of high lineage. If the folk of Longueil had
+consented to ransom them as the nobles do among themselves, they would
+have been very rich. But they would not hear of this and killed their
+captives, saying that in this way the enemy would do no more harm.</p>
+
+<p>In this last struggle the fighting was very hard and Le Grand Ferré
+became much exhausted. He drank quantities of cold water and was almost
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>immediately seized with a fever. He managed to get back to the village to
+his cottage and went to bed, but keeping close to him his good axe, an iron
+axe so heavy that a man of ordinary strength could scarcely lift it from the
+ground with both hands. The English learned with joy that Le Grand
+Ferré was ill, and without giving him time to recover despatched twelve
+soldiers with orders to kill him. His wife saw them from afar and cried to
+him, “Oh, my poor Ferré, here come the English, what will you do?”
+He forgot his illness, and got up quietly. Taking his heavy axe he strode
+into his yard. When they entered, “Ah, brigands,” he cried, “you come
+to take me in my bed, but you don’t know me.” He placed his back to the
+wall so as not to be surrounded, and swinging his axe brought his assailants
+face to face with death. Of the twelve he killed five and put the rest to
+flight. Le Grand Ferré returned to his bed, but he had again overheated himself
+in dealing so many blows and drank more cold water. The violence of
+the fever redoubled, and a few days later, having received the sacraments, he
+passed away. Le Grand Ferré was buried in the village cemetery. All his
+companions, the whole countryside in fact, mourned his loss; for with him
+alive the English would never have dared approach.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6d1"><a href="#endnote_6d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One feels, in the wealth of detail into which the chronicler enters, the
+sympathy of the old monk for the poor peasants. In the depths of the
+monasteries were narrated their valiant deeds against the pillagers of
+churches; these are told much more frequently in village companies. The
+tales spread slowly but went far. Little by little the foundations of hatred
+for the foreigner were laid in the hearts of the people, and a love of country
+whose fiercest outburst is found in Joan of Arc.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY (1360 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The dauphin was still more anxious to send the English home because
+“France was in its last throes, and for so little as its woes might last it
+might perish.” A conference was opened at Bretigny, near Chartres, the
+1st of May, 1360. The English negotiators demanded in the first place the
+whole crown of France; then they limited themselves to what had belonged
+to the Plantagenets; finally Edward III contented himself with the duchy
+of Aquitaine and all its dependencies (Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis,
+Agénois, Périgord, the Limousin, Quercy, Rouergue, and Angoumois),
+ceded in independent sovereignty, and Calais with the counties of Ponthieu
+and Guines, also the viscounty of Montreuil. Thus ended the first period of
+the Hundred Years’ War. The king’s ransom was fixed at three million
+gold crowns;<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> in guarantee for which sum John had to leave in Edward’s
+hands a certain number of hostages taken from the highest nobles and richest
+bourgeoisie of the land. Edward carried them with him across Normandy,
+which he harassed once more, in order to embark at Honfleur, the Havre
+of that day. The provinces promised to the king of England were given
+up, despite the protests against this pretended restitution by the great
+majority who said, with the inhabitants of La Rochelle, “We will acknowledge
+the English with our lips, but never with our hearts.” For a whole
+year they refused to open their gates to the English.</p>
+
+<p>At Abbeville things went still better. When the patriotic citizens
+saw in their streets the soldiers who for fifteen years had trampled France
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>under foot, they were unable to restrain themselves; secret meetings were
+held; then a riot broke out which was quickly suppressed, but not before a
+rich citizen, Ringois, was captured. The English commandant used, however,
+moderation and offered Ringois his liberty on sole condition that he
+would take the oath of allegiance to Edward III. Ringois refused. They
+took him to Dover, threatening him this time with death if he were obstinate,
+but he persisted. They brought him even to the platform of the
+fortress and showed him the furthermost parapet with the sea beating furiously
+at its feet; if he said one word he would be saved. He still refused
+and the guard threw him off.</p>
+
+<p>There still remained to find the money for the first payment of the
+ransom, and it was obtained by a shameful expedient. “The king of
+France,” says Matteo Villani<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6q"><a href="#endnote_6q">q</a></span> the historian, “sold his flesh and blood.” For
+600,000 florins he bestowed his daughter Isabella, then only eleven years of
+age, on Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the son of the fiercest tyrant in Italy, who
+hunted men in the streets of his capital and threw them living into the
+flames. Thanks to this money the king left Calais on the 25th of October,
+1360.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST YEARS OF KING JOHN (1360-1364 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1360-1364 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The 5th of December following we find an ordinance by which John
+announces, in spite of the great compassion he has for his people, the levy
+of a new tax on all merchandise sold or exported, on salt and on wine, in
+return for which he promises henceforth good and loyal justice to all, to put
+nothing but undebased coin into circulation, and to abolish the right of
+seizure and other abuses that fell so heavily upon the poor people. These
+promises did not deceive any more than the taxes profited them. What
+could be produced in a country ceaselessly ravaged by large forces and
+desolated by frequent appearances of the black death? It became necessary
+to fall back on other resources—loans, the revocation of all donations made
+by kings since Philip the Fair, and giving the Jews considerable privileges
+in matters of finance. With the money thus procured what did the king
+do? Did he use it to break up those bands of brigands, marauders, and
+<i>tard venues</i> that had just (1362) captured and killed the constable James
+de Bourbon at Brignais near Lyons? He made little journeys at great
+expense, travelling from town to town to take possession of the rich heritage
+of the Capetian house of Burgundy, which the death of Philip de Rouvre
+had recently placed in his hands. From there he journeyed down to
+Avignon where he spent six months in feasting, and planning a marriage
+with the famous queen Joanna of Naples. The pope, who had already been
+twice ransomed from the great companies, made John a proposition capable
+of appealing to his adventurous imagination—to form all these warrior
+bands into a crusade, which would rid France of them, and at the same time
+win glory for himself. It is not impossible that John would have embarked
+on this rash enterprise had he not learned that one of his sons, the duke of
+Anjou, had escaped from the English, by whom he was held in hostage.
+John felt for his son to do a thing like this was a slight on royal honour,
+and resolved to go himself to replace the fugitive. He thus escaped in a
+chivalrous manner from his embarrassing position and the sight of France’s
+misery. A part of the winter was spent in London, “in great rejoicings
+and recreations,” says Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g4"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> “in dinners, suppers, and other fashions.”
+These fêtes and great repasts killed him; he died in London, April 8th,
+1364, at the age of forty-four.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6l2"><a href="#endnote_6l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span></p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1361 the young duke Philip de Rouvre of Burgundy
+expired, leaving no issue; his marriage with the young heiress of Flanders
+not having been consummated. The duke possessed not only Burgundy,
+but Franche-Comté, Champagne, Artois, and Boulogne. An ancestor of
+Duke Philip had three daughters, to whom the succession now reverted. The
+eldest had been Marguerite, the unfortunate queen of Louis Hutin, whose
+daughter, married to the king of Navarre, had conveyed to the representative
+of that family the best right to the Burgundian succession. King John,
+descended from the second sister, would admit no right to the king of
+Navarre, nor yet to the count of Bar, descended from the third sister. He
+pleaded that he was nearer of kin than Charles of Navarre to the duke
+just deceased; and thus made use of the same claim to Burgundy that
+Edward III had done to France. John hastened to Dijon and installed
+himself there as duke, taking a solemn oath to respect all the privileges and
+rights of the duchy. Artois and Franche-Comté returned to the duchess-dowager
+of Flanders. John had no intention of uniting Burgundy to the
+crown, which he well knew would displease the Burgundians, accustomed
+from time immemorial to their native dukes and provincial independence.
+He therefore, in 1363, gave the duchy of Burgundy to his youngest son, Philip,
+who had been constantly by his side during the battle of Poitiers and his subsequent
+captivity. King John, indeed, assigned this reason for the gift. It
+was fully acquiesced in by John’s successor; and thus was founded that brilliant
+house of the dukes of Burgundy of the second race, which reigned from
+the Schelde to the Alps, and overshadowed and endangered the monarchy of
+France itself.<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6j2"><a href="#endnote_6j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CHARLES THE WISE (1364-1380 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Charles V was seven-and-twenty when he began to reign, and if he had
+followed the example of his father, he would have played the part of feudal
+king and fighting cavalier, as that for which he was ordained. But the young
+monarch saw that France had need of other defenders than feudal kings and
+fighting cavaliers. It needed a clear eye and a steady hand—a man at the
+helm, not a gilt figure at the prow; for never was there a time when
+the vessel of the state seemed in such danger. There was a whole people
+to feed and satisfy—rebellious vassals to reclaim—an open foe to guard
+against—riotous bands in the very heart of the kingdom to be discomfited;
+and for all this he had an empty treasury, a discontented parliament, ambitious
+communes, and a disunited nobility. But the French heart of courage and
+chivalrous spirit of loyalty was still entire.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p144.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Charles V</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charles was weak in body, and over him hung the sentence of death
+passed on him by the physicians in his youth. Charles the Bad, it was said,
+in return for his arrest at Rouen, had poisoned the dauphin’s food.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> The
+prince escaped destruction by the opening of a perpetual wound in his left
+arm. “Whenever the sore heals over,” the doctors said, “the dauphin must
+die.” This issue was probably only a sign of a feeble constitution, but it
+silenced the sneers of his enemies, who were not accustomed to see a king
+except in armour; it doubled the respect of the few discerning potentates of
+the time, who began to perceive that a cabinet might be quite as great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>a scene of glory as a field of battle. Edward III said he was never so
+resisted in open fight, as by the calm, sagacious councillor who had never
+drawn a sword. Before the first year was over all men perceived that things
+were greatly changed. There were no tournaments at the Louvre—no feasts
+at the palace. The king lived like an anchorite, except on state occasions,
+when he outshone the magnificence of oriental princes; and paid his men-at-arms
+their wages, and granted privileges to the trading towns, and did not
+increase a single tax! People must have grown ashamed of sustaining the
+cause of Charles the Bad against so
+true a Frenchman and gracious a king
+as Charles the Wise; yet the war continued.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6n1"><a href="#endnote_6n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charles V at first made use of the
+help of his brothers, committing to
+their hands the provinces most remote
+from the centre, Languedoc to the duke
+of Anjou, and Burgundy to Philip the
+Bold. He himself attended only to
+the centre; but he needed an arm—a sword.
+There was then hardly
+any military spirit except among the
+Bretons and the Gascons. The king
+attached to him a brave Breton of
+Dinan, the sieur Du Guesclin, whom he
+had himself seen at the siege of Melun,
+and who had been fighting for France
+for some years.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6e3"><a href="#endnote_6e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Early Exploits of Bertrand du Guesclin</i></h4>
+
+<p>The childhood of Bertrand du Guesclin
+offers some striking peculiarities.
+His ugliness, his deformity, and his
+rough, wild bearing had won for him
+the dislike of his family; the harsh treatment he endured only served to
+embitter his character. Armed with a stick, which he invariably carried,
+young Bertrand was a great trouble to his mother, and the terror of all the
+children in the neighbourhood. He could not be taught to read. “He
+knew nothing of letters,” says a chronicle, “and no masters could ever be
+found from whom he was willing to learn; but he always wanted to strike
+and beat them.”</p>
+
+<p>One fine day, being then about sixteen or seventeen years of age, Bertrand
+escaped from his father’s house, which to his youthful ardour felt like
+a prison, and went off in triumph to Rennes to wrestle with a young
+Breton, already made proud by having overcome twelve adversaries; and
+soon afterwards Rennes beheld him again victorious in a solemn tournament,
+and from that time everyone who knew him, even his parents, understood
+that Bertrand had a great future before him. The war between Charles of
+Blois and John de Montfort, the two claimants of the duchy of Brittany,
+afforded Bertrand a favourable opportunity for distinguishing himself; he
+took the side of Charles of Blois, whose cause appeared to him more French
+than that of his rival, and the walls of Vannes, Fougeray, and Rennes were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>in turns witnesses of his extraordinary valour. Charles of Blois, to show
+his gratitude, presented him with the valuable domain of La Roche d’Airien
+or De Rien. In 1359 Bertrand compelled the duke of Lancaster to raise
+the siege of Dinan. His battle-cry was, “Notre Dame, Guesclin. Guesclin!”
+When in battle, this name rang in the ears of the English; it had
+the effect of a clap of thunder, and even the bravest trembled before such
+an enemy. The most careful and complete investigations have not enabled
+the learned to state the precise date
+when Bertrand entered the service
+of the king of France; it is not certain
+whether it was to King John
+or to the dauphin that he first offered
+the support of his valour.
+But at least we know that in 1361
+he was already in the royal pay, and
+that he was in command of a company
+of men-at-arms and archers;
+this fact is proved by a discharge
+signed at Paris by Du Guesclin,
+and preserved amongst the registers
+of the court of exchequer.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p145.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Bertrand du Geusclin</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Some authors say that the governorship
+of Pontorson was given
+to Du Guesclin as a mark of special
+favour. Whilst fighting for the
+glory of the lilies of France, the Breton
+warrior by no means forgot the
+interests of Charles of Blois, his
+natural sovereign; thus, after driving
+the English out of Normandy,
+he marched to the siege of Bécherel
+and routed De Montfort’s troops.
+It must have been about this time
+that his marriage took place with
+Tiphaine or Thiéphaine Raguenel, a rich heiress who, if we are to believe the
+traditions of the fourteenth century, foretold future events. The date of
+this marriage is one of the points of uncertainty in the history of Bertrand.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6o1"><a href="#endnote_6o">o</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The new king’s first care was to recover the mastery of the course of
+the Seine. Mantes and Meulan belonged to the king of Navarre; Boucicault
+and Du Guesclin got possession of them by an act of signal perfidy.
+The two towns had paid the penalty of all the mischief the Navarrese had done
+to the Parisians. The citizens had the satisfaction of seeing twenty-eight
+of them hanged in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The Navarrese, reinforced by English and Gascons under the captal
+De Buch, desired to avenge themselves, and do something to hinder the
+king from going to Rheims. Du Guesclin soon advanced with a considerable
+body, of French, Bretons, and also Gascons. The captal retreated
+towards Évreux, and halted at Cocherel, on an eminence; but Du Guesclin
+had the address to deprive him of the advantage of the ground. He
+sounded a retreat and made a feint of running away. The captal could
+not hinder his Englishmen from descending to pursue; they were too proud
+to hearken to a Gascon general, though a great lord and of the house of
+Foix. He was, therefore, constrained to obey his soldiers and accompany
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>them into the plain. Thereupon Du Guesclin wheeled round. The Gascons
+whom he had with him appointed thirty of their number to carry off
+the captal from the midst of his men. The other Navarrese leaders were
+killed and the battle was won. Won on the 16th of May (1364), it was
+known at Rheims on the 18th, the coronation day—a fine omen for the new
+royalty. Charles V gave Du Guesclin such a reward as never king before
+him had bestowed: an establishment on the footing of a prince, the county
+of Longueville, the patrimony of the king of Navarre’s brother. At the
+same time he beheaded the sire de Saquenville, one of the chief advisers of
+the Navarrese. He dealt no better with the French who were found in the
+ranks of the companies. Men began to bethink them that brigandage was
+a crime.</p>
+
+<h4><i>End of the Breton War: Battle of Auray (1364 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The war in Brittany ended in the same year. The king of France lent
+Charles of Blois Du Guesclin and one thousand lances. The prince of Wales
+sent De Montfort John Chandos,—the only rival in Europe to the
+fame of Du Guesclin as general and knight,—two hundred lances, and as
+many archers; and with these were joined several English knights. Montfort
+and the English were posted on a height, like the prince of Wales at
+Poitiers. Charles of Blois did not care for that. That devout prince, who
+believed in miracles, and who himself performed them, had refused at the
+siege of Quimper to retreat before a flood. “If it is God’s will,” he said,
+“the tide will do us no harm.” He made no more account of the mountain
+at Auray than of the flood at Quimper. Charles of Blois had the greater
+strength; many Bretons, even, of La Bretagne-Bretonnante joined him,
+out of hatred doubtless to the English. Du Guesclin disposed the army in
+an admirable manner. “Each man-at-arms,” says Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g5"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> “carried his
+lance straight before him, projecting five feet, and had a small, hard, and
+well-sharpened axe, with a small handle. And thus they advanced in most
+handsome array. They rode so close that you could not have thrown a
+tennis ball among them, but it would have fallen on the points of the lances.”
+John Chandos gazed long on the French order of battle, “the which he
+praised mightily within himself.” He could not conceal his sentiments, but
+said, “So help me God as it is true that there is here flower of chivalry,
+great sense, and good arrangement.” Chandos had set apart a reserve to
+support each corps that wavered. It was not without difficulty he prevailed
+on one of his knights to remain in the rear and command that reserve;
+prayers, and almost tears were necessary to overcome the feudal prejudice
+that made the front rank be regarded as the only post of honour. Du Guesclin
+could not have effected the same thing in the other army.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1364-1366 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The two adverse claimants fought at the head of their respective forces.
+The Bretons were weary of this war, and wished to see it ended by the
+death of the one or the other. Chandos’ reserve gave him the advantage
+over Du Guesclin, who was unhorsed and taken prisoner. The whole brunt
+of the battle then fell on Charles of Blois; his banner was pulled down and
+himself slain. The greatest lords of Brittany obstinately held out, and
+were likewise slain (September 29th, 1364). When the English came,
+with great exultation, and showed De Montfort his enemy whom they had
+killed, the voice of French blood, or perhaps of kindred, awoke within him,
+and tears started from his eyes. A haircloth was found under the dead
+man’s cuirass. His piety and his good qualities recurred to memory. He
+had recommenced the war only in deference to his wife, whose patrimony
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>Brittany was. This saint was also a man. He made verses and composed
+<i>lais</i> in the intervals between his battles. He had been a lover, too; a bastard
+of his was killed by his side, endeavouring to avenge him. De Montfort
+got possession of all the strongest places in the country in a few days.
+The children of Charles of Blois were prisoners in England. The king of
+France, who carried no passion into the trade of war, made terms with the
+victor, and induced the widow of Charles of Blois to content herself with
+the county of Penthièvre, the viscounty of Limoges, and an income of
+10,000 livres. The king did wisely. The essential thing was to hinder
+Brittany from doing homage to the English sovereign. There was every
+probability that, sooner or later, it would become weary of the protégé of
+England.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6e4"><a href="#endnote_6e">e</a></span> Peace was concluded on these terms at Guérande in 1365, and
+Du Guesclin was restored to liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Peace also was concluded with Charles of Navarre, who was glad to
+accept the city of Montpellier in exchange for the places he had lost upon
+the Seine, and a period of rest was promised to the distracted land.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Du Guesclin Leads the Free Companies into Castile (1366 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>But the rest was impossible with so many conflicting interests to arrange,
+and such a spirit of unrule diffused by the recent struggles. Charles the Wise
+looked back with fond regret to the time of the Crusades, and meditated an
+exportation of the thousands of armed men of all surrounding countries to
+the East. But the Brabanters, English, and Saxons were very well satisfied
+with their present position, and had no desire to distinguish themselves
+against the enemies of the faith, when they could live so comfortably on the
+fat of abbey-lands, and occasionally put a bishop to ransom at home. The
+example of Montferrat, who had saved the pope at Avignon by leading
+the free lances of the south against the wealth of Milan, occurred also to
+the anxious thoughts of the king; and just at the moment when he was
+in greatest distress, a circumstance occurred in Spain which gave him the
+wished-for opportunity. Pedro, known in general history as the Cruel, but
+recognised in Spanish annals as the Great Justiciar, had offended a great
+proportion of his subjects by his relentless executions and harsh behaviour.
+He had poisoned his wife, a princess of Bourbon, at the instigation of his
+favourite Maria de Padilla, and threatened death to the surviving natural
+children of his father. Of these, Don Henry of Trastamara was the most
+popular and the best; he fled to France, and implored the aid of Charles
+against the murderous husband and unpitying brother. Du Guesclin saw
+the opening. “Sir,” he said, “the free lances are anxious for work, and will
+gather from all parts if I hoist my banner. Better neighbours will they be
+on the other side of the Pyrenees than on this.”</p>
+
+<p>Charles adopted the party of the banished brother, and preparations were
+instantly made. Du Guesclin himself had begun as a leader of free lances,
+and knew their ways. Thirty thousand of them joined him in an incredibly
+short space of time, and he marched southward down the Rhone. The pope
+was as much alarmed as his predecessor had been, and sent out to know the
+object of their approach to Avignon. Bertrand answered with a grim smile,
+“We are thirty thousand poor Christian pilgrims bound on a crusade against
+the Saracens of Granada, and we want the holy father’s absolution, and also
+200,000 livres.” “Touching the absolution, my son,” replied the nuncio,
+“you shall have it without fail; but with regard to the money, that is a different
+thing.” “Sir,” replied the knight, “there be many here who reck not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>of absolution, but many who desire the money, for we make them prudent
+men in spite of themselves.” Their prudence was rewarded with both
+the absolution and coin to the amount of 200,000 livres. They made
+a detour and Avignon was saved. When they reached Toulouse, the object
+of the expedition was for the first time declared to them. Plunder and battle
+was all they required, and a deluge of cruelty, courage, and destructiveness
+poured down on devoted Spain. Pedro was expelled from the throne,
+and fled to Portugal. Henry was crowned at Burgos with Du Guesclin at
+his side, and was joyously received in the other cities of Castile.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1366-1368 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Both nations now seemed ready for repose, and the triumph of having
+restored an exile and created a king was added to the other glories of the
+French monarch. But the Black Prince held his court at Bordeaux.
+Shortly after his marriage, in 1361, he was created duke of Aquitaine and
+had been living in his dominions since 1363. Feasts and tournaments were
+celebrated according to the strictest rules of chivalry, and noble ladies
+listened to the songs of troubadours, and the picturesque narratives of Froissart,
+and the adventures of fabulous warriors, as their predecessors were said
+to have done in the days of Charlemagne and Arthur. Suddenly the
+dethroned and powerless Pedro threw himself at the feet of the master of the
+lists; and half the stories of kingdoms lost and won by the irresistible sword
+of a single champion immediately rushed to their minds. All the blood of
+knighthood was on fire at the insolence of a people who had rebelled against
+their anointed lord, and Edward of Wales, as became a knight and man
+of honour, vowed to restore his suppliant to the throne. Crécy was renewed
+over again in the great field of Navarrete in 1367. Du Guesclin himself fell
+into the enemy’s hands, and all the work of the free lances was utterly
+undone. Pedro was king and justiciary in one, and let loose his royal
+vengeance on all the land. Murders, executions, confiscations threw the
+whole kingdom into despair, and the English bitterly repented of their interference
+in behalf of so unchivalrous, unpitying a tyrant. The dreadful heats
+of the south came to the support of Henry. The English died of fever and
+excess, and discipline became relaxed. The reinstated king declined to pay
+the stipulated rewards; mutiny broke out among the discontented conquerors;
+and in the scorching summer, and amid these disturbances, the health
+of the Black Prince began to fail.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Charles the Wise endeared himself to his subjects by diminishing
+their burdens, by encouraging agriculture, and giving greater influence
+to the parliaments he convoked. The contrast was great and striking.
+Conquest in the field was of no avail against the steady advance of a popularity
+so justly founded and nobly sustained, as now grew on the vanquished
+side. The free lances, who had joined the prince, if not paid by the treasuries
+of Pedro, must be satisfied by the wealth of their employer. Edward
+returned to Bordeaux with barren laurels, and an empty exchequer. He
+laid fresh burdens on his unhappy subjects in Aquitaine, to pay for the
+expenses incurred in Castile, and when the population of that trampled province
+compared their position with that of their neighbours under the crown,
+dissatisfaction took a wider range, and they complained of their rulers, not
+only as oppressors, but as foreigners. The English, indeed, even when the
+languages were the same, never became acclimated in France, and now there
+was added the great distinction of a different tongue; for the Norman portion
+of the English people had now become so small that English at this time
+was declared to be the language of law, as it had long been of religion and
+commerce. Anglo-Saxon bowmen, who never spoke a word of French,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>served in the ranks of the Black Prince, and, of course, offended the nations
+by their brutal contempt for everything they did not understand. The
+prince, therefore, in the midst of failing health and military disappointment,
+perceived that his countrymen were not the masters of the land he claimed,
+but were only forcibly encamped on it.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p149.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight, End of the Fourteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1368-1369 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>From England no help was to be had. The king was old, and had fallen
+into the hands of a designing favourite, Alice Perrers, and her accomplices,
+who ruled him at their will. And nothing
+was wanting to the French monarch in
+these favourable circumstances, but warriors
+who could carry his plans into effect.
+Du Guesclin was a prisoner at Bordeaux,
+and all the wiser spirits in the court advised
+the prince on no account to let so dangerous
+an enemy go. But Edward was made of
+penetrable stuff; and on one occasion when
+they were in familiar conversation, he said,
+if the captive could collect a hundred thousand
+francs, he should be set at large—a
+vast sum in those days; but the sight of
+Du Guesclin, sword in hand, and released
+from bondage, was worth forty times the
+amount to the French king. The money
+was sent at once, and Du Guesclin lost no
+time in showing his arm was as strong and
+his heart as brave as ever. A rapid incursion
+into Spain and the battle of Montiel
+(March 14th, 1369) established Henry of
+Trastamara once more upon the throne, and
+freed him from the rivalry of Pedro, by the
+death of that ferocious tyrant. He was
+stabbed to the heart by his infuriated
+brother, after a personal struggle which
+lasted a long time. Henry was now undisturbed,
+and attributed his prosperity to
+the favour of the French king. He put the
+Castilian navy at the service of France.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Peace of Bretigny is Broken (1368-1369 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Charles was not slow in seeing the advantage of his position. Strengthened
+by the gratitude of his new ally, and the general favour of all his subjects,
+he spoke in a tone of defiance and majesty to the English prince, which
+sounded strange in his ears within twelve years of the battle of Poitiers. He
+summoned the prince of Wales to appear before his court of peers, as one of
+the feudatories of the realm, to answer for high crimes and misdemeanours.
+Edward answered, with much submission, that he would not fail to obey the
+summons, but would bring sixty thousand men along with him—helmet on head
+and spear in rest. Charles knew too well that this was but a vain boast, for
+the warrior was now too feeble to ride, and advanced in the exorbitance of
+his claims. Edward of England took up the game of brag on behalf of his son,
+and retorted from Windsor by reasserting his claim to the French throne, and
+calling himself, in formal documents, king of England and France once more.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>War was openly declared, and Charles summoned his states in Paris
+(May 9th, 1369). Never was meeting so unanimous and so sedately firm.
+Taxes were voted, forces were raised, and defiance was hurled against the
+English both in their island fastness and the lands they usurped in France.
+The court of peers, consulted in its turn, declared that King Edward and
+his, not having appeared in answer to these summons, the duchy of Aquitaine
+and other English holdings in France should be and were confiscated. Every
+village, in imitation of the enemy they had learned to fear, had butts for practice
+of the bow; games of manly exertion were encouraged; freedom was
+extended to the serfs, and the municipal towns were enriched with further
+privileges. Du Guesclin returned from the Spanish triumph, and visited
+the king. The feeling in favour of illustrious birth was then so strong that,
+though Charles had bestowed the highest commands on the Breton soldier,
+they were offices which gave him only a temporary superiority over the forces
+employed, and implied no permanent pre-eminence when peace should be
+restored. But on this occasion a stately assemblage was called. All the
+princes of the blood, nobles of highest rank, chancellors, judges, warriors,
+were assembled in the great hôtel St. Pol, and Charles gave his sword
+to Du Guesclin, and said: “Du Guesclin, take my sword, and use it against
+my enemies. Henceforth you are constable of France.” This was the
+highest dignity a subject could hold, and Bertrand excused himself on account
+of his humble extraction; but Charles persisted, and the Montmorencys,
+and De Coucys, and Courtenays, and Bourbons, thought the sword could
+not be in better wielding, and did obeisance to Sir Bertrand du Guesclin,
+who was now the foremost man in all the land.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6n2"><a href="#endnote_6n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The English Invasion (1369-1370 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1369-1370 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The English immediately landed at Calais, while the Black Prince prepared
+another attack upon the south. A French army marched to meet
+them, but refused to engage them and retreated as they advanced. The
+towns were well fortified, and none was taken; the expedition was confined
+to useless devastation of the surrounding country.</p>
+
+<p>In 1370 they returned and the same programme was repeated. The
+order to refrain from combat was so rigorously observed that at Noyon,
+when one of the enemy’s cavalry climbed the ramparts crying out: “My
+lords, I have come to call on you; since you do not condescend to come
+out of your shell, I will come in!” he was allowed to depart safe and
+sound. Before Rheims, before Paris, the English encountered the same
+stolidity. From his refuge at St. Pol, where he had shut himself up, the
+king could watch the burning of the villages. But the brave Clisson himself
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>“Sire, you have no need to pit your own men against these furies; let
+them wear themselves out. They will not deprive you of your heritage with
+all these rubbish-heaps.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never was a king of France less given to war,” said Edward III; “never
+was one who kept me so busy!” Charles V, in fact, feeble and ailing,
+never held a lance; he was vastly more fond of books. He had the most valuable
+library of the day, 910 volumes carefully guarded behind iron bars
+in a tower of the Louvre. He read the Bible through once every year. He
+corresponded with the pope and sent him presents; and again, to quote
+Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g6"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> “my lord the king piously marched barefoot in the procession,
+and madame the queen also.” So good a friend of the pope, so pious a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>sovereign, merited the alliance of every bishop of the realm; and in fact
+the majority opened to him the gates of their capitals; even those upon
+whom the English most depended, as the bishop of Limoges, comrade of the
+prince of Wales, turned French.</p>
+
+<p>This last act of treachery exasperated the English. The Black Prince
+swore by the soul of his father that he would enter into no other undertaking
+until he had made Limoges and the other traitors pay dearly for their
+treason. Having arrived before the city, he had part of the wall torn down,
+and his soldiers plunged through the breach into the streets. The prince
+had himself carried in in his litter.</p>
+
+<p>“That was a sad scene,” writes Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g7"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span> “where men, women, and
+children flung themselves at his feet, crying, ‘Mercy, gentle prince.’ But he
+was too inflamed with excitement to attend. Their pleading went unheard,
+and all were put to the sword. Never a heart so hard but would have wept
+to have stood in that city of Limoges and witnessed so great slaughter;
+more than three thousand men, women, and children lost their heads that
+day. And may God receive their souls, for martyrs they truly were.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1370-1380 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The English grew somewhat calmer at last through their interest in a
+new spectacle: three French cavaliers, with backs to an old wall, contended
+as if in the lists against the duke of Lancaster and the earls of Cambridge
+and Pembroke. The prince of Wales stopped his chariot near by, the better
+to look on; and he allowed the three cavaliers to be recommended to mercy.
+The bishop, the principal author of the treason, he also spared. This unfortunate
+exploit was the Black Prince’s last adventure; he languished for a
+few years, and returned to die in England (1376).</p>
+
+<p>The English possessed an excellent infantry, archers whose darts pierced
+the best-made cuirasses, and men-at-arms almost worth a regular cavalry by
+their remarkable discipline and their habituation to concerted movement. To
+these Charles could oppose only an immense throng of nobles who, though
+they might be very brave, were also totally undisciplined. The part of wisdom,
+therefore, was to avoid encounter with large bodies; but in the intervals
+between expeditions he allowed his men to indulge in skirmishes. Thus
+Du Guesclin fought at Pont-Valain with Robert Knolles, a redoubtable
+English partisan (1370), and another corps near Chizey in Poitou (1373).
+Chandos had been killed during the first campaign. Another leader of
+great renown, the captal De Buch, was taken in 1372, near Soubise. The
+French were not always beaten back.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the king had his own battles to fight, and his victories are
+inscribed intact in the <i>Recueil des Ordonnances</i>. Under date of 1370 we
+read: “February, 1370, letters according the inhabitants of Rodez the right
+to trade with the entire kingdom free of duty on imports.—March, 1370,
+letters to the effect that the inhabitants of Figeac, now on land declaring
+allegiance to Edward, son of the king of England, will not have their goods
+confiscated if they return to French soil; ordinance setting forth privileges
+accorded the city of Montauban.—April, 1370, ordinance setting forth privileges
+accorded the city of Verfeil.—May, 1370, letters exempting the city
+of Milhaud from imposts during twenty years, and ordinance of privileges
+accorded the city of Tulle.—June, 1370, ordinance containing privileges
+accorded the inhabitants of the county of Tartas, the cities of Dorat and
+Puy-Mirol.—July, 1370, ordinances containing privileges accorded the cities
+of Cahors, Castres, Puy-la-Roque, Sarlat, Montégrier, and Salvetat.”</p>
+
+<p>These were Charles V’s implements of war. Among those cities whose
+doors the royal ordinances failed to open prowled his captains with their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>stratagems of war, cajoling and negotiating. Du Guesclin treated in secret
+with the inhabitants of Poitiers, who like those of many other towns had
+remained French at heart, and they allowed him to enter with three hundred
+lances within their walls (1372). Charles at once granted titles to all those
+who afterwards exercised the functions of mayor or alderman in that city.</p>
+
+<p>Philip Mansel with one hundred English held La Rochelle. One day
+while dining with the mayor, John Caudourier, he received a letter from the
+king of England. The governor, recognising the royal seal, but being in
+his quality of gentleman unable to read, requested his host to read it for
+him. The mayor read out a message composed by himself to the effect that
+on the following day, August 15th, 1372, the citizens and the garrison
+should pass in review before the square. As soon as Mansel had drawn his
+men from the château, a troop placed in ambush by the mayor occupied the
+citadel. Du Guesclin was there with two hundred lances, ready to take
+possession in the name of France. Some weeks previously the Castilian
+fleet had destroyed an English fleet before La Rochelle.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the confident enemy tried again in 1373. Landing at Calais
+with thirty thousand men, the duke of Lancaster set forth to conquer France:
+he only crossed it. The journey was prosperous as long as it lay through the
+rich provinces of the north; but in the poor and meagre central districts
+deprivation and illness were encountered. At Auvergne not a horse
+remained; at Bordeaux only six thousand men were left: the cavaliers as
+well as foot soldiers had to beg their bread from door to door.</p>
+
+<p>The English, disgusted with such warfare, remained away the following
+year; and the year after that they demanded a truce, which lasted up to the
+death of Edward III in 1377. Charles then broke the truce and struck a
+blow. He fitted out five armies and conquered all Guienne, while a Castilian
+fleet manned by French troops ravaged the English counties of Kent
+and Sussex. In 1380 there remained to the enemy only five French towns—Bayonne,
+Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais. At the same time
+Charles the Bad was overwhelmed and saved his Pyrenean kingdom only by
+the ceding of twenty places as a pledge of peace (1379).</p>
+
+<h3>LAST YEARS OF CHARLES V AND OF DU GUESCLIN</h3>
+
+<p>The king of France attempted in Brittany what had served him so well
+in Guienne. June 20th, 1378, he summoned the duke John IV to appear
+before the court of nobles; the duke not appearing, his fief was declared
+forfeit to the crown. The Gascons gave themselves up to France. The
+Bretons would not hear of the alliance. Barons, knights, and esquires
+signed at Rennes, April 26th, 1379, an act of confederation that the citizens
+themselves subscribed.</p>
+
+<p>John IV, although expelled from the country, was recalled. All the
+Bretons in the service of the king—and there was a great number of them—abandoned
+him; even those who had previously promised to second his
+projects turned against him. The old Du Guesclin sent him the constable’s
+sword; and on March 1st, 1380, a treaty of alliance was signed at Westminster
+between England and Brittany. Again an English army landed at
+Calais under the earl of Buckingham, and again it journeyed with impunity
+across the north of France. It had not reached Brittany when Charles V
+died at Vincennes, September 16th, 1380.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6l3"><a href="#endnote_6l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Many things had conduced to weaken the health of the too thoughtful
+king. Dissensions among his brothers renewed in Paris the scenes of falsehood
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>and partisanship which were going on in London. The influence he
+possessed over Europe as long as the pope resided in Avignon was taken
+from him, first by the removal of Gregory XI to Rome; and, in a short time
+after that, the usefulness of the papal chair in his schemes of advancement was
+altogether destroyed by the schism which broke out at the election of the
+next pope.</p>
+
+<p>France accepted the Frenchman, Clement VII, who resided at Avignon
+as his predecessor had done; and half the rest of Christendom, including
+England, adhered to his Italian rival. This is the commencement of the
+great schism which afforded such vantage-ground, not only to the enemies
+of priestcraft but of Christianity itself. Charles felt the blow equally as
+Christian and king. While mourning this unhappy event, his grief was
+increased by the fall of the constable. Bertrand was besieging one of the
+strong castles in Auvergne which was rebellious against the royal authority
+and strengthened with an English garrison. The commander had agreed to
+surrender if not relieved within a certain time. Fever, pain, and anxiety
+laid Du Guesclin low; and when the appointed day came he was lying on
+his bier, and preparations were making to carry him to the grave. The
+governor, true to his word, hauled down the flag of independence, and
+marched out with all his men, head bare and sword drawn, and laid the keys
+of the fortress on the hero’s coffin. So died the best soldier and truest gentleman
+of France. His last words to his comrades who bent over his couch were
+these: “Remember that whenever you are at war, the churchmen, the women,
+the children, and the poor are not your enemies.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6n3"><a href="#endnote_6n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The modern editors of the works of the sieur Le Fevre give the following
+exaggerated estimate of Du Guesclin’s merits:</p>
+
+<p>“Bertrand was the man selected by providence as the instrument by which
+France was to be saved. Such a man deserved to take his place beside the
+kings among the tombs of St. Denis. He has been compared to Turenne;
+both brave and generous, they were like fathers to the men fighting under
+them; and when they were in want, Turenne sold his silver service for the
+benefit of his troops, as Bertrand sold his lands; there is some resemblance
+between these two characters, and the parallel might truthfully be carried
+further. But in reviewing the history of the Middle Ages, we find two
+heroes who much more strongly resemble Du Guesclin—Tancred and
+Richard Cœur de Lion. Examine carefully these three men, Tancred,
+Richard, and Du Guesclin, and you will find the same courage, the same
+boldness, the same rashness, the same contempt for danger, the same self-abnegation
+in victory; you will see three men who, on the battle-field, kill men
+as easily as an autumn wind blows down the leaves from the trees, and who,
+on their return to their tents, are as mild and docile as children; for them
+there is no intoxication in triumph, they show no pride in the hour of victory;
+their brows are humble, and you would think them unconscious of their own
+greatness. Bertrand du Guesclin swore ‘by God who suffered on the cross
+and rose again the third day’; Tancred and Richard swore by the Holy
+Sepulchre, and trusting in the justice of their cause, the three knights would
+rush on the enemy with as much confidence as if God himself were speaking
+to them and urging them on. Does not the disinterestedness of Du Guesclin
+remind one of Tancred? How many knights were fed and paid by them—how
+many times they took off their own cloaks to conceal the poverty of
+some needy nobleman! Du Guesclin has all the characteristics of a hero
+of the Crusades; he would figure worthily in the Christian <i>Iliad</i> of the poet of
+Sorrento.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6o2"><a href="#endnote_6o">o</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span></p>
+
+<p>The entire secret of Charles’ success was reliance on his people; and
+perhaps the most valuable portion of this reliance was in the fact that in the
+word “people” he included the whole population of France. This great
+word was not limited, in his interpretation of it, to the taxpaying inhabitants
+of the towns or free labourers on the farms. The very serfs on the soil were
+fellow-countrymen of the great successor of St. Louis. His laws had reference
+as often to the interests of the lowest of his subjects as to the rights of the
+richest cities. He was the first and the last to put arms into the hands of
+the whole nation. Each man had his bow and quiver of arrows, his short
+sword or iron-pointed staff. He was openly practised in the use of them,
+and was taught that it was dishonourable for a Frenchman to be unable
+to defend his wife and children with his own hands. The experiment
+was so successful against even such generals as Chandos and the Black
+Prince, that it might be expected to continue one of the standing institutions
+of the kingdom. But these feelings of self-respect were only useful against
+a foreign enemy, and might be dangerous against a domestic master. So, ere
+many years elapsed, the system was abolished; the butts were destroyed,
+the bows and swords withdrawn, for fear the “small people” should find
+themselves too powerful; and the result was—as we shall see—Henry V
+of England and the battle of Agincourt. It was not more in the formation of
+new establishments that Charles showed his wisdom than in the purification
+and improvement of the old. The legalism so strongly encouraged by
+Philip the Fair, as a preservative against the power of the nobles, had now
+become an oppression to the people. The civil servants of the crown absorbed
+a vast portion of the taxes they were employed to raise, and the paid offices
+about the provincial courts and local parliaments were innumerable. He
+diminished them both in number and amount of salary, and tried to save
+his subjects from the intricacies of technical pleadings, as almost an equal
+evil with the violence of lawless force. The only people, indeed, he could
+not bring within the rules of mercy and justice were the lords and gentlemen,
+who were the ornaments of chivalry and the strength of his armies.
+Feudalism, in fact, was dissolving, and chivalry, which was its poetic ideal,
+could not stand the trial of actual war. Knights were still mere gladiators—sometimes
+more for show than action; and gentlemen, in our sense of the
+word, were not yet in existence.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6n4"><a href="#endnote_6n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-6.jpg" width="500" height="125" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> [The continuator of Nangis<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6d2"><a href="#endnote_6d">d</a></span> is responsible for this statement.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> [The French left 11,000 dead on the field of battle. The English loss was but 2,500, and
+they made prisoners of 13 counts, 1 archbishop, 70 barons, and 2,000 armed men, not counting
+persons of less importance.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> [Maillart entered into communication with two leaders of the dauphin’s party, Pépin des
+Essarts and John de Charny. All three with their men “came properly armed, a little before
+midnight, to the porte St. Denis, where they found the provost of the merchants with the keys of
+the gate in his hand. Upon this, John Maillart said to him, calling him by his name, ‘Étienne,
+what do you do here at this time of night?’ The provost replied, ‘John, why do you ask it? I am
+here to take care of, and to guard the city, of which I have the government.’ ‘By God,’ answered
+John, ‘things shall not go on so: you are not here at this hour for any good, which I will
+now show you,’ addressing himself to those near him; ‘for see how he has got the keys of
+the gate in his hand, to betray the city.’ The provost said, ‘John, you lie.’ John replied, ‘It is
+you, Étienne, who lie’; and rushing on him, cried to his people, ‘Kill them, kill them: now strike
+home, for they are all traitors.’ There was a very great bustle; and the provost would gladly
+have escaped, but John struck him such a blow with his axe on the head, that he felled him to the
+ground, although he was his comrade, and never left him until he had killed him. Six others,
+who were present, were also killed; the remainder were carried to prison. They then put themselves
+in motion, and awakened everyone in the different streets of Paris.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g8"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> [According to Leber,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6m"><a href="#endnote_6m">m</a></span> the king’s ransom would equal 247,500,000 modern francs; and
+he adds: “This sum, enormous as it is, cannot equal the total of the single ransoms that went
+out of the country during this reign.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> [This famous house consisted of but four dukes: Philip the Bold, 1363; John the Fearless,
+1404; Philip the Good, 1419; and Charles the Bold (<i>le téméraire</i>), 1467-1477.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> [This story is related by Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6g9"><a href="#endnote_6g">g</a></span>, but, as Martin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6b3"><a href="#endnote_6b">b</a></span> says, “the fact is more than doubtful.”
+Charles’ biographer, Christine de Pisan,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_6p"><a href="#endnote_6p">p</a></span> is unable to give the cause of the king’s constitutional
+weakness.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-7.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII. THE BETRAYAL OF THE KINGDOM</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Fourteenth century France was the prey of Anarchy, of Civil War,
+of Foreign Invasion. When one considers the unhappy reigns of Philip
+of Valois and of John, the captivity of the king, the occupation of
+France by the English, the insanity of Charles VI, and the crimes of
+Isabella of Bavaria, one can explain why two centuries separated the
+literary epoch of France from that of Italy.—<span class="smcap">Villemain.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7t"><a href="#endnote_7t">t</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1380-1422 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Charles V was but forty-three years of age when he died. His death was
+a great misfortune for the country, for his eldest son was only twelve years
+old, and intrusted to the care of his three uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Burgundy,
+and Berri, grasping men, each solely preoccupied with one subject—the
+first with the kingdom of Naples where Queen Joanna had proclaimed
+him her successor, the second with the great fief of Flanders which he would
+in time inherit, the third with his pleasures and his wealth. The young
+king, who came to the throne as Charles VI, and who, owing to his tender
+years, was quite at the mercy of his relatives, had, on his mother’s side, a
+fourth uncle, the duke de Bourbon, an excellent prince but wholly without
+influence; and a brother, the duke of Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>During the late king’s last moments, his eldest brother, the duke of
+Anjou, who by virtue of his title would assume the regency, kept himself
+hidden in an adjacent chamber. Scarcely had Charles drawn his last breath
+than the duke seized the crown jewels, and by threatening the treasurer,
+Savoisy, with death, got hold of a number of gold and silver ingots which
+had been sealed up in the walls of the castle of Melun by masons who had
+immediately been got rid of. The year before, while governor of Languedoc,
+he had caused an insurrection by his rapacious acts, and in Montpellier alone
+condemned two hundred citizens to the stake, two hundred to the gallows,
+two hundred to the block, eighteen hundred to the loss of their property,
+and the rest of the town to a fine of 600,000 francs. The king modified
+these atrocious sentences and recalled the duke. Unfortunately the
+power of regency belonged to this prince. His brothers, like himself, filled
+their pockets; Burgundy allotted himself the government of Normandy and
+Picardy; Berri, who had already had Berri, Auvergne, and Poitou in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>appanage, took Languedoc and Aquitaine. Thus a third of the realm became
+a field for his rapacity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1380-1382 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A new reign always brings a moment of hope. The abolition of certain
+taxes was demanded, and the duke promised to suppress all those which had
+been instituted since Philip the Fair. He might as well have promised to
+renounce the government of France; the regent did not know how to keep
+his word. One day a mounted crier appeared in the public square, and
+announced that the king’s silver plate had been stolen, promising a large
+reward to whoever recovered it. When a crowd had gathered to discuss the
+news, he cried that the next day a new tax would be levied on all merchandise
+sold, and galloped away at full speed.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, in truth, which was the first of March, 1382, tax-gatherers
+appeared in the market-place and demanded a tax on a bit of cress which
+had just been sold by an old woman. A furious riot at once broke out.
+The rebels rushed to the Hôtel-de-Ville and the arsenal, and armed themselves
+with new mallets that had been stored up there in view of an attack
+from the English. These <i>maillotins</i> were, for the moment, masters of the
+situation; then, as in all popular riots of this time, fury gave way to terror
+and discouragement. The princes, who took the matter in hand, executed
+in secret the most seditious and imposed on others the most ruinous fines,
+with the proceeds of which the duke of Anjou departed for Italy. But the
+new tax was withdrawn and the leaders of the riot were punished secretly.
+The Parisian rising had meantime spread to Rouen, Rheims, Châlons, Troyes,
+and Orleans, where it formed the nucleus of two other revolutionary movements—one
+in the north in Flanders, the other in the south in Languedoc.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Berri had scarcely appeared in his province of Languedoc
+when trouble broke out. The pope interfered and put an end to it, but the
+pope could not stop the executions and cruelties of the governing prince.
+The peasants despoiled of everything by the soldiers commenced a sort of
+<i>jacquerie</i> (peasant revolt). They took refuge in the mountains, especially
+on the slopes of the Cévennes and thence, organised into armed bands,
+rushed down upon the nobles and wealthy inhabitants, giving no quarter to
+those whose hands were not callous with toil. They were called the <i>tuchins</i>.
+Affairs in Flanders were still more serious.</p>
+
+<h3>WAR IN FLANDERS: BATTLE OF ROOSEBEKE (1382 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The Flemings had rebelled, in the preceding reign, against their French
+count who amused himself with violating the municipal franchises of the
+country. Peter Dubois and Philip van Artevelde, son of the famous brewer,
+had led with success the insurrection of the “chaperons blancs” (white-caps),
+and at the battle of Bruges (May 3rd, 1382) had overturned the last
+hopes of Count Louis. Philip van Artevelde pushed the insurrection with
+the same boldness and in the same manner as his father. Plenipotentiaries
+from Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges were sent to Richard II of England, offering
+to recognise him as king of France if he would come to their aid. For a
+quarter of a century the breath of revolt had been blowing over the middle
+classes throughout Europe—the enterprise of Rienzi at Rome, Wat Tyler
+in England, then Étienne Marcel and now the “Jacques,” the “maillotins,”
+the “tuchins,” and the “white-caps”! Insurrection, smothered in one
+place, broke out afresh in another, and it was to be feared, as Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7c1"><a href="#endnote_7c">c</a></span> says,
+“that all nobility and refinement would be dead and lost in France as well
+as in many other countries.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1382-1383 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>One day while the dukes of Burgundy and Berri were discussing together
+the dangers of the situation and the necessity for intervention in Flanders,
+and of striking at the roots of the spirit of revolt and liberty, the young king
+entered, with a hawk on his fist. “Well, my dear uncles,” said he, “and
+what are you talking about in such solemn council?” “Ah, monseigneur,”
+replied Berri, “here is my brother of Burgundy who complains of the people
+in Flanders where the wretches have turned their lord and nobles out of their
+heritage. They have a leader who calls himself Artevelde, a true Englishman
+for courage, who has besieged a crowd of nobles in Oudenarde, and
+swears he will never leave and will have his will with those in the town unless
+your power relieve them.” “By my faith,” rejoined the king, “I have a great
+desire to help them. For God’s sake, let us go there. I want nothing more
+than to arm myself, for I have never yet been armed, and if I wish to reign
+with power and honour, must I not learn the use of arms?” And he was
+anxious to set out that day or the next.</p>
+
+<p>A great army was soon ready. At its approach all the Flemish towns
+made submission and the people of Ghent had now no resource but to win a
+great battle by throwing themselves upon the enemy with the impetuosity of
+the boar, as they had done at Bruges and as they now tried to do at Roosebeke,
+November 27th, 1382. They were tied one to the other, so as to make
+it impossible to retreat, and advanced in a single battalion. This manœuvre
+had been successful at Bruges against a much smaller number. But this
+time the wings of the great French army folded upon them, and, assailed on
+its side, the battalion was helpless. The lances of the cavalry carried much
+farther than the short Flemish spears, and the latter could not reach the
+enemy which was attacking them. Disorder soon reigned supreme in the
+little cohort surrounded on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>“The men-at-arms,” says Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7c2"><a href="#endnote_7c">c</a></span> “knocked down the Flemings with
+all their might. They had well-sharpened battle-axes, with which they cut
+through helmets and disbrained heads; others gave such blows with leaden
+maces that nothing could withstand them. Scarcely were the Flemings overthrown
+when pillagers advanced, who, mixing with the men-at-arms, made use
+of the large knives they carried, and finished slaying whoever fell into their
+hands, without more mercy than if they had been so many dogs. There was
+a large and high mound of the Flemings who were slain; and never was there
+so little blood spilt at so great a battle where such numbers were killed.”
+Twenty-six thousand dead remained upon the field and among them the
+whole battalion of Ghent, including Artevelde. Flanders was not laid low
+by this defeat, for Ghent held out for two years more. But the nobles had
+avenged the shame of their defeat at Courtrai; and to efface even the memory
+of it, on leaving the town which had lodged them for a fortnight but
+where they had found, hanging in the churches, the golden spurs of the
+knights killed in 1302, they gave it to the flames after ransacking it. On
+his own account the duke of Burgundy took down from the cathedral a magnificent
+clock with figures which he removed to Dijon and set up in the south
+transept of the church of Notre Dame. It is still there.</p>
+
+<h3>INSURRECTIONS IN PARIS AND ROUEN</h3>
+
+<p>The Paris riots, quite as much as the rising at Ghent, had been put down
+at Roosebeke. The Parisians realised that nothing more would be tolerated
+from them, but hoped nevertheless by showing their strength that nothing
+would be attempted. So they set out to meet the king to the number of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>twenty thousand armed men, who drew up in line of battle beneath the
+heights of Montmartre. At this sight the nobles said to themselves: “Look
+at the fine rabble and its insolence. Why didn’t they come with our army
+to serve the king in Flanders? They kept well out of it, and instead of
+ringing the bells to celebrate our victories, they dare to show themselves in
+arms before their lord.”</p>
+
+<p>Heralds came forward who asked the Parisians: “Where are your leaders?
+Which of you are captains?” The Parisians replied, “We have none other
+than the king and his nobles.” The heralds
+then demanded whether the constable and
+four barons would be allowed to enter in
+safety. “Ah, you laugh at us,” returned
+the Parisians; “go, tell them that we are
+ready to receive their commands.” The constable
+then confronted them. “Well, men
+of Paris,” he said, “who has made you come
+out thus from the city? You look as though
+you would fight your lord the king.” “My
+lord,” they replied, “we have no such wish
+and we never had; we only wish to show the
+king the power of his fair city of Paris. He
+is very young and does not know what we
+could do for him should he ever need us.”
+“Well said,” retorted the constable, “but
+the king for this once does not wish to see
+you thus. If you would that he enters
+your city, go back to your homes and lay
+aside your arms.” They obeyed (1383).</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p158.jpg" width="250" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Charles VI</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The next day the king arrived. The
+gates were all wide open; but he wished to
+enter through a breach and had a section
+knocked out. Then he made his way through
+the streets, helmeted, lance in hand, with the
+most terrible air his young person could assume. Executions began at once;
+first those of the city’s liberties. They took away its franchises, its elective
+magistrates, provost, aldermen, clerk, syndic, centurions, and tithing-men;
+they suppressed the people’s masterships, corporations, and brotherhoods;
+they deprived them of their arms and of the chains that made the streets
+safe. Then followed executions of persons; they arrested, made summary
+investigation, and finished by killing. Three hundred of the richest bourgeoisie
+were drowned, hanged, or decapitated with scarcely a form of trial.
+Noteworthy were the deaths of Nicholas le Flamand, one of those who followed
+Étienne Marcel the day of the slaying of the two marshals, twenty-six
+years before, and of John Desmarets, <i>avocat-général</i> in the parliament, one
+of the negotiators of the Peace of Bretigny, and who was worn out in vain
+efforts between the two parties. His trial was iniquitous and his death
+touching. “When Desmarets,” says the monk of St. Denis,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7d1"><a href="#endnote_7d">d</a></span> “arrived at
+the place of execution, ‘Ask mercy of the king, Master John,’ the people
+cried, ‘that he may forgive your crimes.’ The old man turned to them and
+replied, ‘Loyally and well did I serve King Philip his great-grandfather,
+King John, and King Charles, his father; never had these kings anything to
+reproach me with; and this one would reproach me neither, had he the age
+and knowledge of a grown man. I do not believe him responsible in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>least for this judgment. I have done nothing to ask mercy of him. It is
+God alone from whom I must ask it and I pray him to pardon my sins.’”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1383-1388 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The bourgeoisie were brought together and read a long list of their misdeeds,
+with the punishments they deserved. At the moment when terror
+was at its height the two uncles of the king threw themselves at his feet and
+begged for pity. He let himself be influenced, and announced through his
+chancellor that he would change the punishments into fines. “This was,” says
+Mézeray,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7e"><a href="#endnote_7e">e</a></span> “the true reason for this <i>coup de théâtre</i>!” Paris did not get
+off on less than 400,000 francs, worth to-day about 20,000,000; at Rouen,
+Rheims, Troyes, Châlons, Orleans, Sens, in Auvergne and Languedoc, the
+same proceedings took place, especially the enormous fines. “And this all
+went,” says Froissart,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7c3"><a href="#endnote_7c">c</a></span> “to the profit of the duke of Berri and the duke of
+Burgundy, for the young king was in their power!” This blow fell upon
+the bourgeoisie more disastrously than that of 1359, because the government
+was then in the hands of an intelligent man who checked the feudal reaction;
+in 1383 the princes gave themselves a free hand. The upper middle
+class was decimated and ruined; and when, after thirty years, public grievances
+caused them to essay another revolution, they were in no condition
+to assume its control and left it to violent men, who drenched Paris with
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>In 1384 the count of Flanders died and the duke of Burgundy, his son-in-law,
+inherited his vast dominions. In 1369 Charles V, in order to facilitate
+the marriage of his brother the duke of Burgundy with the heiress of
+the county of Flanders, had abandoned French Flanders to him. But at the
+same time the king exacted an agreement from his brother, that the donation
+would be restored on the death of the latter’s father-in-law, Louis de Mâle.
+But the count of Flanders survived the king, and Philip the Bold easily
+obtained from Charles VI the remission of his promise. Henceforth the
+house of Burgundy will turn all its affection towards these rich provinces,
+and as it finds means for aggrandisement in this direction at the expense of
+the petty German princes, it will forget little by little both the stock from
+which it came, and the France which began its greatness.</p>
+
+<p>The following year was employed in immense preparations for an invasion
+of England. They collected, says Froissart, enough ships to make a bridge
+from Calais to Dover; there were fourteen hundred of them. They built a
+whole town of wood, which could be taken apart, piece by piece, in order to
+take an entrenched camp with them. But they let the proper moment for
+crossing over pass, and the project had to be given up, but not until enormous
+sums had been squandered. Another expedition against the duke of
+Gelderland who, for the price of a pension of £400 from England, bade
+defiance to the king of France, cost still more, and came to nothing (1388).</p>
+
+<h3>THE KING ASSUMES THE RULE (1388 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The voice of public opinion was still very feeble, but it could be heard.
+On the return from the sad war in Germany, the king called a general
+council in the hall of the palace of the archbishop of Rheims, and demanded
+of those present, in virtue of the obedience they owed him, their advice on
+the conduct of public affairs. Peter de Montaigu, cardinal of Laon, took the
+floor, and praising the king’s good qualities, exhorted him to begin the exercise
+of his absolute power by taking under his own control and direction
+the ministry of war and his own household, taking counsel from no one.
+Others supported the cardinal’s advice; Charles declared himself determined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>to follow it and thanked his uncles for the good offices they had rendered
+him. The king had scarcely left Rheims when the cardinal of Laon died by
+poison.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1388-1389 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The former counsellors of Charles V, the “small fry,” the <i>marmousets</i> as
+the great lords dubbed them in disdain, Olivier de Clisson, Bureau de la
+Rivière, Le Bègue de Vilaines, John de Novian, and John de Montaigu,
+reassumed, as ministers of state, the direction of affairs. The new administration
+was wise and economical, and stood for internal order and foreign
+peace, but through it the king only became the more prodigal; having no
+longer the pleasures and distractions of war, those of the fête and tourney
+became necessary to him, and these diversions now never ceased.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b1"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Prodigious sums were needed for the “incomparable” fêtes in which
+Charles VI gloried, and which attracted to Paris the flower of the knights
+and noble ladies of all Christendom. This vast concourse of strangers, the
+stir, the joyful tumult, the dazzling shows intoxicated the young nobility
+and even the people of Paris; the Parisians had their share of the rain of
+gold and recovered in one way what was taken from them in another. In
+the first days of May, 1389, the most magnificent tournament which had
+ever been seen was held at St. Denis on the occasion of the knighting of the
+two sons of the late duke Louis of Anjou, the eldest of whom, Louis II,
+duke of Anjou and count of Provence, was preparing to set out to assert his
+claims to the kingdom of Naples against the heir of Charles of Durazzo.
+Charles VI had endeavoured to realise the most brilliant descriptions of the
+romances and to present to the feudal world a complete type of chivalric
+splendours. The ceremonial of initiation to the “holy order of chivalry,”
+which had almost fallen into disuse since the adoption of the custom of conferring
+the order on the field of battle, was reproduced with scrupulous
+exactness.</p>
+
+<p>In a neighbouring field the lists had been prepared, surrounded with
+wooden galleries for the ladies; and in the great court of the abbey a
+banquet hall had been constructed 192 feet long by 36 wide and hung
+throughout with tapestries of silk and gold. The first day of the tournament
+twenty-two knights in green and gold armour were conducted into
+the lists to the sound of music, by twenty-two fair ladies similarly attired
+and mounted on elegant palfreys; each gave her knight a ribbon of her own
+colours. The contests lasted all day; then the company proceeded from
+the enclosure to the festival hall and after the supper the ladies awarded
+the prize to the two who had done the best. The rest of the night was
+passed in dances and <i>caroles</i><a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> and in “pastimes” of a less innocent kind.
+The fête lasted three days and three nights—nights of orgy and delirium
+which rendered the venerable cloisters of St. Denis the witnesses of many
+voluptuous mysteries and which must have strangely scandalised the chaste
+shade of St. Louis in the depths of its tomb.</p>
+
+<p>The jousts and balls were succeeded by a ceremony of a sterner character
+but equally sumptuous: the young king loved to vary his emotions and his
+shows. He had been seized with “a great love” for the memory of Bertrand
+du Guesclin, a feeling which was shared by the whole nation: although nine
+years had passed since the death of that great captain, and though Charles V
+had honoured him with a splendid funeral, Charles VI insisted on recelebrating
+the obsequies of Messire Bertrand in presence of all the French and
+foreign nobility whom the tournament had brought together.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span></p>
+
+<p>The fêtes of St. Denis had not satiated Charles VI; he remembered that
+the queen his wife had not yet been crowned: this was a fine occasion to
+indulge in fresh magnificences. He resolved to have Isabella anointed at
+Paris, and to compensate himself for the paucity of ceremonial which had been
+accorded to the queen’s first entry into the capital. He notified his intention
+“to those of Paris,” in order that they might be prepared, and charged
+the old queen, Blanche of Navarre, widow of Philip of Valois, to arrange the
+ceremony. Accordingly Blanche ordered the <i>Chronicles of St. Denis</i> to be
+examined for everything which they reported concerning the anointing of
+queens in olden times. Froissart<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7c4"><a href="#endnote_7c">c</a></span> and the monk of St. Denis<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7d2"><a href="#endnote_7d">d</a></span> have vied
+with one another in describing the queen’s procession which arrived before
+St. Denis the 22nd of August, 1389, with all the princesses, some in painted
+and gilded litters, others on palfreys marvellously caparisoned. The king’s
+uncles, who sought every opportunity to approach the supreme power, had
+presented themselves at court with their families; the dukes and all the
+great nobles escorted the litters which entered Paris to the sound of a thousand
+instruments and between two rows of horsemen clad, some in scarlet
+silk, others in green silk: they were on the one side the members of the
+king’s household, on the other twelve hundred citizens of Paris led by
+the provost of the merchants. Across the whole of the rue St. Denis and the
+Grand Font (the Pont au Change) were hung draperies of silk, camlet, and
+cendal (taffetas), which “shut out the sky”; all the houses were hung with
+silks and tapestries of a high warp and the windows were crowded with
+women adorned with dresses of brilliant materials and with gold necklaces.
+Fountains of milk and perfumed wine flowed at the street corners, and beautiful
+young girls offered the passers-by to drink from golden goblets. At
+the Porte St. Denis, at the <i>moûtier</i> (monastery) of the Trinity, at the second
+Porte St. Denis or Painters’ Gate (Porte aux Peintres), at the church of St.
+Jacques de l’Hôpital, at the Grand Châtelet, platforms, wooden castles, and
+richly ornamented theatres had been erected; one represented God in his
+paradise and the starry heavens filled with angels who sang “very melodiously”
+and congratulated in rhyme “the lady enclosed amongst <i>fleurs-de-lis</i>”;
+another “showed” the king of France and his twelve peers, King
+Richard Cœur de Lion, and King Saladin with his Saracens. A rope had
+been stretched from one of the towers of Notre Dame to the Pont au
+Change: as the queen passed the bridge a man dressed as an angel, seated
+on this rope, descended from the towers of Notre Dame, passed through an
+opening in the awning which covered the bridge, placed “a beautiful
+wreath” on the queen’s head, and “was drawn up again through the said
+opening as if he were returning to heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>The procession presented itself before Notre Dame, whence it returned
+to the Palais, and the next day the queen was anointed and crowned in the
+Sainte-Chapelle, by the archbishop of Rouen. The descriptions of the banquets
+which took place at the “marble table” in the great hall of the Palais,
+and of the jousts at the Hôtel St. Pol are to be found in Froissart.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7c5"><a href="#endnote_7c">c</a></span> The
+king had adopted a golden sun with rays as his device: he was one of the
+victors in the jousts. The rich presents of the city of Paris to the queen
+and the duchess of Touraine, the king’s sister-in-law, contributed to pay for
+the gaiety of the court; the Parisians offered the princesses gold and silver
+plate to the value of sixty thousand crowns: they doubtless calculated on
+being repaid for this munificence by a large diminution of the taxes; but
+their expectation was cruelly deceived. The king left Paris a few days
+later, and as a farewell to his people left an increase of the gabelle and an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>ordinance which prohibited, under pain of death, the use of silver coins of
+twelve and four deniers which had been in circulation since the reign of the
+late king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7f1"><a href="#endnote_7f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>HATRED OF THE NOBLES FOR THE MINISTRY (1389-1392 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1389-1392 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The ministry attempted to combat this state of affairs or at least to
+extenuate its disastrous effects. It economised in state expenditure to make
+up for the king’s extravagance, and the state was the gainer by the arrangement.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p162.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costume in the Reign of Charles VI</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The ministers gave Paris back its provost and conferred upon the bourgeoisie
+the right to acquire fiefs, as though they were nobles, and deprived the
+duke of Berri of his government in Languedoc,
+where four hundred thousand inhabitants
+had fled into Aragon. Not being
+able to inflict further punishment on Berri,
+they caused his treasurer Bétisac to be put
+to death. This Bétisac had merited the
+hate of all by his exactions. But they did
+not dare condemn him as an embezzler,
+since the duke of Berri had authorised all
+his acts and it was on the duke himself that
+the complaints of the people should have
+fallen. So they laid a trap for Bétisac, by
+advising him to declare heretical opinions,
+for which he would be summoned to ecclesiastical
+jurisdiction which would exculpate
+him. The accused man followed this advice
+and they burned him for a heretic instead
+of hanging him for a thief.</p>
+
+<p>The “small fry” ruled the kingdom
+for four years. Four years in which the
+king’s uncles and the great nobles had
+to keep their hands off the management
+of affairs, and longed for an opportunity
+to get back into power. Finally an
+Angevin nobleman, Peter de Craon,
+mortal enemy of the leader of the marmousets,
+the constable Olivier de Clisson,
+placed his personal hatred at the service of the aristocracy’s political
+resentment.</p>
+
+<p>On June 13th, 1392, at the close of a fête given at the Hôtel St. Pol, the
+constable lingered a little to take leave of the king and the duke of Orleans,
+and then with eight attendants, two carrying torches, made his way towards
+the rue Ste. Catherine. Here Peter de Craon was waiting for him, with
+forty mounted brigands, scarcely a half dozen of whom knew what was
+expected of them. When Clisson appeared, Craon’s men threw themselves
+on his attendants and extinguished their torches. Clisson at first thought
+it a joke of the duke of Orleans, whom he supposed to have followed
+him. “My lord,” he said, “you are young, we must pardon you. These
+are the pranks of youth.” But Peter de Craon cried, “Die, die, Clisson;
+here you shall die.” “Who art thou,” asked Clisson, “who speakest
+such words?” “I am Peter de Craon, your enemy. You have many times
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>provoked me, and shall here pay for it. Forward,” he called to his men,
+“I have him whom I wanted and will have.” The constable tried to defend
+himself but was soon wounded and thrown from his horse. In falling, his
+head came against the unlatched door of a bake-shop, which gave way. This
+saved him. The assassins thought him dead; they had, moreover, recognised
+the constable, and fearful of having attacked so powerful a personage, they
+fled with Craon to his castle of Sablé in Maine.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the outrage was brought to the king as he was preparing for
+bed. He called his guard, had torches lighted and went to the bake-shop
+where Clisson was beginning to recover consciousness. “Constable,” said
+the king, “how do you feel?” “Weak and poorly, sire.” “And who
+brought you to this pass?” “Peter de Craon, sire, and his accomplices,
+treacherously and with no warning.” “Constable, nothing will be paid more
+dearly or amends made for than this thing.”</p>
+
+<p>Peter de Craon, who no longer felt himself safe in the castle of Sablé,
+sought refuge with the duke of Burgundy, who, called upon to deliver up
+the rascal, caused him to be hid and replied that he knew nothing whatever
+of him. Charles immediately collected an army, swearing to take no rest
+until he had punished this rebellion. The dukes of Burgundy and Berri
+endeavoured to block this enterprise. Their hatred towards Clisson had
+grown since they learned he possessed great wealth. The constable, believing
+himself about to die, had made his will, and besides his fiefs and heritage
+he had disposed of 1,700,000 francs’ worth of personal property. But the king
+paid no heed to the delays and bad will of his uncles and to the fears which
+his physicians expressed for his health. He led his army as far as Le Mans.</p>
+
+<h3>THE KING GOES MAD: THE PRINCES RETURN TO POWER (1392 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>It was the middle of summer, during the prolonged August heat. As the
+king was crossing the forest, a man dressed all in white seized his bridle and
+cried, “Stop, noble king, go no further, thou art betrayed.” This sudden
+apparition startled the king greatly; a little farther on the page who carried
+the royal lance nodded in the saddle. The lance fell and struck a shield a
+resounding blow. At the sound of arms the king trembled, drew his sword
+and cried, “Quick, quick, upon the traitors!” He thrust his naked sword
+at his brother the duke of Orleans, who barely avoided it. One of his knights
+finally had to seize him from behind. They disarmed him. He no longer
+knew anyone.</p>
+
+<p>The king was mad. Some said it was sorcery, but the king himself was
+to blame. Possessor at twelve years of age of that unlimited power which
+is often the undoing of the strongest characters, he was at twenty-four worn
+out with every pleasure and emotion in the range of human experience from
+debauch to battle-field. His constitution was ruined, his mind shaken; a
+violent shock had deranged everything.</p>
+
+<p>When it was hinted that the king was the victim of poison or sorcery,
+“No,” exclaimed the duke of Berri, “he is neither poisoned nor bewitched,
+except by bad advice.” These words sealed the fate of the marmousets.
+A few days later Clisson demanded of the duke of Burgundy the pay of
+the knights who had accompanied the king on his last expedition. The
+duke looked him through and through, and said, “Clisson, you need not
+trouble yourself about the affairs of the kingdom, for without your help
+it will be well governed. It was an evil day for the realm when you first
+meddled with it. How the devil have you got so much money, that you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>were recently able to will away 1,700,000 francs? Neither his majesty, my
+brother Berri, nor I with all our present power have been able to acquire so
+much. Leave my presence and let me never see you again, for were it not
+for my honour I would put your other eye out.” Clisson hastened to the safety
+of his castle in Brittany, while parliament declared him guilty of extortion,
+and banished him from the country, imposing a fine of 100,000 silver marks.
+The sire de Montaigu, warned by this experience, sought refuge at Avignon.
+Bureau de la Rivière, the sire de Novian, and Le Bègue de Vilaines were
+arrested and imprisoned in the Château St. Antoine (the Bastille).</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1392-1396 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king’s uncles came again into full possession of the government:
+what would they do? They signed a twenty-eight years’ truce with England
+in 1395 and gave King Richard II the infant princess Isabella, Charles VI’s
+daughter, in marriage. But four years later (1399) the English deposed
+and afterwards, it is said, strangled their king, and this valuable alliance
+was broken.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b2"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The signing of the truce of 1395 was a real assurance of peace in France,
+even in Brittany, where Clisson, banished to his fiefs, had armed his vassals
+at once and attacked John de Montfort. But the duke of Burgundy appeared
+in person at Ancenis, mediated between the two parties, and made
+them in January, 1395, sign a reciprocal promise to lay down their arms.
+Shortly after this John IV attended the meeting of Charles VI and Richard
+II at Guines (where the truce was arranged) and obtained from the English
+the restitution of Brest which had only been pledged to them.</p>
+
+<p>With peace thus restored France was now able to occupy herself more
+particularly with the great questions then agitating all Europe: that of the
+papal schism of which all Christendom was longing for the end, and that
+of the crusade—or rather the barrier which it was felt must be raised against
+the conquests of the Ottoman Turks in the European provinces of the Greek
+empire.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7g1"><a href="#endnote_7g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forty years before the Ottoman Turks had crossed the Bosporus, taken
+Adrianople and a portion of the Danube valley. Now they were threatening
+Hungary. A crusade was therefore resolved upon, and put under the direction
+of a young man of twenty-four, John, count of Nevers, who later became
+the famous duke of Burgundy (John the Fearless). Young and old, equally
+short-sighted, gaily descended the Danube, taking the whole matter as a
+pleasure excursion. When they arrived at Nicopolis, King Sigismund of
+Hungary advised them to meet the advance troops of the enemy with his
+Hungarian foot-soldiers and light cavalry, and to reserve the knights for
+the real Ottoman army which would appear afterwards. But no one was
+willing to forego the honour of striking the first blow. So all opposed themselves
+to the advance-guard, threw themselves upon the first enemy who
+appeared, and arrived exhausted and in disorder at the top of a hill where
+they were received by the redoubtable janissaries which Amura had just
+organised, and who made short work of the breathless, disordered troops.
+It was said that Bajazet put ten thousand captives<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> to death in his own presence,
+saving only from the massacre the count of Nevers and twenty-four
+nobles whom he ransomed (1396).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b3"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span> Consternation was universal throughout
+France, especially in Burgundy. Duke Philip strangely abused the obligations
+of feudalism which compelled vassals to ransom a captive lord or his
+son and raised as much from his vassals as from the royal treasury, more
+than double the 200,000 ducats which Bajazet demanded for the freedom of
+his captives.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7f2"><a href="#endnote_7f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span></p>
+
+<h3>DOMESTIC TROUBLES AND SCANDALS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1396-1407 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The government of the aristocracy was not fortunate: its acts were discrediting
+it abroad; its quarrels were weakening it at home.</p>
+
+<p>Isabella of Bavaria was but fifteen years old when she came from Germany
+to wed Charles VI. Without parents, without a guide in the midst
+of a corrupted court, she learned its morals quicker than she learned its
+tongue, and she lived solely for luxury and pleasure. Years did not render
+her conduct more circumspect, or her thoughts more serious. From pleasure
+she descended to debauchery. Charged after the king’s affliction with the
+keeping of his person, she used the authority obtained through the melancholy
+situation of her husband to satisfy her passions, her vices, and her
+vengeances. It will soon be seen how fatal this foreign queen was to France.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, kept the sovereign authority
+until his death in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, wished to receive, with
+his heritage, his father’s influence in the government, but the duke of Orleans,
+the king’s brother, all powerful with the queen—master, through her,
+of the king and the dauphin; chief of the nobility, and brilliant knight himself—had
+no intention of renouncing the power to anyone. So there soon
+sprang up, between John the Fearless and Orleans, a rivalry that threatened
+to become civil war right in the midst of Paris. Each collected his arms
+and fortified his palace; they were about to fight when the aged duke of
+Berri interposed. He brought Burgundy to the bedside of Orleans who was
+lying ill and made the two men embrace and talk and take food together.
+This reconciliation took place November the 20th, 1407; on the 23rd Louis
+of Orleans fell, assassinated by John the Fearless.</p>
+
+<p>For more than four months, the duke had been planning this murder.
+He had bought, in the city, a house for the ostensible purpose of storing
+wine, corn, and other provisions, but really concealed in it seventeen hired
+assassins. This house, situated in the rue Vieille du Temple, near the Porte
+Barbette, lay in the path of the duke of Orleans while returning from the
+king’s residence to his own palace. Wednesday, the 23rd of November, at
+eight in the evening, the duke of Orleans left the Hôtel Montaigu on muleback.
+The night was very dark, and he was accompanied only by two
+equerries mounted on one horse and four foot attendants carrying torches.
+Although it was not late, all the shops were closed. The duke, keeping a
+little behind his people, was singing softly to himself and toying with his
+glove when suddenly the assassins, concealed by the corner of a house,
+rushed upon him crying, “Die! Die!”</p>
+
+<p>“I am the duke of Orleans,” the duke shouted. “Then we want you,”
+they replied, striking him. A page tried to cover the prince with his body
+and was killed. A woman who witnessed the affair from a window screamed
+murder. One of the assassins called to her, “Shut up, wretch.” Then by
+the light of the torches she saw come out of the duke of Burgundy’s
+recently bought house, a large man with a red hat over his eyes, who, with
+a lantern, looked to see that there had been no slip as in the case of the constable
+De Clisson. But this time the murderers had well earned their wage.
+The body was literally hacked to pieces; the right arm was cut in two, the
+severed left wrist was thrown to one side, the skull split from ear to ear, and
+the brains scattered on the pavement. At this the man in the red hat said to
+the others, “Put out your lights and let us go, he is dead.” They put their
+torches back into the house they had occupied, strewed caltrops behind them
+to prevent pursuit, and retired to the Hôtel d’Artois in the rue Mauconseil.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1407-1409 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The next day John the Fearless went, like all the princes, to see the
+corpse, and sprinkled it with holy water, at the church of the Blancs-Manteaux.
+“Never,” he said, at sight of the dead, “has so foul a murder been
+committed in this realm.” He wept at the funeral and held a corner of the
+pall. Some days later, however, when the provost of Paris announced in
+the council that he would make every effort to find the assassins if they would
+give him permission to search the palaces of the princes, John the Fearless
+became confused and grew pale. Then it was he drew aside the duke of
+Berri and the king of Sicily, “I did it,” he whispered, “the devil tempted
+me.” This state of mind soon passed, and the duke of Burgundy resolved
+to admit and justify his crime. In fact the next day he boldly appeared at
+the council of the princes, but his uncle Berri met him at the door and said,
+“My good nephew, don’t come in this time. I don’t want you here.” The
+thought came to the guilty man that perhaps they were going to arrest him,
+and he fled at once to his possessions in Flanders. From there he proclaimed,
+preached, and wrote to the world that he had but forestalled an ambush of
+the duke of Orleans. A Franciscan monk, the learned John Petit, was the
+following year charged with the proof in twelve arguments, in honour of
+the twelve Apostles, that if the duke was killed it was for the glory of God,
+since he was a heretic; for the good of the king, since he wished to usurp the
+throne, and for the public welfare, since the state was rid of a tyrant.</p>
+
+<p>To this strange apology for the murder, from the pen of a monk, Burgundy
+added a bloody victory.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b4"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span> An insurrection of the people of Liège
+against their bishop, a creature of the duke, called the latter from Paris.
+His influence had caused John, a younger brother of the house of Bavaria,
+to be elected bishop; John took deacon’s orders to entitle him to assume the
+episcopal sovereignty, but he refused to be priested, preferring the helmet
+to the mitre. The Liègeois were discontented at having a profane knight
+in lieu of a bishop; they entreated and petitioned John to take upon him
+the sacerdotal character. He laughed at them. They rebelled and drove
+him out. Such was the crime of the Liègeois. The duke of Burgundy
+marched against them; a battle was fought at Hasbain, in which the burgesses
+of Liège were as unfortunate as those of Ghent had been at Roosebeke.
+It is said that twenty-six thousand dead were counted on the field of battle.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7h1"><a href="#endnote_7h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was the best argument in Burgundy’s defence; he returned to Paris
+promising the people an immediate abolition of taxes, and extracted from the
+king a letter of forgiveness, in which Charles VI declared that he cherished
+no resentment towards the author of his brother’s death (Peace of Chartres,
+March, 1409).</p>
+
+<p>The duchess of Orleans, the beautiful and gentle Valentine Visconti, was
+at least spared this last shame. The death of her husband killed her. She
+had taken for her motto, “<i>Rien ne m’est plus; plus ne m’est rien</i>,” and “died
+in 1408” [says Juvénal des Ursins<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7i"><a href="#endnote_7i">i</a></span>] “in anger and grief.”</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Orleans was not worth much regret. His administration had
+been as deplorable as his morals. He had declared war on England, and had
+not carried it out, and had used this pretext for an increase of taxes which he
+himself had appropriated. Burgundy had bitterly opposed this new burden,
+and to appease the people, and especially to lay his own hand on the rich
+spoil, he now sent the superintendent of finances to the scaffold (1408). Then
+he restored the Parisians their ancient free constitution, the rights to elect
+their provost and to organise a citizen militia under elective leaders, and even
+to hold noble fiefs with the privileges thereto attached. Besides this he was
+extremely popular, which state of affairs he increased by showing citizens,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>even the least important, such consideration as they had never before known.
+These were the market people who formed, in Paris, the strength of the
+Burgundian party. Feudalism never forgave John the Fearless for having
+sought such support, no more than it did for having compromised seignorial
+inviolability by slaying a prince of the blood, the king’s brother. A considerable
+faction of the nobility turned against him. The avengers of Orleans
+ranged themselves under the banner of the father-in-law of one of his sons,
+the count d’Armagnac, who gave the party its name (1410). Thus, with the
+king mad, the queen ignored and incapable, the dauphin threatened by his
+excesses with his father’s end, the first prince of the blood stained with
+an infamous murder, there was no government—only armed factions, and
+war at home and abroad. Such was the state of France; nothing but disaster
+could come of it.</p>
+
+<h3>CIVIL WAR</h3>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p167.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Shield used in the First Part of the Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>From 1410 to 1412 the two factions attacked each other twice, and twice
+came to a settlement (Peace of Bicêtre, November, 1410; Peace of Bourges,
+July, 1412). Both sides made advances to the English to win over the country’s
+enemy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b5"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span> The Gascon soldiers, preferring
+a plundering life in the midst of France
+to their own rude and poor homes, were
+constant to their banners. The duke of
+Burgundy, on the other hand, could not get
+his Flemings to quit their families and
+crafts for more than forty days; he was
+therefore obliged to call in the English.
+Henry IV sent a body of archers to his aid,
+with whom he drove his enemies from the
+north of the capital (February, 1410).
+In May we find Henry in league with
+the Orleans party, who were to restore to the
+English, in recompense, all their ancient
+possessions in France. The emissary who
+bore this treaty was seized at Boulogne;
+its contents were made public, and great
+odium was in consequence excited against
+the Armagnacs. The hapless monarch,
+Charles, recovering for a moment from his
+frenzy, joined in this indignation; he called
+an army, displayed the oriflamme, and
+marched with the Burgundians to besiege
+Bourges. The campaign, as usual, ended
+without an action, in a kind of treaty. Both
+parties felt the thirst of pillage and of blood;
+both wanted the courage to decide their
+differences in a general combat. No period
+of history manifests such an utter want of
+talent; no prowess was shown except in
+tournaments; no statesmanship save in the
+planning of a murder. Although the passions of men possessed of power
+and means were excited to the utmost, yet not a decisive blow was struck in
+policy or in arms. The fortune of the struggling parties was left to events—to
+chance. Success and reverse, the former at least, if not both, unearned,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>alternately ensued; conquerors and conquered pursued and fled, rolling like
+destructive waves over the necks of a prostrate and ruined people. Civil wars
+in general, destructive as they are of peace and prosperity, beget at least the
+virtue of courage; yet it was not so in France. The peasantry were crushed
+and trodden down; the nobles and knights feared to trust them with arms.
+The Bretons and the Gascons, natives of distant provinces, were the only
+foot-soldiers, the sole infantry of France at this time; and a handful of
+English sufficed in these quarrels to give the advantage to either party.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7h2"><a href="#endnote_7h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1410-1413 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In this condition of affairs there was much to recall the worst days of
+king John, and to better them the bourgeoisie took the initiative, parliament,
+as in 1356, holding back. The University of Paris was very proud of having
+recently accomplished the deposition of two anti-popes, the election of
+Alexander V, a former doctor of the Sorbonne, and the convocation of a
+general council for the consideration of reforms within the church; and the
+bourgeoisie thought it could pacify the state as it hoped to have pacified
+Christianity. It obtained from Charles VI, in one of his lucid moments, a
+decree ordering all the princes back to their provinces and forbidding them
+to leave. But in a few months the war recommenced. The Armagnacs
+committed a thousand atrocities, telling their victims to seek vengeance from
+the “poor mad king.” The body of citizens asked, in the king’s council,
+that the defence of Paris might be committed to a friend of Burgundy’s, the
+count of Saint-Pol, and the latter, not very sure of the upper middle classes,
+wished to overcome them by means of the populace. He took refuge in the
+great and rich corporation of the butchers which he authorised to raise five
+hundred men for the municipal defence. The butchers armed their servants
+and all the men employed about the slaughter-houses. This violent mob, accustomed
+to the sight of blood and killing, and who made a slaughterer named
+Caboche their chief, let themselves be led for a time by their masters and
+the learned men of the University of Paris. Then Paris presented the most
+singular and terrible spectacle. One day the mob presented itself at the
+dauphin’s palace, forced him to appear on a balcony and through their
+spokesman, the old surgeon, John de Troyes, made him listen to their
+demands. He must send away his evil companions; lead a more regular
+life in every way; and take care of his health, and of his soul. The butchers
+charged themselves with superintending this change of morals which
+would bring with it, according to their ideas, the reformation of the kingdom.
+They set a watch around the Hôtel St. Pol for the safety of the king
+and monseigneur the duke of Guienne, and if they heard the sound of instruments
+and dancing in the night they entered boldly to put a stop to it, and
+preserve decency and order. But these rough and violent natures were not
+always content with words. If they had compassion on “that good fellow,
+the dauphin,” they broke out against those who were corrupting him and
+removed them violently from the palace and dragged them before the parliament
+for justice, even sometimes administering it on the way to those who
+had displeased them the most.</p>
+
+<p>However, the able members of the party drew up, for the repression of
+abuses, the ordinance of 1413, known as the Cabochian ordinance, whose
+application would have been successful, if in making elections universal it had
+not made its administration impossible (May 25th). “But,” says Augustin
+Thierry, “men were found to conceive that great reform charter, joint work of
+the citizens and the university, while none could be found to execute and maintain
+it. Wise men and those accustomed to affairs had at this time neither
+will power nor political energy. They kept themselves apart, and all action
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>rested upon fanatics and the unruly who precipitated, through their intolerable
+excesses, a reaction which brought about their fall and put a stop to all reform.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1413-1415 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>What the bourgeoisie respected, the mob outraged. It proscribed not
+only vice and immorality, but wealth, and mingled pillage and murder with
+its reforms; it disgraced finally those who had employed it and who, blushing
+at the association, now preferred the Armagnacs to the Cabochians.
+Called upon by all men of moderation the Armagnacs put a stop to the mob’s
+excesses, but at the same time overthrew the reform measures of the bourgeoisie
+(September 5th, 1413). John the Fearless fled again to his Flemish
+provinces.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b6"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span> Charles VI marched in person against him at the head of the
+Armagnacs, besieged and took Soissons, of which the inhabitants of every
+age and sex were inhumanly massacred. Arras was next invested,<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> but the
+Armagnacs becoming disgusted at the tediousness of the siege, as the Burgundians
+had been the previous year at that of Bourges, an accommodation
+ensued, the duke of Burgundy making verbal submissions, and promising
+never to show himself in Paris again. (Treaty of Arras, September, 1414.)</p>
+
+<h3>HENRY V INVADES FRANCE—A FRENCH VIEW</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1415 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Whilst France was thus occupied and torn by civil contests, Henry V had
+succeeded, in 1413, to the throne of England.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7h3"><a href="#endnote_7h">h</a></span> He now judged the time
+come to interfere in the French mêlée. He stood, moreover, in need of a
+foreign war to settle himself on the throne his father had usurped. Since
+the great campaigns of the preceding century, the idea of a war with France
+had ever been popular in England. Therefore, when Henry proposed a
+serious expedition, he obtained easily from parliament six thousand men-at-arms
+and twenty-four thousand archers, with whom he debarked at Harfleur
+on the 14th of August, 1415. After a heroic defence which lasted a whole
+month, Harfleur, unsuccoured, was compelled to give up. But Henry V had
+lost fifteen thousand men (two thousand men-at-arms, thirteen thousand
+archers)—the half of his army. Too feeble now for any great undertaking,
+he resolved to march across country to Calais, and to throw the French knighthood
+a new and insolent defiance.</p>
+
+<p>The English left Harfleur on the 8th of October, traversing the Pays de
+Caux, not without some resistance, although they took nothing but food and
+wine from the towns for fear of arousing the inhabitants. On the 13th they
+arrived at Abbeville intending to cross the Somme there, but they found the
+ford at Blanquetaque so well defended this time that they were obliged to
+ascend the stream as far as Amiens.</p>
+
+<p>Near Nesle a peasant pointed out a ford that could be reached across a
+marsh. It was a difficult and dangerous passage; they would be lost if
+attacked. But the French army was still far away. Besides, the nobles
+would not have wished a combat in this swamp; they were seeking a fine
+battle in open field and to this end asked king Henry for a day and place
+for a fight. To which the Englishman replied that it was not necessary to
+name either day or place, since every day would find him on the field.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this answer, they feared, in the French army, that the enemy
+would escape; and to make sure they should not, the princes took up a position
+between the villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt [French Azincourt],
+where the English must necessarily pass, on a narrow plain, newly ploughed
+and all sodden with rain.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b7"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span></p>
+
+<p>On Thursday, the 24th of October, the English having passed Blangy
+learned that the French were close at hand, and thought they were about to
+attack them. The men-at-arms dismounted from horseback, and all of them
+kneeling down, and lifting up their hands to heaven, prayed to God to take
+them into his keeping. Nothing, however, took place as yet, the constable
+not having reached the French army. The English proceeded to quarter
+themselves at Maisoncelle, still nearer to Agincourt. Henry V disencumbered
+himself of his prisoners, saying to them, “If your masters survive, you will
+present yourself again at Calais.”</p>
+
+<p>At last, they discovered the huge French army, its fires and its banners.
+There were, according to the estimate of the eye-witness, Lefebvre de St.
+Rémy,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7j1"><a href="#endnote_7j">j</a></span> fourteen thousand men-at-arms, in all perhaps fifty thousand men;
+thrice the number of the English. The latter had eleven or twelve thousand
+men remaining of the fifteen thousand that had marched from Harfleur, ten
+thousand of them at least being archers.</p>
+
+<p>The Welshman, David Gam, the first who brought word to the king of the
+enemy’s presence, being asked how many men the French might have, is said
+to have replied, “Enough to be killed, enough to be taken prisoners, enough
+to fly.” An Englishman, Sir Walter Hungerford, could not forbear from
+observing that it would not have been amiss to have brought ten thousand
+more stout archers; there were as many in England who would have desired
+no better. But the king replied peremptorily, “Now in our Lord’s name, I
+would not have one man more. The number we have is that which he has
+willed; these folks place their confidence in their multitude, and I in him
+who so often gave victory to Judas Maccabæus.”</p>
+
+<p>The English having still a night at their disposal, employed it usefully
+in making their preparations, and providing as well as possible for both
+body and soul. First, they rolled up the banners for fear of the rain, and
+took off and folded up the handsome coats of arms they had put on for the
+fight. Then in order to pass the cold October night in comfort, they opened
+their baggage and laid straw under them, which they procured from the
+neighbouring villages. The men-at-arms fitted the rivets of their armour,
+the archers applied fresh strings to their bows. They had for several days
+employed themselves in cutting and sharpening the stakes which they usually
+planted before them to stop the advance of cavalry. Amidst all their preparations
+for victory, these brave men did not forget their souls’ weal, but
+set their accounts in order with God and their consciences. They confessed
+hastily, those at least whom the priests could attend, and all this was done
+without noise, in whispers. The king had commanded silence, under penalty
+of forfeiture of their horses for the gentlemen, and of loss of the right ear
+for those of lower degree.</p>
+
+<p>It was otherwise on the French side, where the time was spent in making
+knights. In every direction there were great fires which showed everything
+to the enemy; a confused din of people shouting and calling to each other;
+a bustling mob of valets and pages. Many gentlemen passed the night on
+horseback in their heavy armour, no doubt to avoid soiling it in the deep
+mud, which with the cold rain chilled them to the bones.</p>
+
+<h3>MICHELET’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (OCTOBER 25TH, 1415)</h3>
+
+<p>On the morning of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian’s day, October 25th, 1415,
+the king of England heard three masses, bareheaded, but otherwise in full
+armour. “For it was his custom,” says John de Vaurin,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7k1"><a href="#endnote_7k">k</a></span> “to hear three
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>masses each day, one after the other.” He then put on a magnificent helmet
+with an imperial gold crown. He rode without spurs on a gray palfrey, and
+made his men advance over a field of green corn, where the ground was less
+spoiled by the rain, the whole army forming one body, with the few lances he
+had in the centre, flanked by bodies of archers. He then rode slowly along
+the line, speaking a few brief sentences: “You have a good cause; I am
+come but to demand my right. Remember that you belong to old England;
+that your kindred, your wives and children are awaiting you there; see that
+you return to them with good cheer. The kings of England have always
+fared well in France. Look to the honour of the crown; look to yourselves.
+The French say they will cut off three fingers from each archer’s hand.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p171.jpg" width="500" height="260" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Map illustrating the March of Henry
+V and the Battle of Agincourt</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(The dotted line indicates a doubtful part of the route.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The ground was in so bad a condition that no one was disposed to attack.
+The king of England parleyed with the French, offering to renounce the
+title of king of France, and to surrender back Harfleur, provided he were
+given Guienne, with some few convenient additions, Ponthieu, a daughter
+of the king, and 800,000 crowns. While this parleying between the two
+armies was going on the English archers were securing their stakes.</p>
+
+<p>The two armies formed a strange mutual contrast. On the French side
+were three enormous squadrons, like so many forests of lances, following
+each other in lengthened file through the narrow plain; at their head the
+constable, the princes, the dukes of Orleans, Bar, and Alençon, the counts
+of Nevers, Eu, Richemont, and Vendôme, a multitude of lords, a dazzling
+iris of enamelled armour, escutcheons, banners, the horses fantastically disguised
+in steel and gold. The French, too, had archers, men of the commonalty;
+but where were they to be placed? Every post was numbered,
+and no one would give up his own; these men would have been a blot upon
+so noble an assemblage. There were cannon, but it does not appear that
+they were made use of; probably there was no place for them either.</p>
+
+<p>The English army did not look handsome. The archers had no armour,
+often no shoes; for headpieces they had sorry caps of boiled leather, or even
+of willow with a crosspiece of iron; the axes and hatchets stuck in their
+belts gave them the appearance of carpenters. Many of these good workmen
+had taken off their breeches, in order to be at their ease and to work
+the better. It is a strange, incredible, and yet certain fact, that the French
+army really could not stir either to fight or to fly. The rear alone escaped.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span></p>
+
+<p>At the decisive moment, when old Thomas of Erpingham, having drawn
+up the English army, threw his truncheon into the air, crying out, “Now
+strike!” and when the English had replied with a shout from ten thousand
+throats, the French army, to their great astonishment, still remained motionless.
+Horses and riders, all appeared enchanted, or dead in their steel cases.
+The fact was that the big war horses, loaded with their heavy riders and
+their steel caparisons, had sunk deep in the stiff soil, had become firmly fixed
+there, and only struggled out to advance slowly a few paces. Such is the
+acknowledgment of the English chroniclers; a modest acknowledgment, which
+does honour to their probity.</p>
+
+<p>Lefebvre,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7j2"><a href="#endnote_7j">j</a></span> John de Vaurin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7k2"><a href="#endnote_7k">k</a></span> and Walsingham<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7m"><a href="#endnote_7m">m</a></span> expressly say that the
+field was nothing but viscid mud. “The place was soft and cut up by the
+horses, so that it was with great difficulty they could drag their feet out of
+the ground. The French were so loaded with harness that they could not
+advance. They had long and very weighty coats of mail, hanging below
+the knees; below these they had leg harness, and above them plate harness,
+and, moreover, helmets of proof. They were so much crowded together that
+they could not lift their arms to strike an enemy, except some of them in
+the front.”</p>
+
+<p>Another historian of the English side, Titus Livy,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7l"><a href="#endnote_7l">l</a></span> informs us that the
+French were drawn up thirty-two deep, whilst the English were ranged
+in but four ranks. This enormous depth of the French served no purpose;
+their thirty-two ranks consisted wholly, or almost so, of cavalry; the
+majority of whom, far from being able to act, did not even see the engagement;
+whereas every man of the English was efficient. Of the fifty thousand
+French, two or three thousand only could fight against the eleven
+thousand English, or at least might have done so if their horses could have
+extricated themselves from the mud.</p>
+
+<p>To rouse those inert masses, the English archers discharged volleys of ten
+thousand arrows with extreme rapidity and pertinacity at their faces. The
+iron-clad horsemen stooped their heads, otherwise the arrows would have
+entered through their visors. Then, from the two wings of Tramecourt and
+Agincourt, two French squadrons began with much spurring to execute a
+clumsy charge, led by two excellent men-at-arms, Messire Clignet de Brabant
+and Messire William de Saveuse. The first squadron, advancing from
+Tramecourt, was unexpectedly taken in flank by a body of archers concealed
+in the woods; neither squadron reached the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Of twelve hundred men who began this charge, there remained not more
+than 120 when they came up with the English palisades. Most of them had
+fallen in the mud by the way, men and horses. Would to God that all
+had so fallen; but the others, whose horses were wounded, could no longer
+control the frantic animals, which rushed desperately back on the French
+ranks. The vanguard, far from being able to open and let them pass, was,
+as we have seen, so closely packed together that not a man could move. We
+may imagine the frightful accidents that took place in that dense mass, the
+horses wild with terror, backing and smothering each other, flinging off their
+riders, or crushing them under their armour as the iron masses clashed together.
+Then came the English to complete the havoc. Coming out from their line
+of stakes, and throwing down their bows and arrows, they advanced quite
+at their ease with axes, hatchets, heavy swords, and leaded clubs, to demolish
+that confused mountain of men and horses. In process of time they
+succeeded in clearing away the vanguard, and made their way, with the king
+at their head, to the second line of battle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps at this moment that eighteen French gentlemen made a
+dash at the king of England. They had made a vow, it was said, to die or
+bring down his crown; one of them struck off a point from it; all perished
+in the attempt. This <i>on dit</i> is not enough for the historians, who further
+adorn the tale, and convert it into a Homeric scene, in which the king fights
+over the body of his wounded brother, like Achilles over that of Patroclus.
+Then it is the duke of Alençon, commander of the French army, who kills
+the duke of York and cleaves the king’s crown. Being speedily surrounded,
+he yields; Henry holds out his hand to him; but he was already slain.<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>
+What is more certain is that the duke of Brabant arrived in haste at the
+second stage of the engagement. He was the duke of Burgundy’s own
+brother, and seems to have sought the field to clear the honour of his family.
+He arrived very late, but time enough to die. The brave prince had left all
+his men behind him, and had not even put on his coat of arms: instead of
+which he took his banner, made a hole in it, passed his head through it, and
+charged the English, who slew him instantly.</p>
+
+<p>There remained but the rearguard, which soon dispersed. A great number
+of cavaliers, dismounted, but raised up again by their servants, had made
+their way out of the throng of battle and surrendered to the English. At
+this moment, word was brought the king that a French corps was pillaging
+his baggage; and at the same time he saw some Bretons or Gascons in the
+French rear, that seemed about to return to the charge against him. He was
+alarmed for the moment, especially as he saw his men embarrassed with so
+many prisoners, and instantly ordered every man to kill his captive. Not
+one obeyed; those soldiers without shoes or breeches, who held the greatest
+lords of France in their hands, and thought they had made their fortunes,
+were now ordered to ruin themselves. As they refused to comply, the king
+appointed two hundred men to act as executioners. “It was a sad spectacle,”
+says Lefebvre,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7j3"><a href="#endnote_7j">j</a></span> “to see those poor disarmed wretches, who had just received
+promise of quarter, slaughtered in cold blood, cut and hewed, head and face!”
+The alarm was groundless. It was only some pillagers of the neighbourhood,
+people of Agincourt, who, in spite of their master, the duke of Burgundy,
+had taken advantage of the opportunity. The battle being ended, the
+archers made haste to strip the slain, whilst they were yet warm. Many
+were dragged forth alive from beneath the corpses; among others, the duke
+of Orleans. Next day the victor, on his departure, killed, or made prisoners,
+all that remained alive.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> “It was a piteous sight to see the great nobles who
+had there been slain, and who were already stark naked, like those who were
+born of men of no account.” An English priest was not less affected by
+the spectacle. “If this sight,” he says, “excited pity and compunction in
+us, who were strangers, and but passed through the country, how great was
+the sorrow for the native inhabitants. Oh, may the French nation come to
+peace and union with the English, and depart from its iniquities and its evil
+ways!” Sternness then prevails over compassion, and he subjoins: “Meanwhile,
+let his grief be turned upon his head.”</p>
+
+<p>The English lost 1,600 men; the French 10,000, almost all gentlemen,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>120 lords having banners. The list fills six large pages in Monstrelet,
+beginning with seven princes (Brabant, Nevers, D’Albret, Alençon, the three
+De Bar); then come lords without number, Dampierre, Vaudemont, Marle,
+Roussy, Salm, Dammartin, etc., the bailiffs of Vermandois, Mâcon, Sens,
+Senlis, Caen, and Meaux, and Montaigu, the brave archbishop of Sens, who
+fought like a lion.<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p>The duke of Burgundy’s son bestowed the charity of a grave on all the
+dead that lay naked on the field of battle. Twenty-five square rods of
+ground were measured out, and in that huge pit were laid all the bodies that
+had not been carried away, fifty-eight hundred men by the tale. The ground
+was consecrated, and a thick thorn hedge was planted round it, for fear
+of the wolves. There were but fifteen hundred prisoners, including the
+dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the counts d’Eu, de Vendôme, and de
+Richelieu, the marshal de Boucicaut, Messire James d’Harcourt, Messire
+John de Craon, etc.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7p1"><a href="#endnote_7p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>MASSACRE OF THE ARMAGNACS IN PARIS (1418 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1415-1418 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>With this rich capture, Henry hastened to re-embark at Calais. His
+army, reduced to ten thousand men, was unable to consider any further
+enterprise. The duke of Burgundy had taken no part whatever in the battle
+of Agincourt;<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> it was his enemies that brought about that shameful defeat.
+If he had made haste, he might have entered Paris as its master. D’Armagnac,
+the new constable and successor of D’Albret, showed more promptitude;
+he took possession of the capital, of the king and the dauphin his son,
+who was still a minor; that is to say, of the entire government. To recall a
+little popularity to the side of the party he showed a praiseworthy activity,
+borrowing ships from the Genoese, raising troops in France, and besieging
+Harfleur (1416). But funds were lacking and he fell back on the great
+resource of the times, debasement of money and false loans.</p>
+
+<p>John the Fearless was always the patron of the poor. Paris murmured,
+and John the Fearless, to increase the fermentation, prevented the arrival of
+provisions in the city. He succeeded in carrying off Queen Isabella from
+Tours and having her declared regent. He forbade the cities, in his name,
+to pay the taxes imposed by D’Armagnac, and he entered into negotiations
+with the English (1417).</p>
+
+<p>The latter had now returned. Henry V had taken Caen (1417), and like
+a conqueror who is sure of himself had divided his army into four divisions,
+the more quickly to accomplish his purpose. What, in fact, did he have to
+fear? The dukes of Brittany, Anjou, and Burgundy had signed treaties of
+neutrality with him. D’Armagnac could do nothing, for he was reduced
+to “borrowing from the saints,” in melting their shrines, with the people
+of his party fast abandoning him because they were not paid enough; it was
+necessary to protect Paris with the Parisians who hated and betrayed him.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p175.jpg" width="250" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Crossbow-man, Beginning of Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>One Perrinet Leclerc, iron merchant on the Petit Pont, had charge of
+the small gate at St. Germain. “His son,” says Monstrelet, “and some
+reckless young companions, who formerly had been punished for their escapades,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>plotted to deliver the city over to the Burgundians. On the night
+of May 29th, 1418, Perrinet entered his father’s chamber while the old man
+slept and stole the keys from under the pillow. The sire de l’Isle-Adam
+informed in advance, was on the other side
+of the moat. He entered with eight hundred
+men, and the former partisans of the
+faction, the butchers, the slaughterers—all
+the people of the market flocked around
+him. Some Armagnacs tried to escape,
+taking the dauphin with them; but the
+greater part including the constable were
+thrown into prison, where their lives were
+soon in peril. The mob, which in 1413 had
+made its first appearance, reappeared on the
+scene in 1418 exasperated and furious with
+misery and uneasiness. Provisions failed
+and Paris was threatened with famine at
+the same time that ugly rumours circulated
+in the crowd; the Armagnacs were
+coming to assail such a gate, such a faubourg;
+the English, another. The cause
+of these misfortunes, they cried on every
+side, were those Armagnacs they had in
+their keeping. Vengeance must be had
+upon them and an end put to their schemes.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday the 12th of June, 1418, the mob
+got under way and rushed to the prisons,
+Hôtel-de-Ville, Temple, St. Éloi, St. Magloire,
+St. Martin, and the Grand and Petit
+Châtelet, to murder indiscriminately everyone
+they found there. Armagnacs or not,
+by Monday morning sixteen hundred people
+had perished, killed in the prisons and
+streets. Their bodies were left there and
+“bad children played with them and dragged them about.” With that of the
+constable they amused themselves by raising a large strip of skin “to represent
+the white scarf of Armagnac.”</p>
+
+<h3>THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY MASTER OF PARIS (1418 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>These dreadful occurrences had just taken place when John the Fearless
+returned with the queen to Paris, amidst the enthusiastic acclaims of the
+crowd, who believed he brought peace and abundance with him. Vain hope!
+Neither one nor the other was to come from the duke of Burgundy, but on
+the contrary to all preceding misfortunes there was added an epidemic which
+carried off in Paris and its environs fifty thousand persons. Again the fury
+of the mob became uncontrollable and wrought its vengeance on the wretched
+beings that had been overlooked in the prisons or sent there since June.
+The 31st of August an immense assemblage formed itself under the orders
+of the hangman Capeluche, and set out for the prisons. The duke of Burgundy
+hastened after them imploringly, and even went so far as to press the
+hand of Capeluche, but in vain. A new massacre took place. Some days
+after the duke sent the bloodthirsty mob after some Armagnacs, shut up, as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>he said, in Montlhéry, and as soon as they were gone he shut the gates of
+Paris behind them and had Capeluche beheaded.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b8"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In becoming master of Paris, the duke of Burgundy had succeeded to all
+the embarrassments of the constable D’Armagnac. He had now in his turn
+to rule the great city, victual and maintain it, which could only be done by
+keeping the Armagnacs and the English at a distance—that is to say, by
+making war, re-establishing the taxes he had suppressed, and losing his
+popularity.</p>
+
+<p>The equivocal part he had so long played, accusing others of treachery,
+while he himself was betraying his country, was now to come to a close. As
+the English were ascending the Seine and menacing Paris, he had no alternative
+but to forego his hold on the capital, or to give them battle. But by
+his eternal tergiversation and duplicity, he had enervated his own party, and
+was now powerless alike for peace or war.</p>
+
+<p>The people of Rouen and Paris, who had chosen him for their leader,
+were Burgundians, indeed, and foes to the Armagnacs, but still more foes to
+the English. They were astonished, in their simplicity, to see that their
+good duke did nothing against the enemy of the kingdom. His warmest
+partisans began to say, as the Bourgeois de Paris<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7q1"><a href="#endnote_7q">q</a></span> relates, that “he was, in
+all his proceedings, the slowest man that could be found.” The Armagnacs
+possessed the whole centre, Sens, Moret, Crécy, Compiègne, Montlhéry, a
+girdle of towns round Paris, Meaux, and Melun; that is to say, Marne and
+Haute Seine. The duke sent to Rouen all the forces he could spare without
+leaving Paris unprotected, namely, four thousand horse.</p>
+
+<p>It had long been foreseen that Rouen would be invested. Henry V had
+approached it with extreme slowness. Not content with having two great
+English colonies in his rear, Harfleur and Caen, he had completed the conquest
+of lower Normandy by the capture of Falaise, Vire, St. Lô, Constance,
+and Évreux. He kept possession of the Seine, not only by Harfleur, but
+also by Pont de l’Arche. He had already re-established some degree of
+order, reassured the clergy, and invited the absentees to return, promising
+them support in case of their compliance, and declaring that otherwise he
+would dispose of their lands or their benefices. He reopened the exchequer
+and the other tribunals, and appointed his grand treasurer of Normandy
+supreme president over them. He reduced the tax on salt to almost nothing,
+“in honour,” says Rymer,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7r"><a href="#endnote_7r">r</a></span> “of the Holy Virgin.”</p>
+
+<h3>SIEGE OF ROUEN (1418-1419 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1418-1419 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>There were in Rouen fifteen thousand foot-soldiers and four thousand
+horse, in all, perhaps, sixty thousand souls—a whole people to feed. Henry,
+knowing he had nothing to fear, either from the dispersed Armagnacs, or
+from the duke of Burgundy, who had just besought of him another truce for
+Flanders, did not hesitate to divide his army into eight or nine bodies, so as
+to embrace the vast compass of Rouen. These bodies communicated with
+each other by means of trenches, which protected them from shot; whilst in
+the direction of the open country they were defended from a surprise by
+deep ditches set with thorns. He was prepared for an obstinate resistance,
+but his anticipation was surpassed. There was a strong Cabochian leaven
+in Rouen. Alain Blanchard, the chief of the arblast men, and the other
+Rouennese leaders, seem to have been connected with the Carmelite Pavilly,
+the Parisian orator of 1413. The Pavilly of Rouen was the canon Delivet.
+These men defended Rouen for seven months.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span></p>
+
+<p>The king of England, thinking to terrify the inhabitants, had gibbets
+erected all round the town, and hanged the prisoners on them. He barred
+the Seine, too, with a wooden bridge, chains, and barges, so that nothing
+could pass. The Rouennese seemed reduced to extremities at an early
+period of the siege, and yet they held out six months longer; it was a
+miracle. They ate up the horses, dogs, and cats. When these were gone,
+those who could anywhere find a morsel of food, however filthy, took good
+care not to let it be seen; a thousand greedy wretches would otherwise have
+seized upon it. The most horrible necessity that befell the town was that of
+expelling all who could not fight, twelve thousand old men, women, and
+children. The piteous crowd presented themselves before the English intrenchments,
+and were received at the sword’s point. Repulsed alike by their
+friends and their enemies, they remained between the camp and the town,
+in the ditch, without any other food than the weeds they plucked. There
+they passed the whole winter, with nothing between them and the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the duke of Burgundy was beginning to put himself in
+motion. First, he went to Paris from St. Denis, where he made the king
+go through the solemn mockery of displaying the oriflamme, to remain a
+long while at Pontoise, and again a long while at Beauvais. There he
+received another message from Rouen by a man who had risked his life to
+convey it. It was the voice of an expiring town, and said merely that fifty
+thousand men had died of famine in Rouen and its environs. The duke of
+Burgundy was touched by this sad tale, and promised succour; then having
+got rid of the messenger, and feeling assured that he should hear no more
+of Rouen, he turned his back on Normandy, and took the king to Provins.</p>
+
+<p>A surrender was then inevitable; but the king of England, desirous of
+making an example on account of so long a resistance, wished to have the inhabitants
+at his mercy. The Rouennese, who well knew what was the
+mercy of Henry V, resolved to undermine a wall, and to pass out that way
+by night with arms in their hands, trusting in God’s grace. The king and
+the bishops reconsidered the matter, and the archbishop of Canterbury
+personally offered the besieged the following terms of capitulation: (1)
+their lives to be spared, five men excepted (those of the five who were rich,
+or churchmen, got themselves out of the difficulty, and Alain Blanchard
+paid for all; the English were bent on an execution, in order to ratify the
+principle that the resistance had been rebellion against the lawful king);
+(2) for the same reason, Henry insured to the town all the privileges which
+the kings of France, his ancestors, had granted to it, “before the usurpation
+of Philip of Valois”; (3) it had to pay a tremendous fine—300,000 gold
+crowns—one-half before the end of January (it was already the 19th of
+that month), the other half in February, 1419. To squeeze all that from a
+depopulated, ruined town was no easy matter.</p>
+
+<h3>HENRY AND JOHN THE FEARLESS (1419 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The king of England being occupied with the task of organising the
+country he had conquered, granted a truce to the two French parties, the
+Burgundians and the Armagnacs. He felt it necessary to refit his army;
+and, above all, to collect money and discharge his debts to the bishops, who
+had lent him funds for his long expedition.</p>
+
+<p>Henry was so far from apprehending danger from the dauphin, that he
+was not afraid to displease the duke of Burgundy. The latter sought an
+interview with him, and proposed to him a marriage with a daughter of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>Charles VI, with Guienne and Normandy for a dower; but Henry required
+also Brittany as a dependence of Normandy, besides Maine, Anjou, and Touraine.</p>
+
+<p>But the duke of Burgundy had about him persons who besought him to
+treat with them. They were followers of the dauphin, Barbazan, and Tannegui
+Duchâtel, the commanders of his troops. It was full time France
+should become self-reconciled, when her ruin was so imminent. The parliament
+of Paris, and that of Poitiers, laboured equally to that end; so, too, did
+the queen, who talked, wept, and found means to move his hardened soul.</p>
+
+<p>On the 11th of July was beheld, at the bridge of Pouilly, this singular
+spectacle: the duke of Burgundy surrounded by the old servants of the duke
+of Orleans, and by the brothers and kinsmen of the Agincourt prisoners,
+and of the victims butchered in Paris. Of his own accord he knelt before
+the dauphin. A treaty of amity and mutual aid was signed and submitted
+to by both parties. But on the 29th of July, less than three weeks after the
+signing of the treaty, the Burgundian garrison of Pontoise, near Paris, suffered
+themselves to be surprised by the English; the inhabitants fled to
+Paris, which they filled with consternation, and this augmented when, on
+the 30th, the duke of Burgundy, carrying away the king from Paris to Troyes,
+passed beneath the walls of the capital, without making any other provision
+for the defence of the distracted Parisians than naming his nephew, a boy
+of fifteen, captain of the town.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1419-1420 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Seeing all this, the dauphin’s followers believed, rightly or wrongly, that
+the duke had a secret understanding with the English, and his servants told
+him, it is alleged, that he would perish in an interview which the dauphin
+sought with him. The dauphin’s people had set about erecting on the
+bridge of Montereau the gallery in which it was to take place; a long, tortuous
+wooden gallery, without any barrier in the middle, contrary to the
+custom always observed in that suspicious age. In spite of all this he persisted
+in his resolution to meet the dauphin; such was the wish of Dame de
+Giac, who never quitted him.</p>
+
+<p>As the duke did not come in time, Tannegui Duchâtel went to fetch him.
+The duke hesitated no longer, but slapped him on the shoulder, saying:
+“Here is the man I trust in.” Duchâtel made him hasten his pace, for the
+dauphin, he said, was waiting. In this way he separated him from his
+suite, so that he entered the gallery along with none but the sire de Noailles,
+brother of the captal de Buch, who was in the service of the English, and had
+just taken Pontoise. Neither of them came out alive (September 10th, 1419).</p>
+
+<p>The altercation which took place is variously related. Tannegui Duchâtel,
+however, averred that he had not struck the duke. Others boasted that
+they had done so. One of them, Le Bouteiller, said: “I said to the duke of
+Burgundy: ‘Thou didst cut off the hand of the duke of Orleans, my master;
+I am going to cut off thine.’” However little worthy of regret was the duke
+of Burgundy, his death did the dauphin immense mischief. John the
+Fearless and his party had both fallen very low, and in a little time there
+would have been no more avowed Burgundians. Everyone was beginning
+to despise and hate him; but from the moment he was killed all were again
+Burgundians.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY OF TROYES (1420 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>We must not suppose that Paris easily admitted the foreigner, but extreme
+lassitude and inexpressible suffering made everyone only too happy
+to find a pretext for a settlement with Henry. Each man exaggerated
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>to himself his feelings of pity and indignation. The shame of calling in the
+stranger was veiled by a fair show of just vengeance; but the real fact was
+that Paris yielded, because it was perishing of hunger. The queen yielded,
+because, after all, if her son was not to be king, her daughter, at least,
+would be queen. The duke of Burgundy’s son, Philip the Good, was the
+only person who acted sincerely; he had his father’s death to avenge. But
+he, too, doubtless, thought to find his advantage in the new order of things;
+the Burgundy branch would thrive by the ruin of the elder branch, by placing
+on the throne a stranger, who would never have more than one foot on the
+continent, and who, if he were wise, would govern France through the duke
+of Burgundy.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p179.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Man-at-arms, Beginning of the Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Paris then left the Burgundians, who again possessed full authority in the
+town, to do as they thought fit. Young Saint-Pol, nephew to the duke of
+Burgundy, and captain of Paris, was sent,
+in November, to the king of England, with
+Maître Eustace Aloy, “in the name of the
+city, the clergy, and the commune.” He
+received them extremely well, declaring
+that he desired nothing but the independent
+possession of what he had conquered,
+and the hand of the princess Catherine; and
+he said graciously: “Am I not myself
+of the blood royal of France? If I become
+the king’s son-in-law, I will defend him
+against all men living.” He obtained more
+than he demanded. His ambassadors, encouraged
+by the inclinations of the new
+duke of Burgundy, asserted their master’s
+right to the crown of France, and that right
+the duke acknowledged. The king of
+England had spent three years in conquering
+Normandy; the death of John the Fearless
+seemed to give him France in one day.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty concluded at Troyes, May
+20th, 1420, in the name of Charles VI, secured
+to the king of England the hand of
+the daughter of the king of France, and the
+reversion of the kingdom: “It is agreed
+that immediately after our decease the
+crown and realm of France shall remain and
+be perpetually to our said son King Henry
+and his heirs. The faculty and exercise
+of governing and ordering the public affairs
+of the said realm shall be and remain, during
+our life, to our said son King Henry,
+with the counsel of the nobles and sages of the said realm. During our life
+the letters pertaining to matters of justice shall be written and shall proceed
+under our name and seal; nevertheless, for as much as extraordinary cases
+may occur, it shall be competent to our son to write his letters to our subjects,
+wherein he shall order, prohibit, and command, on our behalf, and on
+his own, as regent.” After this, was not the subsequent article a mockery?
+“All conquests which shall be made by our said son king, over the disobedient,
+shall be and shall be made to our profit.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span></p>
+
+<p>This monstrous treaty concluded worthily with these lines, in which the
+king proclaimed the dishonour of his family, the father proscribed his son:
+“Considering the enormous crimes and misdemeanours perpetrated upon the
+said realm of France by Charles, styling himself (<i>soi-disant</i>) dauphin of
+Viennois, it is agreed that we, our said son the king, and also our very dear
+son Philip, duke of Burgundy, will in no wise treat concerning peace or
+concord with the said Charles, nor will we treat by ourselves or others,
+except with the consent and counsel of all and each of us three, and of the
+three estates of the two realms aforesaid.”</p>
+
+<p>The mother received prompt payment for the shameful phrase, <i>soi-disant
+dauphin</i>. Isabella immediately had 2,000 francs a month assigned to her,
+payable out of the mint at Troyes. For this price she denied her son, and
+gave up her daughter. The English took from the king of France, at one
+stroke, both his kingdom and his child. The poor girl was forced to wed a
+master, and brought him for dower her brother’s ruin.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7p2"><a href="#endnote_7p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>HENRY’S STRUGGLE WITH THE DAUPHIN (1420-1422 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Such was the tenor of the Treaty of Troyes, so glorious to Henry, yet so
+impracticable of accomplishment, that it must be doubted whether there was
+any sincerity in the French signers of it. To be avenged of the dauphin,
+and to crush him by the assistance of England, was evidently the foremost
+thought, the first desire. But it is scarcely credible that the duke of
+Burgundy looked forward to continuing, after the accomplishment of his
+vengeance, the faithful vassal of the house of Lancaster. The arrangement
+of one king governing the two countries was plainly impracticable. And
+that Henry himself could have entertained it only shows how the most
+vigorous intellects may allow their perspicacity and sense to be clouded by
+success and superstition. He was well aware that his new position could
+only be preserved by force of arms. On the occasion of his marriage with
+the princess Catherine, which took place on June 2nd, the knights of both
+countries were for celebrating the event by a tournament. But he forbade
+the rival combat, and told those who proposed it to join him in the siege
+of Sens, where they might exercise their prowess against the Armagnacs.
+Sens made but a trifling resistance.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7h4"><a href="#endnote_7h">h</a></span> Next, this implacable hunter of men
+hurried to Montereau, and not being able to reduce the castle, he had his
+prisoners hanged by the ditch sides.</p>
+
+<p>With all his impetuosity he was forced to have patience before Melun,
+where the brave Barbazan detained him many months. The king of England,
+employing all the means of which he could avail himself, took Charles
+VI and the two queens to the siege, presenting himself as the son-in-law of
+the king of France, speaking in his father-in-law’s name, and using his wife
+as a bait and a snare. All these clever devices were ineffectual. The
+besieged resisted valiantly; obstinate conflicts took place round the walls,
+and beneath them, in the mines and countermines, and Henry did not spare
+his own person. At last, however, provisions failed, and the garrison were
+constrained to surrender. Henry, according to his custom, accepted the
+capitulation, and put to death several citizens, all the Scotchmen who were
+in the place, and even two monks.</p>
+
+<p>During the siege he had got the Burgundians to deliver up to him Paris
+and the four fortresses, Vincennes, the Bastille, the Louvre, and the Tour de
+Nesle. He made his entry in December, riding between the king of France
+and the duke of Burgundy. The latter was dressed in mourning, in token
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>of grief and vengeance, perhaps also from a feeling of shame for the unworthy
+part he played in thus introducing the foreigner. The king of England
+was accompanied by his brothers, the dukes of Clarence and Bedford, the
+duke of Exeter, the earl of Warwick, and all his lords. The king of England
+was well received in Paris. He entered into formal possession as
+regent of France, by assembling the estates on the 6th of December, 1420,
+and making them sanction the Treaty of Troyes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1420-1421 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>That the son-in-law might be sure of inheriting, it was necessary that the
+son should be proscribed. The duke of Burgundy and his mother presented
+themselves before the king of France, sitting as judge in the Hôtel St. Pol,
+to make “great plaint and clamour of the piteous death of the late duke John
+of Burgundy.” The king of England was seated on the same bench as the
+king of France. Messire Nicholas Raulin demanded in the name of the duke
+of Burgundy and his mother that Charles, styling himself dauphin, Tannegui
+Duchâtel, and all the murderers of the duke of Burgundy, should be carted
+through the streets, with torches in their hands, to make <i>amende honorable</i>.
+The king’s advocate spoke to the same effect, and the university supported
+the demand. The king authorised the prosecution, and Charles was cried
+and cited at the Marble Table, to appear within three days before the parliament.
+He did not put in an appearance and was condemned by default,
+sentenced to banishment, and stripped of all right to the crown of France
+(January 3rd, 1421).</p>
+
+<p>The cumbrous and devouring army which Henry brought with him was
+but too necessary to him. His brother Clarence was defeated and killed,
+with two or three thousand English, in Anjou (battle of Baugé, March 23rd,
+1421). In the north even the count d’Harcourt had taken up arms against
+the English, and was overrunning Picardy. Saintrailles and La Hire were
+advancing by forced marches to combine with him. All the men of family
+were gradually going over to the side of Charles VII, to the party that made
+bold expeditions and adventurous forays. The peasants, it is true, who were
+the sufferers by these pillaging exploits, would in the long run declare for a
+master who could and would protect them.</p>
+
+<p>The ferocity of the old Armagnac marauders was of service to Henry’s
+cause. He did a popular thing in besieging Meaux, the captain of which
+town, the bastard De Vaurus, a sort of ogre, had filled the country round
+with indescribable terror. But as the bastard and his men expected no
+mercy, they defended themselves with desperate determination. They detained
+the English the whole winter, eight long months, before Meaux, till
+cold, want, and pestilence consumed that fine army. The siege began on the
+6th of October, and on the 18th of December, Henry, who already saw his
+forces diminishing, wrote urgently for fresh soldiers to Germany and Portugal.
+Englishmen were probably more costly to him than those foreigners.
+To induce the German mercenaries to take service with him rather than with
+the dauphin, he caused them to be told, among other things, that he would
+pay them in better coin.</p>
+
+<p>He could not reckon on the duke of Burgundy. That prince appeared
+for a short while at the siege of Meaux, but soon withdrew, under pretence
+of going into Burgundy, and obliging the towns in his duchy to accept the
+Treaty of Troyes. Henry had good reason to believe that the duke himself
+had secretly instigated their resistance to a treaty which annulled the contingent
+rights of the house of Burgundy to the crown, as well as those of
+the dauphin, the duke of Orleans, and all the French princes. And why
+had young Philip made such a sacrifice to the friendship of the English?
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>Because he thought he needed their aid to avenge his father and beat his
+enemy. But it was much rather they who had need of him. Fortune had
+forsaken them. Whilst the duke of Clarence was getting himself beaten in
+Anjou, the duke of Burgundy had been brilliantly successful in Picardy,
+where he had come up with the dauphin’s partisans, Saintrailles and
+Gamaches, before they could form a junction with d’Harcourt, and had
+defeated and made them prisoners.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1421-1422 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>During that interminable siege of Meaux, whilst Henry was seeing his
+fine army dissolving away around him, word was brought him that the
+queen had been delivered of a boy at Windsor Castle. He evinced no
+joy, and comparing his own destiny with that of the child, he said, with
+prophetic sadness: “Henry of Monmouth will have had a short reign and
+will have conquered much; Henry of Windsor will reign long and will lose
+all. God’s will be done!”</p>
+
+<p>Henry was still young, but he had toiled much in this world, his time
+for rest was come; he had never had any since his birth. He was attacked,
+after his winter campaign, with an acute irritation of the bowels, a malady
+very common in those days. Being warned by the physicians that his end
+was at hand, he commended his son to his brothers, and gave them two wise
+counsels; first, to conciliate the duke of Burgundy, and secondly, in any
+treaty that might be made, to manage always so as to keep Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>He died at Vincennes on the 31st of August, 1422; Charles VI followed
+him on the 21st of October. The people of Paris shed tears for their poor mad
+king as freely as the English for their victorious Henry V. “The whole
+people,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7q2"><a href="#endnote_7q">q</a></span> “were in the streets weeping and
+crying, as if each had lost the friend he most loved. Truly, their lamentations
+were like those of the prophet, ‘<i>Quomodô sedet sola civitas plena populo!</i>’
+The petty folk of Paris cried, ‘Oh, most dear prince, never shall we have
+one so good! Never shall we see thee more! Cursed be death! We shall
+never have aught but war since thou hast left us. Thou art gone to rest;
+we remain in tribulation and sorrow.’”</p>
+
+<p>Charles VI was carried to St. Denis, “poorly accompanied for a king of
+France. There were only his chamberlain, his chancellor, his confessor, and
+some subordinate officers.” One prince only attended the funeral, and that
+was the duke of Bedford. When the corpse was lowered into the grave, the
+ushers-at-arms broke their wands and threw them into the grave, and reversed
+their maces. Then Berri, king-at-arms of France, cried out, over the grave,
+“May it please God to have mercy on the soul of the very high and very
+excellent prince Charles, king of France, sixth of the name, our natural and
+sovereign lord.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7p3"><a href="#endnote_7p">p</a></span> And then he added, “God grant long life to Henry,
+by the grace of God, king of France and of England, our sovereign lord.”
+About the same time at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, in Berri, some French knights
+unfurled the royal banner, crying, “Long live King Charles, seventh of
+the name, by the grace of God, king of France.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b9"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WOES OF THE PEOPLE—THE <i>DANSE MACABRE</i></h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1418-1424 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>After having spoken of the death of the king, we must mention that of
+the people. From 1418 to 1422, the depopulation was frightful. The history
+of those dismal years runs in a murderous circle; war leads to famine, famine
+to pestilence, and pestilence again brings round famine. It is like that night
+of the Exodus, in which the angel passes and repasses, touching each house
+with the sword.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span></p>
+
+<p>When men have come to that pass they weep no more; there is an end to
+tears, or there mingle even with tears gleams of hellish joy and savage laughter.
+It was the most tragical characteristic of the times that in the gloomiest
+moments there were alternations of frantic gaiety. The beginning of that
+long series of evils, “of that woeful dance,” as the Bourgeois de Paris<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7q3"><a href="#endnote_7q">q</a></span> says,
+was the madness of Charles VI, and contemporaneously therewith the too
+famous masquerade of the satyrs, the piously burlesque mysteries, and the
+<i>basoche</i> farces.<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>The year in which the duke of Orleans was murdered was distinguished
+by the organisation of the corporation of minstrels. That corporation, quite
+indispensable of course in so joyous a period, became important and respected.
+Treaties of peace were cried through the streets with a mighty strumming
+of violins; hardly any six months passed in which a peace was not
+cried and sung. The eldest son of Charles VI, the first dauphin, was an
+indefatigable player on the harp and the spinet. He had a great staff of
+musicians; and in addition to these, he used to call in the aid of the choir-boys
+of Notre Dame. He sang, danced, and “balled” (<i>balait</i>), night and
+day, and that even in the year of the Cabochians, whilst they were killing
+his friends. He killed himself, too, by dint of singing and dancing.</p>
+
+<p>It seems an ascertained fact that in the fourteenth century dancing
+became involuntary and maniacal in many countries. The violent processions
+of the Flagellants set the first example. The great epidemics, and
+the terrible and lasting shock they gave to the nerves of the survivors,
+easily gave occasion to St. Vitus’ dance. These phenomena are, as we know,
+contagious. The spectacle of the convulsions acted with so much the more
+force, as there was nothing in men’s souls but convulsion and vertigo; and
+then the sick and the hale danced together promiscuously. They would
+catch each other violently by the hand, in the streets and the churches, and
+foot it round in a ring. Many a one who at first laughed at this sight, or
+looked on coldly, became at last bewildered, his head reeled, and he, too,
+reeled and danced with the rest. The rings went on multiplying, interlacing;
+they became bigger and bigger, more and more heady, fast, and
+furious, as though they were huge coiling reptiles, that momently swelled to
+view. There was no stopping the monster, but its joints might be lopped;
+the electric chain was broken by one falling with feet and fists on some one
+of the dancers. The rude dissonance interrupting the harmony, they found
+themselves free, otherwise they would have gone on reeling until utterly
+exhausted, and have danced themselves to death.</p>
+
+<p>This phenomenon of the fourteenth century does not occur again in the
+fifteenth; but in the latter we find, in England, France, and Germany, a
+strange amusement, which reminds us of those great popular dances of the
+sick and dying. It was called the dance of the dead, or <i>danse macabre</i>. It
+was a great favourite with the English, who introduced it into France.</p>
+
+<p>The spectacle of the dance of the dead was enacted in Paris in 1424, in
+the cemetery of the Innocents. That narrow space in which the enormous
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>city for so many ages accumulated the remains of almost all its inhabitants
+had been at first both a cemetery and a laystall, haunted at night by robbers,
+and in the evening by wantons, who plied their trade among the tombs.
+Philip Augustus enclosed it with walls, and to purify it dedicated it to St.
+Innocent, a child crucified by the Jews. In the fourteenth century the
+churches were already very full, and it became the fashion among the good
+citizens to bury their dead in the cemetery. Such was the suitable theatre
+of the <i>danse macabre</i>. It was begun in September, 1424, when the heat had
+diminished, and the first rain had rendered the smell of the place less offensive.
+The performances lasted many months.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever disgust both the place and the spectacle might inspire, it was
+matter suggestive of much thought to see in that fatal period, in a town so
+frequently and so cruelly visited by death, the hungry, sickly, scarce living
+multitude, merrily making death itself a matter of spectacle, attending with
+insatiable avidity to its moralising buffooneries, and enjoying them so
+heartily as to tread heedlessly upon the bones of their fathers, and on the
+gaping graves they were themselves about to fill.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7p4"><a href="#endnote_7p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1414-1424 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A very different phase of life which demands at least a passing notice is
+that which clustered about the wonderful University of Paris.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> As early
+as the thirteenth century, the university shone in all its glory. Born in
+the shadow of the cloister of the bishopric, and primarily confounded with the
+ancient cathedral college of the town, it had obtained, little by little, immunities
+and privileges by favour of which it had grown and had reached a
+point where it was dependent upon no one but the court of Rome. Among
+the popes who conferred the most important privileges may be cited Alexander
+III, Innocent III, and his successor Honorius III, all promoters of
+the progress of knowledge, all jealously seeking to retain for the church
+that superiority of studies and learning to which its power was bound.
+The University of Paris rose rapidly above the universities of Italy, the only
+ones with which it was then in serious rivalry. It became the most important
+ecclesiastical and scientific college of Europe, the school whence the
+high clergy of France was recruited, as well as that of a large part of
+Christianity. It belonged to the church by its creation, by its studies in
+which theology predominated, and by its object, which was to prepare the
+learned candidates for the obtention of livings. For all its rights it
+depended on the holy see, which subjected it to visits and regulations.
+Meanwhile it formed in the bosom of the church itself a vast corporation
+(<i>universitas</i>), governing itself by its own laws with an extended liberty.</p>
+
+<p>It was divided into four faculties: arts or philosophy which comprised
+nearly all the known sciences; theology; decree or canonical law; and
+medicine. The faculty of arts had a particular celebrity; it is to it that
+the capital of France owes its appellation of the Modern Athens. The
+faculty of theology was not less celebrated after the lectures of Roscellinus
+and Abelard. That of law was incomplete, since civil law, which restored
+to honour the work of the great Italian jurists, was taught in Paris only
+subsidiarily. It even ceased to exist at the beginning of the year 1220,
+although the laws of Justinian had found able interpreters in France as
+well as in Italy. The decree of the pope, Honorius III, to suppress its
+instruction in Paris, had probably its entire concentration in the college
+of Boulogne for an object. In any case, that suppression was only
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>for a time, and a little later at Orleans a special university was founded,
+called the University of Law. As to the study and profession of medicine,
+it is well known that in the Middle Ages it was a prerogative of the religious
+orders almost exclusively.</p>
+
+<p>Each faculty held special assemblies, in which the masters and graduates
+had deliberative voice. The four faculties met once a year to elect their
+rector, the formulæ of which elections, determined with infinite care, in
+order to guarantee liberty of vote and prevent intrigue, presented a great
+analogy to the election of a pope. Thus the University of Paris possessed
+a liberal government, with a regular hierarchy, where degrees conferred
+powers, and where superior intelligence ruled.</p>
+
+<p>The pope gave it its highest protection. He made the rules of study,
+intervened in disputes with the civil authorities. The principal ecclesiastical
+privilege of the University of Paris was that of being dependent on no
+bishop, and having its own jurisdiction. Its members could not be excommunicated
+except by the court of Rome.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7g2"><a href="#endnote_7g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is one of the strangest contrasts of history that while France was at
+the lowest ebb of its national history, the University of Paris was attempting
+to carry out one of the greatest revolutions in the history of Europe. The
+conciliar movement in the church, which produced such great international
+gatherings as the councils of Constance and of Bâle, and which aimed to
+limit papal absolutism by something like a parliamentary system, was due
+to the work of men like Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris,
+and Pierre D’Ailly, scholar and prelate. It was universally admitted that
+abuses had crept into the administration of the church. There was evidently
+something wrong when, while Frenchmen were perishing from famine, and
+France was on the verge of ruin, the papal court at Avignon luxuriated on a
+revenue that was more than royal, and a pope (John XXII) could accumulate
+a treasure of eighteen millions of gold florins, and jewels and vestments
+estimated at seven millions more.</p>
+
+<p>But the evils which date from the residence at Avignon were increased
+twofold during the schism. All Christendom was in doubt how this would
+end. For the civil war in the church had divided the countries under rival
+obediences. France, Scotland, and Spain adhered to the pope at Avignon;
+and England, Germany, and Italy obeyed the Italian pope.</p>
+
+<p>At first they tried to induce the rivals to resign; and Pedro de Luna,
+who was elected pope at Avignon as Benedict XIII, won the high office by
+declaring that he would resign as easily as take off his hat. But the wily
+prelate, after his election, declared that no earthly power could dethrone
+him, and for more than a decade defied the attempts of reformers to achieve
+union. It was then that in the University of Paris the theologians began
+agitation for a universal council, as supreme over the pope. It is said that
+a German doctor began the movement, but the credit has gone to France.
+First at Pisa and then at Constance, the great parliaments of the church took
+in hand the reformation.</p>
+
+<p>In the later council (1414-1418) union was achieved by the deposition of
+opposing popes and the election of Martin V (see volume on The Papacy),
+but the decree <i>Frequens</i> which demanded regular meeting of councils in the
+future, was gradually lost sight of in the following pontificates, and the great
+experiment of a constitutional church was a failure. That such an attempt
+should be made while France was in the throes of this great Hundred Years’
+War, and that mostly by Frenchmen, shows that alongside of the story of
+carnage, crime, and superstition, there were signs of intellectual life and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>earnest effort of reformers, which are suggestive in the age of Wycliffe and
+Huss.</p>
+
+<p>A strange page of history is opened here. Sigismund, emperor of Germany,
+who presided at the council of Constance, was anxious to play a great
+part in the world’s affairs. He took advantage of the great international
+assemblage in his dominions to attempt to put himself at the head of a
+European confederacy to fight the Turks, who were advancing along the
+Danube.</p>
+
+<p>To accomplish this he made a journey into France and England to try to
+prevent the war. His visit took place just before the fatal invasion of Henry
+V which brought the victory of Agincourt.<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> To raise the money for that
+journey Sigismund made over the mark of Brandenburg to Frederick of
+Hohenzollern, burggraf of Nuremberg, and thus founded the power of the
+Hohenzollern.</p>
+
+<p>Henry V, was willing to accede to Sigismund’s plans, but although he
+even offered the succession of Hungary as a bribe, the court of France refused
+to make the peace he desired, and Sigismund’s great effort at European concord
+resulted in only one thing—the foundation of the great dynasty which
+rules in Germany to-day. France and England went their own way, bringing
+mutual disaster for another generation.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-7.jpg" width="500" height="250" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> [This old French word denoted either a song or a particular kind of dance.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> Doubtless a monkish exaggeration.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> [At the siege of Arras the harquebus was used for the first time.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> This embellishment is of Monstrelet’s<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7n1"><a href="#endnote_7n">n</a></span> contrivance. He places it apart from the account
+of the battle after the long list of the killed. Lefebvre, an eye-witness, could not make up his
+mind to copy Monstrelet in this place.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> Lefebvre<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7j4"><a href="#endnote_7j">j</a></span> and Monstrelet<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7n2"><a href="#endnote_7n">n</a></span> are the authorities for this statement. De Barante<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7o"><a href="#endnote_7o">o</a></span> says
+without naming his source, “Henry V put a stop to the carnage and caused the wounded to
+receive relief.” [Tyler,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7s"><a href="#endnote_7s">s</a></span> after reviewing the evidence, declares that “Henry did not stain his
+victory by any act of cruelty. His character comes out of the investigation untarnished by a suspicion
+of his having wantonly shed the blood of a single fellow-creature.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> [For other views of the battle of Agincourt see our history of England.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> [But neither for that matter had, in person, the count d’Armagnac. The princes had
+refused the aid of any civic corps, and as Burgundy could command but the town folk of Flanders
+and Picardy, his offers of help were rejected. The responsibility of the battle lay therefore
+entirely with the Armagnacs; but, as Crowe<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7h5"><a href="#endnote_7h">h</a></span> says, “to the honour of the Burgundian party,
+more of its princes, than of the Armagnacs, fell on the field of Agincourt.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> [In 1402 letters-patent were issued by the king permitting the bourgeois of Paris to constitute
+themselves into a religious fraternity for the representation of the “Mystery of the
+Passion.” This is the origin of the modern tragic theatre. The “morality plays,” or comedies,
+were created by the clerks of the <i>basoche</i>—the corporation formed by the clerks of the <i>procureurs</i>
+of the parliament of Paris. This body exercised extensive jurisdiction over its members—its
+head bore the title of “king.” In the reign of Charles VI playing-cards were perfected, and
+about 1420 Jan van Eyck, called Jean of Bruges, discovered a drying oil, which has caused him
+to be regarded as the inventor of oil painting. Hitherto men had used distemper, fresco, gum,
+paste, or white of egg.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_7b10"><a href="#endnote_7b">b</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> [It was Sigismund’s grandfather, the blind King John of Bohemia, whose death at Crécy
+gave the famous motto, <i>Ich dien</i>, to the prince of Wales.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-8.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII. THE RESCUE OF THE REALM</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">No longer on St. Denis will we cry,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">But Joan la Pucelle shall be France’s saint.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse right">—<span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1422-1427 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king proclaimed at St. Denis was an infant of ten months, grandson,
+on his mother’s side, of Charles VI. His two uncles ruled in his name,—one
+the duke of Bedford in France; the other the duke of Gloucester in
+England. This child was recognised as sovereign of the kingdom of France
+by parliament, by the university, by the first prince of the blood, Philip the
+Good, duke of Burgundy, and by the dowager queen, Isabella of Bavaria.
+Paris, Île-de-France, Picardy, Artois, Flanders, Champagne, and Normandy—that
+is to say, almost all the country north of the Loire—and Guienne,
+south of that river, obeyed him.</p>
+
+<p>The king proclaimed in Berri, sole surviving son of Charles VI, was a
+youth of nineteen years, graceful bearing, but weak in body, pale of figure,
+of small courage, and ever in fear of violent death; and besides, adds
+Chastelain,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8d"><a href="#endnote_8d">d</a></span> “a good Latinist, a fine <i>raconteur</i>, and most wise in council.”
+Such indeed he was later on; but for the present and for many years to come
+he showed spirit only for his own pleasures and a sort of dull apathy in
+matters of state and in the face of peril. His authority was recognised only
+in Touraine, Orleans, Berri, Bourbonnais, Auvergne, Languedoc, Dauphiné,
+and Lyonnais. Indifferent to disaster, he was resigned to hearing himself
+called derisively “the king of Bourges.” To Poitiers he transported his
+council, his parliament, and his university. But Bourges and Poitiers were
+still great towns in his eyes; he dragged his little court from castle to castle,
+completely submissive to the sire de Giac, to Le Camus de Beaulieu, to the sire
+de la Trémouille, and willingly enduring the all-powerful influence of his
+mother-in-law Yolande of Anjou.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b1"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The young king, brought up by the Armagnacs, found in them his chief
+support, and so shared their unpopularity. These Gascons were the most
+veteran soldiers in France, but the greatest and most cruel plunderers. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>hatred they inspired in the north would have been sufficient to create there
+a Burgundian and English party. The brigands of the south seemed more
+of foreigners than the foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>Charles VII next made trial of the foreigners themselves, of those who
+had gained experience in the English wars. He called the Scotch to his aid.
+These were the most mortal enemies of England, and their hatred might be
+relied on as much as their courage. The greatest hopes were built on these
+auxiliaries. A Scotchman was made constable of France; another, count of
+Touraine. Notwithstanding, however, their incontestable bravery, they had
+often been beaten in England. They were not only beaten in France, at
+Crevant and Verneuil (1423, 1424), but destroyed: the English took care
+that none of them escaped. It was asserted that the Gascons, out of jealousy
+against the Scotch, had not supported them.</p>
+
+<p>The English narrowly escaped giving Charles VII an ally far more useful
+and important than the Scotch—the duke of Burgundy. So little concert
+was there between the two brothers, that at the selfsame time Bedford
+married the duke of Burgundy’s sister, and Gloucester was commencing war
+against him. A word as to this romantic story.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, never thought himself secure
+of his Flanders until he should have flanked it with Holland and Hainault.
+These two counties had fallen into the hands of a girl, the countess Jacqueline,
+widow of the dauphin John. The duke of Burgundy married her to a
+cousin of his own, a sickly boy. Jacqueline, who was a handsome young
+woman, did not resign herself to so irksome a fate, but left her sorry mate,
+nimbly crossed the Straits, and herself proposed marriage to the duke of
+Gloucester. Gloucester committed the folly of accepting the proposal
+(1423). He espoused Jacqueline’s cause, thus beginning against the duke
+of Burgundy, the indispensable ally of England, a war which, for the latter,
+was a question of actual existence, a war without treaty, in which the sovereign
+of Flanders would risk his last man. The incensed duke of Burgundy
+concluded a secret alliance with the duke of Brittany, and then he
+made pecuniary demands on Bedford. What could Bedford do? He had
+no money; instead of it, he offered an inestimable possession worth more
+than any sum of money—his whole barrier on the north (September, 1423).
+The bands of Charles VII came and lodged themselves in the very heart of
+English France, in Normandy; a pitched battle was fought before they
+could be expelled. It took place on the 17th of August, 1424, at Verneuil.
+In June, Bedford had regained the good will of the duke of Burgundy by
+an enormous concession, having pledged his eastern frontier to him, Bar-sur-Seine,
+Auxerre, and Mâcon.</p>
+
+<p>All northern France was greatly in danger of thus falling bit by bit into
+the duke of Burgundy’s hand; but suddenly the wind shifted. The sapient
+Gloucester, in the midst of this war begun for Jacqueline, forgets that he
+has married her, forgets that at that very moment she is besieged in Bergues,
+and weds another, a fair English woman. This new folly had the effect of an
+act of wisdom. The duke of Burgundy consented to be reconciled to the
+English, and made a show of believing all Bedford told him; the essential
+thing for him was to be able to despoil Jacqueline, and occupy Hainault,
+Holland, and afterwards Brabant, the succession to which could not but
+soon be opened.</p>
+
+<p>Charles VII, therefore, derived little advantage from this event which
+seemed likely to be so profitable to him. The only benefit that accrued to
+him from it was that the count de Foix, governor of Languedoc, comprehended
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>that the duke of Burgundy would sooner or later turn against the
+English, and declared that his conscience obliged him to recognise Charles
+VII as legitimate king. He placed Languedoc in subjection to him, with
+the clear understanding that the king should draw from it neither money
+nor troops, and should not in any wise interfere with the little royalty which
+the count de Foix had contrived for himself in that province. The friendship
+of the houses of Anjou and Lorraine seemed to promise more direct
+advantage to the party of Charles VII. The head of the house of Anjou
+was then a woman, Queen Yolande, relict of Louis II, duke of Anjou, count
+of Provence, and pretender to the throne of Naples; she was the daughter
+of the king of Aragon, by a lady of Lorraine, of the house of Bar. The
+English having committed the egregious mistake of troubling the houses of
+Anjou and Aragon, as regarded their pretensions to the throne of Naples,
+Yolande formed against them an alliance of Anjou and Lorraine with
+Charles VII. She married her daughter to the young king, and her son
+René to the only daughter of the duke of Lorraine. Yolande was of service
+to her son-in-law. By her sage counsels she removed the old Armagnacs
+from about him; she had the address to win the Bretons back to him,
+and caused the constable’s sword to be conferred on the count of Richemont,
+brother of the duke of Brittany.</p>
+
+<p>Charles VII, combining together the Bretons, Gascons, and Dauphinois,
+had thenceforth the real military strength of France on his side. Spain
+sent him Aragonese, Italy Lombards. But the war sped feebly for all that;
+money was wanting, and union still more so. The king’s favourites frustrated
+Richemont’s first enterprises; not, indeed, with impunity, for the
+stern Breton put to death two of them within six months, without form
+of trial. Since a favourite was necessary to the king, he gave him one of
+his own choosing, young La Trémouille, and the first use the latter made
+of his ascendency was to dismiss Richemont. The king, strange to say, forbade
+his constable to fight for him; the king’s men and Richemont’s were on
+the point of drawing their swords against each other. Thus Charles VII
+found his cause less advanced than ever.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c1"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the towns were resisting the foreign domination. La Ferté-Bernard
+underwent in 1422 a four months’ siege and only yielded to the earl
+of Salisbury in the last extremity. In 1427 the English, in order to get
+closer to the Loire, sent three thousand men-at-arms to besiege Montargis
+on the Loing. The town had only a small garrison under the brave La
+Faille, but the inhabitants supported him well.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b2"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>MONSTRELET DESCRIBES THE SIEGE OF MONTARGIS (1427 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Shortly after their arrival the English built some bridges and passages
+over the river. This being done, they began to approach the town and fortress
+of Montargis, and attacked and destroyed several engines of war. But
+despite this, the besieged defended themselves valiantly, and kept the besiegers
+thus employed for the space of about two months. During this time
+tidings were carried to King Charles of France, which informed him that, if
+he did not shortly send succour to the besieged, they must needs yield to
+their adversaries. This news came to the knowledge of King Charles, and
+it is said that king summoned a council, where it was concluded and determined
+to send help to Montargis, or, at least, to reinforce it with men and
+provisions. The charge of the relief was bestowed upon the bastard John
+of Orleans and Étienne de Vignolles, known as La Hire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1427-1428 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>They, with about sixteen hundred fighting men and skilful soldiers,
+took the road with much display, with the intention of victualling the
+said town of Montargis, and raising the siege. When they had come
+within half a league, as secretly as they could, they took counsel together
+and determined to make an attack upon some of the camps of the English, on
+both sides of the town. They had with them some of the garrison of the
+said town of Montargis who would direct them. They attacked the camps
+of the English with much violence (which attack the English had not guarded
+against), crying, “Montjoie St. Denis!” and began to fire a number of the
+camps, and killed and captured several
+of the English. Such was the spirit
+they put into their work, that the camp
+of Sir John de la Pole was overthrown
+in a short space of time; but the same
+lord and about eight others escaped in
+a small boat. The water was so high
+at that time that the bridges the English
+had made were covered, so that
+when they attempted to escape they fell
+beside these bridges and were drowned.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p190.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Charles VII</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French engraving)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whilst this was going on, the bastard
+of Orleans was on the other side of the
+town, attacking on foot the camp of
+Henry Basset, and there being much
+to do, the others, when they had overthrown
+the first camp, came to his
+assistance. The English, perceiving
+that the victory was not to them, began
+to retreat to the camp of the earl of
+Warwick, and crossed a bridge so hastily
+and in such numbers that the bridge gave
+way beneath them, and there perished
+miserably very many; for besides this
+the inhabitants of Montargis, who had sallied forth boldly to the help of
+their own people, slaughtered and captured many, and did not spare them.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the earl of Warwick assembled his men as quickly as he could.
+But when he learned the great loss and pitiable defeat of his host, of which
+from a thousand to fifteen hundred men were either killed or captured, he
+departed and went his way, with the remainder of his men of which the
+greater number were on foot. They retreated to the castle of Landou in
+Nemours, and to other places under their suzerainty.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8e"><a href="#endnote_8e">e</a></span> This was the first
+time that the bastard of Orleans was intrusted with a command of any
+importance, and he did not fail to justify his brilliant début.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8f1"><a href="#endnote_8f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS (1428-1429 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1428-1429 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The following year (1428) Bedford resolved to push military operations
+vigorously and to force the barrier of the Loire. In the month of June the
+earl of Salisbury debarked at Calais with six thousand of the best soldiers
+England ever had in France; Bedford joined him there with four thousand
+men drawn from garrisons in Normandy, and their army took Jargeau, Janville,
+Meung-sur-Loire, Thoury, Beaugency, Marchenoir, and La Ferté-Hubert,
+thus approaching Orleans step by step.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span></p>
+
+<p>Orleans was the gate to Berri, the Bourbonnais and Poitou. This taken,
+the “king of Bourges” would become the king of Dauphiné and Languedoc.
+October 12th, 1428, the English appeared before its ramparts and at once
+formed around the place a series of bastilles, each of which was commanded
+by one of the first lords of England—by William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk;
+the “English Achilles,” Lord Talbot; and William Glasdale, who had sworn
+to kill everyone in Orleans. Salisbury was commander-in-chief. The Orléanais,
+who had been expecting the siege, had fortified the heart of their
+town by burning the suburbs. Their captain was the sire de Gaucourt whom
+the English had held captive for thirteen years, because he had persisted in
+defending Harfleur against them. The garrison did not number more than
+five hundred at the most, but they were all hardened warriors. Moreover,
+the bourgeois were looking out for themselves. They had formed thirty-four
+companies—and each undertook the defence of one of the thirty-four
+towers of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Artillery was beginning to play a great rôle in battles and sieges. That
+of the besiegers was badly handled, and the bourgeois laughed at the unskilful
+English cannoneers who threw eighty-pound balls into the town and
+killed no one.<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> The Orléanais artillery was very different. It was composed
+of seventy pieces, aimed by twelve master cannoneers, expert at firing.
+Each cannon had its name and its own particular duty. The good cannon
+<i>Riflard</i> (Clean Sweep) killed its man at every shot.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b3"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span> Another one, too, was
+the celebrated culverin of a skilful Lorrainian cannoneer, Maître Jean; the
+two, man and culverin, made the finest hits. The English came at last to
+know this Maître Jean; he never ceased killing them except to make game
+of them: from time to time he would drop down and pretend to be dead; his
+body was carried off into the town; the English were in ecstasy when—behold!
+back he would come, alive and merry, and fire upon them worse
+than ever.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c2"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the luckiest shot of all was fired by a child [according to Grafton,
+the son of a gunner who had gone to dinner]. This schoolboy came across
+a fully loaded piece on the rampart. He lit the fuse and ran away. The
+ball went straight into the face of the earl of Salisbury, who was standing on
+one of the bastilles and to whom, at that very instant, William Glasdale was
+saying, “My lord, behold your town.”</p>
+
+<p>The English commander was dead; and the next day the bastard of
+Orleans, the handsome, brave Dunois, entered the town with the best
+knights of the time—La Hire, Saintrailles, Marshal de Broussac, and six
+or seven hundred soldiers. Others followed until little by little seven thousand
+were gathered in Orleans.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b4"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The “Battle of the Herrings” (1429 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The siege continued with various success to the 12th of February, 1429,
+with sundry episodes in the way of sorties, feigned attacks, conflicts about
+provision entering the town, and even duels, to amuse the two parties and
+try their respective mettle. They went on slowly completing their fortifications,
+and it was to be foreseen that the town would be at last almost
+entirely shut in.</p>
+
+<p>However careless the king might appear about saving the appenage of
+the duke of Orleans, it was clear that, once that city had fallen, the English
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>would advance unhindered into Poitou, Berri, and the Bourbonnais, would
+live at the expense of those provinces, and ruin the south after having ruined
+the north. The duke de Bourbon sent his eldest son, the count de Clermont,
+under whom some Scotch forces and some lords of Touraine, Poitou, and
+Auvergne were to succour Orleans, cast provisions into it, and even hinder the
+arrival of provisions in the English camp. The duke of Bedford sent a supply
+from Paris under the conduct of the brave Sir John Fastolf; and he had
+availed himself of the old Cabochian enmity of Paris to Orleans, to add to his
+English detachment a considerable number of Parisian arblast men, and the
+provost of Paris himself. They took with them three hundred wagon-loads
+of provisions, particularly herrings, an article indispensable in Lent. Troops
+and wagons all marched in narrow file, and nothing could have been easier
+than to break their line and destroy them. The Gascon La Hire, who was
+in advance of the French, burned with impatience to fall upon them, but
+received express orders not to do so, from the prince, who was advancing
+slowly with the main body of his force.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the English had taken the alarm, and Fastolf had drawn his
+men together under cover of the wagons and a line of sharp stakes which
+these provident English always carried with them. The English archers were
+posted on the right, the Parisian arblast men on the left. In spite of all the
+count de Clermont could say, his men were carried away by their impetuous
+rancour; the Scotch leaped from their saddles to fight the English on foot, and
+the Armagnac Gascons rushed upon their old enemies the Parisians; but the
+latter stood their ground. The Scotch and Gascons having thus broken
+their ranks, the English issued from behind their temporary ramparts, pursued
+them, and killed three or four hundred. The count de Clermont
+remained immovable. La Hire was so furious that he turned back upon the
+English who dispersed in the pursuit, and killed some of them. The count’s
+party had to return to Orleans after this unlucky engagement, to which the
+Orléanais, always satirical, gave the name of the “battle of the Herrings”;
+in fact, the balls had burst the barrels; and the field was strewn with herrings
+more than with the slain.</p>
+
+<p>Slight as was this check, it discouraged everyone. The most knowing
+hastened to quit a town that seemed lost. The young count de Clermont
+had the weakness to withdraw with his two thousand men; the admiral and
+the chancellor of France thought it would be a sad thing if the king’s great
+officers should be taken by the English, and they too departed. As the men-at-arms
+no longer hoped for human aid, and the priests did not reckon very
+confidently on divine succour, the archbishop of Rheims took himself off, and
+even the bishop of Orleans left his flock to defend themselves as they could.</p>
+
+<p>They all went away on the 18th of February, assuring the citizens that
+they would soon return in strength. Nothing could stay them. The bastard
+of Orleans, who with equal skill and valour defended the appenage of his
+house, had in vain been telling them since the 12th that a miraculous succour
+should be looked for, that a daughter of God, who promised to save the town,
+was coming from the marches of Lorraine. The archbishop, an ex-secretary
+of the pope, and an old diplomatist, paid little heed to this talk about miracles.
+Dunois himself did not reckon so exclusively on aid from on high as to neglect
+employing a very human and very politic means against the English. He
+sent Saintrailles to the duke of Burgundy, to beg him, as a relative of the duke
+of Orleans, to take the latter’s town into his keeping. He was now asked
+to accept the grand and important possession of the centre of France, and
+he did not refuse the offer. He went straight to Paris, and told the affair
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>to Bedford, who answered dryly that he had not toiled for the duke of Burgundy’s
+behoof. The latter, much offended, recalled all the troops he had
+at the siege of Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>Supplies arriving with difficulty, discontent began in the town; many
+no doubt were of opinion that the town had made quite enough sacrifices for
+the sake of its lord, and that it was better Orleans should become English
+than cease to be. Things did not stop there. It was discovered that a hole
+had been made in the wall of the town; treachery was manifestly at work.
+Besides all this, Dunois could expect no help from Charles VII. The estates,
+assembled in 1428, had voted money and summoned the tenants of fiefs to
+fulfil their feudal duties. Neither money nor men had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>We are not well acquainted with the intrigues that divided the little court
+of Charles. The divisions in it had naturally augmented in this its extreme
+distress. The old Armagnac advisers, whom Richemont and the king’s
+mother-in-law had for a while removed, were in the way to regain their credit.
+That southern party would have been well pleased to have a king of the south
+holding his court at Grenoble. The duchess of Anjou, the king’s mother-in-law,
+on the contrary, could not preserve Anjou if the English definitively
+passed the Loire. So far there was a community of interests between her
+and the house of Orleans. But the house of Anjou had so many other interests,
+so various and divergent, that she thought it expedient always to keep on
+fair terms with the English, and to negotiate perpetually. When the defence
+of Orleans appeared to be desperate (May, 1429), the old cardinal De Bar
+hastened to treat with Bedford, in the name of his nephew, René of Anjou,
+lest he should lose the inheritance of Lorraine, calculating that René could
+disavow his proceedings, should the affairs of Charles VII at any future time
+assume another aspect.</p>
+
+<p>The impending ruin of Orleans had frightened the other towns of the
+Loire. The nearest, Angers, Tours, and Bourges, sent provisions to the besieged;
+Poitiers and La Rochelle, money; then, when the alarm increased,
+the Bourbonnais, Auvergne, and even Languedoc sent the Orléanais saltpetre,
+sulphur, and steel. Gradually all France became interested in the fate
+of one town, and moved with sympathy for the brave resistance of the men of
+Orleans and their fidelity to their lord. Orleans was pitied; so too was its
+duke. The captive Charles of Orleans could not defend his town.<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>The English had one thing in their favour, namely, that their young
+king, Henry VI, was certainly a Frenchman by the mother’s side, and grandson
+of Charles VI, whom he resembled but too much as regarded the weakness
+of his mind. The legitimacy of Charles VII, on the other hand, was
+very doubtful; he was born in 1403, in the high tide of his mother’s intimacy
+with the duke of Orleans; and she herself had acquiesced in the acts
+in which he was called <i>soi-disant</i> dauphin. Henry VI had not yet been
+crowned at Rheims, but neither had Charles VII. The people in those days
+recognised a king but by two things, royal birth and the crown placed on
+his head with the church’s solemn sanction. Charles VII was not king
+according to religion, nor was he sure that he was so according to nature.
+This question, of no moment for politicians of that class who decide after
+their own interests, was everything for the people, who are willing to obey
+only the right. A woman had obscured this great question of right, and by
+a woman it was cleared up. This second woman bore the name Jeanne Darc.
+She was soon to be famous as the Maid of Orleans.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span></p>
+
+<h3>THE MAID OF ORLEANS (<i>LA PUCELLE</i>) (1429 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The originality of the Maid of Orleans, and what determined her success,
+was not so much her valour or her visions as her good sense. Through all
+her enthusiasm, this daughter of the people saw the question clearly, and
+was able to solve it. She cut the knot which the politic and the men of
+little faith could not untie. She declared, in God’s name, that Charles VII
+was the true heir, and she set him at ease as to his legitimacy, of which he
+himself had doubts. That legitimacy she sanctified, taking her king straight
+to Rheims, and gaining over the English, by the celerity of her movements,
+the decisive advantage of the coronation.</p>
+
+<p>It was at Domrémy, just between Lorraine of the Vosges and that of
+the plain, between Lorraine and Champagne, that the beautiful and brave
+girl was born, who was to wield the sword of France so well.</p>
+
+<p>Joan or Jeanne was the third daughter of a peasant, Jacques Darc,<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>
+and of Isabella of Romée. She had two godmothers, one of whom was
+named Jeanne, the other Sibylle. The eldest son having been named James
+(Jacques), another Peter (Pierre), the pious parents gave one of their daughters
+the more exalted name of St. John (Jean). Whilst the other children
+accompanied their father in his field work or tended cattle, the mother kept
+Joan at home for sewing or spinning. She did not learn to read or write,
+but she knew all her mother could teach her of sacred things. She acquired
+religion, not as a lesson or a ceremony, but in the homely popular form of a
+winter night’s tale, as the simple faith of a mother.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knew her charity and her piety. They saw clearly she was
+the best girl in the village. What they did not know was that in her the
+life from above always absorbed the other life, and suppressed all vulgar
+development. Hers was the divine gift to remain a child in soul and body.
+She grew up, became strong and comely, but never knew the physical miseries
+of her sex. They were spared her, to the advantage of her mental
+growth and religious inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Joan had her share in the romantic adventures of those restless times.
+She saw poor fugitives arrive in the hamlet, and the kind-hearted girl
+assisted towards their reception, gave up her bed to them, and lay down in
+the hayloft. Her kindred, too, were once obliged to save themselves by
+flight. Then, when the inundation of brigands had passed off, the family
+returned and found the village sacked, the house devastated, and the church
+burned down. Thus she knew what war meant. She understood that anti-Christian
+state of things, and abhorred that reign of the devil, in which
+every man died in mortal sin. If, as everyone said, the ruin of the kingdom
+was the work of a woman, an unnatural mother, it might be that its salvation
+should proceed from a girl. This very fact was foretold in one of
+Merlin’s prophecies, a prophecy which, variously enriched and modified in
+the several provinces, had become thoroughly Lorrainian in the country of
+Joan of Arc. It was a girl of the marches of Lorraine that was to save the
+realm. The prophecy had probably received this embellishment, in consequence
+of the recent marriage of René of Anjou with the heiress of the
+duchy of Lorraine, which was in reality a very fortunate event for France.</p>
+
+<p>One summer’s day, a fast day, Joan, being in the garden at noon with
+her father, close by the church, saw a dazzling light in that direction, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>heard a voice saying, “Be a good child, Joan, and go often to church.” The
+poor girl was greatly frightened. Another time she again heard the voice
+and saw the light; but now she discerned it in noble figures, one of which
+had wings and seemed a sage counsellor. He said to her, “Joan, go to the
+aid of the king of France, and thou wilt restore him to his kingdom.” She
+answered, trembling all over, “My Lord, I am but a poor girl; I cannot
+ride the war-horse, or lead men-at-arms.” The voice replied: “Thou shalt
+go to M. de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and he will take thee
+before the king. St. Catherine and St. Margaret will be with thee to help
+thee.” She remained stupefied and in tears, as if she had already beheld
+her whole future destiny.</p>
+
+<p>The sage counsellor was none other than St. Michael, the stern archangel
+of judgment and battle. He returned again, cheered her courage,
+“and related to her the pity there was in the realm of France.” Then came
+the white figures of female saints, surrounded with innumerable lights, their
+heads adorned with rich crowns, their voices sweet and melting even to
+tears. But Joan wept above all when the saints and angels left her. “I
+should have been very glad,” she said, “if the angels had taken me away
+with them.” Joan has told us nothing of the first inward conflict she sustained;
+but it is evident it took place, and endured a long while, since five
+years elapsed between her first vision and her departure from the home of
+her parents.</p>
+
+<p>She encountered not only resistance but temptation in her own family.
+They tried to marry her, in the hope of bringing her back to a more rational
+way of thinking. A young man of the village alleged that she had promised
+him marriage when she was still a child; and as she denied the fact, he
+cited her before the ecclesiastical judge at Toul. It was supposed she would
+make no defence, but would submit to be cast by the court and married; but
+to everyone’s great astonishment, she went to Toul, appeared in court, and
+spoke—she who had always held her peace.</p>
+
+<p>To enable her to escape from the control of her family, it was necessary
+she should find in her family itself someone to believe her; this was a most
+difficult problem. Failing to persuade her father, she made a convert of her
+uncle, who took her away with him, under the pretext of her nursing his wife
+in her lying-in. She prevailed on him to go to the sire de Baudricourt,
+captain of Vaucouleurs, and ask his support for her; but the man of war
+gave the peasant a very bad reception, and told him the only thing to be
+done was “to slap her well,” and take her home to her father. She was not
+cast down by the rebuff, but determined to depart, and her uncle was constrained
+to accompany her. The decisive moment was come; she quitted
+her family and her native village forever; she embraced her friends, especially
+her dear little friend Mengette, whom she commended to God’s keeping;
+but as for Haumette, the friend she loved above all others, she preferred
+to depart without seeing her.</p>
+
+<p>She arrived then in the town of Vaucouleurs, dressed in her clumsy red
+peasant garments, and went along with her uncle to lodge with the wife of
+a wheelwright who took a liking to her. She had herself taken into Baudricourt’s
+presence, and said to him boldly that “she came to him on the part
+of our Lord to bid him tell the dauphin to keep his ground steadily, and not
+give battle to his enemies; for our Lord would grant him succour in mid-Lent.
+The kingdom did not belong to the dauphin but to our Lord; nevertheless,
+it was our Lord’s will that the dauphin should become king, and that
+he should hold the kingdom in trust.” She went on to say that, in spite of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>the dauphin’s enemies, he would be king, and she would take him to be
+crowned. The captain was amazed, and suspecting there was some deviltry
+at work, he consulted the parish priest, who apparently entertained the same
+doubts. Joan had not spoken of her visions to any churchman. The priest,
+therefore, accompanied the captain to the wheelwright’s house with his stole
+on, and adjured Joan to depart if she was sent by the evil spirit.</p>
+
+<p>But the people did not doubt; their admiration was extreme; persons
+flocked from all parts to see her. It appears that Baudricourt sent to ask
+leave of the king. Meanwhile, he conducted Joan to the duke of Lorraine,
+who was ill and wished to consult her. He got nothing from her but advice
+to appease God’s anger by becoming reconciled with his wife. He gave her
+encouragement notwithstanding. On her return to Vaucouleurs, she found
+a messenger from the king, who brought the permission she desired. The
+disaster of the battle of the Herrings disposed the king to accept every
+means of which he could avail himself. Joan had predicted the battle on
+the very day when it took place. The people of Vaucouleurs, entertaining no
+doubt of her mission, clubbed together to buy her a horse. The captain
+gave her only a sword.</p>
+
+<p>It was a rough and very perilous journey she was about to make.
+The whole country was overrun by armed bands belonging to either party.
+There was now neither road nor bridge; the rivers were swollen; it was the
+month of February, 1429.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Joan at the Court</i></h4>
+
+<p>The court of Charles VII was far from being unanimous in the Maid’s
+favour. That inspired girl, just come from Lorraine, and patronised by the
+duke of Lorraine, could not fail to strengthen with the king the party of
+the queen and her mother, the Lorraine and Anjou party. An ambush was
+laid for Joan at some distance from Chinon, and she escaped from it only by
+miracle.</p>
+
+<p>So strong was the opposition against her that, after she was actually
+arrived, the council continued for two days to discuss the question whether
+or not the king should see her. Her enemies thought to postpone the matter
+indefinitely, by having it decided that inquiries should be made respecting
+her in her native place. Fortunately, she had friends also—the two
+queens, no doubt, and above all, the duke of Alençon, who, having recently
+come out of the hands of the English, was very impatient to carry the war
+into the north, and recover his duchy. The inhabitants of Orleans, to whom
+Dunois had been promising this marvellous aid since the 12th of February,
+sent to the king and claimed the Maid’s presence.</p>
+
+<p>The king received her at last, surrounded with the greatest pomp;
+which, in all probability, was adopted with the hope of disconcerting her.
+She presented herself humbly “as a poor shepherd wench,” distinguished
+the king at the first glance from the crowd of lords among whom he had
+purposely mingled; and though he insisted, at first, he was not the king, she
+embraced his knees. But as he was not yet crowned, she styled him only
+dauphin: “Gentle dauphin,” she said, “my name is Jehanne la Pucelle.
+The King of heaven sends you word by me that you shall be anointed and
+crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the King of
+heaven, who is King of France.”</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p197.jpg" width="300" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Cathedral of Rheims</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France, and president of the
+king’s council, summoned doctors and professors of theology, some of them
+priests, others monks, and ordered them to examine the Maid. The doctors
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>being introduced and seated in a hall, Joan sat down on the end of the bench,
+and replied to their questions. She recounted the apparitions and the words
+of the angels, with dignified simplicity. A Dominican met her with a single
+objection, but it was one of weight: “Jehanne, thou sayest it is God’s will
+to deliver the people of France; if such is his will he has no need of men-at-arms.”
+The observation did not confound her. “Ah! <i>mon Dieu</i>,” said she,
+“the men-at-arms will do battle, and God will give the victory.” Another
+person was not so easily satisfied.
+This was Friar Séguin,
+a Limousin, professor
+of theology in the university
+of Poitiers, “a very sour
+man,” says the chronicle.
+He asked her, in his Limousin
+French, “What language
+did the celestial voice
+speak?” Joan answered
+with rather too much sharpness,
+“A better one than
+yours.” “Dost thou believe
+in God?” said the enraged
+doctor; “well then, God will
+not have us put faith in thy
+words unless thou show a
+sign.” She answered, “I
+am not come to Poitiers to
+perform signs or miracles;
+my sign shall be to raise the
+siege of Orleans. Let me
+have men-at-arms, few or
+many, and I will go.”</p>
+
+<p>The question of her inspiration
+was made to depend
+on the test of her virginity.
+The duchess of Anjou, the
+king’s mother-in-law, accomplished
+the ridiculous
+examination, with the aid
+of some ladies, to the honour
+of the Maid. Some Franciscans
+who had been sent
+to her native place to collect
+information, brought
+back the most satisfactory
+accounts. There was no
+more time to be lost. Orleans was crying out for help; Dunois was sending
+message upon message. The Maid was equipped, and a sort of establishment
+was formed for her. First of all they gave her for squire John Daulon, a
+brave knight of mature years, who belonged to the count de Dunois, and was
+the most respectable among his followers. She had also a noble page, two
+heralds-at-arms, a seneschal, and two valets; her brother, Pierre Darc, had
+also joined her suite. John Pasquerel, a friar, hermit of the order of St.
+Augustin, was assigned her for confessor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Deliverance of Orleans (1429 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1429 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>When we read the list of the captains who threw themselves into Orleans
+with Joan of Arc—La Hire, Saintrailles, Gaucourt, Culan, Coaraze, Armagnac;
+when we see that, independently of the Bretons under Marshal de Retz,
+and Marshal de St. Sévère’s Gascons, Florent d’Illiers, captain of Châteaudun,
+had brought all the nobles of the vicinity to take part in this short expedition,
+the deliverance of Orleans seems less miraculous. One thing, however,
+was by all means wanting to enable these great forces to act with
+advantage, an essential, indispensable thing—unity of action. Dunois might
+have created this, had no more been requisite to that end than address and
+intelligence; but this was not enough. An authority was requisite, one surpassing
+that of the crown; the king’s captains were not habituated to obey
+the king.</p>
+
+<p>War had changed men into wild beasts, and these beasts required to be
+turned again to men, Christians, docile subjects. A great and difficult
+change! Some of these Armagnac captains were perhaps the most furious
+men that ever existed. It was a ludicrous and touching thing to see the
+sudden conversion of the old Armagnac brigands. They did not stop short
+halfway in their amendment. La Hire no longer ventured to utter an oath;
+but the Maid, compassionating the violence he did himself, allowed him
+to swear, “by his staff.” The devils had all at once been transformed into
+little saints.</p>
+
+<p>She had begun by insisting that they should renounce their wanton
+women, and should confess. Then in the course of her march along the
+Loire, she had an altar erected in the open air, at which she took the communion,
+and so did they. The first night they bivouacked, she lay down in
+full armour, as there were no women about her; but she was not yet habituated
+to such hardships, and she was ill in consequence. As for danger, she
+knew not what it meant. She wanted to cross over to the north side of
+the river, and march along the English bank and between the bastilles of the
+invaders, who, she asserted, would not stir. Her followers would not listen
+to her advice, but marched along the left bank, so as to pass two leagues
+above Orleans. Dunois came out to meet her: “I bring you,” she said,
+“the best succour ever sent to anyone, the succour of the King of heaven.
+It comes not from me, but from God himself, who, at the entreaty of St.
+Louis and St. Charlemagne, has had pity on the town of Orleans, and will
+not suffer that the enemy should have both the duke’s body and his town at
+once.”</p>
+
+<p>She entered the city slowly at eight in the evening (April 29th), the
+crowd scarcely allowing her to advance. Everyone strove eagerly to touch
+at least her horse. They gazed on her “as if they saw God.” Talking
+gently to the people all the while, she proceeded to the church, and then
+to the houses of the duke of Orleans’ treasurer, an honourable man, whose
+wife and daughter gave her welcome. She slept with Charlotte, one of the
+daughters.</p>
+
+<p>She had entered the town along with the provisions, but the army
+marched down-stream again, to cross at Blois. She would, nevertheless, have
+had an immediate attack made on the English bastilles; but as she could not
+effect this, she sent a second peremptory message to those on the north side,
+and then proceeded to repeat her summons to those on the south. Glasdale,
+the captain, abused her in the coarsest terms, calling her cow-girl and ribald.
+In their hearts they believed her to be a witch, and were greatly afraid of her.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>They kept her herald, and were thinking of burning him, in hopes that this
+would, perhaps, break the charm.</p>
+
+<p>The army not arriving, Dunois ventured forth in search of it. The archbishop
+of Rheims, chancellor of Charles VII, had detained the little army at
+Blois. The old politician was far from conceiving the existence of such an
+irresistible enthusiasm, or perhaps he feared it. It was, therefore, much
+against his will that he came to Orleans. The maid went out to meet him,
+with the people and the priests singing hymns. The procession passed
+and repassed before the English bastilles; and the army entered the town,
+protected by some priests and a girl (May 4th, 1429).</p>
+
+<p>Joan, who, in the midst of her enthusiasm and her inspiration, had much
+shrewdness of apprehension, very clearly discerned the hostile temper of
+the new comers. She was right in surmising that there was a design to act
+without her. As she lay by Charlotte’s side, she suddenly started up,
+exclaiming, “My God! the blood of our people is running on the ground.
+It was ill done! Why was I not wakened? Quick! my arms, my horse!”
+She was armed in a moment, galloped off at full speed, and met men already
+wounded, whom they were carrying back from the field. The fugitives
+faced round on her arrival. Dunois, who had also not been called, arrived
+on the ground at the same time. The bastille (one of those on the north
+side) was attacked again. Talbot strove to succour it; but fresh forces
+issued from Orleans; the Maid put herself at their head, and Talbot withdrew
+his men. The bastille was carried. This was her first victory, the first
+time she looked on a field of slaughter. She sought confession for herself
+and her followers; and declared that she would take the communion on
+the morrow, being the feast of the Ascension, and pass the day in prayer.</p>
+
+<p>Advantage was taken of this resolution to hold a council without her,
+wherein it was determined that this time the besiegers should cross the Loire
+and attack St. Jean le Blanc, the bastille which most impeded the introduction
+of provisions into the town, and that a false attack should be made at the same
+time on the other side. The English then did what they ought to have done
+before. They concentrated their strength. With their own hands burning
+the bastille which was to have been attacked, they retired upon the other
+two on the south side, the Augustins and the Tournelles. The former was
+instantly attacked and carried, the success in this instance again being partly
+due to the Maid. The French were seized for a while with a panic, and
+rushed back towards the floating bridge; but the Maid and La Hire disentangled
+themselves from the throng, threw themselves into boats, and took
+the English in flank.</p>
+
+<p>There remained the Tournelles. The victors passed the night before it;
+but they obliged the Maid, who had eaten nothing all day (it was Friday), to
+recross the Loire. Meanwhile the council had assembled. The Maid was
+told in the evening that it had been unanimously resolved that, since the town
+was now fully victualled, they should wait for a fresh reinforcement to attack
+the Tournelles. It is difficult to believe that such could have been the real
+intention of the leaders, for delay was extremely dangerous, since the English
+might at any moment be succoured by Fastolf. Probably the intention was to
+deceive the Maid and deprive her of the honour of the triumph she had so
+powerfully contributed towards securing. She disappointed them.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning she rode to the Burgundy gate with a multitude of men-at-arms
+and citizens; but the sire de Gaucourt, grand-master of the king’s
+household, kept it shut. The crowd opened the gate, and forced another
+near it. The sun was rising on the Loire when the whole concourse threw
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>themselves into the boats. On arriving, however, at the Tournelles, they
+felt that they wanted artillery, and they sent for some to the town. At last
+they attacked the outward rampart which protected the bastille. The English
+defended themselves valiantly. The Maid, perceiving that the assailants
+were beginning to show signs of weakness, jumped into the ditch, seized a
+ladder, and was in the act of applying it to the wall, when an arrow struck
+her between the neck and the shoulder. The English sallied out to seize
+her, but she was carried off by her own party. She only allowed a little oil
+to be poured on the wound, and confessed.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile no progress was made, and night was at hand. Dunois himself
+gave orders to sound a retreat. A Basque had taken out of the hands
+of the Maid’s squire that standard of hers which struck such dismay into
+the enemy. “When the standard touches the wall,” said she, “you will be
+able to enter.” “It is touching it.” “In then! all is your own.” And
+just as she had predicted, the assailants in a frenzy of enthusiasm climbed
+the wall “as though by one step.” The English were at this moment
+attacked on two sides at once.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the men of Orleans, who watched the fight from the other
+side of the Loire, could contain themselves no longer. They threw open
+their gates and rushed to the bridge, but there was an arch broken; they
+pushed a rickety plank across the opening, and a knight of St. John ventured
+to pass over the frail spar in full armour. The bridge was hastily repaired,
+and the whole multitude hurried to the other side. The English, seeing such
+a human sea rushing upon them, thought the whole world had come together
+against them. Their senses grew bewildered; some of them beheld St.
+Aignan, the patron of the town, others the archangel Michael. Glasdale
+endeavoured to retreat from the rampart to the bastille, across a small
+bridge; but it was shattered by a shot, and the Englishman fell into the
+water and was drowned, before the eyes of the maid he had so vilified. There
+were five hundred men in the bastille, all of whom were put to the sword.</p>
+
+<p>Not one Englishman remained south of the Loire. Next day, Sunday,
+the besiegers on the northern side abandoned their bastilles, their artillery,
+their prisoners, and their wounded comrades. Talbot and Suffolk conducted
+the retreat steadily and in good order. The Maid would not allow them to
+be pursued, since they retired of their own accord; but before they withdrew
+out of sight of the town, she had an altar erected on a plain, at which
+mass was celebrated, and the people returned thanks to God in the presence
+of the enemy (Sunday, May 8th). The effect of the deliverance of Orleans
+was prodigious; everyone beheld in it the agency of supernatural power.
+Many attributed it to the devil, but the majority to God; it began to be
+generally believed that Charles had right on his side.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c3"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Joan of Arc leads the King to Rheims</i></h4>
+
+<p>However discomfited and paralysed by the panic of their soldiers, as
+well as by the great diminution of their numbers in the siege, the English
+generals would not retreat from the Loire, but withdrew, Suffolk to Jargeau,
+up the stream of the river, Talbot to Meung, lower down its current. They
+were unmolested for a month. The French were lost in jubilation. Joan
+left Orleans on the 13th of May, and hurried back to the court at Tours to
+press the king for an army to proceed to Rheims.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8g1"><a href="#endnote_8g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To be crowned at Rheims would have been a decisive victory for Charles
+over his young competitor Henry VI. It would have made him a real king
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>of France. But once again the politicians believed themselves the wiser,
+and the coronation was not to be thought of until the English were driven
+from the Loire.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b5"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Early in June, however, Joan was able to muster eight thousand combatants,
+of whom twelve hundred were knights, most of them townsmen of
+Orleans.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8g2"><a href="#endnote_8g">g</a></span> Suffolk, who had thrown himself into Jargeau, was besieged and
+the place stormed. Beaugency, too, was taken before Lord Talbot could
+receive the succours which Sir John Fastolf was bringing him from the
+regent. The constable De Richemont, who had long kept aloof within
+his own estates, came, in spite of the king and the Maid, to lend his aid
+to the victorious army.</p>
+
+<p>A battle was imminent; Richemont came to share the honour it might
+afford. Talbot and Fastolf had formed a junction of their forces; but it is
+a curious fact, illustrative both of the condition of the country and of the
+fortuitous character of the war, that no one knew where to find the English
+army in the wilderness of La Beauce, which was then covered with coppices
+and thickets, until they were discovered by a stag, which, being pursued
+by the French vanguard, rushed into the ranks of the English.</p>
+
+<p>The latter were on their march, and had not set up their defensive line
+of stakes as usual. Talbot alone was for fighting, furious as he was, since the
+defeat at Orleans, at having shown his back to the French. Fastolf, on
+the contrary, who had gained the battle of the Herrings, had no need of an
+engagement to retrieve his reputation, and said, like a sensible man, that
+with a disheartened army it was better to remain on the defensive. The
+French men-at-arms did not wait for the end of the discussion, but charged
+headlong, and met with no great resistance. Talbot fought with desperate
+obstinacy, hoping perhaps to be killed, and succeeded only in getting himself
+made prisoner. The pursuit was murderous; the bodies of two thousand
+English were strewed over the plain.</p>
+
+<p>After this battle of Patay (28th or 29th of June), it was now or never
+the time to venture on the expedition to Rheims. The politicians wanted
+to remain still on the Loire, and make sure of Cosne and La Charité. This
+time they talked in vain; no timid counsels could now be listened to. Every
+day brought people flocking in from all the provinces, attracted by the fame
+of the Maid’s miracles, and believing only in her, and in her purpose forthwith
+to convey the king to Rheims. There was an irresistible outburst of
+the pilgrim and crusading spirit. The indolent young king himself at last
+yielded to the popular flood, and suffered himself to be borne along by that
+vast tide that set in towards the north; and off they started all together,
+willingly or perforce—the king, courtiers, the politic and the enthusiastic,
+the madmen and the sages. They were twelve thousand when they began
+their march, but their numbers augmented continually as they advanced;
+every hour brought them additional strength; and those who had no armour
+followed the holy expedition in plain doublets, as archers or sword-and-buckler
+men, even though they were of gentle blood.</p>
+
+<p>The army marched from Gien on the 28th of June without attempting
+to enter it, that town being in the hands of the duke of Burgundy, whom
+there were reasons for treating with favour. Troyes had a mixed garrison
+of Burgundians and English, who ventured to make a sortie on the first
+appearance of the royal army. There seemed small chance of storming a
+large town so well guarded, and that too without artillery. There was only
+one old Armagnac councillor, the president Mâcon, who was of a contrary
+opinion, well knowing that in such an enterprise prudence was on the side
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>of enthusiasm, and that men must not reason in a popular crusade. “When
+the king undertook this march,” said he, “he did so not by reason of the
+great armed force or the abundance of money he possessed, nor because the
+achievement seemed to him possible; he undertook it because Joan told him
+to advance and be crowned at Rheims, and that he would encounter little
+resistance by the way, such being the good pleasure of God.” The Maid
+then presented herself at the door of the council-room, and assured them
+they would be able to enter the town in three days. “We would willingly
+wait six,” said the chancellor, “if we were sure what you say is true.”
+“Six? You shall enter to-morrow!”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p202.jpg" width="250" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight, Time of Joan of Arc</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>She seized her standard; the whole army followed her to the ditch, and
+they threw into it all they could lay their hands on, fagots, doors, tables,
+rafters, with such rapidity that the townspeople
+thought the ditches would very soon
+disappear altogether. The English began
+to be dazzled and bewildered as at Orleans,
+and fancied they saw a cloud of white butterflies
+fluttering round the magic standard.
+The citizens on their part were in great
+dread, recollecting that it was in Troyes the
+treaty had been concluded which disinherited
+Charles VII, and fearing that an
+example would be made of their town.
+Already they were taking refuge in the
+churches, and crying out that the town
+must surrender. The fighting men, who
+desired nothing better, parleyed and obtained
+leave to depart with what they had.</p>
+
+<p>What they had was chiefly prisoners,
+Frenchmen. Charles VII’s councillors,
+who had drawn up the capitulation, had
+stipulated nothing with respect to those
+unfortunate persons. The Maid alone
+thought of them. When the English
+marched out with their prisoners in irons,
+she stood at the gates and cried out, “In
+God’s name, they shall not carry them off!”
+She stopped them, in fact, and the king
+paid their ransom.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c4"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charles simply passed through Troyes,
+neither did he stop at Châlons, which opened
+its gates with alacrity; and, on July 13th,
+he arrived before Rheims. Two Burgundian
+nobles, the sires of Châtillon and of Saveuse, were in command, but
+they had no men. They assembled the townsmen, and asked them to hold
+out for six weeks only; at the end of that time they guaranteed that the
+dukes of Burgundy and of Bedford would arrive with so powerful an army
+that it would easily raise the siege. The townsfolk refused to run the risk,
+persuaded the two captains to retire, and sent a deputation to the chancellor
+of France who was at the same time archbishop of Rheims, begging him to
+enter his episcopal town. On July 17th Charles was at last crowned in
+accordance with the usual ritual, anointed with oil from the holy ampulla of
+Saint-Rémy and lifted up to his seat by the ecclesiastical peers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Joan defeated at Paris (1429 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Joan had done the two great things which her ‘voices’ told her to do:
+she had delivered Orleans, and had caused the king to be crowned; she
+now wished to return to her village. “On her entrance into Rheims,” says
+the <i>Chronique de la Pucelle</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8h"><a href="#endnote_8h">h</a></span> “seeing how all the poor people of the country
+cried ‘Noel!’ and wept from joy and gladness, and how they came to the
+king singing <i>Te Deum laudamus</i> without response or anthem, she said to
+the chancellor of France and to Dunois: ‘In God’s name this is a good
+and pious people, and when it shall be my time to die, I should like it to
+be in this country.’</p>
+
+<p>“Then the said count Dunois asked her: ‘Joan, do you know when you
+will die and in what place?’ She answered that that was as God willed;
+and said moreover to the said lord: ‘I have fulfilled what my Lord commanded
+me, and I wish that he would send me back to my father and
+mother to keep their sheep and cattle.’”</p>
+
+<p>But her rôle was not ended, for the English still held a large part of
+the kingdom. Joan, with the same firmness which had made her go to Orleans
+and to Rheims, asked to be allowed to march to Paris. The king’s
+counsellors could not accustom themselves to these heroic deeds of daring
+which, at certain moments, are more estimable than prudence; they decided
+first to take the small towns on the road to Paris. These opened their
+gates of their own free will. The royal army entered Laon, Soissons, Coulommiers,
+Provins, Senlis, and St. Denis without trouble. But when they
+came to Paris the opportunity had passed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b6"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span> Bedford had sent for the duke
+of Burgundy to secure Paris, and he came at the invitation, but almost
+alone; all the use the regent could make of him was to have him figure
+in an assembly of notables, where he harangued, and repeated once more
+the lamentable history of his father’s death. This being done, he took himself
+off, leaving Bedford, by way of aid, only some Picard men-at-arms; and
+even for this slight assistance, he required to have the town of Meux given
+to him in pledge.</p>
+
+<p>There was no hope save in Beaufort. That priest was king in England.
+His nephew, Gloucester, the protector, had ruined himself by his own follies.
+In order to uplift the cardinal’s power to the highest pitch, it was necessary
+that Bedford should be brought as low in France as Gloucester was in England;
+that he should be reduced to such exigency as to call for Beaufort’s
+presence, and that the latter should come at the head of an army to crown
+Henry VI. That army Beaufort had in readiness. With it he was to secure
+Paris, convey young Henry thither, and crown him.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until July 25th, nine days after Charles VII had been duly
+anointed and crowned, that the cardinal entered Paris with his army. Bedford
+did not lose a moment, but set out with these troops to observe Charles
+VII. Twice they were in presence of each other, and some skirmishes took
+place. Bedford, fearing for Normandy, kept watch over it, and during this
+time the king marched against Paris (August). This was contrary to the
+wish of the Maid, whose voices told her not to advance beyond St. Denis.</p>
+
+<p>It was an imprudent enterprise; the French nevertheless carried a rampart.
+The Maid went down into the first ditch, and crossed the shelving
+bank between it and the second, and found the latter full of water, up to
+the foot of the wall. Heedless of the arrows, that fell like hail about her,
+she shouted to her men to bring fascines, and meanwhile sounded the depth
+of the water with her lance. She was almost alone, a mark for every arrow,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>and one passed through her thigh. She strove to bear up against the pain,
+and remained on the spot to encourage the troops to mount to the assault.
+At last, having lost much blood, she retired to the cover of the outer ditch,
+and it was not until ten or eleven at night she could be prevailed on to
+return to her quarters. She seemed to feel that this decisive check under
+the very walls of Paris would ruin her beyond recovery.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1429-1430 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Fifteen hundred men were wounded in this attack, which she was
+wrongfully accused of having advised. She was now vilified by her own
+party as well as by the enemy. She had not scrupled to make the attack
+on the day of our Lady’s Nativity (September 8th), to the great scandal of
+the pious town of Paris. The court of Charles VII was still more shocked
+at this irreverent deed. The libertines, the politic ones, the blind worshippers
+of the letter and sworn foes to the spirit, all declared bravely against
+the spirit the moment it showed signs of weakness. Negotiations were
+resolved on, contrary to the Maid’s advice, at the instigation of the archbishop
+of Rheims, chancellor of France, who had never been cordially in her
+favour. He proceeded to St. Denis, to ask for a truce; perhaps he had
+secret hopes of prevailing with the duke of Burgundy, who was then in
+Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Regarded with ill will, and badly supported, the Maid carried on the
+sieges of St. Pierre le Moûtier and La Charité during the winter. Though
+almost abandoned before the former, she nevertheless stormed and took it.
+The siege of La Charité proceeded slowly and languidly; a panic broke out
+among the besiegers, and they dispersed.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Capture of Joan of Arc (1430 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the English had induced the duke of Burgundy to give them
+effectual aid. The weaker they were, the more hope he had of being able
+to retain the strongholds he might take in Picardy. The English, who had
+just lost Louviers, offered him his own terms, and he, the richest prince in
+Christendom, no longer hesitated to stake men and money in a war, the
+profit of which he hoped to appropriate. A bribe to the governor put him
+in possession of Soissons. Then he laid siege to Compiègne, the governor
+of which was also a man of very questionable integrity; but the inhabitants
+were too strongly committed to the cause of Charles VII to let their town
+be given up. The Maid threw herself into it, and on the very same day
+made a sortie in which she nearly surprised the besiegers. But the latter
+rallied in a moment, and pressed hotly upon the besieged, up to the rampart
+and the bridge. The Maid, having remained in the rear to cover the
+retreat, was not able to get within the walls in time—whether it was that
+the bridge was blocked up by the crowd, or that the gates were already
+closed. Being identified by her costume, she was soon surrounded, seized,
+and dragged from her horse. Her capturer, a Picard archer, brought her
+to his master, the bastard of Wandomme, who sold her to John of Ligny,
+who belonged to the illustrious house of Luxemburg and was the duke of
+Burgundy’s vassal.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c5"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now this John of Luxemburg had need of the duke of Burgundy in
+order to inherit peacefully the domains of Ligny and St. Pol, to the detriment
+of his elder brother. The duke of Burgundy, in order not to be disturbed
+when seizing Brabant, Brussels, and Louvain, in spite of the rights
+of his aunt Margaret, needed the assistance of the English. The English
+were inclined to allow anything provided Joan of Arc was given up to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>them.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b7"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span> It was absolutely necessary to get her out of the hands of the
+Burgundians. She had been taken on the 23rd of May; on the 26th a
+message was sent from Rouen in the name of the vicar of the Inquisition
+summoning John of Ligny to give up the woman, she being suspected of
+witchcraft.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c6"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span> A violent tempered man, a Burgundian, who was willing to do
+anything in the hope of obtaining the archbishopric of Rouen, Pierre Cauchon,
+bishop of Beauvais, undertook to prove it by a trial in due form.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b8"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1430-1431 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The university stepped forward, and wrote to the duke of Burgundy and
+to John of Ligny (July 14th). Cauchon, in his exceeding zeal making himself
+the agent and courier of the English, carried the letter with his own
+hands to the two dukes. At the same time he summoned them as a bishop
+to deliver over to him a prisoner over whom he had jurisdiction. In this
+strange proceeding, we find him pass from the part of a judge to that of a
+negotiator, and make offers of money; though the woman in question cannot
+be considered a prisoner of war, the king of England will give John of Ligny
+and the bastard of Wandomme 200 or 300 livres’ yearly rent, and a sum
+of 6,000 livres to those in whose keeping she is. Towards the end of the
+letter he advances as far as 10,000 livres, “as much,” he says, “as would be
+given for a king or a prince according to the custom of France.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus on all sides that world of interest and covetousness was opposed to
+the Maid, or at least indifferent as to her fate. The good Charles VII did
+nothing for her, the good Duke Philip gave her up to her mortal foes. It was
+in vain John of Ligny’s wife threw herself at his feet, and implored him not
+to dishonour himself.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> He was not free; he had already received English
+money, and he gave up Joan, not directly indeed to the English, but to the
+duke of Burgundy, who took her to Arras, and then to the keep of Crotoy.</p>
+
+<p>Compiègne was delivered on the 1st of November. The duke of Burgundy
+had advanced as far as Noyon, as though it were to meet the disgraceful
+blow more nearly and in person. He was again defeated shortly
+afterwards at Germigny (November 20th). At Péronne Saintrailles offered
+him battle, but he durst not accept it. These humiliations no doubt confirmed
+the duke in his alliance with the English, and fixed his determination
+to give up the Maid to them.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment when the English had the Maid at last in their hands,<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>
+and could begin her trial, their affairs were in a very bad condition. Far
+from having recovered Louviers, they had lost Château Gaillard; La Hire,
+who took it by escalade, found Barbazan a prisoner there, and let loose that
+redoubtable captain. The towns were going over of their own accord to
+the side of Charles VII, and the citizens were driving out the English. The
+men of Melun, so close to Paris, ejected their garrison.</p>
+
+<p>The rapid downhill course of English affairs was only to be checked by
+some strong machinery, and such had Beaufort ready in the trial and the
+coronation of Henry VI. The latter entered Paris on the 2nd of December.
+The university had been made to write on the 21st of November to Cauchon,
+accusing him of tardiness, and requesting the king to begin the trial. Cauchon
+was in no hurry, thinking it hard, apparently, to begin the work,
+whilst the payment was as yet uncertain. It was not until a month later
+that he obtained authority from the chapter of Rouen to proceed in that
+diocese. He opened the proceedings at Rouen, on the 9th of January, 1431.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c7"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Trial of Joan of Arc</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1431 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>He based the accusation on the four following points: infringement of
+the laws of the church, by making use of magic practices; by taking up
+arms, contrary to her parents’ wishes; by wearing clothes which were not
+those of her sex; and lastly, by announcing revelations which were
+not sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority. Thus a poor girl of nineteen
+was alone, without protection against judges who were sold to her enemies,
+who arbitrarily suppressed every proof of her innocence, who prevented her
+appealing to the pope or to the council, who sought to embarrass her by absurd
+and misleading questions or by extremely delicate ones, and who were
+often disconcerted by her heroic replies.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p206.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costume of a French Peasant, at the Time of Joan of Arc</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The maid was finally brought before her judges on the 21st of February.
+“Joan,” they asked her, “do you believe you have found salvation?” “If
+I have not, may God grant it me; if I
+have, may God preserve me in it!” “Did
+you not say that standards made by the
+soldiers in imitation of yours would bring
+them good luck?” “No; I only said,
+‘advance boldly among the English,’ and
+I advanced also.” But she declared that
+she had never killed anyone. “Why was
+her standard carried to the church at
+Rheims at the coronation, more than those
+of the other captains?” “It had borne the
+burden, it was only just that it should
+receive the honour.” “What was the idea
+of those people who kissed your hands, your
+feet, your clothes?” “The poor people
+came to me gladly, because I did them no
+ill; I supported them and defended them
+to the best of my power.” “Do you think
+you were right to leave without permission
+from your mother and father? Ought one
+not to honour one’s father and mother?”
+“They have forgiven me.” “Did you not
+think you were sinning in acting in this
+manner?” “God commanded it; if I had
+had one hundred fathers and one hundred
+mothers I should have gone.” “Do you
+think your king did right in killing or
+having killed Monseigneur of Burgundy?”
+“It was a great pity for the kingdom of
+France. But, whatever may have been
+between them, God sent me to help the
+king of France.” “Do St. Catherine and St. Margaret hate the English?”
+“They love what our Lord loves, and hate what he hates.” “Does God hate
+the English?” “I know nothing of the love or hatred which God has
+for the English; but I know well that they will be driven from France,
+except those who perish here.” “Is it not a mortal sin to admit a man to
+ransom and then put him to death?” “I have not done so.”</p>
+
+<p>The judges laid stress on the man’s clothing which Joan had assumed
+contrary to the laws of the church, which she was still wearing, and which she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>would not relinquish. The wretches affected not to understand what the poor
+girl did not dare to tell them—that in camp, even in prison, this dress had
+been, and still was, her protection.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b9"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Twelve Articles</i></h4>
+
+<p>Between the 2nd and 4th of April the judges, on the advice of the
+members of the university, caused the seventy points of accusation brought
+forward by the prosecutor to be summed up in twelve articles. There
+were two doctors of Paris, Nicholas Midi and Jacques de Touraine, who
+worked on this—one on the plan, the other on the final form. The twelve
+articles reviewed the trial in a spirit very hostile to Joan, while it eliminated
+the prosecutor’s accusation of impostures and brutalities. On the 12th of
+April twenty-two doctors and licentiates deliberated together on the twelve
+articles. They left the question hanging between a matter of human invention
+and an inspiration of Satan.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8f2"><a href="#endnote_8f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We give herewith these twelve articles and follow them with the findings
+of the faculty, as they are given in the report of the trial, edited by
+M. Quicherat.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8i1"><a href="#endnote_8i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I. And in the first place, a certain woman states and affirms that, when
+she was thirteen years of age or thereabouts, she herself saw, with her own
+corporeal eyes, St. Michael consoling her, and sometimes St. Gabriel appearing
+in bodily form; sometimes, also, she saw a great multitude of angels:
+and afterwards, SS. Catherine and Margaret showed themselves visible in
+bodily form to the same woman, and she also sees them daily and hears their
+voices, and has embraced them at times, and kissed them, touching them sensibly
+and corporeally. She truly saw the heads of the said angels and saints,
+but concerning their other parts or their garments she was unwilling to say
+anything. And that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret sometimes
+spoke to her at a certain spring near a large tree, commonly called “the
+fairies’ tree,”<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> concerning which spring and tree there was a common report
+that the “fates of the ladies” frequent there, and that many fever-stricken
+persons go to the said spring and tree for the sake of recovering health,
+although they are situated in a profane place. These she frequently
+worshipped there and elsewhere and paid them reverence.</p>
+
+<p>She says, moreover, that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret appear
+and show themselves to her crowned with very beautiful and costly crowns,
+and from the aforesaid time and ofttimes subsequently spoke to the same
+woman concerning the command of God, that it behoved her to go to a certain
+secular prince promising that by the help of the same woman and by her
+labours the said prince would recover by force of arms great temporal dominion
+and worldly honour, would obtain victory over his enemies, and that the
+same prince would receive the said woman and would bestow on her arms together
+with an army of soldiers for the carrying out of what was promised.
+Furthermore, the said SS. Catherine and Margaret instructed the same woman
+concerning the command of God, that she should assume and wear male
+attire, which she has worn and still wears in persevering obedience to this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>kind of command insomuch that the woman herself has said that she would
+rather die than abandon this kind of dress, saying this simply at different
+times, and occasionally “unless it were the command of God.” She even
+chose rather not to be present at the offices of mass and to go without the
+holy communion of the Eucharist at times ordained by the church for receiving
+the sacrament, than to resume female and put off male attire. They
+were also protectors of the said woman in this matter that, without the
+knowledge and against the will of her parents, when she was seventeen years
+of age or thereabouts, she left her father’s house and associated with a number
+of soldiers, frequenting with them by day and by night, never or rarely
+having another woman with her. And many other things did the said saints
+tell and teach the same woman, by reason of which she says that she has been
+sent by the God of heaven and by the victorious church of the saints now
+enjoying beatitude to whom she commits all her good deeds.</p>
+
+<p>She declines, however, and refuses to submit her deeds and words to the
+church militant, having been ofttimes required and admonished concerning
+this; saying that it is impossible for the same woman to act contrary to those
+things which she affirmed in her process, that she had acted by the command
+of God, nor would she render account concerning these things to the conclusion
+or judgment of anyone living, but only to the judgment of God; and
+that they revealed to the same woman that she herself will be saved in the
+glory of the blessed ones and she would attain the salvation of her soul if
+she should keep her virginity, which she vowed to them on the first occasion
+when she saw and heard them. By the occasion of which revelation she
+asserts that she is as certain of her own salvation in the kingdom of heaven
+as if it were already a present fact.</p>
+
+<p>II. Further, the said woman declares that the sign which the prince
+had to whom she was sent, and by which he was influenced to believe her
+concerning her revelations and to receive her for the purpose of carrying on
+war, was that St. Michael came to the same prince accompanied by a multitude
+of angels of whom some had crowns and others had wings, with whom
+were SS. Catherine and Margaret. This angel and the woman were walking
+above the earth along a way like unto steps and an arch stretching a
+great way, other angels and the aforesaid saints accompanying them; and a
+certain angel delivered to the same prince a very costly crown of purest
+gold and the said angel bowed himself before the said prince showing him
+reverence. On one occasion she said that, when her prince had the sign
+given him, she herself thought that he was then alone although several
+others were near enough at hand; and on another occasion that, as she
+believes, one archbishop received that sign of a crown and delivered it to the
+aforesaid prince, several temporal lords being present, witnessing it.</p>
+
+<p>III. Further, the aforesaid woman knew and was assured that he who
+visits her is St. Michael, by the good advice, comfort, and good doctrine which
+the aforesaid St. Michael gave and made for the same woman; and in that
+he named himself, saying that he himself was Michael. And similarly she
+knows St. Catherine and St. Margaret distinctly from each other through
+this—that they name themselves and salute her. On account of which
+things, concerning the appearance of St. Michael to her, she believes
+that he is St. Michael himself, and she believes that the words and deeds of
+that Michael are true and good as firmly as she believes that our Lord Jesus
+suffered and died for our redemption.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span></p>
+
+<p>IV. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that she herself is certain
+concerning certain future things that are wholly coming to pass, and will
+happen, just as she is certain about those things which she indeed sees done
+before her; and boasts that she has and has had information concerning certain
+hidden things by means of revelations as far as the meaning of the word
+extends through the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret—namely, that
+she will be liberated from prison and that the French will do a fairer deed
+in her company than was ever done for the whole of Christianity; that, furthermore,
+she has recognised by means of revelation, as she says, some men
+whom she had never seen before without anyone pointing them out to her,
+and that she has revealed and discovered a certain sword which was hidden
+in the earth.</p>
+
+<p>V. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that according to the
+command of God and that which is well pleasing to him she has assumed
+and worn and continually wears and clothes herself with a dress after the
+fashion of a man. And further, she declares that from the time that she held
+it to be the command of God to take male dress, it behoved her to get
+a short tunic, a hood, a jerkin, breeches, and boots with many tags, the hair
+of her head being cut off round over the tops of her ears, leaving nothing
+upon her body which represented or pointed out the feminine sex beyond
+those things which nature conferred on the same woman for the distinction of
+the feminine sex. And that she ofttimes received the Eucharist when wearing
+the aforesaid dress. She neither has wished nor does she wish to resume
+feminine attire. Having been ofttimes lovingly questioned and admonished
+about this, she has said that she would rather die than leave off male attire,
+sometimes simply saying so, and sometimes, “unless it were by God’s command.”
+And that if she were in male attire among those for whose sake she
+at other times armed herself and did as she used to do before her capture
+and detention, this would be one of the greatest benefits which could happen
+for the whole kingdom of France; adding that for nothing in the world
+would she take an oath of not wearing male attire and not arming herself,
+and in all aforesaid she declares that she has done and does do well in
+obeying God and his commands.</p>
+
+<p>VI. Further, the said woman confesses and asserts that she has caused
+to be written many letters in some of which on the one hand these names,
+Jesus Maria, were added together with the sign of the cross, and at times
+she superadded a cross, and then she was unwilling that that should be done
+which she ordered to be done in her letters. In other letters, on the other
+hand, she caused to be written that she herself would have those put to death
+who were not obedient to her letters or her counsels and that “it will immediately
+be seen who has the greater authority from the God of heaven”; and
+she frequently declares that she has done nothing except by the revelation
+and commandment of God.</p>
+
+<p>VII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that when she was
+seventeen years of age or thereabouts, she went of her own accord and by
+revelation according as she says to a certain esquire whom she had never seen,
+before leaving her father’s house against the wish of her parents; who, as
+soon as they were aware of her departure, were almost out of their mind.
+The said woman requested indeed this esquire that he should lead her or cause
+her to be led to the prince of whom it has been before spoken. And then the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>said gentleman, a captain, delivered to the said woman a man’s dress together
+with a sword at the request of the woman herself, and deputed and ordered
+one soldier, one esquire, and four serving men to conduct her; who when they
+had come to the aforesaid prince the said woman said to the same prince that
+she herself wished to head the war against his enemies, promising that she
+would place him in great power and would overcome his enemies; and that
+she had been sent for this purpose by the God of heaven, saying that in the
+aforesaid she did well by the command of God and by revelation.</p>
+
+<p>VIII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that she, no one
+forcing or compelling her, threw herself down from a certain very lofty tower,
+preferring rather to die than to be delivered into the hands of her enemies, or
+than to live after the destruction of the city of Compendium (Compiègne);
+she declares too that she could not avoid this kind of fall and yet that the
+aforesaid SS. Catherine and Margaret prevented her from casting herself
+down, to offend whom she declares is a great sin. Yet she knows well that
+this kind of sin has been forgiven her after she has made confession of it.
+And concerning this she declares that she has had a revelation.</p>
+
+<p>IX. Further, the said woman declares that the aforesaid SS. Catherine and
+Margaret promised her that they themselves would lead her into paradise if
+she kept well the virginity which she vowed to them both in body and in soul.
+And concerning this she declares she is as certain as if she were already in the
+glory of the blessed ones. Nor does she think she has committed works of
+mortal sin; for if she were in mortal sin, it seems to her that the aforesaid
+SS. Catherine and Margaret would not visit her as they daily do visit her.</p>
+
+<p>X. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that God loves certain
+men determined and named hitherto travellers, and loves them more than he
+does the same woman. And she knows this through the revelation of the
+SS. Catherine and Margaret who speak to her frequently in French, and not
+in English, since they are not on their side. And since she has known by
+revelation that their voices were on behalf of the prince above mentioned,
+she has not loved the Burgundians.</p>
+
+<p>XI. Further, the said woman declares and affirms that she has ofttimes
+shown reverence to the aforesaid voices and spirits whom she calls
+Michael, Gabriel, Catherine, and Margaret, by uncovering the head, bending
+her knee, kissing the earth over which they walked, and by vowing to them
+virginity and at times by embracing and kissing the same Catherine and
+Margaret; and that she has touched them corporeally and sensibly, and has
+besought of them counsel and help by invoking them at times, although
+they frequently visit her when not invoked, and she acquiesces in and obeys
+their counsels and commands and has acquiesced from the beginning without
+seeking advice from anyone, for example, from father or mother, curate,
+or prelate, or any other ecclesiastic. And nevertheless she firmly believes
+that the voices and revelations which she has had through male and female
+saints of this sort come from God and by his ordering, and she believes this
+as firmly as she believes the Christian faith and that our Lord Jesus Christ
+suffered death for us; adding that if an evil spirit appeared to her, who
+pretended that he was St. Michael, she would know well how to distinguish
+whether he were St. Michael or not. The same woman also declares that
+at her own request, no other person compelling or requiring it of her, she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>swore to the SS. Catherine and Margaret, who appeared to her, that she
+would not reveal the sign of the crown which was to be given to the prince
+to whom she was sent. And in conclusion she said that “unless she had
+license to reveal it.”</p>
+
+<p>XII. Further, the said woman declares and confesses that if the church
+should wish that she should do anything contrary to the command which
+she declares has been given her by God she would not do that for anything,
+affirming that she knows well that those things which are contained in her
+process come by the commandment of God, and that it were impossible for
+her to do anything contrary to them. Nor was she willing to refer, concerning
+these things, to the judgment of the church militant or to any man
+in the world, but to one Lord God alone, whose commands she will always
+do; especially as to the subject-matter of the revelations and those things
+which she declares she has done by revelation. And she declares that she
+has not made this answer and other answers of herself alone, but she has
+made and given these answers by command of the voices and revelations
+made to her; although the article of faith, “one holy Catholic church,”
+was ofttimes explained to the said woman by judges and others there
+present, explaining to her that every faithful pilgrim is bound to obey and
+to submit his deeds and words to the church militant, especially in the
+matter of faith and that which touches holy doctrine and ecclesiastical
+sanctions.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Findings of the Faculty</i></h4>
+
+<p>I. And in the first place as to the first article, the faculty declares
+by means of doctrine that the manner and matter of the revelations, the
+quality of the person and place, together with other circumstances, having
+been finally considered, they are either fictitious lies, seductive and pernicious,
+or the aforesaid apparitions and revelations are superstitions, proceeding
+from malignant and diabolical spirits, Belial, Satan, and Behemoth.</p>
+
+<p>II. Further, as to the second article, that that which it contains does
+not seem true; yea, the latter is a presumptuous lie, seductive, pernicious,
+fictitious, and derogatory to the dignity of angels.</p>
+
+<p>III. Further, as to the third article, that the signs contained in it
+are not sufficient and the said woman believes lightly and asserts easily.
+Furthermore in the statement which she makes she believes wrongly, and
+errs in the faith.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Further, as to the fourth article, that in it is contained a superstition,
+a soothsaying and presumptuous assertion, together with empty boasting.</p>
+
+<p>V. Further, as to the fifth article, that the said woman is blasphemous
+towards God and a despiser of God in his sacraments; a prevaricator of
+divine law and holy doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanctions; of evil wisdom,
+she errs from the faith and is an empty boaster, and is to be held suspected
+of idolatry and the curse of herself and of her garments by imitating the
+custom of the Gentiles.</p>
+
+<p>VI. Further, as to the sixth article, that the said woman is a traitress,
+crafty, cruel, and thirsting after the shedding of human blood, seditious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>and provoking to tyranny; a blasphemer of God in his commands and
+revelations.</p>
+
+<p>VII. Further, as to the seventh article, that the said woman is undutiful
+to her parents, a prevaricator of the precept concerning honouring parents;
+scandalous, blasphemous towards God, and errs in the faith and makes a rash
+and presumptuous promise.</p>
+
+<p>VIII. Further, that in the eighth article is contained weakness of mind
+tending to despair, that is to say, to suicide and to presumptuous and rash
+assertion concerning the pardon of sin held out; and that the said woman has
+an evil opinion of the freedom of human judgment.</p>
+
+<p>IX. Further, that in the ninth article is contained a presumptuous and
+rash assertion and a pernicious lie, and she contradicts herself in the preceding
+article and has an ill knowledge of the faith.</p>
+
+<p>X. Further, that in the tenth article is contained a presumptuous and
+rash assertion, superstitious divination, blasphemy against SS. Catherine
+and Margaret, and transgression of the precept concerning the love of your
+neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>XI. Further, as to the eleventh article, that the said woman, supposing
+that she had the revelations and apparitions of which she boasts with certain
+beings according to the first article, is an idolatress, an invoker of demons,
+and errs in the faith, asserts rashly, and has made an unlawful oath.</p>
+
+<p>XII. Further, as to the twelfth article, that the said woman is a schismatic,
+having an evil opinion of the unity and authority of the church; an apostate
+and hitherto errs obstinately in the faith.</p>
+
+<p>Here follows a deliberation and determination by manner of doctrine of the
+Venerable Faculty of degrees in the University of Paris upon the twelve
+articles concerning the words and deeds of Joan, commonly called La Pucelle,
+above annotated and described; which deliberation and determination the
+said faculty submits to the order and judgment of the great pontiff of the holy
+apostolic seat and of the holy general council. If the said woman being of right
+mind obstinately affirm the propositions declared in the above written twelve
+articles and in performance abide by the deeds contained in the same, it
+seems to the faculty of degrees, having diligently examined the aforesaid
+propositions, speaking in love by manner of council or doctrine:</p>
+
+<p>I. That the said woman has become schismatic, since schism is unlawful
+division, through her disobedience from the unity of the church, and separates
+herself from the obedience of the church militant, in that she says, etc.</p>
+
+<p>II. Further, that the woman herself errs in the faith: contradicts the
+article of faith contained in the lesser symbol “one holy Catholic church”; and,
+as says St. Jerome, by contradicting this article she acknowledges herself
+not only unskilful, malevolent, and uncatholic, but heretical.</p>
+
+<p>III. Further, that the woman herself is also even apostate, both because
+with an evil purpose she caused to be cut off from her the hair which God
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>gave her for a covering; and also because, for the same purpose having given
+up female dress, she imitated the dress of men.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Further, that the woman herself is a liar and a soothsayer when
+she says that she was sent by God and spoke with the angels and saints and
+did not make it known by the operation of a miracle or special witness of
+Scripture; as when the Lord wished to send Moses into Egypt to the children
+of Israel, in order that they might believe that he was sent by him he gave
+them a sign that he should turn his rod into a serpent and the serpent into
+a rod again; that John the Baptist also should reform them, he brought
+forward a special testimony of his mission from Scripture, saying: “I am the
+voice of one crying in the wilderness; make straight the way of the Lord,
+as saith the prophet Esaias.”</p>
+
+<p>V. Further, that the same woman, by her presumption of authority, and
+concerning right, errs in the faith both firstly, since she herself is anathema
+by canonical authority and has continued in the same state for a long time;
+and secondly, because she says she would rather not receive the body of
+Christ and not make her confession at the time appointed by the church than
+put off her male attire and resume the dress of women; she is therefore most
+vehemently suspected of heresy, and is to be diligently examined concerning
+the articles of faith.</p>
+
+<p>VI. Further, the same woman also errs in that she says that she is as
+certain that she will be led into paradise as if she were already in the glory
+of the blessed ones; since, in this journey, whether the traveller be worthy of
+praise or tribulation is unknown but is recognised by the supreme Judge
+alone. Wherefore, if the aforesaid woman be charitably exhorted and duly
+admonished by a competent judge to return of her own will to the unity of
+the Catholic faith and publicly to abjure her errors at the will of the aforesaid
+judge, and be unwilling to show suitable satisfaction, she is to be abandoned
+to the power of the secular judge under obligation to receive vengeance
+in proportion to the quality of her crime.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8i2"><a href="#endnote_8i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Sentence and its Execution</i></h4>
+
+<p>Her condemnation was decided beforehand; but they wanted to obtain
+from her some words implicating Charles VII, and they employed all means
+for this purpose; they sent for the executioner to come to the prison; then
+they said that all was ready for the torture. She was very ill during holy
+week. Threats had little effect on this heroic mind; they resorted to promises,
+to the most pernicious for her—that of being taken from the hands of her
+English gaolers and given over to men of the church. She yielded, and
+signed the recantation which was presented to her, without even knowing
+what it contained: and then, out of mercy and moderation, she was only
+condemned to spend the rest of her days in prison, on the bread of affliction
+and water of sorrow, to weep over her sins.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8b10"><a href="#endnote_8b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was admitted by the ecclesiastical judge to do penance, nowhere else
+of course than in the church prisons. The ecclesiastical <i>in pace</i>, hard as it
+was, would at least take her out of the hands of the English, protect her
+from their insults, and save her honour. What were her surprise and horror
+when the bishop said coldly, “Take her back to the place whence you
+brought her!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span></p>
+
+<p>Nothing was done; thus deceived, she could not fail to retract her
+retraction. But even had she been willing to persist in it, the rage of the
+English would not have allowed her. They had come to St. Ouen, where
+the sentence had been delivered, in hopes at last to burn the witch; they
+waited in breathless expectation; and were they now to be sent off in this
+way, with nothing for their pains but a scrap of parchment, a signature, and
+a grimace? At the moment when the bishop suspended the reading of the
+sentence, stones flew about the platforms without
+respect for the cardinal. The doctors were
+in danger of their lives when they set foot on
+the ground; bare swords were everywhere
+pointed at their throats; the most moderate
+of the English confined themselves to insulting
+words: “Priest, you do not earn the
+king’s money.” The trembling doctors, shuffling
+away as fast as they could, said, “Be not
+uneasy, we shall surely catch her again.” It
+was not merely the common soldiers, the English
+mob, that showed this thirst for blood.
+The respectable people and the lords were not
+less rancorous. The king’s man and his tutor,
+Lord Warwick, said, like the soldiers, “The
+king fares badly; the girl will not be burned”
+(May 23rd, 1431).</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl, exposed to such danger, had
+hitherto possessed no other defence than her
+male attire; but strange to say, no one had
+ever chosen to understand why she wore it.
+Her friends and her enemies were alike shocked
+at her doing so. In the beginning she had been
+obliged to explain herself to the women of
+Poitiers. After her capture, when she was in
+the custody of the ladies of Luxemburg,<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> those
+good dames begged her to dress as became a
+decent girl. If the women understood nothing
+of this female question, how much less did the
+priests! They quoted the text of a council
+of the fourth century, which anathematises this exchange of garments. They
+did not perceive that this prohibition applied especially to an epoch which
+had scarcely emerged from pagan impurity.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p214.jpg" width="250" height="525" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight, Time of Joan of Arc</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On Friday and Saturday the unfortunate prisoner, deprived of her male
+attire, had much to fear. According to the statement of her confessor, to
+whom she revealed the fact, an Englishman, not a soldier, but a gentleman,
+a lord, bravely undertook to violate a chained girl and, failing in the attempt,
+loaded her with blows.</p>
+
+<p>“When the morning of Trinity Sunday was come, and it was time for
+her to rise (as she has related to him who speaks) she said to the English, her
+guards, ‘Un-iron me that I may rise.’ One of them took off the woman’s
+garments that were on her, emptied the bag in which was the male dress,
+and said to her, ‘Get up.’ ‘Sirs,’ said she, ‘you know it is forbidden me;
+certainly I will not take it.’ This dispute lasted until noon, and at last, by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>reason of bodily necessity, she was obliged to go out and take that dress.
+On her return, they would not give her any other, notwithstanding all her
+supplications.”</p>
+
+<p>In reality, it was not for the interest of the English that she should
+resume the garb of a man, and thus annul the retractation so laboriously
+obtained; but at that moment their rage knew no bounds. Saintrailles
+had just made a bold attempt on Rouen. It would have been a fine exploit
+to seize the judges on their bench, and carry off Beaufort and Bedford to
+Poitiers. The latter had another narrow escape of being captured on his
+return between Rouen and Paris. There was no safety for the English so
+long as that infernal girl lived, who was doubtless continuing her diabolical
+arts in prison. It was necessary she should die.</p>
+
+<p>The assessors being instantly sent for to the castle to see the change of
+dress, found in the courtyard some hundred English, who stopped their way.
+Thinking that if these doctors entered, they might spoil all, they brandished
+axes and swords in their faces, and drove them out, calling them Armagnac
+traitors. Cauchon, getting in with great difficulty, assumed a gay air to please
+Warwick, and said, laughing, “She is caught.” On Monday he returned
+with the inquisitor and eight assessors to interrogate the Maid, and ask her
+why she had resumed that garb. She offered no excuse, but bravely accepting
+her danger said that this dress suited her better so long as she should be
+guarded by men; that moreover, word had not been kept with her. Her
+saints had said to her that it was great pity to have abjured to save her life.
+At the same time she did not refuse to put on female garments again. “Let
+me be consigned to a mild and safe prison,” she said, “I will be good and do
+all the church shall desire.”</p>
+
+<p>On Tuesday the judges got together, at the archiepiscopal palace, some
+sort of an assemblage of assessors, some of whom had been present only at
+the first sittings, and the rest at none; they were men of every kind—priests,
+lawyers, and three were even physicians. The judges reported to
+them what had taken place, and asked their opinions. The opinion they
+gave, very different from what was expected, was that the prisoner ought to
+be brought again into court and have her act of abjuration read again to her.
+It is doubtful that this was within the power of the judges. Judge or judgment
+was in fact no longer a thing possible amidst naked swords and raging
+soldiers. Bloodshed was inevitable; the judges perhaps were not far from
+seeing their own spilt. They drew up a hasty citation to be served the next
+morning at eight; her next appearance was only to be for the purpose of
+being burned.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, Cauchon sent her a confessor, Brother Martin l’Advenu,
+“to announce death to her and induce her to penitence. And when he
+announced to the poor girl the death she was to die that day, she began to
+cry out woefully, sinking with faintness, and tearing her hair. ‘Alas! am I
+to be treated so horribly and cruelly, and must my body, whole and entire,
+which was never corrupted, be now consumed and reduced to ashes? Oh! oh!
+I would rather be beheaded seven times than be thus burned! Oh! I appeal
+to God, the great Judge of the wrongs and grievances they do me!’”</p>
+
+<p>At nine she was dressed in women’s clothes and placed on a car, with
+Friar Martin l’Advenu on one side of her, and the <i>huissier</i> Massieu on the
+other. Isambart, the Augustine monk, who had already displayed so much
+charity and courage, would not quit her. The Maid had never despaired
+until now. Even whilst saying, as she did at times, “the English will
+put me to death,” she did not in reality believe it. She did not imagine
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>she could ever be forsaken. She had faith in her king, and in the good
+people of France. She had said expressly, “There will be in the prison or
+at the condemnation some tumult by which I shall be delivered—delivered
+with great victory!” But though the king and the people should fail her,
+she had another aid, far more potent and sure—that of her friends on high,
+the good and precious saints. What then were her thoughts when she saw
+that she was really to die—when, mounted on the cart, she passed along
+through the trembling crowd, guarded by eight hundred Englishmen armed
+with lances and swords? She wept and bewailed her fate, but never
+accused either her king or her saints. But one phrase escaped her lips,
+“O Rouen, Rouen, must I die here!”</p>
+
+<p>The end of this dismal journey was the Vieux Marché, the fish market.
+Three platforms had been erected there. On one was the episcopal and
+royal chair, the throne of the cardinal of England, surrounded by the seats
+of his prelates; the other was destined for the performers in this melancholy
+drama, the preacher, the judges, and the bailiff, and lastly the culprit.
+Some way off from these was seen a great platform in plaster filled and
+heaped with wood; materials had not been spared upon the pile: it struck
+terror by its height. This was done not merely for the purpose of rendering
+the execution more solemn; there was another intention—namely, that the
+great height of the pile should make it inaccessible to the executioner except
+from below, where he was to light it, and thus prevent him from abridging the
+sufferer’s agony and despatching her, as usual, before the flames reached her.
+There was no thought here of defrauding justice and giving a dead body to
+the fire; it was meant that she should be literally and truly burned alive, and
+that placed on the summit of that mound of wood she should be visible
+above the circle of lances and swords to every spectator on the ground.
+Burning slowly before the eyes of a gaping multitude there was reason to
+expect that she would at last yield to some weakness, and utter something
+that might be given out as a recantation; at the very least it was probable
+that some incoherent words would escape her, which might be interpreted
+as her judges desired; perhaps that in womanly terror and despair
+she would descend to ignoble prayers and cries for mercy.</p>
+
+<p>The hideous ceremony began with a sermon. Master Nicholas Midi,
+one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached from this edifying
+text: “When a member of the church is sick the whole church is sick.”
+That poor church could only be cured by cutting off a limb. He concluded
+with the formal phrase: “Joan, go in peace; the church can no longer
+defend thee.”</p>
+
+<p>Then the ecclesiastical judge, the bishop of Beauvais, benignly exhorted
+her to think of her soul and to recollect all her misdeeds, that she might be
+moved to contrition. The assessors had decided that it was incumbent in
+law to read her abjuration to her again; but the bishop did not do so,
+fearing that she would contradict and remonstrate. But the poor girl had
+no thought of thus battling with lawyers’ subtleties for her life; her mind
+was far differently engaged. Before even she had been exhorted to contrition
+she was on her knees invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St.
+Catherine, pardoning all and asking pardon, and saying to the by-standers,
+“Pray for me.” She particularly requested each of the priests to say a mass
+for her soul; and all this she did in a manner so pious, humble, and affecting,
+that the emotion spread from man to man, and none present could restrain
+their feelings; the bishop of Beauvais wept, the bishop of Boulogne sobbed,
+and at last the English themselves shed tears, and Beaufort as well as the rest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span></p>
+
+<p>The judges soon recovered from their momentary fit of humanity, and
+the bishop of Beauvais, wiping his eyes, began to read the sentence. He
+recapitulated to the culprit all her crimes, schism, idolatry, invocation of
+fiends, and set forth how she had been admitted to repentance, and how,
+“seduced by the prince of lies, she had relapsed, O grief! as a dog returns
+to his vomit. Therefore we pronounce you a rotten member, and as such
+cut off from the church. We give you over to the secular power, entreating
+it at the same time to moderate its sentence, and to spare you the pain of
+death and mutilation of your limbs.”<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus abandoned by the church she cast herself in full confidence on
+God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman handed her a wooden cross
+which he had made out of a stick; she received it not the less piously,
+kissed it, and put that rough emblem of salvation under her clothes next
+her skin. But she would rather have had the church cross to keep before
+her eyes until death. The good <i>huissier</i> Massieu and Brother Isambart
+exerted themselves to fulfil her wishes, and the cross was brought her from
+the parish of St. Sauveur. While she was embracing it, and Isambart was
+exhorting her, the English began to think the business very tedious; it
+was noon at least; the soldiers grumbled, and the captains called out, “Holla,
+priest! are you going to keep us here to dinner?” Then losing patience
+and not waiting for the order of the bailiff, though he alone had authority to
+send her to death, they sent up two sergeants to take her out of the hands
+of the priests. She was seized at the foot of the tribunal by the soldiers,
+who dragged her to the executioner, and said to him, “Do thy office.”
+This fury of the soldiery excited horror; many of the by-standers, and even
+of the judges, rushed from the ground to avoid seeing any more of it.</p>
+
+<p>When she was on the ground among those English who laid hands on
+her, nature gave way and the flesh was troubled. Again she cried, “O
+Rouen, thou art then to be my last abode!” She said no more and sinned
+not with her lips, even in that awful moment. She accused not her king or
+her saints. But when she was on the top of the pile, and saw that great
+town and that motionless and silent multitude, she could not help saying,
+“Ah, Rouen, Rouen, I fear me much thou wilt have to suffer for my
+death!” Wonderful gentleness of soul! she who had saved the people,
+and whom the people forsook, expressed but compassion for them in her
+dying moments.</p>
+
+<p>She was bound beneath the infamous inscription, and on her head was
+placed a mitre, on which was written: “Heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolator.”
+Then the executioner applied the fire. She saw it from above and
+shrieked. The monk who was exhorting her did not pay attention to the
+flames; and she, forgetting herself, became alarmed for him and made him
+go down. What plainly proves that until then she had retracted nothing
+expressly is that the wretched Cauchon was obliged (doubtless by the imperious
+Satanic will of him that presided) to approach the foot of the pile,
+obliged to look his victim in the face, and try to elicit something from her.
+She repeated to him mildly what she had already said: “Bishop, I die by
+you. Had you placed me in the church prisons this would not have happened.”
+Of course it had been expected that, thinking herself abandoned
+by her king, she would at last accuse him and speak against him; but she
+defended him still: “Whether I have done well or done ill, my king is in
+no wise implicated therein: it was not he who advised me.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the flames were ascending. At the moment they reached
+her the poor creature started and called out for holy water; this apparently
+was a cry of terror. But immediately collecting herself she uttered
+no names but those of God, her angels, and her saints. She testified
+her faith in them: “Yes, my voices were of God; my voices have not
+deceived me!” That grand expression of hers is attested by the compulsory
+and sworn witness of her death, the Dominican who ascended the pile with
+her, whom she sent down from that dangerous post, but who continued
+speaking with her from below, listened to her words, and held up the cross
+to her sight.</p>
+
+<p>We have yet another witness of this holy death, a witness of very grave
+character, who was himself doubtless a saint. This man, whose name history
+ought to preserve, was the Augustine monk already mentioned, Brother
+Isambart de la Pierre. He was near perishing in the course of the prosecution
+for having given counsel to the Maid, and yet though so conspicuously
+obnoxious to the English, he voluntarily ascended the cart with her, procured
+her the parish cross, and stood by her in the midst of the furious
+crowd, both on the platform and at the stake. Twenty years after the event
+the two venerable men, humble monks, devoted to poverty and with nothing
+to gain or to fear in this world, depose as follows: “We heard her in the
+fire invoking her saints and her archangel; she repeated the Saviour’s name.
+At last, dropping her head, she cried aloud, ‘Jesus.’”</p>
+
+<p>“Ten thousand men wept.” Some English alone laughed or tried to
+laugh. One of the most violent among them had sworn to fling a fagot
+on the pile; she was expiring at the moment he deposited it, and he was
+taken ill. His comrades carried him off to a tavern to revive his spirits
+with drink, but he could not recover his equanimity. “I saw,” he cried
+distractedly, “I saw a dove escape from her mouth with her last sigh.”
+Others had read in the flames the word Jesus which she repeated. The
+executioner went that evening in utter dismay to Brother Isambart, and
+confessed, but could not believe that God would ever forgive him. One of
+the king of England’s secretaries said openly as he returned from the horrid
+scene, “We are undone; we have burned a saint!”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c8"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE REHABILITATION OF JOAN OF ARC (1456 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>For a long time the people refused to believe in Joan’s death.<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> The
+memory of her who had been both the heroine and victim of patriotic and
+national sentiment became more and more popular, and several years after
+the English had been driven from France and her predictions accomplished,
+there arose a desire that her memory should be avenged.</p>
+
+<p>When Charles VII entered Rouen in 1450 he had ordered the revision of
+the trial. Cardinal Estouteville, archbishop of Rouen and papal legate, began
+investigation in the name of the church. But for political reasons, and so as
+not to irritate the English, it was judged better to have the request for rehabilitation
+come from Joan’s own family, as a private matter. Two doctors
+designated by the court of Rome examined the request, declared it founded
+on the most serious motives, and concluded if the church must hesitate to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>pronounce on Joan’s visions, it could not charge them with crime. Upon
+these conclusions Pope Calixtus III appointed three prelates and an inquisitor
+to form a court of revision over which the archbishop of Rheims presided.</p>
+
+<p>The new judges began their labour. All the witnesses still living who
+had known Joan appeared before them. Military leaders who had fought
+with her—as Alençon and Dunois—gave testimony to her memory. Three
+clerks who had exercised their office at the trial in Rouen furnished proof of
+irregularities that had been committed. No defender of the former proceedings
+appeared. Thereupon the court, giving the most simple explanation of
+all that had determined the former judges, found a hundred and one reasons
+for nullity. In consequence the new judges quashed, in 1456, the decree of
+their predecessors—as stained with illegality, fraud, violence, and manifest
+partiality. They declared the twelve articles of the condemnation false,
+calumnious, and full of fraud—while recognising that the manner in which
+they had been drawn up might easily have deceived the good faith of those
+that acted upon them. They declared the trial iniquitous—that Joan had
+been judged by her enemies. The church thus restored that which an ecclesiastical
+tribunal had struck down. The sentence of rehabilitation was published
+in every town of France; Orleans raised on a bridge over the Loire a
+statue to her liberator. Rouen held expiation processions in honour of her
+victim.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8k"><a href="#endnote_8k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>A BRITISH ESTIMATE OF JOAN’S SERVICES</h3>
+
+<p>Those writers who consider Joan of Arc not merely as a female Mohammed,
+but as a heaven-sent saviour, do not enhance the virtue or the beauty of
+her own natural character, whilst they exaggerate the depression, and derogate
+from the martial spirit of the French, by representing them as only to be
+saved at the time by an avatar. It does not appear that France was in such
+imminent danger, or was likely to be conquered, even had Orleans fallen by
+a handful of English, very unequal to the subjugation of the country.</p>
+
+<p>If the starting up a great prince or warrior, like Henry V, on the throne
+of England had brought disaster upon France, his premature death, with the
+consequent abstraction of English aid and English vigour from the duke of
+Bedford, was a greater blow to English ascendency than any supposed mission
+of Joan of Arc. If the French were defeated at Agincourt and Verneuil,
+this was mainly owing to the yeoman middle classes, which formed the
+strength of the English army, whilst a similar class in France was kept out
+of the ranks of the national defence. But the sieges of Rouen and of Orleans
+had restored to the French peasant and the French townsman the right and
+the habit of wielding a sword by the side of the gentleman. What Joan of
+Arc did was to restore their confidence; this was her good fortune or her
+mission. The disinherited and degraded middle and lower classes rose to
+defend and save the monarchy, which counts and barons had allowed to fall
+with themselves into the mire. This was the revolution, this the new spirit
+that saved France from the English, and not the trumped-up miracle of
+La Pucelle. It was the red right arm of French manhood which did that
+act, and not the prophecies of Merlin, the visions of saints, or the embroidered
+banner of the virgin of Domrémy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8g3"><a href="#endnote_8g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> [It was positively asserted that a ball had taken off a man’s shoe without hurting his foot.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> [The duke of Orleans had been a captive in England since the battle of Agincourt.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> [The family name was Darc, and the name of the Maid of Orleans was therefore, properly,
+Jeanne Darc, not Jeanne d’Arc as commonly written; but the latter has the sanction of general
+usage.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> [His aunt, the saintly Joan of Luxemburg, was also most energetic in her efforts to have
+Joan released.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> [The count of Ligny received the money before October. The duke of Burgundy handed
+Joan over to the English on the 21st of November.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> [From the door of her father’s dwelling she looked on an old oak wood. The fairies
+haunted that wood; their favourite spot was a certain spring near a great ash called the “fairies’
+tree.” The children used to hang garlands on it and sing to it. These somewhile ladies and
+mistresses of the forest could no longer, it was said, assemble at the spring; they had been
+excluded from it for their sins. The church, however, always retained a jealous fear of the old
+local divinities, and the curé used to go once every year, and read a mass at the spring, in order to
+drive them away.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_8c9"><a href="#endnote_8c">c</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> [The mother and aunt of the count of Ligny, who took a tender interest in the Maid while
+she was in his keeping.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> [The regular formula for the sentence of giving over a heretic to the secular arm.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> [In 1436 rumour spread through France that it was not La Pucelle that the English had
+burned at Rouen. In fact, a woman whose resemblance to Joan was astonishing had presented
+herself to her two brothers and was acknowledged by them. In 1438 and 1439 this “false Joan”
+headed a body of armed men and was enthusiastically received by the people of Orleans. Brought
+before the king, she admitted the imposture, was imprisoned, afterwards released and came,
+according to report, to a bad and shameful end.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-9.jpg" width="500" height="200" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX. “THE CONVALESCENCE OF FRANCE”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Confused as was the long period of the last years of Charles VII, it
+may nevertheless be thus summarily defined—the convalescence of
+France. France recovered and England fell ill.—<span class="smcap">Michelet.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b1"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The sorceress, the she-devil, was burned; the charm was doubtless broken,
+the spell removed; there was nothing now to prevent the English from conquering
+the kingdom of France. Nevertheless, before they should recover
+the power in fact they deemed it right to have the power in law on their
+side—to legitimise the young Henry VI by having him crowned. The
+coronation to which Charles VII had been led by an agent of the devil
+being, by that means itself, null and void, they wished to have for their
+little prince a coronation perfectly orthodox and irreprehensible.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1431-1432 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The ceremony took place the 17th of December, 1431; not at Rheims,
+which the English no longer held, but at Paris. An English prelate, Beaufort,
+the cardinal-bishop of Winchester, officiated, to the great discontent of
+the bishop of Paris; for assistants there were English lords, not a single
+French prince. There was no liberation of prisoners, no reduction of taxes,
+no largesse to the people. “A bourgeois marrying off his daughter,” says
+the Bourgeois de Paris,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9i1"><a href="#endnote_9i">i</a></span> “would have done better.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9c1"><a href="#endnote_9c">c</a></span> The child king was
+found to have little intelligence or grace, and the day after Christmas he
+was taken from Paris to Rouen, and thence to England.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9d"><a href="#endnote_9d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Paris was far from prosperous under foreign domination. Public officials
+were ill paid. The university was no longer recruited, except from the English
+and Burgundian provinces. It lost its pupils; it lost still more when, a
+month after his arrival, Bedford established schools of civil and canon law at
+Caen, in the midst of the English provinces. Charles responded by creating,
+in his turn, a university at Poitiers, and by according new privileges to the
+schools of Angers.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9e1"><a href="#endnote_9e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was now that period when the feeble bond that still united the duke
+of Burgundy to the English began to give way. His sister, Bedford’s wife,
+died in November, 1432. The duke of Burgundy had never had much reason
+to like the English, nor had he more to fear them. Their war in France
+was becoming ridiculous.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b2"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span></p>
+
+<p>The marshal De Boussac, as the result of a conspiracy, was almost able to
+seize Rouen. His advance guard was already in the castle when his bands
+began to quarrel over the division of the booty, and the English drove them
+off. Dunois was more successful at Chartres; he had an understanding with
+a preacher of renown. The latter announced that he would preach every day
+in a certain church; the entire English garrison assisted devoutly at the sermon
+while the French took the town. The English, from whom so important
+a place had been taken, were not even able to capture a hamlet. A certain
+French captain, John Foucauld by name, was stationed at Lagny and greatly
+harassed the neighbourhood of Paris. The duke of Bedford and the earl of
+Warwick went to besiege the place. They soon made a breach in the wall,
+but when they saw the besieged bravely awaiting them, they returned to Paris,
+where they arrived on Easter eve, “apparently to confess,” says the Bourgeois
+de Paris,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9i2"><a href="#endnote_9i">i</a></span> maliciously, in his journal. Meanwhile several soldiers of fortune
+in the service of the king of France had seized St. Valéry, Gerberoy, St. Denis,
+and other places (1432).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9c2"><a href="#endnote_9c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Parisians, delighted at this retreat of Bedford from Lagny, made
+themselves no less merry on the subject of his second marriage. At fifty
+years of age he wedded a girl of seventeen, “sprightly, fair, and gracious,”
+a daughter of the count of Saint-Pol, one of the duke of Burgundy’s vassals,
+and that abruptly and furtively without saying a word to his brother-in-law.
+The duke would not have consented to the match. The Saint-Pols, raised by
+him for the purpose of guarding his frontier, were beginning to play that
+double game which was to be their ruin; they were giving the English a
+footing in the dominions of the duke of Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>Beaufort saw more clearly that if the alliance with Burgundy were broken
+off, the war would change its aspect; that it would become far more costly,
+and that the church would infallibly have to bear the expense. A beginning
+had been made with the church of France, from which it was sought to wrest
+all the pious donations it had received for sixty years. In this state of anxiety,
+he exerted himself strongly for peace, and had it arranged that a conference
+should take place between Bedford and Philip the Good. He succeeded in
+making the two dukes advance towards each other as far as St. Omer. But
+this was all; once in the town, neither of them would take the first step.
+Though Bedford ought to have seen clearly that France was lost for the English
+if he did not bring back the duke of Burgundy to their party, he remained
+peremptory on the point of etiquette; as the king’s representative, he awaited
+the visit of the king’s vassal, who never moved. The rupture was definitive.</p>
+
+<p>France, on the contrary, was gradually becoming reunited, a result
+brought about chiefly by the efforts of the house of Anjou. The old
+queen, Yolande of Anjou, the king’s mother-in-law, brought him back the
+Bretons; and in concert with the constable Richemont, the duke of Brittany’s
+brother, she dismissed the favourite, La Trémouille.<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was more difficult to allure the duke of Burgundy, who was supporting
+the pretender Vaudemont, in Lorraine, against René of Anjou, Yolande’s son.<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>That prince, who has remained in the memory of the Angevins and Provençals
+by the name of “the good king René,” possessed all the amiable qualities
+of old chivalric France; and with them, too, its imprudence and levity. He
+suffered himself to be beaten and taken prisoner at Bulgnéville, by the Burgundians
+(July, 1431). The duke of Burgundy restored him to liberty,
+under security.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b3"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Philip the Good might well have congratulated himself on a victory which
+clipped the wings of the royalists in Lorraine, but he made no use of it, and
+now showed himself disposed for pacific measures. In September, 1431,
+at the very moment that the royalist captains were preparing to invade
+Charolais and Burgundy, he signed at Chinon a two years’ truce with Charles
+VII for his frontiers of Réthelois, Picardy, Burgundy, and Charolais.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9e2"><a href="#endnote_9e">e</a></span> The
+English had no good reason for their complaints of Philip’s loyalty in this; if
+he had concluded a separate truce for his own states, he did not treat for peace
+on their behalf or without them. The English ambassadors were called to
+take part in all negotiations; but it was very evident, at the conferences of
+Auxerre (July, 1432) and those held in the village of Simport (now Seineport)
+in March, 1433, that while peace was now almost an easy matter
+between Charles VII and Philip on account of the great concessions to
+which the king resigned himself, it was next to impossible between Charles
+VII and Henry VI.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9f"><a href="#endnote_9f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The princes were becoming friends, and there was nothing to hinder the
+people from doing likewise, if they had the will. Paris, governed by Cauchon
+and other bishops, tried to get rid of them and expel the English. Normandy,
+even, that little French England, at last grew weary of a war of which it was
+made to bear the whole burden. A vast rising took place, in 1434, among
+the rural population of Lower Normandy; the leader was a peasant named
+Quatrepieds; but there were knights also engaged in the affair, which was
+not a mere Jacquerie. The English could not fail soon to lose the province.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY OF ARRAS (1435 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1435 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>They seemed themselves to look on their prospects as desperate. Bedford
+abandoned Paris. The poor town, smitten by turns with famine and pestilence,
+was too hideous an abode. The duke of Burgundy, nevertheless, ventured
+to visit it with his wife and son, on his way to the great assembly at
+Arras, where the terms of a treaty of peace were to be arranged. The Parisians
+welcomed him, and implored his aid, as though he had been an angel
+from God. The assembly in question was one of all Christendom, including
+ambassadors from the council, the pope, the emperor, the sovereigns of Castile,
+Aragon, Navarre, Naples, Milan, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark.
+All the French princes, and all those of the Low Countries, attended in person
+or by deputy; so did the University of Paris, and a number of good towns.
+All these personages being assembled, England herself arrived, in the person
+of the cardinal-bishop of Winchester. The conferences opened August 5th,
+1435, in the chapel of St. Waast.</p>
+
+<p>The first question to be considered was the possibility of an accommodation
+between Charles VII and Henry VI. But how was it to be effected?
+Each of them claimed the crown. Charles VII offered Aquitaine, and even
+Normandy, which was still in the hands of the English. The latter required
+that each party should retain what it then had, with the exception of
+mutual exchanges for the purpose of rendering the possessions of each more
+compact.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span></p>
+
+<p>Nothing could be made of the English, and they were allowed to depart
+from Arras. Everyone turned towards the duke of Burgundy, beseeching
+him to have pity on the realm and on Christendom, which suffered so much
+from these long wars. But he could not make up his mind; his conscience
+and his knightly honour were engaged, he said; he had given his signature;
+besides, was he not bound to take vengeance for his father’s murder? The
+pope’s legates told him he might make light of such scruples, for they had
+power to release him from his oaths. But this did not yet satisfy him.
+Ecclesiastical law not seeming sufficient, recourse was had to civil law, and a
+fine case was drawn up, in which, to leave the
+minds of the jurisconsults the more free,
+the parties were designated by the names of
+Darius and Ahasuerus. The English and
+the French doctors gave such opinions as
+might have been expected of them respectively;
+but those of Bologna, whom the
+legates brought forward, declared, in conformity
+with the French lawyers, that
+Charles VI had no power to conclude the
+Treaty of Troyes.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p223.jpg" width="250" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Nobleman, First Part of Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1435-1436 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The duke of Burgundy allowed the suppliants
+to argue and implore. But, in
+reality, the desired change had already
+taken place in him; he was weary of the
+English. The Flemings, who had so often
+forced their counts to remain united with
+England, were becoming hostile to that
+nation; they suffered from the forays of
+the garrison of Calais, and were maltreated
+when they went to that great wool market.
+England was then becoming a rival and
+enemy of Flanders; had she been friendly
+to that country, her friendship would henceforth
+have availed little. The duke of Burgundy
+had gained the barrier of the Somme,
+through the English alliance, and rounded
+and completed his Burgundy; but their
+alliance could no longer guarantee him the
+possession of his new acquisitions. Divided
+as they were, it was with difficulty they
+could defend themselves. Bedford alone could maintain some sort of balance
+between Winchester and Gloucester; but he died, at Rouen in September,
+1435, and his decease was a further alleviation to the conscience of the duke
+of Burgundy. Thenceforth the treaties concluded with Bedford, as regent of
+France, appeared to him less sacred; such was the strictly literal mode of viewing
+things in the Middle Ages; he deemed himself bound during the lifetime
+of him to whom he had given his signature.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Burgundy’s two brothers-in-law, the duke de Bourbon and
+the constable De Richemont, contributed not a little to fix his wavering purposes.
+They plied him so hard that he vouchsafed at last to yield to their
+entreaties and grant mercy. The Treaty of Arras cannot be characterised
+by any other phrase. The king asked pardon of the duke for the murder of
+John the Fearless, and the duke did not pay him homage; thereby he became
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>himself king, as it were. He retained for himself and his heirs all he had
+acquired: on the one side Péronne and all the fortresses on the Somme, on
+the other Auxerre and Mâcon.</p>
+
+<p>The explanations and reparations for the death of Duke John were very
+humiliating. The king was to say, or have it said, that at that time he was
+very young, had as yet little knowledge, and had not been sufficiently
+advised to see duly into the matter, but that at present he was about to use
+all diligence in searching out the guilty parties. He was to found a chapel
+in the church at Montereau, and a convent for twelve Carthusians; and to
+erect, moreover, on the bridge where the act had been perpetrated, a stone
+cross, which was to be kept in repair at the king’s expense. The ceremony
+of forgiveness took place in the church of St. Waast. The dean of Paris,
+Jean Tudert, threw himself at the feet of Duke Philip, and cried him mercy,
+on the king’s part, for the murder of John the Fearless. The duke appeared
+moved, raised and embraced him, and told him there should never be war
+between King Charles and himself. The duke de Bourbon and the constable
+then swore a peace, as did the French and Burgundian ambassadors and
+lords.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1436-1438 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But the reconciliation would not have been complete if the duke of Burgundy
+had not concluded a definitive arrangement with the brother-in-law
+of Charles VII, René of Anjou. René, not having been able to adhere to the
+terms of the first treaty, had preferred returning to prison. Philip the Good
+released him and gave him back part of his ransom money, in consideration
+of the marriage of his niece, Mary de Bourbon, with René’s son. Thus were
+the houses of Burgundy, Bourbon, and Anjou united with each other and
+with the king. That of Brittany still vacillated; the duke did not declare
+himself; he found great profit in the war; it was said that thirty thousand
+Normans had taken refuge in Brittany. But whether the duke was English
+or French, his brother Richemont was constable of France: the Bretons
+followed him cheerfully; the Breton bands were the main force of Charles
+VII, and were called the <i>bons corps</i>.</p>
+
+<h3>THE FRENCH RETURN TO PARIS (1436-1437 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>This self-reconciliation of France drove the English distracted; their
+wrath blinded them, and they plunged as it were wilfully into their ill fortune.
+The duke of Burgundy wished to keep some terms with them, and
+offered them his mediation; but they rejected it, and plundered and killed the
+Flemish merchants in London. Flanders becoming incensed in its turn,
+the duke seized the opportunity to lead the communes to the siege of Calais.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b4"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span>
+For this he collected a large army in 1436, the Flemings, especially the
+Ghenters, answering his call to the number of forty thousand, and promising
+not merely to second his enterprise, but to accomplish it themselves. They
+found the task, however, so much beyond their power, that they grew disheartened,
+accused the Burgundians of betraying them, and marched off
+leaving the duke to extricate himself with his other forces as best he could.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9g1"><a href="#endnote_9g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Burgundian party turned round like the duke; those of Paris, of the
+<i>halles</i> even, the Burgundian quarter <i>par excellence</i>, called in the king’s forces
+and his constable, and installed them in the town. The English, who had
+still fifteen hundred men-at-arms there, and at first made a show of resisting,
+shut themselves pitiably in the Bastille, and then, apprehensive of famine,
+obtained leave to embark and descend the river to Rouen. The people, who
+had been harshly governed by three bishops on behalf of the English, pursued
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>them with hootings, and shouted, “Fox! fox!” after the bishop of Thérouanne,
+the chancellor of the English. The Parisians were loath to let them
+off so cheaply, for they calculated that the ransom of so many rich nobles
+would bring in at least 200,000 livres; but it would have been necessary to
+besiege the Bastille, and the constable himself was at his shifts, money failing
+him. The king had only 1,000 livres to give him for the purpose of retaking
+Paris (1436).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b5"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At length, in November, 1437, Charles made his solemn entrance into his
+capital, from which he had been an exile nearly twenty years. The constable
+rode on the monarch’s right hand, the count de Vendôme on his left, and
+the royal cavalcade was met at the Porte St. Denis by “the seven virtues
+and the seven mortal sins, well clad, mounted upon various beasts.”
+Charles had previously reunited the parliament of Poitiers to that of Paris,
+and the new judges and councillors returned to take their seats, and thus
+restore Paris to the rank of judicial capital of the <i>languedoïl</i>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9g2"><a href="#endnote_9g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION (1438 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>In that vast and multitudinous wretchedness, amid so many ruins, two
+things were still standing—the nobility and the church. The nobility had
+served the king against the English, gratuitously served a beggared king;
+it had consumed much of its own wealth, at the same time that it devoured
+the people’s substance, and it looked for compensation. The church, on its
+part, represented itself as very poor and afflicted; but there was this notable
+difference, that its poverty consisted in the suspension of its revenues—in
+general the capital remained. The king, indebted to the nobility, could
+discharge his obligations only at the church’s expense, either by forcing it to
+pay for him, which seemed difficult and dangerous, or rather by gently and
+indirectly, for the sake ostensibly of the ecclesiastical liberties, re-establishing
+the elections in which the lords had the paramount influence, and thus
+enabling them to dispose of benefices. These were often bestowed by the
+pope on the partisans of England; Charles VII had no inducement to respect
+his claims. He adopted in his <i>pragmatique</i> of Bourges (July 7th, 1438) the
+decrees of the council of Bâle, which re-established elections, and recognised
+the rights of the noble patrons of churches to present to benefices. These
+patrons, descendants of the pious founders or protectors, regarded the
+churches as portions severed from their fiefs, and desired nothing better than
+to protect them still, that is to say, to put their own men into them, by
+causing them to be elected by the monks or canons.</p>
+
+<p>What delighted France in its then extreme poverty was that the <i>pragmatique</i>
+would stop the outgoing of money from the kingdom. The absence
+of gold was acutely felt. Under Charles VII it was really necessary as an
+instrument of war and a means of rapid action. The bankers were turning
+their speculations in that direction; previously occupied with the exchange
+of Rome and the transmission of the ecclesiastic tithes, they were about to
+draw on the English that bill of exchange which was paid with Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>One thing, however, was to be feared, namely, that a church so completely
+closed against papal influence might become not national but purely seigniorial.
+It was not the king or the state that would inherit what the pope lost,
+but the lords and the nobles. At a period when organisation was still so
+feeble, it was not very practicable to act with effect from a distance; now at
+every election the lord was on the spot to present or recommend, and the
+chapters obsequiously elected his nominee; the king was very far away.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>It was a question whether the nobility were worthy of being intrusted with
+the chief active part in the affairs of the church—whether the lords on whom
+really devolved the choice of pastors and the responsibility for the salvation
+of souls were themselves the pure souls whom the Holy Spirit would enlighten
+in so delicate a matter.</p>
+
+<h3>THE ATROCIOUS CRIMES OF THE BARONS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1435-1440 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In his fief the baron of the twelfth century, haughty and stern as he
+might be, had yet a rule of conduct which, though unwritten, seemed but
+the more inviolable. This rule was “usage,” custom. In his most violent
+proceedings he saw himself accosted by his men, who said respectfully to
+him: “Messire, it is not the ‘usage’ of the good people here.” The fear of
+God and respect for usage, those two bridles of the feudal times, were broken
+in the fifteenth century. The lord was no longer a resident on his estate,
+and knew neither his people nor their customs. If he returns, it is with
+soldiers to raise money abruptly; he falls on the country occasionally like
+storm and hail, everyone hides at his approach, and the whole district is
+seized with a panic.</p>
+
+<p>This lord, though bearing his father’s seigniorial name, was not the more
+a lord for all that; he was commonly a rough captain, a barbarian, scarcely a
+Christian. Often he was a leader of <i>houspilleurs</i>, <i>tondeurs</i>, or <i>écorcheurs</i>, like
+the bastard de Bourbon, the bastard of Vaurus, a Chabannes, or a La Hire.
+<i>Écorcheurs</i> (flayers) was their right name: ruining the ruined, taking away
+the shirt from him who had been left with nothing but a shirt to cover him;
+and if nothing remained but the skin, then stripping off the skin.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a mistake to suppose that it was only the captains of the
+<i>écorcheurs</i>, the bastards, the lords without lordship, that were so ferocious.
+The grandees and the princes had acquired a strange appetite for blood in
+these hideous wars. What shall we say when we see John of Ligny, of the
+house of Luxemburg, exercising his nephew, the count of Saint-Pol, a boy of
+fifteen, in massacring fugitives?</p>
+
+<p>They treated their relations just as they did their enemies; in fact, as
+regarded safety, the enemy was better off than the relation. It would seem
+as though there were no fathers, no brothers in those days. The count
+d’Harcourt keeps his father a prisoner all his life; the countess de Foix poisons
+her sister, the sire de Giac his wife; the duke of Brittany starves
+his brother to death, and that publicly—the horror-stricken passer-by heard
+his piteous voice imploring a morsel of bread for charity. One evening, on
+the 10th of January, Count Adolphus of Gelderland drags his old father out
+of bed, marches him five leagues on foot through the snow without hose, and
+throws him into a subterraneous dungeon (1440). The son, indeed, might
+have said in his own behalf that parricide was matter of usage in the family.
+But we find it likewise in most of the great houses of the time, in all those
+of the Low Countries, in those of Bar, Verdun, Armagnac, etc.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Gilles de Retz</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1426-1440 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>People were well inured to these things, but one such that came to light
+stupefied all men with wonder and horror. The duke of Brittany being at
+Nantes, the bishop, who was his cousin and his chancellor, was emboldened
+by his presence to proceed against a great lord of the neighbourhood, regarded
+with singular awe, a Retz of the house of Laval, which was itself a branch
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>of the Montforts, of the lineage of the dukes of Brittany. Such was the
+terror inspired by that name that it had silenced every tongue for fourteen
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The accusation was a strange one. An old woman called La Meffraie
+used to travel about the country and the heaths, and make up to the children
+who kept cattle or begged. Caressing and cajoling them, but all the while
+keeping her face half covered with a piece of black gauze, she used to entice
+them to the château of the sire de Retz, and they were never seen again.
+This Gilles de Retz was a very great lord, rich both in patrimony and by his
+marriage into the house of Thouars, besides which he had inherited the
+wealth of his maternal grandfather, John de Craon, lord of La Suze, Chantocé,
+and Ingrande.</p>
+
+<p>There was found in the tower of Chantocé a tunful of calcined children’s
+bones, the remains, it was calculated, of some forty victims. Similar discoveries
+were made in the château de la Suze, and in every other place where
+he had made his abode. Murder accompanied him wherever he went. The
+number of children slaughtered by this beast of extermination is estimated
+at 140. How slaughtered, and why? In the answer to this question lay
+something more horrible than death itself. They were offerings to the devil.
+He invoked the fiends Barron, Orient, Beelzebub, Satan, and Belial, praying
+them to grant him “gold, knowledge, and power.”<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>He was condemned to the flames and placed at the stake, but not burned.
+Out of deference for his powerful family and the nobility in general, he was
+strangled before the flames reached him. The body was not reduced to ashes.
+“Damsels of high condition,” says Jean Chartier,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9h1"><a href="#endnote_9h">h</a></span> went to the meadows of
+Nantes, where the execution had taken place, raised the body with their
+noble hands, and, with the aid of some nuns, gave it very honourable burial
+in the Carmelite church (1440).</p>
+
+<p>Barbarism had returned, only without what was good in it, simplicity and
+faith. Feudalism had come back, but without its traits of devotedness and
+fidelity, and its chivalry. These ghosts of buried feudalism appeared like
+damned souls bringing unknown crimes to earth from their infernal abode.
+It mattered not that the English withdrew; France still continued the work
+of self-extermination. The provinces of the north were becoming a desert;
+the waste heaths were spreading. In the centre, Beauce was becoming overrun
+with briers and thickets; two armies sought and could hardly find each
+other there. The towns in which the whole population of the rural districts
+sought refuge, absorbed that miserable multitude, and yet remained not the
+less desolate. A vast number of houses were empty, says the Bourgeois de
+Paris,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9i3"><a href="#endnote_9i">i</a></span> and many a door was closed to open no more. The poor took from
+those houses whatever they could for firing. Paris was burning Paris. We
+may judge of the other towns from this one, the most populous of all, the
+town in which the government had held its seat, and where resided those
+great corporations, the university and the parliament. Famine and wretchedness
+had made it a focus of disgusting contagious maladies, the nature of
+which was not very accurately discriminated, but which were called at random
+the plague. Charles VII had a glimpse of that hideous thing which
+was still called Paris, was struck with horror, and hurried away. The
+English did not try to return thither. The two parties withdrew as if by a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>common understanding. The wolves alone were voluntary visitors, entering
+at evening in search of carrion; for as they no longer found food in the
+fields, they were rabid with hunger, and attacked men. The contemporary
+historian, who no doubt exaggerates, alleges that in September, 1438, they
+devoured fourteen persons between Montmartre and the Porte St. Antoine.</p>
+
+<p>These terrible miseries are expressed, very feebly indeed, in the <i>Complaint
+of the poor Commonalty and the poor Labourers</i>. It is a medley of
+lamentations and threats; the starving wretches warn the church, the king,
+the burghers and merchants, and, above all, the lords, that “the fire is very
+near their hôtels.” They call the king to their aid. But what could
+Charles VII do—that king of Bourges, that weak and mean-looking personage,<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>
+how could they expect him to impose respect and obedience on so
+many audacious men? With what forces was he to put down the <i>écorcheurs</i>
+of the rural districts, and the terrible petty kings of châteaux? They were
+his own captains;<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> it was with them and through them he was waging war
+against the English.</p>
+
+<h3>CHARLES BEGINS THE WORK OF REFORM (1439 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>On the 2nd of November, 1439, Charles VII ordained in the states of
+Orleans, and at their request: that henceforth the king alone shall nominate
+the captains; that the lords, as well as the royal captains, shall be responsible
+for the acts of their men; and that both alike must answer before the
+king’s functionaries, that is to say, that henceforth war shall be subjected to
+the control of justice. The barons shall no longer take anything beyond
+their seigniorial rights, under pretext of war. War becomes the king’s
+affair, and he undertakes, in consideration of 1,200,000 livres a year granted
+him by the states, to maintain fifteen hundred lances with six men to each.
+By and by we shall see him back this cavalry with a newly created infantry
+of the communes. Contraveners shall obtain no grace; should the king
+pardon, his servants should take no heed thereof. The ordinance subjoined
+a more direct and more efficacious threat: the spoils of the contraveners
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>shall belong to whoever shall take them. This was a tremendous clause;
+it armed the peasant, and sounded, as it were, the tocsin in the village.</p>
+
+<p>What partially explains the boldness of the measure is that the self-styled
+royal captains, the pillagers and <i>écorcheurs</i>, had recently damaged
+their own strength. They had attempted an expedition to Bâle with the hopes
+of extorting ransom-money from the council, but instead of this they were
+themselves very roughly handled on their march by the peasants of Alsace;
+and then, seeing the Swiss ready to receive them, they returned with their
+tails between their legs. The king, who had taken Montereau, valiantly
+leading the assault in person (1437), took Meaux with his artillery (1439);
+then feeling himself in strength, he listened to the complaints made against
+the soldiery, and lent a gracious ear to the lamentations of his good subjects.
+Acts of justice were done with rapid despatch; the constable De Richemont,
+willingly exchanging his functions for those of provost-martial, hanged and
+drowned all along his route. His brother, the duke of Brittany, did not
+delay to strike that great blow, the sentencing and burning of Marshal
+de Retz. This first instance of justice done upon a lord was effected only
+in God’s name, and with the aid of the church; but it was, nevertheless, a
+warning to the nobility that their impunity was at an end.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b6"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The most important effect of the memorable meeting of the states-general
+of 1439 was to render further meetings of that body unnecessary. In effect,
+the king was given the exclusive right to raise troops and to levy taxes.
+This virtually amounted to the creation of a permanent army, and, by implications,
+to the imposition of a perpetual tax. So at least the king interpreted
+it. From then on the king, having no need of the authorisation of the
+estates for the imposition of taxes, took good pains to dispense with its
+services. In point of fact it assembled but once more during the remaining
+period of his reign.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9p1"><a href="#endnote_9p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Who were the intrepid advisers that urged the king upon this course
+of proceeding? Who were the servants that could have prompted him to
+these reforms, and procured for him the name given by contemporaries:
+Charles “the well served”?</p>
+
+<p>Along with the princes in the council of Charles VII, the count of
+Maine, the cadet of Brittany, and the bastard of Orleans, there were also
+petty nobles, the brave Saintrailles, and those wise and politic men, the
+Brézés, nobles, but men who were nothing without the king. We find in it
+two burghers, Jacques Cœur, the money-changer, and the master of the
+artillery, Jean Bureau, both very humble <i>roturier</i> names. Bureau was a
+man of the robe, a master of the accounts. He threw down his pen, and by
+this remarkable transformation exemplified the truth that an able mind can
+apply itself to anything. Henry IV reformed the finances through a man of
+the sword; Charles VII waged war through a financier. Bureau was the
+first who made an able and scientific use of artillery.</p>
+
+<p>War needs money, and Jacques Cœur contrived to supply it. Whence
+came he? We are sorry to know so little of his early career. All we know
+is that in 1432 we find him engaged in commerce in Beirut in Syria;
+sometime afterwards we see him at Bourges in the capacity of money-changer
+to the king. This great trader had always one foot in the East,
+and one in France. Here, he made his son archbishop of Bourges; yonder,
+he married his nieces or other female relations to the masters of his galleys.
+On the one hand he was continuing his Egyptian traffic; on the other
+he was speculating on the maintenance of armies and the conquest of
+Normandy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span></p>
+
+<p>Such were the able and humbly-born councillors of Charles VII. If it be
+asked who brought them about him, and what was the influence that made
+him yield to their advice, it will be found, if we are not mistaken, that it was
+a woman, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Anjou. We see her in possession
+of power from the beginning of this reign; it was she who caused the Maid
+to be received with favour; and it was with her on one occasion that the
+duke of Alençon arranged the preparations for a campaign. This influence,
+balanced by that of the favourite, seems to have been without a rival from
+the moment the old queen had given her son-in-law a mistress whom he
+loved for twenty years (1431-1450). This was Agnes Sorel.</p>
+
+<h3>AGNES SOREL; THE <i>PRAGUERIE</i> (1440 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1440 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Agnes la Sorelle or Surelle—she assumed for arms a gold <i>sureau</i> (elder
+tree)—was the daughter of a gownsman, Jean Soreau, but she was noble
+by the mother’s side. She was born in honest Touraine. The <i>naïveté</i> of
+Agnes was early transplanted into a land of craft and policy, Lorraine.
+She was brought up with Isabella of Lorraine, with whom René of Anjou
+espoused that duchy. Isabella, the wife of a prisoner, waited on the king
+to beseech his aid, bringing her children with her and also her good friend
+from childhood, the demoiselle Agnes. The king’s mother-in-law, Yolande
+of Anjou, who stood also in the same relation to Isabella, was, like her, a
+woman of masculine mind; and they both agreed to attach Charles VII
+forever to the interests of the house of Anjou-Lorraine. The gentle creature
+was given him for his mistress, to the great satisfaction of the queen,
+who wished at any cost to remove La Trémouille and the other favourites.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone knows the little story how Agnes said one day to the king that,
+when very young, she had been informed by an astrologer that she was to be
+loved by one of the most valiant kings in the world: she had thought that
+this was Charles, but she now saw clearly it was the king of England, who
+took so many fine towns from him in defiance of his beard; therefore to the
+king of England she would go. Stung by these words, the king burst into
+tears, “and quitting his hunting and his gardens, he took the bit in his
+teeth,” and to such purpose, that he drove the English out of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>The pretty verses by Francis I<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> prove that this tradition was of earlier
+date than Brantôme.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9l1"><a href="#endnote_9l">l</a></span> Be this as it may, we have an equivalent testimony
+in favour of Agnes from a hostile pen, that of the nearly contemporary
+Burgundian chronicler, Olivier de la Marche.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9m"><a href="#endnote_9m">m</a></span> “Certest Agnes was one of
+the most beautiful women I ever saw, and did in her quality much good to
+the realm.” And again: “She took pleasure in bringing under the king’s
+notice young soldiers and gentle companions, by whom the king was afterwards
+well served.”</p>
+
+<p>Charles VII thought wisdom charming when preached by such lips; old
+Yolande in all probability spoke through Agnes, and no doubt she had the
+principal part in all that was done. More politic than scrupulous, she had
+welcomed with equal readiness the two girls that came to her so <i>à propos</i>
+from Lorraine, Joan of Arc and Agnes, the saint and the mistress, who
+both in their several ways were of service to the king and the realm.</p>
+
+<p>This council of women, <i>parvenus</i>, and <i>roturiers</i>, it must be confessed, did
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>not command much reverence, or greatly tend to set off to advantage the
+unroyal figure of Charles VII. To sit as judge of the realm on the throne
+of St. Louis, and be like him the guardian of God’s Peace, he ought apparently
+to have surrounded himself with people of a different sort. The league
+of the three ladies, the dowager queen, the queen, and the mistress, was not
+edifying in anybody’s eyes. What was Richemont? An executioner.
+Jacques Cœur? A trader in Saracen lands. A Jean Bureau, a limb of the
+law, “an inkhorn,” had made himself a captain, was riding all over the kingdom
+with his cannon, and not a fortress could stand before him; was not
+that a shame for the men of the sword? The foxes had become lions.
+Thenceforth the knights were to account to the knights at law—the most
+noble lords and the high justiciars were to tremble before the underlings of
+justice!</p>
+
+<p>So much was this the tone of feeling prevalent among the nobles, not
+excepting those who were most immediately in contact with Charles VII,
+that even Dunois quitted the council after the famous ordinance. “The
+cool and tempered lord,” as Chartier<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9h2"><a href="#endnote_9h">h</a></span> calls him, repented of having served
+his king too well. This bastard of Orleans had begun his fortunes by defending
+the town of Orleans, his brother’s appanage, in which service he
+had very adroitly employed the heroic simplicity of the Maid. After having
+grown great through the king, he wished to grow great against the king.
+The misfortune was that his brother the duke was still in England; but the
+ancient enemy of the house of Orleans, the duke of Burgundy (converted no
+doubt by Dunois), was labouring to get that future chief of the malcontents
+out of the hands of the English.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Alençon threw himself headlong into the affair; the Bourbons
+and the Vendômes lent their hands to it. The ex-favourite, La Trémouille,
+whom Richemont had removed, readily engaged in it. The most
+eager of all were the leaders of the <i>écorcheurs</i>, the bastard de Bourbon,
+Chabannes, and Le Sanglier (“the wild boar”). In truth, the matter was
+one that most nearly concerned them; the lords had their honours and jurisdictional
+prerogatives to contend for; but as for them, they had their necks
+to save; the gallows stared them in the face.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was now wanting but a leader. As the duke of Orleans could
+not be had, the malcontents took the dauphin, a mere child in point of age,
+but it was thought that a name would be sufficient. The supposed child,
+who was already Louis XI, had made his first efforts in arms, as he made his
+last, against the very party of the lords that chose him for their chief. At
+fourteen years of age he had been commissioned to pacify the marches of
+Brittany and Poitou. His first capture had been that of one of Marshal de
+Retz’s lieutenants; such a commencement did not promise the grandees a
+very trusty friend. Friend or not, he accepted their offers. This dauphin
+of France resembled Charles VII in no respect, but took rather after his
+grandmother, who was sprung from the houses of Bar and Aragon.</p>
+
+<p>The king was keeping his Easter at Poitiers, and was at dinner, when
+word was brought him that St. Maixent had been seized by the duke of Alençon
+and the sire de la Roche; whereupon Richemont said to him in Breton
+fashion, “Remember King Richard II, who shut himself up in a fortress and
+got taken.” The king thought the hint a good one, mounted his horse, and
+galloped with four hundred lances to St. Maixent. The burghers had been
+fighting four-and-twenty hours for their king, when he came to their relief.
+De la Roche’s men were decapitated or drowned, according to Richemont’s
+custom, but Alençon’s were let go. The small fortresses of Poitou did
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>not hold out; Richemont carried them one by one. Dunois then began to
+reflect, and he calculated too that the first who should leave the rest would
+be allowed good terms. He came, was well received, and congratulated
+himself on the course he had adopted, when he saw the king stronger than
+he had supposed, with 4,800 cavaliers, and 2,000 archers at his back, without
+having been obliged to weaken the garrisons in the marches of Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>More than one of Dunois’ party thought as he did. Many an <i>écorcheur</i>
+of the south took the king’s pay, and fought against the <i>écorcheurs</i> of the
+north. Charles VII drove back the duke de Bourbon upon the Bourbonnais,
+securing the good will of the towns and châteaux by prohibiting all pillage.
+He assembled the states of Auvergne, and got them to declare loudly that
+the rebels were hostile to the king, only because he protected the poorer
+classes against the plunderers. The princes, abandoned by their followers, and
+obtaining no support from the duke of Burgundy, came in and made their
+submission; first Alençon, then the duke de Bourbon and the dauphin. As for
+La Trémouille and two others, the king would not receive them. The dauphin
+hesitated about accepting a pardon which was not
+extended to his friends, and said to the king, “I
+find then, my liege, that I must go back to them,
+for I have promised so.” The king replied coldly,
+“The gates are open for you, Louis, and if they
+are not wide enough, I will have sixteen or twenty
+fathoms of the wall pulled down for you.”</p>
+
+<p>This war, so well conducted, was not less
+wisely terminated. The duke de Bourbon was
+deprived of his possessions in central France
+(Corbeil, Vincennes, etc.) and the dauphin was
+dismissed from court, and assigned an establishment
+on the frontier, in Dauphiné. Thus he was
+isolated, and allotted his separate portion; there
+was no getting rid of him, except by giving him
+a little royalty, in advance of his hereditary expectations.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p232.jpg" width="200" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Nobleman, Middle of Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This <i>praguerie</i> of France (it was so called
+after the name of the great Bohemian <i>praguerie</i>),
+although it was so quickly ended, nevertheless
+produced some disastrous results. The military
+reform was postponed. The English were emboldened
+to attack Harfleur, which they took and
+retained. They released the duke of Orleans at
+the request of the duke of Burgundy (1440).
+When the ancient enemy of his house thus exerted
+himself to take him out of captivity, the
+king could not decently refuse likewise to guarantee
+the ransom-money, and aid in the deliverance
+of the dangerous prisoner. He proceeded straight on his return to the
+duke of Burgundy, who threw the chain of the Golden Fleece<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> over his
+neck, and gave him his niece in marriage. Against whom was formed this
+close union of two enemies, if not against the king? He took the hint.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1440-1442 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>First of all, he obtained from the states a tenth to be levied on all the
+clergy of the realm. He recalled Tannegui du Châtel, the mortal enemy
+of the house of Burgundy. Then concentrating all his forces towards the
+north, he proceeded along the frontier, doing justice upon the Burgundian,
+Lorrainian, and other captains, who were desolating the land. Among
+those who made their submission, there was a man of turbulence, the most
+audacious of plunderers; audacious both from the strength his birth gave
+him, and because he was the common agent of the duke de Bourbon and
+the duke of Burgundy; this was the bastard de Bourbon. He did not get
+off so cheaply as he had expected. The king handed him over, Bourbon as
+he was, to the provost, who put him on his trial just like any other robber;
+and after being well and duly found guilty, he was put in a sack, and
+thrown into the river.</p>
+
+<p>Another lesson, not less instructive, was given. The young count of
+Saint-Pol, relying on the protection of the duke of Burgundy, dared to
+intercept some of the king’s cannon on the march, and carry them off; the
+king deprived him of two of his best fortresses; Saint-Pol hastened to the king
+and besought pardon, but he could obtain no favour, except by submitting
+to the decision of the parliament on the litigated question of the Ligny
+inheritance.</p>
+
+<h3>EFFECTIVE PROGRESS AGAINST ENGLAND (1441-1444 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the English, all this time so near Paris, and so strongly established
+on the lower Seine, had advanced up the river and seized Pontoise.
+Lord Clifford, who had surprised that important and formidable post, kept
+possession of it in person. The inveterate obstinacy of the Cliffords
+acquired but too much notoriety in the wars of the Roses. Besides the
+English, there were in Pontoise numerous deserters, who knew they had no
+quarter to expect.</p>
+
+<p>Invincible pertinacity of purpose was displayed on both sides. The
+duke of York, regent of France, now came to the aid of Clifford, whom he
+was afterwards to put to death in the civil wars. He brought with him an
+army from Normandy, revictualled the place, and offered battle (June);
+Talbot was with him. The king let the English pass, fell back, and returned.
+Talbot also returned, and again threw provisions into the town (July). The
+duke of York once more marched his army back, but could not yet bring
+on an engagement. He was allowed to roam over the ruined Île-de-France
+as much as he pleased, and waste his strength in those useless evolutions.
+When they had exhausted and harassed themselves, in four times revictualling
+Pontoise, Charles VII seriously resumed the siege; Jean Bureau battered
+the walls with admirable activity; two murderous assaults were made,
+that lasted five hours; first a church, that served as a redoubt, was carried,
+and then the place itself (September 16th, 1441). Thus men, who dared not
+meet the English in the plain, attacked and defeated them by storm.</p>
+
+<p>The recapture of Pontoise was a deliverance for Paris, and for the whole
+country around; cultivation could thenceforth recommence, the means of
+subsistence were secured. Yet the Parisians evinced no gratitude to the
+king; they felt but their present miseries and the burden of the taxes; these
+were beginning to affect the brotherhoods even, and the churches, which
+were loud in their complaints. There was no want of willingness on the
+part of the princes to take advantage of these discontents. The duke of
+Burgundy, without himself appearing, assembled them in his own home at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>Nevers (March, 1442). The duke of Orleans, with whom he did as he
+pleased, since he had delivered him, presided for him over the meeting, which
+consisted of the dukes de Bourbon and d’Alençon, the counts d’Angoulême,
+d’Étampes, and de Dunois. The king frankly sent his chancellor to this conclave
+which was held against him, and notified to them that he would readily
+hear what they had to say.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1442-1443 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Their demand and alleged grievances very plainly showed what were
+their secret views. The princes, therefore, in their love for the public welfare,
+and for the good people of France, set forth before the king the necessity
+of making peace. They called for the repression of the brigands.</p>
+
+<p>The king’s reply, which was sedulously made public, was overwhelming,
+and the more so as its tone was calm and moderate. He answers specially,
+respecting the taxes, that the aids had been consented to by the lords on
+whose property they had been levied; that as to the tallages, the king had
+“notified” them to the three estates, although in matters so urgent, when the
+enemy was in occupation of one portion of the kingdom, and was destroying
+the rest, he had a good right to levy tallages of his royal authority. “It is
+not necessary to that end,” he says, “to assemble the estates; it is but a
+burden for the poor people who have to pay the charges of those who attend.
+Many notable persons have requested that these convocations should cease.”</p>
+
+<p>The king, leaving the malcontents to waste time in their meeting at
+Nevers, was then performing a grand and useful journey all through his
+kingdom, from Picardy to Gascony, everywhere establishing peace, especially
+in the marches, in Poitou, Saintonge, and the Limousin. Strengthened
+in the north by the recovery of Pontoise, he went to make head against
+the English in the south. The count d’Albret, being hard pressed by them,
+had promised to surrender if the king did not come on the 23rd of June to
+“keep his day,” and await them on the <i>lande</i> of Tartas. They liked the condition,
+not believing that he could arrive in time, much less that he would
+offer them battle. On the appointed day they saw the king of France and
+his army on the <i>lande</i> (June 21st, 1442). All these Gascons, who had imagined
+themselves far beyond the king’s reach in a world of their own, were
+beginning to feel that he was everywhere. They came and did homage,
+performed feudal service, and the king rendered justice to them.</p>
+
+<p>He did this conspicuously in an important case the following year
+(March, 1443). The estates of Comminges supplicated Charles VII on
+behalf of the aged countess de Foix who had been imprisoned by her husband.
+He frightened the count de Foix, liberated the old countess, divided
+the usufruct of Comminges between the husband and wife, and adjudged the
+property to himself. This startling act of justice struck great awe into all
+those lords who had hitherto been so independent.</p>
+
+<p>This was not all. In order to remain always among them as judge, the
+king gave them a royal parliament, which was to reside in Toulouse. This
+judicial royalty of the south was altogether free of the parliament of Paris;
+it judged in accordance with the law of the country, the written law, and
+was not dependent on anyone, but was self-elected. Until such time as
+this great body could establish order and justice in Languedoc, Charles VII
+authorised the poor to take justice into their own hands, and hunt down the
+brigands and vagrant soldiers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/fp3.jpg" width="650" height="460" alt="">
+<p class="caption">LOUIS XI AND CHARLES THE BOLD AT PÉRONNE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>He could not remain long absent from the north. Dieppe, which had
+been recovered by a fortunate and bold stroke, was in danger of being lost
+again. A great fleet and an army were every moment expected from England;
+it was urgently necessary to anticipate their arrival. The dauphin
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>got permission to undertake this service along with Dunois; many Picard
+and Norman gentlemen also volunteered. The Bastille was taken. The
+duke of Somerset, the English commander, returned to Rouen to rest from
+his toils and take up his winter quarters.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p235.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costume of a Noblewoman, Middle of Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1443-1444 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>That winter, whilst Somerset was enjoying his victorious repose, the
+dauphin Louis was rapidly traversing the whole kingdom, to ruin and destroy
+the best friend of the English. The
+count d’Armagnac, dissatisfied by
+the way in which Comminges had
+been disposed of without giving him
+a share, had attempted to seize the
+whole country. He reckoned on
+the English, and particularly on the
+duke of Gloucester, who in fact
+wanted to marry Henry VI to a
+daughter of the count. The dauphin
+set out in winter, made his way over
+snows and swollen rivers, and found
+the game in its lair, everything that
+bore the name of Armagnac shut up
+in one place. Gloucester and the war
+party, though they had encouraged
+Armagnac, were unable to defend
+him. They had enough to do to defend
+themselves in England against
+the bishops, and the partisans of
+peace, Winchester and Suffolk, who
+had gained the upper hand.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b7"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span> Painful
+as it was to their pride they were
+obliged at conferences held at Arras,
+in 1444, to beg for a truce and the
+hand of a French princess, Margaret
+of Anjou, for their young king Henry
+VI, placing also a new enemy at their gates through the marriage of the
+dauphin Louis with Margaret of Scotland, daughter of James I.</p>
+
+<h3>EXPEDITION TO SWITZERLAND AND LORRAINE</h3>
+
+<p>Charles VII only granted that truce in order the better to complete
+the work of reform begun in 1439.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9c3"><a href="#endnote_9c">c</a></span> But there was a third people very
+embarrassing during the truce, the war-folk namely. What could be done
+was to induce them to go and rob elsewhere, to quit ruined France for thriving
+Germany, and make a pilgrimage to the council of Bâle, to the rich and
+saintly towns of the Rhine, and the fat ecclesiastical principalities.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1444-1445 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Just then the king received two applications for aid, the one from the
+emperor Frederick III against the Swiss, the other from René, duke of Lorraine,
+against the cities of the empire. The king was equally favourable
+to both proposals, and generously promised aid for and against the
+Germans.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b8"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Switzerland had founded and consolidated its independence of Austria
+and the empire in three battles—Morgarten, Sempach, and Näfels—in which
+a handful of peasants had heroically vanquished great feudal armies. The
+French nobility was always ready for positive warfare, but that of Germany
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>showed itself more circumspect and the Austrian provinces were reduced to
+setting, by means of wretched intrigue, the Swiss cantons one against the
+other, and then if possible to intervene. This time Frederick III reckoned
+to make the Armagnacs of Charles VII intervene for him.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Sankt Jakob (1444 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Charles hastened to set in motion, in as orderly a fashion as possible,
+an army of 14,000 French and 8,000 English, Scotch, Brabanters, Spaniards,
+and Italians. The commander-in-chief was the former leader of the
+praguerie—the dauphin Louis. This terrible band turned the Jura in
+fairly good order, and entered Switzerland by crossing the little river
+Birse. The Swiss, who were then besieging Zurich, were able to send
+only 2,000 men to meet the enemy. These brave fellows had expected only
+to skirmish and knew not with what force they had to deal. A messenger
+had come from Bâle to warn them of the numbers of the French, but
+they had killed him; and in the brutal pride their former successes had
+inspired, they threw themselves head-foremost on the first corps they met
+(1444). Their bravoura did not save them. After making a desperate
+resistance in a hospital and behind the dilapidated walls of a garden, their
+position was forced and they perished, every one. The dauphin had such
+respect for the brave men that fought so well that he went no further and
+made a treaty of alliance with the Swiss. As for the <i>écorcheurs</i>, they found
+nothing to take away from these poor mountaineers and many turned towards
+Alsace and Swabia.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9c4"><a href="#endnote_9c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dauphin’s return, and the report of the check the Swiss had suffered,
+considerably advanced the affairs of Lorraine. The towns which sheltered
+themselves under the name of the empire saw that, if the emperor and the
+German nobility had called in the French to the heart of the German countries,
+to save Zurich, they would not come and fight the French on the marches of
+France. Toul and Verdun acknowledged the king as protector.</p>
+
+<p>Metz alone resisted. That great and aspiring town had others dependent
+on it, and was encompassed by from twenty-four to thirty forts. Épinal, however,
+had from the beginning seized the opportunity to emancipate itself, and
+had put itself into the king’s hands. The forts having afterwards surrendered,
+the Metz men made up their mind to negotiate. They represented to the
+king that “they were not of his realm or lordship, but that, in his wars with
+the duke of Burgundy and others, they had always received and comforted
+his men.” Thereupon, by order of the king, Master Jean Rabateau, president
+of the parliament, propounded many arguments to the contrary. The
+grand question of the limits of France and the empire could not be settled
+thus incidentally, and during a truce to the English war. The matter
+remained undecided. The king contented himself with drawing on the
+finances of the wealthy town of Metz.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9b9"><a href="#endnote_9b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>MILITARY AND FINANCIAL REFORMS (1443-1448 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1443-1448 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>These two expeditions had disembarrassed the king of the most riotous
+among his adventurers, and broken in the rest to an elementary discipline;
+it was at last possible to put into execution the ordinance of Orleans. In
+1445, the army was consolidated into fifteen companies of one hundred
+lances; to each lance six paid men were reckoned—a man-at-arms and his
+esquire, three archers and a <i>coutillier</i>, all mounted. By these were the cities
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>garrisoned, the largest having only from twenty to thirty lances; in this
+way the inhabitants remained stronger than the soldiers, and in a position to
+check any disorder. The demand for positions in the army was so great that
+numerous old stagers followed the companies about that they might be ready
+to snap up the first vacancy. All the others were obliged to retire immediately
+to their homes without disturbing the peace, under penalty of being given
+up to justice as vagabonds. Such was the progress of order that they obeyed
+and at the end of the fifteen days nothing more was heard of them; as for
+those who had enlisted, they submitted to a rigorous discipline. Charles VII
+had thus at his disposition a picked troop of nine thousand horse.</p>
+
+<p>By another ordinance, that of April 28th, 1448, the king secured to France
+an advantage which she had hitherto furnished to foreigners—to the Genoese,
+at need—but had never herself possessed: a regular and permanent
+infantry. Each of the sixteen thousand parishes of the kingdom was obliged
+to furnish the king “a good comrade,” said the ordinance, “who has seen
+service.” He had to furnish at his own expense his <i>brigandine</i>, a light coat
+of armour of iron plates joined together; a short coat, light helmet, dagger,
+sword, crossbow, and quiver of arrows. He was obliged to drill on all feast
+days, and be ready to serve the king at any time he should be called upon to
+do so; he received in payment four francs a month when in service and
+exemption from all taxes and subsidies, excepting the <i>aide</i> and the <i>gabelle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The free archer did not become at once a model soldier; military genius
+was not developed in a day in a nation so long without arms. But while Villon
+depicts for us one of those archers dropping on his knees before a scarecrow,
+taking it for a gendarme, entreating pardon, and beginning to feel extremely
+ill, satiric poetry is not history; a century later, in 1554, the same archers,
+incorporated in the provincial legions of Francis I, gained against the first
+army in the world—the Castilian veterans—a battle that had been once lost
+by the men-at-arms; still another century, and in 1643, changing their quivers
+for guns, they had developed into the foot-soldiers that fought at Rocroi.</p>
+
+<p>All these reforms were subordinate to that of the finances, set in motion
+in 1443 by Jacques Cœur. To establish a reciprocal control by the regulators
+of finances over one another; to oblige individual receivers to account to
+the receiver-general and the latter in his turn to the chamber of accounts;
+to force the king’s officers—the ministers of finance, the master of the
+horse, the treasurer of wars, and the commander of artillery—to render
+monthly accounts to the king in person—these were excellent and admirable
+reforms, thanks to which Charles VII found himself in a position to create
+in France an institution that the most powerful of his predecessors had been
+unable to establish—a military force dependent only on the king, and protecting
+him, instead of leaving him at the mercy of the barons’ evil humours,
+as had heretofore been the case. Since Charles V, the ordinary indirect
+taxes, such as that on salt, on merchandise, and on liquors, had been permanent.
+Since Charles VI, the land tax (the <i>taille</i>), for payment of the soldiers,
+had become permanent—that is, it continued to be levied without the vote
+of the estates. But the king gave guarantee for the proper administration
+of financial justice by declaring sovereign the <i>cour des aides</i>, which alone had
+the right to interpret ordinances pertaining to the taxes and was the last
+resort of all civil and criminal processes growing out of the administration
+of the finances.</p>
+
+<p>Though it was not yet possible, in the fifteenth century, to reduce all
+France to one uniform law, she was at least beginning to emerge from the
+arbitrary customs of a justice exercised, above all in the north of France,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>according to unwritten laws. Charles VII thought—and the thought is an
+honour to him—that it was essential that all the laws of a kingdom should
+be written and “agreed upon by the lawyers of each country,” and examined
+and authorised by the supreme court and by the parliament, so that it would
+not be possible to deviate from the text thus officially inscribed. To him
+was due this innovation.</p>
+
+<h3>THE CLOSE OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1448-1450 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Having accomplished these reforms, Charles found himself sufficiently
+strong to finish with the English. A certain Francis de Surienne, an Aragonese
+adventurer in the service of the English, wishing to garrison one
+of the Norman villages possessed by the English, found himself repulsed on
+all sides. The soldiers, having received from Henry VI neither pay, provisions,
+nor munitions, were unwilling to share with this foreigner their
+already insufficient resources. The Aragonese, finding the doors of the allies
+closed to him, provided for the needs of his company after the fashion of the
+greater number of the military leaders: during the season of peace he fell
+upon Fougères, a rich city of Brittany, and gave it over to his men to plunder
+in lieu of their arrears of pay.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately the king of France and the duke of Brittany demanded of
+the English governor of Normandy reparation and an indemnity of 1,600,000
+crowns damages. They demanded an impossibility. The indemnity not arriving,
+the French set out to collect it for themselves at Pont-de-l’Arche,
+Gerberoy, Verneuil. Dunois entered the province with an efficient army
+which the Burgundians and Bretons joined voluntarily. Pont-Audemer,
+Lisieux, Mantes, Vernon, Évreux, Louviers, St. Lô, Coutances, and Valognes
+were taken or surrendered by the inhabitants without striking a blow.</p>
+
+<p>England was then beginning her Wars of the Roses, which during thirty
+years were to cover her with blood and ruins. The parliament, not as yet
+daring to take action against the king, fastened upon his minister, the duke
+of Suffolk, and troubled itself little about Normandy, since the reverses there
+were new and potent arguments against the accused. The governor, Somerset,
+instead of concentrating his forces, divided them into twenty garrisons,
+and sent ambassadors to open negotiations; but, knowing no better
+how to make treaties than how to make war, he forgot to invest them with
+authority. Order, proficiency—all that had hitherto contributed to their
+success was now on the side of the French: to the French Victory went
+over. On October 18th, 1449, they appeared beneath the walls of Rouen.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment all the inhabitants of Rouen were armed, but armed against
+the English, who took refuge in the citadel. Somerset was there, and the
+veteran Talbot, and numerous lords, officers, and soldiers; but it must be
+remembered that it would have been impossible to resist at once both the
+population and the French army. There was talk of a treaty, but on what
+conditions!—that, in addition to Rouen, Caudebec, Villequier, Lillebonne,
+Tancarville, Harfleur,—that is to say all the lower course of the Seine,—should
+be delivered up to the king of France; and that a hostage should be
+furnished in the person of the famous Talbot himself—the English Achilles.</p>
+
+<p>The governor of Honfleur refused to recognise this capitulation. The
+city was taken in the middle of winter (December, 1449); Harfleur met the
+same fate. The English, pushed to extremities, sent a knight of great
+renown, Thomas Kyriell, with 6,000 men. It was a last effort. Landing at
+Cherbourg, Kyriell sought to join the duke of Somerset at Bayeux, by way of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>the shore; the French followed, and on April 15th, 1450, near the village of
+Formigny, the constables of Richemont from one side, the count of Clermont
+from the other, vigorously attacked him. Kyriell’s soldiers fought
+bravely, but were defeated and left 4,000 on the field. This insignificant
+number sufficed to blot out from the minds of the French the 30,000 dead
+at Crécy, the 12,000 captive at Poitiers and at Agincourt. Vire, Bayeux,
+Avranches, Caen, Domfront, and Falaise fell into the hands of Charles.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1450-1453 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The numerous garrison of Cherbourg counted upon having nothing to
+fear, thanks to its own strength and above all to the neighbourhood of the
+sea. From this side it was taken. The French cannoneers established seven
+batteries in the sea itself; when the tide rose they left their cannon well
+anchored on the beach and protected by oiled skins; when the tide fell they
+returned to them. It was the English who, first of all, had turned against
+the French, at Crécy and Agincourt, this terrible arm of the artillery; the
+latter now manipulated it better than themselves. Cherbourg capitulated,
+and in a year the whole of Normandy was taken. Also the French army
+presented a novel spectacle: disciplined and obedient, it now lived on its
+pay and not by plunder.</p>
+
+<p>A month later, Dunois, Saintrailles, Chabannes, and the brothers Jean
+and Gaspard Bureau, who directed so advantageously the French artillery,
+marched with 20,000 men against Guienne. Bourg-sur-Gironde, Blaye, Castillon,
+Libourne, St. Émilion, offshoots from Bordeaux, which the English
+had loaded with privileges as they had that city, were easily taken. The
+inhabitants of Bordeaux, so well disposed to the England who bought
+their wines, attempted a sortie, fled upon catching sight of the enemy, and
+entered like the others into negotiations. The French granted nearly all
+that was asked of them. This was the 5th of June, 1451; the surrender
+was delayed until the 23rd. On that day, the herald of the city having cried
+with a loud voice for succour from the English for the people of Bordeaux,
+and no one replying, the gates were opened to the French.</p>
+
+<p>However mild the conquerors were, the great town soon regretted that
+English domination so far removed as to be scarcely felt. Now it had to pay
+taxes and furnish soldiers, the harbour was deserted, the shops were encumbered
+with unsold tuns. If an English army had appeared, no matter how
+weak, Bordeaux would have thrown herself into its arms. Such an army now
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The government of Henry VI, or, to speak more correctly, of Margaret of
+Anjou, had need of a great success abroad in order to establish itself at
+home. Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, now eighty years of age, was charged
+with bringing Guienne again under the English rule. The first steps were
+easy. The inhabitants of Bordeaux themselves introduced the English into
+their town, September 22nd, 1452; almost the whole province followed their
+example, and the king of France had to recommence his conquest. With
+the spring of 1453 his troops were marching into Guienne; on the 14th of
+July they laid siege to Castillon.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9c5"><a href="#endnote_9c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Castillon (July 17th, 1453)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The royal army, the greater part of which, including the artillery under
+the Bureau brothers, was concentrated in the camp, nearly two thousand
+feet long by one thousand wide, occupied also an abbey, which was later on
+the priory of St. Florent, and which overlooked Castillon; on the plain of
+Mount Horable, near to the village of Capitourlans, were the Bretons of Count
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>d’Étampes, to the number of 240 lances under the command of the knights
+of Hunaudaye and Montauban. The night of the 16th of July was passed in
+fortifying the camp, which was surrounded by deep trenches and defended
+by powerful artillery. Talbot on the morning of the 17th attacked the
+abbeys, defended by eight hundred free archers under the command of Jacques
+Rouhault and Pierre de Beauvau. The archers, terrified by the impetuosity
+of the English, who shouted the war-cry of their old leader, abandoned the
+abbey and retreated in the direction
+of the entrenched camp,
+followed by the enemy. On
+hearing of the approach of Talbot,
+Jacques de Chabannes left
+the camp and advanced at the
+head of two hundred lances.
+Aided by Rouhault and Beauvau,
+he protected the retreat of
+the archers. A very brief engagement
+took place; one hundred
+men were killed on either
+side. Rouhault, thrown from
+his horse, owed his safety only
+to the devotion of his archers,
+to whom he had sworn that he
+would live and die with them.
+Chabannes, surrounded at one
+moment, was delivered by his
+men.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p240.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Noblewoman, Early Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Finally it was possible to
+effect the retreat. Talbot rallied
+his men and regained the
+abbey. There, seizing the provisions
+abandoned by the French,
+he broke open the casks and
+distributed wine to his soldiers;
+it was still early in the day; the
+earl of Shrewsbury (Talbot)
+had mass performed by his chaplain.
+The holy sacrament was about to be celebrated, when news was
+brought that the French were abandoning their enclosure and fleeing.
+“Never,” he exclaimed, “will I hear mass till I shall, to-day, have overthrown
+the band of Frenchmen which is before me”; and he gave orders to advance.
+The English advanced uttering their war-cry, “Talbot, Talbot, St. George!”
+Mounted on a little nag, the old captain was dressed in a simple red velvet
+cassock. Vain attempts were made to stop him, he was told that it was a
+false rumour, and that it would be better to await quietly the onset of the
+enemy; he answered his standard-bearer, who gave him this advice, by
+insults, and drove him away, it was said, by a sword-cut across the face. On
+arriving at the palisade Talbot began to shout, “On foot, on foot, all!”
+His men-at-arms, supported by the archers, who arrived gradually and fell
+into rank, were received by a formidable discharge; three hundred catapults,
+howitzers, culverins, and ribaudequins, the firing of which was directed by
+the famous gunner Giribault, threw their projectiles, which slew a large
+number of victims. The English hesitated. Talbot brought them back, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>formed them in testudo; sheltered behind their bucklers they attacked the
+entrenchments. Talbot succeeded in planting the banner of St. George on
+the summit of the trench. A terrible conflict took place; for more than
+an hour they fought hand to hand.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, from the neighbouring heights, the sires de Montauban and
+de la Hunaudaye descended with their Bretons, and took the enemy in the
+rear; this movement decided the issue of the combat. The English stopped
+to face this fresh body of troops. The terrible tempest of the artillery did
+not cease to rain down on them. Seizing the opportunity, the French
+dashed from the camp, some on foot, some on horse, and charged with fury.
+Talbot, though wounded, held out. A blow from a culverin struck him on
+the leg and threw him under his horse. The French archers surrounded
+him and pierced him with their arrows. His son, who had vainly endeavoured
+to persuade him to flee, died at his side, trying to protect him. The
+English, seeing the fall of their chief, fled in disorder. Some wished to
+regain their vessels or to cross the Dordogne at the ford of Rozan; the
+others took the road to St. Émilion. A body of about two thousand men
+under the leadership of the Gascon nobles fell back in good order on Castillon
+and succeeded in penetrating into the town. The French, tired, worn
+out, breathless, renounced the pursuit of the enemy; only the count de
+Penthièvre, with his troops, gave chase to the fugitives in the direction
+of St. Émilion. The English army was overwhelmed; thirty knights and
+four thousand soldiers perished; in the heat of the action they were killed
+without mercy. It is said that even in our day bones are found in the plain
+which was the scene of this sanguinary struggle. On the French side the
+loss was considerable; some of their leaders, Admiral de Bueil, Jacques
+de Chabannes, Pierre de Beauvau, were wounded, but not seriously. In spite
+of the reinforcements brought by the Gascon nobles, Castillon could not
+oppose a long resistance; the town capitulated July 20th. From there the
+army marched immediately against St. Émilion and Libourne, which opened
+their gates.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9n"><a href="#endnote_9n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cadillac and Blanquefort followed suit. The royal army closed in
+around Bordeaux. The free archers overran the country; the ships loaned
+by La Rochelle and Brittany blocked the mouth of the Gironde. Bordeaux,
+threatened with famine, sent deputies to Charles VII. In their presence
+Jean Bureau made it a point to say to the king: “Sire, I have been reconnoitring
+for proper positions for our batteries; if such is your pleasure,
+I promise you on my life that in a few days I shall have demolished the
+town.” The envoys understood that this time they must accept what conditions
+the king would make. He stripped Bordeaux of her privileges,
+exacted a contribution of 100,000 crowns and ordered the banishment of
+twenty guilty citizens with the confiscation of their wealth; finally the
+construction of two citadels to guarantee the fidelity of the town in the
+future. The sire de l’Esparre, who had called in the English, promising
+a rising of all the nobility of the province, lost his head. On the 19th of
+October, 1453, Charles VII entered Bordeaux in triumph—the Hundred
+Years’ War was over. The English held nothing in France except Calais
+and two small neighbouring towns.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9c6"><a href="#endnote_9c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus after a century’s struggle was decided the impossibility of English
+monarchs holding France, under whatever pretensions or rights. The
+French had outgrown those times when the sovereignty over them could be
+transmitted to foreigners, or divided with them by the mere laws of feudal
+heritage or proprietorial descent. All that the ablest kings and bravest
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>warriors of England could do was to hold their ground upon the continent.
+Any lack of talent, suspension of vigilance, or remissness of energy on their
+part restored military superiority to the French upon their own soil, and
+insured with this their independence.</p>
+
+<p>It was fortunate for both countries that such a decision had taken place,
+and that it should be final. The circumstances as well as the result of the
+war now rendered it so. The re-conquest of all the French provinces by
+Charles was not, like that of Philip Augustus or Philip the Fair, the work
+of trickery or deceit. It had been achieved in fair and stand-up fight, and,
+what was more remarkable, with forces on either side almost balanced in
+number. The French were not more numerous than the English at Formigny;
+and Talbot, when he fell at Castillon, led a greater army than that
+which defeated him. It was the French free archers, too, and peasant
+soldiers, who fought more than the knights on that field. Experience had
+taught the mistake of attempting to ride down the hardy sons of the soil by
+mounted gentry. English and French met on these last fields equal in courage
+and in strength. But as the French soldiers were now more carefully
+selected, disciplined, and organised, they were victorious over those of England,
+distracted as it was by civil war, sending forth armies as distracted as
+its government.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9g3"><a href="#endnote_9g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES VII</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1451-1456 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>About this time the services of the wise counsellor we have already mentioned—the
+great merchant and shipper, Jacques Cœur—were lost to the
+state. After the conviction of Jean de Xaincoings, receiver-general of the
+realm, for embezzlement in 1451, Jacques Cœur was accused of malversation
+in his office of treasurer of the crown. He was said to have heaped up
+incredible riches; and on some occasions he made a display of his wealth
+which in a great measure compensated for the evil proceedings, if such they
+were, by which he gained it. He furnished funds for fleets and armies out
+of his private stores, when they could not otherwise be had; and continued
+his sage advices to the king, inculcating economy and repose. Charles was
+still indolent and self-indulgent when no great national effort was to be
+made. He allowed the prosecution of his faithful servitor, accepted the sentence
+of death which was passed upon him, and only started up to the kindness
+and generosity of his character when he remembered his services, and
+granted him his life (1453). The rest of the treasurer’s story is very
+strange. Jacques Cœur escaped from prison and found refuge at Rome,
+was appointed admiral of the Italian fleets against the Saracens, trafficked
+in goods and money while sweeping the infidels from the sea, and died in
+the island of Chios, 1456, richer and more honoured than he had ever been
+in Paris. The king must have seen, when it was too late, that he had banished
+a financier whose advice on public affairs was cheaply paid for by the
+acquisition of private riches.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9j"><a href="#endnote_9j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Quarrels with Burgundy and with the Dauphin</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1451-1453 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The expulsion of the English from the continent, where they no longer
+held any town save Calais, left the king of France in the presence of his
+powerful rival, the duke of Burgundy, who reigned over dominions no less
+vast, and after a manner quite as independent.</p>
+
+<p>After the English had been driven from Normandy, Philip of Burgundy
+began to feel the hostility of Charles and of his court. Whenever his subjects,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>especially of towns, had cause of complaint against him, they appealed to the
+king of France and his parliament as suzerain. Ghent would not submit
+to the <i>gabelle</i> (or salt tax) imposed by Philip, and the people appealed to the
+king of France, who pretended that the <i>gabelle</i> peculiarly belonged to the suzerain,
+and a French embassy soon arrived to arbitrate between the duke and
+the Ghenters. The duke altogether set aside the demand of <i>gabelle</i>, but
+insisted merely on the fact of the chiefs of trades and the demagogues having
+usurped the entire power in Ghent, even the administration and the
+election of magistrates. The French envoys took completely the duke’s
+view of the difference, and gave an award, obliging the people of Ghent to
+admit the ducal bailiffs to a share of authority, to pay a large fine, give up
+the rallying emblem of the white <i>chaperon</i>, and desist from holding the
+meetings of the united trades.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year, 1452, the French court returned to the charge and
+sent fresh ambassadors, not approving of the facility with which their predecessors
+had abandoned and condemned the democracy of Ghent. But at
+that time occurred the descent of Talbot on the Garonne, and the attention
+and efforts of Charles were necessarily turned in that direction. Duke
+Philip saw his opportunity. He must crush the rebellious towns ere Charles
+succeeded in expelling the English from Guienne. He raised a large army,
+brought it to Ghent, and captured several small places round it, cruelly
+hanging every prisoner. Treachery is reported to have been employed to
+induce the citizens to come forth to battle on the open plain. But 40,000
+armed inhabitants of the Flemish capital, so often victorious in the field,
+scarcely needed any incentives to march to the relief of their towns and
+garrisons. Duke Philip was engaged in the siege of Gavre, from which the
+commander escaped to Ghent, craving succour, if the fortress was to be
+saved. The citizens accordingly mustered to the number of 30,000 and
+marched to attack the Burgundians. The encounter took place on the
+23rd of July, 1453; it began by the cannon on both sides. The Ghenters
+were most of them slain, 20,000 being left on the field; and the duke, on
+beholding the heaps of slaughtered men, felt, for the first time, that these
+were his subjects, the sources of his wealth and the sinews of his strength.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year Muhammed II carried Constantinople by assault, and
+extinguished the Greek empire in the East. The catastrophe, alarming to
+Italy and Germany, might well have aroused the king of France. Charles
+VII was not the hero of a crusade; the sphere of his activity and ambition
+did not extend so far. Yet, when the duke of Burgundy, in a solemn
+festivity at Lille, made a public vow to lead his armies against the Turks,
+when all his noblesse became associated in the same vow, and when the pope
+and emperor joined in the enterprise, Charles was mortified; nor was his
+jealousy diminished when Philip, after this vow, set forth in person to visit
+the Swiss and the Germans, in order to negotiate alliances and aid in his
+great design.</p>
+
+<p>However wisely the councillors of King Charles had conducted his military
+operations, and his negotiations with England and with Burgundy, the
+spirit of their domestic administration was narrow in the extreme. The
+princes of the blood, however cautious and apparently submissive, looked with
+jealousy and anger upon those upstarts of the king’s court who so completely
+eclipsed and set them aside.</p>
+
+<p>The king and his council, therefore, looked upon the duke of Burgundy’s
+proposed crusade as merely a scheme for enhancing his importance, and placing
+himself at the head of the princes of Europe and of a formidable army,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>and they resolved to attack and crush those of his subjects whom he supposed
+to be associates and fellow-conspirators with Duke Philip. The principal
+of these was his son Louis, who lived independently, but not tranquilly, in
+Dauphiné, now warring, now intriguing with the duke of Savoy, and omitting
+no opportunity of gaining followers and procuring money.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1453-1457 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The first of the dauphin’s friends whom the court attacked was the count
+d’Armagnac, who afforded every pretext for Charles’ interference. He was
+living in incest, excommunicated by the pope, and guilty of many crimes.
+Unable to resist Charles’ lieutenants, Armagnac was soon reduced, his seventeen
+castles were taken, and he was driven across the Pyrenees. The court then
+resolved to make an example of the duke of Alençon. The prince was noted
+for his gallantry and independent spirit, which had won the admiration of
+Joan of Arc. He had been foremost as a partisan against the English, yet
+was an object of suspicion to Charles. Dunois was sent to arrest and bring
+him to the king’s presence, who accused him of conspiring to receive the
+English into his fortresses. According to some he made an indignant answer
+to the king; according to others he confessed his treason, and gave information
+of the designs of his confederates.</p>
+
+<p>By what was elicited from the duke of Alençon, the king’s suspicion and
+anger were increased against his son Louis, whom he resolved to leave no
+longer in possession of the revenues and government of Dauphiné, at least
+unless he submitted. In April, 1456, the king signified his intention of
+resuming the government of that province. The dauphin would not put
+himself in the power of the council, the members of which he believed capable
+of any crime. Nor would Charles receive his son into favour, except upon his
+complete submission. The march of an army, led by his declared enemy,
+Dammartin, alarmed Louis. He at first thought of resistance, but none of
+the nobles of Dauphiné or of his court would support him in resistance to his
+father. With a few followers Louis abruptly quitted Dauphiné, as Dammartin
+advanced into it, and hastened to St. Claude, in Franche-Comté. From thence
+he informed the king that he was determined to take part in his uncle the
+duke of Burgundy’s crusade against the Turks. He at the same time informed
+that potentate of his arrival. An answer of welcome speedily came,
+and Louis proceeded to Brussels. Here the duke embraced him so cordially
+and so long, as scarcely, so Chastelain<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9k"><a href="#endnote_9k">k</a></span> relates, to let his feet touch the earth.
+The dauphin was all in all for a few days; but a quarrel arising between the
+duke and his son, the latter was brought by his mother to Louis, who undertook
+to intercede for him, and remonstrate with his sire. This at once interrupted
+friendship and harmony. The duke saw in the dauphin one who might
+take his son’s part against him. Louis thus found it necessary to retire to
+the château of Gennape, near Brussels, where he lived on a monthly pension
+of 2,500 livres allowed him by the duke (1456-1457).</p>
+
+<h4><i>Death of Charles VII; the Influence of His Reign</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1457-1461 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This was the very result which Charles most dreaded, and which he most
+carefully should have avoided. But his council feared the reconciliation
+between father and son: and some of them meditated setting Louis aside altogether,
+and prolonging their own power by proclaiming his brother Charles,
+then but a boy. The king would not entertain a project necessarily so fatal
+to his family and his kingdom. As to Charles, his inward distrust became at
+last a malady, and almost an insanity. Yet his suspicions were not without
+grounds; for as his health and strength visibly declined, especially after the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>breaking of a boil in the mouth, the members of his court—even those who
+had been the bitterest enemies of the dauphin—addressed letters to that
+prince containing information as to the state of things, and assurances of their
+own attachment. Even the king’s new mistress, the dame de Villequier,<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> was
+amongst those who hastened to seek security in the worship of the rising sun.</p>
+
+<p>The desertion of his own ministers did not escape Charles, who reasoned
+that those who were so eager to abandon him in his decline might, without
+scruple, hasten his death. The dauphin is said to have caused some of the
+letters addressed to him to be placed within reach and view of the king.
+Charles’ terror was equal to his disgust. A captain told him that his physicians
+had been suborned to administer poison; one was instantly sent to
+prison, whilst the others fled. In his alarm, Charles refrained from taking
+sustenance altogether; and when the cause of his consequently weak state
+was discovered, and it was sought to administer food, his stomach refused to
+retain it. Thus did one of the most successful and triumphant among monarchs
+expire of mistrust—of hunger and inanition. Death levels all distinctions:
+Charles, the restorer of the French monarchy, died the death of a
+beggar (July 22nd, 1461).</p>
+
+<p>The character of Charles VII is perplexing to the historian; it affords
+subject of surprise that such great aims, which must have been wisely conceived
+and steadily pursued, should have been attained by a personage in
+many respects so weak. We are thus obliged to separate the private habits
+of the prince from the public life of the monarch. In the one Charles was
+indolent, self-indulgent, inconstant, and immoral; in the other, active, adventurous,
+persevering, and patriotic. He first introduced the important
+novelty of a royal council. Such, indeed, had existed under his predecessor,
+but it was an assemblage of magnates, not of ministers, the orators and
+inferior members being the followers or exponents of their chiefs’ opinions.
+Charles VII did nothing without consulting his council. This, perhaps, is
+the most remarkable characteristic of his rule. And it stands in strong contrast
+with the habits of his son and successor, who ruled altogether from his
+own judgment, and who with far greater talents and capacity committed the
+greatest blunders, and fell far short in all his aims, which his sire contrived
+to avoid or to accomplish, by merely mistrusting his own omniscience and
+not disdaining the counsels of others.</p>
+
+<p>The upper classes, their ideas, their spirit, and privileges, were no doubt
+undergoing in this century a great and remarkable change. This was the
+gradual metamorphosis from the feudal baron and knight into the courtly
+<i>seigneur</i> and the modern gentleman. As their numbers greatly increased it
+became impossible for all to preserve the superiority in power and wealth
+which the ancient holders of fiefs had possessed. The younger brothers of
+the gentry were obliged to seek for public service and live upon pensions or
+pay, in military or other capacity. But they carefully preserved themselves
+from losing caste, by insisting that they alone should fill these numerous
+offices. Thus the originally restricted class of the nobility in France was
+spread into the wider caste of the <i>gentilhomme</i>, the power and pretensions of
+the whole being undiminished.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9g4"><a href="#endnote_9g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Most important of all, however, was the steady growth in power of the
+crown. We have seen that Charles VII practically dispensed with the aid of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>the states-general after 1439, and that in so doing he virtually established a
+standing army and a permanent tax.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> In reality the taxes were already
+permanent, or nearly so, but they had been considered as extra revenue;
+now they became usual. Charles VII in suppressing the vote of the assembly
+followed the example of Charles V under identical circumstances, and thus
+rid himself of an obligation which was often only a useless formality, and
+often a hindrance and restraint.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9e3"><a href="#endnote_9e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A more fatal consequence of this usurpation on the part of the crown was
+that the nobility and clergy, remaining exempt from the tax on land which
+was only levied on the property of the <i>roturiers</i>, ended by taking no interest
+in the question. They abandoned the great principles supported at the
+estates of 1355 and 1356, to wit, that no tax could be levied save with
+the assent of the estates, and that the three orders should be subjected to the
+same taxes. Liberty established itself in England because the prelates,
+nobles, and towns remained closely united in their resistance to the encroachments
+of royalty, all accepting the same burdens and vindicating the same
+guarantees. In France the nobility and clergy deserted the common cause,
+handed over the third estate to the arbitrary authority of the crown, and sold
+the public liberties for a pecuniary advantage. From that moment it was an
+admitted formula that the clergy paid with their prayers, the nobility with
+their swords, the people with their money. The third estate, betrayed by
+the privileged orders, approached the king, applauded all the attacks made
+by the crown on the rights of the nobles and clergy, and energetically aided it
+to consummate the ruin of their power, until the moment that it found itself
+alone, face to face with the crown, and overthrew it. The defection of the
+clergy and the nobility was the first cause of the establishment of absolute
+power and of the Revolution which was accomplished 350 years later.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9p2"><a href="#endnote_9p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But little enough did Charles VII or his contemporaries concern themselves
+with such remote consequences of their deeds as are here ominously
+suggested; and, not to be ourselves blinded to the true historical relations
+of the times we are treating, let us seek again the atmosphere of the fifteenth
+century, and in leaving Charles VII take a parting glance at him through
+the eyes of a contemporary writer, whose quaint phrasing and peculiar smack
+of piety will remind us that our stage setting is still of the Middle Ages. That
+the phrases of the courtier are somewhat more flattering than strict justice
+demands need neither surprise nor concern us. “Charles VII,” says Henry
+Baude,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9o1"><a href="#endnote_9o">o</a></span> “was loved as much by his subjects as by foreign nations, who came
+often to him for advice in settling their disputes, and this because of the
+great justice that he observed. He was feared by the good and by the
+wicked: by the good, who were afraid to do evil lest it should come to his
+knowledge; by the wicked who were afraid of his justice. He was obeyed
+by his vassals and subjects, and well served by old, wise, and well-tutored
+servants, who knew his disposition to be such that he wished each to have
+his own. He died in old age [in reality he was but fifty-nine]; and after
+his death was in great solemnity, weeping, and lamentation honourably
+buried, and with great regret by men of all estates, in the church of St. Denis
+in France, with his ancestors. May God in his holy grace receive his soul
+into Paradise. Amen.”</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> [The fall of La Trémouille was due to a conspiracy aroused by his lethargy, through which
+the English in 1432 were able to regain Montargis and take several important towns. “M. de la
+Trémouille,” says De Brantôme;<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9l2"><a href="#endnote_9l">l</a></span> “was so happy as to prove a faithful and worthy servant to
+three kings. He was an excellent and worthy captain, and for this reason he had the honour
+and happiness to be known as ‘the knight without fear and without reproach.’ Splendid title
+indeed for him who can keep it, and wear it to the end of his life!”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> [Vaudemont was the nephew and René the son-in-law of Duke Charles I who had just died.
+René was appointed heir by Charles’ will, but Vaudemont persisted in his pretensions, alleging
+Lorraine to be a masculine fief.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> [Just how much of truth there is in this tale of Gilles de Retz, it would be difficult to determine.
+The motive alleged for the crimes smacks of the familiar witchcraft stories. A perversion
+of a type well known to psychiatrists might offer a more plausible explanation, supposing the
+facts to be assured.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> [Henri Baude<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_9o2"><a href="#endnote_9o">o</a></span> has a different conception of the personality of the king. He says: “Charles
+was a man of handsome figure, tall, and of good temperament; of sanguine complexion; humble,
+gentle, gracious, and of pleasant temper, liberal and not prodigal. He was solitary, living soberly,
+loving joyously, frank, decorous, and humane. He loved ladies in all honesty, and held all women
+in honour. His amusements were chess and shooting with the crossbow, and he rose early. The
+day after he entered a town and the day before he left it he went to the principal church. His
+oath was ‘St. George! St. George!’ He took only two meals a day. He spoke and drank
+little. He had a courteous gravity, tempered familiarity, and effective diligence. His word was
+the word of a prince and kept as law. He thought continually of the affairs of his kingdom and
+the relief of his people. He heard three masses a day, that is to say, the high mass with music
+and two low masses, and said his prayers every day without fail. At meals he was alone at
+table, and few persons in his room; and his doctor was always there, and honest people and
+valets who spoke of gay subjects or told old stories in which he took delight.</p>
+
+<p>“Naught cared he for false wisdom. At the yearly feasts, a bishop or abbot was seated at
+the head of his table, he in the centre, and at the end of the table one of the nobles of royal
+blood. When the table was spread there was none so great that did not leave the room, and all
+was so well arranged that none presumed to remain. He loved all virtuous people; was true
+and certain in promise and in all his acts. When he knew a man of virtue he took him. He
+had in his house and in his service the children of the princes, great nobles, and barons of his
+kingdom. He had around him, his chamberlains and others, the most handsome persons of the
+kingdom.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> Many of these captains of <i>écorcheurs</i> have left lasting traces in the memory of the people.
+The Gascon La Hire has given his name to the knave of hearts. The Englishman, Matthew
+Gough, whom the chroniclers call Mathago, has remained, we believe, as a puppet and bugbear
+for children in certain provinces. The history of Gilles de Retz, greatly softened down, has
+furnished matter for a tale: he is the original of Blue Beard.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">More honour, gentle Agnes, thou hast won,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">For that thy voice our France recoverèd,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Than could be achieved by cloister-prisoned nun,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Or holiest beadsman to the desert fled.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> [The order of the Golden Fleece was instituted at Bruges in 1429, by the duke of Burgundy,
+Philip the Good, in honour of one of his mistresses, Marie de Cumbrugge, whose red
+tresses had been the object of many pleasantries. On the extinction of the Burgundian house
+the grand-mastership passed to the Habsburgs.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> [Agnes Sorel had died of dysentery on the 9th of February, 1450. The <i>dame de Beauté</i>,
+as she was called, had her enemies, the dauphin among them, and rumours that she had been
+poisoned were not long in spreading through the court. These were made use of later in many
+infamous machinations, even against Jacques Cœur.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-10.jpg" width="500" height="250" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X. THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI: THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROWN</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Louis XI, that king more adroit than the most adroit courtier; that
+old fox furnished with lion’s claws; powerful and shrewd, served secretly
+as in the light, constantly sheltered by his guards as by a shield, and
+accompanied by his executioners as with a sword.—<span class="smcap">Victor Hugo.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1461-1483 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>During fifteen years, the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI, had maintained a
+struggle against his father, which had commenced on account of Agnes Sorel
+and had been continued by mutual distrust. Throughout this struggle the
+dauphin had shown a most indomitable pride and the utmost tenacity, and
+in all this delicate and false situation he affected to act as the prince and
+as the prince who would one day be king. If he rebelled against the king
+it was against the king only, and not against the crown. Such at least is
+the attitude revealed by the tone of his letters.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he succeeded to the throne, he hastened to leave his little
+court of Gennape and return to France. He asked the duke of Burgundy
+to lend him an escort of four thousand soldiers in case he should meet with
+opposition from his father’s councillors who might wish to impose their own
+conditions on him. However, on arriving at Avesnes, the nobility thronged
+around him to swear allegiance, and, finding his escort unnecessary, he sent it
+back to the duke. He repaired at once to Rheims to be crowned and at that
+place the throng became greater. This adulation, which always follows when
+a new prince succeeds one but little loved, made Louis believe that he would
+be popular. Perhaps his absence, his exile, which had been interpreted as a
+protest or a disgrace, had contributed to this apparent popularity. It was,
+at least, very ephemeral.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XI was thirty-eight years old when he ascended the throne, with
+his experience of governing and his virtues and vices equally matured by his
+exile. Like his father, he loved power and did not wish to share it. A
+contemporary, Chastelain,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10b1"><a href="#endnote_10b">b</a></span> called him “the universal spider,” because he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>never ceased weaving a web of which he was the centre, and the threads
+of which extended everywhere. Not only did he wish to decide everything
+himself, but he was loath to accept any advice, and the least opposition would
+make him obstinate. Like his father, also, he was observant, discreet, suspicious,
+esteeming men but little, rewarding them richly when he had need
+of their services and forgetting them the day after. He had in this respect
+the three faults that Chastelain<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10b2"><a href="#endnote_10b">b</a></span> attributes to Charles VII—fickleness, diffidence,
+and envy. On the other hand he had a wonderful discernment in
+seeing the use that each person could be to him. Those who served him
+must serve him absolutely. Independence to him seemed conspiracy.
+Comines<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10c1"><a href="#endnote_10c">c</a></span> says that he did not like to have serve him “the great ones who
+could surpass him.” He preferred to choose for his agents men of humble
+birth whom he took from the lowest of his household, knowing them to be
+more easy to control and capable of a more blind devotion. Reared in the
+school of Charles VII, he resembled him very much, in spite of the aversion
+he had shown toward him. He continued his reign and his policy. He
+employed the same means to maintain, or to extend the results already
+attained. If he had any advantage over him, it was the knowledge, which
+he had acquired by personal experience, of the opposition he would be
+obliged to combat.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, to these hereditary traits he joined others. He was
+distinguished by a feverish activity, a perpetual restlessness, an irresistible
+taste for intriguing. He would complicate affairs on all sides, then meet
+the difficulties and make light of them. Chastelain<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10b3"><a href="#endnote_10b">b</a></span> describes him as
+“scheming new thoughts day and night.” His government was very secret.
+He sought the shadowy ways, which makes it difficult for one to follow the
+thread of his diplomacy, the details of which necessarily escape us. He was
+educated, like most of the princes of his day. He was possessed of great
+keenness and vivacity—almost too much, as he very often allowed himself
+to be carried away by it. He had been surrounded, at Gennape, by a small
+court, vivacious and refined. He had a certain loftiness in his views, notwithstanding
+all that the historians have said of his littleness and his superstition.
+In his relations with the pope he showed a sense of nobility and
+justice. But these sentiments and qualities, which keep him from being
+regarded altogether as a bad man, had but little influence on his political
+conduct. His passion to rule, and to carry on secret intrigues, was so
+strong that it destroyed all scruples, if he had any. He knew no rule save
+his own will, no goal but success. He had no respect for established things,
+but followed the necessity of the moment. He sought to attach men to himself
+only by corruption, believing that the more corrupt they were the more
+useful they would prove; he was prodigal with money to gain tools in France
+and traitors in the neighbouring states. In fact the celebrated portrait of
+<i>The Prince</i>, for which he served as one of the models employed by Macchiavelli,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10d"><a href="#endnote_10d">d</a></span>
+gives a just idea of the personal government, arbitrary and mysterious,
+which existed in the sixteenth century and which most fortunately is no
+longer possible, at least under the same conditions.</p>
+
+<p>He has received much praise for his ability. He hastened the progress
+of the unity, and the ruin of the great feudal houses. The crown acquired
+important provinces during his reign and he greatly augmented the power
+of France. These results are incontestable, but at the same time we must
+remember it was not he alone who brought them about; that these results
+had been preparing for a long time; that the twenty years of Charles VII had
+done much; that Louis XI had, in the beginning, compromised by his imprudence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>the conquests of the preceding reign and that his principal merit was
+to profit, in an incontestable manner, by favourable circumstances. If he
+has been regarded as a great statesman, it is because, meeting with reverses
+in the commencement of his reign, he in the end triumphed over his enemies
+who were less calculating and less prudent than himself. For it is the final
+success that sways the judgment of posterity, and even the judgment of contemporaries,
+as is shown by Philip de Comines,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10c2"><a href="#endnote_10c">c</a></span> that observer so profound,
+that spirit so penetrating and so cold.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10e1"><a href="#endnote_10e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH</h3>
+
+<p>After his coronation Louis looked around the land he was now about to
+“bring into order,” and was alarmed at the condition of the national church.
+A national church it really deserved to be called; for, while confessing the
+superiority of Rome in antiquity and rank, it rested firmly on the decision
+of the Council of Bâle, and acknowledged a power superior to the holy see.
+It defended, also, freedom of election to vacant benefices, and refused the
+annates, or first year’s income of bishoprics and incumbencies, to the exchequer
+of the pope. Louis saw that the first advance against the citadel of civil
+liberty was a return to the obedience of Rome. He gave up at once all the
+franchises and exemptions wrung with such difficulty by the church of France.
+He placed it again, bound hand and foot, under the heel of the successors of
+St. Peter, and even gave advantages to the ecclesiastical ruler which he had
+never held before. In return for this, the faithful son of the church was
+sure of the pontiff’s support. Though he oppressed his subjects, deceived
+his friends, and murdered his enemies by treachery, he had shown a most
+religious regard for the interest of the papacy, and was honoured with the
+title, which his successors have retained, of “the most Christian king.” The
+least Christian monarch of his time, being elevated by popish gratitude to this
+lofty position, it was only left for the adulation of the courtiers to bestow
+upon him the title of “majesty,” which great word had not yet been applied
+to the person of the sovereigns of Europe; but Louis XI set the example of
+claiming the highest sounding and least deserved epithets, and cheated and
+grovelled through a long reign of trickery and meanness as his Majesty the
+Most Christian King. When the church was again governed by a foreign
+master, whom it was easy for the king to win over to his side, the next important
+step in the progress of his design was to render the people powerless. For
+this purpose he did away with the free-archers of the previous reign. No
+village was allowed its butts and shooting-grounds. The parish was relieved
+of the expense of finding an “archer good” for the interior defence of the
+country, and the spirit of emulation in warlike sports was discouraged. But
+the land was not to be left unprotected. So in addition to his Scottish allies,
+he took into his pay large bodies of Swiss mercenaries, whose valour had
+struck him with such admiration at the battle of Sankt Jakob near Bâle.</p>
+
+<p>He now more than doubled the taxes; and as, although saving and grasping
+from personal disposition, he was liberal and even generous from policy,
+he derived great support from the absence of a home-force of his own subjects,
+and the devoted adhesion of penniless mountaineers from the two
+poorest and most courageous populations in Christendom. We will only
+insert a word of surprise here with regard to the Swiss, that a people who
+are honoured throughout the world for the defence of their liberties at home,
+should be the scorn and shame of all generous minds by furnishing their
+strength and valour for the maintenance of the worst tyrannies abroad.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span></p>
+
+<h3>THE WAR OF THE PUBLIC WEAL</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1465 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The nobility saw the object of the king, and took arms to prevent the
+extinction of their order, and the diminution of their individual power. A
+cry is never wanting when people are determined to quarrel, and as the
+feudal chiefs could not, with any decency, state openly the reasons of their
+opposition, they placed it upon the two grounds of the sacrifice of French
+ecclesiastical liberty by the abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction, and the
+intolerable weight of taxation which the new king had imposed. This,
+therefore, was called “the war of the public weal.” Princes and feudatories,
+and all who had a lingering regard for the grand old days of license and free
+quarters, took up the patriotic cause. Charles of France, the king’s brother,
+was the nominal chief, but the real head of this league was Charles the Bold
+[properly Le Téméraire or the Rash], at this time called count of Charolais,
+eldest son of the good Philip, duke of Burgundy. In the list besides him
+were read the names of Saint-Pol, Brittany, Lorraine, Alençon, Bourbon,
+Armagnac, and Dunois. In short, the two parties were perfectly aware of
+each other’s intentions, and met face to face. If the league succeeded,
+Louis’ life would have been short, and a regency was openly promised. If
+Louis was successful, farewell to the great nobility, its independent power
+and hereditary magnificence; it must sink into an ornament of the court, or
+be exterminated altogether. It was the life of one or the other which lay
+upon the scales; and though the swords were sharpest, and the cause apparently
+the freest on the side of the great vassals, the cunning, the policy, the
+perseverance were all on the side of the king. Suddenly the oppressors of
+the towns, and the harsh masters of country populations, affected a deep
+interest in the common weal. With haughty condescension they assumed
+the championship of the overburdened commons, and kept them at the same
+time from coming “between the wind and their nobility,” as if contact with
+them would have stained their coats of arms. But Louis, dressed in very
+undignified apparel, looking like a small shopkeeper, and affecting no airs
+of grandeur or superiority, entered into familiar talk with any well-to-do
+citizen he encountered, joked with him about his family, poked him under
+the ribs to give emphasis to his innuendoes, and strolled off to have a merry
+conversation with somebody else. Nobody could believe that so free-spoken
+a gentleman cared less for the common people than the prince of Charolais,
+who would have put a townsman to death if he stood in his way; and in a short
+time the people liked better to pay their taxes to a man who put them at
+their ease, than to owe their deliverance to a set of champions who despised
+them in their hearts and insulted them in their manners.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Montlhéry and the Treaty of Conflans</i></h4>
+
+<p>Louis saw his advantage, and tried to gain his object by a battle with the
+confederates at Montlhéry, where neither party was decidedly victorious.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10f1"><a href="#endnote_10f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An account of this battle is given by Monstrelet.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10q1"><a href="#endnote_10q">q</a></span> His description,
+however, is criticised by his continuator,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10p1"><a href="#endnote_10p">p</a></span> who professes to draw on other
+authorities and whose brief account may be quoted. The later chronicler
+says: “At this battle which was fought on Tuesday the 6th day of July,
+in the year 1465, the king of France, coming with all haste from beyond
+Orleans to Paris, halted at early morn at Châtres, under Montlhéry, and
+that having taken scarcely any refreshment, and without waiting for his
+escort, which was, for its number, the handsomest body of cavalry ever raised
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>in France, he so valiantly attacked the army of the count de Charolais and
+his Burgundians that he put to the rout the van division. Many of them
+were slain, and numbers taken prisoners. News of this was speedily carried
+to Paris, whence issued forth upward of thirty thousand persons, part of
+whom were well mounted. They fell in with parties of Burgundians who
+were flying, and made them prisoners; they defeated also those from the
+villages of Vanvres, Issi, Sevres, St. Cloud, Arcueil, Surennes, and others.</p>
+
+<p>“At this recounter, great booty was gained from the Burgundians, so that
+their loss was estimated at two hundred thousand crowns of gold. After
+the van had been thus thrown into confusion, the king, not satisfied with this
+success, but desirous to put an end to the war, without taking any refreshments
+or repose, attacked the main body of the enemy with his guards and
+about four hundred lances: but the Burgundians had then rallied, and advanced
+their artillery, under the command of the count de Saint-Pol, who did
+on that day the greatest service to the count de Charolais. The king was
+hard pressed in his turn, insomuch that at times he was in the utmost personal
+danger, for he had but few with him, was without artillery, and was always
+foremost in the heat of the battle; and considering how few his numbers
+were, he maintained the fight valiantly and with great prowess. It was the
+common report of the time, that if he had had five hundred more archers on
+foot, he would have reduced the Burgundians to such a state, that nothing
+more would have been heard of them in war for some time.</p>
+
+<p>“The count de Charolais, on this day, lost his whole guard,—and the
+king also lost the greater part of his. The count was twice made prisoner
+by the noble Geoffroy de Saint Belin and Gilbert de Grassy, but was rescued
+each time. Towards evening the Scots carried off the king, that he might
+take some refreshments; for he was tired and exhausted, having fought the
+whole of the day without eating or drinking, and led him away quietly and
+without noise, to the castle of Montlhéry. Several of the king’s army not
+having seen him thus led off the field, and missing him, thought he was either
+slain or taken, and took to flight. For this reason, the count du Maine, the
+lord admiral De Montaulban, the lord de la Barde, and other captains, with
+seven or eight hundred lances, abandoned the king in this state, and fled,
+without having struck a blow during the whole of the day. Hence it is
+notorious, that if all the royal army who were present at this battle had
+behaved as courageously as their king, they would have gained a lasting victory
+over the Burgundians; for the greater part of them were defeated, and
+put to flight. Many indeed were killed on the king’s side, as well as on
+that of the enemy; for after the battle was ended, there were found dead
+on the field three thousand six hundred, whose souls may God receive!</p>
+
+<p>“The king of France came to Paris, the 18th day of July, after the battle
+of Montlhéry, and supped that night at the hôtel of his lieutenant-general,
+Sir Charles de Melun,—where, according to the account of Robert Gaguin,
+a large company of great lords, damsels, and citizens’ wives supped with him,
+to whom he related all that had happened at Montlhéry. During the recital,
+he made use of such doleful expressions that the whole company wept and
+groaned at his melancholy account. He concluded by saying, that if it
+pleased God, he would soon return to attack his enemies, and either die or
+obtain vengeance on them, in the preservation of his rights. He, however,
+acted differently, having been better advised; but it must be observed, that
+some of his warriors behaved in a most cowardly manner,—for had they all
+fought with as much courage as the king, he would have gained a complete
+victory over his enemies.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10p2"><a href="#endnote_10p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span></p>
+
+<p>Continuing, the chronicler gives an extended account of the events of the
+ensuing months, during which the allies approached Paris and besieged
+the city. “The king,” he says, “finding that he had many enemies within
+his realm, considered on the means of procuring additional men-at-arms to
+those he had,—and it was calculated how many he could raise within Paris;
+for this purpose, it was ordered that an enrolment should be made of all
+capable of bearing arms, so that every tenth man might be selected to serve
+the king. This, however, did not take place,—for such numbers of men-at-arms
+now joined the king that there was no need of such a measure. The
+king was very much distressed to get money for the pay of these troops, and
+great sums were wanted; for those towns which had been assigned for the
+payment of a certain number of men-at-arms, being now in the possession of
+the rebellious princes, paid no taxes whatever to the crown, for they would
+not permit any to be collected in those districts.</p>
+
+<p>“On the 3rd of August, the king, having a singular desire to afford some
+comfort to the inhabitants of his good town of Paris, lowered the duties on
+all wines sold by retail within that town, from a fourth to an eighth; and
+ordained that all privileged persons should fully and freely exercise their
+privileges as they had done during the reign of his late father, the good
+Charles VII, whose soul may God pardon! He also ordered that every tax
+paid in the town, but those on provision, included in the six-revenue farms,
+which had been disposed of in the gross, should be abolished, namely, the
+duties on wood-yards, on the sales of cattle, on cloth sold by wholesale, on sea-fish
+and others; which was proclaimed that same day they were taken off, by
+sound of trumpets, in all the squares of the town, in the presence of Sir
+Denis Hesselin, the receiver of the taxes within the said town. On this being
+made public, the populace shouted for joy, sang carols in the streets, and at
+night made large bonfires.” Such deeds as this illustrate the diplomacy of a
+king who, whatever else he may have been, was assuredly a consummate politician.
+Meantime, as practical aids to defence, fires were lighted and a strict
+watch kept in Paris, and chains were fastened across the principal streets.</p>
+
+<p>The guard kept about Paris was evidently not very strict, for the king
+was able to go and come at will. There were occasional sallies, but these
+amounted to nothing more than skirmishes. On the second of September,
+after several parleys, commissioners were at length named by the king and
+the confederates to settle their differences. There were numerous meetings
+which came to no very definite issue, but meantime the statecraft of the king
+was preparing the way for the final issues.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1465-1467 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A truce was proclaimed in the two camps on October 1st; from that day
+until the 30th, when the articles of peace were registered by the parliament
+and published, the king continued to show an almost boundless friendship and
+confidence in his attitude toward the princes and especially toward the
+count of Charolais. He furnished their camp with supplies, he received
+their soldiers at Paris, he was present without guards at their military
+reviews, abandoning himself to their care; finally he acceded to their demands,
+conditions which seemed to make him wholly dependent upon them.<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>
+Thirty-six commissioners were appointed by him to reform all the abuses in
+the kingdom, of which the princes had complained; the past was to be forgotten;
+no one could blame anyone else for what he had done during the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>war, and all the confiscations proclaimed by the tribunals were revoked. In
+exchange for Berri the king gave his brother the duchy of Normandy, with
+the homage of the duchies of Brittany and Alençon, as a hereditary title
+in the male line. To the count of Charolais he restored the cities on the
+Somme which he had so recently bought back, reserving for himself only
+the right to buy them back again, not from him but from his heirs, for the
+sum of 200,000 gold crowns. He gave over to him, moreover, as a perpetual
+possession, Boulogne, Guines, Roye, Péronne, and Montdidier. To the
+duke of Calabria, regent of Lorraine, Mouzon, Ste. Menehould, Neufchâteau,
+he gave 100,000 crowns in cash and the pay of five hundred lances for a
+month.</p>
+
+<p>To the duke of Brittany he granted the royal prerogative, which had been
+a subject of dispute between them, also a part of the aids; he ceded to him
+Étampes and Montfort and gave presents to his mistress, the same dame de
+Villequier who had formerly been mistress of Charles VII. To the duke
+de Bourbon he gave several seigniories in Auvergne, 100,000 crowns in cash,
+and the pay of three hundred lances; to the duke de Nemours, the government
+of Paris and of the Île-de-France, together with a pension and the pay of two
+hundred lances; to the count d’Armagnac, the castellanies of Rouergue, which
+he had lost, a pension, and the pay of a hundred lances; to the count de
+Dunois, the restitution of his domain, a pension, and a company of gendarmes;
+to the sire d’Albret, various seigniories on his frontier. He gave back to the
+sire de Lohéac the office of marshal with two hundred lances; he made Tannegui
+du Châtel master of the horse; De Beuil was made admiral; the count
+of Saint-Pol constable. Finally he pardoned Antoine de Chabannes, count of
+Dammartin, gave back all his estates, and granted him a company of a hundred
+lances. Such were the principal clauses of the Treaty of Conflans, which
+was the most humiliating that rebel subjects ever extorted from a crown, and
+also the most degrading for the character of the allied princes, because they
+concluded a war which they had undertaken under the pretext of the public
+good, by sharing the spoils of the people as well as those of the king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10g1"><a href="#endnote_10g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>POLITICAL INTRIGUES</h3>
+
+<p>Louis now commenced one of the games which must have given him as
+much enjoyment as if he had been playing a game of chess. How to move
+a castle to resist a knight, or a number of pawns to surround a bishop, how
+to keep Normandy in order by stirring up the enmity of Brittany, how to
+paralyse the motions of the young duke of Burgundy—for in 1467 Charolais
+succeeded his father<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>—by inciting insurrections among the men of Liège—these
+were the problems worked out in the solitude of his own thoughts;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>for he boasted that he formed all his plans without the aid of others. The
+marshal De Brézé said, accordingly, that the horse the king rode was a much
+stronger animal than it looked, for it carried the whole council on its back.
+The results of the deliberations of this unanimous assemblage were soon
+visible in the vengeance which fell on the heads of the late confederacy.
+Charles of France, when all the others were getting lofty offices and rewards,
+had been presented with the dukedom of Normandy. The people of Rouen,
+who had at first taken part against the crown, received the first prince of the
+blood with acclamations, as a champion of their cause; and the king determined
+to show them they had chosen the wrong side. He raised an army,
+and hurried down to Caen; bought and bullied the duke of Brittany, whom
+he found in that town, out of his friendship with Charles; and then fell
+upon the capital of the duchy, as if it had been in open rebellion. His right-hand
+man on this, as on similar occasions, was the famous Tristan l’Hermite,
+the executioner. Tristan’s hands were soon full, for the king, with a vigorous
+impartiality which showed he was not a bigot to either side, cut off the
+heads of the aristocracy who had helped the princes, and threw hundreds of
+the commonalty, who had grumbled at his taxes, into the Seine.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1467-1468 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The church, which he had bought over by the sacrifice of the Pragmatic
+Sanction, and still kept in awe by threatening to restore it—as he had
+engaged to do by the treaty with the leaguers—was next to be taught that,
+however much he prized its friendship as a politician, its loftiest officers were
+the mere creatures of his breath. The system he pursued of excluding the
+higher orders from civil employments had been introduced into ecclesiastical
+affairs. Wherever the sharp eye of Louis detected a fitting instrument for
+his purpose in the person of a penniless adventurer, or townsman of the lowest
+rank, he was very soon invested with the necessary authority, and perverted
+justice in the character of president of a court, or vilified religion in the office
+of a bishop. The son of a small tradesman of the name of La Balue had early
+shown such amazing want of principle, combined with quickness of talent and
+audacious self-reliance, that he gained the notice of the king, then his confidence,
+then his friendship. The pope made great efforts to win over this
+ornament of the faith, who was now bishop of Évreux, and promised him
+the cardinal’s hat if he persuaded his master to enregister the suppression of
+the Pragmatic Sanction in the rolls of parliament; and in foolish reliance
+on the promises of La Balue, sent him the blushing sign of his dignity before
+the service was performed. La Balue relaxed in his endeavours, as his wages
+were already received, and gained additional favour with the king for ceasing
+to trouble him on the subject. The favour continued for a long time, but at
+last, when Louis, in reliance on his powers of persuasion, and the counsels
+of his friends, trusted himself again within the power of Charles of Burgundy,
+and hoped to win him over as he had done in the former interview which
+destroyed the league of the Public Weal, the advice given by the cardinal
+was found to lead to very dangerous results.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10f2"><a href="#endnote_10f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE STRUGGLE WITH CHARLES THE BOLD</h3>
+
+<p>This visit of Louis to the redoubtable Charles was one of the most famous
+incidents of his reign. Louis went with meagre attendance to Péronne, and
+placed himself entirely within the power of Charles. He of course had a
+safe conduct, but considering the morals of the time, this by no means insured
+him a safe return. His anomalous act has been variously criticised. On its
+face it seems foolhardy; yet rightly considered it speaks for the keen intelligence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span>and practical political sagacity of the king quite as much as for his
+personal courage. The truth seems to be that Louis at this time felt that he
+could not trust his officers. Dammartin, his right-hand man, was, as we have
+seen, a soldier who had been in the employ of Louis’ father, and therefore
+at that earlier period had been in antagonism with Louis himself. His exact
+attitude of mind could not be known to the king, and the loyalty of various
+other officers was more than questionable. And to win battles loyal soldiers
+are absolutely necessary. On the other hand, in the field of diplomacy the
+king, acting as his own emissary, could feel sure of his results, in proportion
+as he felt confidence in his own powers. And he had every reason to trust
+his own sagacity. He knew himself more than a match for Charles in matters
+of intrigue, and in thus putting his antagonist upon his honour, and appearing
+to trust him, he doubtless felt that he paved the way most advantageously
+for his future movements. The visit did not turn out triumphantly, as we
+shall see, but its ill success was perhaps largely due to an incident beyond
+the king’s control. We may best gain an idea of the incidents of this famous
+visit through the narrative of the celebrated chronicler Comines, who at this
+time was in the employ of Burgundy and who afterwards became still more
+famous as the minister to Louis himself. Comines,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10c3"><a href="#endnote_10c">c</a></span> as Sismondi<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10g2"><a href="#endnote_10g">g</a></span> says,
+considered history as a lesson in politics, not as a catalogue of events; but
+here he confines himself chiefly to the narrative, letting the story point its
+own moral.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Comines describes the Visit to Péronne (1468 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1468 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It was agreed [says Comines] that the king should come to Péronne.
+Thither he came, without any guard, more than the passport and parole of
+the duke of Burgundy; only he desired that the duke’s archers, under the
+command of the lord des Quedes (who was then in the duke’s service), might
+meet and conduct him; and so it was done, very few of his own train coming
+along with him. However, his majesty was attended by several persons of
+great quality and distinction, and among the rest by the duke de Bourbon,
+the cardinal his brother, and the count of Saint-Pol, constable of France, who
+had no hand in this interview, but was highly displeased at it; for he was
+now grown haughty, and disdained to pay that respect to the duke which
+he had formerly done; for which cause there was no love between them.
+Besides these, there came the cardinal Balue, the governor of Roussillon, and
+several others. When the king came near, the duke went out (very well
+attended) to meet him, conducted him into the town, and lodged him at the
+receiver’s, who had a fine house not far from the castle; for the lodgings in
+the castle were but small, and no way convenient.</p>
+
+<p>War between two great princes is easily begun, but very hard to be composed,
+by reason of the accidents and consequences which often follow; for
+many secret practices are used, and orders given out on both sides to make
+the greatest efforts possible against the enemy, which cannot be easily countermanded
+as evidently appears by these two princes, whose interview was
+so suddenly determined that, neither having time to notify it to their ministers
+in remote parts, they went on performing the commands which their
+respective masters had given them before. The duke of Burgundy had sent
+for his army out of Burgundy, in which at that time there was abundance
+of the nobility; and among the rest the count of Bresse, the bishop of Geneva,
+and the count of Romont, all three brothers of the house of Savoy (for between
+the Savoyards and Burgundians there was always a firm amity), and some
+Germans, who were borderers upon both their territories. And you must
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>know that the king had formerly imprisoned the count of Bresse, upon the
+account of two gentlemen whom he had put to death in Savoy, so that there
+was no right understanding between him and the king.</p>
+
+<p>In this army there were likewise one Monsieur du Lau (who had been
+a favourite of the king’s, but upon some disgust had been kept afterwards
+a prisoner by him a long time, till at length he made his escape and fled
+into Burgundy), the lord d’Urfé, since master of the horse to the king of
+France, and the lord Poncet de Rivière; all which company arrived before
+Péronne as the king came into the town. Bresse and the last three entered
+the town with St. Andrew’s cross upon their clothes (supposing they should
+have been in time enough to have paid their respects to the duke of Burgundy,
+and to have attended him when he went out to receive the king), but they
+came a little too late; however, they went directly to the duke’s chamber
+to pay their duty, and in the name of the rest, the count of Bresse humbly
+besought his highness that himself and his three companies might have his
+protection (notwithstanding the king was in the town), according to the
+promise he was pleased to make them in Burgundy; and at the same time
+assured him they were at his service, when and against whomsoever he might
+command them. The duke returned them thanks, and promised them protection.
+The rest of this army, under the command of the marshal of Burgundy,
+encamped by the duke’s orders in the fields. The marshal had no more
+affection for the king than the above-mentioned gentlemen had; for the king
+had given him the government of Épinal in Lorraine, and taken it from him
+afterwards to give it to John, duke of Calabria. The king had notice presently
+of all these persons being in the town, and of the habits in which they
+arrived, which put him into a great consternation; so that he sent to the duke
+of Burgundy to desire he might be lodged in the castle, for he knew those
+gentlemen were his mortal enemies; the duke was extremely glad to hear it,
+appointed him his own lodgings, and sent to him to bid him fear nothing.</p>
+
+<p>But the king at his coming to Péronne had quite forgot his sending of
+two ambassadors to Liège to stir them up to a rebellion against the duke,<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> and
+they had managed the affair with such diligence that they had got together
+such a considerable number, that the Liègeois went privately to Tongres
+(where the bishop of Liège and the lord of Humbercourt were quartered
+with more than two thousand men) with a design to surprise them.
+The bishop, the lord of Humbercourt, and some of the bishop’s servants
+were taken, but the rest fled and left whatever they had behind them,
+as despairing to defend themselves. After which action the Liègeois
+marched back again to Liège, which is not far from Tongres; and the
+lord of Humbercourt made an agreement for his ransom with one Monsieur
+William de Ville, called by the French Le Sauvage, a knight, who,
+suspecting the Liègeois would kill him in their fury, suffered the lord
+of Humbercourt to escape, but was slain himself not long after. The
+people were exceedingly overjoyed at the taking of their bishop. There
+were also taken with him that day several canons of the church, whom
+the people equally hated, and killed five or six of them for their first repast;
+among the rest there was one Monsieur Robert, an intimate friend of the
+bishop’s, and a person I have often seen attending him armed at all points,
+for in Germany this is the custom of the prelates. They slew this Robert
+in the bishop’s presence, cut him into small pieces, and in sport threw them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>at one another’s heads. Before they had marched seven or eight leagues,
+which was their full journey, they killed about sixteen canons and other
+persons, the majority of whom were the bishop’s servants; but they released
+some of the Burgundians, for they had been privately informed that some
+overtures of peace had already been made, and they were forced to pretend
+that what they had done was only against their bishop, whom they brought
+prisoner along with them into their city. Those who fled (as I said before)
+gave the alarm to the whole country, and it was not long before the duke
+had the news of it.</p>
+
+<p>It was said by some that all of them were put to the sword; others
+affirmed the contrary (for in things of that nature, one messenger seldom
+comes alone); but there were some who had seen the habits of the canons
+who were slain, and supposing the bishop and the lord of Humbercourt had
+been of the number, they positively averred that all that had not escaped
+were killed, and that they had seen the king’s ambassadors among the
+Liègeois, and they mentioned their very names. All this being related
+to the duke, he gave credit to it immediately; and falling into a violent
+passion against the king, he charged him with a design of deluding him by
+coming thither; ordered the gates both of the town and castle to be suddenly
+shut up, and gave out, by way of pretence, that it was done for the discovery
+of a certain casket which was lost, and in which there were money and jewels
+to a very considerable value. When the king saw himself shut up in the
+castle, and guards posted at the gates, and especially when he found himself
+lodged near a certain tower, in which a count of Vermandois had caused his
+predecessor, one of the kings of France, to be put to death,<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> he was in great
+apprehension. I was at that time waiting upon the duke of Burgundy in
+the quality of chamberlain, and (when I pleased) I lay in his chamber, as
+was the custom of that family. When he saw the gates were shut, he
+ordered the room to be cleared, and told us who remained that the king was
+come thither to circumvent him; that he himself had never approved of the
+interview, but had complied purely to gratify the king; then he gave us
+a relation of the passages at Liège, how the king had behaved himself by his
+ambassadors, and that all his forces were killed. He was much incensed,
+and threatened his majesty exceedingly; and I am of opinion that if he had
+then had such persons about him as would have fomented his passion, and
+encouraged him to any violence upon the king’s person, he would certainly
+have done it, or at least committed him to the tower. None was present at
+the speaking of these words but myself and two grooms of his chamber, one
+of whom was called Charles de Visen, born at Dijon, a man of honour, and
+highly esteemed by his master. We did not exasperate, but soothed his
+temper as much as possibly we could. Some time after he used the same
+expressions to other people; and the news being carried about the town,
+it came at last to the king’s ear, who was in great consternation; and indeed
+so was everybody else, foreseeing a great deal of mischief, and reflecting on
+the variety of things which were to be managed for the reconciling of a difference
+between two such puissant princes, and the errors of which both
+of them were guilty in not giving timely notice to their ministers employed
+in their remote affairs, which must of necessity produce some extraordinary
+and surprising result.</p>
+
+<p>The king thought himself (as I said before) a prisoner in the castle of
+Péronne, as he had good reason to do; for all the gates were shut and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>guarded by such as were deputed to that office, and continued so for two or
+three days; during which time the duke of Burgundy saw not the king,
+neither would he suffer but very few of his majesty’s servants to be admitted
+into the castle, and those only by the wicket; yet none of them was forbidden,
+but of the duke’s none was permitted to speak with the king, or come
+into his chamber, at least such as had any authority with their master. The
+first day there was great murmuring and consternation all over the town.
+The second, the duke’s passion began to cool a little, and a council was
+called, which sate the greater part of that day and night too. The king
+made private applications to all such as he thought qualified to relieve him,
+making them large promises, and ordering 15,000 crowns to be distributed
+among them; but the agent who was employed in this affair acquitted himself
+very ill, and kept a good part of the money for his own use, as the king
+was informed afterwards. The king was very fearful of those who had been
+formerly in his service, who, as I said before, were in the Burgundian army,
+and had openly declared themselves for his brother, the duke of Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Burgundy’s council were strangely divided in their opinions;
+the greatest part advised that the passport which the duke had given
+the king should be kept, provided his majesty consented to sign the peace as
+it was drawn up in writing. Some would have him prisoner as he was, without
+further ceremony. Others were for sending with all speed to the duke of
+Normandy, and forcing the king to make such a peace as should be for the
+advantage of all the princes of France. Those who proposed this advised that
+the king should be restrained, and a strong guard set upon him, because
+a great prince is never, without great caution, to be set at liberty after so
+notorious an affront. This opinion was so near prevailing, that I saw a
+person booted and ready to depart, having already several packets directed
+to the duke of Normandy in Brittany, and he waited only for the duke’s
+letters; and yet this advice was not followed. At last the king caused
+overtures to be made, and offered the duke de Bourbon, the cardinal his
+brother, the constable of France, and several others, as hostages, upon condition
+that, after the peace was concluded, he might return to Compiègne,
+and that then he would either cause the Liègeois to make sufficient reparation
+for the injury they had done, or declare war against them. Those whom the
+king had proposed for his hostages proffered themselves very earnestly, at
+least in public; I know not whether they said as much in private; I expect
+they did not: and, if I may speak my thoughts, I believe that the king
+would have left them there, and that he would never have returned.</p>
+
+<p>The third night after this had happened, the duke of Burgundy did not
+pull off his clothes, but only threw himself twice or thrice upon the bed, and
+then got up again and walked about, as his custom was when anything vexed
+him. I lay that night in his chamber, and walked several turns with him.
+The next morning he was in a greater passion than ever, threatening exceedingly,
+and ready to put some great thing in execution; but, at last, he recollected
+himself, and it came to this result: that if the king would swear to
+the peace, and accompany him to Liège, and assist him to revenge the
+injuries which they had done him and the bishop of Liège, his kinsman, he
+would be contented. Having resolved on this, he went immediately to the
+king’s chamber, to acquaint him with his resolutions himself. The king had
+some friend or other who had given him notice of it before, and who had
+assured him that his person would be in no manner of danger, provided he
+would consent to those points; but that, if he refused, he would run himself
+into so great danger that nothing in the world could be greater.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span></p>
+
+<p>When the duke came into his presence, his voice trembled by the violence
+of his passion, so inclinable was he to be angry again.<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> However, he
+made a low reverence with his body, but his gesture and words were sharp,
+demanding of the king if he would sign the peace as it was agreed and
+written, and swear to it when he had done. The king replied he would;
+and, indeed, there was nothing added to what had been granted in the treaty
+at Paris, which was to the advantage of the dukes of Burgundy or Normandy,
+but very much to his own; for it was agreed that the lord Charles of France
+should renounce the duchy of Normandy, and have Champagne and Brie, and
+some other places adjacent, as an equivalent. Then the duke asked him if
+he would go along with him to Liège, to revenge the treachery they had
+practised by his instigation, and by means of that interview. Then he put
+him in mind of the nearness of blood between the king and the bishop of
+Liège, who was of the house of Bourbon. The king answered that, when
+the peace was sworn, which he desired exceedingly, he would go with him to
+Liège, and carry with him as many or as few forces as he pleased. The duke
+was extremely pleased at his answer, and the articles being immediately produced
+and read, and the true cross which St. Charlemagne was wont to use,
+called “the cross of victory,” taken out of the king’s casket, the peace was
+sworn, to the great joy and satisfaction of all people; and all the bells
+in the town were rung. The duke of Burgundy immediately despatched a
+courier with the news of this conclusion of peace into Brittany, and with it
+he sent a duplicate of the articles, that they might see he had not deserted
+them, nor disengaged himself from their alliance; and, indeed, Duke Charles,
+the king’s brother, had a good bargain, in respect of what he had made for
+himself in the late treaty in Brittany, by which there was nothing left him
+but a bare pension, as you have heard before. Afterwards the king did me
+the honour to tell me that I had done him some service in that pacification.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10c4"><a href="#endnote_10c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Storming of Liège</i></h4>
+
+<p>The next day the two princes left together, Charles with his army, Louis
+with his modest following, increased by three hundred soldiers whom he
+had sent for from France. They arrived before Liège the 27th of October.
+Since Duke Charles’ last victories the city had neither ramparts nor moats;
+nothing seemed easier than to enter; but the besieged could not believe that
+King Louis was a sincere ally of the duke of Burgundy. They made a sortie,
+crying: “Long live the king! Long live France!” Their surprise was
+great when they saw Louis advance in person, the cross of St. André of
+Burgundy on his hat, and heard him exclaim: “Long live Burgundy!”
+Among the French themselves who were about the king, some were shocked;
+they could not be resigned to so little pride and to so much effrontery in the
+deceit. Louis himself paid no attention to their humour and kept repeating:
+“When pride prances in front, shame and disaster follow close at
+hand.”</p>
+
+<p>The surprise of the people of Liège was turned into indignation. They
+resisted more energetically and for a longer time than had been expected;
+confident of their strength, the besiegers guarded themselves badly; the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>besieged increased the number of their sorties. One night Charles was
+informed that his people had just been attacked in a suburb they occupied
+and were fleeing. He mounted his horse, gave orders not to awaken the
+king, betook himself alone to the scene of combat, re-established order, and
+returned to tell Louis what had happened, the latter appearing very much
+pleased over the affair. At another time the night was dark and rainy:
+towards midnight a general attack awakened the whole Burgundian camp;
+the duke was soon afoot; an instant later the king arrived; the disorder
+was great. “The people of Liège came out on that side,” said some. “No,
+it was by this gate,” said others; nothing was certain, no order was given.
+Charles was impetuous and brave, but became easily alarmed. His followers
+were not a little worried not to see him put on a more cheerful countenance
+before the king. Louis on the other hand was cool and calm, firm in giving
+his orders, and prompt to take authority wherever he might be.
+“Take what people you have,” he said to the constable Saint-Pol who accompanied
+him, “and go in this direction; if they are to come upon us, they
+will pass on that side.” It was discovered afterwards that it had been a
+false alarm.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p260.jpg" width="500" height="325" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Cannon, Middle of Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Two days later the situation was more serious; the inhabitants of a canton
+bordering the city, and called Franchemont, decided to make a desperate
+attempt and to fall unexpectedly upon the very quarter in which the two
+princes were lodged. One evening, at ten o’clock, six hundred men went out
+through one of the breaches in the wall, all of them men of stout heart and
+well armed. The duke’s house was the first to be attacked; twelve archers
+alone kept watch below and were playing at dice. Charles was in bed;
+Comines quickly helped him on with his helmet and cuirass; they went down
+the stairs; the archers were with difficulty preventing an entrance through
+the door; reinforcements arrived; the danger disappeared. The lodging of
+King Louis had also been attacked; but at the first sound the Scotch archers
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>had hastened to the scene, had surrounded their master, and repulsed the
+attack, without troubling themselves to see whether their arrows killed
+the people of Liège or the Burgundians who had come to help. Almost
+all the braves of Franchemont perished in the enterprise they had undertaken.
+The duke and his chief leaders held a council the next day; the duke
+wanted to make an attack. The king was not present at this council; when
+informed as to what had been decided upon in it, he was not in favour of an
+assault. “You see,” he said, “the courage of this people; you know how
+much slaughter and uncertainty there is in a fight among the streets of a city;
+you will lose in it many useful men. Wait two or three days; the people
+of Liège will without doubt come to terms.” Almost all the Burgundian
+chiefs shared the king’s opinion. The duke became angry. “He wants to
+save the people of Liège,” he said; “what peril is there in an assault? There
+is no wall; they cannot put one single piece of artillery into action; I shall
+certainly not give up making an attack. If the king is afraid, let him go to
+Namur.” The insult shocked even the Burgundians. Louis was informed
+of it and said nothing. The next day, October 30th, 1468, the order for the
+assault was given; the duke marched at the head of his troops; the king came
+up. “Stay behind,” said Charles to him, “do not needlessly expose yourself
+to peril; I will have you informed when it is time.” “My brother,” returned
+Louis, “do you march in advance; you are the most fortunate prince alive;
+I follow you,” and he continued to march with him.</p>
+
+<p>The assault was useless; discouragement had taken hold of the people of
+Liège; the bravest of them had perished. It was a Sunday; the people
+who were left were not expecting an attack. “The cloth was laid in every
+house; all were preparing to sit down to dinner.” The Burgundians advanced
+through deserted streets; Louis marched quietly, surrounded by his
+men and crying, “Long live Burgundy!” The duke came back to join him
+and together they went to thank God in the cathedral of St. Lambert. It
+was the only church preserved from the fury and pillaging of the Burgundians;
+at noon there was nothing more left to take, either in the houses or
+churches. Louis heaped Charles with congratulations and compliments. The
+duke was charmed and mollified. The next day as they were conversing
+together: “My brother,” said the king to the duke, “if you have any further
+need of my assistance, do not spare me; but if you have nothing further for
+me to do, it is fitting that I return to Paris in order to proclaim in my court
+of parliament the arrangement we have agreed upon; otherwise it runs the
+risk of becoming invalid; you know that that is the custom of France. Next
+summer we must meet again: you will come to your duchy of Burgundy;
+I shall go to visit you, and we will pass a month together joyously in making
+good cheer.” Charles answered nothing, sent for the treaty which they had
+concluded shortly before at Péronne, and gave the king his choice of confirming
+or abandoning it, excusing himself in veiled terms for having thus
+forced him and led him about. The king appeared to be satisfied with the
+treaty, and the 2nd of November, 1468, the second day after the capture of
+Liège, he left for France. The duke accompanied him half a league out from
+the city. As they were on the point of taking leave of each other, the king
+said to him: “If perchance my brother Charles, who is in Brittany, is not
+pleased with the partition I have made him, out of love for you, what do you
+want me to do?” “If he does not want to take it,” answered the duke,
+“do you take measures to satisfy him; I will leave the matter to you two.”
+Louis asked for nothing more; he returned home free and confident in his
+own powers, “after having passed the three hardest weeks of his life.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10i1"><a href="#endnote_10i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Return of Louis to France</i></h4>
+
+<p>To appreciate the import of the promises which Charles had exacted from
+the king, it must be recalled that Champagne and Brie, which Louis promised
+to transfer to his brother, were geographically so situated as to separate—or
+unite—the duchy of Burgundy and the northern possessions of Charles the
+Bold. Hence Charles’ interest in having this territory controlled by his
+friend, the king’s brother, rather than by his enemy, the king. Quite as
+obviously, Louis’ interests were opposed to such an arrangement, and of course
+he had no intention of fulfilling his agreement. But he wished to avoid fulfilment
+in the most diplomatic manner possible. This he accomplished by
+persuading his weak-minded brother to take the territory of Guienne instead
+of that specified in the compact with Charles. Thus Louis’ brother was
+separated by all France from the duke of Burgundy instead of being his
+nearest neighbour; and Champagne continued a barrier, not a bridge, between
+the Burgundian possessions. So in the end the diplomacy of Louis stood
+him in good stead, notwithstanding his momentary discomfiture.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louis’ bearing was far from proud when he recrossed the frontier. He
+had received two great checks from the Burgundian power; in 1465 a check
+of power, in 1468 a check of honour. Had it been only a question of honour
+Louis might have easily consoled himself; but, aside from honour, his reputation
+as an able ruler came into question. It was that which made him ill
+from shame. He knew his contemporaries. The treason to and the sacrifice
+of Liège troubled him less than his blunder at Péronne. It was not so
+much indignation as mockery that he dreaded. Paris received from him an
+order to neither speak, write, paint, or sing anything of the detested name of
+“Monseigneur de Bourgoyne,” and an order was sent out that all birds, magpies,
+crows, starlings, who were making the streets resound with allusions to
+the king’s discomfiture at Péronne, should be delivered to a commissioner
+of the king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10j1"><a href="#endnote_10j">j</a></span> At least so runs the story.</p>
+
+<p>When Louis arrived in Paris strange discoveries awaited him. He intercepted
+letters from his favourite the cardinal. He found that his friend
+and gossip was the friend and gossip also of the duke of Burgundy, the adviser
+of all that had happened at Péronne, especially of his forced presence at
+the siege, the degrading clauses of the final treaty, and the general harshness
+of his treatment. He found at the same time that the cardinal was in correspondence
+with his brother Charles, late leader of the league, who was still in
+resistance to his authority; and, in short, that he was betrayed in every point.
+The king was offended at the perjury of his subject, but the man was a thousand
+times more angry at the error in his judgment. The son of the tailor,
+in the red stockings, had outwitted the son of St. Louis with the crown on
+his head. La Balue, though prince of the church and bishop of a diocese, was
+imprisoned in an iron cage, about eight feet square, and kept like a wild beast
+in his den for eleven years in the castle of Loches. All that can be said in
+extenuation of this pitiless proceeding was that the man was the disgrace of
+his order and his country, and that the instrument of his torture (as the natural
+justice of mankind is so prone to make out in other instances) was of his
+own invention.</p>
+
+<p>There were some institutions, as well as individuals, which it was now
+Louis’ purpose to get within his power. Edward III of England, reposing
+upon the laurels of Crécy, had founded the order of the Garter in 1349.
+John of France, in rapid imitation, as we have already seen, founded the
+order of the Star. Philip of Burgundy had founded the order of the Golden
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>Fleece in 1429, and the principles of all these lordly confederations were
+derived from the ideas of chivalry which the romances had spread among the
+people. They were to be brotherhoods of noble knights, bound together by
+the bonds of mutual honour; they were to succour the weak, bridle the
+strong, and pay honour, as they fantastically expressed it, by purity of life
+and courage of conduct, to God and their ladies. But the Garter was a
+foreign badge; the Golden Fleece was a symbol of his subject and liegeman;
+the Star had fallen into disrepute from its promiscuous distribution
+among the favourites of the crown; and Louis XI determined on instituting
+an order of chivalry himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be select in its membership, limited in its number, generous in
+its professions, and he fondly hoped the Garter and Fleece would soon sink
+into insignificance compared to the order of St. Michael. The first brethren
+were named from the highest families in France; the remaining great feudatories,
+who had preserved some relics of their hereditary independence, were
+fixed upon to wear this mark of the suzerain’s friendship. But when they
+came to read the oaths of admission, they found that the order of St. Michael
+was in reality a bond of stronger obligation than the feudal laws had ever
+enjoined. It was a solemn association for the prevention of disobedience to
+the sovereign. The members were to swear submission in all things to the
+chief of the order; they were to enter into no agreements with each other, or
+anyone else, without the king’s consent; they were to submit to such punishment,
+in case of breach of the rules, as the order might appoint; and, in short,
+the brotherhood of noble knights sank, in the degrading treatment of its
+founder, into a confederation of spies. Armed with this new weapon, the
+king tried its effect on the duke of Brittany, who was discontented with many
+things that had occurred. If he accepted, he would be bound by the statutes;
+if he refused, it would be an insult to the dignity of the king. The duke temporised,
+and consulted the duke of Burgundy. The fiery Charles saw through
+the design, and swore to defend his neighbour in case of a quarrel with the
+crown. Louis, nothing daunted, sent the collar of the order to Burgundy
+himself. Burgundy refused it, and Louis’ object was gained. He discovered
+who was bold or strong enough to stand out against him, and the war began.
+Not openly—it was not yet time to make it a matter of national honour—but
+the angry subject and hostile king were perfectly aware of each other’s
+designs.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Edward IV of England aids Charles the Bold</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1469-1470 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Their animosity first broke out in the sides they chose in the great struggle
+then going on in England, called the Wars of the Roses. Edward of York,
+representing the direct line of Edward III, had taken arms against the feeble
+and dissolute Henry VI of the Lancastrian house. Margaret of Anjou had
+mingled in the fray, and embittered it. We know how fortune alternately
+swayed to the red and the white of the emblematic flowers. Warwick, who
+is known in English history as the “king-maker,” had just established Edward
+IV on the throne, and then failed, when he had quarrelled with the monarch
+he had set up, in restoring Henry. While preparing an expedition for this
+purpose in France, he had fitted out privateers, who enriched themselves
+equally on the English and Flemish traders, and then found refuge in the
+French harbours. Charles of Burgundy complained; Louis retorted with
+accusations of his having aided the new king of England in his attacks on
+the coasts of Normandy, and of having accepted the English order of the
+Garter, though he had refused his own St. Michael. He summoned the vassal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>to appear before his parliament in Paris, and the vassal threw the summoners
+into prison. Louis saw the game now in his hands. He had put his enemy
+legally in the wrong, and, moreover, he had all the counsellors, and favourites,
+and warriors, by whom Charles was surrounded, in his pay. We need not,
+however, waste much pity on the duke. He was nearly in the same situation
+with regard to the courtiers and officers of the king. When the armies lay
+face to face, and famine had almost placed the Burgundians in Louis’ hands,
+Charles sent a flag of truce with a statement and proofs of the infidelity of
+half the princes and feudatories who commanded the royal troops. Charles
+of France, now duke
+of Guienne, was at
+the head of the deceivers,
+and was anxious
+to gain Charles’
+good-will, in hopes of
+obtaining the hand
+of his daughter and
+heiress, Mary of Burgundy.
+Battle, with
+traitors commanding
+both the armies,
+would have been
+madness, and Louis
+agreed to a truce.
+Bitterer thoughts
+than ever, about the
+pride and falsehood
+of the nobility, rankled
+in that ignoble
+heart. Another incident
+soon occurred
+that brought affairs
+to a crisis. One of
+his spies, being in the
+castle of the count de
+Foix, saw a mass of
+torn papers in a corner
+of his room, which
+had previously been
+occupied by a messenger
+of the duke of Burgundy. The man gathered up the fragments, saw
+a name or two that excited his attention, pasted them all together, and was
+enabled to present to the king a bond of firm alliance, and the signatures of
+enemies whom he might well have trembled to see united against him—Edward
+of England, triumphant at the battle of Barnet, where his enemy
+Warwick was slain, and now firmly established on the English throne; the
+duke of Burgundy, Nicholas of Lorraine, the duke of Brittany, and, above
+all, Charles of France, duke of Guienne. These were all to be on him at
+once, and, as one of the papers said, were to set so many greyhounds at his
+heels that he could not know where to fly for safety.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p264.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Gunner, Middle of Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1470-1471 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis, however, was more of the fox than the hare. He doubled on his
+pursuers, and tempted the duke of Burgundy with the promise of restoring
+him some towns on the Somme, and letting him have his full revenge on his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>former favourite, the constable Saint-Pol, who had betrayed him to the king.
+Charles, on the other hand, was to let Louis do as he chose with the dukes
+of Brittany and Guienne.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10f3"><a href="#endnote_10f">f</a></span> The duke of Guienne, indeed, was not likely to be
+an annoyance much longer to his brother the king, for he was seized of a mortal
+malady, presumably consumption. He died May 24th, 1472, at Bordeaux.
+There was a rumour current that he had been poisoned along with his mistress
+the lady of Monsoreau, by the abbé of St. Jean d’Angély, at the instance
+of Louis himself. The story of a peach, cut with a poisoned knife and shared
+by the lovers, became famous. There were many suspicious circumstances,
+and very likely the king may have watched the progress of his brother’s
+illness “with ill-disguised hope” as Martin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10j2"><a href="#endnote_10j">j</a></span> suggests; but the fact that the
+duke had suspected no one during his long illness and had named Louis as
+his executor may perhaps justify us in giving the king the benefit of the
+doubt for the nonce. “Examples of fratricide are all too common in this
+sinister century,” says Martin; but he adds, half doubtingly, that “the best
+justification of the king appears to lie in the long illness of his brother. A
+man poisoned with fruit does not survive eight months.” In any case, the
+death of the duke removed one of the most important obstacles to Louis’ plans
+for the centralisation of power and the ultimate autocracy of the crown.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1471-1474 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Now, then, there was to be war to the knife carried on by the crown
+against the nobility. Burgundy was bought off by promises and gifts; England
+was soothed by concessions. But within the boundaries of France
+itself, no limit was put to the vengeance and cruelty of the king. He
+arrested the duke of Alençon in full peace, and immured him in a dungeon
+in Paris. He sent an army into the territories of the count d’Armagnac,
+and a detachment of it burst into his house, and murdered him in his bed.
+They also forced his wife, who was pregnant, to drink a mixture which produced
+immediate death. His brother was thrown into the Bastille, and kept
+in a cave below the level of the Seine, so that the water penetrated the floor.
+The wretched prisoner lived for eleven years in this manner, without shoes
+or proper clothing; and when released at the end of that time, on the accession
+of Charles VIII, was found to have fallen into a state of fatuity. A
+short cessation in this career of murder and revenge was produced by a new
+combination against Louis’ life and crown. French honour and patriotism
+had now fallen so low that the princes and great vassals, in order to get
+revenge upon their oppressor, agreed to assign the crown of France to
+Edward IV of England. He was to be crowned at Rheims, and already he
+bestowed rewards upon his adherents as if he were in possession of the kingdom.
+The treaty united many contending factions, with but one object in
+common—the destruction of him whom all now knew to be their destroyer.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Gold and Diplomacy make Louis the Victor</i></h4>
+
+<p>Burgundy and Brittany and Saint-Pol forgot their animosities, and
+signed the bond. But Louis detected the plot. The old plans were tried,
+and succeeded. Promises scattered the confederates, and they became distrustful
+of each other. Edward had disembarked in France at the head of
+an English army. Louis sent for great bags of coined money from Paris,
+and signed several papers, with the names in blank, bestowing salaries and
+pensions for distribution among the English council. He disguised a common
+lackey as a herald, and sent him to an interview with the invader. The
+lackey was as clever and subservient as if he had been bred an ambassador,
+and won over the luxurious king. Louis flattered his ambition and bribed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>his avarice. He called him “king of England and France, and lord of Ireland,”
+contenting himself with the title of “king of the French.” He gave
+him 60,000 crowns on condition of withdrawing his forces at once, and
+promised him 50,000 crowns a year so long as they both lived. Edward was
+so captivated by the arts and liberality of Louis that he agreed to visit him
+at Paris. But Louis repented of the invitation he had given, and put
+him off, for fear he should grow too fond of that most fascinating of towns.
+“It is better,” he said, “the sea should be between us”; and to attain this
+object no expense was spared. Gifts were heaped upon the officers, and all
+the public-houses were made free to the retiring army. The English
+pocketed the money, and marched from pothouse to pothouse with the
+greatest satisfaction.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1474-1476 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>At last it was reported to Louis that his invaders were safe home, and he
+resolved to make use of his victory. The fate of the constable Saint-Pol
+was sealed. Conscious of his approaching doom, he threw himself on the
+protection of his former friend, the duke of Burgundy. Charles hated him
+for his falsehood, but could not reject a suppliant. He told him to take
+shelter in St. Quentin. Louis, however, was at his heels with twenty
+thousand men. He fled, and Charles, rash in promise but infirm of purpose,
+forgot his chivalry, and surrendered him on the threat of hostilities
+against himself. He was tried for treason at Paris, and condemned to lose
+his head on the place de Grève. Thousands of the brave and noble have
+spilt their blood since that time in the great square which faces the Hôtel-de-Ville,
+and allows a last view of the towers of Notre Dame; but this is the
+first occasion in which a prince, a near ally of the throne,—for he had married
+a sister of the queen,—was exposed to the sword of the headsman for
+a crime against the crown. The supremacy of the king’s will was now so
+well established that there was no further use for secret assassination. A
+public execution struck more awe into the populace, and kept the nobility
+in more subjection, than a stab in the dark or a poisoned peach. Tristan
+l’Hermite, almost equally with Louis, was from henceforward the acknowledged
+governor of France. But as long as Charles the Bold preserved his
+independent attitude in Burgundy, the discontented had always a refuge
+from the justice of the king.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Last Deeds of Charles the Bold</i></h4>
+
+<p>Fortunately at this time the overweening Burgundian became engaged
+in controversy with the strong-armed highlanders of Switzerland. They had
+offended him, by refusing compensation for some injury they had done to
+one of his adherents. To be resisted by a set of republican shepherds was
+too much for the knightly pride of the most touchy prince in Christendom.
+A great army was raised, and poured down upon the town of Granson. The
+inhabitants were put to the sword or drowned in the Lake of Neuchâtel. All
+the cantons were irritated at the shameless deed, and rushed to rescue or
+revenge. Charles met them in a narrow defile at the head of his horsemen,
+who could not act on such unequal ground. The first rank fell back upon
+the second, the second carried confusion into the rear. The quick-footed
+Swiss still pressed on, and at last a complete panic seized the Burgundian
+host. Charles himself spurred out of the confusion, and galloped as far as
+his horse could go. Never had the eyes of the mountaineers rested on such
+wealth and splendour as met them in the tents of the discomfited army—silken
+curtains, golden vessels, barrels of money, and armour of the finest
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>polish. A jewel was taken by a soldier from the private chest of the duke,
+sold to a priest for a florin, sold by him for five shillings, and is now considered
+the greatest ornament of the French crown, and one of the richest stones
+in Europe. Louis did not know how to proceed in these astonishing circumstances.
+He had signed a treaty to maintain the peace towards the duke,
+and yet could not resist showing his approbation of the Swiss. With the
+Swiss also he had signed a treaty, by which he was bound to give them aid
+in men and money whenever they were attacked. He compromised the two
+obligations by abstaining from assaulting the Burgundian, and from sending
+assistance to the Swiss. He could not fulfil both stipulations, and it was
+more economical to execute neither. He gave the mountaineers, however,
+unmistakable evidence of his sympathy in their cause; and when Charles, in
+the same year, came forth at the head of another powerful army, Louis
+encouraged the cantons to resist. The same thing as before occurred, with
+only the variation of place. Morat was a repetition of Granson. The
+slaughter of the defeated Burgundians was so great that, till the latter end
+of the eighteenth century, a vast monument was still to be seen upon the
+field of battle, built up of the bones of the slain, and called the Bone-Hill of
+Morat.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1476-1477 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The battle of Nancy followed in 1477, and raised the Swiss to the summit
+of military fame, besides weakening Burgundy so as to render it forever
+powerless against France. In the midst of winter, ill-provided, and doubtful
+of the issue themselves, the hosts of Burgundy moved on, and laid siege to
+the town of Nancy. Charles was no longer the impetuous warrior he had
+been. He was broken in spirit, and at times almost mad with disappointment
+and chagrin. He had even summoned to command his army an adventurer
+from Italy, of the name of Campobasso. Campobasso was, as might be
+expected, a correspondent of Louis, and had offered to place Charles in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>But Louis played, of course, a double game with the deceiver and his
+dupe. To show how generous he was, he warned the duke of the insincerity
+of his general, feeling well assured that his advice would be attributed
+to dishonourable motives; and accordingly it was thought a weak invention
+of the enemy, and Campobasso was more trusted than before. Again the
+Swiss battalions, aided by the forces of René of Lorraine, began to appear.
+In the midst of a great storm, and in a hard frost, Charles resolved to attack
+them. Campobasso sent over an offer of his treachery to the gallant mountaineers;
+but they despised a traitor, and scorned the disgrace of having
+such an auxiliary. He therefore retired to the rear of the Burgundian line,
+to intercept the fugitives, and enrich himself with their ransom. There
+were few fugitives, however, to ransom; for, as the horses slipped upon
+the icy plain, the victory was easier than at either Granson or Morat. The
+earth was heaped with corpses, and among them, after a long search, was found
+the body of the fiery duke, fixed in the snow, and so disfigured that he was
+only recognised by a scar on his face and the length of his nails, which he
+had allowed to grow, as a sign of mourning, ever since his calamities began.
+Not deserving of a very favourable epithet, this harsh and arrogant potentate
+closed a life of violence with a death of defeat.</p>
+
+<p>But now all men’s eyes were turned with earnest expectation to the first
+move in the great drama of intrigue and policy which his demise was certain
+to produce. His daughter had been the great card which he had held in his
+hands for many years. Lady of Hainault and Flanders, and all the Low
+Countries, she was a bait which none of the princes could resist.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span></p>
+
+<h3>MARY OF BURGUNDY</h3>
+
+<p>Charles had silenced enemies and gathered friends, by a mere hint of the
+bestowal of Mary’s hand. He had played it against the name of king, and
+promised it to the son of Frederick the emperor, if that successor of the
+Roman cæsars would consent to convert his ducal coronet into a royal crown.
+The treaties and arrangements, and all the preparations for the betrothal and
+the creation, would be amusing, if they did not show how low morality
+and honour had fallen in those days. The emperor said, “Let the young
+people marry, and I will name you king.” But the duke, who gave no credit,
+said, “Make me king, and I will give your son my daughter.” Neither
+would trust the other. The emperor hurried off by stealth from the place
+of meeting, when he found the duke had summoned an increase to his escort;
+and Charles, vowing vengeance, and fearful of ridicule, packed up the royal
+crown he had brought with him beside the sceptre and mantle, and took his
+way to his states with no higher rank than when he came. Other expectations
+had been equally disappointed, and now, in the year 1477, Mary was an
+orphan twenty years of age, handsome and well-informed, with a portion in
+her own right which would make any man she chose a sovereign prince, or
+double the grandeur of the greatest potentate. When Louis heard of the
+father’s death, his first thought was, of course, to secure the daughter’s succession.
+He knelt to all his saints in gratitude for the defeat of his rival,
+walked on a pilgrimage of grace to a church in Anjou, and vowed silver
+banisters to the tomb of St. Martin of Tours. Having purified his mind by
+these religious exercises, he sent a peremptory demand for the restoration of
+the two Burgundies to the crown, as they lapsed for want of male heirs.</p>
+
+<p>Of this there could be no doubt with respect to the duchy, which had been
+conveyed by John to Philip the Bold; but the county of the same name was
+capable of feminine holding, and if Mary had been in a condition to assert
+her claims, might have refused obedience to the king. Mary, however, was
+lonely in the midst of all that wealth. She had no disinterested guardian to
+apply to, and made only a feeble protest when the parliament of Burgundy,
+purchased or intimidated, recognised its feudal obligation, and transferred
+its allegiance to the French crown. Holland, however, and Flanders, and
+Artois, and large territories in Germany, and the disputed cities on the
+Somme, belonged to her still. If she had given her hand to some gallant
+soldier who would have defended her states, she might have aroused the
+chivalrous feelings of all the gentlemen in Europe on her behalf. But this
+she did not try, knowing too well, perhaps, that chivalrous feelings were
+limited to books of fiction.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/fp4.jpg" width="650" height="460" alt="">
+<p class="caption">THE ENTRANCE OF LOUIS XI INTO PARIS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The encumbered heiress wrote in her despair to Louis himself. Louis
+was her godfather, and she had no other friend. She sent four trusty counsellors
+to lay her case before him. She begged his protection, and made a
+confidential request that he would conduct all his correspondence with her
+through no one but these trusted friends. “You want, of course, to know
+what I intend to do,” said Louis, when he had read the letter on the day of
+audience; and the four envoys bowed. “I will marry my godchild Mary to
+my son, the dauphin. I will rule her states in their joint names, till she is
+old enough to do homage. I will take possession of the male fief at once,
+and if anyone opposes my decisions, I have forces enough to make my will
+obeyed.” There was no circumlocution here, and the ambassadors were
+silent with surprise. The dauphin was a sickly boy of eight years old, and
+their young mistress, as we have seen, was in the flower of her age. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>king, in return for the visit of the Burgundian envoys, sent an envoy of his
+own. His barber was a quick-witted, unprincipled adventurer, of the name
+of Oliver le Daim. He had come originally from Ghent, and was, of course,
+master of the Flemish tongue. This was the dignified emissary whom France
+despatched to the highest princess in Europe. He covered his original baseness
+with a pinchbeck title, and the barber took his northward way under
+the name of the count of Meulan. But the count of Meulan smelt dreadfully
+of the shop. He never could get the shaving-basin out of his countrymen’s
+sight; and at his first reception he behaved so unlike a royal ambassador
+that he was hissed by the audience, not without allusions to the propriety of
+throwing him out of the window. He was hustled downstairs, and was glad
+to slip out of his house and out of the town in the darkness of the night, and
+make his way back to his employer without having presented his letters of
+recall.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1477-1478 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis was delighted, for, while these things were going on at Ghent, he
+had succeeded with the messengers of poor Mary, and did not care if they
+had hanged the barber-ambassador on a lamp-post in the street. The trusty
+counsellors, won over by his address and protestations, surrendered Artois
+to his honourable keeping; and on their return were executed by the states
+of Flanders, in spite of the prayers and intercession of the princess. The
+accusation was not for having betrayed their mistress, but for having constituted
+themselves members of the council of Four, in whom Mary had told
+Louis she put all her confidence. She had told nobody else, and declared
+the innocence of her hapless friends. But Louis, with his usual generosity,
+had forwarded the letter in which his goddaughter made the fatal avowal,
+and the discovery was almost fatal to herself. The states were republican
+in tendency, and resolved to submit as little as possible to the governance of
+a woman. They tormented her with their advice and wearied her with their
+reclamations, till she fortunately escaped their further importunities by persuading
+them to consent to her marriage with Maximilian, the son of the
+emperor, the man to whom her father had resolved to give her in return for
+the title of king. Louis was quieted for a time by the fear of offending the
+emperor, but carried on more fiercely than ever his war against feudalism, as
+represented by the great nobility at home. Burgundy was gone—Artois
+was his own—Normandy had long been attached to the crown.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Brittany, uneasy at the rapid extirpation of his brethren,
+intrigued with England; but Louis intercepted the letters, convicted him by
+his own handwriting, and forced him to a treaty which rendered him utterly
+dependent. The duke had seen that a cloud was gathering from the increased
+religious fervour visible in the king. When a murder or a treachery was on
+hand, his activity in visiting shrines and vowing church ornaments became
+remarkable. People trembled when they saw the meanly dressed, slouch-gaited,
+sallow-faced old man travelling from altar to altar, and sticking his
+bonnet full of little images of saints, and pouring out flatteries and adulations
+to the statues of the Virgin. A tale of blood was sure to follow; and in
+1478 the wildest expectations of Paris were surpassed by the horror of one
+of his executions. There had been no such cold-blooded monster since the
+days of Tiberius. The duke de Nemours was representative of the great
+house of Armagnac, and was married to a princess of Anjou, first cousin of
+the king. A headstrong, discontented, and ambitious man, he had joined
+in the league of the Public Weal, and in many of the intrigues against the
+monarch since that time. Louis had taken no notice till he could secure his
+revenge. But two years before this, he had got him in his power, and kept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>the unfortunate man in chains. He was now tried for treason and condemned
+and executed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10f4"><a href="#endnote_10f">f</a></span> In after times it was related that the king had placed the
+children of the culprit beneath the scaffold, that a father’s blood might bathe
+their innocent heads. But this is only a fable of later invention that marks
+the reaction against the memory of Louis XI. “What is more certain and
+equally odious, however,” says Michelet,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10o"><a href="#endnote_10o">o</a></span> “is that one of the judges who
+were to receive the goods of the condemned, feeling insecure of the heritage
+unless he had the natural heir in his power, demanded to be given custody
+of the eldest son of Nemours. The king had the barbarity to deliver up the
+child, who promptly disappeared.” Moreover, the king suspended from office
+three counsellors who had not favoured the death penalty.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10j3"><a href="#endnote_10j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WAR WITH MAXIMILIAN</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1478-1479 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis’ pilgrimages and prayers must have increased in frequency shortly
+after this, for a tremendous thought had come into his head, and it would
+require a vast amount of saintly aid to make it tolerable to his subjects.
+This was no less than the trial for felony
+and treason of the deceased duke of Burgundy.
+A court was called, the culprit
+was summoned, barristers were appointed
+to support the accusation; his whole life
+was inquired into, his faults pointed out,
+and malicious antiquarians ascended to the
+actions of his ancestors; and the murder
+of the duke of Orleans, in the reign of
+Charles VI, was urged as an aggravation
+of his crimes. After so much eloquence
+and such convincing proofs, the verdict
+could not be doubtful. The duke of Burgundy
+was sure to be found guilty of the
+crimes laid to his charge, and his estates
+forfeited to the crown. Maximilian, the
+husband of Mary, took the alarm. He
+begged his father the emperor to interfere.
+He was afraid that action would follow the
+judgment, and tried at least to delay the sentence.
+The diet of the states of Germany
+was about to meet, and might take up the
+cause of their chiefs. Louis therefore
+allowed the trial to expire, and had merely
+the satisfaction of showing that a grand
+vassal was not safe from his insults and
+vengeance even after death. Yet the
+daughter and son-in-law of the insulted
+potentate could not be expected to remain
+satisfied under so insolent a proceeding.
+Maximilian collected his forces, and declared
+war against the king of France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10f5"><a href="#endnote_10f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p270.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Knight of the Fifteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>By uniting all his forces, Maximilian had assembled, at St. Omer, an army
+of about 27,400. On Sunday, the 25th of July, 1479, he reached Arques, waiting
+there three days, and on the Thursday following, the 29th of July, attacked
+and invested Thérouanne. The belief in his numerical superiority, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>desire to retrieve his repulses in Burgundy, and perhaps also the absence
+of the king, whom he knew to be occupied in Dijon, decided him to take
+the initiative. Besides, he could only keep his army together for a limited
+period. This was certainly the moment to try his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>It was really not until Saturday afternoon, the 7th of August, that the
+principal action took place. Des Querdes, with six hundred picked men,
+tried to surround the Flemish on his right. The Flemish men-at-arms
+hastened to defend the spot attacked. Soon the whole of the cavalry was
+engaged, and the struggle became serious. But the Flemish, separated
+from their infantry, were forced to give in and began to flee towards Aire,
+Thérouanne, and St. Omer. The French thought they had won the battle.
+Encouraged by this success Des Querdes hotly pursued the fugitives, urged
+on by the hope of capturing rich prizes. “Philip de Raverstein,” says the
+chronicle, “was wearing a mantle of cloth of gold, so that, mistaking him for
+Duke Maximilian himself, they pursued him to the gates of Aire, but paid
+dearly for their mistake.”</p>
+
+<p>The battle was far from being over, as Des Querdes imagined. Very
+few men-at-arms remained to support the French infantry, and Maximilian’s
+hope revived. He redoubled his efforts, aided by the Flemish soldiers and
+German crossbows. The French archers, already seeing that all exertions
+to break the enemy’s lines were fruitless, began to slacken their efforts and
+their discouragement was obvious. Just then, the lord de St. André arrived
+with the garrison from Thérouanne. He could still, in this critical moment,
+hope for victory. But instead of making for the thick of the combat the
+new arrivals threw themselves upon the enemy’s baggage and provisions,
+counting upon a rich spoil. The lords of Romont and Nassau, seeing the
+archers busy pillaging, fell upon them. In this tumult they threw them
+into disorder. Then Maximilian, whilst his cavalry was escaping, himself
+caused confusion in the ranks of the French by pursuing them with the small
+number of knights which he could still command, and remained master of
+the battle-field. But he was thus obliged to raise the siege of Thérouanne,
+and could only continue the campaign two months later.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XI was much upset when he heard of this defeat. Perhaps he
+regretted the absence of his experienced and proven chief, who had defended
+his frontier so well. Comines,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10c5"><a href="#endnote_10c">c</a></span> who was then returning from his mission in
+Italy, has preserved for us the portrait of the king: “I thought the king
+our master grown older and beginning to break up. However, he conducts
+his affairs with great common sense. I was with him when he received the
+news of the battle. He was very downcast, for he is not accustomed to defeat;
+it even seemed as if everything always happened to suit his pleasure. His
+common sense helped him in this hour of trouble. At first, he feared that
+his advantages had been lost; but when he knew the truth, he was patient
+and decided to act so that such things should not be undertaken without
+his knowledge again.”</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Louis XI was aware of how the men-at-arms, thinking only of
+making many prisoners, had lost a battle all but won, he ordered that all the
+prisoners and spoil should be collected, sold at auction, and the money
+equally divided amongst them all. This was returning to the times of
+Achilles, to the natural equality of the Homeric ages—an equality too often
+forgotten in barbarous centuries. Forbidding prisoners to be ransomed on
+the battle-field was already a great step gained; but again, the chiefs, sure
+under this system of having prisoners at a cheap rate after the battle,
+thought less of making any during the combat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1479-1483 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But the archduke, in his turn, had to endure some annoyances. The naval
+campaign had been disastrous for him. Through the care and perseverance of
+William de Casenove, known as the vice-admiral Coulon, France was in possession
+of her first real fleet. For several years past, vessels were being
+unceasingly constructed, their forms perfected, and their size and strength
+increased. From henceforth, great battles could be waged upon the sea, even
+against the strongest. Herring fishing had, for a long time, been one of
+the principal resources of wealth, and a precious means of existence to the
+northern nations. The French admiral, taking advantage of the fact that
+the fishermen of Zealand and Holland were bringing into port the fruit
+of their labours, went to meet them, attacked them boldly, and brought nearly
+their entire fleet into the Norman ports. In vain did the Dutch equip other
+vessels to serve as escorts to the fishing boats. Coulon attacked and dispersed
+them and brought back more prisoners. Thus the archduke and his
+followers were cut off at one and the same time both from the cereals of
+Prussia and from the fish they depended upon.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10k1"><a href="#endnote_10k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The defeat of Guinegate humbled the hopes of Louis. The war was no
+longer prosecuted with vigour. Even the death of Mary of Burgundy,
+which soon after took place, afforded him no opportunity of adding to his
+usurpations. A treaty, called the Treaty of Arras, was concluded between
+him and Maximilian, in December, 1482. Its stipulations were that the
+dauphin Charles should espouse Margaret of Austria, Maximilian’s daughter;
+and that France should acquire, as her dowry, the county of Artois, and that
+of Burgundy (or Franche-Comté), with other territories; those possessions
+reverting to Austria in case no heirs came of the marriage. Independently
+of these cessions, Louis acquired the duchy or province proper of Burgundy,
+as well as that of Picardy, as his share of the spoils of Charles the Bold. About
+the same time, on the death of the good king René, he inherited Provence and
+Anjou. René II of Lorraine made some efforts to establish a claim, but in
+vain. Good fortune never crowned political craft more completely than in
+the instance of Louis XI. That monarch had now brought all his favourite
+schemes to their completion: his nobles were humbled; his great rival was
+destroyed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10l"><a href="#endnote_10l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF LOUIS</h3>
+
+<p>In 1480 Louis XI had a first attack of apoplexy at the château de Montils-les-Tours,
+called Le Plessis because it had a fortress with many enclosures.
+Other attacks followed this one and warned him that his end was approaching.
+He undertook in 1482 the pilgrimage of St. Claude, but the progress
+of his malady obliged him to retire to Plessis, which he never left. Here
+he lingered for eighteen months, seen by no one, having in attendance only
+a small number of officers and servants, and seeking vainly to quiet by religious
+devotions his customary restlessness. His illness, while subduing his
+physical forces, only served to increase the activity of his spirit. The more
+he felt his power waning the more he wished to make others feel it and he
+became more tyrannical in proportion to his weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he lived in this seclusion in perpetual suspicion of everyone—not
+only the princes of the family, but even of the most obscure members of
+the household, though they had been chosen most carefully. His castle was
+a prison, well guarded, where he was bound, following the expression of
+Comines, by strange chains and enclosures, in fear of conspirators. Jealous
+of his power up to the last hour, “he had himself arrayed in rich vestments,
+such as had never been the custom before.” His isolation was such that he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>rarely saw even the dauphin, who was brought up far from him, in the château
+d’Amboise. Little by little his state of weakness effaced the king and
+left only the man. During this period he returned to himself, and perhaps
+to new thoughts; for he wished the relief of his people and a peace of six
+months at least. This was, also, the time of his terrors and superstitions,
+which have been so much exaggerated, for he retained his clearness of mind
+and gave proof of it even in the last days of his life. At times the king
+awoke in him, and made those around him feel that he was master; and he
+was more jealous than ever of his authority, suffering no one under any
+circumstances to question it.</p>
+
+<p>He overwhelmed the church with donations in order to obtain acquittal
+of his offences, just as the ancient Merovingian kings thought to expiate
+their crimes on their death-beds at a similar price. He surrounded himself
+with priests whose prayers he desired; he brought from Calabria the famous
+Francis of Paula (Paola), founder of the order of Minims, for which order
+he had built a monastery at Plessis. His doctor, Jacques Cottier, took
+a scandalous part in these liberal actions. He seemed to ask of heaven not
+so much the salvation of the soul as the prolongation of life. Many hold
+that this long agony, these physical and moral sufferings, were an expiation.
+Comines sees in it “a punishment which God had sent upon him in this
+world that he might suffer less in the next, and that those who succeeded
+him might have more pity on the people and punish them less than he had.”
+He died the 30th of August, 1483, in his sixty-first year.</p>
+
+<p>The opinions expressed by contemporaries on this king, whose character
+was so remarkable and strange, were various, but of uniform severity.
+Comines, whose opinion might be subject to question, as he was his minister,
+his confidant, and almost his accomplice, has praised but little his prodigious
+activity, his genius for intriguing, and his singular aptitude for the carrying
+on of dark schemes in all directions. John de Troyes, although recognising
+that the power of the country had been strengthened, the kingdom brought
+more into unity, and new provinces acquired, blames most strongly the means
+employed, the dilapidation of the finances, the ruin of the people, the excess
+of arbitrariness, and the injury to the morals of the public. If public opinion
+was mute during this reign, it does not follow that it was favourable
+to the king. Of course the evidence that has been preserved is too slight to
+be able to make a positive assertion, but the theatre and popular verse of the
+period show the fault-finding spirit that existed.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, Louis XI left the kingdom overwhelmed with burdens, the
+people unhappy, the prisons full, and discontent everywhere. He is
+reproached with always having had a large army and never having carried
+on a brilliant war; with not having respected the liberty of the church;
+with having ceaselessly violated justice; with having preferably employed
+corrupt agents who were justly detested; with having acted without definite
+plans; with being humble in misfortune and insolent in success, commencing
+enterprises which were never finished. He, however, knew so well how to
+be master; to bring the will of others into subjection to his own; to inspire
+in the world, and especially in those who approached him, the sentiments of
+obedience, fear, and almost admiration for his political genius; in fact, he
+had so well filled the position of king and of prince that, even after his death
+and when a strong reaction had set in against his reign, a certain terror continued
+to be attached to his name. It would seem that no one dared oppose
+him; Comines himself, who has drawn his portrait with such a master hand,
+has in this respect a singular discretion.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10e2"><a href="#endnote_10e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span></p>
+
+<p>Guizot, after quoting Comines<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10c6"><a href="#endnote_10c">c</a></span> and Duclos,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10m"><a href="#endnote_10m">m</a></span> adds: “I am more exacting
+than Comines and Duclos; I cannot consent to apply to Louis XI the
+words “liberal,” “virtuous,” “good”; he had neither greatness of soul,
+uprightness of character, nor kindness of heart; he was neither a great
+king nor a good king; but I hold to the last word of Duclos, ‘He was a
+king.’”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10i2"><a href="#endnote_10i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“He was a king.” That verdict, at least, no one will dispute; and for
+a concluding estimate of the character of his kingship, we perhaps cannot do
+better than to quote the judicious words of Martin:</p>
+
+<h3>MARTIN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XI</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1461-1483 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Utility was Louis’ sole rule; he never comprehended what power there
+is in justice. In everything he preferred, sometimes to his own disadvantage,
+the crooked line to the straight line, stratagem to force, suavity to courage,
+although when necessary he had the stubborn courage of an indomitable will.
+He was the incarnate reaction against the Middle Ages, against its morals
+and its ideality as well as its errors, against its liberties as well as its anarchy.
+The very devoutness of Louis, the only inconsistency in a character which
+would otherwise have been incredible, had no more of the grand, austere
+fanaticism of earlier days; it was a materialistic fetichism that went back
+beyond the Middle Ages to the time when the barbarian kings gave the
+saints of heaven half the credit for their enterprises and their aims. Except
+for this weakness Louis XI was the most illustrious disciple of that policy
+of which the contemporary Italian despots gave the example and the theory of
+which Macchiavelli was later to set forth and give his name to. The usurper
+of the duchy of Milan, the famous Francesco Sforza, had been Louis XI’s
+master and model. Italian education invaded France earlier in politics than
+in fine arts.</p>
+
+<p>There was one essential distinction between Louis and his masters. He
+was like them in his means, but different in his end. These tyrants on the
+other side of the Alps had only a personal, or at best a family end, while
+Louis pursued a common end. He was the head of a real political society,
+the head of a nation. On this point, and on this alone, he had a conscience.
+He had a strong instinct for the future and wished to leave behind a work
+that would endure after him. This bad man was not a bad Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p>His reign, so troublous, so oppressive, so unhappy for the people, had
+accomplished wonderful things for the unity of the French nation. It gave
+to France, Picardy from the sources of the Oise to Burgundy, Provence,
+Anjou, Maine, Barrois, and Roussillon; and at least a provisional title to
+Artois and Franche-Comté. It upheld the power of France to the Pyrenees
+on the west, to the Jura on the east, and to the maritime Alps, and it powerfully
+advanced the important work of establishing natural frontiers. It had
+subordinated the power of great and petty lords alike and had placed under
+the control of the crown a great military force. It had favoured the development
+of the middle classes and of the industrial and commercial forces of the
+country. But if the growth of national power under him was immense, if
+social progress was in certain respects incontestable, it is equally certain that
+despotism made a like progress. The instruments of autocracy were fortified
+and perfected by him, and under him the religion of force and of strategy,
+“the religion of success” as Michelet terms it, everywhere dethroned the
+religion of duty and of right; nor is it possible to stifle morality everywhere
+in the political world without profoundly altering the ethics of private life.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>The aurora of a brilliant intellectual dawn was now appearing above the
+horizon; active minds turn eagerly towards the new light; but France was
+not in a healthy moral condition to receive the new lessons of the Renaissance.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10j4"><a href="#endnote_10j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS’ INFLUENCE ON CIVILISATION</h3>
+
+<p>It must not be overlooked, however, that Louis had a powerful influence
+upon his time in other directions than that of mere statecraft. His mind
+was ever receptive to any novelty that did not contradict his authority. He
+favoured literature and science; in particular the healing art made progress
+under the valetudinarian king. In surgery there was at least one great
+conquest; the operation of lithotomy was performed for the first time under
+the authorisation of the king, upon a condemned criminal, who recovered
+and was granted his life. Louis also came to some extent under the influence
+of the learned Greeks, who after the overthrow of Constantinople, in 1453,
+scattered over western Europe. Several of these were received at the
+French court. The king took a certain interest also in the famous discussion
+between the nominalists and the realists which so long distracted the
+philosophical world. Acting, it is supposed, under the advice of his confessor,
+Louis in 1474 took the part of the nominalists and prohibited the works
+of Ockam, Buridan, and other realists; though three years later the prohibition
+was removed. Louis showed himself equally receptive in regard to
+the new art of printing. As early as 1469 three exponents of the wonderful
+new method of book-making appeared in Paris in answer to the summons of
+William Fichet, rector of the university, and began their work with the royal
+sanction. Before the close of Louis’ reign many books had been printed in
+Paris as well as in several of the other large cities of France. The chronicles
+of St. Denis were published in 1476, together with numerous other religious
+and classical works. A translation of the Bible appeared in 1477. From
+this time books multiplied so rapidly that the contemporary poets assure us
+with hyperbolic enthusiasm that more books are produced from day to day
+than formerly could be written in an entire year.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10j5"><a href="#endnote_10j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The catholicity of interest which enabled Louis thus in the midst of his
+political activities to become to so considerable an extent a patron of the
+sciences and arts, furnishes conclusive evidence of the fulness of his mental
+equipment. It remains to call attention to an even more important contribution
+made by Louis to the amenities of civilisation. This was in the matter
+of the establishment of government posts. Here he was an innovator not
+merely for France but for the modern world; and there have been those
+enthusiasts who would claim for this feat a place among the three greatest
+achievements of the fifteenth century—the other two being the invention
+of printing and the discovery of America. Whatever may be thought of
+this estimate, there is no question that the creation of the postal service was
+a most important innovation, and it seems equally little in question that
+Louis XI was the innovator.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10n1"><a href="#endnote_10n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Establishment of Posts in France</i></h4>
+
+<p>Certain ancient writers have attributed Louis’ motives in creating the
+posts to his paternal solicitude. They say “Louis XI, being anxious about
+the illness of the dauphin, from whom he was separated, established the posts
+in order to be informed at almost every moment of the hope or fear which
+his condition inspired.” This is most improbable, given Louis XI’s character,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>but it can readily be admitted that his spirit of dissimulation might
+easily have prompted him to invent and circulate a fable of this kind, in
+order to distract attention from the end which he really had in view. His
+restless life, his disputes with his greater vassals, particularly with the duke
+of Burgundy, his continual intrigues with the principal courts of Europe, at
+which he had secret agents, suffice to explain the interest he had in establishing
+posts, by means of which he could satisfy at once his suspicious mind
+and his ambitious schemes. In character Louis XI’s institution resembles
+the ancient posts, especially the Roman (<i>cursus publicus</i>). Louis’ only object
+was to facilitate the exercise of his royal power and to strengthen his
+authority at the time when the league of the Public Weal was about to be
+founded with the object of dismembering his kingdom. Therefore it was
+greatly to his interest to be rapidly informed of all the unforeseen events
+which might arise. Is it necessary to add that it never entered into the
+thoughts of Louis XI to institute a public service in his kingdom by which
+private individuals might profit in any way?</p>
+
+<p>The exact date when the posts began to be placed along the high-roads is
+not known. According to Nicholas de la Mare even the name of the first
+postmaster-general is not given; but, says he, as Louis XI’s intention was
+to confide this office to a person of credit, intelligent and capable, it was
+probably given to the grand equerry of France, whose functions had much
+more in common with the new charge; the grand equerry had, it is true,
+the king’s messengers already under his orders. The same author says, in
+another passage, that the king’s messengers became so numerous that it was
+found necessary to create a controller of king’s messengers (edict of October,
+1479). In the absence of proofs to the contrary, we believe that it was
+Robert Paon who, in October, 1479, received the double charge of postmaster-general
+of foot runners and of controller of king’s messengers, and was thus
+invested with supreme authority over the growing institution.</p>
+
+<p>The runners or king’s messengers were, properly speaking, cabinet messengers,
+by which denomination they were afterwards known. They followed
+the court and had to be always in readiness to carry the king’s
+despatches. They already existed previous to the decree of 1464, and it is
+to be supposed that the towns or villages that they passed on their route
+were bound to provide them with relays of horses. This we understand
+from the statute of St. Louis, of December 13th, 1254, which we have already
+quoted, and from a statute of Philip V, surnamed the Tall, of February 11th,
+1318, which gives the royal couriers the qualification of king’s messengers
+(<i>chevaucheurs</i>). The edict of 1464 officially sanctioned the existence of the
+couriers or messengers and made them into a regular and definite body.
+Their number, fixed at first at 230, had at the death of Louis XI risen to
+234. But it is very probable that this number comprised the officers who
+kept horses for the service of the king, or <i>maîtres coureurs</i>, that is to say
+king’s messengers who went by the name of <i>chevaucheurs</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>maîtres coureurs</i> were established at distances of four leagues along
+the high-roads, keeping four or five horses of light build and suited to go at
+a gallop; they received, besides their wages, a fee for each horse which they
+supplied to people holding a passport from the king with the seal of the
+postmaster-general. They were also, as we have said, qualified as king’s
+messengers, because they were not only charged with keeping horses, but
+also with carrying letters and parcels of the king, the governors, the lord-lieutenants
+of the provinces, and other superior officers. It is not probable,
+however, that the <i>maîtres coureurs</i> actually carried the king’s despatches
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>from post to post, as it is certain that the court despatches were conveyed
+by special messengers or <i>coureurs de cabinet</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Later on the king’s messengers lost the title of <i>chevaucheurs</i>, which
+placed them in a relatively inferior position to the <i>coureurs de cabinet</i>, but
+what they lost in dignity they gained in profits. At first the new institution
+profited only the king, his commissioners in the provinces, or personages
+accredited to foreign courts. Even the terms of the edict, which defined
+the attributes of the postmaster-general, have from the outset given a
+political character to this high post.</p>
+
+<p>The postal organisation created by Louis XI comprised two distinct
+postal systems—a system of relays, embracing the most important towns
+and served by the king’s messengers on horseback; a secondary postal system,
+branching off at certain points from the former and including secondary
+localities. The latter system was covered by messengers “sworn and
+received in the court of parliament.”</p>
+
+<p>This organisation is justly considered as having been the starting point
+of the modern post, but the state did not as yet look upon itself as being the
+servant of the public. Private letters continued to be transported almost
+exclusively by university messengers. But these, even in the time of Louis
+XI, were in competition with the royal messengers already in existence at
+that time, as is testified by the numerous inquiries and proceedings relating
+to disputes of this nature mentioned in the voluminous collection of manuscripts
+known as the <i>de Toisy</i>, which is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. These
+disputes were prolonged in the sequel with a vivacity which increased as the
+interests engaged became more considerable by reason of the incessant
+progress of circulation and correspondence.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10n2"><a href="#endnote_10n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-10.jpg" width="200" height="400" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> [In reality, Louis only sanctioned what was already lost. He acceded to conditions as they
+were, awaiting his time to overthrow them. The peace was a part of his political game. Needless
+to say he had no scruples as to the carrying out of any terms of the treaty that could advantageously
+be avoided.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> [Enguerrand de Monstrelet<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10q2"><a href="#endnote_10q">q</a></span> ends his famous chronicle with an account of the death of the
+duke of Burgundy. He says: “On the 12th day of June, in the year 1467, the noble duke Philip
+of Burgundy was seized with a grievous malady, which continued unabated until Monday, the 15th,
+when he rendered his soul to God, between nine and ten o’clock at night. When he perceived,
+on the preceding day, that he was growing worse, he sent for his son, the count de Charolais,
+then at Ghent, who hastened to him with all speed; and on his arrival, about mid-day of the
+Monday, at the duke’s palace in Bruges, he went instantly to the chamber where the duke lay
+sick in bed, but found him speechless. He cast himself on his knees at the bedside, and, with
+many tears, begged his blessing, and that, if he had ever done anything to offend him, he would
+pardon him. The confessor, who stood at the bedside, admonished the duke, if he could not
+speak at least to show some sign of his good will. At this admonition, the good duke kindly
+opened his eyes, took his son’s hand, and squeezed it tenderly, as a sign of his pardon and his
+blessing. The count, like an affectionate child, never quitted the duke’s bed until he had given
+up the ghost. May God, out of his mercy, receive his soul, pardon his transgressions, and admit
+him into Paradise!”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> [Legeay,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10k2"><a href="#endnote_10k">k</a></span> in his <i>Histoire de Louis XI, son siècle, ses exploits, etc.</i>, defends Louis against
+the charge of having incited the Liègeois to revolt, in opposition to most of the other French
+historians.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> [King Charles the Simple. He died in prison at Péronne in 929.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> [“As soon as the king saw the duke enter his chamber, he could not conceal his fear, and
+said to the duke, ‘My brother, am I not safe in your house and in your country?’ And the
+duke answered, ‘Yes, sire; and so safe that if I saw an arrow coming towards you, I would put
+myself in front to shield you.’ And the king said to him, ‘I thank you for your good will, and
+will go whither I have promised you; but I pray you that peace may be from this time sworn
+between us.’”—<span class="smcap">Olivier de la Marche.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_10h"><a href="#endnote_10h">h</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-11.jpg" width="500" height="225" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI. CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII—THE INVASION OF ITALY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>There never was a period of history in which the efforts of individual
+minds were more important in their effects than the present. The inventions
+of one or two artisans on the banks of the Rhine presented
+mankind with the art of printing; an idea, a theory, springing up in
+the manly mind of Columbus, led to the discovery of another hemisphere;
+a whim conceived by Charles VIII, who, from hearing tales
+of Cæsar and Charlemagne, suddenly became desirous of turning conqueror,
+had more effect on the destinies of Europe than all those occult
+causes of human progress which the philosopher of history loves to
+fathom.—<span class="smcap">Crowe.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11c1"><a href="#endnote_11c">c</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>CHARLES VIII (1483-1497 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1483-1515 A.D.]</div>
+
+<p>We now enter the epoch when, according to the usual computations of
+modern writers, the Middle Ages are passing away and modern times are
+being ushered in. Just at the time when Charles VIII is preparing to
+establish a new order of things in Europe by invading Italy, Columbus is
+sailing out into the western seas to discover the New World. This is the
+age when the new forces of the Renaissance are making themselves felt in
+Italy, and, to a less extent, all over Christendom. It is the age of Lorenzo
+de’ Medici in Florence, and of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; of
+Alexander VI, the Borgia, and of Savonarola; of Ferdinand and Isabella in
+Spain; and of Edward V and Henry VII in England. It is an age of new
+ideas, an age of discovery. The seat of the new culture is Italy; the
+centres from which the explorers start out in quest of new worlds are Spain
+and Portugal. France has little share in either of these movements; but she
+shares with the other peoples a spirit of unrest; and this spirit is to
+manifest itself in the attempt of Charles VIII—Charles the Little as
+Brantôme<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11b"><a href="#endnote_11b">b</a></span> calls him—and his immediate successors to make the conquest
+of Italy. A fatal ambition that! It will cost France the lives of two
+millions of her best men; it will gain her little else than bitter experiences.
+But the vain ambition of a selfish prince never yet learned to count the
+cost; and in this case it must be admitted that the dominant spirit of
+the people is in full accord with the reckless ambition of the kings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span></p>
+
+<p>This idea of extending the domain of France was the one thought that
+dominated the life of Charles VIII, after he came to maturity. Yet the
+first years of his reign were devoted to a very different purpose. During
+these earlier years, as we shall see, the weakly youth was under the control
+of his sister Anne de Beaujeu, who had inherited many of the traits of
+Louis XI, and who carried forward the policy of that crafty monarch to its
+logical conclusion when she succeeded in bringing the last of the great
+feudal fiefs under full control of the crown, through the marriage of her
+brother Charles with Anne of Brittany. Thus the earlier years of Charles
+VIII must be regarded, thanks to the influence of his sister, as continuing
+and perfecting that policy of the unification of France which Louis XI had
+carried forward so efficiently. The events of the reign, therefore, divide
+themselves into two sharply defined periods. The first of these, during which
+Charles though nominally king is really subordinate to the influence of his
+sister, will now claim our attention.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Rule of Anne de Beaujeu</i></h4>
+
+<p>Charles VIII, born June 30th, 1470, had entered his fourteenth year
+when his father died, and he was consequently of age by the terms of the
+famous ordinance of Charles V: it was therefore not necessary to establish
+a regency. But the government of the realm and the direction of council
+had been given to the first occupant, as the struggle which was to begin
+between the ambitions of the rivals could not be foreseen. The king, feeble
+of body, gave no hint of precocious talents; his minority in fact if not in law
+seemed as if it should be prolonged beyond the usual term.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1483-1484 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The true danger to the state lay less in public unrest, so easily appeased
+by the reforms partially foreseen and indicated by Louis XI himself, than
+in the pretensions of the princes of the blood to take again their baleful
+power which had been crushed under Louis XI. The late king, in dying,
+had confided his son and his authority to his daughter Anne and his son-in-law
+Peter de Bourbon, sire de Beaujeu. His widow, Charlotte of Savoy,
+trembling still at the memory of her tyrannical spouse, made no objection to
+this exclusion. She survived Louis only a few months. Anne of France
+had laboured in advance to gain the confidence of the young king, whom
+she inspired with a timid deference, and had attached to herself the greater
+part of the councillors as well as the leaders and servitors of Louis XI. Anne,
+who was then twenty-two years old, was the only one of the children of
+Louis XI who resembled him. She had the tenacity, the dissimulation, and
+the iron will of the late king, who had once said of her with his usual caustic
+manner that she was “the least foolish of women, since there were no wise
+women.” She proved that there was at least one, since she continued with
+admirable sagacity and energy all that was national in the plans of Louis XI.
+“She would have been worthy of the throne by her prudence and courage,
+if nature had not denied to her the sex upon which empire devolves.” This
+opinion of a contemporary is also that of posterity. Anne’s husband, a man
+of ripe age, of upright judgment, and a certain practical capacity, was but
+the first and most useful instrument of his wife. Through him she hoped
+to conciliate the other princes of the house of Bourbon, the duke de Bourbon
+and the archbishop of Lyons, brothers of the sire de Beaujeu; the old count
+de Montpensier, their uncle; the count de Vendôme and his son, their
+cousins; and the admiral de Bourbon, their bastard brother. The natural
+rival of Anne and her husband was the other son-in-law of Louis XI, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>first prince of the blood, the duke Louis of Orleans, whose birth gave him the
+place of honour in the council. The name of Orleans awakened sad memories.
+But Duke Louis was hardly twenty-one years of age; repressed during
+the whole of his first years under the iron hand of his terrible father-in-law,
+bound from his infancy to a woman worthy of esteem for her gentleness and
+kindness, but whose exterior repulsed every other sentiment, it was not
+ambition to which he devoted the first days of his liberty. He emancipated
+himself more like a schoolboy than a prince, and broke rein only to throw himself
+body and soul into a whirl of pleasure. Women, gambling, tournaments,
+horses, the pleasures of the table, left him little inclination for the
+cares of politics. He preferred courting women, breaking lances, jumping
+ditches “fifteen feet wide,” to discussing royal edicts. Meanwhile he shared
+with the Bourbons the semblance of power, and his cousin, Dunois, son and
+heritor of the great count de Dunois, a most able man, and accustomed to
+diplomatic intrigues, spared nothing to draw him in the direction of duty.
+All who remained of the members and allies of the royal house had
+hastened to sit in council, and the first letters and edicts of Charles VIII
+are signed by several among them.</p>
+
+<p>Some acts of indispensable reparation and amends signalised the beginning
+of the new régime. All who had suffered, all who had been offended,
+oppressed, justly or unjustly, under the late king—that is to say, nearly everyone
+in the kingdom—urgently demanded justice. The people clamoured
+loudly for the abolition of duties, and the punishment of the “wicked councillors”
+of Louis XI. A host of great noblemen, the count du Perche, the
+children of the duke de Nemours, the count de Bresse, the brother of the last
+count d’Armagnac, the prince of Orange, and very many others asked, some
+of them liberty, others restitution of property which had been confiscated.
+The duke, René de Lorraine, came in his turn to reclaim the duchy of Bar,
+and the county of Provence as the heritage of his mother. Claims threatened
+to go very far.</p>
+
+<p>From the 22nd of September, all alienations of the royal domain, made
+for the benefit of either the church or private individuals, were revoked. The
+necessity for that measure could not be contested. The count du Perche was
+liberated from the cruel prison where he languished, and recovered the duchy
+of Alençon, confiscated but lately in spite of the just title of his father. The
+duke John de Bourbon, who had endured many affronts and vexations from
+Louis XI during the last years, was created lieutenant-general of the realm,
+and invested with the office of constable, vacant since the death of the
+count of Saint-Pol. This was the most powerful of the princes of the blood,
+by reason of the extent of his domains, but his infirmities and love of repose
+made him hardly equal to active participation in the government; his sister-in-law
+asked of him only the support of his name. The count de Dunois
+acquired a large pension with the governorship of Dauphiné, while the duke
+of Orleans became lieutenant-general of the Île-de-France, Picardy, and
+Champagne. The prince of Orange and the count de Bresse were again put
+in possession of their lands. This was only justice—at least to the prince of
+Orange, since the Treaty of Arras had stipulated reciprocal amnesty for
+all events relating to the war of the Burgundian Succession. The duke René
+of Lorraine, thanks to the support of the duke de Bourbon and Madame de
+Beaujeu, who expected to make use of the hero of Nancy against the princes
+of Orleans, obtained the restitution of Barrois, without re-embursement of
+the sums for which the king held Bar in pledge, a company of one hundred
+lancers, and 3,600 francs annually for four years, “during which time the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>claims of the count of Provence should be investigated.” Madame Anne did
+not intend to go further than the concession of Barrois and wished only to
+gain time in regard to Provence. According to feudal law, the pretensions
+of René were justified: female succession was so thoroughly admitted in
+Provence that two women had successively brought this county into the two
+houses of Anjou; but another law, more conformable to reason and the nature
+of things, tending to be substituted in place of feudal law, was that of French
+nationality recognised and accepted by Provence.</p>
+
+<p>These favours accorded to the princes were accompanied by harsh measures
+against the most odious of the ministers of the former reign. Oliver le
+Dain, count de Meulan, was sacrificed to popular vindictiveness, and Doyat
+to the resentment of the duke de Bourbon, whose follower he had been, and
+whom he had gravely offended. Oliver was condemned to death for various
+crimes, among others for having secretly killed a prisoner whose wife had
+sacrificed her honour to him as the price of her husband’s life; the barber
+count de Meulan was hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, and his properties
+were given to the duke of Orleans. Doyat was beaten with rods at the
+pillory of the market-place, and lost both his ears, after having had his
+tongue pierced by a hot iron—punishment reserved for blasphemers and
+calumniators. One of his ears was cut off at Paris, the other at Montferrand,
+where he had filled the office of royal bailiff. The physician Coitier was
+relieved from the loss of his lands and castles by a ransom of 50,000 crowns.</p>
+
+<p>Public sentiment demanded more than the punishment of a few wretches.
+The princes, divided among themselves, little known to the people, who had
+for them hardly any affection or fear, felt the impossibility of maintaining
+the despotic rule of Louis XI, and the necessity of having recourse to a
+national authority to obtain the obedience of the masses. The people would
+not have failed to resist universally the continuation of arbitrary taxation.
+This law reacted with irresistible force against the existing tyranny: a thousand
+voices repeated that “no king nor lord had the power to levy one denier
+on his subjects and on the revenues of his domain without the concession and
+consent of the people.” Comines, the admirer of Louis XI, devotes a whole
+chapter to the discussion of this principle, which he declares not only equitable
+but essential to the prosperity of states, and regrets profoundly that the
+late king had not respected it. “In England,” said he, “the kings can
+undertake no great enterprise, nor levy any subsidies without assembling
+parliament, which equals the three estates, and which is a just and holy
+thing.” And he declares that “men who enjoy credit and authority without
+in the least meriting them” are the only ones who fear the great assemblies,
+since they will through them be known for the little they are worth.
+The king’s council, on the proposition of the duke of Orleans, decided the
+convocation of the states-general at Tours, for the 5th of January, 1484, in
+spite of the outcries of some persons “of small importance, and little virtue,
+who said it was a crime of <i>lèse majesté</i> to talk of assembling the estates, and
+would tend to diminish the authority of the king.” The friends of “Madame”
+as Anne of France was called, and those of the duke of Orleans, were agreed
+upon that important question. Each of the two parties which began to outline
+itself in the council hoped for the assistance of the estates against the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The record of state of 1484, drawn up by one of the most trustworthy
+members of the order of the clergy, Jean Masselin, official of the archbishopric
+of Rouen, has been preserved to us. It is the most explicit account we
+possess of the national assemblies of France, before the sixteenth century.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>It is of great interest, and it preserves for us the memory of most important
+incidents. Nevertheless the states of 1484 became less remarkable for their
+actions than for their mode of action, that is, innovations practised in the
+system of election. Louis XI, in 1468, had already overturned the old form
+of the estates, but without substituting definitely a new form in the place of
+the old. The daughter of Louis XI, and the members of the council who
+nursed the project of the late king in the midst of a feudal reaction, effaced
+from the elections all trace of feudality, completing and regulating the work
+of Louis. Before Louis XI, the estates were composed only of the immediate
+feudatories of the king—prelates, barons, representatives of the <i>bonnes villes</i>,
+and the ecclesiastical or lay committees held by the crown.</p>
+
+<p>In the estates of 1484 the elections were made after a uniform regulation,
+by bailiwicks and <i>sénéchaussées</i>, by purely administrative divisions; the
+electors were convoked not as feudatories of the king, but as subjects of
+the realm; and for the first time the peasants, at least the free peasants, were
+called upon to take part in operations of first degree; they sent delegates from
+the villages to the lesser bailiwicks or provostships, where the electors of the
+third degree were chosen, who in the head-quarters of the bailiwick elected
+the deputies of the third estate. The social importance of such a change
+needs no commentary. There is now a real third estate, embracing the
+whole body of the people. The peasant is no longer the chattel of the lord
+of the manor, the appendix of the fief; he is the equal of the citizen, he is a
+member of the third estate.</p>
+
+<p>This is not all; the same spirit of unity and equality, at least relative, is
+manifested in the regulation applied to the two privileged orders. There,
+all vote directly and not by triple degree; and not only do the lower clergy
+elect representatives, but the bishops are admitted to the estates only when
+they have the votes of the ecclesiastical order, and not by virtue of their
+episcopal title. In the nobility as well, no great baron is member of the
+estates unless elected by the noblemen. The three orders, under this régime,
+appear like three superimposed nations, in which equality reigns. It is here
+the great difference appears between the democratic spirit of France and the
+aristocratic spirit of England.</p>
+
+<p>The only exceptions to the new rules were those provinces which were
+administered by annual provincial estates, and which continued to choose
+their deputies in their provincial estates, without resorting to popular assemblies
+of three degrees. This is true at least of Languedoc, and resulted, as a
+rule, in a veritable political inferiority of those countries formerly so much
+in advance of the others, their provincial estates retaining an oligarchical
+character in presence of a transformation wholly democratic.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11g1"><a href="#endnote_11g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The king’s minority and the factions at court seemed no unfavourable
+omens for liberty. But a scheme was artfully contrived which had the most
+direct tendency to break the force of a popular assembly. The deputies
+were classed in six nations, who debated in separate chambers, and consulted
+each other only upon the result of their respective deliberations. It was easy
+for the court to foment the jealousies natural to such a partition. Two
+nations, the Norman and the Burgundian, asserted that the right of providing
+for the regency devolved, in the king’s minority, upon the states-general;
+a claim of great boldness, and certainly not much founded upon precedent.
+In virtue of this, they proposed to form a council, not only of the princes,
+but of certain deputies to be elected by the six nations who composed the
+states. But the other four, those of Paris, Aquitaine, Languedoc, and
+Languedoïl (which last comprised the central provinces), rejected this plan,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>from which the two former ultimately desisted, and the choice of councillors
+was left to the princes.</p>
+
+<p>A firmer and more unanimous spirit was displayed upon the subject of
+public reformation. The tyranny of Louis XI had been so unbounded
+that all ranks agreed in calling for redress, and the new governors were
+desirous at least, by punishing his favourites, to show their inclination
+towards a change of system. They were very far, however, from approving
+the propositions of the states-general. These went to points which no
+court can bear to feel touched, though there is seldom any other mode of
+redressing public abuses—the profuse expense of the royal household, the
+number of pensions and improvident grants, the excessive establishment of
+troops. The states explicitly demanded that the taille and all other arbitrary
+imposts should be abolished; and that from thenceforward, “according
+to the natural liberty of France,” no tax should be levied in the kingdom
+without the consent of the states. It was with great difficulty, and through
+the skilful management of the court, that they consented to the collection
+of the taxes payable in the time of Charles VII, with the addition of one-fourth,
+as a gift to the king upon his accession. This subsidy they declare
+to be granted “by way of gift and concession, and not otherwise, and so as
+no one should from thenceforward call it a tax, but a gift and concession.”
+And this was only to be in force for two years, after which they stipulated
+that another meeting should be convoked. But it was little likely that the
+government would encounter such a risk; and the princes, whose factious
+views the states had by no means seconded, felt no temptation to urge again
+their convocation. No assembly in the annals of France seems, notwithstanding
+some party selfishness arising out of the division into nations, to have
+conducted itself with so much public spirit and moderation; nor had that
+country perhaps ever so fair a prospect of establishing a legitimate constitution.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11j"><a href="#endnote_11j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The most serious question which the estates had to determine was that of
+regulating the composition of the council and deciding to whom the care
+and education of the king should be confided. The deputies would have
+liked to conciliate the princes without clashing with them. However, in the
+course of examining the various projects submitted to them, they were led
+to inquire if the states-general were invested with the constituent power.
+The opinion that this was so was shared by the most eminent members of
+the assembly, especially by those belonging to the order of the clergy, and
+had for interpreter an eloquent deputy of the Burgundian nobility, the sire
+de la Roche. He demonstrated that no absolute, fundamental rule for
+the administration of the kingdom during the minority or childhood of the
+king existed in France; that neither was the right of the princes in such
+circumstances in any way definite or precise. In consequence he maintained
+that it was for the nation, that is for the estates, to constitute the
+government in moments of crisis. He presented a theoretical and philosophic
+analysis of the principle of the sovereignty such as might be laid
+down in the schools; then he passed in review the history of preceding
+assemblies and showed that several of them, called together under exceptional
+circumstances, had exercised a genuine constituent power.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the weight of this justly celebrated speech, the estates shrank
+from the danger of entering into a struggle with the council and the princes.
+They preferred to attempt an amiable conciliation of the different claims.
+It was not easy to come to an understanding even on this basis; for each
+day brought new difficulties. “It was,” says Masselin, “the seven-headed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span>hydra. Cut one and two grow in its place.” Finally it was agreed that
+the duke of Orleans should have the first place at the council and the presidency
+in the young king’s absence; the duke de Bourbon and the sire de
+Beaujeu the second and third places; that the other princes of the blood
+should have the right to take their seats there after them; that all the
+existing councillors should be retained and that twelve new councillors,
+taken from the six bureaux of the estates, should be added to them.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11k1"><a href="#endnote_11k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Struggle with the Duke of Orleans</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1484-1488 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The discontent of the duke of Orleans was not appeased by the decision
+of the states. He was a handsome, frank, amiable man, not naturally
+inclined to be turbulent; but as first prince of the blood, and heir presumptive
+to the throne, it was derogatory to his pride and spirit to remain tranquil,
+while deprived of all influence by a woman. Dunois, son of the famous
+bastard of Orleans, was his chief friend and councillor—a man as fond
+of intrigue, apparently, as his stout sire had been of battle. The dukes of
+Lorraine and Bourbon seemed at first inclined to join him, but both were
+won over by the lady Anne; Bourbon, the elder brother of the lord of Beaujeu,
+being made constable. Orleans tried every expedient to shake the
+authority of the king’s sister. He sought to make himself popular in the
+capital, and to bring its citizens to declare in his favour. He tried the parliament
+also; but its president, La Vaquerie, replied that it was not their
+interest or duty to interfere in a private struggle for power. Orleans was
+soon after closely pressed by La Trémouille at the head of a superior army,
+and obliged to make submission; Dunois being banished to Asti, a town in
+Italy which the duke of Orleans inherited from his grandmother, Valentine
+of Milan.</p>
+
+<p>Such a forced submission could not conduce to a lasting peace. Dunois
+soon afterwards returned from exile. There was a plot for carrying off the
+king, which failed, and the duke of Orleans was obliged to take refuge in
+Brittany. The gay and fascinating manners of the French prince entirely
+won the good will of Francis, the reigning duke. He was without male
+heirs; and his daughter, as inheritor of the duchy, was a rich prize for
+an ambitious prince. It is said that the duke of Orleans became a suitor
+for the hand of Anne, and that Duke Francis favoured his pretensions.<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
+But the native nobles of the province were jealous of the duke of Orleans
+and of his influence with their prince. They leagued with the lady of Beaujeu
+against both; and a French army, supported by a great body of Bretons,
+soon after besieged the dukes of Brittany and Orleans in Nantes. There
+were two other pretenders to the hand of the heiress of Brittany: the sire
+d’Albret, a rich lord of Gascony, into whose family the crown of Navarre had
+passed from that of Fox. The duke of Orleans, in prosecuting his own suit,
+affected to support this competitor. The other was Maximilian, king of the
+Romans. A timely succour sent by this prince obliged the French to raise
+the siege of Nantes; and the lady of Beaujeu betraying a disposition to
+conquer the duchy, and to garrison and appropriate its towns, the Bretons
+became suspicious, abandoned her, and resumed their allegiance to the duke.
+The war nevertheless continued. The troops on both sides met at St. Aubin,
+and a battle ensued. The French were commanded by La Trémouille; the
+prince of Orange and duke of Orleans led on the Bretons. The French
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>gendarmerie, having routed the cavalry opposed to them, took the Bretons in
+flank and rear, and routed them. The duke of Orleans and the prince of
+Orange were both taken prisoners. They were startled to perceive a confessor
+enter their tent in the evening. La Trémouille, who saw and enjoyed their
+consternation, reassured them by observing that it was only for the inferior
+rebels to clear their consciences and prepare for death.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1488-1491 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>An accommodation followed this defeat. The duke of Brittany made
+submissions, and survived but a short time. He was the last duke of the
+province, which now descended to his daughter Anne. There was another
+sister, who, as she died soon after, need not be more than mentioned.
+Affairs were now as unsettled as ever. The count d’Albret, seconded by a
+strong party of Bretons, who above all things aimed at the independence of
+their duchy, pushed his suit with the young heiress. The addresses of this
+aged noble could not be agreeable to a
+princess of fourteen. The duke of
+Orleans, the object of her predilection,
+was in prison. The armies of France
+were invading the duchy, and it behoved
+her to espouse a prince capable
+of defending her dominions. The resolution
+was taken that she should be
+married to Maximilian, king of the
+Romans, and the ceremony was accordingly
+performed by proxy; the archduke’s
+ambassador, to conclude it,
+putting a naked leg into the couch of
+the young duchess. Hitherto the aim
+of king Charles and his regent sister
+had been to conquer the duchy by
+force of arms, laying claim to it as a
+male fief. Charles had been long
+betrothed to Margaret of Austria, Maximilian’s
+daughter, who was then receiving
+her education in the French court,
+and awaiting the age of nubility. The
+stubbornness of the Bretons, however,
+made the lady of Beaujeu despair of
+her project. The ever-ready Dunois, in order to make his own peace and
+procure the liberty of the duke of Orleans, proposed that Charles should
+espouse the young duchess himself, and thus unite Brittany to the kingdom.
+Charles and his sister instantly entered into this scheme. The king, with a
+kingly generosity, began by setting the duke of Orleans, his secret rival, at
+liberty. This the monarch did without consulting his sister; nor was his
+generosity abused, for the duke remained ever after faithful to him, and even
+seconded his purpose of espousing Anne. Dunois, on his side, laboured to
+render the duchess less hostile to France. Anne still held with all the faithfulness
+of a wife to Maximilian, to whom she was nominally betrothed. An
+ostensible act of compulsion was deemed requisite to overcome her reluctance.
+A royal army besieged her in Rennes. One of the conditions of the
+capitulation was that she should espouse the king of France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11c2"><a href="#endnote_11c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p285.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Charles VIII</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French engraving)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The marriage festivities which united Brittany to France took place at
+Langeais-Touraine. The pope declared the former marriage of Anne and
+Maximilian null and void, and the new queen was conducted to Paris to be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>crowned. All these negotiations took place in the greatest secrecy, as it was
+desired to conceal them from the envoy of Maximilian. The king of the
+Romans was doubly insulted. Charles VIII took from him a princess whom
+he had already married by proxy, and sent back to him his daughter Margaret,
+educated in Paris, since the Treaty of Arras, and destined to the
+throne of France. When the time came to declare the marriage, it was
+shown that Maximilian had been the first to violate the Treaty of Arras,
+that he had never ceased to make war against France for fourteen years,
+and that he had not respected the conventions of Frankfort or Plessis-les-Tours.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1491-1492 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The contract was made with much artfulness. Charles VIII and Anne
+gave up all their rights, their reciprocal pretensions which it was useless to
+pronounce upon. It was stipulated that these rights should be combined in
+the persons of the children born of this marriage; that if there were none,
+and the king should die, the duchess could not contract a second marriage
+except with his successor or the heir presumptive to the crown, on pain of
+losing the duchy.</p>
+
+<p>The province demanded the maintenance of its privileges, which were
+confirmed (declaration of July 7th, 1492). It preserved its particular
+estates, its supreme court of justice, which sixty years later became the
+parliament of Rennes, and its independent administration. It was assimilated
+in every respect with Dauphiné, Languedoc, Provence, and Burgundy,
+but it ceased to be a sovereign state, to become like those countries
+one of the members of the body of the monarchy. It is annoying that we
+cannot to-day follow, step by step, the artful conduct of the duchess of
+Bourbon. However that may be, she had at that time achieved her ends,
+and scored a complete triumph. Brittany was joined permanently to
+France; the princes were reconciled, in a definite manner this time.
+Finally Charles VIII arrived at man’s estate, and having nothing to fear of
+internal conspiracies, could defy those of foreign countries.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the coalition, which had shown too little activity to hinder
+the reunion with Brittany, was too strongly opposed to it to accept it
+without protest. A war might be expected, or at least great diplomatic
+difficulties. Henry VII, Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic protested
+in common against an act which the latter called an unheard-of and execrable
+fraud. They agreed to attack France on her different frontiers. But
+the king of England was in a measure the only one to act. Ferdinand,
+for the last twelve years, was directing all his forces against Granada,
+and in spite of the triumph of his officers, who raised the Christian flag
+there in February, 1492, he could undertake nothing against France, unless
+it was to continue the hostilities on the frontier of Roussillon, which had
+never been interrupted. Maximilian, obliged to submit to Hungary, and to
+make war against the Turks, could the less wage war on the frontier of
+Artois, as he continued to be hampered by the ill will of the Flemish towns.
+Henry VII, on the contrary, had full liberty of action, and, what made him
+more dangerous, he never acted on calculation or on personal resentment.
+It was the national sentiment of England which protested against the
+aggrandisement of France. The English rightly regarded the union of Brittany
+with the rest of the monarchy as a fatal blow to their hopes of some
+day regaining Normandy and Guienne. Henry VII therefore declared war
+against Charles VIII; however, in yielding to the enthusiasm of his subjects,
+he took very little part in it; for, if the historian of his reign, the
+chancellor Bacon, is to be believed, he proposed alone to obtain the subsidies
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>from parliament by flattering national vanity, and to sell to France as dearly
+as possible his recognition of the acquisition of Brittany.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1492-1493 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Charles VIII had to oppose the English regular army, already increased,
+whose augmentation had brought taxes up to the figure of 2,300,000 livres.
+He collected all his supporters and obliged the principal towns of the realm
+to furnish him with men-at-arms. He called to his court also Perkin Warbeck,
+whom the Yorkists of England represented as a pretended son of
+Edward IV and a rival of Henry VII.</p>
+
+<p>The latter passed the Channel, but not before October, after long delays,
+and besieged Boulogne, which would have strengthened the position on the
+continent which Calais already assured him. Arriving under the walls of
+the fortress, he found there much stronger resistance than he had expected;
+he received no aid from the Netherlands, and he heard that the Spaniards
+had begun separate negotiations with Charles VIII. These reasons decided
+him to sign a treaty at Étaples in the month of November. He contented
+himself with the payment of large sums by France as indemnity for the
+English troops which had served in Brittany, or as amends for the rupture
+of the Treaty of Picquigny and interruption of the payment of subsidies
+promised to Edward IV by Louis XI.</p>
+
+<p>Charles VIII had undertaken separate negotiations with Ferdinand the
+Catholic. Roussillon and Cerdagne were objects of litigation between the
+crowns of Aragon and France, which had already lasted more than thirty
+years. Charles VIII finished by purely and simply restoring those two
+provinces, without even exacting reimbursement of the sums lent by Louis
+XI. The treaty was signed at Barcelona in January, 1493. France felt a
+certain astonishment at this abandonment of pretensions, on the subject of
+which all former offers of compromise had been refused. But notwithstanding
+that the question of law was not a simple one, and that the different
+acts of Louis XI had greatly complicated it, Charles VIII considered that,
+in buying the friendship of Spain at such a price, he would attain the dissolution
+of the coalition, assure to himself the possession of Brittany, and
+finally open an unobstructed road into Italy. He then made preparations
+to force the realm of Naples to respect the rights inherited by Louis XI
+through the princes of the house of Anjou. The king of Spain promised at
+Barcelona not to hinder his march to Italy in any way, and to furnish no
+aid to Ferdinand of Naples, who was of a bastard branch of Aragon, and
+even to aid the pretensions of France at the court of Rome, sovereign of the
+Two Sicilies.</p>
+
+<p>There remained still Maximilian and his son, the archduke Philip, then
+fourteen years of age. Although these princes were for the time not redoubtable,
+a treaty with them presented more difficulties, as they had been more
+personally offended, and in sending back the princess Margaret it was not
+possible to preserve her dowry, stipulated in the Treaty of Arras, that is to
+say of Artois and Franche-Comté. Already disturbances had broken out in
+the two provinces. Arras, which remembered the cruelties of Louis XI, had
+driven out her French garrison the day after the Treaty of Étaples. Franche-Comté
+became insurgent in its turn. Charles VIII by a last treaty signed
+May 23rd, 1493, at Senlis, restored the counties of Burgundy, Artois, Charolais,
+and Noyon. He contented himself by sequestrating the fortresses of
+Hesdin, Aire, and Béthune, until the day when Philip, having reached his
+majority, paid him homage; and to stipulate the restitution of Tournay,
+Mortagne, and St. Amand, towns of the ancient domain of the crown.
+Maximilian finished by accepting these conditions, which after all he was not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>in a position to refuse; for although his ambition was cosmopolitan, the
+extensiveness of his dominions and the multiplicity of interests which called
+him every year to a new point of Europe never permitted him to pursue to
+the end any enterprise of long duration. His thoughts were now turning
+towards the imperial throne, which the death of his father Frederick III
+allowed him to mount a few months later. The French government wished
+that, following usage, the Peace of Senlis should be guaranteed by the principal
+towns of Flanders, Hainault, and Artois, such as Ypres, Namur, Arras,
+and Valenciennes.</p>
+
+<p>Historians have often reproached Charles VIII with having signed oppressive
+treaties at Étaples, Barcelona, and Senlis, and above all to have
+partly restored by the last the power of the house of Burgundy, which had
+been previously weakened by the Treaty of Arras. Here was in effect a sad
+offset to the acquisition of Brittany; but the choice had to be made between
+Anne and Margaret, between Brittany and Franche-Comté. If Charles VIII
+made a blunder it was at least more excusable than that of Louis XI, who
+had never been placed in the same position.</p>
+
+<p>Charles VIII has also been reproached with having sacrificed the frontier
+and French-speaking provinces in seeking aggrandisement and conquests in
+a country so far removed as Italy. The conquests in Italy were bound to be
+ephemeral. It had been necessary in the peninsula to battle for half a century
+without retaining in the end a single inch of ground.</p>
+
+<p>Much more would have been attained by extending the northern frontier,
+which was too near Paris, and by attaching again to France the provinces
+which gravitated around her. But it was forgotten that Charles VIII, in sending
+back Margaret, had no claim worth considering on Franche-Comté or the
+Netherlands; that he had consequently on this side no motive for war, and
+that he could not undertake such a war without running foul of the empire
+and of allied Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Italy offered no such dangers. If prudence had, until now, hindered him
+from interfering in her revolutions, Charles VIII, having no longer any
+interior questions to regulate, was in a much better position than his father
+or grandfather had ever been. It is thus the treaties of 1492 and 1493
+should be understood. In France they were judged rather unfavourably,
+which was natural, since they stipulated concessions and restitutions; but
+they were not as has been said the result of the heedless enthusiasm of a
+young king, sacrificing the manifest interests of his realm to the passion
+for foreign conquest.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11k2"><a href="#endnote_11k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Charles VIII in Italy</i></h4>
+
+<p>As already suggested, the acquisition of Brittany marks the conclusion
+of the first period of the reign of Charles VIII. The king was now of an
+age to shake off the leading-strings of his sister. He was old enough to
+have a policy of his own, and he was soon to show that he had one. It was
+a policy dominated by a single thought—the conquest of Italy. In putting
+that sinister policy into effect, Charles VIII inaugurated a new era in French
+history; a new era, indeed, in the history of all Europe. France was now
+the most closely unified kingdom in all Europe; it aspired to become an
+empire.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the invasion of Italy was no doubt suggested by the fact that
+certain claims upon the kingdom of Naples had been bequeathed to Louis XI
+by Charles II of Anjou. Solicited by disaffected Neapolitans and by Lodovico
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span>Sforza, duke of Milan, Charles VIII now determined to go to Italy and make
+good his hereditary claims.<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a><span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The thought of an expedition to Italy was most seductive to a prince as
+young as Charles VIII, nourished on traditions of chivalry, in which the
+study of antiquity was mingled with souvenirs of Cæsar and Alexander.
+It was equally seductive to the nobility, the army, and the whole country,
+as flattering to the national vanity. Since the Crusades no great foreign
+enterprises had been undertaken by the kings in the name of the nation.
+The campaigns of Du Guesclin in Spain, of John the Fearless at Nicopolis,
+of the princes of Anjou at Naples, had been only private expeditions and had
+not involved France. The war in Italy reopened the era of great conquests.</p>
+
+<p>In addition, this was an important epoch in French history as well as
+in that of all Europe. The old political system was upset. The empire was
+nothing more than a name at the head of what was still called Christianity.
+France seeking aggrandisement, the result was the prevalence of an idea of
+a necessary equilibrium among the great powers. This idea was not entirely
+new. The growth of France under Louis XI, the marriage of Maximilian
+of Austria to Mary of Burgundy, had already conduced to its formation.
+The powers observed how the rôle of diplomacy gradually grew, and conquests
+formed their necessary counterpoise in coalitions.</p>
+
+<p>Without going back to reminiscences of the brother of St. Louis, and
+the protectorate assumed by France over the Guelfs of Italy two centuries
+before, it may be well to recall the expeditions, undertaken by the princes of
+the younger branch of Anjou, to seize the crown of Naples. Louis II, René,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>John of Calabria, had, one after the other, claimed a succession regarded in
+France as a legitimate inheritance. René of Lorraine would again have followed
+that example in 1486, if the news that the great Angevin barons were
+treating with the house of Aragon had not stopped him, almost at the
+moment of departure. Men’s minds were occupied with what Comines called
+“the smoke and glories of Italy.” Louis XI had exercised some sort of a
+protectorate over the different states of the peninsula, governing Savoy and
+Montferrat by French princes; all-powerful at Milan; refusing the sovereignty
+of Genoa, which was offered to him; intervening as mediator in
+the dispute between Rome and Tuscany. Pius II has already stated that the
+greater part of the princes and people of Italy were more French than
+the French themselves, <i>Gallis Galliores</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Orient was also thought of. The prediction of a crusade renewed by
+Pius II and Sixtus IV, after the entrance of Muhammed II into Constantinople,
+the terror with which the Turks inspired Europe, the growth of their
+conquests which had not slackened, the recent heroic defence of the walls of
+Rhodes by Pierre d’Aubusson, grand-master of the knights of St. John, carried
+back public thoughts to memories whose vividness time could not alter.
+Although times had changed, the brilliancy and glory of the Crusades had
+not been forgotten. It was indeed all that tradition had kept up after two
+centuries. Moreover the military strength was much greater, and inspired
+another confidence than that of former times. If the route of Charles of
+Anjou were followed, the Ottoman empire could not be attacked before
+being sure of a base of operations at Naples, and it was hoped that the Greek
+Christians would rise at sight of the banners of the new crusaders.</p>
+
+<p>In reality the oriental question had been asked; Europe was interested
+in solving it. Preparations were being made for the expedition into Italy.
+Each time that great events take place, public opinion is excited and the
+dominant ideas of the times reveal themselves in one way or another. It
+was now the first period of the Renaissance, in which the savants caused a
+perpetual confusion of antiquity and modern society.</p>
+
+<p>Ancient memories had therefore a peculiar influence. Guillaume de
+Villeneuve, officer and historian of Charles VIII, Jean Bouchet, author of
+<i>The Life of De la Trémouille</i>, Comines himself, in the latter part of his
+memoirs—all abused ancient history, from which they borrowed a long list
+of comparisons; they even took occasion to compare the crossing of the
+Alps by the king to the similar feats of Hannibal and Cæsar.</p>
+
+<p>Italy has always exercised a great and natural fascination, due to the
+beauty of the land and its cities, the splendour of its civilisation. The
+presence of so many monuments of antiquity, the study and appreciation of
+which had begun, had so much attraction for the French nobility, whom the
+Italians haughtily regarded as “barbarians,” but who were far from meriting
+this title. The French had indeed an exaggerated idea of a country less
+known than we should be inclined to suppose, since nations were far from
+having the same intercourse that they have at the present day.</p>
+
+<p>Charles VIII was, according to the Italians, who have portraits of him,
+small, of insignificant appearance, and expressed himself with difficulty.
+The desire for pleasure seemed to dominate him, and he is reproached with
+caring only for the chase, for dogs, falcons, and horses. The Tuscan and
+Venetian envoys at his court refused for a long time to believe that he
+could ever become a conqueror. They recognised, however, that he showed
+a certain natural ardour, when he assisted regularly at the reunions of his
+council, and reserved the decisions to himself.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>Nearly two years were consecrated to the necessary preparations. The
+enterprise, without being officially announced, was no secret to anyone.
+The Italian states were engrossed in it, and, with the exception of Milan,
+sent embassy after embassy to the court of France, to spy upon its actions,
+divine its intentions, and avert a project which menaced them all. The envoys,
+Florentines and others, whose correspondence has come down to us,
+showed infinite ability and genius in a series of delicate and difficult negotiations.
+But nothing proves more clearly the weakness of the government
+they were trying to serve than their tendency to intrigue, their perplexity,
+their suspicion, combined with self-deception and the duplicity of some of
+them.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1493-1494 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Charles VIII, on his side also, sent envoys beyond the Alps. He wished
+to isolate the king of Naples, to entangle the different states in an offensive
+alliance against him, or at least obtain their neutrality, but a neutrality favourable
+to free passage over their lands. Above all he scrutinised closely the
+court of Rome. As he had had his rights to southern Italy examined by
+the parliament and the parliament had declared them valid, he demanded a
+similar declaration from the pope, sovereign of the crown of Naples. Alexander
+VI could not be relied upon very strongly—a Spaniard by birth
+whose election had been opposed by the French; but it was hoped to frighten
+him by threatening to uphold his personal enemies, who were many, and by
+demanding a general reform in the church, a reform equally desired by France
+and demanded by Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>Much as it was hoped also to find allies and resources in Italy, nothing
+was neglected for raising a large army, well equipped, and which should be
+sufficient in itself. Men-at-arms were not wanting. The difficulty was in
+organising them—the artillery, the wagons, and the ships necessary. Money
+was also needed, and to raise it every means in usage in such a case was
+employed. The pensions paid to the king were reduced for half a year;
+the treasurers were made to give advances; different loans were obtained,
+and an assessment was made on the banks of Milan and Genoa, and on
+Italian merchants; finally a particular tax was made on the clergy, under
+the form of a forced loan, as well as on the states of Languedoc, and several
+cities of the realm. All these negotiations required time, and were not
+concluded without difficulty. Paris and the other cities presented remonstrances,
+from which the Italian ambassadors concluded that the war was
+not popular and would not materialise.</p>
+
+<p>The pecuniary difficulties, the inevitable length of the preparations, the
+boldness of the enterprise, the uncertainty of the political situation in
+Europe gave rise to a natural opposition. Several of the former councillors
+of Louis XI, such as M. d’Argenton (Comines), and the sire de Graville,
+grand admiral, expressed their doubts and fears. The duke de Bourbon saw
+with regret the abandonment of the prudent policy which he had followed
+until then, but neither he nor the duchess was any longer master of the government.
+Des Querdes maintained that, if it were desirable to make conquests,
+it would be better to look for them in the Netherlands rather than in
+Italy. Meanwhile the opponents generally held themselves in reserve, and
+sought rather to moderate the enthusiasm than to combat it.</p>
+
+<p>The general rendezvous was to be at Lyons. Des Querdes, who was to
+have the command, died before the departure. The king resolved therefore
+to place himself in person at the head of his troops. He arrived at Lyons
+in the month of April, 1494; but preparations were not completed, and he
+had to wait several months before entering upon the campaign. Ships were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span>wanting, and it became necessary to construct a certain number for transporting
+one division of artillery. At last the departure took place in the
+month of September, although no tents, pavilions, nor other necessaries were
+at hand.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11k3"><a href="#endnote_11k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1494-1495 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The details of the incidents of this memorable tour<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> have already been
+given in our history of Italy, and need not be repeated here. We have there
+seen how Charles VIII was permitted to enter Florence as the friend of the
+people, yet came with all the presumption of a conqueror; how he went to
+Rome and was there received with the outward semblance of friendship by
+Alexander VI; and how he entered Naples and took the nominal kingship
+of that realm without striking a blow. It will be recalled that while the
+king lingered in Naples, antagonistic princes gathered in the north of Italy,
+and attempted to intercept the French army on its return. The French army,
+fatigued from its long march, and only about nineteen thousand strong, with
+five or six thousand servitors or guards of the transport in its train, met the
+Italian army of at least thirty thousand fresh and well-supplied men in
+the duchy of Parma near the castle of Fornovo on the right bank of the
+Taro, on the 5th of July, 1495.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was a brief but sharply fought battle with alternations of success
+and defeat for both armies. The two chief officers of the royal forces, Louis
+de la Trémouille and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, sustained without wavering
+the shock of troops far more numerous than their own. “At their throats—at
+their throats!” cried La Trémouille after the first counter, and his three
+hundred men fell upon the enemy with sufficient force to break their ranks.
+During the heat of the battle the French baggage wagons were attacked by
+the <i>stradiots</i>, a Greek corps recruited and paid by the Venetians. “Let
+them alone!” shouted Trivulzio to his troops; “their ardour for pillage
+will make them forget everything else and we can the more easily overcome
+them.” At one time the king was in advance of the main body of his guard
+and had neglected to see if they were closely following. He approached to
+within a hundred feet of the marquis of Mantua, who, seeing him so slimly
+accompanied, charged at him with all his cavalry. “It is not possible,” says
+Comines,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11d1"><a href="#endnote_11d">d</a></span> “to strike harder blows than were given on both sides.” The
+king, closely pressed and surrounded, defended himself valiantly against those
+who sought to take him. The bastard Matthew de Bourbon, his brother-at-arms
+and one of the bravest knights of the army, rushed forward twenty steps
+in advance of the king to protect him, and had just been taken prisoner when
+a large body of the royal troops came to the rescue of both and delivered them
+from peril. It was in this engagement that Pierre du Terrail, Chevalier de
+Bayard, at that time scarcely twenty years of age but destined later to achieve
+such fame, performed his first feats of arms.<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> He had two horses killed under
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>him, and took one standard, which he presented to the king, being rewarded
+by the latter after the battle with a gift of 500 crowns.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11e"><a href="#endnote_11e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1495-1498 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>As a result of the battle Charles VIII and his troops were allowed to
+continue their march unmolested; but their return to France partook somewhat
+of the nature of a retreat. It was not to be expected that a territory
+so distant as Naples could be held subordinate to the French crown without
+difficulty; and while Charles himself and his followers no doubt regarded
+the expedition as a great success, it was really in the sober view of posterity
+a most lamentable enterprise. It was fraught with all manner of deplorable
+sequels, as we shall see. But of course the French people could not be
+expected to anticipate future events, and for the moment they were able to
+welcome their king back to Paris as a conqueror and a hero.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Death of Charles VIII</i></h4>
+
+<p>The two years which elapsed from Charles’ return over the Alps to his
+death were marked by no event of importance. The chief expenditure and
+amusement that occupied him seemed to be the building and ornamenting of
+the castle of Amboise, for which he had brought with him eminent architects
+and artists from Italy. His sons perished in infancy one after the other;
+the name of the last, Charles Orlando, marking the favourite studies and
+thoughts of the monarch. In the spring of 1498 a game of ball, which interested
+the king, was played in the fosse of the castle of Amboise, where he
+resided. Charles, an affectionate husband, brought the queen to witness it.
+Passing in haste through the low archway of a gallery, he struck his head
+somewhat violently against it; for the moment the blow did not seem to
+affect him, but soon after, he was seized with a stroke of apoplexy, and died
+at the early age of twenty-seven. “Charles,” says Comines,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11d2"><a href="#endnote_11d">d</a></span> “was of a small
+person, and little understanding; but a better creature was not to be seen.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11c3"><a href="#endnote_11c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By the death of Charles VIII, the direct line of Valois was ended,
+and the crown was transferred to the collateral branch of Valois-Orleans,
+descended from Louis I, duke of Orleans, second son of Charles V.</p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS XII, “THE FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE” (1498-1515 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The transmission of the crown of France to another branch of the royal
+house had been effected without agitation and without an obstacle; there
+were whispers, but in hushed voices, round Madame de Bourbon, the ancient
+enemy of duke Louis, that that prince had forfeited his rights by bearing
+arms against the crown of France in the Breton war; but no one ventured
+to exhibit such ideas abroad, and the new king, by his prudent and generous
+conduct, prevented any chance of disturbance. It would not be becoming
+and to the honour of the king of France to avenge the wrongs of the duke
+of Orleans—such was the maxim which guided the first acts of Louis XII.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1498-1499 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>He sent for the sire Louis de la Trémouille, that renowned captain who
+had made him prisoner at the battle of St. Aubin, and confirmed him in all his
+offices, rank, pensions, and advantages. He declared that he would maintain
+every man in his full possessions and rights, and refused to bear in mind
+which of the late king’s servants had persuaded Charles VIII in the latter
+part of his life to keep the first prince of the blood in a species of exile.
+Finally he invited Madame Anne of France and her husband Duke Peter de
+Bourbon to come to him at Blois and lavished on them marks of esteem and
+favour of every kind; his generosity towards them even appeared to many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span>people to go beyond the boundaries prescribed by the interests of the state.
+Louis XI, in giving his daughter Anne in marriage to the sire Peter de
+Beaujeu, had stipulated in the contract that if Peter should inherit property
+from the ducal branch of the house of Bourbon (which actually happened),
+those great domains, although originally feminine fiefs, should return to the
+crown in case Peter should die without male heirs. Now Duke Peter was
+old and had only a daughter named Suzanne; the last great lordship (<i>seigneurie</i>)
+of central France was thus about to be merged in that royal domain
+which had successively absorbed all the great fiefs. The king allowed himself
+to be drawn into sacrificing this
+final result of the labours of Louis XI,
+and by letters patent of the 12th of
+May, 1498, he annulled the ancient contracts
+and treaties which excluded
+Suzanne from the paternal fiefs. The
+marriage of Suzanne with her cousin
+Charles de Bourbon, who like herself
+was still a child, secured that the heritage
+should not pass from that house.
+The parliament of Paris, accustomed
+to defend the permanent interests of
+the crown against the kings themselves,
+only enregistered the royal
+letters after a resistance of several
+months.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p294.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis XII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Louis XII showed no less benevolence
+to the good towns than to the
+princes and old servants of Charles
+VIII; he promised the citizen deputies
+who had come to pay him their respects
+to give his attention to improving
+the condition of the poor people;
+he published a severe ordinance for
+the repression of robberies and violences
+committed by the soldiers; he
+diminished the taxes (<i>tailles</i>) by two
+hundred thousand livres, and dispensed Paris and the whole kingdom from
+the <i>don de joyeux avènement</i>. Louis XII kept the promises of the opening
+of his reign: his well-directed energy, his desire to do good did not fail.
+The frivolous and libertine young prince had become a humane king, moderate,
+devoted to his duties, an economical administrator, who kept a careful
+watch over the public wealth, the protector of order and of justice, the
+equitable rewarder of merit and honesty: unfortunately he had little initiative
+and little breadth of mind, and the facility of his disposition placed him
+to an inordinate degree under the influence of those he loved. It is true
+that he often had the good sense and the good fortune to bestow his affections
+in safe keeping: his principal minister and his best friend, George
+d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen, who had participated in his evil fortune and
+who shared, not to say absorbed his power, was certainly worthy to govern
+the king and the kingdom, if the internal administration alone is taken into
+consideration; but abroad the blind and often reprehensible policy in which
+George involved Louis afforded a melancholy compensation for the services
+rendered at home.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Marriage with Anne of Brittany</i></h4>
+
+<p>The first months of the reign of Louis XII were filled with an important
+matter which touched no less the most precious interests of the realm than
+the private life of the king. By the marriage contract of Charles VIII and
+Anne of Brittany the husband and wife had combined their respective rights
+over Brittany to the advantage of the survivor; this duchy therefore returned
+to the widow and was once more separated from France. Madame Anne of
+Brittany had already returned to her town of Nantes and had been reinstated
+in full possession of her sovereignty. It
+is true that another article of the contract,
+in order to obviate this separation,
+required the duchess not to marry again
+except with the successor of Charles VIII
+or the heir presumptive to the crown;
+but for twenty-two years the king had
+been married to the second daughter of
+Louis XI and had no son. Louis resolved
+to push aside the obstacle which
+separated him and the widowed queen
+and set to work to obtain a divorce from
+the deformed Joan of France in order to
+marry the fair sovereign of Brittany. It
+has been universally repeated, on the
+faith of certain writers, contemporaries
+of Louis XII, that the duke of Orleans
+and the duchess Anne had been previously
+attached to one another and that,
+during the Breton war, Louis had secretly
+contended with the other suitors for the
+hand of Anne. This tradition is confuted
+by a simple comparison of dates:
+when the duke of Orleans withdrew to
+Brittany in 1484, the princess was only
+eight years old: she was but twelve when
+he was taken prisoner at St. Aubin-du-Cormier. What does seem certain
+was that Landois, the intriguing favourite of Francis II, had even then suggested
+to Duke Louis the idea of a divorce for purely political objects, and
+that Duke Francis II had secretly promised his daughter to the duke of
+Orleans. Be that as it may, the duke of Orleans, after leaving his prison,
+figured without apparent repugnance in the negotiations which brought
+about the union of Charles and Anne and was even one of the king’s witnesses
+at Rennes and Langeais.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p295.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Anne of Brittany</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French engraving)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whilst Charles VIII was still alive nothing indicated that the duke and
+the queen had feelings of tenderness for one another; they were even at one
+time on very bad terms—on the occasion of the death of the little dauphin
+Charles Orlando, the death which had made Louis heir to the crown. Anne
+bore a grudge against Louis for the slight sympathy he had shown for her
+in her maternal grief. Finally Anne gave expression to a somewhat theatrical
+despair on the death of Charles VIII, a husband very far from faithful,
+but gentle and affectionate; she was the first queen of France who wore
+black for mourning; hitherto the widows of kings had dressed in white,
+which circumstance had procured for them the title of “white queens”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>(<i>reines blanches</i>). Anne assumed black as the symbol of constancy, because
+it cannot fade.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of these demonstrations of a showy grief, the proud and ambitious
+Anne graciously received the first advances of the new king who proposed
+to her that she should not leave the throne of France, and Louis had
+little difficulty in persuading her to sign on the 9th of August a promise of
+marriage to be fulfilled as soon as might be. The king, without loss of time,
+had presented to Pope Alexander VI an application for the dissolution of
+his marriage. The circumstances were favourable: the Roman pontiff
+wished to withdraw his son, the cardinal De Valence (Cesare Borgia),
+from the ecclesiastical state that he might make him a secular prince;
+he had asked for him the hand of a daughter of Frederick, king of Naples.
+Frederick refused this shameful alliance. Alexander in his anger threw
+himself on the French side and undertook not only to authorise the king’s
+divorce but to second his plans in Italy on condition that Cesare Borgia
+should have his share. A bull of the 29th of July charged three ecclesiastical
+commissioners to inquire into and take proceedings on the monarch’s
+application. Two of these delegates, the cardinal De Luxemburg and
+the bishop of Albi, brother of George d’Amboise, were devoted to the king.
+Louis recognised this service by investing Cesare Borgia with the counties
+of Valentinois and Diois in Dauphiné; besides this he gave him a company
+of one hundred lances and a pension of 20,000 livres and promised to help
+the holy see to subdue the petty princes of Romagna. George d’Amboise
+received the cardinal’s hat from Alexander VI: such was the earnest of the
+odious alliance which formed the ineffaceable stain on the reign of Louis XII.
+The excuse of the public advantage, the necessity of gaining over the pope
+in order to procure the divorce, closed the eyes of Louis and induced him to
+take the first steps; he was then unable to stop and almost his whole reign
+presented the aspect of two faces offering a strange contrast, the one of
+uprightness, good sense, and humanity at home; the other of injustice,
+violence, and folly abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Joan of France, who had not been crowned with her husband and had
+not been accorded the honours of a queen, was summoned to appear on the
+30th of August at the deanery of Tours before the pope’s commissioners.
+There is something sad and ignominious about the details of this trial.
+Joan, resigned beforehand to a fate too clearly foreseen, defended herself
+solely from a sense of duty: the dissolution of the marriage was pronounced
+on the 17th of December and the repudiated wife withdrew to a convent at
+Bourges.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XII now only awaited the necessary dispensation of consanguinity
+to marry Anne of Brittany: Cesare Borgia, whom the king had enticed into
+France in order to make him an instrument and who had arrived at the
+court in semi-royal state, was endeavouring to extort fresh favours from
+Louis before complying with his wishes; the bishop of Ceuta, one of the
+pope’s commissioners, revealed to the king that the dispensation had been
+signed by Alexander VI and was now in Cesare’s possession. Louis made
+ready to take further proceedings; Cesare then produced the bull which he
+had no further interest in keeping; but the bishop of Ceuta died a few days
+later—poisoned.</p>
+
+<p>In the château of Nantes, three weeks after the granting of the divorce,
+Louis XII married the widow of Charles VIII: the marriage treaty, signed
+the 6th of January, 1499, by the chief nobles of France and Brittany, was
+much less advantageous to the crown than the contract of Langeais between
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>Charles VIII and Anne. Anne and her subjects, having in view the re-establishment
+of Breton independence,<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> required that the duchy of Brittany
+should be destined to the second child, male or female, to be born of the
+future marriage or, if the married couple had only one heir, to the second
+child of that heir; if the duchess died childless before the king, Louis was
+to retain Brittany during his life, but after him the duchy was to return to
+the next heirs of Madame Anne. As yet it was but a feeble bond which
+attached Brittany to France. The king swore to preserve to Brittany all
+its rights and liberties, its own administration judicial and political, its
+council, parliament, chamber of accounts (<i>chambre des comptes</i>), general
+treasury, and assembly of the three estates for the reform of the customs,
+tolls, and the levy of subsidies; he promised that benefices should only be
+given to natives according to the exclusive choice of the queen; that no
+new jurisdiction might be established and that free episcopal electors should
+be defended against the pretensions of the pope.</p>
+
+<p>The whole conduct of Louis had shown that he desired this alliance
+equally as man and king: whether he had or had not loved the queen during
+the lifetime of Charles VIII he bore her during the whole period of
+their union a constant and unique affection which formed a singular contrast
+to the vulgar and licentious amours of his youth. It was doubtless by
+a kind of delicate flattery that contemporary writers traced back the origin
+of the king’s passion to the childhood of the heiress of Brittany. The
+Breton duchess, who had the obstinacy rather than the sensibility of her
+race, made but a feeble response to this tenderness and took advantage of it
+to draw her docile husband into deplorable political errors.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11g2"><a href="#endnote_11g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Foreign Affairs</i><a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></h4>
+
+<p>The domestic and internal affairs of the kingdom thus regulated, Louis
+turned his views towards Italy. He was eager to renew the successes and
+avenge the defeats of his predecessor. He had not only to support the claims
+of the house of Anjou upon Naples, but to maintain his own private right to
+the duchy of Milan. The Sforza, soldiers of fortune, had usurped the duchy,
+and founded their right on the marriage of the first Sforza with Blanche, the
+natural daughter of the last Visconti. Louis XI had allied with them, and
+had refused to permit the duke of Orleans to insist upon his heritage. No
+sooner did the latter become Louis XII than he assumed the title of duke of
+Milan, and prepared, by arms and alliances, to prosecute his claim.</p>
+
+<p>Lodovico Sforza had usurped the duchy, and secured it by poisoning his
+nephew: he was peculiarly hateful to the French, from having been the first
+to entice Charles VIII into Italy, and afterwards the first to betray him.
+His crimes made him equally odious to his countrymen. The pope was won
+over by the gift of the duchy of Valentinois, which the king gave to his
+notorious son, Cesare Borgia. The Florentines were in the French interest,
+and the Venetians leagued with Louis in order to share the spoils of Lodovico.
+In short, when a French army entered the Milanese in the summer of
+1499, it met with no resistance. The duchy submitted almost without a
+blow, and Lodovico fled to Innsbruck, to his only ally, Maximilian.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1500-1502 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Lodovico returned with an army in the ensuing year. The capital rose
+in his favour. Trivulzio, who had been left governor of the duchy, was
+besieged in the town-house, and was only rescued by the audacious gallantry
+of some sixty knights, his followers. The French were obliged to evacuate
+the province. At the first tidings of the insurrection, La Trémouille marched
+from France to succour Trivulzio. Lodovico sought to intercept this aid by
+posting himself at Novara. But when the outposts of both armies touched,
+the Swiss in Lodovico’s service learned that their comrades in the French
+army were better paid and treated. On the eve of action these mercenaries
+declared their intention of deserting to the French. Lodovico Sforza used
+the strongest entreaties to dissuade them; but finding them determined, he
+merely begged not to be delivered to the enemy. How was he to escape
+from Novara, in which he was in a manner besieged? The Swiss consented
+to allow him to mingle in their ranks, clothed as one of their soldiers. Their
+treachery, however, or the vigilance of the French, discovered the unfortunate
+Lodovico in the Swiss ranks, as they marched out of Novara. He was
+taken, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in the castle of Chinon
+until he died. Thus Louis subdued for the second time the duchy of Milan.</p>
+
+<p>The conquest of Naples still remained to be achieved; but the present
+enmity of Maximilian king of the Romans rendered it inexpedient to undertake
+at present so distant an expedition, which would leave Milan exposed
+to the hostility of the Germans. This inability to conquer, joined with the
+impatience to possess, caused Louis to commit an egregious blunder. He
+formed an alliance with Ferdinand king of Spain, to divide between them the
+kingdom of Naples, to the exclusion of its reigning monarch, who was of
+the illegitimate race of Aragon. Louis was to have the better or northern
+half of the kingdom, the city of Naples included. Ferdinand, who merely
+wanted a pretext to obtain a footing in the peninsula, and introduce forces,
+was to content himself with Apulia and Calabria. Accordingly, Ferdinand
+sent Gonsalvo de Cordova, and Louis despatched Stuart d’Aubigny, each to
+conquer their respective portions, which they effected; the reigning monarch
+at first confiding in Gonsalvo, who of course betrayed him. Frederick of
+Naples, being driven from his capital and kingdom, fled first to Ischia and
+thence to France, where Louis gave him the duchy of Anjou as a compensation
+for the loss of his crown.</p>
+
+<p>Louis now turned his views towards the Venetians. They had obtained
+Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, the eastern territories of the duchy of Milan, as
+the price of their co-operation against Sforza. The king envied them this
+portion of his duchy, as they hated and feared the newly grown power of a
+foreign monarch in Italy. He endeavoured to bring Maximilian of Austria
+to join in an alliance against them; and a treaty was concluded, by which
+Maximilian promised the investiture of the duchy of Milan to Louis. Maximilian’s
+grandson Charles (afterwards emperor) was to marry the princess
+Claude, the daughter of Louis. The designs, however, which the monarchs
+entertained against Venice were interrupted by the bad faith of Ferdinand
+of Spain, which began to manifest itself in Naples. The agreement by which
+this kingdom was partitioned between two rival powers, without any fixed
+line of demarcation, was necessarily rather a source of war than a seal of
+peace. A great portion of the country’s revenue proceeded from the tax
+on the herds of cattle, which were yearly collected in the plains. Quarrels
+arose about this, and about the limits of the provinces; and war soon
+broke out between Gonsalvo and the duke de Nemours, who was viceroy for
+the French.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1502-1503 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>He was now leagued with the Borgias—the father, the execrable pope
+Alexander VI; his son, Cesare Borgia, one of the heroes of Macchiavelli.
+They betrayed Louis at every turn; crushed and murdered his friends.
+Still the French king temporised; and in a treaty concluded with them at
+this period, he agreed to sacrifice to them several of the independent nobility of
+Italy—among others, the Bentivoglios and the Orsini. One of the causes of
+this blindness in Louis was the care which the pope took to win the favour
+of the cardinal D’Amboise, the French minister, whom he cajoled in a manner
+which was afterwards practised on Wolsey, by flattering him with the hope
+of succeeding to the popedom. The French were at first the strongest party
+in Naples. Gonsalvo retired before D’Aubigny, and shut himself in Barletta.
+There were several combats: one, in which the brave La Palisse was taken;
+another, of thirteen French against thirteen Italians, in which the Italians
+had the best, although their enemies assert that the advantage was won
+by treacherously stabbing the horses of the French knights. The Spanish
+monarch had recourse to artifice, his usual weapon. Seizing the opportunity
+of his son-in-law the archduke Philip’s travelling through France, he proposed
+a new treaty to Louis, by which Naples was to be brought as the princess
+Claude’s dowry to young Charles, the grandson of Ferdinand and Maximilian.
+Louis XII gladly and confidently agreed to these proposals. He relaxed
+in his exertions for reinforcing his army in Naples, while Ferdinand
+made use of the interval to send potent succours to Gonsalvo. The continued
+hostilities and successes of this captain, notwithstanding the pacific
+declaration and arrangement of his master, awakened Louis from his supine
+confidence. But it was too late. D’Aubigny was beaten by the Spaniards
+and taken prisoner at Seminara in Calabria, the scene of one of his former
+victories. On the same day of the ensuing week, the hostile commanders,
+Gonsalvo and the duke de Nemours, met at Cerignola. It was towards evening,
+and the Spaniards threw up an entrenchment before their position. The
+duke de Nemours would not tarry. He ordered an instant attack, which was
+at first successful. He himself, leading on another to support it, was slain
+by a bullet from an arquebuse; and his followers failing in the assault, a
+rout ensued, in which the French army were for the most part dispersed.
+Naples surrendered to Gonsalvo. Its castle was taken by mining—a mode of
+offence invented in these wars. Shortly afterwards, the fortress of Gaeta
+was the only post in the kingdom that held for the French.</p>
+
+<p>Louis raised armies to attack Ferdinand in the Pyrenees and in Italy;
+but equally without result. The reign of the Borgias was immediately
+after brought to a tragical close. The pope and his son had invited
+several rich cardinals, their intimates, to sup with them in a vineyard. The
+Borgias intended to poison them; and Cesare Borgia sent some bottles of
+medicated wine, under the especial care of a domestic, to the spot. The
+pope arrived first; he was thirsty, and called for drink. The poisoned wine
+was poured out for him; and his son, coming in at the moment, partook
+of it. Pope Alexander expired soon after, and his son’s life was saved only
+by means of antidotes and a strong constitution. Great intrigues agitated
+the conclave. An aged and infirm pope was elected by way of compromise.
+In another conclave the cardinal D’Amboise was not more successful. An
+Italian prelate was preferred, who soon displayed his imperious, ambitious,
+and warlike spirit, under the name of Julius II. Cesare Borgia had contributed
+to his election, in return for a promise of protection; and Julius
+showed his gratitude by arresting Borgia immediately afterwards. He
+escaped, however, and fled to Gonsalvo, who, receiving him with friendship
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>equally insincere, put an end to the career of this prince of intrigue by
+sending him prisoner to Spain. In the meantime the French army remained
+inactive for want of a chief. Gonzaga had been driven from the command
+by the taunts of the French: the marquis of Saluzzo succeeded him, but
+with no more success. The campaign served but to display the valour of
+the brave Bayard, who alone defended the passage of a bridge against a
+body of Spaniards for a considerable time. Gonsalvo was everywhere
+successful; and Gaeta, the last fortress of the French, surrendered in a
+panic.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1503-1506 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The tidings of this ill fortune, and especially of the loss of Gaeta, so
+affected Louis that he fell into a dangerous illness. He was tended with
+exemplary affection by his queen, Anne of Brittany. But that prudent
+princess, seeing his death imminent, despatched much of her valuables to be
+conveyed down the Loire to Brittany. The heir to the crown, young
+Francis, Count d’Angoulême, then inhabited, with his mother, the château
+of Amboise. The marshal De Gié was the chief counsellor and influential
+man of this embryo court. Over zealous for the interests of the future
+king, and deeming Louis past hope, De Gié stopped the valuables of the
+queen as they descended the Loire past Amboise. Anne never forgave the
+insult. Louis recovered, and the marshal De Gié was pursued by the vengeance
+of the queen for years. He was tried; and it is a great proof of the
+improvement of the judicature that he escaped with life from so powerful
+an enemy. This circumstance increased the hatred between the mother of
+Francis, Louise of Savoy, and Queen Anne. By the last treaty with Maximilian
+it had been agreed that his grandson Charles should marry Claude,
+the daughter of Louis, and with her inherit the Milanese. Some time previous
+to the last illness of the king, Maximilian had sent an embassy to
+conclude and enlarge this treaty. The monarch was at the time sorely
+vexed by his disasters in Naples, and greatly enraged against the fickleness
+and bad faith of the Italian powers. Above all he was incensed against
+Venice; and in order to be avenged on this proud republic, he granted to
+Maximilian all that he asked. The cessions then made or stipulated by
+Louis are so enormous as to be incredible. The heirs of his daughter Claude
+by Charles of Luxemburg were to possess not only Milan, but the duchies of
+Burgundy and Brittany, thus dismembering the monarchy of France, and
+reducing it almost by one-half.</p>
+
+<p>De Seyssel,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11h"><a href="#endnote_11h">h</a></span> the minister and biographer of Louis, excuses his conduct
+on this occasion, by saying that the king merely wanted to gain Maximilian’s
+aid against the Venetians, and that he never intended to fulfil these conditions.
+It seems much more probable that these stipulations were owing to
+the influence of Anne of Brittany; to the love of that queen for her own
+daughter, whose exaltation she preferred to that of France; and at the
+same time to Anne’s hatred of Louise of Savoy, and of her son Francis, the
+heir to the throne. Every Frenchman was shocked and terrified at the prospect
+of these provinces being conveyed to a foreign power. Louis himself,
+listening to the advice of his counsellors, was struck with remorse at the
+folly and want of patriotism which characterised such measures. The
+states-general were called together: they drew up a strong remonstrance
+against them, and supplicated that the princess Claude should be given in
+marriage to Francis. The king consented to this. But so long as Anne of
+Brittany lived, she never allowed the marriage to take place.</p>
+
+<p>Maximilian was of course extremely wroth on learning that the king of
+France and the assembly of the nation refused to fulfil the treaty. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>resolved to attack the French in Italy. Genoa about this time had rebelled
+against Louis. Louis, however, conquered and reduced it to submission.
+Maximilian was too late to support the insurrection. The Venetians, then
+allies of the king, barred the passage of the Austrians into Italy. They
+defeated Maximilian, and compelled him to purchase a treaty, resigning his
+conquests. They concluded it without awaiting the consent of Louis, or
+allowing him to derive from it any advantage.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p301.jpg" width="300" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Peasant, Reign of Louis XII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1506-1509 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This was a new grievance added to the many already entertained against
+these republicans by the French. Maximilian was of course ready to join
+against them. Pope Julius was at variance
+with them on account of Faenza,
+and other towns, the wreck of the Borgian
+usurpations, which they held.
+Between these powers and Ferdinand
+of Spain was formed the famous
+League of Cambray for the destruction
+of Venice. It was called famous from
+having nearly attained its aim—a distinction
+which could be applied to few
+treaties of the time. In raising his
+army for this enterprise the king made
+an important improvement in his
+levies. He began to mistrust the Swiss,
+whose mercenary and turbulent spirit
+was scarcely recompensed by their
+character for courage. Therefore,
+although he hired a corps of them
+to the number of 6,000, he at the
+same time endeavoured to resuscitate
+the French infantry. Louis XI had
+abandoned the good custom of training
+the French peasants to arms, which
+had so contributed to the victories of
+Charles VII. The despot dreaded a
+national army. The armies of Charles
+VIII, and hitherto those of Louis XII,
+were composed of mounted gentlemen,
+who formed the cavalry, and of hired
+Swiss, or perhaps a few Gascons, for
+infantry. This was the principal reason of the first success and subsequent
+defeats of the French in Naples. Cavalry force, so superior when in good
+condition, is liable to be unhorsed, and is more easily disorganised than
+infantry. Louis now levied a body of infantry in France of from 12,000 to
+14,000 men. To give spirit and respectability to this force, he induced his
+bravest captains, Bayard, Molard, and Chabannes, to fight on foot and command
+these new brigades; and it required all his influence to make them
+submit to such degradation. The French cavalry amounted to 12,000 men.
+With this army he marched against the Venetians. Their army, nowise
+inferior, was commanded by the count of Pitigliano, whose policy accorded
+with the orders of the senate to avoid a battle. Alviano, the Venetian
+general second in command, risked an attack in despite of this at Agnadello.
+An action took place, in which the count feebly supported his lieutenant.
+Louis, who fought in the thickest of the engagement, was victorious. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span>Venetian army was utterly routed; and the French king, advancing to
+the brink of the lagunes, enjoyed the satisfaction of sending from his cannon
+some vain shots against the discomfited but still unsubdued queen of the
+Adriatic. This success dissolved the league. Julius II, having obtained
+possession of the towns which he coveted from the Venetians, leagued with
+them against Louis; and a war, or a succession of skirmishes, ensued.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1509-1512 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis sent a powerful army against the pope, under the command of Gaston
+de Foix, duke de Nemours, his sister’s son, then twenty-two years of age.
+The battle of Ravenna ensued, and the French were victorious. The sack
+of Ravenna was almost the only fruit reaped by this signal victory.
+Julius II, undaunted by defeat, refused to yield. He raised up the English
+and the Swiss against Louis, who threatened with invasion from both
+these countries. Maximilian let loose upon Milan his namesake, Massimiliano
+Sforza, son of Lodovico; and the Swiss espoused the youth’s pretensions.
+The cantons were enraged against Louis for attempting to substitute
+French soldiers for them. When he sent La Trémouille to negotiate with
+them, they demanded that 15,000 Swiss should be yearly hired, and paid by
+France in peace and war. They demanded also the Milanese for Sforza, and
+the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction for the pope. It is said they also
+resented some injurious words spoken by Louis. Whatever was its cause,
+their resentment was but too well seconded by their force. The French
+under La Palisse and Trivulzio were driven out of the Milanese, and even
+Genoa again declared itself independent. The feats of Bayard during this
+unfortunate campaign might be made to fill pages, but they availed nothing.
+Haute-Navarre was at the same time wrested by Ferdinand from Jean
+d’Albret. The province has ever since remained to the Spaniards.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11c4"><a href="#endnote_11c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Internal Affairs</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1509-1510 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Neither the war of Genoa nor that of Venice had interrupted that universal
+movement of internal improvement in France, which, begun under Charles
+VIII, had gone on and increased under Louis XII. The foundation of this
+progress lay, above all, in the vitality of the nation itself; next in the good
+supervision given to the legislation, administration, and finances by the
+appointed members of council and parliament; but to the prime minister
+was due the merit of having given to all this activity a united impulse, and
+to the king the merit of zealous participation therein.</p>
+
+<p>During the winter of 1509 Louis visited a large portion of his kingdom,
+and did much good in regard to the execution of justice. Never at any
+epoch of its history had France enjoyed so much prosperity; the twenty
+years’ absence of all civil disorders, the maintenance of order by an absolute
+and vigilant administration, the security of people and property, the protection
+given to the weak against the stronger, to the labourers against the
+nobles and soldiers, bore marvellous fruits. The population increased
+rapidly, the cities in their ancient limits constantly expanded into large
+suburbs; hamlets and villages rose up as if by enchantment in the woods
+and waste places. The last vestiges of the fatal wars that had depopulated
+France were completely effaced, and Seyssel, a contemporary writer, states
+that a third of the kingdom had again been put under cultivation during the
+last thirty years. The produce of the land increased enormously; the excise
+taxes, tolls, fees, etc., had increased more than two-thirds in many places,
+and the revenue of the royal estate, augmenting like the private ones, allowed
+the king to carry out his enterprises without oppressing the nation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span></p>
+
+<p>Industry and commerce received no less an impetus, communications were
+endlessly extended, and merchants made less of going to Rome, Naples, or
+London than formerly to Lyons or Geneva. The luxury and elegance of
+buildings, furniture, and apparel displayed the progress of the arts and public
+wealth. The condition of all classes was improved, and the poor, unaccustomed
+to see the sovereigns take such care of their interests, were deeply
+grateful to the king and his minister. “Let George do as he thinks right,”
+had become a popular saying expressing the confidence placed in Cardinal
+Amboise. Louis XII received striking testimonies of the affection of the
+people on a journey he took from Paris to Lyons through Champagne and
+Burgundy in the spring of 1510. “Wherever he went, men and women
+assembled from all parts, following him for three or four leagues, and when
+they were able to touch his mule or his dress, or anything belonging to him,
+they kissed their hands with as much devotion as they would show to a
+reliquary.” (Saint-Gelais.) The Burgundians displayed as much enthusiasm
+as the ancient French.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal George did not reap his share in the popular homage. The
+inseparable companion of Louis XII had not accompanied him on this journey;
+whilst the health of the king was improving somewhat, that of the
+minister was rapidly declining. George, weakened by gout and other infirmities,
+had not the strength to resist an epidemic, called “whooping
+cough” by contemporary historians. Louis XII found him dying at Lyons,
+whither the cardinal had gone to await the king, and had only the consolation
+of receiving the farewells of his “faithful friend.” Cardinal Amboise
+expired May 25th, 1510. He had not yet reached the age of forty-five. He
+was the first of those cardinal-ministers, almost kings, who have played so
+large a part in the history of the monarchy. The experiment was not
+encouraging, for the duties of Cardinal Amboise were altogether foreign to
+his ecclesiastical dignity, and his faults, on the contrary, largely proceeded
+from it. His dream of the papacy and his dealings generally with the college
+of cardinals and the holy see were very detrimental to the interest and the
+honour of France.</p>
+
+<p>His home administration saves his memory. He does not shine therein
+by disinterestedness, but that was never the distinguishing virtue of great
+ministers, and is scarcely compatible with monarchical government. He
+left a vast fortune, amassed rather at the expense of Italy than of France;
+his use of it at least pleads for his memory. Many touching anecdotes attest
+his goodness of heart; the fine remains of those buildings mutilated by the
+hand of the Revolution show us the use to which his wealth was put. Like
+all men of superior talents, whether princes or ministers, who have left their
+mark upon the destinies of nations, George was the centre of the art movement,
+and diffused a vivifying influence around him. One of the most
+beautiful periods of French art belongs to his ministry; it has been incorporated
+too long with the reign of Francis I, who during his best years merely
+continued, whilst enlarging it, and who took the first step towards decadence
+when he departed from it.</p>
+
+<p>The artistic history of France in the sixteenth century may be divided
+into two periods: in the first, Italian art modifies French art by some happy
+innovations, and incites it to a healthy emulation; in the second, it stifles
+and absorbs it. In the first period, the Italian artists summoned to France
+concur with native artists in raising French monuments; in the second, the
+Italianised French build Italian monuments—vanquished Italy conquers her
+conquerors.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11g3"><a href="#endnote_11g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Last Years of Louis XII</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1513-1515 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The internal prosperity of France contrasted strangely with the conditions
+of interminable warfare that characterised the external policy of
+Louis XII. The seat of these wars was not confined to Italy. In 1513
+France became embroiled with her old enemy, England.</p>
+
+<p>Henry VIII of England invaded France in concert with Maximilian.
+He laid siege to Thérouanne. The French succeeded in throwing supplies
+into the town; but being attacked suddenly some days after by the English
+and imperialists, they were seized with a panic and fled. This has been
+called the battle of Spurs. Bayard, who refused to join in the flight of his
+compatriots, was made prisoner after a gallant defence. Thérouanne was
+the sole conquest of Henry.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11c5"><a href="#endnote_11c">c</a></span> But almost simultaneously the French arms
+were checked in Burgundy and in Italy. In fact, the year 1513 has been pronounced
+(by Dareste<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11k4"><a href="#endnote_11k">k</a></span>) one of the most disastrous in French military annals.
+Yet no very important political sequels were attached to these reverses.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In January, 1514, Louis lost his queen, Anne of Brittany. She was a woman
+of distinguished beauty, though she limped in her gait. She possessed great
+influence over Louis: was proud, independent, and obstinate—qualities
+characteristic of the Bretons. Anne was
+at the same time a pious, chaste, and exemplary
+queen. It was through her influence
+and importance that the female
+sex, hitherto excluded, was introduced
+into society: she formed a court, and
+collected around her the principal young
+ladies of rank in the kingdom, whose
+manners and principles she loved to
+form. The establishment of a court,
+that is, of a court in which woman’s
+presence was allowed and her influence
+felt, was, trifling as it may seem, a most
+important innovation.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p304.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis XII</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Louis, attached as he had been to
+Anne, did not long delay to fill up the
+place by her left vacant. Policy joined
+with other reasons to prompt this step.
+As the seal of a reconciliation and alliance
+with Henry VIII, Louis espoused
+that monarch’s sister Mary, a princess
+then in the flower of her age. The gay
+habits of a bridegroom did not suit the
+constitution of the king, then past fifty-four.
+In a few weeks after his marriage he was seized with a fever and
+dysentery, which carried him off at the palace of the Tournelles, in Paris,
+on the first day of the year 1515.</p>
+
+<p>Never was monarch more lamented by the great mass of his subjects than
+Louis XII. He was endeared to them principally by his economy and forbearance
+in levying contributions, and by his strict administration of justice,
+so different from the sanguinary executions which characterised the reign of
+Louis XI, when no man could be certain of life. He reduced the taxes more
+than one-third in the early part of his reign, and even in his distresses preferred
+selling the crown lands to any of the usual expedients for exaction.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span>Hence Louis earned the appellation of “Father of his people.” His popularity
+was much greater with the middle than with the higher classes. The latter
+called his economy parsimony, and his sympathy with the commons forgetfulness
+of his rank. Writers of the reigns of Louis XIV and XV seek to
+depreciate the character of Louis XII, and to elevate that of his successor.
+Louis XII they consider as the <i>roi roturier</i>, “the plebeian king”; Francis as
+the aristocratic and chevaleresque. The nobility certainly do not appear prominent
+in this reign. New names arise and become illustrious as in the time
+of Charles VII. The lesser noblesse or gentry were in fact treading on the
+heels and taking the places of the higher aristocracy. The latter rallied or
+were re-created in the days of Francis, but these tendencies were as much the
+effect of opposite states and circumstances, as of the opposite characters of
+the two monarchs.</p>
+
+<p>The writers of the Revolution reverse the system of favouritism: they
+choose Louis, the father of his people, to be their hero, and they depreciate
+the kingly Francis. An author of this school, Roederer,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11i"><a href="#endnote_11i">i</a></span> has seen every perfection
+in Louis XII, and he considers that the commons of France were in
+possession of perfect constitutional freedom during his reign: history, however,
+does not present this view of the question. Although Louis did
+certainly seem to allow in the parliament a power of examining and objecting
+to his edicts, yet the assembly of states in his reign was far from assuming
+or being allowed aught like a constitutional control. The very virtues and
+moderation of Louis were inimical to political freedom, since, by rendering
+the commons contented, they took from them, with the wish, the right of
+remonstrance. Had a prodigal and an unpopular king been reduced to the
+same distress as Louis was in the latter years of his reign, the commons of
+France might opportunely have made a stand for their privileges, and at least
+kept alive their traditions of freedom.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11c6"><a href="#endnote_11c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-11.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> [The exact attitude of the duke of Orleans, at this early period, toward his future wife is not
+clearly established. Further reference to the subject is made later in the present chapter.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> The following table will make clear the bearings of the French claim to the kingdom of
+Naples: Full face type denotes reigning kings of France and Naples. Italics denote titular
+kings of Naples.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/genealogy1.jpg" width="700" height="525" alt="Genealogical table">
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> See vol. IX, pp. 409 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> Champier gives the following portrait of Bayard: The noble Pierre du Terrail was born
+at Bayard, a stronghold situated in a province of Dauphiné, called Givosdam, near the royal
+castle of Avalon—which castle is a fine mansion wherein were born and bred, in this fair and
+beautiful spot, a family noble and ancient, in Dauphiné, by name Montenar, from whom are
+descended many brave knights and valiant men skilled in the art of warfare. This same Pierre
+was well named Terrail, for no page was a better horseman, which same by his prowess did send
+many to their end before their time, and in many places and on many occasions did truly guard
+and defend the territories of his lord and sovereign prince, the noble king of France.</p>
+
+<p>The noble Bayard in his youth was kindly, gracious, and courteous to all men; none ever
+beheld him wrathful; he was greater than all other pages; he did harm to no woman, relinquishing
+intrigues with them, as being unlawful; but little given to melancholy, he was cheerful
+towards all, loving good company, jestings, and pleasant sport. As for his gravity, it was always
+mingled with kindness and affability; he loved order in all things, and was benign, merciful, and
+charitable.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_11f"><a href="#endnote_11f">f</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> [Anne had Brittany in dangerously good order; and it has even been suggested that she
+intended by this move to make it almost a political necessity for Louis to marry her.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> [The ensuing pages should be read with constant reference to our history of Italy, vol. IX,
+pp. 425 <i>et seq.</i>, where a complementary treatment of the subject is given. See also the history of
+the Holy Roman Empire, vol. XIII.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-12.jpg" width="500" height="200" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII. IMPERIAL STRUGGLES OF FRANCIS I AND HENRY II</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Francis I, his government and his times, commence the era of
+modern France, and bring clearly to view the causes of her greatnesses
+and her weaknesses.—<span class="smcap">Guizot.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12b"><a href="#endnote_12b">b</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>CRITICAL SURVEY OF FRANCIS I AND HIS PERIOD</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1515-1559 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The accession of Francis I to the crown of France, January 1st, 1515,
+on the death of Louis XII, may be considered as signalising the passage
+from the Middle Ages to modern times and from ancient barbarism to civilisation.
+The transformations of great masses of men amongst whom new ideas
+and new passions are seen to germinate, are never sudden; centuries have
+prepared them in silence, and an attentive eye may have discerned, in the
+preceding age, the authors of the age which is about to open; but their action
+on the people has an element of the unexpected, because the men whose
+minds have been formed in principles and sentiments scarcely avowed by
+themselves, and scarcely understood by their contemporaries, all at once perceive
+that they form the majority, that they are understood, that they will be
+followed; and they burst as it were upon the country which had not noticed
+them. Thus simultaneously with the reign of the young monarch there
+began a decided taste for arts and letters which signalised itself by the most
+glorious monuments; a new zest for the pleasures of society, for wit, and for
+gallantry which corrupted morals while it perhaps gave more elegance to
+manners; an esteem for learning, a zeal for study which reflected a special
+glory on the French magistracy in whom dignity of character soon joined
+itself to knowledge; and finally an independence of opinions which, while
+admitting men to judge what they had adored, led some to new systems of
+philosophy and others to the reform of religion. France, hitherto poor in
+writers, began to turn her attention to herself, to study herself; her follies
+and vices, like her virtues and learning, left their traces; and there came
+into being the double series of courtly and philosophic writers, of the friends
+of disorder and those of wisdom—a series which was not afterwards interrupted
+until the fall of the throne of Louis XVI.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/p307.jpg" width="450" height="575" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Francis I</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The new sovereign, Francis d’Angoulême, duke of Valois, who gave the
+signal for this revolution, was not however of sufficient force to produce it.
+He was a son of Charles d’Angoulême, cousin german of Louis XII, and as
+he had been born at Cognac on the 12th of September, 1494, he was only
+twenty years and a few months old. His education had been begun by
+Marshal de Gié, whom Louis XII had replaced in 1506 by Arthur Gouffier,
+sire de Boisy; this last had been through all the Italian campaigns, and he
+had acquired in that country a taste for arts and polite literature which
+was scarcely ever to be met with amongst other men of noble rank. He
+perceived that a certain glory might be attached to the study of letters, he
+even accustomed his pupil to show some deference to men of learning and
+to seek their conversation; but if Boisy himself took pleasure in reading, it
+was in vain that he endeavoured to inspire the prince he was training with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span>the desire to read any books other than the romances of chivalry. It was
+from them that Francis I derived his sole instruction; he modelled himself
+on the heroes of the Round Table and of the palace of Charlemagne, not on
+those of history; he desired to shine as an Amadis rather than as a sovereign;
+and the height of his figure, the beauty of his face, his skill in arms and
+in all physical exercises, his bravery which he had already had occasion to
+exhibit, and finally his love of pleasure which his young comrades esteemed
+in him more than his moral qualities, marked him out for the admiration
+of those who, like himself, knew the world only through the medium of
+romances. “He was as fair a prince,” said Bayard’s <i>Loyal Serviteur</i>,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12c"><a href="#endnote_12c">c</a></span> “as
+ever was in the world; never had there been a king in France who so
+rejoiced the noblesse.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12d"><a href="#endnote_12d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>A BRILLIANT CAMPAIGN IN ITALY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1515-1516 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>After the coronation, which was celebrated at Rheims with great pomp,
+and the festivities of the royal entrance in Paris, the preparations for the
+expedition into Italy begun by Louis XII were resumed without delay.
+France possessed nothing beyond the Alps since the fort at the Lantern or
+Fanal at Genoa had capitulated. Everyone expected to see the French
+retake the Milanese; but Francis I anticipated the general expectation—he
+wished that conquest to mark the first year of his reign.</p>
+
+<p>Two things were necessary: to hinder a coalition of the great powers,
+and to find allies. The coalition had been dissolved in the year previous; in
+order that it should not be formed again two treaties were signed, with England
+and with the Netherlands. Henry VIII, always displeased with the way
+in which the other kings had abandoned him, consented to renew the alliance
+he had sworn with Louis XII in 1514. The young prince of Castile, Charles
+of Austria, freed from guardianship, took the direct government of the
+Netherlands, and prepared to cross into Spain; he was the first to try to
+regain the friendship of France, in order to secure the Belgian frontier. It
+was agreed that he should be affianced to Madame Renée, the second daughter
+of Louis XII, who had a large dowry, and that he might defer for five years
+the homage he owed to the crown in his character of count of Flanders.
+On the part of Francis I, the concessions were important but remote and
+eventual: the advantage was immediate. France, safe-guarded in the north
+on its most vulnerable frontier, and having nothing to fear from England nor
+the Netherlands, might proceed boldly.</p>
+
+<p>France had wished to gain the court of Rome. Leo X had never ceased
+seeking reconciliation with France. His brother, Giuliano de’ Medici, had
+married a sister of Louise of Savoy in 1514. Several ambassadors were sent
+to him, among others the celebrated humanist, Guillaume Budé. But the
+pope desired peace in Italy and the grandeur of his family. A new French
+campaign would derange his plans, and for some months he had done everything
+possible to dissuade the French from such an enterprise. He refused
+to bind himself in any way, even that of simple neutrality.</p>
+
+<p>There still remained Ferdinand the Catholic, Maximilian, and the Swiss.
+The king of Aragon was old and in failing health. His death was shortly
+expected, and he was known to be little in favour of taking the management
+of a new league. It was he who, by his withdrawal, had caused the failure
+of that of 1513. Meanwhile, fearing to lose the alliance of the Swiss, and
+wishing to hinder the return of the French into the peninsula, he refused to
+prorogue the truce of the preceding year, and signed a defensive alliance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span>with Maximilian and the thirteen cantons. The emperor always had need
+of Spanish troops to continue his war against Venice; he objected all the
+more to the troubling of the empire by France by her levies of lansquenets.
+But his hostility was as harmless as his friendship was useless. As for the
+Swiss, finding them rejecting all offers and manifesting unqualified unreasonableness,
+the plan to conciliate them was abandoned. The alliance with the
+Venetians was always assured. Francis I renewed the treaty signed at Blois
+by Louis XII with the republic.</p>
+
+<p>After these diplomatic precautions it was necessary to renew and
+strengthen the army. The gendarmerie was increased from 2,500 lances to
+4,000. A national infantry was added to it, also more numerous than that
+of preceding years, 6,000 Basques and Dauphinois, 10,000 French adventurers,
+Picardians, Gascons or Bretons, and 3,000 pioneers or engineers.
+Part of these troops were formed by Pedro Navarro, prisoner of the French
+since the battle of Ravenna. The celebrated Spanish captain, not having
+obtained from Ferdinand the Catholic the payment of his ransom, consented
+to enter into the service of Francis I. The foreign infantry was composed
+of 26,000 lansquenets under the command of the duke of Gelderland. The
+artillery, more important than ever, comprised 72 large cannon, and 500
+mounted pieces.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12f1"><a href="#endnote_12f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus equipped, Francis crossed the Alps and entered upon that campaign
+which culminated in the brilliant victory over the Swiss army at Marignano,
+a full description of which has been given in our history of Italy.<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a><span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is related that, after the battle, Francis wished to be knighted and that
+he chose Bayard to give him the blow with the sword; a thing never before
+seen, as it was supposed that kings had no need of being knighted, as they
+were knights by birth.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12f2"><a href="#endnote_12f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The victory of Francis resulted in his regaining possession of the whole
+of the Milanese, with the addition of Parma and Piacenza. He also signed
+two treaties, on November 7th, 1515, at Geneva, and November 29th, 1516, at
+Friburg, which established a perpetual alliance between himself and the Swiss.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Concordat</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the course of an interview between himself and Leo X at Bologna,
+Francis took the important step of abolishing the Pragmatic Sanction and
+signed the Concordat, which gave the king the right of nomination to bishoprics
+and other ecclesiastical privileges. “Then it was that Francis I and
+his chancellor loudly proclaimed the maxims of absolute power; in the
+church, the Pragmatic Sanction was abolished; and in the state, Francis I
+during thirty-two years did not once convoke the states-general and laboured
+only to set up the sovereign right of his own will.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12h1"><a href="#endnote_12h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first article of the Concordat, destined to replace the Pragmatic
+Sanction, transferred to the king the right to appoint the bishops, abbots,
+and priors, the pope reserving for himself the veto, in cases where the
+elect did not fulfil canonical conditions; by the second article, the pope renounced
+the rights of reversion and expectative, the reversion of livings during
+the life of the incumbents; but he did not renounce in any way the annats,
+the most exorbitant of papal exactions, and the silence of the Concordat on
+this subject implied their re-establishment. The rights of collators of livings
+were subsequently recognised and limited, and it was decreed that collators
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>could accord only to graduates “<i>ès universités</i>” the livings which became
+vacant during the months of January, April, July, October. Every collator,
+having from ten to fifty livings at his disposal, was obliged to resign one
+to the discretion of the pope—or two if he had more than fifty. It was
+ordained that ecclesiastical trials should be judged in the realm, either by
+ordinary judges or by commissioners of the pope in reserved cases. The
+Concordat kept a significant silence on the rights and periodicity of the councils.
+A tithe on the clergy was accorded to the king, in recognition of the
+re-establishment of annats, but on condition that the pope and the Medici
+should receive their part. The abolition of the Pragmatic was then proclaimed
+in the Lateran Council, a servile assembly which did nothing but
+register the wishes of the pope, which abjured the principles of the councils
+of Constance and Bâle, and dissolved itself obscurely shortly afterwards,
+without the perception by Europe, so to speak, of its closing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1516-1520 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Concordat was an act of boldness on the part of royalty; which
+ceded only on a question of money (and reduced that concession when it
+came to practice). It was an immense stride in the direction of despotism:
+after the political order it seized upon the religious order; after having
+usurped the right of the Estates in the fixation of taxes, it usurped the right
+of the church in the election of its chiefs. In fact during the whole extent
+of the Middle Ages, the temporal power frequently troubled the liberty of
+elections, sometimes by force, more often by recommendations equivalent to
+commands. The ecclesiastical bodies were rarely in full enjoyment of their
+liberty, and the ancient participation of the people, and even of the lower
+clergy, at the election of the bishops had been reduced to a purposeless acclamation.
+But in the end the law remained, the best kings having recognised
+it, the Pragmatic had revivified it, and after the great reaction directed by the
+councils of the fifteenth century against the papacy, the chapters and convents
+proceeded more freely at elections than at any period of the preceding
+centuries. It was this state of things which Francis I and Leo X violently
+overturned in their division of what did not belong to them by a bizarre exchange
+where, as Mézeray says, the pope, the spiritual head, took the temporal
+power unto himself, giving the spiritual power to a temporal prince.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12k1"><a href="#endnote_12k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This displacement of the Pragmatic Sanction by the Concordat is justly
+regarded as one of the most momentous events in French history. The effect
+of the new order of things upon the immorality of the upper clergy can
+hardly be overestimated. The Concordat remained in force until the Revolution,
+and much of French scepticism and philosophical criticism may be
+ascribed to its influence.</p>
+
+<h3>STRIFE BETWEEN FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V</h3>
+
+<p>The reign of Francis I thus opened brilliantly. That first victory was
+to have no complete parallel during a long reign; but it served to establish
+the reputation of Francis as a warrior, and to cast a glamour about his name
+that no subsequent defeats could quite obscure. We are now to see the victor
+of Marignano enter upon a struggle with that crafty monarch Charles I
+of Spain,<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> who, when the emperor Maximilian died, was elected to succeed
+him, and who came to the imperial throne as Charles V. The life-long
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>rivalry with this most powerful monarch of the century furnishes the keynote
+to the reign of Francis I. Francis had himself been an eager candidate
+for the imperial crown.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> His mortification was great when his rival was
+chosen by the electors. He dreamed of nothing but revenge, and fancied
+that an alliance with Henry VIII of England would help him to gain his
+object. A meeting was consequently arranged between the two kings, and
+took place on June 7th, 1520. So gorgeous were the garments of the kings
+and the trappings of their horses, that their courtiers in trying to rival them
+“bore thither,” the contemporary writer Du Bellay<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12g"><a href="#endnote_12g">g</a></span> graphically tells us,
+“their mills, their forests, and their meadows, on their backs.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>Meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1520 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Nothing equalled in splendour this meeting between the two kings and
+the two courts in the camp so well named “The Cloth of Gold.” It was a
+struggle upon both sides for pre-eminence in magnificence. It would seem as
+if they sought more to dazzle than to please, and etiquette, being prejudicial
+to cordiality, was set aside.</p>
+
+<p>Both arrived on the same day, June 1st, 1520, the one at Calais, the other
+at Ardres. Henry VIII and Francis I exchanged visits through the most
+important personages of their courts and councils. Six days passed in the
+necessary negotiations for their meeting. All was at last arranged with a
+care so distrustful and minute as to suggest a mutual fear of treason. It was
+arranged that, leaving the castle of Guines, whither he expected to go on June
+5th, Henry VIII should advance towards Francis I, who, on his side, would
+leave the castle of Ardres, and advance towards Henry VIII.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday, June 7th, the kings of France and of England, mounted
+upon great chargers, clothed the one in cloth of gold, the other in cloth of
+silver, covered with pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, their heads covered
+by velvet caps resplendent with precious stones, from which floated magnificent
+white plumes, set out at the same time and at the same pace. Their
+constables preceded them, bare sword in hand, and the lords of their court,
+most gorgeously apparelled, followed in their train. Each of them was followed
+by a bodyguard of four hundred archers or men-at-arms. Thus
+escorted they descended the two hills which led into the pleasant plain of
+the Valdoré, where a pavilion had been erected to receive them. Their
+appearance was more that of two knights marching to battle than two princes
+going to a diplomatic interview.</p>
+
+<p>The escort halted at a certain point, from whence they kept watch, so that
+the English archers should not approach too closely to the king of France,
+nor the men-at-arms of the French army to the king of England. At a
+short distance from each other, Henry and Francis spurred their horses,
+reining them in with all the grace of the experienced cavalier, when they
+found themselves side by side. Saluting one another in kingly fashion they
+then dismounted and entered the pavilion arm in arm. Cardinal Wolsey and
+Admiral Bonnivet, who, since the death of his brother the grand-master,
+Arthur de Boisy, had been the favourite of Francis I and managed his affairs,
+preceded them.</p>
+
+<p>Francis I showed great cordiality to Henry VIII, and, giving utterance
+to the thought always present with him, proffered him his assistance in the
+hope of gaining his. “Dear brother and cousin,” said he, “I have taken
+much trouble to see you. You understand, I hope, that I am ready to
+help you with the kingdoms and lordships which are under my authority.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span>Henry VIII, evading any pledge, relieved himself from the obligation of
+helping Francis I, by not accepting the assistance offered. He contented
+himself with assurances of his friendship, which he still made conditional.
+“I have not in view your kingdoms or your lordships,” answered Henry
+VIII, “but loyalty and the instant execution of promises contained in the
+treaty drawn up between us. If you keep these, my eyes have never beheld
+a prince who could win more the affection of my heart.”</p>
+
+<p>They then examined the treaty which had been drawn up that evening,
+and by which, conforming to the agreement of the 4th of October, 1518,
+the dauphin of France was to marry the
+only daughter of the king of England, and
+Francis I was to pay an annual sum of
+100,000 francs, which is equivalent to more
+than 2,000,000 francs of modern money,
+until the celebration of the wedding, which
+was yet far distant. Whilst reading the
+introduction to the treaty, in which, according
+to diplomatic etiquette, the title of king
+of France was added to that of king of England
+and of Ireland, Henry VIII said with
+tact: “I will omit it. In your presence it
+is not correct.” But if he omitted it in
+reading, he left it in the treaty, and a little
+later was ambitious to make it real by invading
+France and wishing to reign there.
+After some discussion, following the custom
+of that time the sovereigns took wine
+together, and admired the nobles of their
+courts, whom they presented to one another
+and who were embraced, those of France
+by the king of England, those of England by
+the king of France. As the meetings, so the
+fêtes were regulated and carried through
+in a very ceremonious manner, with precautions
+that excluded intimacy, and requirements
+which betrayed jealousy. When Francis I went to dine with Queen
+Catherine at Guines, Henry VIII came to dine with Queen Claude at Ardres.
+The two kings held hostages for one another, and behaved in many ways as
+if they were in the presence of enemies. This suspicious attitude, these
+timid steps, were as little suited to the political views as to the trusting
+character of Francis I.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p312.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Dauphin Francis, Son of Francis I</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Wishing one day to break down this ceremonious and distrustful barrier,
+he arose earlier in the morning than was customary, and taking with him
+two gentlemen and a page, and wrapped merely in a Spanish cape, he left
+Ardres to go and surprise the king of England in Guines. Two hundred
+archers and the governors were upon the drawbridge when he arrived. At
+the sight of the king of France, come at such a time, so meagrely attended,
+putting himself thus in their hands, they were aghast. Francis I crossed
+their ranks with a frank and laughing countenance, and, as if he wished to
+take the fortress by storm, summoned them gaily to surrender to him. The
+king of England still slept. Francis I went straight to his room, knocked
+at the door, awoke Henry VIII, who, on seeing him, was even more
+astounded than his archers had been, and said frankly, with as much cordiality
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>as tact: “My brother, you have done me the best turn that one man ever
+did to another, and showed me what confidence I ought to have in you.
+From this moment I am your prisoner, and pledge you my faith.” He took
+at the same time a beautiful collar from his neck and begged the king of
+France to wear it that day for love of his prisoner. Francis I went still
+further in his demonstrations. He had a bracelet double the value of the
+collar. Putting this upon Henry’s arm he asked him to wear it for love of
+him, and he added that he wished for that day to be valet to his prisoner.
+The king of France as a matter of fact handed the king of England’s shirt
+to him. The next day Henry VIII, imitating the confidence of Francis I,
+went to Ardres slightly attended, and there took place a fresh exchange
+of presents and courtesies between them.</p>
+
+<p>This attempt to rival each other in friendship was followed by a rivalry
+of skill in the tournaments and games that the two kings held at their courts.
+Spacious lists, which ended in strong enclosures for the guards of each
+prince and which adjoined elegant stands erected for the queens and the
+ladies-in-waiting, had been prepared in a high and uncovered place. There
+for eight days were held jousts in which the most skilful men-at-arms of
+France and England took part on foot and on horseback, with lance and
+sword. The two kings who directed them displayed therein without contention,
+the one his brilliant dexterity, the other his athletic strength.
+Francis I, who excelled in horsemanship, broke his lances with an accomplished
+skill. Henry VIII, whose impetuosity could not be resisted, struck
+his antagonist’s helmet so violently that he unseated him, and prevented him
+from fulfilling his other engagements.</p>
+
+<p>King Henry, who was one of the best bowmen in the kingdom, made himself
+remarkable by the strength with which he drew the string and the swiftness
+with which he struck his mark; he would also have liked to show his
+superiority in wrestling with Francis I. The English wrestlers had defeated
+the French wrestlers because through negligence the latter had not brought
+with them the Bretons, who are unsurpassed in this sort of game. In the
+evening Henry VIII, hoping to complete the victory of his men by an easy
+triumph, came close to Francis I and said to him roughly, “Brother, I want
+to wrestle with you.” At the same time he grasped him with his powerful
+hands and tried to throw him; but Francis I, who was a well-trained wrestler
+and more lithe, twisted his leg around his assailant, so that the latter lost his
+balance and rolled on the ground. Henry arose, crimson with confusion
+and anger, and wished to begin again. Only the fact that dinner was
+ready and that the queens intervened prevented this dangerous test, which
+was more likely to make bad friends of the two kings by wounding their
+vanity, than the recent intimacies of their long interview were likely to
+cement their friendship. After twenty-five days passed together in the
+midst of festivals and pleasures, Francis I and Henry VIII separated, apparently
+in cordial friendship.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Francis I and Charles V at War</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1520-1522 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Francis I was not certain of the armed co-operation of Henry VIII, but
+he believed he had secured his interested and, from thenceforward, faithful
+friendship. He had bought it by a large annual payment which was simply
+a subsidy in disguise. He flattered himself that if the king of England
+failed to declare himself on his side in the war about to begin, at all events
+he would not espouse the cause of the emperor, his enemy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12h2"><a href="#endnote_12h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span></p>
+
+<p>But this interview was nothing more than play-acting, as Francis soon
+realised when he learned that Henry on his way back to England had paid
+a visit to Charles V, who was close friends with Wolsey. Furious at this
+duplicity and at learning that Henry VIII had agreed to arbitrate on
+Charles’ behalf in all quarrels between him and France, Francis cast about
+for a pretext for war, and soon found occasions in the Low Countries, Navarre,
+and Italy. In April, 1521, he despatched Marshal de Lautrec to defend the
+Milanese against the Spaniards.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p314.jpg" width="250" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Baron, Early Sixteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The government of the conquered province had been such as to render
+the French yoke odious to the Milanese. The cause lay in the intrigues and
+corruption of the court. As soon as the government has grown despotic, we
+are instantly compelled to look for the causes of events in the scandalous
+chronicle of harlotry. It has been related that Anne, queen of Louis XII,
+had assembled around her the daughters of the French nobility; and a court
+was thus gradually formed, no longer composed solely of warriors and statesmen,
+but of the gay and idle also of both sexes. This sudden freedom had
+an ill effect upon public morals. The principles
+and habits of courtiers were not prepared
+for the increased temptation. The
+grossness of the age did not yet admit of that
+true and pure enjoyment of female society
+which modern cultivation allows. Francis,
+when he was suddenly released from Amboise,
+and found himself possessed of all power, and
+endowed with all attraction, in the midst of
+an assemblage of beauty, gave a loose rein
+to his passions. His wife, Claude, daughter
+of the late king, never had the command of
+his affections; and the court of Francis soon
+arrived at that state of dissoluteness which
+we find recorded in the pages of Brantôme,
+and from which we shrink in incredulity and
+disgust.</p>
+
+<p>Françoise de Foix was one of those highborn
+maidens whom Anne of Brittany had
+reared near her person. That queen had given
+her in marriage to the count de Châteaubriant,
+who retained her at his remote château, far
+from the fascinations of a court. Francis,
+however, insisted on the presence of the
+beauty. The countess de Châteaubriant was
+summoned to the capital, and soon became the avowed and chosen mistress
+of her sovereign. Her brother Lautrec was made governor of Milan.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12i1"><a href="#endnote_12i">i</a></span> In
+spite of Lautrec’s efforts Milan fell into the enemy’s hands, and on April 27th,
+1522, he lost a battle which robbed Francis of all his power in Lombardy.
+This was the battle of Bicocca, in which Prospero Colonna, occupying an
+entrenched position, repulsed the French and inflicted upon them a decisive
+defeat.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Defection of the Duke de Bourbon</i></h4>
+
+<p>The rage of Francis against his unsuccessful general was extreme. He
+refused to see him. The duchess d’Angoulême exasperated the king’s animosity
+by her censures; while Madame de Châteaubriant dared not intercede
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span>for her brother. At length the constable procured Lautrec admission
+to the king, who covered him with reproaches. “It is not I who am to
+blame,” said Lautrec; “the gendarmerie have served eighteen months without
+pay; and the wilfulness of the Swiss, both in fighting against my wish
+and then abandoning me, was owing to my inability to pay them.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the 400,000 crowns?” said the king. “Were never received,” was
+the answer. Francis summoned his treasurer, Semblançay, and asked him
+sternly how it came that the promised sum had not yet reached Lautrec.
+The treasurer replied that the duchess d’Angoulême had made him pay it to
+her. The king then rushed to the apartments of his mother. “It is to your
+avarice then, madam, that I owe the loss of the Milanese?” The duchess
+could not deny the receipt of the sum, but she alleged having received it on
+her private account. The excuse did not satisfy the monarch, and Semblançay
+kept his station. The vengeance of the queen-mother henceforth
+unremittingly followed the unfortunate treasurer. Heads of accusation can
+never be wanting against a man intrusted with the finances of a kingdom;
+and five years after, Semblançay, an honest and irreproachable minister, fell
+a victim to the intrigues and iniquity of the monarch’s mother, and died as a
+malefactor on the common gibbet.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Francis met with these reverses, which were the natural consequences
+of the blunders and recklessness of his administration, the emperor
+Charles was carefully securing every friend, and improving every advantage.
+The new pope, Adrian, was his creature: Wolsey’s resentment, on being
+disappointed of the tiara, was soothed for a time; and Henry VIII was
+induced not only to break with France, but to send thither an army under
+the duke of Suffolk, which, however, achieved nothing remarkable. The
+Venetian Republic, also, the last of the Italian powers that inclined to France,
+was estranged from his friendship, and joined the alliance against him. Not
+content with making every foreign potentate his foe, the French monarch
+had at the same time the imprudence to alienate the most powerful of his
+subjects. Trivulzio, we have seen, expired beneath his neglect. Charles,
+duke de Bourbon, and constable of the kingdom, was now driven by injustice
+to league with the enemies of his country. The last duke de Bourbon had
+left a daughter, Suzanne. The title, and a certain portion of the heritage,
+went by law to the male heir; but as a considerable part would be inherited
+by Suzanne, the paternal care of Louis XII arranged a marriage between
+Charles, the existing duke, and Suzanne de Bourbon, thus preserving unbroken
+the heritage and title of that illustrious family. The duke was of a handsome
+person, and on the death of his duchess, Suzanne, without issue, the
+duchess d’Angoulême made advances to fill her place. This she was the more
+forward in doing, as, being descended in the female line from a previous
+duke de Bourbon, she considered herself to have claims on that part of the
+property which might descend to a female. The constable, however, was
+blind to her advances, backed by this tacit menace. And the slighted
+duchess instantly put forward her claim to the Bourbonnais as appertaining
+by right to her.</p>
+
+<p>Bourbon had previously received affronts from the king, who disliked
+his cold temper and reserved demeanour. The duke was grave and dignified,
+fond of war and business, and averse to join in the follies of a court. It
+appears, too, that Francis amused himself at the duke’s expense; and the
+latter bore raillery with so little good humour as to be called the “prince of
+small endurance.” Whatever was the cause, they certainly disliked each
+other; and Francis manifested this feeling first by recalling Bourbon from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span>the government of Milan, and afterwards by giving the command of the
+vanguard in one of the northern campaigns to the duke of Alençon, although
+that post of honour was the constable’s right.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p316.jpg" width="250" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Constable de Bourbon</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1522-1524 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Bearing all this in mind, when his hitherto unquestioned right to the
+Bourbonnais was called in question, the duke instantly apprehended that
+a league to destroy him had been planned
+by the king and his mother. Duprat, the
+chancellor, was but a creature of the latter;
+and to hope for justice in the event of trial
+was absurd. Bourbon was, therefore, driven
+to look abroad for a refuge or for vengeance.
+The emperor’s emissary was at hand, proffering
+him that prince’s sister in marriage,
+and many advantages, if he would join the
+emperor’s party, and raise a civil war in
+France against its monarch. Bourbon hesitated
+long, but finally acceded to the proposals
+of Charles. Francis in the meantime
+had been roused from the lap of pleasure by
+the league of all Europe against him. He
+was at Lyons, on the way to Italy at the
+head of an army, when Bourbon was about
+to take the fatal step. Francis tried to
+soothe him: he showed his confidence by
+appointing him lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom; and assured him that whatever
+might be the result of this unfortunate
+process, he would not see him despoiled.
+The object of Francis seems to have been
+the gratification of his mother, and the driving
+of Bourbon to a marriage with her.
+This failed, however, like every act of the
+monarch’s policy. The constable determined
+to join the emperor. But Francis
+was now near, accompanied with forces;
+and as circumstances had awakened his
+suspicions, he called on the constable to accompany him to Italy. Bourbon
+feigned sickness, and took to his couch, as a pretext for delay; till at length,
+seeing that it would be dangerous to trifle any longer with the impatient
+Francis, the constable dispersed his suite and fled, followed by a single
+attendant, into the dominions of the emperor. Francis gained by this desertion,
+as he confiscated the wide domains of Bourbon. Charles acquired what
+he least wanted—a general, and an unfortunate claimant.</p>
+
+<h4><i>A Disastrous Campaign in Italy: The Battle of Pavia</i></h4>
+
+<p>Bonnivet, the personal enemy of Bourbon, was now intrusted with the command
+of the French army. He marched without opposition into the Milanese,
+and might have taken the capital had he pushed on to its gates.
+Having by irresolution lost it, he retreated to winter quarters behind the
+Ticino. The operations of the English in Picardy, of the imperials in
+Champagne, and of the Spaniards near the Pyrenees, were equally insignificant.
+The spring of 1524 brought on an action, if the attack of one point
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>can be called such, which proved decisive for the time. Bonnivet advanced
+rashly beyond the Ticino. The imperials, commanded by four able generals,
+Lannoy, Pescara, Bourbon, and Sforza, succeeded in almost cutting off
+his retreat. They at the same time refused Bonnivet’s offer to engage.
+They hoped to weaken him by famine. The Swiss first murmured against the
+distress occasioned by want of precaution. They deserted across the river;
+and Bonnivet, thus abandoned, was obliged to make a precipitate and perilous
+retreat. A bridge was hastily flung across the Sesia, near Romagnano;
+and Bonnivet, with his best knights and gendarmerie, undertook to defend
+the passage of the rest of the army. The imperials, led on by Bourbon,
+made a furious attack. Bonnivet was wounded, and he gave his place to
+Bayard, who, never intrusted with a high command, was always chosen for
+that of a forlorn hope. The brave Vandenesse was soon killed; and Bayard
+himself received a gunshot wound. The gallant chevalier, feeling his
+wound mortal, caused himself to be placed in a sitting posture beneath
+a tree, his face to the enemy, and his sword fixed in guise of a cross before
+him. The constable De Bourbon, who led the imperials, soon came up
+to the dying Bayard, and expressed his compassion. “Weep not for me,”
+said the chevalier, “but for thyself. I die in performing my duty; thou art
+betraying thine.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1524-1525 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Francis, in the meantime, alarmed by the invasion, had assembled an
+army. He burned to employ it, and avenge the late affront. He marched
+upon Milan, whose population was spiritless and broken by the plague, and
+took it without resistance. It was then mooted whether Lodi or Pavia
+should be besieged. The latter, imprudently, as it is said, was preferred.
+The siege of Pavia was formed about the middle of October. Antonio de
+Leyva, an experienced officer, supported by veteran troops, commanded in the
+town. By the month of January, 1525, the French had made no progress;
+and the impatient Francis despatched a considerable portion of his army for
+the invasion of Naples, hearing that the country was drained of troops.
+This was a gross blunder, which Pescara observing, he forbore to send any
+force to oppose the expedition. He knew that the fate of Italy would be
+decided before Pavia.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12i2"><a href="#endnote_12i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During the night of the 23rd of February the emperor’s generals harassed
+the royal camp by a lively cannonade and a series of feigned attacks, while the
+main body of their troops was approaching in silence the walls of the park.
+Masons undermined and tore down a considerable portion of the wall, and
+through the breach thus effected the imperial advance-guard, under the young
+marquis del Guasto, cousin to Pescara, closely followed by the remaining
+troops, rushed into the park. In the light of the breaking day the French
+saw the imperial columns defile rapidly by the king’s quarters and set out in
+the direction of Pavia. The hostile troops were obliged to cross a wide
+clearing that was raked by the shot of the artillery posted along the king’s
+entrenchments, and so terrible was the fire opened out upon them by the veteran
+Galiot de Genouillac that, says Martin du Bellay,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12j"><a href="#endnote_12j">j</a></span> “one after the other
+great breaches were made in the enemy’s battalions, and there was nothing
+to be seen but flying arms and heads.” Their ranks thinned by this frightful
+cannonade, the imperials began running in single file towards a valley,
+where they hoped to be out of range of the royal batteries.</p>
+
+<p>When Francis I saw this movement he believed the enemy to be in full
+flight and his own victory assured; it had, moreover, been reported to him
+that the division under Alençon and Chabot had routed a Spanish battalion
+in the park and captured several cannon. Rallying his gendarmerie, he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span>rushed forth from the camp in pursuit of the flying enemy, thus masking
+his own batteries and reducing them to silence at the very moment when
+they might have been the most destructive; the remainder of the army
+followed the king.</p>
+
+<p>Bourbon and Pescara, transported with joy, hastily formed their line of
+battle, while Del Guasto rushed up with his advance-guard, reinforced by
+Antonio de Leyva, and the flower of the garrison of Pavia, which the guard
+left in charge of the camp had been unable to hold back. The division of
+the duke of Alençon formed the left wing of the French army and was
+separated by a large body of Swiss troops from the king, who commanded
+the centre; between the king and the right wing commanded by La Palisse
+were placed four or five thousand lansquenets, the remnant of the old bands
+of Gelderland and Westphalia who were used to fighting under French
+banners against the house of Austria, and to being placed under the ban of
+the empire by Charles V. The shock of the meeting between these two
+armies, inconsiderable as to numbers but composed of the bravest fighting-men
+in Europe, was terrific. Fallen upon by the lansquenets of Charles de
+Bourbon and left without assistance by the Swiss, the king’s lansquenets
+were overwhelmed by force of numbers and crushed between two battalions
+of the enemy. Nearly all these brave men perished, as did also their two
+chiefs, the duke of Suffolk (the White Rose) and Francis de Lorraine, brother
+of the duke de Lorraine and of Count Claude de Guise. Bourbon and his
+victorious infantry next turned against the French right wing which was
+engaged in a hot contest with a Spanish-Italian cavalry corps. The right
+wing, after many great but useless exploits, shared the fate that befell the
+French lansquenets, and it was on this field that the veteran Chabannes de
+la Palisse ended his glorious career. His horse having been killed under
+him, he was about to surrender his sword to the Neapolitan captain Castaldo,
+when a Spaniard, envious of Castaldo’s good fortune, killed the illustrious
+prisoner by a shot from his arquebuse.</p>
+
+<p>No less furiously did the combat rage in the centre where the king, at
+the head of his gendarmerie, overpowered an Italian squadron under the
+command of the marquis de Saint Angelo, a descendant of the great Scanderbeg;
+it is said that the king slew this nobleman, as well as several other
+knights, with his own hand. The squadron of the Franc-Comtois suffered
+overthrow in its turn; the Spanish cavalry would have had a similar fate
+had not Pescara devised a manœuvre which was as successful as it was
+terrible in its effects. This was to mingle with his horsemen fifteen hundred
+or two thousand Basque musketeers whose agility enabled them to slip into
+the ranks of the French to choose their victims, and who by their deadly fire
+checked the advance of the gendarmerie and threw all the squadrons into
+confusion. The richest coats of mail, the most gallantly plumed helmets
+were the marks selected in preference by these sharpshooters, and one after
+the other the famous leaders who had raised French arms to glory during the
+last thirty years were seen to fall—Louis de la Trémouille, Louis d’Ars,
+teacher and friend of Bayard, the grand equerry San Severino, the bastard
+of Savoy, and the marshal De Foix-Lescun, all were killed or mortally
+wounded. The king and those immediately about him continued to fight
+desperately, a furious charge having brought Pescara to the earth and put
+to flight Lannoy. Victory might still have been on the side of the French
+had Alençon and the Swiss done their full duty; but the duke, on learning
+of the confusion into which the right wing had been thrown, fled precipitately,
+carrying with him almost all the gendarmerie and the left wing, while
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>the Swiss, left uncovered by the desertion of Alençon and menaced on their
+left flank by the imperial cavalry, turned their backs in their turn, instead
+of repulsing the enemy’s attack and flying to the succour of the king, and
+set out in confusion on the road to Milan. This battle should have served
+as a terrible lesson to the kings of France, who were in the habit of buying
+the services of mercenaries at a high price rather than place arms in the
+hands of their own subjects.</p>
+
+<p>All the stress and burden of the battle now fell upon the king and the
+valiant body of nobles who pressed about him; Bourbon, Castaldo, Del
+Guasto, De Leyva, and the viceroy Lannoy had successively joined Pescara,
+and there remained to the French gendarmerie but to sell their lives as dearly
+as possible. Diesbach, the Swiss general, and Admiral Bonnivet decided not
+to survive—the one, the ignominious retreat which was to tarnish the fame
+of the league, and the other the sad “misadventure” for which he himself
+had been mainly responsible. They both flung themselves upon the pikes of
+Bourbon’s lansquenets and at once found death. Bonnivet, the favourite of
+Madame d’Angoulême as well as of the king, had taken the most active part
+in the persecution of the constable, and Bourbon was now seeking him all
+over the field of battle. When he finally perceived his enemy’s mutilated
+corpse, “Unhappy man!” he exclaimed with sadness, “you are the cause of
+France’s ruin and my own!”</p>
+
+<p>The French gendarmerie at last succumbed to the superior numbers of
+the enemy; they were broken, dispersed, and cut to pieces. Francis I,
+wounded in the leg and in the face, defended himself bravely for some time
+longer, but his horse, on being dealt a fatal blow, fell and bore him to the
+earth, where he would have been despatched by the soldiers who struggled to
+reach him had not Pompérant, the companion of the constable’s flight, recognised
+the king and rushed to his rescue. Pompérant proposed to the king to
+pledge his faith to Bourbon, but Francis indignantly refused; then Pompérant
+sent for Lannoy, viceroy of Naples, who bent his knee to receive the
+bloody sword of the king, and proffered his in exchange.</p>
+
+<p>Eight thousand French and auxiliaries had met death; and all the
+leaders—the king of Navarre (Henry d’Albret), the count of Saint-Pol,
+Fleuranges, Montmorency, Brion—who were not stretched upon the battle-field,
+shared the captivity of Francis I. The king begged his captors not to
+take him back to Pavia where he would be a “spectacle and a laughing-stock
+to those upon whom he had formerly inflicted fear, evil, and fatigue.” He
+was conducted to the tent of the marquis del Guasto, where his wounds were
+properly attended to. In the evening Charles de Bourbon presented himself
+with every mark of respect before the monarch upon whom he had taken so
+cruel a vengeance. Both, according to the accounts most worthy of credence,
+displayed great self-control and admirably concealed feelings, of triumph on
+the one hand, of grief and humiliation on the other; the king’s only departure
+from this reserve was in the reception he gave Pescara, which was warm
+compared to his attitude towards Bourbon. Francis I had at least one consolation
+in his misfortune, the one that would most appeal to a nature such
+as his: the imperial soldiers had been so struck by his prowess in the field that
+they divided his effects as relics among themselves, and evinced so strongly
+their desire to see him that the viceroy of Naples experienced some alarm.
+The German mercenaries, without taking into account the immense booty
+they had gained, demanded more imperatively than before the battle their
+arrears of pay, and Lannoy feared that they would seek to seize the king as
+surety, perhaps even go over to the royal side. He averted this danger by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span>sending Francis I to Pizzighettone under the guard of a Spanish captain of
+whose fidelity he was sure, and by extorting heavy contributions from the
+pope and the smaller Italian states, in order that the soldiery might be
+induced to wait in patience.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1525-1526 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It was in the imperial camp near Pavia, on the eve of departure for Pizzighettone
+that Francis I wrote to his mother the celebrated letter that tradition
+has greatly altered by giving it this laconic form: “Madame, all is lost
+save honour.” The true text is as follows: “Madame, To let you know the
+full extent of my misfortune I have but to say, of all things there remain to
+me only honour and my life; and that this news may be of a little comfort
+to you in your adversity I have prayed them to let me write you this letter,
+which prayer they have readily accorded; I also beg of you to allow yourself
+to come to no harm but to make use of your accustomed prudence, for I have
+hope that in the end God will not abandon me. I recommend to you my
+children and your grandchildren, and pray you to let pass the bearer of this
+to Spain and back, for it is his mission to see the emperor to inform him of
+the treatment I receive.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12k2"><a href="#endnote_12k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Francis Captive in Spain: The Treaty of Madrid</i></h4>
+
+<p>Although Francis had hoped to overcome his conqueror, he did not fear
+to humiliate himself before him. This rôle of captive and suppliant was so
+new to him that he rather overdid it and rather bore in mind his present
+fortunes, which might change, than his kingly dignity which he should
+never lose. Thus, in three letters written by him to Charles, three times
+he affected to call himself his slave.</p>
+
+<p>“Having no other comfort in my misfortune than the hope of your goodness,
+by which, if it please you, use me, the fruits of your own victory, with
+all fairness. I have firm hope that your virtue will not constrain me to do
+anything dishonouring, and I beg you to let your heart decide what you will
+do with me. Wherefore may it please you to have the kindly pity to assure
+the safety which is due the king of France as prisoner, then will you render
+me friendly and not despairing, you will make an acquisition instead of a
+useless prisoner, and have a king forever your slave. So I end my humble
+petitions which have no other end to expect but that you will style me,
+instead of a prisoner, your good brother and friend Francis.”</p>
+
+<p>But when Francis heard the rigorous conditions, when he saw he had in
+vain humiliated himself before his enemy, death appeared less horrible than
+captivity for him, and ruin and shame for France. “Tell your master,” he
+cried, “that I would rather die than submit to his terms. My kingdom is
+still intact, and for my deliverance I neither can nor will harm it. If the
+emperor desires treaties, let him speak another language.” The opportunity
+was propitious for Lannoy, and he well knew how to use it. “Your majesty,”
+said he, “had made a better bargain with the emperor by treating directly
+with him. Go yourself to Spain and put yourself in the hands of my master.
+He will be touched by this proof of confidence and will certainly not abuse the
+rights victory has given him.” Francis allowed himself to be taken in the trap,
+and judging his enemy by himself the chivalrous monarch resolved to put
+himself at the discretion of Charles V. He had sent from Marseilles six of
+his galleys to aid in the transport of troops which were to serve him as escort,
+and forbade his admirals to alarm the imperial crews during the crossing.
+He embarked at Genoa May 7th, 1526, and Lannoy was clever enough to persuade
+Bourbon and Pescara that he was conducting his prisoner to Naples.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span></p>
+
+<p>Charles V was unaware of Lannoy’s project; it was a pleasant surprise,
+then, to learn that the king of France, whom he had thought in Italy, was on
+Spanish soil. He immediately had him transferred to his castle at Madrid, leaving
+it himself for fear of meeting him. Francis, always liable to be deceived,
+had counted on prompt deliverance. While waiting, he had imagined himself
+treated by his conquerors as a guest and not as a prisoner. But seeing he had
+been tricked by Lannoy, guessing the astuteness of Charles behind that of
+his minister, he immediately fell ill of grief. Soon his life was in danger.
+The people of Madrid, moved with sympathy for this knightly king, more
+fitted than Charles V to reign over Spain, hastened in crowds to the
+churches to ask God to cure him. Charles, who calculated everything,
+even his pity, realised that if he allowed his prisoner to die he would lose
+a possible ransom. He then decided to pay him a visit, and, lavish of fine
+words, succeeded in raising Francis’ courage. But his object gained and the
+sick man saved, Charles forgot all his promises, refused to see his prisoner
+again, and reinsisted on the hard terms of release.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12l"><a href="#endnote_12l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>France in the meantime, though stunned and disordered by the first
+news of the disaster of Pavia, was recovering its composure and force. The
+duchess of Angoulême was regent; the count de Vendôme, cousin of the constable
+De Bourbon, did not take advantage of his being first prince of the
+blood to embroil the kingdom. The parliament, indeed, displeased with
+the imperious character of the king, and angered on account of the Concordat
+and other causes, gave the regent some trouble. But new allies flocked to
+France in her distress. The Italian states were all ready to combine against
+the emperor, whose power they now dreaded. Henry VIII of England
+instantly flung his support into the scale of the discomfited Francis, and
+concluded a treaty with the regent, stipulating that the kingdom should on
+no account be dismembered. Large numbers of the people of Alsace had
+taken advantage of the opportunity to rise and invade France, excited by
+that religious zeal which scorns restraint. The count of Guise mustered
+some forces, fell upon them in time, and cut them to pieces. It was for this
+service that Francis afterwards created the county of Guise into a duchy-peerage—an
+honour heretofore granted solely to princes of the blood. The
+parliament made great opposition to this novelty; but the king was resolute
+in his friendship, and Guise became one of the high noblesse of France, a
+duke and peer.</p>
+
+<p>Negotiations for the liberation of the king proceeded, with little prospect
+of success, at Madrid. Bourbon had betaken himself thither; his presence
+and his claims were no small source of difficulties. The emperor had promised
+him his sister Leonora, queen-dowager of Portugal, in marriage; but as
+Francis, to disappoint Bourbon, offered to marry this princess himself, the
+constable was obliged to forego the honour. The marquis Pescara dying
+at this time, the emperor offered the command of his Italian armies to Bourbon,
+who was urged to accept of it, and was thus got rid of. Still the terms
+offered to Francis were so harsh that he could not accede to them. His sister,
+the duchess of Alençon, had come to tend him in his illness and captivity.
+She was now about to return; and Francis put into her hand his absolute
+resignation of the kingdom, that he might be considered as dead, and no
+further efforts be made for his liberation. This alarmed the emperor, who
+became willing to relax in some degree. Still his demands were so exorbitant
+and unreasonable that Francis at length consented to extricate himself
+by a breach of faith, and to swear to a treaty the stipulations of which he
+was determined not to perform.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span></p>
+
+<p>With these opposite views—grasping severity, that over-reached itself,
+on the one side, and premeditated bad faith, the almost compulsory resource
+of Francis, on the other—the Treaty of Madrid was concluded. By it the
+king agreed to give up Burgundy, to renounce all right to Milan and Naples,
+as well as to Flanders and Artois. He was to be set at liberty, and to
+espouse Leonora of Portugal, the emperor’s sister. He was, moreover,
+to abandon his allies, the king of Navarre, the dukes of Gelderland, of
+Würtemberg, and the count de la Mark; and he was to re-establish Bourbon
+in all his property and privileges. Moreover, the two sons of Francis were
+to remain as hostages for the performance of these conditions, the king himself
+promising to return into captivity if they were not fulfilled. On the
+14th of January, 1526, the treaty was signed; Francis taking the precaution
+to protest secretly, in presence of his chancellor, against the validity of such
+exactions. Charles himself could not but mistrust the sincerity of Francis,
+and he even retained him prisoner a month after the signature. The king’s
+health again declined in consequence; and at length Charles, in a hurried
+and irresolute way, gave orders for his final liberation. He was led to the
+river Bidassoa, which separates the countries: his sons, who appeared on
+the opposite bank, were exchanged for him, and Francis, mounting a horse
+of extreme swiftness, galloped without drawing rein to St. Jean de Luz, and
+thence to Bayonne.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Further Dissensions and the “Ladies’ Peace”</i></h4>
+
+<p>Thus freed from captivity, on terms which, if fulfilled, must ruin his
+kingdom, and if unfulfilled must stain his honour, Francis, it might have
+been expected, would be instantly occupied in the duty of defending himself
+and retrieving his affairs. His first act on arriving at Bordeaux, however,
+was to become enamoured of Mademoiselle d’Heilly, better known as
+the duchess d’Étampes, who superseded the countess of Châteaubriant in his
+affections, and held thenceforward the greatest influence over the monarch.</p>
+
+<p>The liberation of Francis was the signal for a general league against the
+emperor. The Italian powers were ever disposed to unite against the strongest.
+Sforza had already rebelled against Charles, and had been driven from
+Milan by Pescara. All of them—the pope, the Venetians, the Florentines—now
+formed an alliance with the king, on condition that Sforza should
+remain in possession of Milan. A treaty to this effect was signed at Cognac,
+but was kept secret for some time. The states of Burgundy had assembled,
+to protest against the transfer of their province to the emperor. The king,
+they said, had no right nor power to make such a stipulation without their
+consent. When Lannoy, on the part of Charles, demanded the cession of
+Burgundy, Francis referred him to the answer of the states. The emperor,
+on learning this evasion of the treaty, called on Francis, as a man of honour,
+to redeem his word and return into captivity.</p>
+
+<p>This was a trying moment for Francis, who piqued himself on possessing
+all the chivalric virtues. He could not openly deride the credulity of Charles,
+as Louis the XI or Ferdinand the Catholic would have done. He was perplexed,
+distressed, and could only allege the necessity of the case; a plea
+which by no means satisfied his nice notions of honour. He therefore
+resolved on taking the advice of his subjects. Despotic as he was, he felt
+in this case at least the necessity of having the nation to participate his
+responsibility. To call together the states-general of the kingdom was obviously
+the natural step in such a case. But no; Francis dreaded the very
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span>name of that assembly, in which the vulgar <i>tiers état</i>, or people, had a voice.
+The legists and judges of the parliament had for some time taken upon them
+to represent the nation, in demurring to taxes and to edicts. Francis, and
+his minister Duprat, though not wholly contented with the parliament, yet
+deemed that preferable to an assembly of bourgeois. It was resolved therefore
+between them that the voice of the nation should now be taken, not in
+the good old states-general, but in what has since been called an assembly
+of notables—one of the most unfortunate inventions or innovations that
+despotic craft could have imagined.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1526-1527 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This assembly of notables, or, as some historians will call it, this bed of
+justice, was held in December, 1526. It consisted of prelates, nobles, courtiers,
+gentlemen, the parliament of Paris, and the presidents of the provincial
+parliaments; the only admixture of democracy being the provost of
+merchants and the four sheriffs of the city of Paris. Before those Francis
+made a long discourse; entering at large into the affairs of the kingdom, its
+finances and resources. He recounted the misfortunes of his captivity, and
+declared his readiness to return to it, if his people thought that either their
+interest or his honour so demanded. The reply of each class, for all answered
+separately, was that he was absolved from an unjust and compulsory oath,
+against which he had previously protested, and the fulfilment of which the
+privileges and welfare of his people alike forbade. They at the same time
+accorded to him the liberty of raising two millions for the ransom of his sons,
+assuming in this particular all the rights of the states-general. Thus satisfied,
+Francis published the general league against the emperor, denominated
+“holy,” because the pope was at its head. Not only the Italian states, but
+the Swiss and the king of England acceded to it; so that the reverses of
+Francis, if they had stripped him of territories, rendered him much stronger
+in alliances than his rival.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor, on his side, promised to Bourbon the investiture of the
+Milanese, if he succeeded in expelling Sforza. This the constable accomplished,
+subsisting his mercenary troops on the unfortunate inhabitants of
+Milan—for of money Charles had as notorious a lack as his grandsire
+Maximilian. Milan taken, pillaged, and wasted, how was Bourbon to support
+his army—that army by which he lived? For since his exile the prince
+had inhabited camps, and was averse to any more orderly way of life. He
+loved his soldiers, rapacious and licentious as they were; and was beloved
+by them, as a valiant and successful leader inclined to tolerate the license of
+the freebooter. Since his treason, Bourbon had met everywhere with insults
+and ingratitude from the French, the Spaniards, the emperor, and his brother
+generals. This situation made him misanthropic, and his character degenerated
+into that of the reckless and ferocious corsair. To obtain plunder for
+his army of lansquenets, in lieu of pay, became indispensable; and he
+accordingly led them south, menacing all the great cities of the peninsula,
+and uncertain which he should attack. Florence and Rome had both
+declared against the emperor; Bourbon fixed upon the imperial city as the
+more glorious prey, and accordingly marched thither his mercenary army.
+Pope Clement was terrified at his approach, and used all his country’s
+artifices to avert the danger. It approached nevertheless, and Clement shut
+himself up in the castle of St. Angelo.</p>
+
+<p>The army of Bourbon attacked Rome in the morning of the 5th of May,
+1527. Bourbon himself applied the first scaling-ladder, and was in the act
+of mounting it, when the first shot from the walls struck him and put an end
+to his disastrous career. His army passed over his body to the assault, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span>Rome was carried by storm. The pillage was general, so merciless were the
+soldiery. Not all the ravages of Hun and Goth surpassed those of the army
+of the first prince in Christendom. The cruelty of the German soldiers was
+unequalled: they indulged in the most horrid extravagance of debauch and
+impiety. For two months they remained masters of the city; and the pontiff
+himself was finally obliged to surrender himself a prisoner.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1527-1528 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This new triumph of the emperor, over the head of the church too, roused
+the zeal of Henry VIII. He already meditated a divorce from Catherine,
+Charles’ aunt; and it therefore became his policy to befriend and protect the
+pope, whose assistance he would chiefly require, against the emperor. Wolsey
+was therefore despatched to France; the treaty between the crowns was
+renewed; and a joint army was raised, to march into Italy under the command
+of Lautrec. That general now compensated for his former ill success.
+He made himself master of Genoa by the aid of Andrea Doria; and took
+Pavia by assault, abandoning it to pillage, in revenge for the defeat which
+the French had suffered under its walls. The conquest of Milan would have
+been easy; but as that city was now to belong to Sforza, the French general
+turned from it towards Rome, in order to procure the liberation of the pope.
+His approach effected this: the emperor became less harsh in his terms, and
+Clement soon found himself free at Orvieto.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time, towards the commencement of 1528, that challenges
+and defiances passed between Charles and Francis. The former, in
+his reply to the French envoy, reproached the restored king with an infamous
+breach of faith; and hinted that he was ready to support his charge as a true
+knight, sword in hand. Francis, indignant, sent a reply that the emperor
+“lied in his throat”; and demanded a rendezvous, or <i>champ clos</i>, for the
+duel; but notwithstanding the choler of both parties, it never took place.
+It is singular that in this affair of the single combat the cold and politic
+Charles seems to have been most in earnest, whilst the obstacles and delays
+were raised by the headlong and chivalric Francis.</p>
+
+<p>Lautrec in the meantime advanced to the conquest of Naples. He marched
+to the eastern coast, and soon reduced the provinces bordering on the Adriatic.
+The command of Bourbon’s army had devolved on Philibert, the last prince
+of Orange of the house of Châlons, another French chief of talents and influence,
+whom the petulance of Francis had alienated from him and driven into
+exile. With some difficulty this prince withdrew his army from the spoils
+of Rome to the defence of Naples. He was not strong enough to face Lautrec
+in the field: the prince of Orange, therefore, and Moncada, the new viceroy,
+shut themselves up in Naples, where they were soon besieged by Lautrec.
+Andrea Doria, a faithful partisan of France, held the sea with his Genoese
+galleys, and blockaded the port. It was proposed to reduce the town by
+famine. After some time Moncada, fitting out all the galleys in port, made
+an attack on the Genoese, then commanded by Filippino Doria, Andrea’s
+nephew. The attempt failed: the Spaniards were beaten, Moncada slain,
+and most of the captains taken; amongst others, the marquis del Guasto, and
+two brothers Colonna. Naples thus became in prospect an easy prey to Lautrec.
+Its fall might have brought the final submission of the kingdom; but
+the same blunder which Francis persevered in committing throughout his
+whole reign lost him this advantage, among so many others.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the fatal habit of the French king to disgust and alienate his
+best and most attached friends. Doria, for example, like Trivulzio, was an
+Italian who united with a love of his own country a firm attachment to the
+French. His exertions had but just torn Genoa from the emperor to give it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span>to Francis: he was now doing the very same by Naples, when it pleased the
+French court to insult and disoblige him. The prisoners he had won in action
+were taken from him, and no allowance was made for their ransom. These
+insults to himself Doria might have passed over; of wrongs offered to his
+country he was more sensible. The French undertook to fortify Savona,
+and to raise it into a rival of Genoa. They removed thither the trade in
+salt, one of the most lucrative sources of the Genoese commerce. Doria
+expostulated; and another admiral, Barbescenas, was sent to supersede him
+and bring him prisoner to France. When the admiral arrived, Doria received
+him, saying, “I know what brings you hither: the French vessels I deliver
+to you; the Genoese remain under my command. Do the rest of your errand
+if you dare!” The consequence of this blindness and ingratitude on the
+part of Francis was soon seen; Genoa declared herself free, and allied herself
+with the emperor. The blockade of Naples by sea was raised; and the influx
+of fresh troops and provisions enabled the city to defy its besiegers. These,
+encamped under a midsummer sun, ill supplied, and harassed, were soon
+attacked by pestilence. Lautrec their general died of it. The marquis of
+Saluzzo, who succeeded him, raised the siege and retired to Aversa, where
+he soon after surrendered to the prince of Orange; and thus another unsuccessful
+Italian expedition was added to the long list of French disasters.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1528-1529 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Another army led by the count of Saint-Pol into the north of Italy met
+with as little success. Francis felt that he could not re-establish his fortunes:
+he sickened of the love of glory that had hitherto animated him, and showed
+himself willing to treat for peace on any terms, provided the cession of
+Burgundy was not insisted on. Charles by this time saw that the nation
+would never consent to such a sacrifice: he therefore waived this part of the
+Treaty of Madrid. The negotiations on both sides were carried on by
+the duchess d’Angoulême and Margaret of Austria. The king gave up all his
+claims to possessions in Italy, Milan, Naples, and even Asti, and abandoned
+all his allies in that country; he renounced all right of sovereignty over
+Flanders or Artois; he ceded Tournay and Arras; two millions were to be
+paid as ransom for the young princes; the lands of the house of Bourbon
+were to be restored to the heirs of that family (a stipulation, by the by, never
+performed); and, finally, the treaty was to be sealed by the marriage of
+Francis with Leonora, the emperor’s sister. This Peace of Cambray, called
+also the “Ladies’ Peace,” was concluded in August, 1529: it was as glorious
+for Charles as it was disgraceful to France and her monarch. The emperor
+remained supreme master of Italy; the pope submitted, and obtained the
+re-establishment of the Medici in Florence, with hereditary power; the Venetians,
+who said that Cambray was destined to be their purgatory, were shorn
+of their conquests. Charles forgave Sforza, and left him the duchy of Milan.
+Henry VIII reaped nothing save the emperor’s enmity by his interference:
+the English monarch showed himself generous to Francis, by remitting to
+him, at this moment, a large debt. Thus was Europe pacified for the time.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12i3"><a href="#endnote_12i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>INTERNAL AFFAIRS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1525-1547 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The melancholy Peace of Cambray will not be of long duration; the wars
+of Italy are not wholly finished; Francis I has not sincerely renounced “his
+heritage” beyond the mountains, the theatre of his former glory; he will
+continue to meditate and more than once to attempt, with some partial success,
+to shake his rival’s dominion over Italy. But neither great expeditions
+nor great events in the heart of the peninsula will again be seen under his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span>reign. The essential interest of the history of France is no longer there: it
+returns to the interior; it is in the moral, intellectual, and social condition
+of that nation—thrown back upon itself after having failed in conquest,
+and confronted at home and abroad by the problem, growing daily more
+formidable, of a religious revolution or reaction which will compromise its
+destiny for centuries. The question is no longer whether France will snatch
+Italy from the political domination of Spain united with the empire, but
+whether France will find, in the elements which the Renaissance has brought
+her, the strength and light necessary to maintain or redeem her political
+and religious independence between those two genii of the north and south,
+Teutonic Protestantism and Hispano-Roman Papism<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> which, coming into
+collision, are about to make an attempt to drag everyone into their whirl.</p>
+
+<p>We will not here enter on the religious history, whose crisis does not
+appear in all its intensity till some years after the Treaty of Cambray. We
+will first take a glance at the economical situation of France, at the industrial
+arts and particularly at the fine arts, at letters and science, at that
+Renaissance movement which continued to develop under the patronage of
+Francis I. The taste for a civilisation elegant and learned, picturesque and
+varied, was the sole affection to which Francis always remained faithful.
+He had a more genuine right to the title of “father of letters” (<i>père des
+lettres</i>) than to that of “knightly king” (<i>roi chevalier</i>). Even his own mistakes
+and the misfortunes of the allies he had abandoned were made to
+contribute to the progress of the arts among the French, a progress whose
+advance in a good direction remains, indeed, questionable. The fall of
+Florence, the persecutions of the partisans of France at Naples and in Lombardy,
+sent a multitude of emigrants, the flower of the Italian population,
+streaming across the Alps; and France, as she was so often obliged to do,
+at least opened an asylum to the friends she had not managed to protect.
+The king endeavoured to palliate the wrong he had done Italy by favours to
+Italians, and the exiles experienced some consolation in finding on the banks
+of the Seine and the Loire the tastes, fashions, habits of thought, and almost
+the language of their own country.</p>
+
+<p>Many refugees were pensioned or invested with distinguished posts in
+the army and in diplomacy. The Florentine Strozzi and the Neapolitan
+Caraccioli, prince of Melfi, became marshals of France. Italy not only sent
+France artists and politicians, but merchants and skilful manufacturers, who
+brought into her cities their industry and the remains of their fortunes
+which had escaped the hands of the tyrants. The pre-eminence of the manufactures
+of Lyons dates from the fall of Florence: Louis XI had made Lyons
+a great commercial city and an international entrepôt by instituting
+three annual fairs which caused the decline of those of Geneva, and had
+endeavoured by the aid of Italian workmen to develop the manufacture of
+silk goods, simultaneously at Lyons and Tours: still Lyons, where various
+manufactures had rapidly developed, did not begin to rival Tours in silks
+until about 1525; the Florentine refugees soon gave her the superiority;
+two Genoese are also mentioned amongst the chief founders of the manufactures
+of Lyons.</p>
+
+<p>A bank was instituted at Lyons. An import duty of two gold crowns per
+piece on velvet or silk goods protected the French silk manufactures against
+foreign competition; as to the cloths and woollen goods of Spain and Perpignan,
+they were absolutely prohibited in favour of the cloths of Languedoc. In
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span>the north the manufacture of the cloths of Darnétal near Rouen was very
+considerable; the edict of May, 1542, which regulated the manufacture
+at Darnétal, qualities it as almost inestimable. An edict of the 18th of
+July, 1540, had decreed that foreign stuffs in gold, silver, and silk should
+enter France by Susa if they came from Italy, by Narbonne or Bayonne if they
+came from Spain: they were to be taken straight to Lyons and, there only,
+unpacked and exposed for sale. This privilege must have enormously increased
+the prosperity of Lyons. Yet in 1543 one of those sumptuary edicts
+which the rigid spirit of the parliament from time to time wrung from the
+kings forbade the wearing of gold and silver stuffs. French merchandises
+were subjected to a uniform export duty of one sou per livre. In 1540 a
+royal ordinance attempted to establish a uniform measure as already planned
+by Louis XI: an ell of three feet, seven inches, eight lines was prescribed for
+use throughout the kingdom. But commercial relations were not yet sufficiently
+active for the advantage of such an improvement to be generally felt;
+local practice protested and prevailed: the edict was revoked in 1543.</p>
+
+<p>The French navy was making remarkable progress: Dieppe had raised
+its head since the expulsion of the English and had resumed its ancient preponderance
+amongst the French ports on the ocean; Norman and Breton
+navigators gleaned, so to speak, on the tracks of the Spaniards and Portuguese
+and tried to take up the threads of their old commercial relations with
+Africa, and to open new ones with both Indies. Such expeditions were full
+of peril, for the haughty rulers of the western and eastern seas treated as
+pirates those competitors who ventured into their domains. Captain Denis of
+Honfleur had touched at Brazil as early as 1504, before the Portuguese, who
+discovered it in 1500, had founded any settlement there; the French navigators
+continued to traffic with the savage tribes who sold them those precious
+woods from which Brazil has derived its name, and who “gave a better
+welcome to the French than to the Portuguese and other European peoples.”
+In 1529 two ships from Dieppe, under the command of Jean Parmentier,
+made a voyage to Madagascar and Sumatra. During this time attempts which
+had more lasting results were directed to the north of America, towards the
+countries whither the Spaniards had not turned their steps. In 1506 Denis
+of Honfleur had visited the island of Newfoundland which was then taken
+for a portion of the continent; in 1508 Aubert, a native of Dieppe, followed
+him there with a vessel fitted out by Jean Ango, the father of the illustrious
+shipowner of the same name; the Bretons for their part discovered and
+named the island of Cape Breton, and the annual codfishery was founded on
+those coasts. The French government at last decided to second private
+enterprise, and to claim its share of the New World. In 1524, by order of
+Francis I, the Florentine Verazzano undertook a voyage of discovery, reconnoitred
+all the coasts from Cape Breton and Acadia to Florida, and took
+possession of them in the name of Francis I. Ten years afterwards, in 1534,
+the Breton Jacques Cartier of St. Malo, commissioned by the king at the
+suggestion of Admiral Chabot de Brion, satisfied himself that Newfoundland
+was an island, penetrated into the vast gulf which that great island bars, and
+reconnoitred the mouth of the St. Lawrence: the year following he ascended
+this immense river as far as the spot where Quebec was afterwards built,
+and discovered Canada. The name of New France (<i>Nouvelle-France</i>) was
+imposed on the whole northern part of America.</p>
+
+<p>In 1540 Roberval, a Picard <i>gentilhomme</i>, was appointed viceroy of Canada
+by Francis I, and set out with a squadron of five ships which Cartier commanded
+under his orders; the colony was installed at Cape Breton. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span>severity of the climate, so different from the magnificent regions conquered
+by the Spaniards, the insufficiency of supplies, the improvidence and negligence
+of the royal government were the cause of the failure at the close of a
+few years of this first attempt at colonisation, which was not renewed till the
+reign of Henry IV; but the sailors of Normandy, Brittany, and La Rochelle
+continued the codfishery and the fur trade with the peoples of Canada. A
+wealthy shipowner of Dieppe, Jean Ango, whom the documents of the time
+describe as “merchant of Rouen and viscount de Dieppe,” made himself
+one of the glories of the French nation by his great enterprises, by his taste
+for the arts, and the energy with which he sustained the honour of the French
+flag against the rulers of the seas, particularly the Portuguese. His beautiful
+manor of Warengeville, farm-house rather than château, still charms the
+traveller amongst the green woodlands of the Dieppe coast. This family of
+Ango was probably the same whence came the architect Roger Ango who
+built the Palais de Justice at Rouen.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The French Renaissance</i></h4>
+
+<p>Whilst industry and navigation were thus progressing, the arts surrounded
+Francis I with a splendour which Charles V and Henry VIII in
+vain attempted to rival: for example, the king and all the nobles contended
+with one another in erecting buildings, and there sprang from the earth all
+those Renaissance châteaux which arose on French soil to take the place of
+the feudal fortresses, and which like them have unfortunately in great part
+disappeared. There was Madrid, the elegant retreat of the Bois de Boulogne,
+so called because Francis loved to recall the weariness of the prison in the
+midst of pleasures and liberty; there was La Meute (by corruption La
+Muette), and St. Germain, and Villers-Cotterets and Chantilly and Follembrai
+and Nantouillet, the splendid residence of Duprat. The national
+architecture, threatened by the growing invasion of the Italian taste, seemed
+to concentrate all its forces to protest against it by a last creation of brilliant
+originality (1526). He who has not seen Chambord does not suspect all the
+fantastic poetry that was to be found in the French art of the sixteenth century.
+There is something indescribable in this palace of the fairies, rising
+suddenly before the eyes of the traveller from the depths of the gloomy woods
+of La Sologne with its forests of turrets, spires, aërial campaniles, the beautiful
+tints of their pearl gray stones, chequered with black mosaics standing
+out on the sombre slates of the great roofs. This impression could only be
+surpassed by the spectacle which delights us on the terraces of the keep at
+the foot of the charming cupola which terminates the grand staircase, the
+centre and pivot of this vast and varied whole and which stands up radiant
+above the terraces like a flower one hundred feet high. Everywhere between
+the <i>lacs d’amours</i> and crowned F’s, mysterious salamanders, vomiting flames,
+climb on the pediments, curl round the medallions, or hang from the cornices
+and panels of the vaults, like the dragons which watch over the enchanted
+castles of old legend, waiting the return of the master who will come no more.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12k3"><a href="#endnote_12k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Francis I had at first been the pupil of the Italian, Baldassare Castiglione,
+author of a book called <i>Il Cortegiano</i>, or “the perfect courtier.”
+Struck by the qualities of the Italian people, the French monarch cherished
+for them a peculiar love, and drew about him the most celebrated men of the
+peninsula. Leonardo da Vinci died at Fontainebleau almost in the arms of
+the king. Primaticcio, Il Rosso, Andrea del Sarto, and Benvenuto Cellini
+came with alacrity at his call, and some of their greatest works were destined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span>to be the property of France. The early and most illustrious French
+artists, among them Jean Goujon, were trained in the school formed by these
+masters, and it was to the construction and embellishment of Chambord
+and Fontainebleau that the king devoted their inspired brushes and chisels.</p>
+
+<p>The type of the old fortress-castle of feudal times gradually gave place
+to another and less repellent one, that of the great pleasure-mansions which
+included among their attractions everything that the most luxurious and
+refined taste could devise. The court journeyed without ceasing from castle
+to castle and from feast to feast, eliciting loud complaints from the foreign
+ambassadors, who, though unable to afford the expense of such continual
+moving about, were yet obliged to follow.</p>
+
+<p>Not satisfied with the presence of foreign artists about him, Francis I
+offered great inducements to men of science to visit his court. Erasmus, the
+literary oracle of Europe, was warmly solicited to leave Holland and establish
+himself in France, but he consented merely to make the voyage thither.
+Many Italians, however, among whom was the poet Alamanni, and a number
+of Greeks with the aged Lascaris at their head, established for themselves a
+second fatherland in France. The famous Guillaume Budé, guardian of the
+king’s library and one of the most learned men of the century, was, with the Estiennes,
+deputed by the king to show these colonists all the honours of the
+land. Francis I gave his envoys to Turkey the mission of procuring for him
+manuscripts in Greek, and the translation into French of ancient documents
+was undertaken; while the art of printing, introduced in France during the
+reign of Louis XI, underwent rapid development; the presses of Lyons,
+where a numerous Italian colony had become established, gaining a celebrity
+for the town almost rivalling that of Venice or Bâle.</p>
+
+<p>The College of France, called in the beginning College of the Three
+Tongues, was founded in 1529 after a plan indicated by Budé, less with
+the object of giving general instruction than for the purpose of promoting the
+study of the three languages of learning, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The
+institution bore a great resemblance to the Italian academies. Philology, its
+chief object, was the science most in vogue at that time, as it was held to be
+the initiatory stage in the study of antiquity. Thus conceived, the College
+of France left all instruction, properly speaking, in the hands of the old
+Sorbonne, the ancient university. True to its old scholastic spirit, opposed
+to innovations, and attached to its ancient privileges which it now believed to
+be menaced, the Sorbonne entered upon a bitter war against the new institution;
+but the latter, strong in the royal favour and patronage, issued victorious
+from the conflict. The number of chairs was increased, to the study
+of languages was added that of science, particularly mathematics, and beginning
+with the very first years of its existence the College of France gained
+the reputation of being the most brilliant and complete of all the European
+institutes of learning.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for the creation of this college and for its rapid success and
+growth may be found in the tendencies of an age that was rich in discoveries
+of all kinds. There are, in the history of the human mind, certain happy
+periods when the horizons of thought seem to become enlarged on all sides
+at once. A new field was opened to philological research, as the Middle
+Ages had had but little knowledge of Greek and less of Hebrew. A corresponding
+progress was also made in geography and the natural sciences by
+the study of climates and races hitherto unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Always powerful over the entire country, the influence of the court
+increased under Francis I, and was no less beneficial to letters and society in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span>general than it was to the cause of learning. The king, beloved of his men-at-arms
+because he was the best knight in the kingdom; of artists and scientists
+because he so generously patronised and encouraged them, commended
+himself equally to courtiers, men of letters, and ladies because no one in his
+realm carried to such a point as he the love of the beautiful. Aided by
+his mother and sister and later by his daughter-in-law Catherine de’ Medici,
+he made his court the most remarkable in Europe, not only for the luxury it
+displayed but for its wit and grace and a certain elegant not to say corrupt
+refinement of manners that was best exemplified in the foreign princess
+brought up under the eyes of Catherine, Mary Stuart.</p>
+
+<p>Never had the French court counted so many members. Under Louis
+XII it had been composed of a few favourites, a definite number of officers,
+and a guard of a hundred nobles. Francis I increased in enormous proportion
+the number of court officers, which he intended to bestow on upstarts
+who could in this manner rise to nobility. The posts were mostly
+filled, however, by landless gentlemen of birth upon whom were also
+bestowed detached titles. Thus arose a company of marquises and dukes
+possessing neither marquisates nor duchies. These two innovations alone
+would have sufficed to make the court the point upon which converged all
+ambitions and hopes of fortune. Francis I desired that women should share
+the offices and dignities of the court, and should have a hierarchy of their
+own; he loved to shower upon them, as upon his nobles, the marks of his
+liberality. Two of his mistresses, Madame de Châteaubriant, sister of Lautrec
+and of Lescun; and afterwards Mademoiselle de Heilly, whom he made
+Duchess d’Étampes, reigned for a long time side by side with the king, and
+patronised artists as well as distributed remunerative posts.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately one cannot have much to say about this court without
+speaking of its corruption, to which Francis I himself contributed by the
+changes he brought about and by his personal example. Destroying as they
+did the simplicity of former modes of living, the innovations introduced by
+him resulted in confusion to the rules and usages of the nobility, and
+fostered fawning and intrigues. His own many scandalous deeds as well as
+those that were with impunity committed around him, have heavily burdened
+his memory with the charge of violating the public morality.</p>
+
+<p>It would, however, be most unjust to view the court of the Valois only
+through the biased medium of Brantôme’s<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12p1"><a href="#endnote_12p">p</a></span> chronicle of scandals, or the
+writings of contemporaneous Calvinists. As for these latter, they have
+neglected no means by which they could blacken the fame of the prince and
+personages who were the first to persecute their co-religionists; hence, on
+many points, their testimony is not to be believed. The letters of Venetian
+envoys, on the other hand, who were observers of great depth and keenness,
+reveal the warmest admiration for a court of which they, among all foreigners,
+were the quickest to feel the great seduction and charm. All the
+literature of this century, in fact, imaginative as well as historical, attests
+with striking force the elevated character of the influence exercised by the
+court of Francis I over public opinion.</p>
+
+<p>Particularly prominent among the writers of that time are Marguerite
+de Valois<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12q"><a href="#endnote_12q">q</a></span> and Marot,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12r"><a href="#endnote_12r">r</a></span> the king’s valet, from whose works the fairest judgments
+may be formed concerning the tastes of the court—its gallantry, its
+love of wit and social pleasures, the esteem in which it held pure learning
+and the tolerance it accorded free thought. Severely as we may condemn
+certain of their works, they are nevertheless worthy to serve as models for
+sentiment, beauty of form, and light, poetic grace. To these two writers
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span>compare Rabelais, the author of the people, the creator of that strange and
+inexplicable encyclopædia wherein, as the product of a great intellectual
+debauch, the whole sixteenth century passes by us in review, and you will be
+able to judge on which side lay delicacy and taste, in what degree the literature
+of the court was qualified to elevate and refine the literature of the
+people.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12f3"><a href="#endnote_12f">f</a></span> But, on the other hand, Rabelais<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> remains a classic in our own
+day, while these other writers are forgotten. Rabelais, indeed, is not merely
+the greatest writer of this time, but by common consent he is named as one
+of the three or four greatest humourists of any age or country.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> His work is
+in itself sufficient proof that Francis I destroyed neither the liberty of his subjects
+nor their originality. Although more absolute than his predecessors,
+Francis always took account of public opinion and had the insight to distinguish,
+as Ranke<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12s"><a href="#endnote_12s">s</a></span> ingeniously puts it, enforced obedience from that which
+is rendered voluntarily.</p>
+
+<p>Thus even in those personal memoirs wherein the individuality of the
+writer is most wholly revealed, it is to be observed that the tendency of
+the century was all toward expansion, in height as well as breadth. We note
+the origin, the preliminary flights of that freedom of thought and research
+that was later to soar so high. Apparent as are the excesses of the age, we
+must not judge it by its faults alone; its very shortcomings raised controversies
+that served to form public opinion in a graver, sterner mould. More
+ado was made about the use or abuse of supreme power, which was for the
+first time subjected to control. The writer who passes the severest judgment
+on Francis I and his court is Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes, the representative
+of the most radical of the independent nobility.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12f4"><a href="#endnote_12f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A word must be said about another phase of intellectual development—that
+which found expression in the words and deeds of Luther and Calvin
+and their followers.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> The new opinions early crept into France; their
+first converts were men of letters. All the great French jurisconsults of
+that century, in secret or openly accepted the Reformation. A party at
+the court itself inclined towards it. Louise of Savoy appears not to have
+been opposed to it. Her daughter Marguerite, queen of Navarre, an independent
+genius and the author of mysteries and novels, openly professed the
+principles of the German reformers; the duchess of Étampes, the king’s mistress,
+made a point of protecting them. Lefèbre d’Étaples (Faber Stapulensis),
+and Louis Berquin, both men of learning known and esteemed by Francis,
+sustained these in their favour: the first had begun six years before Luther.
+Finally the favourite court poet, Clement Marot, abandoned his elegies and
+epigrams to translate the psalms of David, which the reformists of Paris sang
+about the Pré-aux-Clercs. At first Francis, far from being alarmed at these
+symptoms, would fain have attached to himself Erasmus of Rotterdam, the
+king of the learned and of the men of letters of the century, who was accused
+of having prepared the way for Luther by his attacks on the monks. But
+when the German peasants, following out the new doctrines to their socialistic
+consequences, would have overturned all authority, Francis I thought
+that the Reformation, which was a revolt against the pope, was in danger of
+leading politically to a revolt against the king; and if he remained the
+interested friend of the German Protestants he had no wish to allow their
+doctrines to gain ground in his own states.</p>
+
+<p>During the king’s captivity two Lutherans had been burned in the capital.
+He had put a stop to these executions, but in 1528 a statue of the Virgin
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span>was mutilated at Paris. Francis declared that “if he knew one of his own
+members to be infected with this doctrine he would tear it away for fear lest
+the rest should be corrupted,” and from that day he persecuted the innovators.
+Berquin, who refused to retract, was burned on the place de Grève (1529);
+at Vienne, at Séez, at Toulouse there were other executions. The necessity
+of propitiating the Protestants of Germany mitigated the persecution.
+Again in 1536 six unfortunates were sacrificed on different squares in Paris
+in presence of the court.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12m1"><a href="#endnote_12m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WAR AGAIN BETWEEN FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1528-1535 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But we must not pause for further details of this character;<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> we must
+return to the sweep of political events in France, and the renewed quarrels
+of Francis and his old enemy Charles V. A lasting peace between such
+rivals as Charles and Francis was not to be expected. Even if the latter
+could have confined himself to the pursuit of pleasure, to the internal
+regulation of his kingdom, and to the patronage of the arts, the spirit of
+Charles, ever restless in the cabinet, could not fail to have provoked him.
+At one time the emperor sent him a summons, requiring his aid against
+the Turks, and ending with the accusation that he had called Suleiman to
+invade Europe. Francis was now on the closest terms of alliance with
+Henry VIII, who was bent on divorcing the emperor’s aunt. The French
+king used all his influence with the pope to procure the necessary license
+for Henry, but was still baffled by the influence of Charles. Clement VII
+was the potentate whose alliance was most warmly disputed by the rival
+sovereigns. And both assailed the pontiff on a pontiff’s weak side, by the
+offer of aggrandisement to his family. Charles proposed that Clement’s
+niece, Catherine de’ Medici, should espouse Francesco Sforza, duke of
+Milan; by which means the Medici would necessarily be ever adverse to
+the claims of the French kings on Milan. Francis, in opposition, offered
+his second son, Henry, duke of Orleans, as a husband for Catherine; and
+Clement, elated by the honour of an alliance with the royal house of France,
+exulted at the proposal. The emperor, who knew the proud character of
+Francis, could not believe that he would sincerely permit his son to ally with
+such upstarts as the Medici; and this incredulity neutralised the exertions
+that he might otherwise have made to obstruct the match. It took place,
+however, in 1533, at Marseilles, where Clement and Francis met to honour the
+ceremonial, and to arrange the conditions of their future friendship. One of
+these, there is no doubt, was the vigorous prosecution and extirpation
+of heresy. Francis, however, reaped as usual little advantage from the negotiation.
+He failed to obtain for Henry VIII the dispensation required, and
+that impatient monarch broke with the church in consequence. Clement
+himself died in the year following, and was succeeded by Paul III of the
+house of Farnese.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12i4"><a href="#endnote_12i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1535-1537 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Francis I and Charles V vied with each other in seeking alliance with the
+church. Francis burned heretics in the great cities, and made adhesion to
+the new opinions a crime against the crown. Charles, on the other hand, led
+an expedition into Africa, and slaughtered the infidels in a new crusade
+(1535). Victorious over Barbarossa, the usurper of Tunis, and followed by
+the blessings of the thousands of Christian captives whom he had delivered
+from slavery, he made his way to Rome. There, in presence of the pope,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span>he stood forth and made his complaint against Francis. He declared his
+readiness to invest one of his sons with Milan, on such conditions of suzerainty
+and subjection as he should afterwards choose to name; failing that,
+to meet his enemy foot to foot, on horseback, or in a boat, armed <i>cap-à-pie</i> or
+naked to their shirts; or, finally, to declare internecine war upon him, binding
+himself by an oath never to sheathe the sword till he had made him the
+poorest gentleman that ever lived. After this decent and courageous bravado,
+at which the pontiff must have been greatly amazed, the assembly broke up
+in most admired disorder, and the dogs of war were let loose. An invasion
+of France was resolved on, and Charles
+already counted his victory so secure
+that he distributed the estates of the
+French nobility among his favourites
+(1536). An army of Spaniards and
+Italians was to overrun Provence,
+and another of Flemings to break in
+on Picardy. Between the two, Francis
+was to be crushed.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p333.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Nobleman, Time of Francis I</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Misfortunes crowded, not in single
+file but in battalions, upon the thoughtless
+but affectionate king. His eldest
+son Francis, the dauphin, died at this
+time [suddenly; there were suspicions,
+probably unfounded, of poisoning].
+Defection deprived him of some of
+the strongest fortresses in Savoy; and
+the forces of his enemy were reported
+to be on the soil of France. Instantly
+the courageous Francis was roused from
+his grief and dejection. The territory
+in front of the Spaniards was made a
+desert; the cattle were driven away, the
+villages burned, and parties of resolute
+horsemen sent forth to harass them on
+the march. Charles expected that all
+would be risked on the arbitrament of
+one great engagement, and was foiled by the unexpected tactics. He marched
+without glory, for he saw no enemy; and without food, for every field was bare.
+Sickness came to aid; and, in frightful disorganisation, the starving hordes
+hurried across the Alps, slain and pillaged on their way by the angry peasantry,
+and perishing in the clefts of the rocks of hunger and fatigue. Thus
+fell the pride of the invader almost without a blow.</p>
+
+<p>Francis took now the lofty part which hitherto had been played by
+his rival; and at a bed of justice in the palace of the Louvre, summoned his
+rebellious vassal before his feudal court (1537), stripped him by solemn
+sentence of his tenures of Artois, Flanders, and Charolais, which always had
+been held of the French crown, and of which his renunciation at the Treaty
+of Madrid was null and of no effect, as having been obtained by violence
+and fraud. Beside him, on this great occasion, sat the king of Navarre and
+James V of Scotland, who had just married the short-lived Madeleine of
+France—a more dignified, though not a more useful demonstration than
+the quarrel-scene of his rival at Rome. The forms of feudalism were
+occasionally revived to gratify a hatred, as the forms of chivalry were retained
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span>to justify a duel; but the hatred of the two greatest sovereigns in Europe
+carried them beyond the bounds both of feudalism and chivalry. Their
+language, by their respective heralds, would have done honour to two English
+prize-fighters. They interchanged the names of perjurer and liar, and
+reminded each other of the discomfitures they had sustained; Charles being
+particularly caustic on the subject of Pavia and the prison of Madrid, and
+Francis retorting with reminiscences of the emperor’s overthrow in Provence,
+and starvation among the hills. Yet, in a year after this time, the enemies
+met, and spent four of the happiest days of their lives in unrestrained
+intimacy at Aigues Mortes, a small seaport on the Mediterranean. Charles
+arrived in a galley. Francis went on board, and grasping his hand said,
+“My brother, you see I am your prisoner again.” Charles returned the visit
+on shore; listened well-pleased to the open unsuspecting talk of his companion,
+and put down all his sayings, and plans, and recollections in his
+memory, to be used against him at the proper time. He promised him great
+things in return for all his confidence; the investiture of Milan for his son,
+and aid in all his schemes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1537-1544 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A French king at that time would have sacrificed anything for the vainglory
+of establishing himself in Italy. Charles saw his triumph, confirmed
+it by a friendly visit to Paris, and made use of it by obtaining permission to
+pass through France to punish the men of Ghent who had rebelled (1539).
+And, when thus the whole advantages of his superior policy were secured,
+he denounced his friend to the indignation of every Christian, as an ally
+of Suleiman the chief of the unbelievers, and bestowed the duchy of Milan on
+his own son, Philip, the prince of Spain. Five armies sprang up at the king’s
+lifting his hand, to revenge this wrong and insult. But though indignation
+may raise troops, it cannot raise money. Fresh burdens were imposed;
+church ornaments were coined into crowns, but still the chest was empty.
+La Rochelle set the dangerous example of rebellion on account of its over-taxation,
+and was only quelled by alleviation of its payments and pardon of
+its behaviour. Assistance was greedily looked to by both parties. Suleiman,
+the champion of Mohammedanism, on the side of Francis, was balanced by
+Henry, the defender of the Protestant faith, on the side of Charles. The
+Turks, under the same Barbarossa whom Charles had displaced from Tunis,
+besieged Nice, and ravaged the shores of Catalonia. Henry did little but
+keep Scotland from aiding France by the intrigues and menaces with which
+he sued for the hand of the unfortunate Mary Stuart, now queen, for his son
+Edward. A great victory at Ceresoles, in 1544, added another useless wreath
+to the chaplet of French achievements, and for a moment Milan opened its
+gates. But Charles and Henry were by this time on the soil of France. The
+Spaniards were at St. Dizier, the English at Boulogne. Troops were summoned
+from Italy, and collected from all quarters. Charles steadily advanced,
+seized Épernay, and rested in Château-Thierry. Paris almost heard the thunder
+of his guns; and, flushed with the possession of Boulogne, Henry was
+reported to be upon the march to join the army.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1544-1547 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But other sounds reached the ears of the belligerents. The Protestants
+in Germany were sharpening their swords, and Charles feared the men of
+the confession of Augsburg more than the Catholic French. A peace was
+patched up at Crespy in the Valois (1544) which left things as they were,
+and enabled the two monarchs to turn their religious minds to the extirpation
+of heresy. The royal heretic [Henry VIII] who had been the faithful
+ally of one of them, and the considerate foe of the other, contented himself
+with demanding a bribe of 2,000,000 crowns for the restitution of his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span>conquests. From this time Francis and Charles had more interests in common.
+Both glowed with a hatred of the Reformation such as only tyrants can feel.
+They persuaded the pope to summon a general council to extirpate Lutheranism
+and Calvinism at once, and while the famous council of Trent was
+gathering from all the orthodox nationalities, they occupied themselves in
+cruel persecutions of their suspected subjects (1545).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12v1"><a href="#endnote_12v">v</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF FRANCIS I</h3>
+
+<p>Francis, however, was growing feeble. He was no longer the brilliant
+knight of Marignano or Pavia, the friend of Leonardo da Vinci and of Erasmus.
+Worn out before his time by excesses, at fifty-one he was a morose old
+man. The greatest blot on his reign belongs to these last unhappy years. So
+long as the war with Charles V continued, Francis I was careful not to offend
+the dissenters; the Edict of Coucy had even ordered, in 1535, the suspension
+of all persecution on account of religion. The peace concluded, men of harsh
+and sinister counsel, such as Montmorency and Cardinal de Tournon, resumed
+the upper hand. They attributed the king’s reverses to the relaxation of
+severity and he allowed himself to be persuaded to order new executions.
+At Meaux fourteen pyres were erected in one day (1546); at the place
+Maubert Étienne Dolet was hanged and then burned.</p>
+
+<p>The most odious execution was that of a whole inoffensive population,
+the Vaudois, whose beliefs were more than three centuries old. In 1540
+they had been condemned as heretics. The execution of the sentence had
+been suspended in favour of a peaceable peasantry who paid their taxes
+regularly and merely offered the spectacle of pure and simple manners in the
+two little towns of Mérindol and Cabrières and in some thirty villages of
+the Alps of Provence.</p>
+
+<p>But in the month of April, 1545, precise and rigorous orders from the
+court reached the parliament of Aix. Without warning, the baron de la
+Garde, assisted by the president D’Oppède and the <i>avocat-général</i> Guérin and
+accompanied by soldiers, entered the territory of these unfortunate people:
+3,000 were massacred or burned in their dwellings; 660 sent to the galleys;
+the rest dispersed in the woods and mountains, where the greater part died
+of hunger and privation. For fifteen leagues round not a house, not a tree
+was left.</p>
+
+<p>Francis I, who perhaps did not know all the details of this execrable
+drama, approved what had taken place and ordered the persecution to be
+continued. Foreign affairs went no better. It was the time when Charles V,
+no longer trammelled by the war with France and assured of peace with the
+Turks, turned his forces against the Protestants of Germany and, under pretext
+of stifling heresy, sought to stifle German liberty; the battle of Mühlberg
+seemed to lay the empire at his feet. Francis I did not see this great success
+of his rival; he had died three weeks before at the château of Rambouillet,
+at the age of fifty-two years (31st of March, 1547).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12m2"><a href="#endnote_12m">m</a></span> He was buried with a
+magnificence far surpassing anything which had yet been witnessed in France;
+eleven cardinals assisted at his obsequies, and the ceremony extended over
+two and twenty days. The bodies of his two sons, the dauphin Francis and
+Charles duke of Orleans, were conveyed to St. Denis together with his own,
+and Henry II succeeded to the vacant throne.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12n"><a href="#endnote_12n">n</a></span> Before we take up the events
+of that monarch’s reign, let us listen to an estimate of the character and
+influence of the showy ruler whose life story we have just followed to its
+close.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span></p>
+
+<h3>GAILLARD’S ESTIMATE OF FRANCIS I</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1515-1547 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Charles V and Francis I (says Gaillard) perhaps owe it to each other that
+they were great men; each had some advantages that were denied the other.
+The leading characteristic of Charles was diplomacy, of Francis straightforwardness.
+If we compare the two princes as warriors, the sum total of their
+military exploits appears about equal; nevertheless the deeds of Francis are
+more famous. His early career was so brilliant that it has shed a lustre
+over his whole life, even over his misfortunes. To gain a victory at twenty
+makes a man famous forever. Charles V began his career, or at any rate
+distinguished himself in it, too late. His first important expedition was the
+one against the Turks in
+1532; for the time when he
+appeared at Valenciennes
+only to fly on the approach
+of the king, and the occasion
+of his failure before
+Bayonne, when he was enabled
+to regain Fuenterrabia
+by the treachery of a
+coward, must count for
+nothing. The expedition
+to Tunis in 1536 was the
+first exploit of Charles V
+which can be compared with
+the battle of Marignano;
+nevertheless it was certainly
+better to gain the battle of
+Mühlberg than to lose that
+of Pavia. On the whole
+Charles V was perhaps the
+greater general and Francis I
+the better soldier, and this
+division of military talent
+is very much what might be
+expected from their individual characters, the one deliberate and thoughtful,
+the other ardent and impetuous.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p336.jpg" width="500" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Boundaries of France in the Time of Francis I</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the matter of policy it cannot be denied that Charles V was much
+greater than Francis I. He kept or gained everything that was contested
+between him and his rival; he obtained the empire and took possession of
+the duchy of Milan, and he kept the kingdom of Naples. Nor did he owe
+his success entirely to the favour of blind fortune; it was rather the result
+of wise conduct, well-thought-out methods, and the adoption of measures
+likely to bring about the end he had in view. He was fortunate, and would
+have been thoroughly worthy of his good fortune had he not so often used
+fraudulent means to bring about success. He possessed in a high degree
+the royal faculty of understanding men. The greatest generals in Europe
+were to be found at the head of his armies; his ministers had no sway over
+him, and he always employed them in the matters for which they were most
+suitable. He understood both his own subjects and foreigners; he knew
+that Bourbon was a hero and that Saluzzo was only a traitor. He therefore
+made use of Bourbon for conquest and Saluzzo for treachery. Bourbon was
+a hero, but he was a French refugee, so Charles placed Pescara to act as a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span>spy over him. Pescara was almost on an equality with Bourbon and was
+jealous of him. Both men however were ambitious and not very faithful,
+so Charles employed the trustworthy and useful Lannoy to watch them
+both. He won over from France La Marck, Sickingen, the sublime Bourbon,
+the prince of Orange, and Andrea Doria, the greatest men of his time,
+while Francis only took from him the obscure prince of Melfi. Charles V
+greatly excelled his rival also in steadiness and energy.</p>
+
+<p>Francis I was capable of actions which dazzle us, but he was only energetic
+by fits and starts, with long intervals of lethargy and languor; while
+with Charles V there were no such intervals. Always full of energy, he
+made his preparations, he carried them out, he plotted, he sowed dissension
+where it suited his purpose to do so, he went to Germany, to Italy, to Spain;
+he controlled the great powers and subdued the lesser ones, he fettered them
+all by his negotiations. Bayle remarks that since there were many more
+leagues formed against Francis I than against Charles V, the former must
+have been more feared than the latter; but it was the emperor’s cleverness
+which made people believe that Francis I was so formidable. Moreover
+such leagues do not always prove that the power of the person against whom
+they are formed is greatly feared. After the defeat of the De Foix and the
+expulsion of the French in 1522, the whole of Italy formed a league against
+them; was it because she had more fear of Francis I, who was routed and
+expelled, than of the emperor, who was master of the Milanese and of the
+kingdom of Naples? No, but she thought she would be more likely to be
+left in peace if she submitted quietly to the emperor, than if she made an
+effort to help the fallen king to rise, by lending him a helping hand.</p>
+
+<p>Henry VIII, it is true, more often allied himself with Charles V than
+with Francis I. He thought he had some claim to France; he knew he had
+none to Italy, to Germany, or to Spain. Charles V knew how to turn to his
+own advantage the power of his rival, which he exaggerated in order to
+injure him. But Francis I was far superior to his rival when he was defending
+Provence against his attacks, and Bayle is right in saying that he
+deserved more glory for preserving his own kingdom, in spite of circumstances,
+than Charles V, who failed to do this notwithstanding his great
+power and numerous intrigues, deserved for all his other conquests. Again,
+Francis was superior to Charles when he warned the latter that the people
+of Ghent were in rebellion, and allowed him to pass through France on his
+way to subdue them; when he pardoned the rebels of La Rochelle; when he
+behaved with such moderation after the scandalous scene in Rome; and
+when, Charles having calumniated him throughout Germany, he took no
+further vengeance than heaping benefits on the German merchants.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in military ability Francis I was at least the equal of Charles V; in
+political genius he was his inferior, but he surpassed him in honour: indeed
+his political inferiority was partly the result of a greater moral delicacy,
+which made him more fastidious than Charles as to the means by which he tried
+to gain his ends. In drawing this parallel we have been looking at Francis I
+as a politician and a soldier, but the point of view is not advantageous to
+him. He will perhaps shine more brightly in the history of literature and
+of art.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12o"><a href="#endnote_12o">o</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY II</h3>
+
+<p>Henry II, at the age of twenty-eight, displayed all the military qualities
+that had distinguished his father in his youth. He was trained in every
+kind of physical exercise, and enjoyed the reputation of being a most accomplished
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span>knight. “He possessed,” says Brantôme,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12p2"><a href="#endnote_12p">p</a></span> “majesty and grace, and
+manners that were suavely royal. He loved war, and never found life so
+much to his liking as when he was in the midst of battle.” His enterprising
+character had revealed itself in the last two struggles against Charles V, in
+which he had taken part under Montmorency and D’Annebaut. Cavalli,
+the Venetian envoy, who erred on the side of leniency, said of Henry that
+his excellent qualities gave promise to France of the worthiest monarch that
+had reigned there in two centuries. Like his father he made it a point
+to become acquainted with every gentleman in his realm. He detested
+Charles V, and took no pains to hide his feeling. The emperor well knew
+the bellicose humour of the king towards him and exerted every effort to
+furnish it satisfaction. “Henry’s father,” wrote Charles V to his ambassador
+at Rome, “drew the Turk towards him by the hair of his head; Henry
+will seize him by hair, hands, and feet.”</p>
+
+<p>One thing, however, was wanting in the new king: though a poet, and
+possessing like all his race a cultivated taste in literature, he lacked that
+personal charm which made of Francis I the natural head of the most cultured
+court in Europe. The men of letters in general have little to say in
+his praise, and the Calvinists, whose numbers were constantly increasing and
+whom he persecuted with relentless rigour, have least of all been inclined to
+spare him.</p>
+
+<h3>COURT FAVOURITES</h3>
+
+<p>Scarcely had Henry II ascended the throne when he recalled Montmorency,
+the master who had instructed him in the art of war and who had
+beguiled the tedium of a recent period of disgrace by building the superb
+mansions of Écouen and Chantilly. Montmorency immediately became all-powerful,
+and showered upon his family the highest dignities and honours.
+Claude of Guise, his brother the cardinal De Lorraine, and his six sons, all
+destined to attain the highest eminence, were also given great prominence in
+the councils of the new reign; they literally blocked the approaches to the
+throne. “It seemed,” says Tavannes, “as though the king had sworn to
+partition France among them.” Diane de Poitiers, grand sénéschale of Normandy
+and mistress of Henry II, though many years his senior, wielded,
+under the title of duchess of Valentinois, an influence far wider and more
+powerful than that exerted by the duchess d’Étampes during the preceding
+reign. By the marriage of her daughter she became allied to the family of
+Guise, with whom all her future movements were made in concert. Lastly
+Saint-André, a former governor of the king, was elevated to the position of
+marshal, and the pope bestowed the cardinal’s hat upon two favourite prelates,
+Charles de Bourbon, brother of the duke de Vendôme, and Charles de
+Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims.</p>
+
+<p>D’Annebaut, to whom Henry attributed the defeat of Perpignan; the
+cardinal De Tournon, and several gentlemen who had served as secretaries
+of state under Francis I were banished from the court. Out of eleven
+cardinals who sat in the council seven were sent to Rome, partly with the
+intention of propitiating the new ministry, and partly to strengthen French
+influence with the government of Rome, and to establish a French party in
+the sacred college. The duchess d’Étampes was also requested to withdraw,
+the king even taking from her the diamonds she had received from
+Francis I to present them to the duchess of Valentinois.</p>
+
+<p>These many changes resulted, as was inevitable, in widespread discontent.
+The new councillors were accused of rapacity, and the spirit of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span>jealous distrust in which they arrogated all the power to themselves highly
+incensed the people, while the king was reproached with the weakness which
+made him so readily yield himself over to be governed. The highest personages
+made open traffic of court dignities and positions; Montmorency in
+particular being accused of having furthered his own and his kinsmen’s
+interests by bribes given to the highest nobles, and by peopling the courts
+of justice with magistrates and councillors of his own creation. Venality
+and corruption everywhere prevailed, and the spirit manifested by new
+ministers in entering upon their office was almost that of dogs rushing upon
+a quarry.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of the writings, in which speaks prejudice or passion, that has
+come down to us from that day is unquestioningly to be believed; it is an
+unfortunate fact that many of our most entertaining historical memoirs are
+little better than chronicles of scandals, since, however incontestable may be
+the facts they contain, the manner in which these are dressed is invariably
+calculated to mislead.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand these memoirs enable us to form an excellent idea of
+the brilliancy of the court, of the intellectual standard of its members, of the
+political ability of the councillors surrounding Henry II, of the sentiments
+of honour and obedience by which were actuated the nobility. It is seen
+that to untrammelled liberty of opinion, whether in praise or blame, was
+allied a deep-seated reverence for law, for the government, and for the king.
+Indeed many diplomatic documents, which for a long time remained unknown,
+are to the honour of Montmorency, Diane de Poitiers, and the
+Guises, attesting a truth that contemporaneous writers of military memoirs
+seem scarcely to suspect—namely, that diplomacy can accomplish more
+than arms. From the additional circumstance that the records of the relations
+with Venice are mainly favourable to the court, it will be seen that,
+strange though it may appear, it was the Frenchmen of that day who contributed
+the most towards blackening the national character.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henry II, and Jeanne d’Albret, queen of
+Navarre, also played parts during this reign, small at first but increasing to
+great prominence as time went on. Catherine, whom Francis I had loved
+and protected against her enemies, gave as yet no evidence of personal
+ambition or greed for authority. She passively submitted to the rule of the
+duchess of Valentinois, but worked stealthily all the time to strengthen her
+own private influence—an influence which Diane herself finally came to
+second, and which paved the way to the reign upon which Catherine was
+soon to enter.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12f5"><a href="#endnote_12f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS AND ROYAL MARRIAGES</h3>
+
+<p>The first days of his accession were employed by Henry in royal progresses
+through his domains, and in shows and spectacles. In the last of these
+he was himself a chief performer, and no one held the lists with a firmer lance,
+or overthrew his opponent with a more scientific thrust. Henry next proceeded
+to the slaughter of such of his people as began to think for themselves
+on religious subjects. Gibbets were erected on the side of the road by which
+he made his entrance into the good city of Paris, and unhappy Protestants
+were suspended from them by cords round their bodies, and dropped into a
+slow fire, which was kindled under them, till they expired. The Protestant
+princes of the league of Smalkald had been completely beaten at the great
+battle of Mühlberg within a month of Francis’ death. The elector of Saxony
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span>and the landgraf of Hesse were taken prisoners, their military followers dispersed,
+and to all human appearance the cause of the Reformation on the
+continent was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>Before the fruits of the battle of Mühlberg could be gathered by the
+victors, news reached the confederated Protestants that a quarrel had broken
+out between the French king and the emperor, and between the emperor and
+the pope. They actually became the arbiters of these great dissensions, and
+were courted by all parties.
+Charles, in order to intimidate
+his holiness, insisted
+on the return of the general
+council to Trent, where it
+had been originally summoned
+in 1544, and its removal
+from Bologna, to
+which it had been transferred
+by Paul. This was to
+place it where the influence
+of Protestant belief was
+greatest, and already there
+were hopes of a compromise,
+by which Germany might
+become an undivided power.
+England was under an
+eclipse at this time, and was
+nearly forgotten outside of
+her guardian seas. Edward
+VI was on the throne, Somerset
+was protector, and both
+were too weak to do anything
+more than defend
+their authority against the
+cabals of the political and
+religious parties into which
+the nation was split.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p340.jpg" width="300" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Henry II</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The career was therefore open to the rival crowns. Charles, in entering
+on the new contest, showed his usual sagacity, and made concessions after
+having obtained all the advantages of force. He granted liberty of worship
+to the Protestants by an imperial rescript, marriage of their priests, and
+communion in both kinds, till the council of Trent should come to a final
+decision. But this was assuming too much of the pontifical authority to be
+pleasing to the pope. He protested against the Interim, as this act was
+called, and prosecuted his schemes in favour of France more zealously than
+ever. Persecution and toleration therefore became the conflicting arms of
+the champions in this great struggle; and it shows us how completely the
+political view at this time excluded the religious, that the heretics were slain
+and tortured by a man who was utterly regardless of the great question in
+dispute, while their liberties were defended by a gloomy and unrelenting
+bigot, who looked on them as the enemies of God and man.</p>
+
+<p>Henry, too thoughtless to take warning by the sudden change in his
+adversary’s treatment of the innovators, sought to strengthen his cause, and
+increase the papal influence, by double severity against the new faith. The
+massacres and atrocities perpetrated under Francis at Mérindol and Cabrières
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span>rested for a long time in the memory of the people, till they were expelled by
+still wilder excesses of fanaticism and hatred. Rebellions, prompted by
+despair and over-taxation, broke out in several places, and an expedition into
+Italy was thwarted by the necessity of hurrying back to punish refractory
+Bordeaux. Disregarding the protest of the local parliament, the edict of
+the king had imposed a duty on salt, which maddened the consumers; for the
+article lay at their doors, and the commissaries were inquisitorial as well
+as unjust. Montmorency, the favourite, was in his element now. He was
+sent down to execute justice on the revolters, and spared neither sex nor age.
+A hundred of the chief artisans of Bordeaux were ignominiously hanged;
+crowns of red-hot iron were placed on other sufferers’ heads while they were
+broken alive on the wheel. The bells were taken down, in sign of the withdrawal
+of the city’s municipal powers; and a breach was made in the walls,
+in sign of its subjection to military law. Wherever the constable went, he
+was preceded by the executioners of his vengeance; and having spread desolation
+and misery through the whole south of the kingdom, he returned to
+Paris in time to take part in the rejoicings which had been going on while
+these terrible events occurred, for the marriage of Anthony de Bourbon with
+Jeanne d’Albret. The mother of this Jeanne was the Protestant and poetess,
+Marguerite of Navarre, the sister of Francis I; and the eldest son of this
+marriage was Henry IV. These blood-stained espousals were the connecting
+link between the follower of Bayard and the friend of Sully. It is a great
+step when we come, with only one life between, from the armed bravo of
+Marignano to the author of the Edict of Nantes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1547-1548 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>At this time also another marriage was resolved on, and another royal
+bride made her appearance at the court of France. A beautiful and graceful
+child she was, whose life has been studied with more zeal, and fate lamented
+with more tears, than those of any other queen; for it was the fair and
+unfortunate Mary of Scotland, transplanted now, in her sixth year, from the
+bleak land which scarcely owned its allegiance, and always refused its affections—to
+appear for a brief moment on the brightest and gayest throne in
+Europe, and go back to the toils and struggles, the errors and sorrows of her
+native realm. She was betrothed in 1548 to Francis the dauphin, who later
+ascended the throne as Francis II. The rejoicings on these two auspicious
+events were soon interrupted; for all the nations were in a roused and unsettled
+state, and every day brought forth some new complication of parties,
+or totally unexpected turn in the progress of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>A distinction seems always to have been drawn between the doctrines of
+the Lutherans and the Calvinists. The Lutherans were considered merely
+dissidents from the papal church, but the Calvinists were thought rebels
+against royal authority. Excesses on both sides justified to superficial
+observers the opinion, which inflamed the Catholics and reformers with
+unappeasable rage, that their joint existence was impossible. Catholicism,
+when it was triumphant, trampled on the faintest spirit of dissent; and dissent,
+when it had the opportunity, retorted with almost insane retribution.
+The release from the darkness in which all men’s minds had been avowedly
+kept was too sudden to be wisely borne. The light blinded their eyes, and
+the persecutors could point to their victims’ acts in justification of their
+own. This will account for the tragedies and nameless horrors of the next
+half century in France, in which the national character entirely changed.
+Jacques Bonhomme became a ravening savage instead of a complaining
+drudge, and knight and cavalier became brutalised below the standard of
+a Chinese mandarin or maddened Hindu.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span></p>
+
+<h3>WAR WITH CHARLES V AND HIS SUCCESSOR</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1548-1552 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>National efforts, however they might ostensibly be only on temporal or
+political subjects, borrowed their spirit from these theological dissensions.
+Wars, sieges, marriages, all had reference to the great argument of the time;
+for it was felt on both sides that the preponderance of either of the parties in
+the religious struggle would decide the predominance of the political opinions
+which were supposed to be involved. Protestantism and free government, if
+not the cry, was already the sentiment of all the peoples, and Catholicism and
+loyalty to the crown were the counterblasts on the other side. If Charles V,
+therefore, at any time, perceived that the pope himself relaxed in his opposition
+to the Calvinist reformers, he opposed the person of his holiness without
+the least compunction, but with an unabated reverence for his office; and if
+Henry II saw, in the midst of his executions of the Protestants of his own
+kingdom, that encouragement of the Lutherans of Germany would weaken
+his rival’s forces, he sent assistance to the confederated princes. But both
+were equally bent on maintaining their individual authority. It will therefore
+not surprise us when we perceive that, in the year 1552, the part played
+by these unprincipled potentates became reversed. Charles, the publisher of
+the Interim which secured the Protestant demands, is at open war with them
+in Germany; and Henry, the torturer of the reformers of his own kingdom,
+is armed in their defence. Maurice of Saxony, however, saved the French
+king the trouble of crossing the Rhine, for he secretly placed himself at the
+head of a band of determined Protestants, forced the passes of the Tyrol, and
+scattered the council of Trent, which was still carrying on its labours. Without
+check or pause they marched without beat of drum, and got so close to the
+house in Innsbruck where Charles was in bed with a slight illness, that his
+imperial majesty had to fly with no more dignified apparel than his shirt and
+stockings.</p>
+
+<p>While the confederated princes were lamenting the escape of their expected
+prisoner, they were cheered with a message from the emperor himself
+offering terms of accommodation. The rapidity of his flight had been
+increased by the knowledge, which reached him in his retreat, that Henry,
+with a great French army, was on the borders of Germany, and ready to cross
+over to the assistance of his enemies. Better, he thought, to yield at once
+than allow his French rival to gain the glory of a reconciliation. The
+princes accepted the offer, and wrote to beg Henry to discontinue his
+advance. Henry yielded to their request by discontinuing his advance; but
+indemnified himself by turning to one side, and seized by main force the
+cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, spread his legions over Lorraine, and made
+an attempt on Strasburg and the county of Alsace. In this he was only
+repulsed by the Protestantism of the people. They feared the most Christian
+king and had more confidence in the Catholic emperor, who, to the great
+satisfaction and at the powerful request of sixty thousand armed Lutherans,
+had just signed his name to the Treaty of Passau. This Treaty of Passau
+was the termination for a long time of the German strife. Equal rights
+were secured by it to Protestant and papist; equal eligibility to seats in
+the great council of Speier, and mutual freedom of worship in the states
+of both communions.</p>
+
+<p>The war henceforth became a petty personal quarrel between the sovereigns.
+Charles, having pacified the reformers, swore he would die before the
+walls of Metz, which the king had taken, before he would raise the siege; and
+Henry swore he would lose his last man before a Spaniard crossed the ditch.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span>It was a duel with the world gathered round the lists. Metz was a wretchedly
+placed town, with no regular fortifications, no bastions or towers, and was
+commanded by hills in the immediate neighbourhood. But Francis, duke of
+Guise, threw himself into the place, and made preparations for defence.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12v2"><a href="#endnote_12v">v</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Siege of Metz (1552 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1552 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>On approaching the place, the 120,000 men who accompanied Charles V
+found neither food nor trees nor shelter in a province which the stupidity of
+the men of Brandenburg had ravaged without aim or profit, as completely
+as the defenders of Metz might have done systematically in their own
+interest. Albert, their markgraf, with the improvidence of a savage, had
+reduced himself to famine. Charles V remained for a long time encamped
+at Saarbrücken and at Forbach, waiting for his heavy artillery.</p>
+
+<p>Guise had no intention of letting himself be surprised by this army,
+masked as it was behind the forests, and most frequently employed himself
+in visiting the guards and sentinels. He established a “watch” of mounted
+men at St. Julien, to give warning of the approach of the enemy. In the
+beginning of October, the imperial army came and encamped at St. Avold,
+and on the 19th Metz was invested. Under fire of the enemy’s cannon, Guise
+continued the defensive works. Frequent sorties kept up the ardour and
+health of his garrison and exhausted the enemy by continual alarms and losses.
+Every day brought some damage to the enemy, taking soldiers and horses and
+spoiling the provisions that were being brought to them.</p>
+
+<p>At the very beginning the emperor sent a trumpeter to Guise to
+announce that Hesdin had been taken from the king of France and that
+his brother, the duke d’Aumale, had fallen into the hands of the markgraf
+of Brandenburg. But Guise did not heed these communications; himself
+informed of what was passing outside, he was in constant communication
+with the king, and imparted to him every episode of the siege, his hopes,
+his checks, and the movements of the besieging army. His quarters were
+near the Champagne gate, the principal object of attack, that he might be at
+all hours on the spot where action and the greatest danger were making
+ready. He had about five thousand men under his orders in the town a few
+days before the investment, but he was entirely without artillery. He sent
+a letter to the king, through the enemy’s lines, on the 29th of October:
+“Having already split and cracked four of the seven pieces of artillery I
+have had fired, am decided on careful consideration to load them only with
+half charges, and to use them to terrify more by their noise than their effect,
+and to employ falconets and other small pieces, it not having depended on
+me to give warning of what I needed in good time, when means to assist me
+were available.” He had a double cannon on the Ste. Marie platform, but
+“one of the pins of the said piece is sticking out; the other large culverin
+is burst at the front end, about a foot and a half, and I have had it sawn off
+and shall still be able to use it. I assure you, sire, that the fault was not
+that they were overloaded, but they are so badly cast and of such brittle
+material that they cannot bear even the smallest charge.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus reduced to make use of his artillery only for noise, he still did not
+hesitate to announce that he could defend himself for ten months. Every
+two or three days he sent despatches to Fontainebleau or to the relieving
+army; he indicated means of supplying him with news and of seizing convoys.
+He wrote to his brother, the cardinal De Lorraine, to the constable,
+to the marshal De Saint-André; he excited everyone to an interest in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span>honour of saving his town. The cardinal shared this passion with all the
+ardour of his vehement temperament. To relieve his brother, to save Metz,
+to hurry to the king at any moment to suggest an idea, propose a surprise
+of the besiegers, and—noteworthy solicitude which shows the party leader
+still hidden behind the courtier—commend to him those gentlemen whom
+his brother singled out for their gallant conduct in the sorties, name those
+who were wounded, demand for his partisans the offices of those who had
+just been killed, were the occupations of his every moment.</p>
+
+<p>On the 20th of November, Charles V approached the ramparts of Metz,
+believing that in a few days they were to fall into his hands; but at this
+moment his engineers
+judged it
+necessary to change
+the point of attack.
+Whilst they opened
+new trenches in front
+of the Tour d’Enfer,
+not a day passed
+but some troops of
+French horse went
+to alarm the enemy
+and ransack the highways,
+where spoil was
+made of provisions
+and booty of prisoners.
+On the 28th of
+November the Tour
+d’Enfer fell with a
+crash. Guise wrote
+to the king that the
+breach was three
+hundred paces in
+width, but that he
+did not fear the
+assailants, for “St.
+Rémy swears by all
+the gods he will make
+them a tasty dish.
+I think, sire, they
+will not be cold
+when they go out.”
+The whole garrison
+awaited the assault
+with the same gaiety.
+The ensigns and standards were planted on the breach to defy the enemy
+and every morning on mounting guard new colours were seen to float.
+While filling the sacks of earth, the men-at-arms removed their cuirasses
+and worked clothed in their “woollen liveries.” Bales of wool were rolled
+by women beside the sacks of earth in the space left empty where the rampart
+had fallen in. One evening Guise, between two of these bales, was
+watching the preparations for an attack, when the engineer, Camillo Marini,
+putting his head in the place whence Guise had just withdrawn his own, suddenly
+received a discharge from an arquebuse which scattered his brains.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/p344.jpg" width="350" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Duke of Guise</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1552-1553 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Only on the 7th of December did the assault seem imminent. Guise
+hurried to the breach with all his volunteers whom he encouraged “by many
+of those good words which incite to honour, to virtue, and to victory.” The
+assault was not attempted, but the besieged had no time to rejoice at this,
+for the next day they learned that Henry II was on the march to besiege
+Hesdin, instead of advancing to the relief of Metz. It is true that they
+showed no appearance of desiring to be relieved, but they began to be sparing
+of provisions; Guise had the pack-horses of the foot-soldiers killed and
+salted, in order to husband the forage for his cavalry. The Tour de Wassieux
+fell in near the Champagne gate and left a new breach a hundred
+paces wide: this opening was closed up like the first, with sacks of earth;
+the sorties went on; sometimes two or three were made the same day, by
+different gates. The wounded in the place were numerous. For their
+benefit Guise sent for the surgeon Ambrose Paré, who had drawn the lancehead
+from his cheek when he was wounded before Boulogne, and an Italian
+officer of the imperial army consented for a hundred crowns to introduce
+him into Metz by night with “his apothecary and his drugs.” The privations
+and sufferings which the emperor’s army had to endure rendered
+treasons of this kind possible, especially amongst the Italians, bewildered
+as they were at finding themselves transported to the north in the middle of
+winter for the sake of a German quarrel. Whole bands of these Italians
+deserted from the camp of the besiegers and went to take service with Henry’s
+army, detachments of which were overrunning Lorraine and intercepting all
+the convoys of provisions sent from Franche-Comté to the emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The garrisons of Verdun and Toul intercepted food and reinforcements,
+which were arriving from other points for the besieging army, carried off
+the famished soldiers who wandered from the camp, and held enclosed in
+mud and snow this confused multitude of men of all nations. The imperial
+leaders were not in agreement. The duke of Alva would not allow his
+veteran Spanish soldiers to be sacrificed under the eyes of the Germans, who
+refused to advance for an assault. Charles V, exasperated at seeing such
+weak walls and crumbling ramparts resist so formidable an army, exclaimed:
+“How, by the wounds of God, is it that they do not enter? By the virtues
+of God, what is the meaning of it?” He grew irascible, ill, discouraged.
+He was heard to exclaim: “Ha, I renounce God; I see well that I have
+no men left; I must bid farewell to the empire, and shut myself up in some
+monastery, and, by God’s death, in three years I will become a Franciscan!”
+Finally, beaten in several sorties, and embarrassed by the capture of his provisions,
+he opened a furious cannonade without attaining the foot of the wall,
+took to mining, in which he was not more fortunate, and withdrew shamed
+and desperate on the 26th of December, 1552, leaving his army orders to
+raise the siege after his departure and execute a retreat on Thionville and
+Treves, under cover of some cannon mounted at the château de Ladonchamp.
+He had lost thirty thousand men during the siege.</p>
+
+<p>When, on the 2nd of January, 1553, Guise perceived the men in full
+retreat, he precipitated himself with his garrison into the camp, to seize the
+artillery and cut to pieces those who had lagged behind. But a heartrending
+spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the French. Whichever
+way they looked, lay so many dead, and an infinity of sick were heard
+groaning in the huts. In every quarter were great cemeteries, newly dug,
+tents, arms, and other abandoned furniture. Some of the sick were lying in
+the mud, others were seated on great stones, with their legs frozen up to the
+knees in mire, so that they could not withdraw them. More than three
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span>hundred were rescued from this horrible condition, but the greater number
+were obliged to have their legs cut off.</p>
+
+<p>As if by magic, the French forgot their own sufferings, the dangers they
+had just escaped, the martial ardour which had animated them, and thought
+of nothing but how to succour these unfortunate Germans, thus abandoned
+with their feet in the snow, administering all necessaries and such comforts
+as poor sick foreigners want. Guise had them taken in boats to the duke
+of Alva at Thionville.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12u"><!-- letter not in references list for this chapter -->u</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Minor Engagements; the Abdication of Charles V</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1552-1557 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The following year the emperor besieged Thérouanne in Artois. The
+little garrison which held it did not capitulate till after a valiant defence; he
+had the town levelled with the ground and it was never rebuilt. Hesdin
+was treated in the same fashion. Charles was avenging his humiliated pride
+by a savage war. In 1554 Henry II paid him ravages for ravages in Hainault
+and Brabant; he sacked Mariembourg, Dinant, and, at the other
+extremity of the Low Countries, he attacked Renty, not far from St. Omer.
+The emperor tried to relieve the place, Guise and Tavannes defied his
+cavalry; but the French army was compelled by lack of provisions to raise
+the siege.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Brissac, by a series of campaigns which have remained
+the model of their kind, maintained himself with a small army in Piedmont,
+in spite of the duke of Alva, and seized Casale, capital of Montferrat;
+Strozzi and Montluc defended Siena in Tuscany against the Florentines and
+imperialists; the Turks menaced Naples; finally the baron de la Garde, the
+French admiral in the Levant, sacked the island of Elba and set foot in
+Corsica. Thus the check given at Metz was not counterbalanced; France
+seemed to have recovered her youth with her new king: Charles V grew
+weary of a struggle which he had now sustained for five-and-thirty years.
+Frustrated alike by France and by the princes of Germany, he ceded the
+Low Countries, Italy, and Spain to his son Philip II, and sought at the monastery
+of San Yuste that repose which is never to be found by the ambitious
+great (1556).</p>
+
+<p>Charles V had not been able to deliver all his crowns to his son; Austria
+and the title of emperor remained to his brother Ferdinand. The house of
+Austria was divided. But at the moment in which Philip II lost Germany
+he seemed to gain England by a second marriage with the queen of that
+country, Mary Tudor. He had already one son, Don Carlos; he reserved
+for him all the Spanish possessions, and it was agreed that the child who
+might be born of this new union should reign over both the Low Countries
+and England, that is to say, that London and Antwerp should be under
+the same master, the Thames and the Schelde under the same laws, and
+that the North Sea should become an English lake. Thus both for the present
+and the future France was seriously threatened by that domination which was
+pressing on her from three sides, which might bring upon her an English
+invasion against which she could no longer hope for aid from Germany. At
+the beginning of 1556 Henry II had signed the Truce of Vaucelles with
+Charles V: he broke it the same year (November), that he might not leave
+Philip II time to establish himself firmly. The holy see was then occupied
+by a fiery old man, Paul IV, who was alarmed to see the Spaniards beside
+and above him, at Naples and Milan. The king and the pontiff made
+alliance. An army under command of Montmorency was sent to the Low
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span>Countries; another under the duke of Guise into Italy. The object was to
+confine Philip II to Spain; Henry II was to enlarge his dominions on the
+north by neighbouring provinces which it would be easy to retain, and one
+of his sons received the promise of the crown of Naples, which Duke Francis
+of Guise, descended in the female line from the house of Anjou, counted on
+taking for himself. The plan was well thought out. The energetic Paul
+IV placed his spiritual power at the service of France and the Italian cause;
+he lanced an excommunication against the most Catholic king.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Battle and Defence of St. Quentin (August 10th, 1557)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1557-1558 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Against Montmorency, Philip II opposed the duke of Savoy, Emmanuel
+Philibert, who, despoiled of his states by Francis, rested all his hopes on
+Spain; and against Francis of Guise, the duke of Alva, a true Spaniard,
+devoted to the church more even than to his king. Guise, received in
+triumph at Rome by Paul IV, penetrated into the Abruzzi, but failed
+near Civitella before the scientific tactics of his adversary. Emmanuel
+Philibert, after a feigned attack on Champagne, suddenly turned on St.
+Quentin where he was joined by seven thousand English. This was a place
+without walls, without munitions, without provisions. Admiral Coligny
+threw himself into it with seven hundred men; Montmorency approached
+with supplies; but came so near to the enemy with an army very inferior in
+numbers and took so few precautions to preserve for himself freedom of
+movement, that he was obliged to fight without securing his rear. Emmanuel
+Philibert turned his flank, attacked him in front and rear, and completely
+defeated him. A Bourbon, the duke d’Enghien, and a viscount of Turrenne
+were slain; another Bourbon, the duke de Montpensier, and the
+constable De Montmorency, the marshal De Saint-André, the duke de
+Longueville were taken with four thousand men, the artillery, and the baggage.
+There were more than ten thousand killed or wounded.</p>
+
+<p>“Is my son at Paris?” cried Charles V on learning in the depths of
+his retreat of San Yuste of this great disaster to France. Philip II was not
+at Paris and did not get there. Cold and methodical of temperament,
+and obstinate but without dash, he had not thought it prudent to follow up
+his victory. Before taking another step he wished to have St. Quentin, and
+St. Quentin did not allow itself to be taken for seventeen days. Coligny,
+knowing that the salvation of France was in question, had made heroic efforts
+to prolong the defence. There had been time to collect forces and Philip II,
+after having taken Ham and Le Catelet, re-entered the Low Countries with
+the slender results of a victory which had promised to be as disastrous to
+France as Poitiers or Agincourt.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Retaking of Calais (1558 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1558-1559 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Henry II had recalled the duke of Guise in all haste from Italy. The
+conqueror of Metz left the duke of Alva to impose, one knee on the ground,
+the Spanish will on the pope, and came to receive the title of lieutenant of
+the kingdom with unlimited power. All the nobility flocked round him;
+Guise responded to the universal expectation. Whilst a movement of the
+troops was attracting the attention of the enemy on the side of Luxemburg,
+the duke hastened to Calais which he immediately invested on the 1st of
+January, 1558. The English, reckoning on the fortifications of the place
+and on the marshes which envelop it, had left in it but nine hundred men.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span>Two forts cover the town: that of Nieullay on the land side and that of
+Rysbank on the side of the sea. Guise attacked the first with fury and carried
+it on the 3rd of January. The fort of Rysbank fell into his power the same
+day. On the 6th the castle was attacked; on the 8th the garrison capitulated.
+The last and shameful memorial of the Hundred Years’ War was
+thus effaced; the English no longer possessed an inch of territory in France.
+In an attempt to compensate themselves by an attack on Brest they were
+unsuccessful, for the troops landed at Le Conquet were driven back into the
+sea by the peasants of lower Brittany. This was the death-blow of Queen
+Mary. “If they open my heart,” she said when she was dying, “they will
+read upon it the name of Calais.” The same blow ended the Anglo-Spanish
+alliance. Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary on the English throne,
+made Protestantism triumphant in the island and became the irreconcilable
+enemy of the king of Spain.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis (1559 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Indeed Philip II, that sombre and fanatical spirit, desired to attain the
+dominion of Europe by another road than his father’s. Half of Germany
+and the Scandinavian states had separated themselves from Rome, and the
+Reformation, stifled in Italy and Spain, was fermenting in France, spreading
+in the Netherlands, triumphing in Scotland and England. Philip II conceived
+the design of crushing Protestantism. He wished to make himself
+the armed leader of Catholicism throughout Europe, the secular arm of the
+holy see, the executor of the sentences of the church. His faith and his ambition
+were in agreement; for he doubtless calculated that if he stifled heresy
+it would not be to the profit of orthodox Christianity alone, but to that of
+his own power, and that the unity of religion would bring about the unity
+of the empire. In this idea a war with France for a few towns on the frontiers
+seemed at the moment impolitic and he desired to treat with its king in
+order to win him to his own plan. Before the peace was concluded some
+further encounters took place; Guise seized Thionville and Therme, captured
+Dunkirk, Bergues, and Nieuwport, but suffered a defeat by allowing himself
+to be caught at Gravelines between the count of Egmont who attacked him
+in front, and an English fleet whose cannon belaboured his flanks. On the
+3rd of April, 1559, peace was at last signed.</p>
+
+<p>By this treaty France kept the Three Bishoprics (Metz, Toul, and Verdun
+with their territory). She had already re-entered into possession of Boulogne;
+she also retained Calais, engaging to pay a sum of 500,000 crowns to
+the English if she had not restored that city at the end of eight years—which
+she took good care not to do. The two kings of France and Spain
+mutually restored each other their conquests on the frontiers of the Low
+Countries and in Italy, with the exception of Piedmont where Henry retained
+several towns<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> until the claims of Louise of Savoy, grandmother of
+the king of France, should be settled. The acquisitions of France were valuable
+and protected her against England and Germany. Nevertheless, one of
+the negotiators, Montmorency, has been accused of having sacrificed his
+country’s interests to the desire of recovering his own liberty more quickly;
+France ceded the county of Charolais, and 189 towns or castles, which she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span>was occupying in the Low Countries or in Italy, in return for St. Quentin,
+Ham, Le Catelet and a few unimportant places which the Spaniards surrendered
+to her. “Sire,” Guise and Brissac said bitterly, “you give in one day
+what would not be taken from you in thirty years of reverses.” Some
+towns in Italy were neither necessary nor desirable for the French, for they
+would have served them as a perpetual temptation to return across the
+Alps. But they were abandoning French territories which should have
+been preserved at all costs, especially as the Spaniards did not restore Jeanne
+d’Albret the portion of her kingdom of Navarre which they had held for half
+a century.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12m3"><a href="#endnote_12m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus the great game of international politics that for half a century had
+been played on the boards of Europe was brought to apparent termination,—and
+France had lost. Since the time of Charles VIII, France, as represented
+by its king, had longed for foreign conquests. We have seen Francis I in a
+life-long struggle with Charles V, striving vainly to give imperial influence
+to his kingly office. Henry II has kept up the game, with Philip II for his
+counter-player. But now, after all these struggles, all this loss of property
+and life, the bounds of France still remain almost the same as they were
+when Francis I came to the throne in 1515. The glamour of the deeds of
+Francis I may have given a certain added éclat to the French name; but the
+actual extra-territorial influence of France has shrunk rather than extended
+since the time when Charles VIII marched practically unopposed to the
+confines of Italy (1494).</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the duchy of Bourbon has reverted to the crown, and
+the recovery of Calais is an event of real significance. With the expulsion
+of the English troops from this last coign of vantage, the work begun by
+Joan of Arc a century before is finished. If the imperial hopes of the French
+kings have been doomed to disappointment, at least France is now mistress
+of her own territory; hers is a compact and unified kingdom, if not an empire
+in the modern sense of the word.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST DAYS OF HENRY II</h3>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed, however, that the French king regarded the
+imperial contest as really over. Doubtless Henry II, while momentarily
+turning his attention to the interior of his kingdom, dreamed of a future
+day when he should return to the imperial struggle. But if so, the dream
+was not to be realised. The end of his life was at hand. The same year
+that witnessed the signing of the treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis was to see
+Henry II pass finally from the scene; indeed there is nothing more to record
+of him except the manner of his death. This came about in a way characteristic
+of the times, but impossible in any other age; it was the accidental
+outgrowth of the festivities that marked in a sense the culminating features
+of the treaty.</p>
+
+<p>It had been arranged that a double marriage of international significance
+should be effected. Henry’s daughter was to marry the king of Spain; his
+sister to marry the duke of Savoy. Thus the great imperial drama was to
+close in the conventional way amidst the peal of wedding bells. The weddings
+took place; but the fates mocked at such an ending, and insisted that what
+had commenced as a tragedy should remain a tragedy to the end.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> In scandalous
+contrast to the feverish agitation—an exaltation mingled with dread—that
+pervaded all France, the court had given itself over to pleasures
+and festivities: nothing but balls, masquerades, jousts, and banquets on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span>occasion of the double marriage of the princesses of France. But the joyous
+sounds were soon to be changed to the silence of death. On the 20th of
+June, 1559, Madame Elizabeth of France, daughter of the king, was married
+at Notre Dame to the duke of Alva, proxy of the king of Spain. On the
+27th the contract of the duke of Savoy and Madame Marguerite, the king’s
+sister, was signed. Splendid lists were marked out, at the end of the rue St.
+Antoine, facing the royal palace des Tournelles, and almost at the foot of the
+Bastille where the deposed magistrates were imprisoned. During three days
+the princes and lords tilted there in presence of the ladies. On the 29th of
+June the champions (challengers) of the tournament were the dukes of Guise
+and Nemours, the son of the duke of Ferrara and the king in person, wearing
+the colours of his sexagenarian lady, the white and black of widows,
+which Diana had never left off. When the passage at arms was finished the
+king who had ridden in several races as “swift and expert rider” wished to
+break another lance before retiring, and in spite of the entreaties of the queen
+he ordered that the count de Montgomery should be his opponent.</p>
+
+<p>Montgomery in vain tried to be excused. The two jousters rushed
+violently against each other and broke their lances with dexterity. But
+Montgomery, forgetting to throw away instantly the fragment remaining in
+his hand as the rule was, involuntarily struck the helmet of the king, penetrating
+the bars of his visor, and thrusting a splinter of wood into his eye.
+The king fell on the neck of his horse, which carried him to the end of the
+enclosure; here his equerries received him in their arms, and carried him to
+Tournelles amidst the greatest confusion and indescribable dismay. All the
+aids of science were ineffectual; the wood had penetrated into the brain.
+Vainly the renowned Vesale hastened from Brussels on the command of
+Philip II; Henry II languished eleven days, and expired on the 10th of July
+after having the marriage of his sister Marguerite with the duke of Savoy
+celebrated in his chamber the day before his death. He was a few months
+over forty years of age. All Protestant Europe hailed the arm of the
+Almighty in this thunderbolt which had struck down the persecuting king
+in the midst of his “impious” festivities.</p>
+
+<p>The reformers were not mistaken. The race of Valois was doomed.
+Restored in the fifteenth century by the greatest marvel in French history,
+it had disregarded the will of God as indicated by Joan of Arc. In the
+sixteenth century it outraged humanity and hampered the natural development
+of France. Its days were numbered. Now replacing the fanaticism
+of Henry II by a policy devoid of principle or sincerity, it was to strive at
+random during thirty years against the tempests of the religious wars, to
+disappear finally in a sea of blood.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_12k4"><a href="#endnote_12k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> [See vol. IX, Chapter XV, for the complementary account of this and the subsequent
+Italian campaigns of Francis I.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> [Charles had succeeded Ferdinand the Catholic, who died in 1516. Francis made no murmur
+when Charles entered into his vast heritage; indeed, he signed a treaty of offensive and
+defensive alliance with him at Nyon in 1516. France gained nothing by it except the restitution
+to Jeanne d’Albret of Basse-Navarre, which Ferdinand had seized. But Maximilian’s death in
+1519 changed the whole face of affairs.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> [“I purposely make use of this Protestant term,” says Martin, himself a Catholic, “as expressing
+a particular form of Catholicism.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> [The work of Rabelais is discussed in <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">Chapter XIV</a> of the present volume.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> [For a study of the Reformation, see vol. XIII.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> The treaty of 1562 with Savoy finally left France only Pinerolo, Perosa, and Savigliano,
+which were restored by Henry III in 1574. The marquisate of Saluzzo which Francis I had
+snatched from the family of that name was usurped by Savoy in 1588 and in 1601 exchanged for
+Bresse.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-13.jpg" width="500" height="325" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII. CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>The lance-thrust with which Montgomery struck down Henry II in
+the tournament of June 29th, 1559, was to change the aspect of France.
+The reign so rudely interrupted in the midst of festivities had not
+always been happy or brilliant, but it had maintained an appearance
+of grandeur. The reigns of which it led the sorrowful series, could not
+bring it the same honour or the same profit. It was no longer the question
+as to who should have the first place in Europe, the house of France
+or that of Austria; but who in France would gain by the unchained religious
+passions—the Guises or the Bourbons. In future it is no longer
+a question of fighting the Spanish or the English; when they are mentioned,
+it will be to open the French frontiers to them and have them
+take part in the country’s struggles.—<span class="smcap">De Lacombe.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13b"><a href="#endnote_13b">b</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1559-1589 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Voltaire—struck with the violent contrast between the misery and
+brilliancy of this century, the sudden rise of the arts, the refinement and
+chivalry of the court which glittered even in the midst of crimes—cries
+out: “It is a robe of silk and gold stained with blood.” The gold and silk
+have been shown; now appear the blood and ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Henry II left to Catherine de’ Medici four young sons. Sickly from
+birth, and already weakened by excess, three of them rapidly succeeded to the
+throne, having themselves no heirs; and thus for a quarter of a century
+the weight of absolute power, so difficult to carry, falls into the hands of
+children or young men without experience. Grandchildren of one of the
+most brilliant of monarchs, and with the blood of the Medici in their veins,
+they were able to show happy qualities of spirit and great defects. They
+were eloquent speakers, occasionally poets, and always friends of literature
+and art, but with vices that endangered the state; and the crimes which
+resulted from their characters, at once violent and perfidious, overshadowed
+their gifts of mind. The oldest, Francis II, was not able to show the sad
+effects of these contradictions in his nature; he reigned less than a year and
+a half.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13c1"><a href="#endnote_13c">c</a></span> His successor, Charles IX, a child of ten on his accession, reigned
+fourteen years, but never ruled, being dominated by the baleful influence of
+his mother. To Charles succeeded his weak and perfidious brother Henry III,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span>with whose troubled and ineffectual reign the house of Valois came to an end.
+Such are the reigning monarchs of our present epoch. But the real ruler of
+France during this dark period of thirty years is the mother of the kings,
+the scheming, pitiless Catherine de’ Medici. It is her story that we tell as
+we follow the fortunes of her weakly offspring, the first of whom now claims
+attention.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FRANCIS II (1559-1560 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1559-1560 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The law declared the king a major at thirteen years of age; at sixteen
+Francis II was still weak of will and under the tutelage of others. With a
+prince feeble both in mind and body at the head of the state, it was natural
+that the queen-mother should be called upon to take an active part in public
+affairs. The widow of Henry II had not as yet made her influence strongly felt;
+with all her superstition she was known to possess intelligence and a refined
+taste in art and in matters pertaining to her personal pleasures, but in moral
+sense she was notably deficient. Always kept by her husband in ignorance
+of public affairs, she had hitherto revealed no higher qualities than a rare
+constancy under affront and a marvellous ability to carry on intrigues. Now
+passing as she did without transition from court circles into state factions,
+and from minor intrigues into war, she was taken at a disadvantage and did
+not at once show herself equal to the requirements of her new rôle; without
+convictions of any kind as without scruples, she was not led to adopt the
+firm and open policy that would best have served the state, but carried all
+the artifices of the boudoir into the conduct of public affairs. Her method
+of government consisted in ruling men by their passions, a method which
+augments corruption by doubling the strength of the parties it places in opposition
+to each other. The many outrages which had been inflicted upon her
+by the triumphant Diane de Poitiers had effaced in her mind all distinction
+between good and evil, and there was left her but a single worthy sentiment,
+her affection for her children. All her efforts were directed toward keeping
+the power in the hands of her sons, and to fulfil this end she unhesitatingly
+made use of every means, from love intrigues to assassination. A policy so
+perverse must inevitably bring its own punishment, and the blood-stained
+crown of the Valois, falling from the hands of this unscrupulous Italian
+woman, came near to being irretrievably shattered.</p>
+
+<p>The young Mary Stuart, wife of Francis II, superseded Catherine de’
+Medici in power for a brief period. Henry II had wedded his son to this
+daughter of James V and Marie de Lorraine in order to make sure of the
+aid of Scotland in any future quarrel with England. Beautiful, gracious,
+intelligent, and witty, Mary had not yet committed those faults which were
+to be expiated by a long term of suffering, that ended only in death. At the
+brilliant court of France, surrounded by the poets, scientists, and artists that
+attended her every step, Mary threw herself unrestrainedly into the pleasure
+of exerting those rare charms of mind and person which have silenced all
+adverse criticism on the lips of modern historians. The influence exercised
+by the young queen on all around her, the empire she had gained over the
+mind of the king, might have operated powerfully for the welfare of the state
+had she been surrounded by disinterested advisers; as it was she gave herself
+up completely to pleasure and left the management of affairs in the hands of
+her uncles, the cardinal De Lorraine, and Duke Francis of Guise.</p>
+
+<p>The house of Guise, a younger branch of the ducal house of Lorraine, had,
+although but newly established in France, rapidly risen to power. Claude,
+chief of the house, had obtained in recompense for his services the governorship
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span>of the province of Champagne and the elevation of his property of
+Guise into a duchy, his brother John being made a cardinal. Two of his
+sons were destined to play a prominent part in the affairs of France: the
+elder, Francis, had bravely defended Metz and reconquered Calais; while
+another, Charles, had succeeded his uncle John as cardinal and possessed as
+many as twelve ecclesiastical sees, among which were three archbishoprics.
+The young king left to the first-named, Francis, all matters pertaining to “the
+militia,” while Charles was given jurisdiction in civil affairs. Thus the entire
+administration of the state was practically given into the hands of these two
+brothers, the “general superintendence” over the government which Catherine
+de’ Medici was supposed to retain being only a high-sounding, empty title.</p>
+
+<p>There were other candidates that aspired to power, some by reason of
+their birth and others from pure ambition—the Bourbons, for example, and
+the Montmorencys. The house of Bourbon had for chiefs at that time
+Anthony who married Jeanne d’Albret, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre,
+and his two brothers, Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, and Louis, prince of
+Condé. These three were the nearest kindred to the Valois, and Anthony,
+in case of minority, could have laid claim to the regency; but since the
+treason committed by the constable, the Bourbons had been somewhat in
+disgrace, and for the time being were making no demands.</p>
+
+<p>The aged and inflexible constable, De Montmorency, the chief who had
+met defeat at St. Quentin, showed himself less disinterested; but the king,
+pretexting his advanced years, gradually relieved him of the burden of
+affairs. Thus the two Guises remained undisputed masters of the power,
+the king, and the court, until a new enemy rose up to challenge their supremacy.
+It was forty years since Luther had begun to preach against the
+established church, and Europe was now divided into two communions.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13c2"><a href="#endnote_13c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Religious Parties</i></h4>
+
+<p>In France the religious parties were political factors at the same time.
+The Huguenots, as they came to be called, were largely recruited from
+among the nobility which was hostile to the Guise party. This must be kept
+in mind as we enter upon the long story of crime and civil war which marks
+the religious settlement in France. It was particularly unfortunate that
+this great question of religious differences came at a time when a line of weak
+kings left authority the prize of faction or in the control of women.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A conspiracy against royalty became the first act of Protestantism in
+France; and thus hundreds of loyal subjects and rational minds were alienated
+from it, and their dislike was strengthened by prejudice. The court,
+with some reason, henceforth declared against it an eternal war. Many
+of the noblesse had already joined the party of Coligny and of Condé, though
+the king of Navarre and the constable hesitated and held back. La Rochefoucauld,
+Jarnac, and the vidame de Chartres declared for them. An
+atrocious impertinence on the part of the cardinal De Lorraine, opportunely
+occurring, swelled this band of foes to the Guises. Tormented by demands,
+some for debts due and some for places promised, the all-powerful prelate in
+a fit of spleen published a proclamation by sound of trumpet, ordering all
+petitioners, of whatever rank, to quit Fontainebleau, where the court then
+was, without delay, and this under pain of being hanged. The cardinal,
+perhaps, meant to be facetious; for the court instantly became a desert.
+The host of noble suitors, proud though mendicant, could not forgive the
+threat, and many joined the discontented.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span></p>
+
+<p>The party had numerous meetings in the château of Vendôme, and in
+other places. La Renaudie, a gentleman of Périgord, and an agent of
+Coligny, was employed by him to be the ostensible leader. A meeting was
+secretly convened at Nantes, where the Protestants and enemies of Guise
+united to the number of six hundred, and took counsel together. It was
+agreed to attack Blois, where the king then was, obtain possession of his person,
+and get rid of the odious Guises. Amongst such a host of conspirators
+secrecy was almost impossible: the duke received warning of the plot, and
+removed the court to the castle of Amboise. The cardinal De Lorraine was
+terrified; he proposed to summon the <i>ban</i> and <i>arrière-ban</i>, and gather an
+army against the rebels. All the anxiety of Guise, on the contrary, was that
+his enemies should show themselves; and for that purpose he affected confidence.
+Coligny and Condé both repaired to Amboise, where Guise received
+them without betraying the least mark of suspicion, and he appointed them
+to different posts of defence about the castle; each, however, watched by his
+own trusty partisans. The rising had been appointed for the 15th of March:
+it took place on the 16th, the baron de Castelnau seizing the castle of Noizé,
+not far from Amboise. La Renaudie was marching to join him: they hoped
+to surprise the court; when on a sudden the royal troops sent by Guise made
+their appearance, attacked La Renaudie, slew him, and besieged Noizé.</p>
+
+<p>An amnesty was now published in the hope of allaying the insurrection;
+but, as if in contempt of it, the château of Amboise was attacked on that
+very night. All the vigilance and valour of Guise were required to repel the
+rebels. By secret information he had time to prepare for them, and they
+were routed. The amnesty was revoked, and no mercy was shown to the
+captives. Twelve hundred of them were hanged, or otherwise despatched;
+even Castelnau, who had surrendered on the faith of the duke de Nemours,
+was executed in the presence of the court. In the confessions forced from
+many by the torture, none of the real chiefs of the conspiracy was mentioned
+except the prince of Condé. History is even in doubt to decide if those
+chiefs were concerned in the attack: the Protestant party will not admit
+that they by this rash and unwarrantable act produced the civil war. Condé
+was brought to trial in presence of the court: he disdained to defend himself
+but as a knight. “Let my accuser appear,” said he, regarding Guise, “and
+I will prove upon him, in single combat, that he is the traitor, not I, and that
+he is the true enemy of the king and of the monarchy.” Guise rose to reply
+to this challenge: “I can no longer suffer these dark suspicions to weigh
+upon so valiant a prince; I myself will be his second in the combat against
+whoever accuses him.” Most of those present were as perplexed as no doubt
+the reader is, to comprehend this conduct in the duke of Guise. Some called
+it chivalric generosity, others the perfection of guile.</p>
+
+<p>In the trouble excited by the conspiracy, the young king, for the first
+time, manifested an opinion of his own. He was shocked at finding himself
+the object of hatred, and he began to mistrust the Guises. The queen-mother,
+Catherine, after the example of her son, also took courage; and the chancellor
+Olivier, as well as Vieilleville and other courtiers, joined her party.
+Hence arose the first amnesty—a concession on the part of the Guises which
+was recompensed by the duke’s appointment as lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom. The executions which followed, especially that of Castelnau,
+which the court witnessed, shocked the princesses (the cardinal De Lorraine
+hoped that the sight of heretic blood would have had an opposite effect), and
+they, with the young queen Mary, flung themselves into the scale of mercy.
+Guise was unable to resist this influence; he saw that the prince of Condé
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span>must in consequence be released, and he sought to take to himself full
+credit for a generosity that was forced upon him. Here then Catherine de’
+Medici, for the first time, appears as the leader of a party.</p>
+
+<p>The continued mistrust and independence of the Guises shown on the part
+of the queen-mother and the young king produced an assembly of notables,
+summoned soon afterwards at Fontainebleau to take the affairs of the kingdom
+into consideration. In it the Protestant leaders, even prelates, spoke
+openly the apology for reformation; and Coligny demanded tolerance for
+the sectarians, relying upon the neutrality of the court. Guise could no
+longer command his temper, as he did at Amboise: mutual recrimination
+and menaces were heard in the assembly of peace. Both parties struggled
+in their discourses to convince the monarch of the justice and expediency of
+their counsels; but the weakness and indecision of the court were at the same
+time seen by both; and an appeal of equal earnestness was made by them to
+the people. The Protestants continually cried out for the states-general and
+a national council. And now the cardinal De Lorraine forgot his nature so
+far as to join in the cry, and make the same demand. The independent
+attitude of the queen rather forced the Guises to strengthen themselves by
+popularity.</p>
+
+<p>Such appear the true reasons why the states-general were summoned to
+meet at Orleans, in October, 1560. Historians in general perceive in them
+merely a snare to catch the Protestant chiefs. They served that purpose
+indeed, but they had been already summoned ere Condé, just released, could
+have recommenced his intrigues. The arrogance and boldness of the Protestants,
+and of Coligny, in the assembly of notables at Fontainebleau, were
+revolting to Catherine and Francis. Between August, when that assembly
+was held, and October, the period for the assembling of the states, the Guises
+had completely won the court to themselves, and regained their influence.
+The prince of Condé attempted during that interval to seize Lyons, and convert
+it into a stronghold of rebellion. He failed, however; and his traitorous
+enterprise became thoroughly known at court. Notwithstanding this,
+the brothers of Bourbon, the king of Navarre and the prince, were induced
+to join the assembly of the states. Though full of mistrust, they still ventured
+on the secret favour or neutrality of Catherine, who joined in enticing
+them to come. They were ill received by the king. Catherine was
+troubled, and shed tears on beholding them, knowing them to be victims
+betrayed by their confidence in her. The king’s mind had been filled with
+the bitterest calumnies against them: he accused Condé of having attempted
+his life, and ended by committing that prince to prison. The king of Navarre
+instantly complained, and expostulated with the queen-mother; but
+she could not now retract the consent she had given, or unbend the mind of
+the young monarch. Condé was tried by a commission, and refusing to
+answer, was condemned to death. The day was appointed for the execution,
+and Catherine de’ Medici betrayed to all who approached the agony and
+misgivings of her mind.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Death of Francis II</i></h4>
+
+<p>Historians will maintain that this sensibility on the part of Catherine was
+affected; but it would seem that she was now sincere in wishing to save the
+life of Condé, and fortune placed this in her power. The young king was
+stricken with sudden illness, arising, it is supposed, from formation of an
+abscess in his head. The supreme authority rested with the queen-mother.
+The Guises urged her to execute the sentence upon Condé; but she hesitated,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span>and resolved to save him. She determined, however, to turn her mercy
+to advantage; summoning the king of Navarre, she offered to spare the life
+of his brother, provided he signed an agreement renouncing all claims to the
+regency in case of the young king’s death. Navarre signed; and Francis II
+expired on the 5th of December, 1560.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13d1"><a href="#endnote_13d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1560-1561 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>France would quickly have forgotten this unfortunate young man but for
+two ineffaceable memories which were connected with his reign—that of the
+rise to power of the Guises, together with the beginning of the terrible religious
+wars, and the far pleasanter one of the presence on the throne of the
+lovely Mary Stuart. Obliged, after the death of her husband, to leave the land
+of her adoption and return to her native Scotland, she wept long on sailing
+away from the shores that had witnessed “evil luck depart from her and
+good fortune take her by the hand.” Leaning on the rail in the stern of the
+ship that was bearing her westward, she kept her brimming eyes fixed on
+the receding coast-line of the country she was leaving, and “remained in this
+attitude full five hours,” says Brantôme,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13e1"><a href="#endnote_13e">e</a></span> “repeating unceasingly, ‘Adieu,
+France! Adieu, France!’” When night came she caused rugs to be spread
+in the same place and laid herself down there to sleep, refusing all food. At
+daybreak she could still perceive a point of land on the horizon, and at the
+sight she cried out, “Adieu, dear France, I shall never see you again!” She
+was to find a crown, it is true, in the country towards which she was journeying,
+but there awaited her chains as well, an eighteen-year period of captivity,
+and instead of ascending a throne she mounted the steps of the scaffold.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13c3"><a href="#endnote_13c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES IX (1560-1574 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Charles IX, a boy ten years of age, succeeded his brother Francis.
+Catherine de’ Medici, according to her promise, liberated the prince of Condé;
+and as the king of Navarre, according to his promise, supported the queen’s
+pretensions, she took upon her the office of regent.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13d2"><a href="#endnote_13d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dangerous experiment of a meeting of the states-general was now
+unavoidable, and all parties paused to see what the result would be. The
+result was not so considerable as either side expected. The universal voice
+was for reform in the management of the state and diminution of taxation.
+Reform also in the church was strongly advocated; but the priests voted that
+it could only be procured by strengthening the laws against the Protestants;
+the third estate voted that the object was to be gained by freedom of conscience;
+and the nobles were almost equally divided in their votes. All,
+however, agreed in re-establishing the Pragmatic, and diminishing the contributions
+to the pope. After a session of six weeks the states-general was
+prorogued, and factions breathed again. Guise reconciled himself to his
+enemies, the constable and the marshal Saint-André; and the three put themselves
+under the protection of Philip of Spain in defence of the Catholic
+church. This gave them the name of the “triumvirate.” Condé and
+Coligny, on the other hand, strengthened their relations with the Huguenots.
+They looked in all quarters for assistance, and the Protestant prospects
+were not so desperate abroad as to discourage their hopes at home.
+In Germany, indeed, the Huguenots were at that moment triumphant. Not
+more than one tenth of the people had retained their allegiance to the pope.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine, the queen-mother, pretending an impartiality she did not feel,
+condescended to listen to a controversy carried on in her presence between
+the doctors of the contending faiths. She was struck with the ability of the
+Huguenot champions, whom she had considered hitherto as mere fanatical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span>enthusiasts, and the admiration of such an enemy is more dangerous than her
+contempt. From this time she brooded over plans for the extermination of a
+sect who could argue so well and fight so bravely, and in the meantime gave
+them some delusive privileges, which irritated their opponents and dissatisfied
+them. They were permitted to worship outside the walls of a town, but they
+must go to the meeting unarmed, and disperse when ordered to do so.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1561-1562 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It chanced that Francis de Guise was travelling with a stout escort near
+the little town of Vassy, in Champagne, on a Sunday in the March of 1562.
+The Protestants were worshipping in and around a barn beside the road, and the
+gallant escort drew sword upon the
+unhappy congregation, slew sixty of
+them on the spot, and wounded almost
+all the rest. Guise, who had been
+struck by a stone upon the cheek,
+rode on and took no notice of the outrage
+committed by his guard.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13f1"><a href="#endnote_13f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CIVIL WAR (1562-1569 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>This was the signal for a war
+which, interrupted seven times by
+precarious treaties and as many times
+renewed, covered the land of France
+during a period of thirty-two years
+with blood and ruins. At the news of
+the massacre of Vassy the Huguenots
+everywhere took up arms; the duke of
+Guise seized the king’s person in his
+castle of Fontainebleau and carried
+him, with his mother, to Paris where
+there were but few Protestants.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p357.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Catherine de’ Medici</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“As regards the efficient and assured
+force of the reformers,” says
+Michel de Castelnan,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13g1"><a href="#endnote_13g">g</a></span> “it consisted
+of three hundred noblemen and as
+many soldiers accustomed to arms;
+besides four hundred volunteers, students
+and citizens, utterly without experience. What was this body, in
+face of the infinite number of the people, but a fly measuring forces with an
+elephant?” Outside of Paris, however, the Protestants thought they could
+count upon a tenth of the population, and the greater part of the provincial
+nobility was on their side.</p>
+
+<p>They proclaimed Condé<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> defender of the king and protector of the realm;
+and at the end of a few weeks they had gained possession of two hundred
+towns, among which were Rouen, Lyons, Tours, Montpellier, Poitiers, Grenoble,
+Orleans, and Blois. The Guises had not expected such prompt action
+on the part of their antagonists. Though ill-prepared for war, they had the
+king in their hands, and strong in this advantage they declared the Calvinists
+guilty of rebellion and Condé of the crime of lèse-majesté; whereupon Philip
+II, the champion of Catholicism over all Europe, sent them a corps formed
+of members of those old Spanish bands that were as noted for their cold-blooded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span>ferocity as for their valour. Condé on his side appealed for aid to the
+Protestant Elizabeth, who sent him an equal number of troops for the defence
+of Rouen, on condition that he would deliver over to her Le Havre as a pledge
+for the sums she had advanced. Thus was committed by the chiefs of both
+parties the criminal error of invoking foreign intervention in their affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the north, where the leaders had taken up their position and
+where the fighting was consequently thickest, that the fortunes of the war
+were finally decided. The duke of Guise, at the head of the Catholic army
+that Anthony de Bourbon had recently rejoined, marched directly upon Rouen,
+which, though scarcely tenable by reason of its position in the midst of commanding
+heights, offered a brave resistance. Anthony de Bourbon, king of
+Navarre, received during this conflict a wound of which he died. Montaigne<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13h"><a href="#endnote_13h">h</a></span>
+relates that during the siege a Protestant gentleman was apprehended who
+had been charged with the mission of assassinating the duke. The latter
+pardoned and set him free. “I will show you,” he said, “how much more
+merciful is my religion than that which you profess. Your faith inspired
+you with the project of slaying me without hearing me in my own defence,
+and without having received from me the least cause for offence; mine commands
+me to pardon you, convinced though I am that you were preparing to
+kill me without reason.” These were noble words, such as are sometimes
+spoken by ambitious individuals who aspire to every earthly glory, but are
+rarely borne out in their lives. The duke had not behaved with such magnanimity
+at Vassy and at Amboise, where he made reply to one of his victims,
+“My trade is not to make speeches but to cut off heads;” nor did he show
+greater clemency at Rouen when that city was at last obliged to surrender.
+“This great city,” says Castelnau,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13g2"><a href="#endnote_13g">g</a></span> “full of riches of all sorts, was pillaged,
+without regard to the religion of either side, in the space of a week, notwithstanding
+that the very next day after the capture the crier had announced
+that every company or standard-bearer, of whatever nationality,
+must at once leave the city on pain of death.” When all the pillaging was
+at an end judicial proceedings were begun.</p>
+
+<p>Condé, in the hope of repairing the loss of Rouen, and reinforced by seven
+thousand men whom he had received from Germany, set out for Paris, the
+outskirts of which it was his purpose to attack. He turned first in the direction
+of Le Havre with the intention of joining the English troops there, but
+was forced by the duke of Guise to come to a stand at Dreux, on the 19th of
+December. There were arrayed against each other at this place fifteen or
+sixteen thousand men on either side. For some time the two armies were
+directly facing each other—“each man,” says La Noue,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13q"><a href="#endnote_13q">q</a></span> “thinking in his
+heart that the soldiers he saw coming towards him were neither Spanish nor
+Italian but French, that is to say, the bravest among the brave, and that in
+their ranks were doubtless many of his own comrades, relatives, or friends,
+whom in less than an hour he must seek to kill. Those reflections lent additional
+horror to the situation without diminishing the courage of a soldier.”
+Condé penetrated to the centre of the Catholic ranks, wounding and taking
+captive the constable; but the Swiss restored the balance of forces, and
+Guise was made victor by a successful flank movement which took the prince
+of Condé prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The admiral Coligny made good his retreat, however, with the Germans,
+and rallied the fugitives. The marshal Saint-André, in endeavouring to
+harass him, was taken and slain. The singularity of the battle of Dreux
+was, that each of the two generals became prisoner to the opposite party.
+Guise gained both ways—not less by the removal of the constable, whose
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span>rank entitled him always to the superior command, than by the captivity of
+Condé. This prince was treated with the utmost generosity by his rival:
+they shared the same tent, the same bed; and while Condé remained wakeful
+from the strangeness of his position, Guise, he declared, enjoyed the
+most profound sleep. There were, indeed, heroic traits about the duke of
+Guise, that mark him to have been naturally of a generous and noble disposition.
+It appears that, especially when in arms and away from his brother,
+he could shake off the hard-heartedness,
+the guile, and even the ambition
+which in the cabinet rose to stifle
+every better quality.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1562-1563 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Guise followed up his victories
+by laying siege to Orleans. While
+he was engaged in reducing this
+stronghold of his enemies a Huguenot
+gentleman named Poltrot treacherously
+shot the duke with his pistol.
+He lingered nine days, and expired
+with exemplary fortitude and piety.
+He was a brave and great man, with
+such power of nerve and concentrated
+pride that, notwithstanding his
+equivocal rank in France, the stern
+constable himself and the princes of
+the blood quailed before him. His
+virtues were his own; his vices those
+of his party.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Edict of Amboise and its Results</i></h4>
+
+<p>The death and captivity of the
+chiefs on both sides, Coligny excepted,
+necessarily brought on an accommodation.
+Peace was declared; and the
+Edict of Amboise, issued in March,
+1563, granted full liberty of worship
+to the Protestants within the towns of which they were in possession up to that
+day. Thus ended the first religious war, which, in addition to the events
+we have recorded, deluged the entire south of France with the blood of the
+contending parties.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p359.jpg" width="300" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Charles IX</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The conclusion of peace restored Catherine de’ Medici to the supreme
+authority. In order to exercise it under a less invidious title than that of
+regent, the parliament of Rouen, by her order, declared King Charles, now
+thirteen years of age, to have attained his majority. Reared by the crafty
+and prudent Catherine, he early acquired, in perfection, the power of dissimulation;
+but he never imbibed that utter indifference to both religious
+parties which distinguished his mother, and which allowed her to consult
+her own interest or the public good in leaguing with either, or in balancing
+and alternating between them. On the contrary, Charles, thrown among the
+Catholic party at an age when a bias is soon and strongly gained, amidst
+the bustle of war and of a camp, which pleased him, soon imbibed the zeal
+of the partisans of Guise. He had the sagacity to perceive that orthodoxy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span>was much more favourable than the doctrines of the reformers to his kingly
+authority. A worse effect on his character was produced by sights of
+cruelty; for at this tender age he beheld the atrocities practised on the
+Protestants at the siege of Rouen, and during the campaign. The young
+king was thus led to adopt, in his sober counsels, the sanguinary measures
+that the heat of war engendered but could not excuse.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1563-1564 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This decision of her son in favour of the Catholics had a very great influence
+in finally drawing over Catherine to that party. Other causes also
+impelled her: the Catholics were without leaders; there was a place, therefore,
+for her at their head; and, in a little time, the pope and Philip of
+Spain both declared so strongly against the Protestants, that the queen was
+driven, from a principle of self-preservation, to adopt the winning side.
+This abandonment of her impartiality Catherine, however, delayed as long
+as it was in her power. After the conclusion of peace, she endeavoured to
+soothe Condé, and win him over to moderate demands; thus preparing the
+way for an accommodation. Condé was a man of pleasure, prone to indolence,
+in which he gladly indulged whenever an interval occurred in war or in
+business. Catherine held out to him her usual bait, the charms of her maids
+of honour; and Condé loitered, like another Rinaldo, in the toils of this
+Armida, until the ministers of the reformed religion recalled him from licentiousness
+and compelled him to marry. These stern disciplinarians were said
+to have hanged one of their flock for the crime of adultery. This alone was
+enough to alienate the courtiers of France and the demoiselles of Catherine.</p>
+
+<p>The Edict of Amboise had not long been issued, when a modification of it
+was found necessary. That edict had allowed to the Protestants the celebration
+of their worship in towns which they possessed. It was found that
+several bishops and clergy, construing its terms in their favour, had established
+the new rites in their cathedrals and churches. This would have
+outraged the pope and the Catholic princes. Indeed, notwithstanding the
+clamours of the Protestants, so great a concession was not to be expected;
+and accordingly the privilege was withdrawn. The ancient cathedrals were
+not allowed to become temples of the reformed religion. New differences
+consequently arose: the Guises accused Coligny of instigating the murder
+of the duke; and the admiral arrived to answer the charge with his suite,
+which amounted almost to an army. Either Catherine or Charles himself
+took this opportunity of increasing the usual royal guard of 100 Swiss to
+upwards of 1,000 men. The old constable came to instigate the Parisians,
+and a tumult ensued, in which lives were lost.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year, 1564, the young king resolved on making a
+progress through his dominions, especially in the south. The cardinal of
+Lorraine went to Rome at the same time, and Charles was met at Bayonne
+by his sister, the queen of Spain, and the duke of Alva. This meeting, in
+which the minister of Philip communicated the views of his master, completed
+in the mind of Charles his hatred of the Reformation, and instructed him
+concerning the means by which it might be eventually crushed. The Edict
+of Roussillon,<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> which appeared while the court was in the south, imposed new
+restrictions on the toleration granted by that of Amboise; so that, as Pasquier
+observes, “edicts took more from the Protestants in peace than force
+could take from them in war.” The Huguenots, therefore, despairing of
+impartiality or justice from the court, already began to look forward to
+another struggle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[361]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1564-1567 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>During this state of things an assembly of notables was held at Moulins.
+Catherine, who, notwithstanding her sagacity, very often mistook the form
+for the reality, insisted on a public reconciliation between the Guises and
+Coligny. It took place at her bidding; the cardinal and the admiral
+embraced; but young Henry duke of Guise showed even there, by his
+cold and mistrustful demeanour, that his first ideas were those of vengeance
+and hatred. It was in this assembly that the chancellor De l’Hôpital proposed
+his improvements in the administration of justice. Whilst all others,
+prince, noble, and functionary, were absorbed in the spirit of religious party,
+De l’Hôpital alone, professing at once Catholicism and tolerance, but unable
+to obtain attention, followed the unambitious track of judicial amelioration.</p>
+
+<p>Religious troubles, similar to those of France, began to agitate the Low
+Countries. Philip, resolving to present a high example to France, established
+the Inquisition among his Belgic subjects in all its vigour; and as this only
+made matters worse, the duke of Alva was despatched to those provinces
+with an army in 1567. The French court affected to fear this course, and
+raised an army as if against it. When the duke of Alva, however, appeared
+on the frontiers of France, he was treated as a friend; and the Huguenots
+immediately perceived that the troops were levied, not for the defence of the
+kingdom, but for the oppression of themselves. They accordingly leagued
+and armed in secret, determined to meet the perfidy of the court with corresponding
+guile. Their consultations ended in a project to surprise the
+court at Monceaux, and get possession of the king. It failed, however, as
+a similar plot had previously failed at Amboise, through the postponement
+of a single day. The queen had warning; the Swiss were summoned; and
+the court retired to Meaux, and from thence to Paris, pursued and menaced
+by the disappointed Condé.</p>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND RELIGIOUS WAR</h3>
+
+<p>Thus commenced the second religious war, in September, 1567. “Catherine,”
+says Henault, “caused the first civil strife by favouring the reformers,
+and the second by irritating them.” She was now at least zealously hostile
+to them. She had been provoked by the numerous calumnies and libels
+which the Huguenots directed against her, and she accordingly joined in the
+opinions of her young son, and of his and her ally, Philip. She no longer
+sought an habitual adviser in the moderate De l’Hôpital, who was of opinion
+that the reformers were unfairly treated. The chancellor always asserted
+their loyalty. After their attempt to surprise Meaux, the queen asked De
+l’Hôpital: “Would you now answer that their sole aim is to serve the
+king?”—“Yes, madam,” replied he, “if you assure me that they will be
+treated with good faith.”</p>
+
+<p>Condé took up his quarters at St. Denis. The Catholics under Montmorency
+were posted at La Chapelle, a village that is now the suburb of Paris
+on that side. The constable wished as usual to procrastinate, but the impatience
+of the Parisians forced him to attack. The battle was fought in the
+plain of St. Denis: it began with a cannonade; but the Huguenots, to avoid
+the destructive effects of the artillery, charged the Parisians furiously, and
+routed them. Their flight left the constable unsupported; Condé turned on
+him his victorious cavalry, and Montmorency defended his position, when
+Stuart, the captain of the Scotch company in the service of the Huguenots,
+coming up close to the constable, against whom he had cause for hatred, fired
+his pistol and shot him. A furious and confused <i>mêlée</i>, somewhat like a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[362]</span>Homeric fight, immediately took place around the dead body of the constable—the
+Huguenots with savage zeal seeking to carry it off. They were beaten,
+however, and driven from the field in the attempt. Thus fell, in civil strife,
+and engaged against his own nephews, the veteran warrior of France. His
+years, his hardihood, and his name, have rendered him deservedly celebrated.
+His defence of Provence against Charles V is particularly memorable. By
+French historians he is characterised in terms of the highest encomium:
+they commend his sternness, his courage, his orthodoxy, and forget that
+avarice and selfishness sullied and almost neutralised all of his virtues.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1567-1568 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The constable’s death was a victory to Condé, who was able to offer battle
+to the Catholics on the following day. He denied having lost that of St.
+Denis. Young Charles, who was witness to a dispute on this point, asked
+Vieilleville who had won the battle. “Neither Catholic nor Protestant,”
+responded the marshal; “it is the king of Spain who has won by our discord.”
+The Huguenots had neither pay nor provisions, and were therefore
+obliged to quit the vicinage of Paris, directing their course across Lorraine
+towards the frontier of Germany, as they expected a body of auxiliaries from
+that country. They were pursued, but not much harassed in their retreat.
+Catherine endeavoured incessantly to decoy them into negotiations, the
+department of warfare which she felt herself most competent to direct. She
+restrained the warlike disposition of the king; arguing with truth that,
+from the violent animosities of the time, the leaders of armies marched to
+meet a certain fate, either in battle or at the hand of the assassin. The
+king’s brother, Henry duke of Anjou, was created lieutenant-general. Catherine,
+who knew the weak and yielding nature of her second son, would
+gladly have made him the hero of the Catholic party in preference to young
+Guise, whose name she dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>After much privation, during a march in winter, the Huguenots fell in
+with their German auxiliaries; and as they now outnumbered their enemies,
+they marched back into France. They laid siege to Chartres, which, being
+stoutly defended, kept the army fixed before it, and gave the queen full
+opportunity for employing her favourite efforts at negotiation. Coligny saw
+plainly the perfidy of these overtures; but their followers and supporters,
+anxious for peace, obliged them to listen to terms. A treaty was concluded
+at Longjumeau, in March, called the Lame Peace, as well from its infirm and
+uncertain nature as from the accidental lameness of its two negotiators. Its
+terms were a medium between the Edict of Amboise and that of Roussillon.</p>
+
+<h3>THE THIRD RELIGIOUS WAR</h3>
+
+<p>The peace was, as Coligny already saw, but a trap to ensnare the Huguenot
+chiefs as soon as their army should be disbanded. They were on their
+guard, however, keeping away from the court, and far apart from each other,
+that at least one might escape in case of treason. Notwithstanding this resolve,
+Condé and the admiral found it necessary to consult together, and
+for this purpose met at Noyers, a little town in Burgundy. The court was soon
+informed of it; and orders were instantly despatched to Tavannes, and to
+the other governors in the south, to arrest them. Tavannes was not vigilant
+in the execution of their commands, and Condé and Coligny escaped.
+By this order the queen had thrown off the mask; though, indeed, without
+such an indication, the executions and murders throughout the south sufficiently
+proved that the Lame Peace was never intended to be observed by
+the Catholics. Through inconceivable difficulties, the two chiefs traversed the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[363]</span>country, and reached Rochelle in safety, where the Protestants now found
+themselves obliged, for the third time, to raise the standard of revolt. Troops
+did not fail to join them from all quarters; but the most welcome aid came
+from Béarn, the queen of Navarre and her young son [the future Henry IV]
+arriving at the head of 3,000 of their subjects.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1568-1569 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This young prince, destined to run so glorious a career, was born at Pau,
+in 1553. His father was Anthony of Bourbon, king of Navarre, slain at the
+siege of Rouen. Chroniclers never forget to relate that his mother sang at
+the birth, and that old Henri d’Albret, the infant’s grandfather, held up the
+child in delight, rubbing its lips with garlic, and moistening them with wine.
+Excepting a short period spent at court, the boy lived the rude and healthy
+life of a mountaineer, and imbibed from his mother the rigid principles of
+the Reformation. It was in September, 1568, that he accompanied her to
+Rochelle.</p>
+
+<p>As if to add to the horrors of civil war, winter was always chosen as the
+period of operations. The duke of Anjou was at the head of the Catholic
+army, with the marshal Tavannes for his adviser. When Condé and the
+Huguenots approached, the cold was so extreme as to chill the zeal of both
+armies. They found it impossible to engage in battle. Mutual pillage and
+cruelties too horrid in many instances for the pen to record were the only
+feats of the soldiery. During the inaction that ensued (for the winter grew
+to that extreme rigour which is seldom known even in France), a great part of
+the Huguenot army dispersed: the bourgeois and volunteers, of whom it was
+principally composed, each betook himself to his own home. The Catholic
+troops, on the contrary, were soldiers by profession, paid and disciplined.
+Hence, in the spring, Condé was far inferior in force to his enemies, before
+whom he was obliged to retire towards La Rochelle. In his retreat, the
+prince, having crossed the Charente, took post at Jarnac, determined to
+keep the river between himself and the enemy, and to dispute his passage.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13d3"><a href="#endnote_13d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was some preliminary manœuvring on the banks of the Charente;
+at last Tavannes surprised the rearguard of the admiral [Coligny] near
+Jarnac (March 13th, 1569). Condé, on receiving news of the attack, rushed
+up with three thousand cavalry, but at the moment of charging a kick from
+a horse broke his leg. Oblivious of this, however, as of the wound he had
+received in the arm the previous day, he continued to rush upon the enemy,
+crying out to those behind him: “Remember in what condition Louis de
+Bourbon does battle for Christ and his country!” This impetuous onslaught
+at first made a breach in the enemy’s ranks, but Condé’s horse being shot
+under him, he fell, and a terrific combat immediately ensued around him.
+An old warrior, De la Vergne, who had brought with him into battle twenty-five
+men-at-arms, all sons, grandsons, or nephews, made heroic efforts to
+protect the prostrate body of the prince, but he was himself killed, and fifteen
+of his followers fell with him, “all in one heap.”</p>
+
+<p>Condé was in the act of giving his gauntlet to a gentleman when Montesquieu,
+the duke of Anjou’s captain of the guards, fired his pistol point-blank
+at his head. Thus perished a prince as energetic as he was brave, whose
+loss was irreparable to the party of which for nine years he had been the
+head that plans and the arm that executes. The Protestants talked of abandoning
+the campaign and shutting themselves up in La Rochelle, but a
+woman caused them to change their plan. Jeanne d’Albret, accompanied
+by her son Henry of Béarn and the young prince of Condé, presented herself
+in the midst of the discouraged army at Saintes. “My friends,” she
+said, addressing the soldiers, “here are two new chiefs that God sends you,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[364]</span>and two orphans that I confide to your care.” Prince Henry,<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> the future
+king of France, up to his present age of fifteen years had been brought up
+with all the severity that went to the training of a country gentleman.
+Brave, intellectually brilliant, and with the faculty of carrying away his
+auditors by his words, he pleased all with whom he came in contact. He
+was appointed general-in-chief of the army, and Coligny was given him as
+counsellor and lieutenant.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Admiral Coligny; the Peace of St. Germain</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1569-1570 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Coligny possessed many of the qualities necessary to a party-leader in a
+war such as was then waging. A Protestant of exemplary piety and austerity,
+he was beloved and respected by ministers and soldiers alike. He fell
+short of being a general of the very first rank, perhaps, and Catherine in
+common with the other Italians at her court did not attribute to him great
+depth as a politician; but he could never be made to accept defeat, which is
+in itself one form of power, and he had the faculty of rendering just judgment,
+which is another. He was a master of limitless resource, and if no
+particularly brilliant victory was to be expected under his leadership there
+was at least to be feared no irremediable defeat. In two respects his name
+is entitled to come down with distinction to posterity: the first of these claims
+is the great deed which opened his career, the defence of St. Quentin; and
+the second is his last political aim, the ambition to conquer the Spanish
+Netherlands, whither he wished to conduct his Huguenot bands that France
+might enjoy the double blessing of rich provincial possession and internal
+peace. In his deep desire to avert domestic dissensions and to assure religious
+liberty he had conceived still another method of accomplishing this end;
+namely, the Protestant colonisation of America. The very purpose which
+the Puritans of Great Britain brought into effect in the seventeenth century
+had been cherished by him. Had he succeeded, French blood and French
+speech might to-day dominate in the New World.</p>
+
+<p>Jarnac had been nothing but a rearguard action in which the Protestants
+had lost no more than four hundred men. Coligny was still strong enough
+to defend Cognac and Angoulême; having been joined by 13,000 Germans
+he even assumed the offensive and inflicted a check on the Catholic army
+near La Roche-Abeille. But Tavannes repaired the harm done. German
+Catholics, Spaniards sent by the duke of Alva, Italians sent by Pius V, increased
+the forces of the duke of Anjou. Already pushed back to the Loire,
+the duke returned on his steps by means of a diversion, relieved Poitiers
+which Coligny had been besieging for the last six weeks, and succeeded in
+surprising the Protestant army between the Dive and the Thoué, near Moncontour.
+The position was a wretched one; six hundred Huguenot soldiers
+were left on the battle-field (October the 3rd).</p>
+
+<p>Yet this victory of Moncontour was as useless as that of Jarnac. Charles
+IX, jealous of the laurels which were being gathered for his brother, came
+to the army, and instead of pressing the Protestants to the Pyrenees wasted
+his time in besieging Niort and St. Jean d’Angély. Coligny traversed the
+whole breadth of the south, replenishing his army as he went; and he suddenly
+appeared in Burgundy, at the head of all the Protestant nobility of
+Dauphin and Provence. A Catholic army of 12,000 men tried to stop him
+at Arnay-le-Duc; he held his own against them and reached the Loing, a
+short distance from Paris.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[365]</span></p>
+
+<p>Catherine de’ Medici now triumphed in the council, events having proved
+the justness of her views. Some other means than war must be devised to
+gain control over a party that rose up in renewed strength after each defeat.
+In order to disarm the Protestants, she caused the Peace of St. Germain to
+be proclaimed, with terms extremely favourable to their side. They were
+to be allowed full liberty of worship in two towns in every province, and in
+all those in which the reformed religion had already been established; Calvinists
+were to be admitted to all kinds of office, and four fortified towns,
+La Rochelle, Cognac, Montauban, and La Charité, were to be given up to
+them as strongholds in which to place a garrison (August 8th, 1570). “A
+traitorous, violated peace, the perdition of those who trusted in it.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13c4"><a href="#endnote_13c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>A TROUBLED PEACE; THE MARRIAGE OF HENRY OF NAVARRE</h3>
+
+<p>What were the real intentions of Catherine at the moment when she concluded
+the agreement of St. Germain? She had conceived a policy in 1563,
+which she tried to carry out by fraud from 1563-1567, then by force mingled
+with fraud from 1567 to 1569. She certainly had still the same views, the
+same desires, but no longer the same confidence. As she had firmly believed
+that her object was attained after the murder of Condé, the defeat of Coligny,
+and the triumph of her favourite son the duke of Anjou, so she was proportionately
+stupefied and discouraged at seeing the final victory escape her and
+the unforeseen powers of those moral forces which she could not understand
+defeat the calculations of her Macchiavellian wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>It is almost certain that in 1570, when she entered into negotiations, she
+desired, above all, time to breathe and to look about her, and had no fixed
+plan; this is what appears from the diplomatic documents. There is however
+no doubt that she continued to meditate the ruin of Coligny, the man
+who was the great obstacle in her way; the idea of destroying the leaders of
+the party was never absent from her mind; but in 1570 her hopes on this
+subject were very weak and very vague. As to the general extermination
+of heretics planned two years in advance by this “great queen” and pursued
+without deviation to the dénouement with “an admirable dissimulation,” it
+is a romance invented by the depraved fanaticism or the cynical Macchiavellianism
+of Catherine’s Italian panegyrists, and accepted by the resentment
+of the Huguenots.</p>
+
+<p>The historians of Catherine have associated Charles IX with the two
+years of plotting and with “the admirable dissimulation” of his mother: they
+have done more than the Protestants themselves to draw on the name of this
+unfortunate and guilty prince the immense execration which has descended
+on him. Here it is no longer a question of mere exaggeration, but of
+complete error. It was not by sentiments of morality that Charles IX was
+incapable of deserving the hideous praises which posterity has changed into
+maledictions; the lessons of the masters whom his mother had imposed upon
+him had destroyed in him all principles; in his eyes good faith was but folly,
+compassion nothing but cowardice; but the passion and inequality of his
+humour would not have permitted him such a long perfidy, and above all
+he was absolutely without bias: the grudge which he nourished against
+the Protestants for the attempt of Meaux was balanced by the jealous hatred he
+bore his brother Henry, and by his distrust of his mother and the Guises.
+He submitted to Catherine’s skilful domination as to a sort of fatality, but at
+times he chafed at the curb in anger, and he was quite as capable of proceeding
+to final acts of violence against the house of Lorraine or even against the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[366]</span>duke of Anjou as against Coligny. Although Catherine held him by chains
+scientifically forged, he might well end by turning against her the lessons
+she had given him.</p>
+
+<p>What should he do? Whither should he turn? He had no idea. He
+received the schemes of betrayal laid before him by Tavannes, the adviser of
+his brother who desired to become his; but immediately he gave ear to the
+most opposite projects.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, at court the politicians had got the better of the Catholic
+zealots: little was wanting in order that a bloody tragedy should exhibit
+this at the expense of the house of Lorraine. Even before the peace was
+signed, the partisans of toleration had worked to prepare a complete understanding
+between the court and the Protestant leaders: the Montmorencys
+had proposed the marriage of Prince Henry of Navarre with the king’s third
+sister, Marguerite of France. This marriage had been talked of almost ever
+since the birth of the two young people; Charles IX eagerly recurred to the
+idea, but Marguerite, then aged eighteen years, had made another choice;
+she was beginning the series of her innumerable gallantries and had surrendered
+to the young duke of Guise, the most brilliant cavalier in France, all
+possible rights over her heart. Henry of Guise, encouraged by the cardinal
+De Lorraine, wished to turn the victory of his love to the profit of his ambition
+and aspired to the hand of the princess. In the month of May, 1570,
+the marriage of Marguerite and Guise was regarded at court as a thing
+decided on: suddenly, in the middle of June, the king, the queen-mother,
+and the duke of Anjou turned indignantly against the bold pretensions of
+Guise; the king, who knew no half measures, gave orders to his brother the
+bastard d’Angoulême to kill the duke of Guise at the hunt. The bastard,
+not from repugnance to the crime, but from cowardice, missed the opportunity
+for action: the reproaches made to him by the king were heard by a
+courtier who, perhaps at Catherine’s instigation, warned Guise: the murder
+of Guise would have thrown the king into the arms of the Huguenots and
+overturned the power of the queen-mother. The young duke, forced to
+renounce Marguerite, found no better expedient to appease the king than to
+marry another woman; he espoused Catherine of Cleves, countess d’Eu,
+sister of the duchess de Nevers and widow of the prince de Portien.</p>
+
+<p>At this price Guise was restored to favour and followed the court to
+Champagne where the king, in his turn, was to be married: after long negotiations
+the emperor Maximilian II had granted Charles IX the hand of his
+second daughter, Elizabeth, without further insisting on the restoration of
+the Three Bishoprics to the empire. This alliance with the house of Austria
+in no way impelled France towards Spain: it made Charles IX for the second
+time brother-in-law of Philip II, who, the widowed husband of Elizabeth of
+France, had just taken as his fourth wife his niece, the eldest daughter of
+the emperor; but on the other hand it gave Charles a father-in-law from
+whom he had to expect no counsels but those of toleration and humanity.
+However, Elizabeth of Austria, a gentle, simple, and modest young woman,
+did not have, or seek to have, any share of influence in the events of her
+husband’s reign. The wedding was celebrated, November 26th, 1570, at
+Mézières, whither the archduchess Elizabeth had been conducted by the archbishop
+elector of Treves, chancellor of the empire. The princes and the
+great Huguenots had been invited to the marriage festivities. They excused
+themselves, and did not quit their refuge at La Rochelle, although the
+admiral had written in respectful terms to the queen-mother to protest his
+forgetfulness of the past and his devotion.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l1"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[367]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1570-1572 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Almost two years of relative quiescence followed, during which the
+Huguenot party gained an increasing influence at court, chiefly through the
+favour shown Coligny by the king. The admiral, ever mindful of the interests
+of his fellow-Huguenots, attempted once more to put into execution a
+colonisation scheme that had long been a favourite project with him. He had
+made an effort to establish a colony in Brazil as early as 1555; and in 1562
+and again in 1564 Charles IX had given him permission to found colonies in
+Florida; but all of these colonies had failed, nor did anything tangible come
+of his present effort.</p>
+
+<p>This colonisation project tended to bring France into antagonism with
+Spain. But another plan of Coligny’s still more directly menaced that
+power; this plan involved nothing less than a direct attack upon the Spanish
+forces in the Netherlands. Charles IX lent an attentive ear to this idea,
+actuated in part, perhaps, by the desire for military glory, in part by Coligny’s
+belief that a foreign war would be the best possible means to harmonise
+the political factions at home. It will be understood that the Huguenot
+question at this time had come to be quite as much a political as a religious
+problem. The antagonism between the Guise faction and the Coligny faction,
+which led to the appalling scenes we are now fast approaching, was based
+by no means exclusively—perhaps not even prominently—upon differences
+of opinion regarding questions of doctrine. It was essentially a personal
+and political rivalry that actuated the chief personages in the drama.
+This, of course, does not necessarily impugn the sincerity of their religious
+differences; it was merely that these differences were not sufficient in themselves
+to supply motives for the bitter and ineradicable hatred with which
+Catherine de’ Medici and the Guises regarded Coligny.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the negotiations for the marriage of the king’s sister Marguerite
+with the Protestant Henry of Navarre were carried forward, sufficiently
+illustrates the superficiality of the religious element as a source of
+political jarrings. This marriage was, indeed, opposed by the pope, who
+declined to give to a heretic the dispensation necessary to legalise the marriage
+of second cousins. None the less were the negotiations carried forward
+at court in open defiance of the papal decision. Jeanne d’Albret, the mother
+of Henry, came to Paris and was received at court with at least the outward
+appearance of friendliness. Her death there in 1572 was probably due to
+natural causes, though the usual intimations of foul play—which the partisanship
+of that time never neglected as an aid to practical politics, however
+shadowy the evidence—were not wanting. The marriage of Henry, now
+king of Navarre, with the not over-willing Marguerite, took place on a specially
+erected platform in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris
+on the 22nd of August, 1572. The story goes that the bride refused to make
+the customary affirmations, and that her brother, Charles IX, pushed her
+head forward with his own hands; but this most likely is an embellishment
+suggested by the known preference of Marguerite for another lover, and by
+the uncongenial wedded life that followed the spectacular nuptials.</p>
+
+<p>It may well be supposed that the Huguenots looked upon the marriage of
+their leader with the sister of the king of France as a great political triumph.
+Doubtless a large number of Huguenot nobles who had long been conspicuous
+by their absence from court came to Paris in honour of the occasion. To
+many of them it proved a fatal visit, for the awful tragedy of St. Bartholomew’s
+day followed hard upon the wedding, turning the seeming triumph of
+the Huguenots into disaster and threatening actual annihilation of their party.
+Such being the sequence of events, it is but natural that the surviving
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[368]</span>Huguenots should have tried to trace a causal connection between the
+marriage of Henry of Navarre and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It has
+been alleged that the real pretext for the marriage was to beguile the Huguenot
+nobles into visiting Paris that they might be caught, as it were, in a trap
+and the more readily massacred. No one doubts that Catherine de’ Medici
+was quite capable of such a plan. But, on the other hand, it must not be
+overlooked that King Charles was most anxious for the consummation of the
+marriage; and all historical evidence tends to exonerate him from early complicity
+in the plot, if plot existed. Still the fact of so many enemies being at
+hand may no doubt have influenced Catherine to carry into effect an idea
+which had at least been dear to her heart. Just how much she was influenced
+by this; just when the first thought of it all came to her—these are questions
+which Catherine herself probably could not have answered, and which it is
+quite futile for any interpreter of her actions to attempt to solve. Here, as
+so often elsewhere, the threads of design make a web too intricate for disentangling.
+This much, however, seems sure: the tangled mesh, whatever
+relations of designs and of accident in its structure, was one of which
+Catherine de’ Medici was the main artificer; her chief assistants being her
+son the duke of Anjou, and the Guises.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE ATTACK ON COLIGNY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1572 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A murderous coil had been woven around the king and the admiral.
+Catherine had been for some time torn between her natural timidity and her
+ardent desire to free herself from Coligny: at one time she had hoped to
+obtain the admiral’s destruction from the king; after a first success she had
+failed; a scene of an opposite kind drove her to the last extremities. The
+duke of Anjou himself has revealed these mysteries of crime: in a night of
+trouble and fear if not of remorse he dictated with his own lips the history of
+his own and his mother’s guilt. “Every time,” he says, “that the queen had
+conferred privately with the admiral, the queen-mother and I had found
+him marvellously angry and sullen, rough in countenance and aspect and
+still more in his answers. One day when I entered the king’s room, without
+saying anything to me he walked up and down with long strides, often
+looking at me askance and putting his hand on his dagger with so much
+animosity that I expected to be poniarded. I managed so dexterously
+that while he was walking about and with his back turned to me I retreated
+to the door which I opened and, with a brief reverence, I made my
+exit.” Charles IX was nearer striking at Anjou than Coligny; the admiral
+certainly did not urge him to raise the dagger against his brother, but he
+conjured him to despatch him with all speed to Poland that there might no
+longer be two kings in France. Catherine and Anjou, brought to bay, took
+their resolution. They secretly sent for the duchess de Nemours, widow
+of the great Guise, the woman in whose veins flowed the blood of Louis XI
+mingled with that of the Borgia. She had continually professed an implacable
+hatred for Coligny. Catherine declared to her that she placed in her
+hands the vengeance so long pursued by the house of Guise. Catherine
+desired to profit by the murder but to impose the execution and the responsibility
+on someone else. Her Macchiavellian mind went further: she did
+not doubt that the Huguenots would rush to arms to avenge the murdered
+Coligny and attack the Guises even in their palaces; the people of Paris
+would go to the help of the Guises, the Montmorencys and their friends to
+the help of the Huguenots, all the great nobles, partisans of Lorraine,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[369]</span>Huguenots and politicians, would cut each other’s throats; the Huguenots
+would finally be overwhelmed by numbers, the Guises would be exhausted
+by their very victory; and royalty, held in reserve during the conflict, would
+remain mistress of a field strewn with dead.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever <i>arrière-pensées</i> there may have been, an agreement was arrived
+at as to the action to be taken. Young Guise, in his furious joy, at first
+wished that his mother should herself kill the admiral with an arquebusade
+in the midst of the court; more practical means were resorted to;
+the blow was intrusted to a hand more expert in crime, that of the same
+Maurevert who had already been hired during the last war to assassinate
+Coligny, and who in his stead had killed one of his lieutenants under the
+most odious circumstances. He was sent for mysteriously and the duke
+d’Aumale’s maître d’hôtel concealed him in the house of a canon, a former
+tutor of the duke of Guise, in the cloister of St. Germain-l’Auxerrois,
+on the road from the Louvre to the rue de Béthisi, where the admiral was
+staying. Maurevert remained there three days on watch. On the morning
+of Friday the 22nd of August, as the admiral was returning from the Louvre
+on foot, walking slowly and reading a petition, a shot from an arquebuse
+came from behind the curtain of a window, carried off the first finger of
+his right hand, and lodged a ball in his left arm.</p>
+
+<p>Coligny, with his mutilated hand indicating the place whence the shot had
+come, sent to tell the king what had occurred and to ask him to judge what
+fine fidelity that was, considering the understanding between him and the
+duke of Guise; then he returned to his hôtel, supported by some gentlemen,
+whilst his suite broke down the door of the dwelling in which the assassin
+had lain in wait; the arquebuse was found still smoking; “but not the arquebusier.”
+Maurevert had flung himself on a horse belonging to the duke of
+Guise which was held in readiness for him, and had fled by the rear of the
+house. He left Paris by the porte St. Antoine; two Protestant gentlemen
+had discovered his track and pursued him for several leagues, but without
+being able to come up with him.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l2"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The king was playing at tennis when he was told that Coligny was
+wounded, and that the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were coming
+to him to demand justice against the Guises. The circumstance both surprised
+and alarmed him. He threw away his racket in a passion, and after
+giving vent to a number of oaths, he declared he would have the assassin
+sought for, even in the recesses of Guise’s hôtel. Charles succeeded in
+satisfying the young princes that the assassins should meet with exemplary
+punishment, and immediately ordered the president De Thou, the provost
+of Morsan, and Veale, a counsellor, to commence an investigation; this
+calmed them in some measure, and made them give up the plan, which they
+had agreed on, of leaving Paris immediately.</p>
+
+<p>But the king felt convinced that something more must be done. He
+announced his intentions of visiting the admiral in the afternoon. He could
+not with prudence go among the Huguenots unprotected, nor could he consistently
+be attended by his guards; he therefore desired that all the court
+should visit Coligny also.</p>
+
+<p>Charles entered the admiral’s dwelling, accompanied by his mother, the
+duke of Anjou, De Retz, and his other counsellors, the marshals of France,
+and a numerous suite. He began by consoling the admiral, and then swore
+that the crime should be punished so severely that his vengeance should never
+be effaced from the memory of man. Coligny thanked his sovereign for such
+testimonials of his kindness, and conjured him to support with his authority
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[370]</span>the execution of the different edicts in favour of the Protestants, many points
+of which were violated, or misunderstood. “My father,” answered the king,
+“depend upon it, I shall always consider you a faithful subject, and one of
+the bravest generals in my kingdom; confide in me for the execution of my
+edicts, and for avenging you when the criminals are discovered.” “They
+are not difficult to find out,” said Coligny, “the traces are very plain.”
+“Tranquillise yourself,” said the king, “a longer emotion may hurt you and
+retard your cure.” The conversation then turned upon the war with Spain,
+and lasted nearly an hour. Coligny complained of the Spanish government
+being informed of whatever was decided on; and as the intimacy between
+the queen-mother and the Spanish ambassador was very great and caused
+suspicion, he spoke to the king in a low voice. The war in Flanders was a
+subject of great alarm for Catherine; she knew her son’s secret wishes, and
+she dreaded the effect which Coligny’s remarks might have upon him; she
+interrupted the conversation and prevailed upon the king to leave the place.
+Charles, who was exerting himself to efface any suspicion which might have
+arisen in Coligny’s mind, became vexed at the anxiety displayed by his mother;
+and as they were returning to the Louvre, being pressed to tell what Coligny
+had said, he declared, with an oath, that the admiral had said what was true—that
+he had suffered the authority to fall from his hands, and that he ought
+to become master of his own affairs. When the king and his suite retired,
+the admiral’s friends expressed great astonishment at his affability, and the
+desire he showed to bring the crime to justice. “But,” says Brantôme,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13e2"><a href="#endnote_13e">e</a></span> “all
+these fine appearances afterwards turned to ill, which amazed everyone very
+much how their majesties could perform so counterfeit a part, unless they
+had previously resolved on this massacre.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13k1"><a href="#endnote_13k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PREPARING FOR THE MASSACRE</h3>
+
+<p>Catherine and Anjou returned in consternation: “We remained,” said
+Anjou, “so bereft of counsel and knowledge of how to act that being, for the
+moment, unable to resolve on anything we retired, putting off our decision
+until the next day.” Meantime they despatched to the king the count de
+Retz, Gondi, the man who best knew how to manipulate that fiery and pliable
+mind, to endeavour to appease him. Retz made him uneasy, agitated him,
+but got nothing from him.</p>
+
+<p>The king’s attitude towards the Huguenots remained the same: Charles
+IX launched great threats against the Guises, who were more and more compromised
+by the information collected by the commissioners: orders were
+given to arrest certain servants of their house. On the morning of Saturday
+the 23rd the dukes of Guise and Aumale came to seek the king and said to
+him, that it seemed to them that his majesty had not been well pleased
+with their service for some time, and that they would retire from court if
+their withdrawal was agreeable to him. The king “with an ill countenance
+and worse words,” answered that they might go whither they would, and
+that he would always be well disposed towards them if they were recognised
+as guilty of what had been done to the admiral. They left the Louvre about
+mid-day, mounted on horseback and with a good following took their way
+towards the porte St. Antoine; but they did not quit Paris, and shut themselves
+up in the hôtel de Guise.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the king was giving the Reformed fresh tokens of interest:
+he had a general list made of the Protestants who were present in Paris; he
+offered lodging to the Huguenot nobility about the admiral; he invited the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[371]</span>king of Navarre and the prince of Condé to accommodate their friends at
+the Louvre. The security of the Protestant princes, of Téligny and almost
+all those about the admiral, was complete: the vidame de Chartres (Ferrières-Maligni)
+twice endeavoured to persuade them to leave Paris; his
+advice was rejected with impatience. Ambroise Paré answered for the life
+of the wounded man, and this great failure in crime seemed to promise the
+ruin of its authors.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the Huguenots indulged in vain clamours against the house of
+Lorraine, passing and repassing “in great companies, in cuirasses, before
+the lodging of MM. de Guise and d’Aumale,” but they took no precautions
+for the night, trusting to the protection of a detachment of the king’s guard
+and in the tranquillity of the first night which had followed the wounding
+of the admiral.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon the queen-mother and the duke of Anjou summoned the
+count de Retz, the chancellor Birague, Marshal de Tavannes, and the duke
+de Nevers to the garden of the Tuileries. Of the three advisers who helped
+the widow and sons of Henry II to soil the annals of France with an ineffaceable
+stain, three were foreigners. They arranged their plan, and then
+all six went to seek the king in his cabinet in the Louvre. Fatal hour, which
+decided for Charles IX between glory with Coligny and eternal shame with
+Catherine; between the redemption of his misguided youth and his eternal
+damnation in history. The destiny of France hung on a word, on the motion
+of a weak head, of a mind without compass and without curb, of one who
+was almost a madman. And the unhappy man was alone, abandoned, in the
+midst of these demons!</p>
+
+<p>We have the account of this infernal council dictated by that one of the
+accomplices who became Henry III. A few other writings of the time
+almost complete our knowledge on the subject. We see this impious mother
+artfully distilling the poison into the shuddering soul of her son, and closing
+round him every other issue save that of crime. “The Huguenots,” she
+said to him, “are everywhere arming, not to serve you but to make themselves
+your masters: the admiral has sent for six thousand <i>reiters</i> and ten
+thousand Swiss; at home their leaders have an understanding with a number
+of towns, communities, and peoples, all agreed to reduce your authority
+to nothingness under pretext of the public advantage. The Catholics, on the
+other hand, are resolved to put an end to this state of affairs. If you refuse
+their advice they have decided to elect a captain-general and to form an
+offensive and defensive league against the Huguenots. You will be left
+alone between the two. Already Paris is under arms.”</p>
+
+<p>“How is that? I had forbidden them to arm in the <i>quartiers</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“The <i>quartiers</i> are armed.”</p>
+
+<p>In fact the demonstrations of the Huguenots and the rumour circulated
+by Anjou and the Guises that the marshal De Montmorency, who after the
+wedding had returned to his château of Chantilly for a few days, was about
+to re-enter Paris “with a great force,” had greatly excited the masses, and
+had brought out the citizen militia.</p>
+
+<p>Fear began to take possession of the king. Anjou and others ardently
+supported Catherine. She continued, “One man is the leader and author
+of all this ruin and calamity; the admiral is deluding the king, making him
+the instrument of his ambitions and of his party, urging the state to its downfall
+while pretending to aggrandise it! Let the king remember the attempt
+of Amboise against his brother, and that of Meaux against himself when he
+saw himself constrained to flee before his revolted subjects!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[372]</span></p>
+
+<p>The memory of Meaux, as Catherine knew too well, always acted on the
+pride of Charles IX as a hot iron on a wound.</p>
+
+<p>“The Huguenots,” she resumed, “demand vengeance on the Guises.
+Well, you cannot sacrifice the Guises; for they will exonerate themselves
+by accusing your mother and your brother! And they will accuse us with
+good reason. It was we who struck the admiral to save the king! The
+king must finish the work or he and we are lost!”</p>
+
+<p>Charles IX seems to have lost his head. He was seized with a fit of
+blind, mad fury against all and everything; his only clear idea was that he
+would not “have the admiral touched”; then, sinking into a melancholy
+dejection, he conjured all these sinister advisers to seek some other means of
+salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Tavannes, Birague, Nevers insisted on the death of the admiral and of
+all the principal leaders. Retz, if Anjou is to be believed, opposed himself,
+contrary to all expectation, to the execution of a design which he, more than
+anyone, had contributed to prepare. Was it fear or was it an awakening
+of conscience in this corrupt man? “You will dishonour the king and the
+French nation; you will plunge again into civil wars, and you will be able
+to speak no more of peace! You will summon again the arms of the foreigner,
+and calamities and ruin whose end we, and perhaps our children,
+shall never see.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of stupor amongst the conspirators. The man who
+had ruined the youth of Charles IX was holding out to him the plank of
+safety. The king was to escape!</p>
+
+<p>They recovered themselves and made a simultaneous and desperate
+effort. “It is too late! The Guises are on the verge of denouncing the
+king himself with his mother and his brother! The Huguenots will not
+believe in the king’s innocence. They will turn their arms against all the
+royal family! War is inevitable! Better to gain a battle in Paris where
+we have all the leaders than to risk it in the open country!”</p>
+
+<p>Retz was silent. The king resisted for more than an hour and a half.
+“But my honour!—but my friends! the admiral!—La Rochefoucauld!—Téligny—”</p>
+
+<p>Catherine saw that he was panting and exhausted: “Sire, you refuse.
+Give us, myself and your brother, permission to take our leave of you—to
+go.”</p>
+
+<p>He realised that Catherine and Anjou would not go far, and that the
+“captain-general” of the Catholics was already found. He shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>“Sire, is it from fear of the Huguenots that you refuse?”</p>
+
+<p>He arose; he sprang forward intoxicated and furious: “By the death of
+God,” he cried, “since you think good to kill the admiral, I will have it so;
+but kill all the Huguenots in France as well, that there may not be left one
+of them to reproach me with it afterwards! By the death of God give the
+order promptly!” And he went out like one frantic. Catherine had won—the
+race of Valois was devoted to the furies!</p>
+
+<p>The conspirators passed the rest of the day, the evening, and a great
+part of the night in preparing for the enterprise. The king having gone
+they had discussed the heads to be proscribed. Should they strike at the
+princes—Henry of Navarre, a king, and the king’s brother-in-law? They
+shrank from this. Henry of Condé, son of him who died at Jarnac? The
+duke de Nevers, whose sister-in-law he had just married, had, it is said,
+great difficulty in obtaining his life. Catherine was aware that to kill the
+Bourbons would be to render the Guises too strong. Should they strike at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[373]</span>the friends of the Huguenots, the Montmorencys? Retz, soon recovered
+from his scruples, advised it. Tavannes opposed it. The head of the house,
+who was at Chantilly, was not in their power; to kill the younger members
+in the absence of the eldest would be to give a leader to the civil war.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was agreed to kill only the Huguenots. All the Huguenots,
+as the king had exclaimed in his madness. Catherine afterwards pretended
+that she had the blood of only five or six on her conscience. Hypocrisy!
+She insisted on the deaths of only these five or six, but she foresaw and
+accepted the deaths of all the others. At the pass to which things had
+come it was no longer a question of isolated assassinations but of massacre—the
+massacre at least of the nobles who
+had come with the princes and the admiral.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l3"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p373.jpg" width="300" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A Court Gentleman, Time of Charles IX</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Everything was soon decided on; the
+duke of Guise was to begin the massacre
+by despatching the admiral directly he
+heard the signal given, by ringing the
+great bell of the palace, which was used
+only on public rejoicings. Tavannes in
+the meantime sent for the provost of the
+trades and some other persons of influence
+among the inhabitants; he ordered them
+to arm the companies and to be ready by
+midnight at the Hôtel-de-Ville. Those
+persons made some excuses and scruples
+of conscience, for which Tavannes abused
+them in the king’s presence. He told them
+that if they refused they should all be
+hanged and advised the king to threaten
+them too. The poor frightened men then
+yielded and promised to do such execution
+that it should never be forgotten. The
+instructions they received were that
+directly they heard the bell, torches were
+to be put in the windows and chains placed
+across the streets; pickets were to be
+posted in the open places; and, for distinction,
+they were to wear a piece of
+white linen on their left arms and put a
+white cross on their hats. Notwithstanding the awful crime in contemplation,
+the king rode out on horseback in the afternoon accompanied by the chevalier
+d’Angoulême, his natural brother: but the sight of his unsuspecting people
+had no effect upon him. The queen also showed herself at court as usual
+in order to avoid suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Secrecy was desirable till the last moment and no one was informed of
+the plan who was not necessary to its execution. But there were several
+persons who caused great concern and anxiety to both the king and queen.
+The queen of Navarre describes herself as altogether ignorant of the affair
+previous to the execution; and when she retired after supper to go to bed,
+her sister, the duchess of Lorraine, entreated her not to go. The queen-mother
+was angry at that and forbade her telling anything further. The
+duchess of Lorraine thought that it would be sacrificing her to let her go
+to bed; and the queen-mother said that if she did not go it might cause
+suspicion and observed that if it pleased God no harm would befall her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[374]</span></p>
+
+<p>The count de la Rochefoucauld was a great favourite with Charles, who
+took such delight in his company that he wished to save his life. He had
+passed the evening with the king, and when he prepared to go home Charles
+advised him to sleep in the Louvre. In vain did he press him; the count
+resolved to go; the king was grieved that he could not preserve him without
+violating his secret, and observed as his guest retired, “I see clearly
+that God wishes him to perish.” Ambrose Paré, his surgeon, was a person
+indispensable for the king’s health and comfort, and he used less ceremony
+with him. He sent for him in the evening into his chamber and ordered
+him not to stir from thence; he said, according to Brantôme,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13e3"><a href="#endnote_13e">e</a></span> “that it was
+not reasonable that one who was so useful should be massacred, and therefore
+he did not press him to change his religion.”</p>
+
+<h3>THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, AUGUST 24TH, 1572</h3>
+
+<p>As midnight approached the armed companies were collecting before the
+Hôtel-de-Ville. They required some strong excitement to bring them to a
+proper mind, and in order to animate and exasperate them they were told
+that a horrible conspiracy was discovered which the Huguenots had made
+against the king, the queen-mother, and the princes, without excepting the
+king of Navarre, for the destruction of the monarchy and religion; that
+the king, wishing to anticipate so execrable an attempt, commanded them to
+fall at once upon all those cursed heretics (rebels against God and the king),
+without sparing one; and afterwards their property should be given up to
+plunder. This was sufficient inducement for a populace who naturally
+detested the Huguenots: everything being thus arranged, they impatiently
+waited the dawn and the signal which it was to bring with it.</p>
+
+<p>The wretched king of France had gone so far that a retreat was impossible;
+but there is every reason to believe that even at the last moment he
+would gladly have obeyed the dictates of nature and have desisted from the
+cruel purpose. But the queen had perceived the inquietude which tormented
+him; she saw that if the signal depended upon him he would not have resolution
+enough to give it; she considered that the hour should be hastened
+to prevent any rising remorse from destroying her work: she therefore
+made another effort to inflame her son by telling him that the Protestants
+had discovered the plot; and then sent someone to ring the bell of St. Germain
+l’Auxerrois, an hour earlier than had been agreed upon. A few
+moments after was heard the report of a pistol, which had such an effect on
+the king that he sent orders to prevent the massacre; but it was then too late.</p>
+
+<p>Guise, who had waited with impatience for the signal, went at once to
+Coligny’s house accompanied by his brother Aumale, Angoulême, and a
+number of gentlemen. Cosseins, who commanded the guards posted there,
+broke open the doors in the king’s name and murdered some Swiss who were
+placed at the bottom of the stairs. Besme, a Lorrainer, and Pestrucci, an
+Italian, both in Guise’s pay, then went upstairs to the admiral, followed by
+some soldiers. He was awakened by the noise, asked one of his attendants
+what it was: he replied, “My lord, God calls us to himself.” Coligny then
+said to his attendants: “Save yourselves, my friends; all is over with me. I
+have been long prepared for death.” They all quitted him but one, and he
+betook himself to prayer, awaiting his murderers. Every door was soon
+broken open, and Besme presented himself. “Art thou Coligny?” said he.
+“I am he indeed,” said the admiral; “young man, respect my gray hairs;
+but do what you will you can shorten my life only by a few days.” Besme
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[375]</span>replied by plunging his sword into Coligny’s body; his companions then
+gave him numerous stabs with their daggers. Besme then called out of the
+window to Guise that it was done: “Very well,” replied he, “but M.
+d’Angoulême will not believe it unless he sees him at his feet.” The corpse
+was then thrown out into the court from the window; and the blood spurted
+out on the faces and clothes of the princes. Guise wiped the murdered
+man’s face in order to recognise him, and then gave orders to cut off his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>The ringing of the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois was answered by the
+bells of all the churches, and the discharge of firearms in different parts.
+Paris resounded with cries and howlings which brought the defenceless
+people out of their dwellings, not only unarmed, but half naked. Some
+tried to gain Coligny’s house in the hope of obtaining protection, but the
+companies of guards quickly despatched them; the Louvre seemed to hold
+out a refuge; but they were driven away by men armed with spears and
+musketry. Escape was almost impossible; the numerous lights placed in
+the windows deprived them of the shelter which the darkness would have
+afforded them; and patrols traversed the streets in all directions killing
+everyone they met. From the streets they proceeded to the houses; they
+broke open the doors and spared neither age, sex, nor condition. A white
+cross had been put in their hats to distinguish the Catholics, and some priests
+holding a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other preceded the murderers
+and encouraged them, in God’s name, to spare neither relatives nor
+friends. When the daylight appeared, Paris exhibited a most appalling
+spectacle of slaughter: the headless bodies were falling from the windows;
+the gateways were blocked up with dead and dying, and the streets were
+filled with carcasses which were drawn on the pavement to the river.</p>
+
+<p>Even the Louvre became the scene of great carnage; the guards were
+drawn up in a double line, and the unfortunate Huguenots who were in that
+place were called one after another and were killed with the soldiers’ halberts.
+Most of them died without complaining or even speaking; others
+appealed to the public faith and the sacred promise of the king. “Great
+God,” said they, “be the defence of the oppressed. Just judge! avenge
+this perfidy.” Some of the king of Navarre’s servants who lived in the
+palace were killed in bed with their wives. Tavannes, Guise, Montpensier,
+and Angoulême rode through the streets encouraging the murderers; Guise
+told them that it was the king’s wish; that it was necessary to kill the very
+last of the heretics, and crush the race of vipers. Tavannes ferociously
+exclaimed, “Bleed! Bleed! the doctors tell us that bleeding is as beneficial
+in August as in May.” These exhortations were not lost upon an enraged
+multitude, and the different companies emulated each other in atrocity.
+One Crucé, a goldsmith, boasted of having killed four hundred persons with
+his own hands.</p>
+
+<p>The massacre lasted during the whole week, but after the third day its
+fury was considerably abated; indeed, on the Tuesday, a proclamation was
+issued for putting an end to it, but no measures were taken for enforcing
+the order; the people however were no longer urged on to the slaughter.
+What horrors were endured during that time can be best described by those
+who were present, or by contemporaries.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p376.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Sully</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1560-1641)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sully<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13j1"><a href="#endnote_13j">j</a></span> gives the following account of his suffering: “I went to bed the
+night before, very early. I was awakened about three hours after midnight
+by the noise of all the bells and by the confused cries of the populace. St.
+Julien, my governor, went out hastily with my valet-de-chambre to learn the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[376]</span>cause, and I have never since heard anything of those two men, who were,
+without doubt, sacrificed among the first to the public fury. I remained alone
+dressing myself in my chamber where a few minutes after I observed my host
+enter, pale and in consternation. He was of the religion, and having heard
+what was the matter he had decided on going to mass to save his life and
+preserve his house from plunder. He came to persuade me to do the same
+and to take me with him. I did not think fit to follow him. I resolved on
+attempting to get to the college of Burgundy where I studied, notwithstanding
+the distance of the house where I lived from that college, which
+made my attempt very dangerous. I put on my scholar’s gown, and taking
+a pair of large prayer books under my
+arm, I went down stairs. I was seized
+with horror as I went into the street
+at seeing the furious men running in
+every direction, breaking open the
+houses and calling out, ‘Kill! Massacre
+the Huguenots!’ and the blood which
+I saw shed before my eyes redoubled
+my fright; I fell in with a body of
+soldiers, who stopped me. I was questioned;
+they began to ill-treat me,
+when the books which I carried were
+discovered, happily for me, and served
+me for a passport. Twice afterwards
+I fell into the same danger, from which
+I was delivered with the same good
+fortune. At length I arrived at the
+college of Burgundy; a still greater
+danger awaited me there; the porter
+having twice refused me admittance,
+I remained in the middle of the street
+at the mercy of the ruffians, whose
+numbers kept increasing and who
+eagerly sought for their prey, when I
+thought of asking for the principal
+of the college, named Lafaye, a worthy
+man who tenderly loved me. The
+porter, gained by some small pieces of money, which I put into his hand, did
+not refuse to fetch him. This good man took me to his chamber, where two
+inhuman priests whom I heard talk of the Sicilian Vespers tried to snatch
+me from his hands to tear me to pieces, saying that the order was to kill
+even the infants at the breast. All that he could do was to lead me with
+great secrecy to a remote closet, where he locked me in. I remained there
+three whole days, uncertain of my fate and receiving no assistance but from
+a servant of this charitable man who came from time to time and brought
+me something to live upon.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13k2"><a href="#endnote_13k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>EFFECTS OF THE MASSACRE</h3>
+
+<p>No allowable space would suffice for the records of such indiscriminate
+massacre. Charles, by his missives, ordered the same scene to be renewed
+in every town throughout his dominions. And the principal cities but too
+zealously responded. Fifty thousand Protestants are said to have fallen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[377]</span>victims of the monarch’s order.<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> A few commanders refused. The viscount
+d’Orthe wrote back to the court, that he “commanded soldiers, not assassins.”
+And even the public executioner of a certain town, when a dagger
+was put into his hands, flung it away, and declared himself above the crime.
+The family of the Montmorencys, though Catholic, showed their abhorrence
+of these acts, and had the courage to take down the body of the admiral,
+which had been hung to the common gibbet, and to give it burial at Chantilly.
+Charles IX had not failed to visit it, while yet suspended. His followers
+complained of the odour. “The
+body of a dead enemy cannot
+smell otherwise than sweet,” was
+his reply. He now avowed that
+all was committed by his orders;
+and even held a “bed of justice”
+in his parliament for the very
+purpose. The trembling judges,
+with De Thou, their president,
+could not but applaud his zeal.
+As for De l’Hôpital, who had long
+been banished from court, and who
+had abandoned the friendship of
+Catherine since she had joined the
+Guises, he expected not to be
+spared, and ordered his domestics
+to throw open the gates. They
+disobeyed, and the murderers were
+unable to reach him. But De
+l’Hôpital did not long survive to
+deplore the miseries of his country.
+His words were, “After such horrors,
+I do not wish to live.” The
+joy of the pope, on the other hand, and of Philip of Spain, knew no
+bounds. The supreme pontiff went in state to his cathedral, and returned
+public thanks to heaven for this signal mercy.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p377.jpg" width="300" height="325" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Michel De l’Hôpital</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1505-1573)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charles had spared his sister’s husband, the young king of Navarre, and
+his companion the prince of Condé. It was only at the price of being converted.
+Death or the mass was the alternative offered to them; and both,
+after some resistance, yielded in appearance. On the other hand, mere
+abhorrence of the massacre caused many Catholic gentlemen to turn Huguenots.
+Amongst these was Henry de la Tour d’Auvergne, viscount de
+Turenne. After all, the crime, from which so much was expected, produced
+neither peace nor advantage. The Huguenots were, indeed, paralysed
+by the blow; but the Catholics were no less stupefied by remorse and shame.
+King Charles himself seemed stricken already by avenging fate. He was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[378]</span>nervous and agitated. The blood he had spilled seemed ever to stream before
+his eyes. A continual fever took possession of him, and henceforth never
+ceased to consume him. The chiefs were equally languid, equally disunited.
+The Huguenots had time to rally, and to prepare for defence. Rochelle and
+Montauban shut their gates. Charles in his blindness sent La Noue, the
+Huguenot, to Rochelle; he became its commander. The town was at length
+besieged, and thousands of the Catholics fell before it; among them, not a
+few of the murderers who assisted in the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s eve.
+At length Charles, unable to conquer, and incompetent to carry on the war
+with vigour, granted the Huguenots a peace. Rochelle and Montauban preserved
+the freedom of their religion; and Charles had the pain of perceiving
+that the grand and sweeping crime to which he had been impelled had but
+enfeebled the Catholic party, instead of insuring its triumph.</p>
+
+<h3>LAST YEARS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER OF CHARLES IX</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1572-1574 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Catherine, in the meantime, had the address to procure the crown of
+Poland for the son of her predilection, Henry duke of Anjou. She had
+lavished her wealth upon the electors for this purpose. No sooner was the
+point gained than she regretted it. The health of Charles was now manifestly
+on the decline, and Catherine would fain have retained Henry; but
+the jealousy of the king forbade. After conducting the duke on his way to
+Poland the court returned to St. Germain, and Charles sank, without hope
+or consolation, on his couch of sickness. Even here he was not allowed to
+repose. The young king of Navarre formed a project of escape with the prince
+of Condé. The duke of Alençon, youngest brother of the king, joined in it.
+A body of horse were to wait in the forest of St. Germain for the princes, and
+protect them in their flight. The vigilance of the queen-mother discovered
+the enterprise, which, for her own purposes, she magnified into a serious plot.
+Charles was informed that a Huguenot army was coming to surprise him,
+and he was obliged to be removed into a litter, in order to escape. “This is
+too much,” said he; “could they not have let me die in peace?”</p>
+
+<p>Condé was the only prince that succeeded in making his escape. The
+king of Navarre and the duke of Alençon were imprisoned. The former,
+accused of conspiring against the king’s life, defended himself with magnanimity,
+and asked if it were a crime, that he, a king, should seek to free
+himself from durance? This young prince had already succeeded by his
+address, his frankness, and high character in rallying to his interests the
+most honourable of the noblesse, who dreaded at once the perfidious Catherine
+and her children; who had renounced their good opinion of young
+Guise after the day of St. Bartholomew; and who, at the same time professing
+Catholicism, were averse to Huguenot principles and zeal. This party,
+called the <i>politiques</i>, professed to follow the middle or neutral course, which
+at one time had been that of Catherine de’ Medici; but she had long since
+deserted it, and had joined in all the sanguinary and extreme measures of her
+son and of the Guises. Hence she was especially odious to the new and
+moderate party of the <i>politiques</i>, among whom the family of Montmorency
+held the lead. Catherine feared their interference at the moment of the
+king’s death, whilst his successor was absent in a remote kingdom; and she
+swelled the project of the princes’ escape into a serious conspiracy, in order
+to be mistress of those whom she feared. Lamole and Coconas, both confidants
+of the princes, were executed for favouring their escape. The marshals
+De Cossé and De Montmorency were sent to the Bastille.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[379]</span></p>
+
+<p>In this state of the court Charles IX expired on the 30th of May, 1574,
+after having nominated the queen-mother to be regent during his successor’s
+absence.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13d4"><a href="#endnote_13d">d</a></span> His end was so miserable that even Huguenot writers express pity
+for it. His short and infrequent sleeping moments were troubled by hideous
+visions. Exhausted by violent hæmorrhages, he sometimes waked up bathed
+in his own blood, and this blood reminded him of that of his subjects which had
+been shed in streams by his orders. He saw again in his dreams all their dead
+bodies floating with the current of the Seine; he heard mournful lamentations
+in the air. The night before his death, his nurse, of whom he was very
+fond, although she was a Huguenot, heard him complaining, weeping, and
+sighing: “Ah nurse,” he cried, “what streams of blood, how many murders!
+What wicked counsel I have had! O my God, pardon me and grant me mercy!
+I know not where I am, so much do they agitate and perplex me! What
+will become of all this country? What will become of me, to whom God
+intrusts it? I am lost, I know it well!” Then his nurse said to him: “Sire,
+the murders and the blood shall be on the head of those who influenced you,
+and on your evil counsellors.” His last words were that he was glad he left
+no male child to wear the crown after him.</p>
+
+<p>This prince, who was so guilty and so unhappy, whose name has been
+handed down from generation to generation, loaded with anathemas, was
+born with the most brilliant gifts of mind and imagination, and with less
+inclination to vice than most of his race. He had that real love of art which
+had been the glory of his ancestor, Francis I, and verses of his have been
+preserved, which are far superior to those of the captive at Pavia—beautiful
+verses, addressed to Ronsard, who might have taken lessons in good taste
+and spontaneity from this essay of royal genius. He loved music no less
+than poetry, and during his last illness melody alone had the power to soothe
+his pain for a moment. A detestable education had destroyed all the gifts of
+nature in Charles IX. When real glory was offered to him, when the chance
+was given him to snatch France from factions, to make her enter upon her
+real destiny by a bound towards her natural frontiers, by a brilliant and legitimate
+conquest, the unfortunate man did not have the strength to seize this
+unique opportunity. It came too late for him; his soul was confused and
+without a guide, his mind vacillating. After long struggles he became a prey
+to the infernal inspirations of his mother, and, as if carried away by furies,
+he leaped into the gulf of shame and of blood, into which he was followed by
+the rest of his race, and in which France came near being destroyed with the
+Valois.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l4"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The above version of the end of Charles IX expresses the opinion held by
+most of the historians. Dareste,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13m1"><a href="#endnote_13m">m</a></span> however, finishes the reign of Charles IX
+with the following remark in regard to this generally accepted description:
+“During his last days there were current rumours which have been transmitted
+to us by D’Aubigné,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13n1"><a href="#endnote_13n">n</a></span> L’Estoile,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13o1"><a href="#endnote_13o">o</a></span> and other contemporaries. They
+recount his great inquietude, his idea that the phantoms of the victims of
+the massacre of St. Bartholomew besieged his death-bed; they tell us that
+he succumbed to his great remorse and these avenging hallucinations. All
+these accounts, of doubtful origin, are at least greatly exaggerated. His last
+illness, the phases and progress of which were followed by the Venetian
+envoys,<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> was of a most natural character. Cavalli<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13p"><a href="#endnote_13p">p</a></span> contents himself with saying
+that the plots during the last days of his life caused him great torture of
+mind and prevented his tasting an instant’s repose.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[380]</span></p>
+
+<p>Charles IX does not lack defenders. In great contrast to the almost
+universal condemnation of him are the writings of some of his contemporaries.
+Sorbin,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13t"><a href="#endnote_13t">t</a></span> after a description of his physical qualities, goes on to express
+his admiration of him in these words: “His manners were the most
+gentle in the world; he loved peace and quiet for his people, and desired
+nothing so much as to see his subjects reunited in the faith and religion of
+the Catholic church, which made apparent to everyone his great generosity,
+and showed how worthy he was to have reigned in a more happy period than
+the one he lived in, when the malice of his subjects kept him in difficulties.
+Had he reigned in a more fortunate time, the opinion of his intimate friends
+and his most faithful subjects and servants would have been correct, for they
+called it a golden age. He would have been loved by all in a good and
+virtuous age.”<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III (1574-1589 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1574-1575 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The duke of Anjou,<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> heir presumptive of Charles IX, was in Poland at
+the time of his brother’s death. Henry was no sooner in possession of this
+crown than he took a dislike to the “land of the Sarmatians,” where the
+rough and virile nobles knew nothing of the refinements of luxury and vice
+which the corrupt civilisation of Italy had inoculated upon France. Upon
+the news of his brother’s death he fled from his capital at night, like a malefactor.
+Pursued by his subjects, who wished to keep him, he did not stop
+until he was on Austrian soil. The pleasures of Vienna and of Venice
+captivated him for a long time; he did not set foot within his new kingdom
+until two months after he had secretly left the old one.</p>
+
+<p>The prince was ill-fitted to master the situation that his brother had left
+him. The victories won in his name by Tavannes had given him a great
+reputation; but abuse of pleasure had cooled that early ardour which had
+at first made him as brave as his ancestors. He no longer had a taste for
+any but childish or effeminate pastimes, when he did not surrender himself
+to horrible debauchery. It could hardly be said that his ostentatious devotion
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[381]</span>was a trick of impiety, but all his religion consisted in certain external
+practices. He thought that all his accounts with heaven and his own conscience
+could be settled by a fast and a few penances. Charles IX, his
+brother, had sometimes had ideas and plans worthy of a king. Henry had
+almost puerile occupations; and D’Aubigné,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13n2"><a href="#endnote_13n">n</a></span> seeing this man so careful of
+his toilet, his complexion, the whiteness of his hands and face, was uncertain
+whether he beheld “a woman-king or a man-queen.” Charles IX was
+vicious in anger and on occasion; Henry in character and constantly.
+He read nothing but Macchiavelli, and, in a word, he never knew that which
+makes pardonable much of his brother’s conduct—remorse.</p>
+
+<p>His first acts showed what was to be expected of him. At Turin he
+repaid the hospitality of the duke of Savoy with prodigal magnificence by
+giving him Pinerolo, Perugia, and Savigliano, the last remains of the conquests
+of Francis I beyond the Alps. Hardly had he entered France when
+he commanded the Protestants to turn Catholic or leave the kingdom. His
+words were indeed menacing: but the reformers were reassured when they
+saw that action was limited to sending a few officers to the southern provinces,
+which were then much disturbed, and to processions of flagellants, in which
+the king took part and which went through the streets scourging their
+shoulders for the remission of their sins. He made a solemn entry into
+Paris, where he greatly scandalised serious people by having about him a
+great number of monkeys, parrots, and little dogs. At Rheims, “when the
+crown was placed upon his head,” says L’Estoile,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13o2"><a href="#endnote_13o">o</a></span> “he said in a loud voice
+that it hurt him; it slipped twice as though it were going to fall.” An evil
+omen was seen in this, and with reason. This head, which could not bear a
+crown, could no more bear the strong and virile ideas that would have been
+so necessary to defend it.</p>
+
+<h3>POLITICAL CONDITIONS</h3>
+
+<p>France had need, however, of an able, honest, strong chief to take up
+the reins of government. Castelnau<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13g3"><a href="#endnote_13g">g</a></span> estimates that “already, by reason
+of the civil wars, more than a million persons had been put to death, all
+under the pretext of religion and public utility, with which both parties
+shielded themselves.” It was only with great difficulty that Catherine
+de’ Medici had been able to prevent a new explosion during the last days of
+Charles IX and the two months of her regency. Between the extreme Catholics
+and the fanatical Protestants a new party was gaining ground, that of
+the <i>Politiques</i>, composed of moderate Catholics who desired the re-establishment
+of public tranquillity by religious tolerance and energetic repression
+of factions. The three Montmorencys, Damville, Thoré, and Méru, were
+the most conspicuous men of this party, which includes a great number
+of magistrates and of rich bourgeois. A prince of the blood, the duke of
+Alençon, had undertaken the leadership of it, less through patriotism than
+through ambition, for he counted upon making use of it for his personal
+ends. The Guises were at the head of the Catholics, the Bourbons at the
+head of the Protestants; in order to be neither isolated nor second in one
+or the other camp he had thought it possible to form a third party that
+should be devoted to his interests. The Béarnais [Henry IV] justly calls
+him “a double heart, an evil and misshapen mind, like a deformed body.”
+We must, however, give him credit for two things: he wished to be French,
+he said, in name and in fact, and an enemy of Spain; and he never stained
+his hands with the blood of the Huguenots.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13c5"><a href="#endnote_13c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[382]</span></p>
+
+<p>On his return to Paris, Henry III remained there for the winter and during
+Lent, taking part in the feasts and the devotions. Accompanied by the
+queen, and carrying a large rosary in his hand, he visited the churches,
+the oratories, and the different religious houses; an action which gave rise
+to numberless lampoons,
+libels, and satirical
+writings.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px;">
+<img src="images/p382.jpg" width="425" height="700" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Henry III</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>L’Estoile<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13o3"><a href="#endnote_13o">o</a></span> in his journal,
+indifferent in the
+main and censorious, gives
+a faithful portrayal of the
+feelings of the Parisian
+people. They were anything
+but disposed to
+pardon the effeminacy and
+ridiculous actions of the
+king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13m2"><a href="#endnote_13m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1575-1576 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>They saw the descendant
+of St. Louis and
+Francis sink religion into
+ridicule, and knighthood
+into disgrace. They saw
+a king of France, surrounded
+by minions or
+favourites, dress himself
+in woman’s clothes, and
+sing infamous ballads in
+a public meeting, and on
+the same day sing
+psalms through the
+streets dressed in
+the robe of a penitent—a
+Christian
+Nero, with the
+solemn voice of
+Coligny scarcely
+hushed, and the grim eyes
+of the Bible-reading
+Huguenots fixed on all
+his proceedings. As a
+consequence there was
+strife and misery in the
+land. Alençon, wicked
+as the king, and not so
+clever, joined the levies
+which were gathering
+round the old leaders.
+Henry of Navarre escaped
+from his honourable and close-watched detention by the swiftness of his
+horse at a hunting-party, and bade his adherents, who came to him in great
+numbers, once more “to follow the White Plume, always in the front of
+battle.” He celebrated his recovered independence by resuming the exercise
+of the Protestant faith. But the great families of the Montmorencys
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[383]</span>and others, who were merely discontented with the government, were disinclined
+to mix their standards with the avowed Huguenots. It was, therefore,
+easy for the queen-mother to break up the ill-assorted union. She
+sent embassies of her bedchamber-women to wait on the duke of Alençon,
+and in a very short time that feeble prince was detached from the cause.
+He, however, mediated a peace which was very favourable to the reformers.
+Their worship was permitted in all parts of France except in Paris; all
+edicts against them were withdrawn; the massacre itself was disavowed;
+and several additional towns were surrendered to them as pledges. This
+was the fifth peace since the religious wars began, and was called the Peace
+of Monsieur, in honour of Alençon.<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> The king, who appeared at ball and
+theatre with rich necklaces round his bare neck, and affected the appearance
+of a female beauty, had no wish, in signing this pacification, but to be left
+undisturbed by the anger of faction or the ambition of his brother. To
+separate Alençon from the Huguenots, he would have made greater sacrifices
+still. But the sacrifice he made was quite enough. The Catholics saw the
+overthrow of their faith in the terms of the treaty; the Huguenots the finger
+of God in the spread of their opinions.</p>
+
+<h3>THE HOLY LEAGUE</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1576-1584 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Holy League began in 1576—a league which bound itself by the
+most awful sanctions to extirpate heresy—to spare neither friend nor foe
+till the pestilence was banished, and even, if need be, to alter the succession
+to the throne. The next heir after the childless Alençon was a Huguenot;
+but ascending far above the successors of Hugh Capet, Bourbon, or Valois,
+there was a prince whose whole heart was devoted to Rome, and who traced
+his lineal descent to Charlemagne—and this was Henry of Guise, son of
+that old Francis who was assassinated by Poltrot, and who himself bore
+marks of his Catholic soldiership in a wound upon his face, which made him
+known as the Balafré. “No Protestant king of Navarre! We will have
+Catholic Henry of Guise!”</p>
+
+<p>But Alençon [who hated Guise and had tried once or twice to assassinate
+him] was by no means pleased with this part of the league’s intentions.
+He threw himself into its ranks by way of stemming its course, and was lost
+or forgotten in the tumult which raged in every heart. The king summoned
+the states to meet at Blois, but the states showed the somewhat contradictory
+symptoms, not only of hatred of dissent, but of something very like republicanism.
+They wished to control the royal power by commissioners appointed
+by themselves, whose decision on any disputed question was to be final; and
+being bribed and coerced by the party of the Guises, they passed an edict
+interdicting the Huguenot faith, and withdrawing all the guarantee towns
+from their hands. This was, in fact, a declaration of war; the white plume
+was waving in the breeze in a moment, and all the party were in arms.
+More sincerity arose on both sides in viewing the matters in dispute, and
+amalgamation became almost impossible. The king brought discredit on the
+league and on himself by joining it as a member. This move degraded him
+from being monarch of France to being one of a faction, and not even the chief
+of it; for in spite of Henry’s calling himself the leader of the confederacy,
+the real authority remained with Henry of Guise. The king, for instance,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[384]</span>wished to raise money, but the Balafré frowned, and the Catholic purses
+remained closed. He could neither command nor persuade. [In fact there
+seems to have been some idea of setting him aside somewhat as his fabled
+ancestor Pepin had set aside the last of the Merovingians.] His thoughts,
+therefore, were soon bent on peace. He managed to obtain a treaty at
+Bergerac in 1577, by which the former state of affairs was restored. A
+compliment at the same time was paid to the Huguenots, and a triumph
+gained to himself, by the abolition of the league.</p>
+
+<p>But one of the articles of the league was the indissoluble “association
+and brotherhood of its members till its objects were obtained.” Now, its
+objects could not be obtained while a Huguenot was favoured, or even tolerated
+in France, or while there was a chance of the accession of so dangerous
+a heretic as Henry of Navarre. War after war broke out, to the
+number of seven in all, and with still increasing hatred; but it is useless to
+particularise them. It will serve to show the curious mixture of motive and
+action that one of these is called the War of the Lovers, because it arose
+from the jealousies and rivalries of the leaders who were invited to meet at
+the palace of the queen-mother. That astute Italian introduced a sort of
+chivalry of vice in the prosecution of a campaign. She invited the young
+king of Navarre to come to her court with all the cavaliers he chose.
+There were balls and dances every night, and the appearance of the greatest
+cordiality; for a radius of a mile and a half was established round the
+house, within which quarrels and fighting were unknown. It was an oasis
+consecrated to the coarser Venus. But outside those narrow limits the war
+raged with undiminished ardour. A Huguenot lord, after joining in the
+same dance with a Catholic, would ask him to accompany him for a ride
+across the line, and the survivor came in with bloody sword to boast of
+the result. One night Henry gave a return entertainment to the queen and
+all the court. When the supper was over, and the dances were resumed,
+Henry slipped out of the garden, joined Sully and some other young nobles
+who were waiting his arrival, and rode all night. On the following day the
+queen-mother heard that one of her towns about thirty miles off had been
+surprised and pillaged; and when Henry rode back within the peaceful
+circle, complimented him on the success of his stratagem.</p>
+
+<p>But gloomy forebodings began to mingle with these festivities. Alençon,
+to weaken the power of Spain, was allowed to place himself at the head
+of the revolted provinces. The revolt was religious as much as political, and
+the furious leaguers saw the brother of the king and heir of the throne
+enlisted against the church. His visit to London, to prosecute his claim to
+Elizabeth’s hand, also, though terminating in ridicule and disappointment,
+showed his want of attachment to the true faith. He came back to Paris
+humiliated and unsuccessful, both in love and war. His want of zeal was
+discovered, and not much reliance could be placed on a man who supported
+the rebels of Holland and wooed the great heretic Elizabeth of England. His
+death, in 1584, was not lamented on any other account than that it advanced
+by one step the cause of a far more hated, because far more terrible opponent.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13f2"><a href="#endnote_13f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE WAR OF THE THREE HENRYS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1584-1586 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The next heir to the throne was now the Huguenot Henry of Navarre.
+With such a prospect before them the Catholic party grew stronger and more
+determined. Three men, all Henrys, now stood forth as leaders of these
+parties, and of these the royal faction was least. The vacillating king sought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[385]</span>alliance first with one side and then with the other. His own inclination led
+him away from the Huguenot cause; his safety was not assured with the
+cause of Guise. He was not strong enough himself to have a loyal and determined
+following of his own.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p385.jpg" width="250" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A Gallant, Time of Henry III</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The conduct henceforth of Navarre and Guise proved a remarkable contrast.
+It was the interest of the Bourbon to elevate and dignify the throne
+to which he saw himself likely to succeed; he therefore treated with profound
+reverence the office of the king, and his person with outward respect.
+It was the business of the Guise to degrade the crown, which would otherwise
+have been too sacred for a sacrilegious hand to touch; he therefore
+treated the king with marked indignity, and stirred up the lowest passions
+of the mob in opposition to the highest authority in the land. By his success
+in this policy he made a narrow escape of
+exciting feelings of hatred to royalty itself,
+which would have punished his ambition by
+taking away the object of it.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13f3"><a href="#endnote_13f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An interesting result, however, of this
+attitude of the Guise party was an advance in
+political thinking. There were hints abroad
+of the sovereignty of the people. The Jesuit
+opponents of Elizabeth and Navarre must give
+up the idea of hereditary monarchy. Orthodoxy
+was the indispensable qualification, however,
+rather than popular choice; the church
+rather than the nation was the source of
+sovereignty. It was on this basis that the
+Guise party made a treaty with Philip of
+Spain. The Pact of Joinville at the end of
+1584 made the league party not only a
+menace to hereditary monarchy in France, but
+by junction with Spain it became anti-national
+in its character. The war now became more
+political and less trivial. The destinies of
+France were at stake. But the foreign aid
+which made the Guise cause a European
+question, and widened the quarrel to one of
+universal religious war, was not destined to
+amount to enough to repress Protestantism in
+France. The year 1585 was spent in useless
+negotiations in France; during the next year the war was hardly begun,
+and before decisive action had been taken in France the foreign situation had
+changed entirely through the action of Elizabeth.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the 18th of February, 1587, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots
+fell like a firebrand on the Catholic plans. She had once been queen of
+France, and was related to the Guises. She had been true to but one object
+throughout her life, but that object justified and ennobled all her deeds, for
+it was the supremacy of the church. The violences of the league, the curses
+of the pope, and the threats of Philip of Spain and of all the Catholics of
+Europe, had led to the sad catastrophe, by showing the wise counsellors of
+Elizabeth that while Mary lived and plotted there was no safety for Protestantism
+or freedom; and now the blow recoiled with tenfold force on the
+persons who had made it unavoidable. Philip began his preparations for
+the Armada. Guise concealed no longer his enmity to the king, and roused
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[386]</span>the populace and parliament of Paris, both of which were entirely at his
+command, against him. The infatuated monarch showed his usual want of
+judgment. He replied to the reclamations of the magistrates by confiscating
+their salaries, and threatening to throw them in sacks into the Seine. But
+no course of proceeding would probably have altered the result. Victories
+and defeats all had the same effect.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13f4"><a href="#endnote_13f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Coutras (1587 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1587 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>One great battle stands out in the dreary stretch of these years. Henry of
+Navarre had marched from La Rochelle across the Loire country to meet a
+German force which was advancing from the east. Henry III sent an army
+under Joyeuse to intercept the forces of the Huguenots and he succeeded in
+doing this at the strong position of Coutras. The situation was such that
+the Huguenots had no hope of escape except through victory. Henry had
+reached the château of Coutras an hour before Joyeuse and on the evening
+of the 19th of October, 1587; the advance guard of the Huguenots drove the
+duke’s Albanian scouts from the town. Joyeuse, however, was afraid that
+the enemy would try to escape and began preparations for battle in the
+middle of the night.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The young courtiers had sworn to give quarter to no one. The king
+of Navarre had only time to leave Coutras and prepare for battle, a little
+before day, in the angle of land formed by the two rivers Dronne and
+Isle. According to D’Aubigné,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13n3"><a href="#endnote_13n">n</a></span> who has left us the most circumstantial
+account of this day [and who was himself a soldier in the service of Henry IV],
+the Catholics had about five thousand foot-soldiers and twenty-five hundred
+cavalry; the Protestants, almost as many infantry, but hardly half as many
+cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>The battle began with volleys of cannon. The Catholics suffered from the
+Huguenot artillery, which was better aimed than their own, and with loud
+cries demanded a charge. At the moment when the Catholics started, the
+ministers Chandieu and D’Amours began to chant in front of the Protestant
+army the twelfth verse of Psalm cxviii. At the sight of the kneeling
+Protestants the frivolous youths who were about Joyeuse uttered insulting
+cries. “They tremble, the cowards, they are confessing.” “You are mistaken,”
+replied a more experienced captain, “when the Huguenots look like
+that, they are determined to conquer or die.” In an instant the Huguenot
+men-at-arms had mounted. “Cousins!” cried the king of Navarre to Condé
+and Soissons, “I will say no more to you than that you are of the blood of
+Bourbon, and, as God lives, I will show you that I am your senior.” “And
+we,” replied Condé, “we will show that you have good juniors.”</p>
+
+<p>The Huguenot line was formed in a crescent on a little plain. The light
+cavalry of Poitou, which formed the point of the crescent on the right,
+were driven back by a great force of Catholic cavalry, and drew the Gascon
+squadron of the viscount de Turenne along in their rout. The left wing
+of the Catholics with a shout of victory pushed on to the baggage in order
+to plunder, without heeding what was taking place on the rest of the battle-field.
+Three hundred Protestant arquebusiers, believing the battle lost and
+inspired by a heroic despair, threw themselves upon a large battalion of nearly
+three thousand of the enemy’s foot-soldiers with such violence as to break
+through the first ranks. The rest of the Huguenot infantry followed this
+movement and the two bodies of infantry attacked each other with great
+violence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[387]</span></p>
+
+<p>But in the meantime the fate of the day was decided elsewhere. Joyeuse
+had started at a gallop with his men-at-arms spread out in a single line of
+lances; the three Bourbons were awaiting him steadfastly at the head of
+three squadrons formed six files deep. Most of the Huguenot cavalry was
+armed with sword and pistol; when the enemy was fifteen paces distant
+they threw themselves with all their might from their horses and fired point
+blank, while some platoons of arquebusiers stationed between the squadrons
+fired with surer aim upon the Catholics. The latter could not even make
+use of their lances. Their long line was driven back and broken. There
+followed a short and terrible hand-to-hand conflict, in which the king of
+Navarre and his cousins kept
+their word to one another and
+fought like true knights. The
+nobles of the court, gaily decked,
+plumed, dressed in velvet and
+embroidery, were crushed like
+glass by the poor and rude gentlemen
+of the south. These young
+effeminates knew only how to
+die.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p387.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Savant, Time of Henry III</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The first squadrons had met
+at nine o’clock; at ten there was
+not a man of Joyeuse’s army who
+had not either fallen or fled.
+The infantry had also dispersed
+after the defeat of the cavalry.
+The king of Navarre had great
+difficulty in stopping the carnage.
+The Protestants took cruel
+revenge for the barbarities
+practised by Joyeuse upon their
+comrades; more than four hundred
+gentlemen and two thousand
+soldiers were put to the sword.
+Joyeuse surrendered to two
+Huguenots when a third split
+open his head with a blow of his
+pistol butt. Nearly all the lords
+and gentlemen who had followed him were killed or taken prisoners. The
+booty, including the ransoms, amounted to more than 600,000 crowns.
+The victors had not lost forty men.</p>
+
+<p>The king of Navarre showed himself worthy of this brilliant triumph by
+moderation and humanity. He exhibited no more pride after the victory
+than fear before the combat. He received all the prisoners with kindness,
+restored their arms to some, released others without ransom, and declared
+that after as before he demanded only the edict of 1577.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l5"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the same time Guise repulsed the enemy from the soil of France in
+Alsace. The defeat was attributed to the king, and the victory to the duke—a
+fatal contrast between him and Guise, of which he could not weaken
+the effect by comparison with Navarre. The two uncrowned Henrys were
+held up as models for the third, for even the Catholics saw with a sort of
+pride the achievements of Henry, who, though a Huguenot, was a prince
+and a Frenchman still. This state of affairs could not last long. Guise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[388]</span>made a solemn entry into Paris, and was received with all the ceremony
+usually reserved for a king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13f5"><a href="#endnote_13f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Henry de Guise at this time was thirty-eight years of age. He was tall
+and well proportioned, with blond curly hair and piercing eyes. The scar on
+his cheek gave him a martial appearance. Although not a great general,
+he possessed all the military qualities necessary to gain the love of the
+populace. Indefatigable, prompt of decision, rapid and sure of execution,
+affable, generous, familiar even, though ever guarding his dignity, he had
+the external gifts and the successful personality which Henry III lacked.
+Madame de Retz said that in comparison to him the other princes were but
+people. All were devoted to him. “France,” Balzac said of him later,
+“went mad over this man; to say they loved him is too weak an expression.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13m3"><a href="#endnote_13m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Day of the Barricades and the Treaty of Union</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1588-1589 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Henry was at the Louvre, and trembled at his subject’s approach. When
+the interview was over, Guise returned to his house and surrounded it with
+armed men, as if to hint that his life was in danger from the king—a very
+old trick, and very often successful. Everything continued quiet on both
+sides till some Swiss royal guards marched into the town. In a moment the
+mob were up in arms. Barricades were erected in the streets; pistols were
+fired at the passengers. The Swiss were attacked, and indiscriminate
+massacre began. Catherine strove in vain to induce her unworthy son to
+go and show himself to the malcontents. He heard the firing on his troops,
+and had not the courage to order them to defend themselves; and while his
+mother rode boldly into the streets to quell the insurrection, he slipped
+noiselessly to his stables, where the Tuileries gardens now are, and galloped
+without pause to Rambouillet. On the following day he got safe within the
+walls of Chartres. This was called the day of the Barricades, and for a
+while it certainly advanced the cause of the duke of Guise. With affected
+moderation he rejected the acclamations of his party, allowed the Swiss
+guards to escape, and in other ways endeavoured to pacify the adherents
+of the king. To Chartres the king was followed by the now triumphant
+Guise, who dictated there, to the degraded king, what was thenceforward
+called the Treaty of Union of July, 1588. It forgave, or rather it applauded,
+all the outrages of Paris. It declared all heretics incapable of any public
+trust, office, or employment. It excluded the heretical members of the house
+of Bourbon from the line of succession to the crown. It raised the duke to
+the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and it provided for the
+immediate convention of the states-general of France. To the observance
+of these terms, Henry pledged himself in the most solemn forms of adjuration.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Meeting of the States-General</i></h4>
+
+<p>Again, therefore, the states-general were summoned to meet at the city
+of Blois; and, on the 16th of October, 1588, 505 deputies were assembled to
+listen to the inaugural oration of the king. “Among them,” says the contemporary
+historian, Matthieu, “was conspicuous Henry, duke of Guise,
+who, as great master of the royal household, sat near the throne, dressed in
+white satin, with his hood thrown carelessly backward; and from that
+elevated position he cast his eyes along the dense crowd before him that he
+might recognise and distinguish his followers, and encourage with a glance
+their reliance on his fortune and success; and thus, without uttering a word,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[389]</span>might seem to say to each of them, ‘I see you;’ and then (proceeds
+Matthieu) the duke rising, with a profound obeisance to the assembly, and
+followed by the long train of his officers and gentlemen, retired to meet and
+to introduce the king.”</p>
+
+<p>The lofty consciousness of his royal character still imparted some dignity
+to Henry’s demeanor. Addressing the states with a majestic and touching
+eloquence, he asserted his title to the gratitude of his people, claimed the
+unimpaired inheritance of the prerogatives of his ancestors, pronounced the
+pardon of those who had already entered into traitorous conspiracies against
+him, and threatened condign punishment of all who might in future engage
+in any similar attempts. Even Guise listened, with evident discomposure, to
+this unexpected rebuke, and public menace, from the lips of his sovereign.
+It was, however, the single gleam of success with which Henry was cheered
+in his intercourse with the representatives of his people; and the rest of the
+history of the states-general of 1588, is little else than a record of the humiliations
+to which they subjected him.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke, as we have seen, with royal indignation, of the outrages of
+Paris and of Chartres: but he was compelled to omit all those passages
+of his address in his subsequent publication of it. He publicly claimed for
+himself the cognizance of all questions respecting the verification of the
+powers of the deputies: but he was constrained, with equal publicity, to
+retract that pretension. He entertained an appeal from one of the members
+of the Tiers État against a decision of his order: but he was sternly
+reminded that the states had met at Blois, not as supplicants to obey, but as
+councillors to advise, him. He pardoned the dukes of Soissons and Conti
+their having borne arms under the Huguenot standards, that so they might
+be qualified to take their places among the order of the nobles: but the
+validity of his pardon was contemptuously denied. He resisted, as an insult,
+the demand of the states, that he should repeat, in their presence, the oath
+he had already taken to observe the Treaty of the Union: but he was
+taught that submission was inevitable. He demanded that the states should,
+in their turn, swear fidelity to himself, and to the fundamental laws of the
+realm: but he was obliged to withdraw that demand. He insisted that
+the exclusion of Henry of Béarn from the succession to the throne should be
+preceded by an invitation to that prince to return into the bosom of the
+church: but his proposal was inflexibly and scornfully resisted. He
+commissioned two of his officers to lay before the order of the clergy his
+objections to the acceptance of the decrees of the Council of Trent: but
+his officers were driven away with insult. He solicited pecuniary aid for
+carrying on the war against the Huguenots: but the suit was answered by
+a demand for his surrender of a large part of his actual revenue.</p>
+
+<p>This long series of indignities was readily traced by Henry to the guidance
+of a single hand. Guise was but too successfully exerting his influence
+at Blois to dethrone the king by degrading him. The crown, which must
+inevitably fall from the grasp of a prince whom all men had been taught to
+despise, might readily be transferred to the brows of a prince to whom all
+were looking with admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was a hazardous policy. The king who had conquered at Jarnac
+and Montcontour, and who had concurred in devising the massacre of St.
+Bartholomew, was not a man to be restrained by the voice either of fear, of
+humanity, or of conscience. The friends of Guise saw, and pointed out to
+him, the danger of provoking the dormant passions of the enervated Henry;
+but he received their remonstrances with contempt, and habitually and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[390]</span>ostentatiously placed himself within the powers of the sovereign whom he at
+once despised, exasperated, and defied.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13w1"><a href="#endnote_13w">w</a></span> This contemptuous attitude was
+to lead to his undoing.</p>
+
+<h3>THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY, DUKE OF GUISE (1588 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>On December 23rd, at three o’clock in the morning, the duke of Guise
+left the room of Charlotte de Beaune, and found on returning to his house
+five notes which warned him to leave Blois immediately. His attendants
+begged him to take refuge without delay with his troops; but being weary
+he retired to sleep. At about eight o’clock, he got up, dressed himself in a
+new gray satin doublet, too thin for the season, took his cloak, went out,
+passed over the drawbridge and entered the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Henry III, during the same night, prepared the ambuscade. The evening
+before, at seven o’clock, he told Liancourt, the chief equerry, in a loud voice,
+to order his coach for four o’clock in the morning, because he wished to visit
+a shrine and return in time for the council. He gave a secret order to the
+Corsican Ornano, and to the forty-five Gascons of his especial guard, to be
+near his room the following day at five o’clock; then he shut himself up
+in his private chamber. At four he rose and went out, saying nothing to the
+queen, who was uneasy. He ascended one flight with Du Halde, led him
+into a gallery which he had divided into fifty cells, during the last two or
+three days, under the pretext of lodging there some Capuchin friars whom
+he wished to have constantly near him, but in reality to hide and separate
+all those who were to take part in the premeditated act. He pushed Du
+Halde into one, and without speaking a word shut him in. Towards five
+o’clock the forty-five guards presented themselves, one by one. He took
+each one in turn to the higher landing, and locked them up, each in a separate
+cell.</p>
+
+<p>The members of the council convoked for six o’clock arrived, and not
+noticing anything strange on the staircases or in the corridors, began their
+sitting. As soon as the king had seen Cardinal De Guise, who was staying
+in the town, at the hôtel d’Allaye, enter the large hall, he ascended to his
+cells, opened the doors, made his men come down, took them into his room,
+having commanded them to make no noise so as not to awaken the queen-mother,
+who was dying on the lower landing. The glimmering light of the
+December dawn and the light from the king’s candle but dimly showed their
+uneasy countenances and eager eyes. The king made a speech to his forty-five
+men, urging them to avenge him; he was delighted to find that his
+oratory was more successful than it was with the state deputies. These
+young noblemen, suddenly transported from their Gascony cottages, where
+they suffered hunger and every sort of privation, to become the confidants of
+the king, to enter his chamber, to hear themselves called his champions, his
+avengers, his friends, must have been the more amazed at this sudden fortune,
+in that the duke of Guise had threatened to plunge them back into their former
+misery.</p>
+
+<p>By the advice of the duke of Guise these forty-five noblemen, sent by
+the states to entreat the king to reform his household, were to be dispersed
+as unnecessary. Still boorish, and knowing nothing beyond the patois of
+their villages, they remained homely and unaffected. One of them, called
+Périac, dimly understood that the king’s speech showed that it was necessary
+to stab the duke of Guise, and he interrupted him with a joyous familiarity,
+striking him in the stomach with the flat of his hand, and crying out to him,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[391]</span>“Cap de Jou, I’ll kill him for you!” Reassured by the enthusiasm of these
+young men, Henry III himself posted them in his room and in the passages;
+then he retired to his private chamber, impatient and troubled at not having
+seen the duke of Guise arrive, but learning finally, at half-past eight,
+that Henry of Guise had just entered the council-room.</p>
+
+<p>Henry of Guise had felt very cold in his satin doublet; his night had
+exhausted him. As he entered he felt sick and faint; his eyes were full of
+tears. “I am cold,” said he, “let me go to the fire.” Whilst more wood
+was being thrown on the fire, he said to M. de Morgondaine, keeper of the
+treasury, “I beg of you to ask M. de Saint-Prix to give me some Damascus
+raisins, or some preparation of roses.” They could only find some Brignolles
+plums, which he began to eat. M. de Marillac, master of requests, read a
+report upon the salt-taxes, when the door opened and Revol, secretary of
+state, was seen to advance. He said to the duke, “Monsieur, the king asks
+for you; he is in his old room.” Then he hastily went out. The duke did
+not notice this hasty retreat, nor the agitation of Revol, who was so white
+that the king had come to him a minute before, and said, “My God, Revol,
+how white you are! Rub your cheeks, Revol, rub your cheeks.” The duke
+of Guise got up, put some prunes in his silver comfit plate, leaving the rest
+upon the cloth. “Gentlemen,” said he “who will have some?” He threw
+his cloak upon his left arm, took his gloves and the comfit plate in the same
+hand, placed the fingers of his right hand upon his beard, was saluted and
+followed by the forty-five who were waiting for him. Two paces from the
+door of the old room he turned to see why they followed him, and immediately
+received first a sword-thrust in the back, then innumerable stabs
+from sword and dagger. Seizing hold of some of his murderers he dragged
+them along with him, and fell near the king’s bed.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing this noise Cardinal De Guise broke up the council and rose:
+“Ah,” he cried, “they are killing my brother!” “Do not move, sir,”
+answered the marshal D’Aumont, drawing his sword, “the king has need
+of you!”</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment, the king half-opened the door of his room, and
+seeing the body gave orders for the pockets to be searched. Whilst they
+were carrying out this command the Balafré, uttering a long, deep, and husky
+sigh, died. The body was covered again with a gray cloak and with a cross
+of straw, and left lying there for some time exposed to the taunts and mockeries
+of the courtiers, who called him “the handsome king of Paris.” They
+were not content with insulting him by words alone. “A diamond heart,”
+someone says, “was taken from his finger by the sieur D’Entragues.” To
+prevent the members of the league procuring any relics of their leader, the
+dead body was burned, by order of M. de Richelieu, grand provost of France,
+and the ashes were thrown into the Loire.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13s"><a href="#endnote_13s">s</a></span> The cardinal De Guise and many
+other partisans of the house of Guise were arrested. The president of the
+Tiers État, and three other conspicuous Leaguers among the members of
+that body, were made state prisoners. The cardinal De Guise was murdered
+next day.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is said that when Henry III was certain that Guise had expired, he
+stepped from his room, sword in hand, and cried out: “We are no longer
+two! I am now king!”<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> then pushed with his foot the still quivering
+body. It was just sixteen years since Guise, at dawn of a fatal day, had
+struck with his foot another corpse!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[392]</span></p>
+
+<h3>DEATH OF CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI</h3>
+
+<p>Another famous death soon followed that of the Guises. The queen-mother
+had been violently affected by the catastrophe of December 23rd.
+Several days after, she visited the cardinal De Bourbon in the apartment
+whither he had retired. The cardinal broke forth in reproaches and accused
+Catherine of having caused the assassination of the Guises. This scene so
+disturbed the aged queen that her gout became worse; she was confined to
+her bed and never recovered. The 5th of January, 1589, at the age of sixty-one
+years, she joined her accomplice in the disaster of St. Bartholomew.
+The other accomplice, doubly an assassin, was not long in following his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>The death of this woman, who had figured so prominently in Christian
+affairs for thirty years, made but a feeble sound in the midst of the tempests
+that rose from the ashes of the Guises. The importance of Catherine had
+diminished greatly in the last few years: justly punished through the only
+source which could affect her, her love for Henry III, she had seen her power
+wane at the moment when she hoped to reign completely: neglected by her
+favourite son, half sacrificed to the favourites, at enmity with her son-in-law
+the Béarnais, she finally was without guidance; the race of Valois, which
+she had dreamed to place on all the thrones, being without issue, the Bourbons
+being her enemies, with the instinct of family, always found in a woman
+even the most corrupted, her hopes turned to the children of her eldest
+daughter; she thought to found a Lorraine dynasty; and only made herself
+the instrument and the puppet of the league. Her qualities as a ruler cannot
+be judged by the last years of her life: although morality and patriotism
+equally forbid the justification of this fatal woman, the historian must
+acknowledge that when it was possible to combine the policy of her family
+with the policy of state, she pursued two ideas which were beneficial to the
+destiny of France—the humiliation of the great, and resistance to the house
+of Austria. The end which she failed to attain by treachery and deceit
+might have been gained by the force and audacity of a genius more magnanimous:
+Richelieu was in this regard the happy inheritor of Catherine’s
+idea.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l6"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE SIEGE OF PARIS AND THE DEATH OF HENRY III</h3>
+
+<p>Heaven and earth rose against the massacre of Blois. It seemed a wilful
+playing into the hands of the Huguenots to remove the Catholic chief, and
+the pope looked on the deed not only as murder, but as heresy. The unruly
+capital burst into a cry of disobedience, and the Sorbonne formally withdrew
+the allegiance of the people from an unworthy king. The name of royalist
+was as fatal as that of Huguenot had been. The president Harlay, and sixty
+of the councillors, who bore the royal commission, were only saved from
+death by being taken to the Bastille. But in the midst of this general
+indignation, the states-general, and they alone, were, in appearance at least,
+unmoved. Occasionally, indeed, and even earnestly, they solicited the release
+of the prisoners. But they breathed not so much as a single remonstrance
+to the king against his enormous infringement of their sacred
+character and privileges in the persons of their colleagues. With an almost
+incredible abjectness they addressed themselves at once to the ordinary
+business of the session, and discussed with Henry, amendments in the law of
+treason, schemes for the admission of his officers to join in their deliberations,
+and plans for bringing to account all public defaulters. They presented
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[393]</span>to him, not indignant defiances, but humble descriptions of the
+sufferings of his people, and meek supplications for the redress of them;
+and continued, during a whole month after the death of the Princes of
+Lorraine, to prostrate themselves before the king, as in the presence, not of
+an assassin, but of a conqueror. The session then closed with the royal
+audience customary on such occasions; when, in the hope of propitiating his
+favour to the imprisoned deputies, they addressed him in a speech in which
+his royal virtues, and especially his <i>clemency</i>, were lavishly extolled. On
+the 16th January, 1589, they at last took their leave of their sovereign, and
+of each other: when “we parted,” says their great orator and memorialist,
+Bernard, “with tears in our eyes, bewailing what had passed, and looking
+forward with terror to what was yet to come; and observing that, in our
+separation, France had an evil augury that she herself was about to be torn
+in pieces.”</p>
+
+<p>The augury was but too well verified. The states-general of France
+never again assembled till they met ineffectually in the reign of Louis XIII,
+to be then finally adjourned till the eve of the French Revolution.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13w2"><a href="#endnote_13w">w</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all this, however, when the meeting at Blois was dissolved,
+the members spread the flame of disaffection through town and country.
+The duke of Mayenne, brother of the murdered Guise, was declared by
+the council of Sixteen, consisting of deputies from the sixteen quarters of
+Paris, lieutenant-general of the kingdom, till the states-general could be
+assembled. In short, the king was deserted by his people, and nothing was
+wanting but the formal sentence of his deposition. Henry of Navarre saw
+his inheritance endangered, and came to the rescue. An interview took
+place between the cousins—the most Christian king, and the most chivalrous
+Bourbon. It was not altogether regard for his own interests which moved
+the new ally. In so unsettled a nation as France then was, a forcible change
+of dynasty would have led to unending conflict. To save his country from
+perpetual civil war or total anarchy was the object of Henry’s efforts. His
+plans were bold and masterly. The few devoted adherents who still clung
+to their sovereign, from hereditary attachment, or from the poetic compassion
+which binds noble natures to a fallen race, accepted the guidance of the
+Huguenot chief. Mayenne was repulsed from Tours, and when men saw
+such measures of tenderness, as now distinguished the royal army, announced
+in the royal name, and such admirable military tactics displayed under the
+royal banner, the personal vices of the nominal monarch began to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Opposition was paralysed by the consciousness that the royal authority
+was now supported by conduct worthy of a king; and at the end of July, an
+army of forty thousand men, confident in their leader, and restored to the
+full feeling of loyalty to the throne, commenced the siege of Paris. Henry
+of Valois gazed on the hated battlements with delight. “Farewell, Paris,”
+he said; “from this time your towers and pinnacles shall offend my eyes no
+more. I will make it difficult to discover where your position was.” But
+Henry of Navarre was more wisely employed. He was superintending the
+placing of the troops, bringing up the guns, arranging the tents; and it was
+understood that the day of assault was fixed for the 2nd of August. Mayenne
+saw no chance of safety. His garrison was weak and dispirited; the
+populace, with its usual fickleness, was cowardly where it was not mad.</p>
+
+<p>But among the rabble there was a youth of twenty-two, who had been a
+Jacobin friar for some time, and had degraded the cowl by the wildest
+excesses, both of debauchery and blood. Every crime was sweet-smelling
+odour to Jacques Clément the monk. He wore a dagger which was displayed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[394]</span>with ferocious energy in every quarrel, and yet was fanatical in his religious
+beliefs, and carried the practices of superstition and idolatry to an almost
+insane extent. This was a sort of man who might be extremely useful in
+the distress to which the Catholic party was reduced. He was sent for
+by the duchess de Montpensier, sister of the duke of Guise, a woman so
+wicked that her conduct drives us into a charitable unbelief of its reality,
+who used such arguments and arts with the blinded, arrogant, sensual young
+fanatic, that he went forth on the 1st of August determined to repay his
+benefactress for her goodness and condescension in the way she herself had
+prescribed. Letters were furnished to him, which were obtained by false
+pretences from the president Harlay in the Bastille, and on presenting them
+he was admitted to the camp of the besiegers, and taken into the presence of
+the king. While Henry was reading the missive which Clément put into
+his hand, the Jacobin drew a knife from his sleeve, and stabbed him in his chair.
+It was not at once fatal. The king started up, and, drawing the weapon
+from his side, wounded his assailant in the face, thus mixing on the same
+blade the blood of the assassin and his victim. The attendants rushed forward
+and killed the murderer at once—a happy chance for his employer,
+for her name escaped the formal revelation which a trial would have produced.
+Henry was placed in his bed, and for a while hopes were entertained of his
+recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it. An undiscovered
+spring of goodness welled forth as his last hour drew nigh. He forgave his
+enemies, recommended himself to his friends, embraced the hero of Navarre,
+and thanked him for all his aid. He turned to the crowd in the apartment, and
+declared Henry his rightful and true successor, and added, “Dear cousin
+and brother-in-law, be sure of this, you will never be king of France unless
+you profess yourself a Catholic.” If the dignity and tenderness of a death-bed
+could have wiped out the vices and deficiencies of all his former years,
+Henry III might have been reckoned among the kings who have done honour
+to the crown. But the inflexible verdict of history must be delivered upon
+the course of a man’s life, and not on the expressions or aspirations of his last
+hours; and the last of the Valois must be pronounced a king without honesty
+or patriotism, and a man without courage or virtue.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13f6"><a href="#endnote_13f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Valois had given to France thirteen kings in the space of 261 years.
+They had assisted and contributed to the decline of old feudal France: they
+seemed at first during several reigns to institute a new order; then, incapable
+and weak, they let slip from their hands this great work, and disappeared
+after having plunged France into chaos.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13m4"><a href="#endnote_13m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> [Louis I of Bourbon, first prince of Condé (1530-1569), brother of Anthony, King of
+Navarre, and great-grandfather of the “Great Condé.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> It was this edict which ordered that the year should commence on the 1st of January,
+instead of, as heretofore, commencing at Easter.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> [He did not take the title of King of Navarre until after the death of his mother in 1572.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> [Martin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13l7"><a href="#endnote_13l">l</a></span> says: “Nothing definite can be affirmed as to the exact number of the victims:
+the <i>Martyrologe des réformés</i> places it at 30,000; M. de Thou thinks this figure somewhat exaggerated;
+the <i>Réveille-matin</i> speaks of no less than 100,000 dead; Capilupi speaks of 25,000; La
+Popelinière of more than 20,000; Papyre Masson, one of the panegyrists of the occasion, reduces
+the number to 10,000. The last figure is too low; about twenty thousand appears to be the most
+probable estimate.” This estimate of Martin’s, confessedly only conjectural, is perhaps a trifle
+conservative. Sully<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13j2"><a href="#endnote_13j">j</a></span> thought that 70,000 perished throughout France. Davila<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_13i"><a href="#endnote_13i">i</a></span> estimated the
+number killed in Paris at 10,000, over 500 of whom were nobles. This is manifestly overdrawn,
+when we consider that the massacre of the first night was for the most part confined to the
+north of the Seine. Possibly about three thousand may have perished in and about Paris and
+twenty-five thousand in the rest of France. But this, let it be repeated, is mere conjecture.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> [The Venetian despatches are regarded as among the most reliable historical sources.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> The following table shows the genealogy of the last kings of the house of Valois:</p>
+
+<p class="center">HOUSES OF ORLEANS AND ANGOULÊME</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/genealogy2.jpg" width="700" height="350" alt="Genealogical table">
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> [The title of Monsieur for the king’s brother next himself begins to be used from now on.
+But, according to Saint-Simon, it was not used regularly and constantly until the time of Gaston,
+brother of Louis XIII.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> [When he repeated the remark to his mother, she is said to have replied: “God grant
+you have not made yourself king of nothing.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[395]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-14.jpg" width="500" height="225" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV. HENRY OF NAVARRE, FIRST OF THE BOURBONS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>It is my wish that every peasant may have meat for dinner every
+day of the week, and a fowl in his pot on Sundays.—<span class="smcap">Henry IV.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>HENRY’S STRUGGLE FOR THE CROWN</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1589-1610 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Jacques Clément in killing Henry III, whom he found not Catholic
+enough, opened to a Huguenot the road to the throne. This was Henry,
+king of Navarre, to be known in future as Henry IV of France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14b1"><a href="#endnote_14b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Henry IV has been compared to Francis I. His face has, in fact, the
+same large outlines, the same sensual mouth and brilliant eye, the same smile
+full of an attraction that is sometimes deceptive, the same expression of
+countenance whose openness is not always that of sincerity. But we must
+not be misled. This quick, ardent eye sometimes looks within to depths
+unattainable to Francis I; and above these projecting eyebrows, a sign, as
+with the Valois, of quickness of perception, rises instead of the low forehead
+of Francis I the vast brow of genius. Though Henry too pushed voluptuousness
+to the point of license, he nevertheless had tenderness if not constancy
+of heart. Though his language has too much of the unstable levity with
+which his Gascon race is reproached, though the confinement of his youth in
+the most depraved of courts and later the infinite difficulties of his position
+changed the cordial spontaneity of his nature, he nevertheless has a reserve
+of true and strong feeling that Francis I never knew. Apparently selfish,
+he was able in reality to associate his interests and his glory with the idea of
+the welfare of France and the interest of humanity. Infinitely superior in
+essential things to the Valois and the Guises, he is their inferior in elegance,
+in external dignity. Compared with the other two Henrys he has the air of
+a soldier of fortune before princes, but he redeems this inferiority of manners
+by a singular charm; he attracts the imagination and the heart by an irresistible
+mixture of shrewdness and good nature, of tenderness and sharp raillery,
+of ardour and calculation, of gaiety and heroism, of authority and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[396]</span>comradeship of the soldier. After two centuries and a half he is still irresistible
+when we see him act and hear him speak in history, when we follow
+him almost day by day in the truly unique monument of his prodigious correspondence.
+The most severe, whether historians or moralists, after many
+and too often deserved reproaches, almost always end, if they are French, by
+extending their hands to the most French of the kings of France.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p396.jpg" width="300" height="525" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Henry IV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>We shall witness the stubborn struggle in which he fought for his throne;
+after the struggle we shall see what his work was as re-organiser of domestic
+peace and founder of foreign
+politics. The immediate
+effects of the death of the last
+Valois in the rebellious capital
+and in the besieging army
+announced only too forcibly
+to the first of the Bourbons
+the immense tasks and the immense
+perils that confronted
+him. The news of the death
+of Henry III was spread in
+Paris after the morning of
+the 2nd of August; all doubts
+were dissipated when the
+duchesses de Nemours and de
+Montpensier were seen driving
+through the city in their
+coaches and crying out on all
+the squares: “Good news, my
+friends—good news! The
+tyrant is dead! There is no
+more a Henry of Valois in
+France!” The mother of the
+Guises, mad with joy and
+vengeance, mounted the steps
+of the high altar of the church
+of the Cordeliers to harangue
+the crowd. Her daughter
+distributed everywhere scarfs
+of green, the colour of hope
+and joy, instead of black
+scarfs. In a few moments the
+multitude passed from consternation
+to frenzy. There
+was nothing but “laughter
+and singing,” tables set in the
+streets, feasts in the open air.
+In the evening bonfires burned
+on all the squares. Everywhere
+resounded the praises
+of the “new martyr” who had given his life for the good of the people.
+The blessed Jacques Clément was honoured in the pulpits, sung in the streets,
+invoked as a saint. Images of him, painted and sculptured, were set in the
+place of honour in private houses, in public places, in churches, and even on
+the altars! His old mother was brought to Paris, loaded with presents and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[397]</span>shown to the people “as a wonder,” who had borne in her bosom the liberator
+of the church.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14c1"><a href="#endnote_14c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1589-1590 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>When the intelligence reached Rome, the rejoicings were still more revolting.
+Sixtus pronounced the assassin’s praises in full consistory, and compared
+his achievement in usefulness and self-sacrifice to the incarnation and
+crucifixion. In Germany and England the deed was differently viewed.
+Elizabeth got ready troops to be landed in Normandy in aid of the new king.
+Lutherans and Swiss came pouring into France. Yet Henry’s position was
+dangerous and undefined. The nobles who commanded his armies were
+Catholics as zealous as the enemy. Before the corpse of the late king was
+cold, they proposed to his successor a retraction of his Huguenot errors, and
+conformity to the church. “You don’t know what you ask,” replied Henry.
+“You require a change which would argue no sincerity either in one faith or
+the other. If you think to terrify me to so sudden an alteration, you know
+neither my courage nor my conscience.” “Sire,” cried the gallant Givry,
+and kneeled at his feet, “you are the true king of the brave, and none but a
+coward would desert you.”</p>
+
+<p>The others, however, hung back. The spirit and principles of the league
+remained unbroken. The cardinal De Bourbon was even proclaimed by
+Mayenne under the name of Charles X. All the victories which made
+Henry’s name distinguished had been gained over Catholic foes. If full
+powers were conveyed to him, would his policy of depressing the leaguers
+not be continued? Henry came to an agreement. He consented to accept
+a conditional allegiance, binding himself to study the doctrines of the Catholic
+faith; to summon a states-general at Tours; to restore to the churches the
+goods of which they had been despoiled; and to limit the privileges of
+the reformers to the places in which they at present existed. These things
+were all to be done within six months. In reliance on these terms, he was
+recognised sole sovereign of France, and entitled to the obedience of all.</p>
+
+<p>But Paris still resisted, and riots and massacres were continually renewed
+under pretence of religious fears, till Mayenne himself was glad to leave that
+city of contention and misrule, and take the field against the Man of Béarn, as
+he was insultingly called. The quality and composition of the contending
+forces had greatly changed. Mayenne, at the head of preponderating
+numbers, besieged Henry in Arques, and was only repelled by the union,
+which his great rival displayed, of the courage of despair and the calmness of
+military skill. With a mixed army of English, French, Germans, and Swiss,
+he found it difficult to keep them together, as his purse was low, and the diversity
+of tongues and nations prevented the unity of the force. To fight was
+the only way to combine those discordant elements; and on the 13th of
+March, 1590, the battle of Ivry took place.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14d1"><a href="#endnote_14d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Ivry</i></h4>
+
+<p>The plain on which the king desired to offer battle to the leaguers extends
+to the west of the river Eure, between Anet and Ivry; neither bank, hedge,
+nor any natural obstacle intersects it, but in the middle the ground slopes
+almost imperceptibly, so that the royal army, protected on the one side by the
+village of St. André, and on the other by that of Turcanville, could not be
+reached by the enemy’s artillery. Henry IV, having seen to the rest and
+refreshment of his forces, occupied this position on Tuesday, March 13th;
+his cavalry, which was almost entirely composed of nobles, and upon which
+he consequently placed most reliance as being more dependable in point of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[398]</span>honour, he divided into seven divisions, each of them supported by two
+regiments of infantry. Marshal D’Aumont, the duke de Montpensier, the
+grand-prior assisted by Givry, the baron de Biron, the king, the marshal De
+Biron, and Schomberg, commandant of the <i>reiters</i> (German troopers), were
+at the head of the seven divisions.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the army was taking up its position, it was joined successively by
+Duplessis, De Muy, La Trémouille, Humières, and Rosny, who, with two or
+three hundred horse, came from Poitou, Picardy, and the Île-de-France to
+take part in this much desired engagement. The last comers were nearly all
+Huguenots; up to now but very few had been numbered among the army.</p>
+
+<p>The duke of Mayenne did not suppose that Henry wished to await him,
+but flattered himself he would overtake him in crossing some river in his
+retreat upon Lower Normandy, so hurried on his march in expectation of this,
+not without exposing his own forces to that disorder in which he expected
+to find the enemy. But on reaching the plain of Ivry, on the afternoon of
+March 13th, he beheld before him the royalists awaiting him, drawn up in
+order of battle with the advantage of position. He slackened his march to
+restore order to his forces, and did not come within range of the enemy
+until evening, when it was too late to contemplate beginning hostilities.
+The weather was very unfavourable, and the soldiers of the league, wearied
+by the cold rain they had experienced throughout their march, were forced
+to sleep in the open, only a few officers succeeding in pitching their tents,
+whilst the royalists established themselves for the night in the villages of St.
+André and Turcanville.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of Wednesday, March 14th, the royal army occupied the
+same position as on the previous day. The two armies were not ranged in
+order of battle until ten o’clock. D’Aubigné<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14e1"><a href="#endnote_14e">e</a></span> relates that whilst putting
+on his helmet Henry addressed these words to his companions-in-arms:
+“My friends, God is for us! Behold his enemies and our own! Behold your
+king! At the enemy! If your ensigns fail you, rally round my white
+feather. You will find it in the path that leads to victory and honour!”
+These words were received with a universal cry of “God save the king!”
+and the battle began.</p>
+
+<p>The royalist artillery directed their fire full upon the leaguers, who were
+exposed upon the rising ground; that of the league, on the contrary, was
+unable to reach the royalists, sheltered as they were in their hollow. Count
+Egmont, stationed at the extreme right of Mayenne’s army, would not wait
+for a third discharge from this artillery, and fell furiously upon the light
+cavalry of the grand-prior, which was opposite him and which he overthrew.
+With the same impetuosity he came up to the cannon of the king, which had
+cut up his company. “Friends,” cried he, “I will show you how the weapons
+of cowards and heretics should be served,” and, turning his horse at the
+same moment, he backed it up against the royalist guns. Not one of his
+warriors but wished he could boast of having done as much. They lost not
+only their time in this extraordinary manœuvre, but all Egmont’s cavalry
+fell into disorder. No longer carried forward by that impetus which constituted
+its strength, it was attacked simultaneously by Marshal d’Aumont, the
+baron de Biron, the grand-prior, and Givry. Egmont and his chief officers
+were killed, all his followers routed and cut to pieces.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/fp5.jpg" width="650" height="460" alt="">
+<p class="caption">THE ENTRANCE OF HENRY IV INTO FRANCE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In another part of the line the duke of Brunswick, who led the leaguers’
+reiters, was also killed. These reiters were accustomed after each charge to
+pass through gaps left for the purpose between each battalion to form again
+behind the line; but the viscount de Tavannes, to whom Mayenne had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[399]</span>intrusted the drawing up of his army in battle array, was so short-sighted
+that he mistook the interval that should be left between the corps, so that
+there was not sufficient space left for this manœuvre. Thus the reiters returning
+from the charge, bore down upon the duke of Mayenne’s squadron of
+lancers, and threw it into disorder. The duke was forced to repulse them
+at the point of the lance, for there was no room to manœuvre his horses, and
+whilst striving in vain to restore order, he was violently charged by the
+king, who perceived his predicament; he was routed and forced to fly to
+the woods. Soon all the cavalry of the league shared the same disastrous
+fate, the battalions of infantry, hitherto covered by the cavalry, now found
+themselves alone in the middle of the plain, and attacked on all sides by the
+king’s forces.</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss, though as yet not routed, held up their arms in token of
+surrender, and were immediately given quarter by the marshal de Biron;
+the lansquenets, encouraged by this example, and at the same time weakened
+by this defection, also held up their arms, declaring that they surrendered.
+But Henry and his soldiers held them in particular abhorrence. Several of
+them had been already concerned in the treachery of Arques, where they
+had feigned to give themselves up; several, engaged by the Protestant
+princes to reinforce the royal army, had gone over to the enemy; the king
+declared that they had transgressed against martial honour, and that he
+would give them no quarter. The massacre lasted a whole hour, but whilst
+they were being killed without resistance, the king cried, “Spare the French
+and put the foreigners to the sword!” And, as a fact, after the <i>mêlée</i> no
+more French were killed.</p>
+
+<p>The fugitives of the league sought refuge, some in Chartres, some at
+Mantes. The bridge of Ivry, by which they made their escape, gave way,
+and the king’s cavalry, in order to pursue them, was forced to go by a longer
+route and to cross the Eure at Anet. The losses of the army of the league
+were nevertheless very considerable. Davila<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14f"><a href="#endnote_14f">f</a></span> reckons them at six thousand
+men; D’Aubigné,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14e2"><a href="#endnote_14e">e</a></span> calculating the armies as being weaker by one-half than
+his estimate, also reduces the loss of the leaguers by the same amount,
+namely one-half. Since the beginning of the civil wars no such brilliant victory
+had yet been won. Henry IV, victor at Coutras, victor at Arques,
+victor at Ivry, seemed to surpass his rivals both in military ability and good
+fortune, and the people rejoiced as much in his good luck as in his skill.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14g1"><a href="#endnote_14g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After this a new power displayed itself, which had never played a part
+in the quarrels of a nation before. It was the brilliancy of the sayings
+of the new king, which spread all through France, the land of all others in
+Europe where a brilliant saying has most weight. After the combat of
+Arques, where he had been foremost in the attack, he wrote to his friend
+the duke de Crillon, “Hang yourself, brave Crillon; we have fought at
+Arques, and you weren’t there.” At supper, on the night before the battle
+of Ivry, he had spoken harshly to an old German of the name of Schomberg;
+and while he was marshalling the troops before the charge, he stopped his
+horse. “Colonel,” he said, “we have work before us, and it may chance I
+don’t survive; but I must not carry with me the honour of a gentleman like
+you. I beg your pardon for what I said last night, and declare you a brave
+and honourable man.” He embraced the colonel. “Ah! sire,” said the German
+in his broken language, “you kill me with your words, for now there
+is nothing for it but to die in your defence.” Schomberg did so. He rode
+up to the rescue of the king in the hottest of the fight, and fell before
+Henry’s eyes.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14d2"><a href="#endnote_14d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[400]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Duke of Parma and the Spaniards</i></h4>
+
+<p>The change that came over public opinion after the battle of Ivry raised
+the hopes of the royalists. Henry was no longer a contestant but the logical
+master of the realm. This feeling of the people caused Henry to move but
+half-heartedly against Paris where the strength of his opponents lay. He
+besieged the city, but he did not forget that the inhabitants were his own
+people. He permitted Mayenne to send out the useless people, said to number
+some six thousand.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> Henry fed them, and soothed their fears. Some peasants
+were brought before him for having introduced provisions into the
+beleaguered town, and expected to be hanged for aiding the rebels. He gave
+them all the money he had in his purse. “The Man of Béarn is poor,” he
+said; “if he were richer, he would give you more.”</p>
+
+<p>Compared to these actions and words of Henry, the conduct of his
+opponents was not only unchivalrous but unpopular. Divisions raged high
+among the leaders of the league. Mayenne wished to be king; the duke
+of Lorraine wished his son to be king; and when Henry of Guise, the son of
+Balafré, escaped from his prison of Tours, and joined the garrison of Paris,
+he also wished to be king. The infanta, or daughter of Spain, wished to be
+queen; and it did not need half the quickness which is always found in the
+French to perceive that, compared with any or all of his competitors, the
+man of the white plume and the generous spirit was the fittest occupant of
+the throne.</p>
+
+<p>But a rigorous pontiff filled the Roman chair. Sixtus V would hear of
+no accommodation with a heretic, and Henry would hear of no recantation
+when his motives might be suspected. “Master first, disciple afterwards,”
+was his motto, and the war went on. The Sixteen, as the sections of Paris
+called themselves, were in the pay of Spain. Availing themselves of the
+absence of Mayenne, they encouraged the brutal populace to break out into
+a riot; they tore the more moderate of the judges from their seats and hung
+them, with their president, above the doorway of the court. Mayenne came
+back. Great was his fear of Henry, but greater his wrath against the
+Sixteen. He hanged four of them from lamp-posts in the street, and restored
+the ordinary municipal officers to their authority. But regular authority dislikes
+rebellion, and the now pacified city looked kindly on the legitimate heir.</p>
+
+<p>Other opponents were driven over to his side by the injudicious aid his
+enemies received. Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, was the most famous
+general of the time, and had been chosen to bring the legions of Spain and
+the chains of the Inquisition over to France in the year of the Armada, 1588.
+He was now selected to head the same legions to support the fantastic claim
+of his master’s daughter. Henry was driven to extremities, for Alessandro
+was unluckily the most cautious of commanders, and always refused a battle.
+The daring gallantry of the royalists, with Henry at their head, fell back
+like sparkles of foam before the imperturbable solidity of the Spanish lines.
+They would not fight—they would not retreat—they solemnly performed
+the work assigned to them, the protection of a border or the relief of a town,
+but they would do nothing more. Alessandro of Parma had nothing of the
+hero in him except his courage, and trusted nothing to chance. Against
+policy like this the Man of Béarn had no defence. His allies were not united
+in their desires. The English wished to drive the Spaniards from the shores
+of Brittany and Normandy, where they would have been dangerous neighbours
+to Elizabeth; Henry wished to drive them from the middle of France
+and send them to the shore, where they could do least harm to himself. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[401]</span>could raise no taxes by the legal machinery of parliament and council, and
+would not lay hard contributions on the districts he held.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1590-1593 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>He was the poorest of gentlemen, this most lovable of kings; and hints
+are given that his majesty’s apparel was not altogether free from darns, or
+his boots from holes in the leather. Nothing kept its gloss but the plume
+of white feathers which swayed above his head, and his bright sword and
+imperturbable good-humour.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14d3"><a href="#endnote_14d">d</a></span> But even this left him as he faced the almost
+certain defeat which a battle would mean. In August he wrote to Gabrielle
+d’Estrées: “The issue is with God. If I lose the battle thou wilt never see
+me again, for I am not one to flee nor to retreat.”</p>
+
+<p>But Parma’s masterly generalship was more than a match for the king’s
+chivalric courage. He relieved Paris after it had been reduced to the most
+awful straits. Two hundred thousand are said to have perished of hunger
+and disease. There were rumours that mothers devoured their own children;
+the Protestants had made merry over the fact that the one cheap thing in
+Paris was sermons; but such fanaticism was yet bound to conquer the king.
+The relief of Paris was a victory for the Spanish party which was growing
+stronger in the capital. In 1592 the same story was repeated at Rouen.
+Once more Parma outmanœuvred the king. But a wound in the hand
+received before Candebec was destined to prove fatal to the great Italian, and
+the conqueror of Antwerp withdrew to the Netherlands, and, then turning
+back, died in the harness at Arras, December 3rd, 1592.</p>
+
+<p>Henry’s fortunes revived with the fall of this redoubtable adversary.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span>
+He gathered all his forces for a last attempt upon Paris, and his enemies as
+usual played into his hands. Philip of Spain, who had united all classes and
+creeds of Englishmen in favour of Elizabeth by his insolent Armada, now
+was the creator of French union by his domineering conduct in France.
+Mayenne summoned a states-general at his request, and Philip there in no
+courteous terms stated his royal will; it was very short and very decisive—they
+were to accept his daughter as queen, that was all. A compromise
+was attempted; they would declare the duke of Guise king, and he should
+marry the infanta. Philip refused; his daughter should be queen in her
+own right, and then would marry Guise. Mayenne, who saw, whether it
+was king or queen, his pretensions were at an end, procured a resolution of
+the parliament of Paris, that “any sentence, decree, or declaration contrary
+to the Salic law, should be void and of non-effect.” Whatever strengthened
+the Salic law and the direct succession was a vote on the side of Henry of
+Navarre.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14d4"><a href="#endnote_14d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Henry IV and the League</i></h4>
+
+<p>The league was now divided into two parties, the Spanish League and
+the French League, who conspired incessantly, sometimes together, sometimes
+against one another, to promote their personal interests. But meantime
+the great national instinct was gradually winning France over to
+Henry’s cause; men’s eyes turned to him as the only one able to put an end
+to war at home and abroad, and to bring about national unity. The burning
+question of the day was, would Henry turn Catholic? Rumours were rife;
+the question was openly discussed. Such being the case, it was only to be
+expected that Henry would boldly face the question himself and lose no time
+in finding an answer.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1593-1594 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>And this he found most puzzling, notwithstanding his broad and independent
+mind. It is M. Guizot’s opinion that Henry’s religious creed was
+not based on mature or deep conviction, but was rather the result of first
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_402">[402]</span>claims of his having been born in the reformed faith; and that it was a feeling
+of patriotism, a desire to save France from all the horrors of civil and
+religious wars, that decided him to abjure his religion. However that may
+be, he did so decide, and on the 16th of May, 1593, announced to his council
+his intention of becoming a Catholic. On July 15th, 1593, he assembled a
+conference of Catholic and Protestant divines at Mantes, and ten days after,
+on Sunday, July 25th, he solemnly abjured his Protestant creed at the
+church of St. Denis. Here then, says M. Guizot, was religious peace, a prelude
+to political reconciliation between the monarch and the great majority
+of his subjects. And now the Catholic Henry was crowned king of France,<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>
+the 27th of February, 1594.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>France has known few periods which can be compared to this time of
+Henry IV; few periods when she has been nearer to ruin and yet has raised
+herself from a state of terrible disturbance to one of glorious peace. A
+kingdom only just relieved from the exhaustion of prolonged strife, and
+threatened with downfall by the new religious doctrines; feuds which stir
+up struggles whose annals are stained by murder, and which are destined to
+end in a huge massacre; a crown rendered insecure by the claims of rival
+houses, and in turn making use of criminal measures as a means of vengeance
+or finding in them its own punishment; a prince whose birth seems
+to call him to the throne while his beliefs seem likely to deprive him of it
+forever; poverty, famine, the growing claims of the foreigner whose pretensions
+increase in proportion to the misfortunes of France; and in the midst
+of all these vicissitudes a nation which does not know where to look for
+help, nor in whose hands to trust its fate—what scenes! what years! what
+memories full of dark heroic grandeur!</p>
+
+<p>The importance of contemporary events and the sombre majesty which
+seems to preside over all the actions of the league, make it difficult to pass
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_403">[403]</span>judgment on it. It presents, both as regards things and men, such striking
+contrasts, it has passed through so many different phases, and has included
+under one name so many motives entirely opposed to one another, that it
+would be impossible to criticise it from only one point of view. And yet
+what contrary opinions it has elicited! Some have praised, while others
+have condemned everything connected with it. It has been handed down
+as entirely faultless or utterly blameworthy.</p>
+
+<p>But through all this confusion one thing is clear, and sums up the whole
+matter—namely, that the conversion of Henry IV was the triumph of the
+league and the ruin of its members. The law of France was not entirely
+on the side of Henry IV nor wholly in favour of his adversaries; it was
+divided. The accession of the king of Navarre placed in opposition two
+principles which had hitherto been united: hereditary monarchy, whose
+claims this prince represented; and the national religion, whose doctrines he
+did not profess. Can it be denied, unless we bring to bear on the examination
+of this period ideas which belong to a different age, that the union of monarchy
+and Catholicism had become a part of the constitution just as monarchy
+itself had? And had not the country some right to insist on the maintenance
+of this union, which was one of the first laws imposed on the sovereign?
+One thing remains certain, and that is that after the league this union was
+re-established, and peace along with it; that Henry IV, when he became
+king, recognised its existence by promising to be instructed in the faith;
+that, with rare exceptions, the best of the royalists, the bishops, those hundred
+bishops who so firmly supported him, the chief generals of his army, and his
+parliaments, continually referred to and called upon the king to remember
+this promise, either in the hope of attracting to him the members of the
+league, or of inducing him to embrace their religion; in short that France,
+exhausted, a prey to the horrors of civil war, and in danger of the Spanish
+yoke, did not rally round Henry IV till after his abjuration, but, that
+abjuration once pronounced, she unanimously declared in his favour.</p>
+
+<p>Who can be astonished at this? Who could fail to understand that a
+nation accustomed to mingle its faith and its history, finding amongst its
+Catholic princes its greatest kings, and knowing nothing of the Protestants
+but the unhappy dissensions which were the result of persecution on
+the one side and revenge on the other, must hate the idea of seeing on the
+throne, which was the centre to which its dearest traditions clung, a representative
+of that belief which was destroying those very traditions? Was
+the promise of Henry IV to respect the Catholic religion a sufficient guarantee
+at that time, when party strife ran so high, when political law was on
+all sides confounded with religious law and had everywhere followed the
+vicissitudes of the latter, and when an instance of a king professing a different
+religion from that of the nation he ruled was unknown? And, as if to
+emphasise the apprehensions of the leaguers, did not England furnish them
+with an example of a nation which had changed its religion three times to
+suit the pleasure of three successive monarchs? This resolution to maintain
+the Catholic religion on the throne of St. Louis, regardless of all
+political considerations, was not the predominant idea of one party only: the
+whole of France was strongly imbued with it.</p>
+
+<p>The league was responsible for more than this. How can we forget that
+besides inculcating the principle which it succeeded in rendering triumphant,
+the league was the moving spirit of many excesses, that it abolished beliefs, or
+used them as means to an end, as best suited its purpose; that it was responsible
+for the frenzied actions of the famous faction known as the Sixteen, of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_404">[404]</span>which the very name is sufficient; that it appealed in turn to revolutionary
+and tyrannical theories; that it menaced the monarchy even before it had
+been threatened by the reform party; and that the result of this violent
+party feeling was to place before the nation the alternative that France must
+either have a Catholic king who was not legitimate or a legitimate king who
+was not a Catholic?</p>
+
+<p>Of course the union of the two principles which constituted the monarchy
+found partisans and opponents in both camps. In both also there were
+many of those turbulent spirits who war against peace, who elevate hatred
+into a duty, and encourage strife on principle. Some of these exaggerated
+the rights of the king, others those of the pope; though they compromised the
+former by their violence, and disavowed their support of the latter by rising
+in rebellion when the king and the pope were reconciled to each other. In
+both camps also, wise and moderate men with a true understanding of religion
+and of France were advancing by different paths towards the same goal.
+Jeannin, Villeroi, and perhaps at certain moments the duke of Mayenne, were
+approaching the same goal as Luxemburg, the duke of Nevers, the bishop of
+Paris and the archbishop of Bourges. But the royalists had the good fortune
+to possess as their leader a prince who, personifying one of the two great
+principles, was soon to submit to the other; whilst the members of the league,
+divided against themselves, having no recognised head, in revolt against
+monarchic authority and yet having no special right to be considered as the
+representatives of the Catholic religion, lost ground by the want of consistency
+in their claims.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14h1"><a href="#endnote_14h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The extravagant enthusiasm of the league had evaporated; in part it
+had been reasoned down by the mild and rational philosophy promulgated in
+the <i>Essays</i> of Montaigne,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14i"><a href="#endnote_14i">i</a></span> and in part scouted by the poignant ridicule of
+the <i>Satire Ménippée</i>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14j"><a href="#endnote_14j">j</a></span> These are the two chief literary works of the epoch—the
+former sufficiently known to every reader, the latter one of the finest
+specimens of political satire to be found in any language. It proved to the
+leaguers what Hudibras proved to the English Puritans—it exposed the
+absurdity and hidden selfishness of fanaticism, and showed that ridicule might
+be made a more effectual weapon than the sword.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14k1"><a href="#endnote_14k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Henry, in his negotiations with the clergy, had ignored the ultramontanes,
+who leaned on Spain, but dealt with the patriotic national clergy.
+Whether Henry said that Paris was worth a mass or not,—and the saying
+was in accord with his wit and his sincerity,—he had left off conversion
+until he could deal with effect directly with the people, and not play over
+into the hands of the high Catholic party. France was ready for the act.
+By the end of 1593 the most of the kingdom had declared for Henry; the
+centres which had been in opposition, Meaux, Orleans, and Bourges, and
+finally Lyons gave in, and in the winter of 1594 he was crowned at Chartres,—Rheims
+not having yet declared for him. The papal absolution had not
+yet arrived and the higher clergy was mostly hostile still. But in March
+Paris opened its gates and Henry went to mass at Notre Dame amid the
+riotous joy of the citizens.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Opposition of the Pope and Philip II</i></h4>
+
+<p>The only two powers who now delayed the recognition of the king were
+the pope and Philip. The Catholic Henry availed himself of the Pragmatic
+which had conveyed the patronage of abbeys and bishoprics to the crown,
+and turned the tables on the holy father by employing the honours of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_405">[405]</span>church in pacifying the state. If a zealous leaguer still held back, hesitating
+to believe the sincerity of the conversion, he was convinced of the
+Catholicism of the most Christian king by the bestowal of the revenues of
+a vacant stall or rich deanery. Villars Brancas, a zealous papist and gallant
+soldier, who was governor of Rouen against the king, never gave credit to
+Henry’s attachment to the church till he was presented with two or three
+abbacies for his own enjoyment. Rouen then opened its gates, and the
+military abbot did suit and service to his orthodox and discriminating
+patron. All the leaders were softened by the same arts, and at last Guise
+and Montmorency were admitted into favour. Guise, a disappointed
+opponent, was made governor of Provence; and Montmorency, a discontented
+supporter, received the constable’s staff. Hatred, doubt, and
+bitterness of course lay for a long time in the hearts of the fanatical and
+ambitious. Clement VIII, the fifth pope who within four years had sat on
+the Roman throne, had not pronounced the absolution of Henry’s previous
+unbelief, and a youth, a pupil of the Jesuits, imbued with their principles,
+if not incited in this instance by their advice, attempted the murder of the
+king. His knife slipped, and only inflicted a trifling wound; but the whole
+nation was awake to the indignity of the action. The university and parliament
+pronounced against the Jesuits, and they were ordered from the soil
+of France. Henry confessed the step was necessary, but it was not legal,
+and in a few years he revoked the sentence of banishment, and allowed the
+society to return.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14d5"><a href="#endnote_14d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1594-1598 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>When the papal absolution came it was the sign of the end of the league,
+which collapsed when Mayenne made his peace early in 1596. The only
+revenge which the king allowed himself being, Sully<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14p1"><a href="#endnote_14p">p</a></span> tells us, to lead him on
+a hot, tiresome tramp around the park of Soisson, which the gouty Mayenne
+must acquiesce in without grimace.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meantime Philip II refused to recognise the king of France under any
+other title than that of Prince of Béarn, and in other ways also showed his
+hostility. So in January, 1595, Henry formally declared war against Spain
+and a conflict began which lasted for three years. It is not worth while to
+follow step by step this monotonous conflict, pregnant with facts which had
+their importance for contemporaries but which are not worthy of an historical
+resurrection.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14l1"><a href="#endnote_14l">l</a></span> Several battles were fought, several towns submitted;
+Amiens surrendered in September, 1597, after a long siege, and with the
+fall of Amiens fell all the knights who had been raising their heads throughout
+France. The Peace of Vervins was signed May 2nd, 1598, four months
+before the death of Philip II. So the peace was made; and in it the aged
+sixteenth century seems to sink to rest. It closed the wounds of all that
+strife of three generations which began with the Reformation as a group
+of purely religious wars, and, after dreary epochs of civil contest, came to
+an end in which nothing was said as to matters of faith, an end heralded by
+the great Edict of Toleration.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14m"><a href="#endnote_14m">m</a></span> A month previous to the signing of the
+treaty of peace Henry had signed and published the Edict of Nantes, defined
+by M. Guizot<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14l2"><a href="#endnote_14l">l</a></span> as his treaty of peace with the Protestant malcontents.
+Hitherto there had never been anything but truces or armed neutrality.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE EDICT OF NANTES</h3>
+
+<p>The Edict of Nantes, in common with almost all measures which have
+been taken to redress grievances in times of disturbance, consisted of two
+distinct parts: one of temporary value and intended to meet the special
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_406">[406]</span>circumstances of the case, the other calculated to endure, and dictated by
+fixed principles. Much has been said about the excessive privileges granted
+by the Edict of Nantes to the Huguenots. This special organisation, giving
+them quite a peculiar position in the state; those two hundred towns, where
+they were to be secure from interference, and which were placed for a time
+in their hands; those places, strong enough to endure a siege and against
+which the whole of the royal forces were no more than adequate, given up
+to them—these, as Sully declared, were concessions quite incompatible with
+the security of any government, and when Cardinal Richelieu, after two
+civil wars, cut down these privileges without interfering with the Protestant
+religion, it became evident that they were not at all necessary to insure
+liberty of conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The measures which did insure that liberty formed the very basis of the
+Edict of Nantes. They secured to the Huguenots the free practice of the reformed
+religion throughout the greater part of the kingdom, excepting certain
+towns belonging to the league, where the Calvinists had realised that
+it was better not to settle. They provided that Protestants should enjoy
+the same civil rights as Catholics, and the very law for depriving people of
+hereditary rights on account of religious opinions, which was to be formally
+promulgated in England against the Catholics, was as formally suspended
+in France with regard to the Protestants. Lastly, not to mention the less
+important clauses, a chamber was created in parliament called the chamber
+of the Edict, an allowance was granted to the Protestants for their ministers
+and their schools, and they were admitted to the dignities and offices of
+state.</p>
+
+<p>The true spirit of the Edict of Nantes, temporarily obscured by the
+granting of the concessions which it enumerated, is contained in these latter
+clauses which granted toleration to the Protestants while depriving the
+Reformation movement of any political character whatever. At a time when
+sovereigns and people were in the habit of shielding their ambition and
+their crimes under the name of religion, Henry IV consistently tried,
+in his relations with foreign powers, as well as in his own kingdom, to
+separate the two orders, and to maintain civil unity in the midst of religious
+dissension; civil unity being in his eyes not only a pledge of peace, but the
+presage of a still higher unity.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this tolerance granted to the Protestants, there is also an evident
+desire to encourage where it was possible a reconciliation with the church,
+and to put an end simultaneously to persecutions and to religious differences.
+He had seen that persecution, far from destroying opposition, only tended to
+excite it, and that the persecution itself, by a sort of reaction, tended to become
+more virulent. He expressed this with striking eloquence in the parliament
+of Paris, saying: “After St. Bartholomew four of us who were playing with
+dice at a table saw drops of blood appear there, and finding that after they
+had been wiped away twice they returned a third time I said I would play
+no more; and that it was a bad omen against those who had shed it; M. de
+Guise was one of the party.” He had said elsewhere: “It is a clear proof
+of unreasonable excitement to begin the work of conversion by subversion,
+of instruction by destruction, by extermination, and by war, when one ought
+to begin by fraternity, admonition, and gentleness.” Whilst granting these
+liberties to the Protestants, whilst further developing the significance of the
+Edict by ordering it to be enforced in Béarn and in the places where Catholics
+were in a minority, whilst he instanced his own example in order to protect
+the latter from the harshness of Protestant rulers, Henry turned his attention
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_407">[407]</span>to the church; strove to satisfy her claims, to secure her liberty, and by so
+doing to insure her ascendency. “I know,” he said to the clerical deputies in
+1598, “that religion and justice are the pillars and the foundation of this
+kingdom, whose preservation depends on justice and piety; and where these
+do not exist I wish to establish them, but little by little, as I wish to do
+everything. I will, God helping me, act in such a way that the church will
+be in as good a state as she was a hundred years ago. I hope to satisfy you
+and my own conscience.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14h2"><a href="#endnote_14h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>REORGANISATION OF FRANCE WITH THE AID OF SULLY</h3>
+
+<p>In 1598 Henry IV had driven out the foreigner, united Catholic and
+Protestant, and finally established peace in his domestic and in his foreign
+relations. It was now necessary to heal France from all the blows she had
+received. “I have hardly a horse on which I could fight,” wrote Henry in
+1596: “my doublets have holes at the elbows and my pot is often empty.”
+The country was in a like condition. A contemporary estimated that, since
+1580, 800,000 persons had perished by wars and massacres, that nine cities
+had been razed, 250 villages burned, 128,000 houses destroyed. And since
+the period preceding the league, what fresh ruin! Workmen without work,
+commerce interrupted, agriculture ruined, brigandage everywhere—that
+was the condition from which Henry must raise France. The nobility had
+proposed to him a means to get out of this distress; they offered him all the
+money necessary for the government and the maintenance of the army on
+the sole condition of a decree “that those who held governments by appointment
+might hold them as their property upon acknowledging them to be
+from the crown by simple liege homage, a thing that was formerly practised.”
+This thing formerly practised was precisely what royalty had incessantly been
+destroying piece by piece for two centuries, and Henry IV was less disposed
+than any of his predecessors to restore feudalism. On the contrary, it was by
+withdrawing France from the hands of these “tyrants” in order to govern
+it himself that he undertook to regenerate it.</p>
+
+<p>Henry had already found the man who was to aid him in this work which
+was more difficult than that of the battle-field; a man of strong good sense,
+intrepid heart, and withal a wise mind, the Protestant Maximilian de Béthune,
+later duke of Sully. Born at the château of Rosny, near Mantes, in 1560, he
+was seven years younger than the king. At the time of St. Bartholomew
+he was studying at Paris. He attached himself to the king of Navarre and
+followed him in all his adventures and his battles, showing himself as brave
+as any. He was often wounded, for example at Ivry, whence he was borne
+apparently dying, when the king met him and “embraced him with both
+arms” as “a brave soldier, a true French knight.” Not a knight, however,
+after the paladins of romance, for though he attended well to the affairs of
+his master, he did not forget his own. He married a rich heiress, a Courtenay.
+He did not disdain the profits of war, the pillage of cities or the ransom
+of captives, nor even the profits of business; he bought horses at a low
+price in Germany and sold them in Gascony for a high price. Increasing
+his fortune in every honest fashion, he established order in his own house as he
+did in the public finances. But, devoted to the prince and to the state, this
+good manager cut down his forest of Rosny to take the proceeds to Henry
+when the latter was at the end of his resources; and the zealous Protestant
+advised the king to end the war by becoming a Catholic. Sully was neither
+a Colbert nor a Bayard; he had, however, some of the qualities of both.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14n1"><a href="#endnote_14n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_408">[408]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sully introduced into the government the energy of a soldier, and into the
+prince’s household the same economy and punctuality as prevailed in his own.
+Having become superintendent of finances, and having assumed the supreme
+direction of this department, he laid the traditions of method and of that
+perfect efficiency which cannot exist without it. He performed a very important,
+very difficult, but not very brilliant work. He formed men and
+trained them so that they could satisfactorily carry on existing institutions.
+By his unfailing watchfulness, he succeeded in having the accounts systematically
+kept, and rendered peculation almost impossible. As most of the hereditary
+financial offices had gradually acquired an independence which had been
+fostered by the civil wars, Sully tried to reunite, as far as they were concerned,
+the ancient ties of centralisation, so as to secure the influence of the supreme
+power over them. He also wished to have the census taken regularly, and
+to insure an accurate statement of the budget being drawn up. He wanted
+to find out the exact value of the taxes, and to institute a regular system for
+their collection; finally he took advantage of the low rate of interest to
+reduce the pensions paid by the state.</p>
+
+<p>This change, and a better system for farming the taxes and of securing
+their returns enabled him to leave the ministry, having made up the deficit,
+and leaving several millions of savings in the cellars of the Bastille. This
+accumulation was very valuable at a period when there was hardly any
+better way of providing for future emergencies than by laying by money.
+Sully was the first superintendent of finance whose memory was not execrated,
+and even remained popular. Let us hear what is said of him in
+an anonymous eulogium, written probably after his death, and which, in
+spite of its somewhat obscure language, contains a true appreciation of his
+administrative powers: “He only, up to the present time, has discovered the
+connection between two things in the government of states, which our forefathers
+were not able to unite, and which they even considered incompatible:
+the amassing of wealth in the royal coffers, side by side with the diminution
+of taxation and increasing prosperity of the people: the increase of the king’s
+wealth simultaneously with that of private individuals.”</p>
+
+<p>Sully called agriculture and cattle breeding the two feeders of France;
+he made a point of encouraging agriculture, the interests of which had already
+attracted attention in the sixteenth century, and he diminished the rates
+though he could not succeed in compelling the nobles to pay them in those
+provinces where the assemblies claimed the right of levying them. As for
+commerce and manufactures, he did not yet recognise their importance. He
+looked upon them simply as ministers to luxury, just as he saw nothing in
+luxury but the extravagance of individuals and the corruption of the public
+mind. Fortunately Henry IV, who did not share these very military prejudices,
+instituted an elective chamber of commerce, granted many facilities
+to manufactures which were taking root or seemed likely to take root in
+France, protecting them by fixing tariffs, commanded the most competent
+men to draw up memoranda on the economic interests of the country, created
+or rather tried to create an India company, and assumed the exclusive right of
+legislating in commercial matters—a right which had hitherto been claimed
+by the representatives of the provincial governments.</p>
+
+<p>We owe to Sully the institution of two important administrations, one
+for public works by which many valuable enterprises were at once undertaken,
+such as the draining of marshy places, and the construction of canals;
+the other in connection with the mines, the working of which, having been
+granted as a monopoly to companies by Charles VI and Louis XI, had not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_409">[409]</span>produced very good results. His reforms extended to almost every service.
+In the army responsibility and discipline were re-established, the stock of
+ammunition, artillery, etc., was augmented, the condition of the troops ameliorated,
+and provision made for the wounded and for veterans. The fifteen
+years of this ministry were too short, though much was effected during their
+course; Sully could not carry out all the plans he had conceived. The most
+important of these were to accustom the nobility to take part in business, to
+form a training school for statesmen in connection with the king’s council,
+which would have insured the maintenance of traditions and made the carrying
+out of reforms much easier. He retired “satisfied,” he said in his letter
+to Marie de’ Medici, “with having by his industry and ingenuity succeeded
+in reducing to order the most terrible confusion which had ever existed in
+the finances of France.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14b2"><a href="#endnote_14b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>AMOURS AND SECOND MARRIAGE OF HENRY IV</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1597-1599 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Let us inspect another phase of the character of Henry of Navarre. Let
+us turn from the warrior and the reformer to the man and the lover.</p>
+
+<p>Who has not heard of the fair Gabrielle? Henry saw her first at the
+château of her father, during one of his campaigns, and became enamoured.
+He frequently stole from his camp in disguise, and crossed the enemy’s lines
+to visit her. A hundred stories are told of the romantic adventures he
+underwent whilst wooing. He won, and was happy. Never had illegitimate
+love a more flattering excuse. Compelled to espouse, when a boy, the abandoned
+sister of Charles IX, his wedding feast had been stained with the blood
+of his friend, and the dissolute Marguerite led a life such as might be expected
+from such a race and such espousals. Henry consoled himself in the affections
+of Gabrielle d’Estrées, whose society he loved, and to whom he was
+constant. She had borne him several children.</p>
+
+<p>And now the wish of Henry was to obtain a divorce from his queen, and
+to sanction his connection with Gabrielle by a marriage. So serious and
+sincere was he in this that all his courtiers applauded the determination.
+Sully alone looked cold. Henry consulted him, and besought his advice;
+and the minister represented to him all the dangers of a disputed succession,
+of the pretensions of the young duke de Vendôme, who could not be legitimated,
+and of all the obvious objections to such a step. Henry was grieved:
+he saw the justice of the counsel, and remained irresolute. Gabrielle broke
+forth in invectives against Sully, and at length demanded his dismissal.
+Henry brought his minister by the hand into the apartment of Gabrielle, and
+entreated her to be reconciled to him. She persisted in her pride and in
+bursts of resentment. “Know, madam,” said Henry, harsh for the first time,
+“that a minister like him must be dearer to me than even such a mistress as
+you.” Gabrielle henceforth gave herself up to grief. The king was true
+and kind as ever. In the spring of the year 1599 she was advanced in a
+state of pregnancy. Henry, about to go through the pious ceremonies of
+Easter at Fontainebleau, felt it decorous to separate for a few days from his
+mistress. She retired to Paris, weighed down by despondency and the blackest
+presentiment. Astrological predictions were then the mode; and some
+imprudent or malevolent information of this kind tormented her: “We shall
+never meet again,” were her words on parting from the king, and they proved
+true. She was taken with convulsions, delivered of a dead child, and expired
+in a few hours. Henry had mounted on horseback at the first news, and
+was halfway on the road to Paris, when he was told it was too late. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_410">[410]</span>brave Henry could not support this blow: he wellnigh fainted, and was
+obliged to be conveyed back to Fontainebleau. There he retired, and shut
+himself up to indulge his grief. Sully alone was able to console him, and
+rouse him, after a time, to the affairs of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1599-1600 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It were to be wished, for Henry’s character, that his amours had ended
+here. His intention was to marry; and the niece of the grand duke of Tuscany,
+Marie de’ Medici, had already been mentioned. But the divorce had
+not yet been expedited by the pope; and the inflammable temperament of
+Henry took fire in the meantime with a new passion. Mademoiselle d’Entragues
+was the object, a being lovely indeed, but wanting alike the modesty,
+the sweet temper, and unambitious conduct of Gabrielle. She long enticed
+and tormented the monarch. Her father, the count d’Entragues, affected
+resentment and vigilance; and Henry had recourse to such disguise as he
+had formerly used to gain admission to Gabrielle d’Estrées. Henrietta
+d’Entragues had not the same taste: she is said to have so disliked the monarch
+in the humble dress of a gardener that she turned him from her presence.
+At length she obtained from Henry a promise of marriage in case that
+a son was born to her within the year, and Mademoiselle d’Entragues became
+marquise de Verneuil. Henry showed the contract to Sully, who, without
+other comment, tore and cast it under his feet. The king felt bound to
+write another; but in consequence of a stroke of lightning which fell on the
+house where the marquise resided, it ultimately became void. The fright
+which the lightning occasioned had the effect of destroying the hopes she had
+entertained of fulfilling her part of the contract, a stipulation indecent and
+unworthy of the monarch. Henry soon after was roused to a fuller sense of
+his dignity and of the nation’s weal. A divorce was by this time obtained;
+and he espoused Marie de’ Medici in the course of the year 1600.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14k2"><a href="#endnote_14k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The duke de Bellegarde, a successful rival to Henry IV in the affections
+of several of his mistresses, had been sent by him to Florence to fetch the
+bride. The Tuscan princess, already twenty-seven years of age, had shown
+some inclination for gallantry. Paul Giordano Orsini, her first cousin, one
+of the nobles who accompanied her to the French court, was said to have
+inspired her with love. Concino Concini, grandson of a secretary of Cosmo,
+a young man of wit and pleasing appearance, but who had ruined himself by
+his licentiousness, came also in her train in search of fortune in France.
+With her also went Leonora Dori, a woman of low origin, remarkable for her
+slenderness and pallor, the daughter of a carpenter and of a woman of ill-fame.
+This woman, in attendance on the princess from her earliest infancy,
+had obtained a complete ascendency over her. Leonora had profited by her
+patronage to induce the noble Florentine house of Galigaï to bestow their
+name upon her. Marie gave her the post of tire-woman, destined by the
+king for a French lady. The new queen left Florence on October 13th,
+took ship at Leghorn for Marseilles, and proceeded from one festivity to
+another, until she arrived at Lyons on December 2nd.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until December 9th that Henry, posting to Lyons, saw his
+queen for the first time. He was not greatly pleased with her stout figure,
+her round face, and her large, staring eyes. The queen had nothing endearing
+in her manner, nor was she of a cheerful disposition; she had no liking
+for the king, and did not pretend to show any; she did not propose to amuse
+or please him; her temper was peevish and obstinate. She had been brought
+up entirely according to the Spanish custom, and in the husband who appeared
+to her old and disagreeable she still suspected the relapsed heretic.
+Henry was detained at Lyons by the negotiations with Savoy, but the signing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_411">[411]</span>of the treaty of peace taking place on January 17th, 1601, he posted to Paris
+the next day, to be near the marquise de Verneuil, who pleased him far more
+than the queen, possessing precisely the charms, vivacity, and gaiety that
+the latter lacked.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p411.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Marie de’ Medici</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1573-1642)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1601-1602 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>After the departure of the king, Marie de’ Medici and all her court set
+forth for the capital; travelling by post, she only reached Paris on February
+9th. The princess of Conti (Louise Marguerite de Lorraine) relates that
+the day of the queen’s arrival in
+Paris, “the king bade the duchess
+de Nemours (the first lady of the
+household) fetch the marquise de
+Verneuil, and present her to the
+queen. The aged princess attempted
+to excuse herself from so doing, saying
+she would lose all credit with
+her mistress; but the king insisted,
+and ordered her to do his bidding,
+and that somewhat rudely,
+which was contrary to his usual
+courteous habits. She therefore
+conducted the marchioness to the
+queen who, greatly astonished at
+the sight of her, received her with
+much coldness; but the marquise
+de Verneuil, very bold naturally,
+talked so much and so familiarly
+that she finally succeeded in forcing
+the queen to discourse with her.</p>
+
+<p>“The king, tired of going two
+or three times a day to see the marquise,
+on perceiving that the queen
+had softened towards her, desired
+her to come to the Louvre where he
+had an apartment made ready for
+her. This, after some time, roused the jealousy of the queen, who had been
+entertained by several people with sayings of the marquise de Verneuil; who
+in truth, spoke of her freely enough and with little respect. The queen and
+the marquise were both enceinte, and the king seemed as if he did not know
+how to be on good terms with them both. He showed that respect to the
+queen to which her rank entitled her, but he was happier in the society of
+the marquise. Everyone wishing to please the king visited the latter, which
+was taken very ill by the queen. They dwelt so near one another as to be
+unable to avoid each other, and continual misunderstandings were the result.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14g2"><a href="#endnote_14g">g</a></span>
+Sully was more than once called in to quiet their domestic broils. The birth
+of a son, afterwards Louis XIII, occurred at Fontainebleau in 1601 to allay
+the fears of a disputed succession, and also contributed to bind Henry to his
+queen.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14k3"><a href="#endnote_14k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The king, though so well-wishing, never thought of cutting down the
+expenses of the court. Yet the desolation of the country, due to the civil
+wars, was appalling. The highways were lost in weeds and brambles, and
+wolves preyed on the country in great bands. Taxes could not be raised, so
+that finally the king gave up trying to collect arrears and in 1598 he gave
+up the taxes of 1594 and 1595.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_412">[412]</span></p>
+
+<h3>INTRIGUES OF DE BIRON</h3>
+
+<p>Another obstacle to the security and happiness of the monarch lay in
+the intrigues of his grandees. The people gave him little trouble; the turbulence
+of the civic class was over: they were ashamed, as well as weary, of
+the long disorders of the league, and in no way sought to renew them. Satisfied
+by the mild and economical management of the revenue by Sully, they
+applauded so beneficent a power, and forgot, or regretted not, that it was
+absolute. None clamoured for the states-general; they made loyalty a part
+of their religion; and abandoned all doctrines of liberty and republicanism
+to the hated Huguenots, who professed them.</p>
+
+<p>The nobles, who were the contemporaries of Henry, could not find the
+same repose: they had lived a life of turbulence and war; they had been
+bred in intrigue, and in all the excitement of contending parties; peace
+could not content them. Then the life of a camp had placed them on a kind
+of equality with their monarch, who had terminated the war by yielding up
+the administering authority in the provinces to the several grandees. He
+had compounded with them, as much as conquered them; and the Protestant
+nobles had taken a position of equal independence with that of the Catholics.
+The high aristocracy, in fact, that Francis I so prudently kept down, had
+reconstituted itself in the subsequent reigns. They now made a covert, but
+not less serious proposal to Henry, choosing the duke de Montpensier, a
+stripling and a prince of the blood, to be their spokesman on the occasion.
+This demand was no less than to re-establish the old feudal system, by
+allowing the present governors of provinces to hold them in fief, and transmit
+them to their descendants. Henry was not a monarch to tolerate such
+a demand; and his angry reply struck young Montpensier with terror.
+The grandees determined to win by union and force what gentler means
+could not obtain. They conspired, leagued with Spain, with the duke of
+Savoy, and even with England, endeavouring to excite a malcontent party.
+Protestants as well as Catholics joined in this: the duke de Bouillon at the
+head of one, the proud Épernon representing the other. Such, however, was
+Henry’s power, and such his character for courage as well as promptitude,
+such, too, was the vigilance of Sully, that this intrigue could never be
+matured into a conspiracy. Henry’s frank and amiable temper won over
+many; and he never proceeded to punish the guilty until he had used every
+gentle means to admonish, to pardon, and recall them to duty.</p>
+
+<p>The marshal De Biron was almost the only one of his nobles who still
+persisted in treasonable views. The king, on one occasion, had summoned
+him, charged him seriously, but not severely, with the crime, and showed
+him that he was well informed of his intrigues. Biron fell on his knees,
+confessed his weakness, but vowed that he would never more forsake the
+path of loyalty. Henry pardoned and embraced him. But Biron, vain
+and fickle, jealous even of his monarch’s fame, was weak enough to listen
+once more to the insinuations of Spain. The duke of Savoy, on a visit to
+Henry, manifested every sign of admiration for the king, while he occupied
+himself in corrupting the French courtiers, and in fomenting a party. He
+was ably seconded by the Spanish count de Fuentes. Biron was fascinated
+by the mighty promises of these intriguers: he was to have Burgundy as an
+independent state. The constable de Bourbon himself never received more
+magnificent promises. Nothing more displays the baseness and declension
+of the Spanish monarchy than its recourse to such weak and dishonourable
+machinations.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_413">[413]</span></p>
+
+<p>Henry soon after, wearied with the bad faith and subtle subterfuges of
+the duke of Savoy, made war on that prince. Biron was intrusted with the
+command, and in conducting it his treachery became manifest. One day,
+when Sully rode with him to view the siege of a fortress belonging to the
+duke, the former could perceive that the fire from the ramparts slackened,
+and was directed from them. Sully took the same ride alone on the following
+day, and was received with a heavy and well-directed cannonade. It
+afterwards appeared that the marshal had intended to entice the king into
+an ambuscade, where the fire of the enemy would have certainly proved
+fatal. The duke of Savoy, worsted by the arms of Henry, made his submission,
+and obtained peace. Biron continued his intrigues with Spain, in
+concert with the duke de Bouillon,
+with the count d’Auvergne, bastard
+of Charles IX, and probably with
+Épernon, and the whole body of the
+malcontent noblesse.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p413.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Charles de Gontaut, Duc de Biron</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1562-1602)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The king was perfectly aware of
+these intrigues. Biron was betrayed
+by his chief counsellor and instigator,
+a person named Lafin. Henry
+saw Biron once talking with Lafin,
+and warned him, saying, “I know
+that man; he will lead you into
+evil.” But the marshal was deaf
+to advice. Henry did not at first
+place much credit in the revelations
+of Lafin, who accused Sully himself
+among others of the court. But
+the informer produced written documents,
+proofs of Biron’s connection
+with Spain. Biron was summoned
+to court. It was the king’s intention
+to reproach his ancient comrade,
+to endeavour to awaken his loyalty,
+shame him into a confession of his
+treason, and again pardon him.
+Sully received instructions to pursue
+the same conduct, and to try
+every means short of letting the marshal know that Lafin had confessed all.
+Biron and the count d’Auvergne came to court boldly. Henry drew the
+traitor apart, led him into familiar conversation, showed himself open, frank,
+forgiving, yet suspicious. Biron betrayed no misgivings, no repentance, no
+wish to remove his sovereign’s distrust. At last, as they arrived before an
+equestrian statue of Henry lately erected, which was ornamented with trophies,
+the king asked, “What would the king of Spain say were he to see me thus?”
+Biron, who felt that this was meant to try him, insolently replied, “Sire, he
+scarcely fears you.” Then correcting himself, he stammered out, “I mean
+in that statue, not in this, your person.” Henry smiled sorrowfully, and
+gave up his merciful and friendly purpose. Sully, on his side, exerted himself
+to the same effect, but in vain. Biron was hardened. It was only then
+that Henry gave orders for his arrest, and that of the count d’Auvergne. As
+they left the king’s chamber, their swords were demanded. They were
+conveyed by water to the arsenal. Biron was tried before the parliament,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_414">[414]</span>condemned, and executed. He evinced the greatest rage on the scaffold; it
+amounted to frenzy, and was excited by his horror of so disgraceful a death.
+The executioner was obliged to hide his sword, and strike off the head of the
+culprit unawares.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY’S REIGN</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1602-1609 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The last years of Henry’s reign are scarcely marked by any important
+incidents. The few that did take place, such as the conspiracy of the family
+D’Entragues, and the weaknesses into which Henry’s amorous disposition
+led him, are exaggerated in importance, and narrated by historians with a
+detail they little merit. The punishment of Biron, which Henry meant as a
+warning to his discontented nobles, succeeded in keeping them in awe. If
+they intrigued, it was in fear, and with a caution that marred all progress or
+purpose. The count d’Auvergne alone, though pardoned for being implicated
+with Biron, renewed his schemes in conjunction with the marquise de
+Verneuil; this mistress treated the king with the capriciousness and severity
+which a wronged beauty might use towards a gallant more advanced in
+years; the monarch construed her caprice into infidelity; and a loving
+quarrel grew to be a serious misunderstanding. Henry withdrew the written
+document of the promise of marriage. The father and daughter, joined by
+the count d’Auvergne, plotted against the king, it was said against his life;
+and, as usual, they found support in a Spanish emissary. They were all
+three arrested, tried, and condemned to death; but Henry pardoned his
+mistress, as well as her relatives, and commuted their punishment into exile.
+The restless and false D’Auvergne was confined permanently in the Bastille.</p>
+
+<p>Squabbles with his queen, Marie de’ Medici, on account of her Italian
+favourites, Concini and his wife; distrust of Sully, excited by the envious
+courtiers; these, with national improvements, negotiations, festivals, and
+hunting parties, bring the reign of Henry IV nearly to its close.</p>
+
+<p>In 1609, its happy and glorious monotony was varied by the enthusiastic
+admiration which the aged monarch conceived for Mademoiselle de Montmorency,
+the young and lovely daughter of the constable, who had just
+appeared at court and eclipsed all its beauties. There is some difference of
+opinion as to the nature of Henry’s admiration: the memoir writers of the
+age saw scandal in every connection; and certainly Henry’s past life and his
+known failings incline to the worst side. Bassompierre,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14o"><a href="#endnote_14o">o</a></span> then a young man,
+relates that he himself became a suitor for the beauty’s hand, and that he
+was induced by the entreaties or commands of the enamoured king to desist.
+Bassompierre was a babbler, however, whose vanity breaks out in the arrogance
+of the mere pretension. The young prince of Condé was also smitten,
+but shrank back from so formidable a rival as the monarch. What belies
+the account of Bassompierre is that Henry came forward, and assured Condé
+that he might woo in all confidence, and that he had nothing to fear on that
+score from his king. If Henry had licentious views, Bassompierre, and not
+Condé, would have been the convenient husband of Mademoiselle de Montmorency.</p>
+
+<p>Condé was the successful suitor, and the marriage was celebrated at
+court with unusual splendour. Henry, having given his word to the prince,
+indulged his predilection for the lovely bride by showering presents and
+favours upon her and her husband. The court, full of the malevolent,
+amongst whom the followers of the jealous queen were not the least forward,
+construed all these symptoms to be the homage of a guilty passion:
+they poured this in the prince’s ear; and Condé, alarmed for his wife’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_415">[415]</span>honour, carried her off from the court by stealth, first to Picardy, whence,
+on receiving a summons from the king to return, he made a second flight,
+and gained the Low Countries. The king showed himself strangely affected
+by this incident: the discovery of Biron’s conspiracy did not cause him more
+trouble. Sully was called up in the night; and the whole court was roused
+by the agitation of the monarch, who was pacing and stamping up and down
+the chamber of the queen, while the courtiers stood “pasted to the walls,”
+says Sully, lest they should interrupt the monarch’s passion. The flight of
+the first prince of the blood, and his taking refuge with the Spaniards, was
+certainly a grave question, love and jealousy being set aside. The king
+demanded Sully’s advice, who hesitated, but being forced, advised him to
+“do nothing.” “Nothing!” said Henry; “call you that advice?” Sully
+replied that the escape of the prince was a matter of little importance, unless
+the king chose to make it important by raising a clamour, and showing that
+he took an interest concerning it. Henry, however, was not in a humour to
+treat the matter thus slightly and thus wisely: he instructed his ambassador
+to demand of the archduke to deliver up the prince and princess of Condé;
+and, as Sully foresaw, the court of Brussels, in refusing, filled Europe with
+calumnies against Henry; asserting that he wanted to take by force the wife
+of the first prince of the realm and of the blood. When Henry, immediately
+afterwards, menaced war, the outcry was that Europe was about to be deluged
+in blood for another Helen.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, unfortunate that Henry, who had remained so many years
+at peace, no doubt preparing and amassing the materials and resources of war,
+and cautiously awaiting fit pretext and proper reason, should now draw the
+sword for a cause at once criminal and absurd.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14k4"><a href="#endnote_14k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Grand Design of Henry IV; His Death</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1609-1610 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>At home the rest of Henry’s reign was perhaps monotonous; but it was
+none the less momentous, for on the ruins of France the Bourbon monarchy
+was already building up the centralised absolutism which it was the work of
+Richelieu to perfect and Louis XIV to wield. But in foreign affairs the
+schemes of Henry were not less far reaching. France was to become the
+centre of European politics, the dictator of Germany. In Sully’s <i>Economies
+Royales</i> we may read of the details of the great scheme which anticipated
+that of Napoleon by two centuries. But such details are the work of subsequent
+addition and the plan of making Europe into a grand republic of
+fifteen states with well-balanced interests, etc., was perhaps not so clearly
+conceived even by Sully as historians have been accustomed to state. But
+some such design was undoubtedly behind the foreign policy which Henry
+was inaugurating at his death. He possibly intended to unite with France
+the Flemish, Dutch, and North German states in a movement that would
+overthrow Spain and Austria. His own statements make this plain.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Henry IV had expressed on many occasions and had incessantly repeated
+in his diplomacy the end which he had in view. His object was to restore
+the cities and states of the empire to their former rights and liberties, to
+assure the liberty of the United Provinces, to base the politics of France upon
+the alliance of the secondary states, in the north the United Provinces, Denmark,
+Sweden, and the German principalities, in the south, Switzerland, Savoy,
+and the Italian principalities; finally to extend his system of religious tolerance
+so as to guarantee liberty everywhere to the dissenters from the
+established cult, whether these dissenters might be Catholics, Lutherans, or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_416">[416]</span>Calvinists; and to prevent religious wars or religious pretexts assigned to
+purely political wars and enterprises. He had long since declared to all the
+courts of Europe that he had ended the era of civil war in France and wished
+to end it everywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>However it may be as to these observations, France, according to him,
+must pursue a double end in her foreign relations, lay the foundations of
+perpetual peace, and drive the Turks from Europe. In order to bring about
+perpetual peace it would be necessary to reduce the possessions of Austria,
+establish a certain balance of power, and create periodical diets or congresses,
+either for this or that category of states or for all Europe, with federal armies
+and fleets to execute the decisions made in common.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14b3"><a href="#endnote_14b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He now resolved to realise his dream: but this, which had been a vision
+of heroism and philanthropy, was now degraded and sullied by the immediate
+motive. Henry, who was passionately fond of glory, saw the stain
+that was to rob his achievements of their brightness and purity. The accusation
+of the Spaniards troubled him: perhaps there was even truth in the
+reproach that the love of a sexagenarian king for a princess, and a married
+princess of twenty, was the only cause and pretext for convulsing Europe
+and shedding its best blood. This weighed upon Henry, and fretted him:
+his gaiety disappeared. Remorse and mortification came to cloud the heaven
+of his declining days. A dark presentiment, similar to that which had forewarned
+his loved Gabrielle of her fate, now gathered around Henry: he could
+not shake it off.</p>
+
+<p>He intended leaving the queen as regent during his absence at the head
+of his army; and her previous coronation, a ceremony that had not yet taken
+place, was considered requisite. This detained him in the capital; and
+Marie de’ Medici, fond of state and ceremony, insisted on it, and delighted in
+it. Henry was annoyed and fretted: he frequently said he should never
+leave Paris alive, and he longed to contradict his presentiment. The coronation
+of the queen at length took place. On the following day, the 14th
+of May, 1610, he manifested strong feelings of despondency. Despatches
+brought him word that his enemies were making no preparations for defence,
+and that they gave out that the delivery of the prince and princess of Condé
+would at once allay his choler and arrest his schemes. This increased his
+ill humour: he called for Sully; but learning that his minister was ill at the
+arsenal, the king’s coach was ordered to convey him thither. Seven of the
+suite occupied with the king his ample carriage. The duke d’Épernon
+was in one corner, and Henry next to him. The vehicle proceeded, but was
+stopped in the narrow rue de la Ferronnerie by two loaded carts. This was
+the moment chosen by an assassin, Ravaillac, who, mounting on the step,
+and leaning full into the carriage, struck the king with a poniard, first in the
+stomach, and then in the breast. One of these stabs pierced the heart of
+the noble Henry.</p>
+
+<p>To paint the rage and despair of the people would be impossible. The
+once detested Henry had won every heart; and the general grief for him
+partook of the character of madness. Tears were the least tokens of sorrow;
+many died on learning the catastrophe, amongst others the brave De Vic,
+the comrade of Henry. The lifeless body was borne to the Louvre, whilst
+Ravaillac, who made no attempt to escape, was taken, brandishing his dagger,
+and only preserved by the guards from being instantly torn in pieces.
+He had been a monk, strongly imbued with the king-killing principles that
+the Jesuits had broached. His crime had long been meditated by him; but
+no proof exists that he had been instigated either by Spain or by any knot
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_417">[417]</span>of malcontent courtiers. Suspicion, indeed, has scattered its stain on all
+with an unsparing hand. Épernon, the queen, Concini, and many others,
+were accused as being privy to the deed; and the record of Ravaillac’s trial
+having been destroyed, whilst these personages possessed the chief influence,
+gives some colour to the charge. But the tortured culprit might idly or
+malevolently cast imputation on the powerful, as indeed he menaced to do.
+For when some one pressed him to name his accomplices, Ravaillac answered,
+“Suppose I name you.” The seed of his crime was the diabolical maxim to
+which the fanaticism of the league had given birth, and which it had rendered
+popular. It had germinated and grown in the dark solitude of a rancorous
+and fanatic spirit.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14k5"><a href="#endnote_14k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY IV</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1589-1610 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>There are two Henry IV’s; the Henry of tradition and the Henry of
+history. The one more heroic and, thanks to Voltaire,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14q"><a href="#endnote_14q">q</a></span> more popular; the
+other, underneath his crafty good nature, much more able and, with his pliant
+character, much better fitted to raise a falling edifice than a simple character
+would have been. Henry of Navarre had the most brilliant bravery, a quality
+common to the warriors of that time and of all times. But it is pleasing
+in a prince, and the chief who is ever ready to offer his life to the sword
+point is sure to win his soldiers’ hearts. Reared among the mountaineers of
+the Pyrenees, he possessed an agility equal to theirs and a body incapable
+of fatigue. The vicissitudes through which he had passed had made his religion
+uncertain. Charles IX said to him, “Death or the mass!” He took
+the mass; later he abjured, and this abjuration was not to be the last. So he
+felt no anger against those who professed a different doctrine; his nature
+made fanaticism odious to him, and his position imposed tolerance upon him.
+Furthermore, he was a good comrade, showing the same face to good or to ill
+fortune. He bent under misfortune but did not break, and found resources
+in the most desperate situations. He loved pleasure, but not as it was loved
+by Henry III. He was kind through good nature as well as experience of
+life. He had friends who, it is true, got from his friendship more good words
+than good results; but his heart was open if his hand was closed, because he
+was for twenty years the chief of a party obliged to give much and to take
+nothing except from the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>One night when D’Aubigné<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14e3"><a href="#endnote_14e">e</a></span> and La Force were sleeping not far from the
+king, the former complained bitterly to the latter of their master’s stinginess.
+La Force, overcome by fatigue, did not listen. “Don’t you hear?” asked
+D’Aubigné. La Force roused himself and asked what he was saying.
+“Why, he is telling you,” cried the king, who heard everything, “that I
+am a harsh, miserly fellow and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the
+earth.” “He did not treat me worse on account of it,” adds D’Aubigné,
+“but he did not give me a quarter of a crown more.”</p>
+
+<p>His forced residence at the court of the Valois had been fatal to his
+morals. For several years he forgot his rôle and his fortune. After the
+death of the duke of Anjou, Duplessis-Mornay wrote to him: “Pastimes are
+no longer in season. It is time for you to make love to France.” Henry
+felt this rebuke; he gave up his pleasures and put on his cuirass.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14n2"><a href="#endnote_14n">n</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In Sully’s <i>Mémoires</i> we find this description of him<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a>: “Such was the
+tragical end of a prince, on whom Nature, with a lavish profusion, had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_418">[418]</span>bestowed all her advantages, except that of a death such as he merited.
+I have already observed that his stature was so happy, and his limbs formed
+with such proportion, as constitutes not only what is called a well-made man,
+but indicates strength, vigour, and activity; his complexion was animated;
+all the lineaments of his face had that agreeable liveliness which forms a
+sweet and happy physiognomy, and perfectly suited to that engaging easiness
+of manners which, though sometimes mixed with majesty, never lost the
+graceful affability and easy gaiety so natural to that great prince. With
+regard to the qualities of his heart and mind, I shall tell the reader nothing
+new by saying that he was candid, sincere, grateful, compassionate, generous,
+wise, penetrating.</p>
+
+<p>“He loved all his subjects as a father, and the whole state as the head of a
+family; and it was this disposition that recalled him even from the midst of
+his pleasures to the care of rendering his people happy and his kingdom
+flourishing; hence proceeded his readiness in conceiving, and his industry
+in perfecting, a great number of useful regulations. Many I have already
+specified; and I shall sum up all by saying that there were no conditions,
+employments, or professions to which his reflections did not extend; and
+that with such clearness and penetration, that the changes he projected could
+not be overthrown by the death of their author, as it but too often happened
+in this monarchy. It was his desire, he said, that glory might influence his
+last years and make them at once useful to the world and acceptable to God;
+his was a mind in which the ideas of what is great, uncommon, and beautiful
+seemed to rise of themselves: hence it was that he looked upon adversity as
+a mere transitory evil, and prosperity as his natural state.</p>
+
+<p>“I should destroy all I have now said of this great prince if, after having
+praised him for an infinite number of qualities well worthy to be praised, I
+did not acknowledge that they were balanced by faults, and those, indeed, very
+great. I have not concealed, or even palliated his passion for women; his
+excess in gaming; his gentleness often carried to weakness; nor his propensity
+to every kind of pleasure: I have neither disguised the faults they
+made him commit, the foolish expenses they led him into, nor the time
+they made him waste; but I have likewise observed (to do justice on both
+sides) that his enemies have greatly exaggerated all these errors. If he was, as
+they say, a slave to women, yet they never regulated his choice of ministers,
+decided the destinies of his servants, or influenced the deliberations of his
+council. As much may be said in extenuation of all his other faults. And
+to sum up all, in a word, what he has done is sufficient to show that the good
+and bad in his character had no proportion to each other; and that since
+honour and fame have always had power enough to tear him from pleasure,
+we ought to acknowledge these to have been his great and real passions.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14p2"><a href="#endnote_14p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Martin’s Estimate of Henry IV</i></h4>
+
+<p>The whole reign of Henry IV, after the Peace of Vervins, had been but
+a preface; the half-opened book is closed forever! All the past glory of the
+Béarnais would have been eclipsed by the magnificent results that his policy
+had prepared and that his arms were to realise. In spite of the exertions
+and the excesses of his life his robust constitution still promised him some
+years of military activity, enough without doubt to make sure if not of the
+complete triumph, at least of the predominance of his European system;
+his heirs would have done the rest! The politics of France, allied with the
+Protestants without being absorbed by Protestantism, triumphing by the aid
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_419">[419]</span>of the entire foreign and French Reformation, would have been started
+beyond recall upon the paths of international equity, intellectual liberty,
+and religious tolerance. Henry IV would have made splendid reparation
+for the faults of Francis I and himself. He would not have abjured
+Catholicism, but with his victorious sword he would have obliterated his
+coronation oath and the humiliation of Roman absolution. Germany would
+not have seen the Thirty Years’ War, nor France the revocation of the
+Edict of Nantes. The seventeenth century would have had all its glory
+without its fatal errors.</p>
+
+<p>God did not grant it him! Henry IV bore to the tomb not only the
+European system which he intended to inaugurate but all the elements of
+order and power that he had given to his country. France fell from the
+height to which he had raised her, until the day when a powerful genius
+came anew to bring order into chaos and to revive in part the policy of
+Henry, but under much less favourable conditions. This genius was that of
+an individual, not that of a king, and Henry IV has remained the greatest
+and above all the most French of the kings of France; not again has there
+been seen on the throne a soul so national, an intellect so liberal. No one
+ever felt better than he the true destiny of France. It is not without
+reason that the popularity of Henry has increased with the growth of the
+modern spirit; it is not without reason that the eighteenth century tried to
+make him the epic hero of French history. The labouring classes have
+never forgotten the king who was to them the most sympathetic in
+manners and in heart, the king who occupied himself most seriously with
+the interests of the soil and of labour. Thinkers will never cease to honour
+in him the forerunner of a new Europe, the just and profound mind whose
+diplomatic plans are to-day in many respects the politics of the most enlightened
+men, and finally the champion and martyr of the most sacred of liberties,
+that of conscience.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14c2"><a href="#endnote_14c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Having listened thus to a contemporary and to a modern French estimate
+of the great ruler, let us take a parting glance at him through the eyes of
+a scarcely less appreciative English historian.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>STEPHEN’S CHARACTERISATION OF HENRY IV AND HIS TIMES</h3>
+
+<p>It has been said of Henry IV [says Sir James Stephen], with equal
+truth and force, that he was l’Hôpital in arms. The principles which had
+been asserted by the wisdom and the eloquence of the great chancellor
+became triumphant by the foresight and the conquests of the great king.
+In an age of wild disorder and overwhelming calamity, he was raised up to
+restore his kingdom to affluence and to peace. He appeared to rescue his
+Protestant subjects from the tyranny which had so long denied to them the
+freedom of conscience. He came to give a firm basis to the national policy,
+and to open to his people at large a new direction, and a wider scope, for
+the martial energies by which they had hitherto been at once so highly, and
+so ineffectually, distinguished. For these high offices he was qualified by
+great talents, and by many virtues. With a capacity large enough to
+embrace all the social, military, and political interests of his dominions, he
+combined that practical good sense and flexibility of address, without which
+there is no safe descent from the higher regions of thought to the real business
+of life. The intuitive promptitude, and the enduring stability, of his
+resolutions attested at once his large experience in affairs, and his wide survey
+both of the resources at his command, and of the contingencies to which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_420">[420]</span>he was exposed. He possessed that kind of mental instinct which advances
+by the shortest path to what is at once useful and possible, and which turns
+aside, with unhesitating decision, from any illusive and impracticable scheme.
+Never was a great innovator more characterised by practical wisdom; and
+never did such wisdom assume a more attractive aspect. His manners exhibited
+all the graces of his native land in their most captivating form. Delighted
+with his bonhommie, his gaiety, and his frankness, his subjects not
+only forgave his vices,
+but even found in them
+a fascination the more.
+They smiled at the scandalous
+amours of their
+gallant monarch as a not
+unbecoming tribute paid
+by human greatness to
+human infirmity. If
+they looked with awe
+on the desperate valour
+of his enterprises, on the
+inflexible rigour of his
+discipline, or on the
+soaring ambition of his
+political designs, they
+were reconciled to the
+stern character of the
+prince by the ever-flowing
+and genuine sensibilities
+of the man. If
+his lofty sense of his
+personal and ancestral
+dignity sometimes gave
+an austere aspect to his
+intercourse with his
+people, that pride of
+birth did but enhance
+the charm of his quick
+sympathy with the feelings
+and interests of the
+meanest of them. And,
+above all the rest, every
+Frenchman loved and
+admired in Henry the
+lover and admirer of
+France; and became
+patriotically blind to
+the faults of his renegade, and debauched, but still patriot, king.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/p420.jpg" width="350" height="550" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costumes of the Time of Henry IV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And even now, when the spell is broken, and we may look back on the
+life of Henry IV with judicial impartiality, and reprobate the apologies
+which would have elevated his crimes into virtues, we cannot conceal from
+ourselves the fact that he conferred on his people benefits which well
+entitled him to their lasting gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>For, first, Henry of Navarre was the founder of religious toleration in
+France. Until the Edict of Nantes there had been many truces, but no real
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_421">[421]</span>peace, between the adherents of Rome and the followers of Calvin. To
+compel all the fragments of the Christian church to coalesce into one body,
+each member of which should hold the same opinions, and worship under
+the same forms, had been the inflexible policy of all his predecessors. To
+acquiesce in their separation, and yet to maintain each section in the nearest
+possible approach to an equality both of civil and religious privileges, was
+the no less inflexible design of Henry. His charter could not, indeed,
+restore unity to the church, but it established, on what seemed a secure basis,
+the unity of the state. The two religions were thenceforward placed under
+ecclesiastical laws widely differing from each other, but under a civil law
+common to them both.</p>
+
+<p>The second great praise of the first of the Bourbon line is that of having
+rescued France from the abyss of bankruptcy and financial ruin in which it
+had been involved by the improvidence of the house of Valois. For the
+completion of that great work the larger share of honour is, indeed, due to
+Sully. But from his own <i>Economies Royales</i> we sufficiently learn that,
+unaided by the magnanimity, the self-denial, and the affection of the king, not
+even the zeal, the courage, and the sagacity of the great minister would have
+accomplished that herculean labour.</p>
+
+<p>The third title of Henry to the place which he has ever held among the
+benefactors of France, has at all times been acknowledged by Frenchmen
+with more enthusiasm than any other of his services. He was the first of
+her kings who had at once the discernment to perceive how high a station
+belonged to her in the European commonwealth, and the energy to devise
+the methods by which that rank might be effectually vindicated.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, however, on these grounds alone, that the reign of Henry IV
+occupies a memorable position in the constitutional history of his country.
+It was a period of great consummations and of great beginnings. Like some
+inland sea, which is at once the receptacle of many converging, and the
+source of as many diverging, streams, it was interposed between two eras
+strikingly contrasted with each other. It marked the close of the mediæval
+sovereignty, and the commencement of the modern monarchy,—the first
+a dominion of undefined rights, of unsettled habits, and of a fluctuating
+policy,—the second, a government absolute in fact and in right, severely
+consistent in its arbitrary principles, but elaborately adapted to the various
+exigencies of a civilised commonwealth. The hitherto unorganised elements
+of the state were now, for the first time, reduced into a political unity. The
+invidious distinctions of earlier times now began to give place to social
+equality; and the slow, though steadfast, progress of that unity and of that
+equality may be considered as the subject of the whole of the subsequent
+history of France. In the triumph of these two principles consists the
+peculiar distinction, and the chief boast, of the French policy, whether
+monarchical or republican, of later times; and, therefore, the age of Henry
+IV when considered as the origin of these great national characteristics,
+demands, and will repay, the most diligent attention.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_14r"><a href="#endnote_14r">r</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a></p>
+
+<p class="center">THE HOUSE OF BOURBON</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/genealogy3.jpg" width="700" height="475" alt="Genealogical table">
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> [It must be recalled that Sully’s estimate is that of a comrade in arms and a counsellor.
+It is a flattering tribute rather than a calmly judicious one.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_422">[422]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-15.jpg" width="500" height="300" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV. THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“It is in Rabelais, in the satire of Ménippée, and in Montaigne that
+we shall find principles of social justice, ideas of reformation, expressed
+with as much profundity as eloquence; in these writers they are scattered,
+hidden under buffoonery in Rabelais, tempered by philosophical
+<i>insouciance</i> in Montaigne; but they bear witness to the extent to which
+the study of antiquity, the religious struggles, and the civil war had set
+political ideas in motion. The great history of the President de Thou
+marked in the highest degree the spirit of legal freedom under the
+monarchy. Calvin had been the despotic legislator of a democracy,
+yet the Reformation everywhere raised the questions of civil liberty
+involved in the question of religious liberty; and as the governments of
+the Middle Ages owed their origin to the church the political innovators
+owed theirs to dissenting theologians.”—<span class="smcap">Villemain.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15b"><a href="#endnote_15b">b</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>While we have followed the fortunes of Henry of Navarre another
+century has been rounded out. Almost a hundred years have passed since
+Francis I came to the throne; more than half a hundred since that monarch
+laid down the sceptre. It has been a troublous epoch for France as we
+have seen: a time of foreign and civil wars that would have disrupted a less
+stable civil organisation. Yet the new forces of the Renaissance and the
+Reformation were making themselves felt throughout this period, and, as so
+often happens, the time of military strife has been also a time of social
+development. Some phases of this development we have studied, particularly
+in connection with the reign of Francis I; it remains to mention in some detail
+the work of three great writers who made this century memorable in French
+literary annals. We have already cited a comment of Villemain on the
+retardation of the French literary Renaissance. How marked this retardation
+was will be even more evident when we reflect that the century which
+has just been rounded out saw Italian culture in its decadence, and that the
+immediate period of Henry IV is precisely contemporary with the age of
+Elizabeth in England,—the time of Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare;
+whereas French literature is only at its beginnings. Notable beginnings
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_423">[423]</span>these are however, for the names that we now have to chronicle are those of
+Rabelais, of Calvin, and of Montaigne. It is true that Stephen, whom we
+quote now somewhat in extenso, cites this trio as the second great literary
+triumvirate of France; having named Joinville, Froissart, and Comines as the
+great triumvirate of an earlier period. In the widest view this classification no
+doubt is just; yet it can hardly be asserted that these earlier chroniclers are
+classic in the same sense as are Rabelais and Montaigne. The earlier writers
+are preserved more for their method than for their manner; and it is only
+work in which literary form takes precedence over mere fact that can be
+classified on the highest plane of art. According to this standard, the work
+of Calvin scarcely belongs beside that of Rabelais and Montaigne; yet a
+study of French literary development in the sixteenth century from which
+that work was omitted would be obviously incomplete. Let us glance then
+at the work of these three greatest French writers of the sixteenth century,
+between whom, as Sir James Stephen asserts “the parallelisms are as remarkable
+as the contradictions.” Taking them in the order of time we have first
+to consider the great humourist Rabelais, mention of whose work has already
+been made when we were speaking of the French Renaissance of the middle
+of the century.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rabelais, the son of an innkeeper at Chinon, was born at that place in
+the year 1483.<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> He became a Franciscan friar, a deacon, and a priest in
+holy orders; and then, at the mature age of forty-two, commenced the study
+of medicine in the college at Montpellier. Various medical treatises were
+the fruit of those labours; and the reputation derived from them was sufficient
+to obtain for him the office of physician to the public hospital at Lyons.
+But his professional books proving unsaleable, Rabelais, to indemnify his
+bookseller, wrote and published his <i>Pantagruel</i>, or <i>Chronique Gargantuine</i>,
+of which (as he says) more copies were sold in two months than of the Bible
+in ten years. Having thus discovered the secret of his power, he next produced
+the <i>Gargantua</i>; the work which has secured for him the admiration
+of all subsequent ages, though the reverence of none. It is a romance
+in which Rabelais may be considered as depicting the habits, opinions, errors,
+crimes, and follies of that age of religious and intellectual revolutions, in the
+centre of which he lived. Yet the critics have doubted, and must ever
+continue to doubt—whether Gargantua and his son Pantagruel are actual
+portraits of those who led the armaments (literary, theological, or military)
+of those times, or are mere impersonations of those abstract qualities by
+which the world was then governed—whether Panurge and Friar John had
+any living prototypes amongst the men of the sixteenth century—or whether
+the one is but a name for mediocrity, ceasing to be honest as it becomes
+conspicuous; and the other a name for sensuality, rescued from contempt
+by a shrewd and jovial spirit. But why investigate these and such other
+riddles, proposed by their author in avowed defiance of any such attempt?
+Why, indeed, read at all a book of which not only the general scope, but
+almost every page is enigmatical? Why squander time and patience on
+a writer who, of set purpose, makes his readers dependent on the guidance
+of some dull and doubtful commentator? For those passages which do
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_424">[424]</span>reward the toil of the student are separated from each other, not only
+by this profound obscurity, but by foul abysses of impurity, which no skill
+or caution can always succeed in overleaping. I know not how to describe
+them in terms at once accurate and decorous, except by borrowing Mr. Carlyle’s
+denunciation of a work of Diderot’s, and saying with him, or in words
+resembling his, that he who, even undesignedly, shall come into contact with
+these parts of Rabelais’ great work, should forthwith plunge into running
+waters, and regard himself, for the rest of the day, as something more than
+ceremonially unclean.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p424.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Rabelais</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet he whose business, or whose determination, it is to appreciate aright
+the civil, and therefore the literary, history of France, must needs pay this
+heavy price of knowledge. For, in
+that history, the romance of <i>Gargantua</i>
+is an indispensable link.
+From the revival of heathen antiquity,
+Rabelais had gathered a
+mass of learning resembling the diet
+of his own Pantagruel, who had
+4,600 cows milked every morning
+for his breakfast. From the revival
+of Christian antiquity, he had
+learned to despise the authority and
+the superstitions of the church of
+Rome; without, at the same time,
+learning to reverence the authority
+and the doctrines of the Gospel. He
+thus traversed the boundless expanse
+of human knowledge. He
+traversed it under the guidance of
+his own wit, sagacity, and humour,
+a wit, vaulting at a bound, from
+the arctic to the antarctic poles of
+thought; a sagacity embracing all
+the higher questions of man’s social
+existence, and many of the deeper
+problems of his moral constitution;
+and a humour which fairly baffles all
+attempts to analyse or to describe
+it. For it was the result, not of
+natural temperament alone, but also of the most assiduous and severe studies.
+The language of Greece had become as familiar to him as his mother-tongue;
+and, while he learned from Galen and Hippocrates to investigate the properties
+of living or of inert matter, he was trained, by Plato, to spiritual meditation,
+and by Lucian to a scepticism and a buffoonery, alike audacious and
+unintermitted. From the union of such a disposition and of such discipline,
+emerged the strange phenomenon of a philosopher in his revels. In contemplating
+it one knows not, as it has been well said, “whether to wonder most
+that such wisdom should ever assume the mask of folly, or that such folly
+should permit the growth and development of any true wisdom.” It is,
+however, an apparent, rather than a real, difficulty. The wisdom is never
+sublime, and the folly but seldom abject. Each is but a different aspect
+of a nature, of which the parts are, indeed, inharmonious, but not incompatible—of
+a genuine Epicurean gifted with gigantic powers, but of cold
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_425">[425]</span>affections, and of debased appetites; ever worshipping and obeying his one
+idol, pleasure, though at one time she bids him soar to the empyrean, and
+at another commands him to wallow in the sty.</p>
+
+<p>Rabelais was wise in the sense in which any man may be so who delights
+in the strenuous exercise of a powerful understanding, and loves thinking
+for thinking’s sake. He was wise to detect popular fallacies, and to discern
+unpopular truths. He was wise to see how the young might be
+better educated, laws better made, nations better governed, wars more
+vigorously conducted, and peace more securely maintained. He was wise
+to call down both theology and philosophy from the skies above to the earth
+beneath us. And he was not more wise than eloquent; sometimes arraying
+truth in the noblest forms of speech, though more frequently enhancing her
+beauty by enveloping and contrasting her with the homeliest. At his prolific
+touch his native tongue germinated into countless new varieties of
+expression; and the mines of wealth, both intellectual and verbal, which he
+bequeathed to future ages, after being wrought by multitudes in each, still
+appear inexhaustible.</p>
+
+<p>The wisdom of Rabelais, was, however, of the world, worldly. It never
+ascended to the eternal fountains of light, nor descended to illuminate the
+dark places of the earth. It neither sought to interpret the awful mysteries
+of our nature, nor bowed down to adore in the contemplation of them. It
+aimed at no exalted ends, nor did it ever lead the way through any rugged
+and self-denying paths. It expressed neither sympathy for the wretchedness,
+nor pity for the sorrows, of mankind; but was satisfied to be shrewd, and
+witty, and comical upon them all. To the keen gaze of Rabelais, the frauds,
+and follies, and ignorance, and licentiousness of the papal court and priesthood
+afforded endless matter of scorn and merriment; but to his last hour
+he lived in their outward garb and communion. To that penetrating eye
+had been clearly revealed the majesty of the truth which the Reformers
+taught, and the majesty of the sufferings which they endured in its defence;
+but not one glow of enthusiasm could they ever kindle in his bosom, as they
+toiled in indigence, and died in martyrdom, to evangelise the world. Secure
+in the absolution of Clement VII for whatever he had done and written
+against the church, and secure in the license of Francis I, to publish whatever
+else he might please, Rabelais delighted to assume the character of a chartered
+libertine, or, as it might almost be said, of an intellectual debauchee. And
+yet, voluptuary, scoffer, and sceptic as he was, his laughter was so hearty, his
+glee so natural, his frolic so riotous, and his buffoonery so irresistible, that
+he became, not merely the tolerated, but the favoured and privileged, Momus
+of his times. He became also a proof to all later times, that, by the great
+mass of mankind, anything will be forgiven or permitted to genius, when,
+abandoning its native supremacy, it condescends to undertake the strangely
+inappropriate office of master of the revels.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15c1"><a href="#endnote_15c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“In the works of Rabelais,” says Michelet,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15f"><a href="#endnote_15f">f</a></span> “the French language appeared
+in a greatness it never possessed before nor since. What Dante accomplished
+for Italian, Rabelais did for French. He employed and blended every
+dialect, the elements of every period and province developed in the Middle
+Age, adding the while a wealth of technical expression furnished by art and
+science. Another man would have been overwhelmed by this immense
+variety, but he,—he harmonised everything. Antiquity, especially the
+Greek genius, and a knowledge of all modern languages permitted him to
+envelop and master that of France.” Saintsbury<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15e"><a href="#endnote_15e">e</a></span> declares that the only
+two men who can be compared to him in character of work and force of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_426">[426]</span>genius combined are Lucian and Swift, adding: “He is much less of a mere
+mocker than Lucian, and he is entirely destitute, even when he deals with
+monks or pedants, of the ferocity of Swift. He neither sneers nor rages;
+the <i>rire immense</i> which distinguishes him is altogether good-natured; but he
+is nearer to Lucian than to Swift, and Lucian is perhaps the author whom it
+is most necessary to know in order to understand him rightly.”<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CALVIN</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p426.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Calvin</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>One cannot better show how contrarieties are related than by the immediate
+transition from Francis Rabelais to John Calvin;<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> for, probably, no two
+men of commanding minds were
+ever more curiously contrasted with
+each other, as certainly no two
+minds were ever enshrined in bodies
+more dissimilar. To look upon,
+Rabelais was a drunken Silenus,
+Calvin a famished Ugolino. The
+one emptied his bottle before he
+wrote, while he was writing, and
+after he had written; the other
+contented himself with a repast of
+bread and water once in each six-and-thirty
+hours. Reposing in his
+easy chair, the merry doctor was
+hailed as lord of misrule by all the
+jovial spirits of his age; enthroned
+in the consistory of Geneva, the
+inexorable divine was dreaded as
+the disciplinarian of himself and of
+the whole subject city. The witty
+physician was L’Allegro, the austere
+minister Il Penseroso, of their
+generation. The reader of the <i>Gargantua</i>
+yields by turns to disgust,
+to admiration, and to merriment;
+but Democritus himself would not
+have found matter for one passing
+smile throughout the whole of the
+<i>Christian Institute</i>. To Rabelais, human life appeared a farce as broad as the
+knights of Aristophanes; to Calvin, a tragedy more dismal than the Agamemnon
+of Æschylus. And as they wrote, so they also lived. The traditional
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_427">[427]</span>stories about Rabelais, if true, attest his love, and, even if untrue, they attest
+his reputed love, of that kind of wit which is called practical; all the traditions
+of Calvin represent him as a man at whose appearance mirth instantly
+took flight.</p>
+
+<p>The gay doctor is made in these tales to play off his tricks on the
+graduates in medicine, on the chancellor du Prât, on the king and queen
+of France, and even on the mule of the pope himself; while the solemn theologian
+makes his domiciliary visits to ascertain that no dinner table at Geneva
+was rendered the pretext for levity of discourse, or for excess of diet.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the congruity on which to found any comparison between
+these most incongruous minds? The answer is (to borrow an expressive
+word), that they were both devoted <i>ergoists</i>, each of them being at once
+a mighty master, and a submissive slave, of logic.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15c2"><a href="#endnote_15c">c</a></span> With the religious significance
+of Calvin’s teaching we have no present concern. We shall have
+occasion to see something more of this in the course of our study of the
+Reformation. Here we are concerned rather with Calvin the writer—the
+author of the <i>Institution Chrétienne</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Published in 1536 this book was received with unbounded delight.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> We
+may, indeed, reject the story, that a thousand editions of it were sold in his
+own lifetime; but we cannot dispute that, during a century and a half, it
+exercised an unrivalled supremacy over a large part of Protestant Europe.
+For that dominion it was indebted, in part, to the novelty and comprehensiveness
+of the design it accomplished,—to the vast compass of learning,
+scriptural, patristic, and historical, which it embraced,—to the depth and
+the height of the morality which it inculcated,—and to the calm but energetic
+keenness with which it exposed the errors of his adversaries. But the
+popularity and the influence of this remarkable book is also, in part, to be
+ascribed to its literary merits. Calvin has been described as the Bossuet
+of his age. Of all the French authors whom France had as yet produced, he
+was the most philosophical when he speculated, the most sublime when he
+adored, the most methodical and luminous in the development of truth, the
+most acute in the refutation of error, and the most obedient to that law or
+spirit of his nation, which demands symmetry in the proportions, harmony
+in the details, and concert in all the parts of every work of art, whether it
+be wrought by the pen, the pencil, or the chisel. In the ninth chapter of
+Bossuet’s <i>Histoire des Variations</i> may, indeed, be found the best, as it is a
+very reluctant, eulogy on the literary excellence of his great rival and predecessor.
+Even in the haughty gloom which the bishop of Meaux discovers
+in the style and tone of the reformer of Geneva, there is a not inappropriate
+interest. The beautiful lake of that city, and the mountains which encircle
+it, lay before his eyes as he wrote; but they are said to have suggested to
+his fancy no images, and to have drawn from his pen not so much as one
+transient allusion. With his mental vision ever directed to that melancholy
+view of the state and prospects of our race, which he had discovered in the
+book of life, it would, indeed, have been incongruous to have turned aside
+to depict any of those glorious aspects of the creative benignity which were
+spread around him in the book of nature.</p>
+
+<h3>MONTAIGNE</h3>
+
+<p>The immediate effect of the servitude into which Calvin had subdued
+the minds of his disciples was to provoke a formidable revolt. When he
+was giving his latest touches to his <i>Institution Chrétienne</i>, Michel de
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_428">[428]</span>Montaigne,<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
+    then in his twenty-second year, had just taken his seat in the
+Parliament of Bordeaux. That he afterwards became a deputy in the states-general
+of Blois, though maintained by no inconsiderable authorities, seems
+to me impossible; but it is clear that his early manhood was devoted to public,
+and especially to judicial, affairs. He was thus brought into contact with the
+busy world at the moment of a greater agitation of human society than had
+occurred since the overthrow of the Roman Empire. Marvellous revolutions,
+and discoveries still more marvellous, in the world of letters, of politics, of
+geography, and of religion,—the welfare of inappeasable passions,—the
+working of whatever is most base, and of whatever is most sublime, in our
+common nature,—and calamities which
+might seem to have fulfilled the most
+awful of the apocaliptic visions, had
+passed in rapid succession before the
+eyes of this acute and curious observer.
+It was an unwelcome and repulsive
+spectacle. He turned from it to seek
+the shelter and the repose of his hereditary
+mansion. In that retirement he
+indulged, or cherished, a spirit inflexibly
+opposed to the spirit by which his
+native country was convulsed. The
+age was idolatrous of novelties; and,
+therefore, Montaigne lived in the retrospect
+of a remote antiquity. It was
+an age of restless ambition; and, therefore,
+he passively committed himself
+and his fortunes to the current of events.
+The minds of other men were exploring
+the foundations, and criticising the
+superstructure, of every social polity;
+and, therefore, his mind was averted
+altogether from the affairs of the commonwealth.
+Because his neighbours
+yielded themselves to every gust of passion,
+he must be passionless. Because
+the times were treacherous, he must
+punctiliously cherish his personal honour. Because they were inhuman, he
+cultivated all the amenities of life. Because calamity swept over the world,
+he was enamoured of epicurean ease. Heroism was the boast of not a few,
+and to their virtues he paid the homage of an incredulous obeisance. Dogmatism
+was the habit of very many; and, therefore, Montaigne must surrender
+himself to an almost universal scepticism.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p428.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Michel de Montaigne</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The contrast was as captivating as it was complete. With a temper
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_429">[429]</span>easily satisfied,—with affections as tranquil as they were kindly,—with a
+curiosity ever wakeful, but never impetuous,—with competency, health,
+friends, books, and leisure, Montaigne had all the means of happiness which
+can be brought within the reach of those to whom life is not a self-denying
+existence, but a pleasant pastime. Yet, with him, it was the pastime of an
+active, enlightened, and amiable mind. The study of man as a member of
+society was his chosen pursuit, but he conducted it in a mode altogether his
+own. The individual man, Michel Montaigne, such as he would be in every
+imaginable relation and office of society, was the subject of his daily investigation.
+He became, of all egotists, the most pleasant, versatile, and comprehensive.
+He produced complete sketches of himself with an air of the
+most unreserved frankness, and in a tone frequently passing from quiet
+seriousness to graceful badinage. He describes his tastes, his humours, his
+opinions, his frailties, his pursuits, and his associates with the most exuberant
+fertility of invention, and has wrought out a general delineation of our
+common humanity from the profound knowledge of a single member of it.
+And, as the variety is boundless, so is the unity well sustained. His essays
+are a mirror in which every reader sees his own image reflected, but in
+which he also sees the image of Montaigne reflecting it. There he is, ever
+changing, and yet ever the same. He looks on the world with a calm indifference,
+which would be repulsive were it not corrected by his benevolent
+curiosity about its history and its prospects. He has not one malignant
+feeling about him, except it be towards the tiresome, and especially towards
+such of them as provoke his yawns and his resentment by misplaced and by
+commonplace wisdom. He has a quick relish for pleasure, but with a preference
+for such pleasures as are social, inoffensive, and easily procured. He has
+a love for virtue, but chiefly, if not exclusively, when she exacts no great
+effort, nor any considerable sacrifice. He loves his fellow-men, but does not
+much, or seriously, esteem them. He loves study and meditation, but stipulates
+that they shall expose him to no disagreeable fatigue. He cherishes
+every temper which makes life pass sociably and pleasantly. He takes
+things as he finds them in perfect good humour, makes the best of them all,
+and never burdens his mind with virtuous indignation, unattainable hopes,
+or profitless regrets. In short, as exhibited in his own self-portraiture, he
+is an Epicurean, who knows how to make his better dispositions tributary to
+his comfort, and also knows how to prevent his evil tempers from troubling
+his repose.</p>
+
+<p>The picture of himself, which Montaigne thus holds up to his readers as
+a representation of themselves, is not sublime, nor is it beautiful; but it is a
+striking and a masterly likeness. It is drawn with inimitable grace and freedom,
+and with the most transparent perspicuity; and they who are best
+entitled to pronounce such a judgment, admire in his language a richness
+and a curious felicity unknown to any preceding French writers. Even
+they to whom his tongue is not native, can perceive that his style is the easy,
+the luminous, and the flexible vehicle of his thoughts, and never degenerates
+into a mere apology for the want of thought; and that his imagination, without
+ever disfiguring his ideas, however abstract, and however subtle they
+may be, habitually clothes them with the noblest forms and the most appropriate
+colouring.</p>
+
+<p>But our more immediate object is, to notice the relation in which Montaigne
+stands to the other great moral teachers of his native land, and to
+those habits of thought by which France is, and has so long been, characterised.
+The antagonist in everything of the spirit of his times, he seems to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_430">[430]</span>have regarded with peculiar aversion the peremptory confidence by which
+the great controversy of his age was conducted, both by the adherents of
+Rome and by the founder of Calvinism. Because they would admit no doubt
+whatever, every form of doubt found harbour with him. Because they were
+dogmatists, he must be a sceptic.</p>
+
+<p>In M. Faugère’s edition of Pascal’s <i>Thoughts</i> will be found the famous
+dialogue on the scepticism of Montaigne, between Pascal and De Sacy,—a
+delineation so exquisite, that it seems mere folly to attempt any addition to
+it. The genius of Port Royal, however, exhibits there its severity, not less
+than its justice; and a few words may not be misplaced in the attempt to
+mitigate a little of the rigour of the condemnation. Montaigne was a sceptic
+(as very many are), because his sagacity and diligence were buoyant enough
+to raise his mind to the clouds which float over our heads, but were not
+buoyant enough to elevate him to the pure regions of light which lie beyond
+them. His learning was various rather than recondite. It was drawn chiefly
+from Latin authors, and from the Latin authors of a degenerating age; not
+from Cicero or Virgil, but from Seneca and Pliny. Of Greek he knew but
+little, though he was profoundly conversant with the translation of Plutarch,
+with which Amyot had lately rendered all French readers familiar. From
+such masters Montaigne did not learn, and could not have learned, the love
+of truth. They taught him rather to content himself with loose historical
+gossip, and with half-formed notions in philosophy. They taught him not
+how to resolve, but how to amuse himself with the great problems of human
+existence. They encouraged his characteristic want of seriousness and earnestness
+of purpose. From such studies, and from the events of his life and
+times, he learned to flutter over the surface of things, and to traverse the
+whole world of moral, religious, and political inquiry, without finding, and
+without seeking, a resting-place. His aimless curiosity and versatile caprice
+form at once the fascination and the vice of his writings, though not indeed
+their only vice, for the name of Montaigne belongs to that melancholy roll of
+the great French sceptical writers—Rabelais, Montesquieu, Bayle, Voltaire,
+and Diderot—who, not content to assault the principles of virtue, have so
+far debased themselves, as laboriously to stimulate the disorderly appetites
+of their readers.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the scepticism of Montaigne was not altogether such as theirs is.
+He has none of their dissolute revelry in confounding the distinctions of
+truth and falsehood, of good and evil. He does not, like some of them,
+delight in the darkness with which he believes the mind of man to be hopelessly
+enveloped. He rather placidly and contentedly acquiesces in the conviction
+that truth is beyond his reach. He could amuse himself with doubt,
+and play with it. With few positive and no dearly cherished opinions, he
+had no ardour for any opinion, and had not the slightest desire to make
+proselytes to his own Pyrrhonism. He was, on the contrary, to the last
+degree, tolerant of dissent from his own judgment; and, in the lack of other
+opponents, was prompt, and even glad, to contradict himself. Of all human
+infirmities, dulness, and obscurity, and vehemence, are those from which he
+was most exempt. Of all human passions, the zeal which fires the bosom of
+a missionary is that from which he was the most remote. We associate
+with him as one of the most pleasant of all our illustrious companions, and quit
+him as one of the least impressive of all our eminent instructors.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15c3"><a href="#endnote_15c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Montaigne’s fame has passed through several very different phases.
+Among his own contemporaries it grew without overstepping a somewhat
+restricted circle of enlightened minds. After that, the main current of French
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_431">[431]</span>thought took a direction opposite to that of Montaigne’s. Dogmatism returned
+and the seventeenth century in general adhered to it. Pascal launched
+anathemas at Montaigne. But the sumptuous edifice of the age of Louis XIV
+soon crumbled away, and Montaigne came forward again, hailed as a glorious
+ancestor by the entire age of Voltaire and Rousseau. To-day he has ceased
+to arouse any tempests, but he occupies his uncontested place in the national
+pantheon. He will live as a writer as long as French literature exists, for
+like the other great sixteenth century writers, men of strong individualities
+like Rabelais and Calvin, he had his own language as well as his own
+thought—a language sovereignly free, eternally young, inimitable, and
+above all a fertile source of rejuvenation for the whole language. He will
+live as a philosopher as long as men practise the axiom of the <i>Essays</i>, “Know
+thyself.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_15d"><a href="#endnote_15d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> [The date of Rabelais’ birth is not certain, although most authorities place it about 1483.
+Of his early years very little is known, but from 1519 his history is more definite. He was
+educated at a convent school and, after his entrance into the Franciscan order, devoted himself
+to serious study. In 1524 he became a Benedictine, this change of order and dwelling-place
+being attributed by some to a disgust with the cloister. Six years later he is found studying
+medicine in Montpellier and afterwards practising in Lyons. John du Bellay, bishop of Paris,
+took him with him to Rome in 1534 as physician. Rabelais died at Paris in 1553.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> [John Calvin, the celebrated Protestant reformer and theologian, was born at Noyon,
+Picardy, France, in 1509, and died at Genoa, May 27th, 1564. His father, Gerard Calvin, was a
+notary-apostolic and procurator-fiscal for the lordship of Noyon, besides holding other ecclesiastical
+offices. His early years are obscure, but from childhood he showed great religious feeling
+and an intense earnestness. He studied at Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, and although brought up
+with the intention of entering the priesthood, after close study of the Bible, he embraced the
+Reformation. In 1532 Calvin published his first work, an edition of Seneca’s <i>De Clementia</i> with
+an elaborate commentary. In 1533, on account of speeches in opposition to the court, he was
+banished from Paris and it is said it was during his retirement at Saintonge that he made his
+first sketch of his <i>Institution Chrétienne</i>. His other works are all of a religious nature, mostly
+controversial. A great many of these are of an exegetical character, of which his expository
+comments or homilies on the books of Scripture are by some considered the most valuable of his
+works. (For a further account of Calvin, see the history of the Reformation movement, volume
+xiii.)]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> Lacépède, referring to Montaigne’s <i>Essays</i>, says: “In a work that one reads again with
+delight and self-improvement, Michel de Montaigne has given a new glory to France.” Michel
+Eyquem de Montaigne, was born at Périgord, of an ancient and noble family, in 1533. Perhaps the
+finish of his <i>Essays</i>, his principal work, is due to his early training, his father having so managed
+his education, that at the age of five he spoke the purest Latin, and, as an old book gives it,
+“was also taught Greek by way of recreation.” He was married at the age of thirty-three. He
+lived at the court of Francis II and Henry VIII. He became mayor of Bordeaux in 1581 and in
+1592; according to one old chronicle, “he died a constant and philosophic death, when he was
+some months short of sixty.” His <i>Essays</i> were first published in 1580; the edition of 1588 was
+the last to be published in the author’s lifetime.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_432">[432]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-16.jpg" width="500" height="175" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI. THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII AND THE RISE OF RICHELIEU</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE REGENCY OF MARIE DE’ MEDICI</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1610-1628 A.D.]</div>
+
+<p>The terrible instability of the monarchical government is revealed upon
+the death of Henry IV, who left as his successor a child of eight years.
+What follows is the opposite of what he desired; France turned inside out
+like a glove.</p>
+
+<p>The treasure that Sully had amassed and protected is squandered in a
+moment, the domain that he cleared of debt is remortgaged, the possessions of
+the state are sold. All the institutions of this reign are abandoned, buildings
+are interrupted, canals given up. The manufactories of silk and of glass, the
+Savonnerie and the Gobelins are closed and the workmen discharged. The
+Louvre, which was to be degraded by lodging great inventors—the Louvre
+is left to the courtiers. Adieu to the museum of trades and the Jardin des
+Plantes; these hobbies of the king, and a thousand others sleep on the
+charts of Sully. At the Tuileries, at the arsenal, Henry’s favourite trees, his
+mulberries, are removed. But for fear of the people his monuments would
+be torn down. By an unexpected change the people discover that they loved
+Henry IV. The legend begins the day of his death; it will go on increasing
+by comparison of what is, with what was.</p>
+
+<p>Paris at this moment was dominated by an extraordinary terror. The
+people believed themselves lost. Women tore their hair, less from grief
+than from fear. It was the same everywhere. The terror of the league
+returned to people’s minds and caused them to tremble. Hence there was a
+surprising, or rather a striking calm. For this great wisdom stuck to one
+thing—that is, that France, having neither idea, nor passion, nor moral
+interest, should no longer have a feeling of life. It was entirely identified
+with the king, with a man who had been killed; and what remained? A
+boy of eight who on the 15th of May surrendered the kingdom to his mother
+and on the 29th got a flogging.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16b1"><a href="#endnote_16b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The last dispositions of Henry, on his intended departure to head his
+army, had appointed his queen, Marie de’ Medici, regent: this was strongly
+in her favour as dowager; and she now found little difficulty in assuming
+the same authority. The duke d’Épernon, her partisan, summoned the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_433">[433]</span>parliament, and procured their acquiescence, not, however, without having
+made some show of menace. This seemed unnecessary: of the princes of the
+blood, three in number, who could alone have pretended to the regency, Condé
+was absent in the Netherlands, his brother of Conti was imbecile, whilst
+their uncle, the count de Soissons, also absent, was at enmity with every
+influential personage.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1610-1614 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It was to Sully that Henry’s death came as the greatest blow. Sully was
+panic-struck; he saw in the murder a Catholic plot, and dreaded a renewal
+of the massacres of St. Bartholomew’s eve; he accordingly shut himself
+up with his followers in the Bastille, which he hastily provisioned by carrying
+off all the bread from the bakers’ shops around. By the morrow, however, his
+suspicions had subsided, and he appeared at the court of the regent. [He
+was cordially received; a reconciliation was effected, and the queen got
+what she was after,—the treasure that Sully had stored up in the Bastille.]</p>
+
+<p>Marie de’ Medici was of a weak character; she was simple womanhood,
+unenforced by either firmness or sagacity. She had come to France a stranger;
+and wanting both charms and wit, she had never acquired any influence either
+with her husband or amongst the followers of his court. Marie, therefore,
+shrank back into her private circle, and made confidants and counsellors of
+her two Italian domestics, the woman, Leonora Galigaï, and Concini, the
+husband of Leonora. These upstart personages, full of all the meanness
+and narrowness of their calling, had frequently fanned the petty jealousies
+of the queen against Henry; and now it was to be feared their influence
+would be perniciously felt. Marie, however, was as yet too conscious of
+her weakness and inability. She had a vague idea of the justice of the
+late king’s policy in keeping down the noblesse, that now pressed around
+her, and terrified her with their pretensions and their quarrels. She
+therefore had recourse to those best fitted to guide her—the ministers of
+the late monarch, Villeroi the secretary, Sillery the chancellor, the president
+Jeannin, and Sully, superintendent of finances: these, except Sully, had
+none of the pretensions and haughty bearing of the noblesse; and Marie felt
+no loss of her will and authority in being guided by them.</p>
+
+<p>It would prove a wearisome task either to narrate or to peruse an account
+of the cabals, quarrels, duels, and claims of the personages and princes
+amongst each other, and with or against the regent, during the three years
+which followed Henry’s death. They formed a repetition of the conspiracies
+and alliances of the aristocracy against Catherine de’ Medici half a century
+previous, except that at that time there were at least some noble characters and
+some serious aims. Whatever might be said of Châtillon or of Guise, they
+were animated by high views; but the political puppets who occupied the
+scene during Marie de’ Medici’s regency, wanted not courage—indeed they
+were quite as ready as their predecessors to slay each other in duels—but
+purpose, at least other purpose than immediate greed, they had none.
+There were some examples of ferocity in Louis XIII’s early days, which
+reminded one of Charles IX—the chevalier de Guise, meeting the baron
+de Luz and running him through the body, and being universally censured
+for the act until he redeemed the murder by slaying the young De Luz, son
+of the baron, in a fiercely-contested duel. This spirit, which showed itself
+in private broils, never rose into a public sentiment. One would have thought
+that in the army which Henry had formed, and amongst the officers whom
+he had honoured with his patronage and friendship, there might have been
+some who burned to distinguish themselves in prosecuting that war against
+the house of Austria which the monarch had planned. Not one noble opposed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_434">[434]</span>the peace; not one soldier of note raised his voice in behalf of the spirited
+policy of the late king; scarcely even a Huguenot. For Bouillon was
+immersed in the intrigues of Concini, and Lesdiguières was tempted by the
+title of duke and peer, as he afterwards was by that of constable.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Disgrace of Sully</i></h4>
+
+<p>As long, however, as the rigid Sully held the finances under his care,
+there was a check to spoliation, as well as a generous voice in the council to
+support the sage, the firm, and yet conciliating measures of the late monarch.
+He was at first retained, indeed, for the sake of the stern negative which he
+was wont to put on the demands of the greedy courtiers, as well as from fear
+or respect of his influence with the Huguenots. But his economical temper
+became soon a disagreeable restraint upon the queen herself; and the duke de
+Bouillon, an indefatigable votary of intrigue, offering to effect more than even
+Sully in conciliating and quieting the Huguenots, this old and upright minister
+of the great Henry, was dismissed. Despite his probity, his able administration,
+and the esteem of Henry, a cloud would rest on the character of Sully
+but for the honest and simple exculpation contained in his own memoirs. His
+austere and rude manners made him many enemies. Most of his contemporaries
+unite in accusing him; and, strange to say, the only family, beyond his own,
+whose friendship and good-will he preserved in his retreat, was that of Guise.</p>
+
+<p>The disgrace of Sully left the treasure of the late king completely
+at the regent’s disposal, who dissipated it by bribing prince and noble
+to remain quiet. The favour of Leonora Galigaï and her husband
+Concini, now Marshal d’Ancre, became more apparent. The avarice of
+these foreigners knew no bounds: not content with the purchase of a marquisate,
+and the dignity of marshal, Concini contrived to get some of the
+principal fortresses of the kingdom in his possession—Péronne amongst
+others, and the citadel of Amiens. Épernon, on his side, secured Metz;
+whilst the count de Soissons and the prince of Condé, despite their pensions
+and their submission, by turns thwarted the court, and threw it into disorder
+by their private quarrels. Although the marshal d’Ancre and his wife
+were the chief favourites of the queen-regent, Villeroi was nevertheless
+the counsellor whose views, in matters of serious policy, she principally
+adopted. Villeroi, say the <i>Mémoires</i> attributed to Richelieu,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16e1"><a href="#endnote_16e">e</a></span> bred in the
+civil wars, had imbibed their virulence, which he repressed during the life of
+Henry. Instead of now recommending that monarch’s conciliating policy,
+which Sully upheld, Villeroi said that there were but two parties in the
+state, Catholic and Protestant, and that the government must necessarily
+embrace one or the other. He leaned to the Catholic side, and supported
+the project of strengthening it by marrying the young king to a daughter of
+Spain, rather than to a princess of Lorraine or Savoy, as had been the advice
+of Henry. The prince of Condé, however, urged by the duke de Bouillon,
+opposed the ministry in this, for no reason, apparently, except the sake of
+making opposition. And for the time, Louis XIII being as yet but nine
+years of age, the project was allowed to slumber.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16d1"><a href="#endnote_16d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>First Revolt of the Lords (1614 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The pretensions of the nobles grew with the weakness of the government.
+“The presents of the queen,” said Richelieu, “stilled the great
+hunger of their avarice and ambition; but it was by no means extinct. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_435">[435]</span>treasury and the coffers of the Bastille were exhausted; then they aspired
+to so great things that royal authority could not possibly give them the
+increase of power which they demanded.” What they wanted in fact was governorships
+for themselves and their families, places of surety, and the dismemberment
+of France. Épernon was governor of Metz, but Henry, being
+afraid of that proud noble, had imposed a lieutenant upon him, who occupied
+the citadel and corresponded directly with the ministers. The very day of
+the king’s death Épernon hastened an order to take possession of the
+lieutenant and the citadel. He had a strong place at that time only two
+steps from the Spaniards, which people called “his kingdom of Austrasia.”
+Many lords at the news of the assassination had thus thrown themselves
+into the cities with which they had an understanding, and some did not wish
+to ever come out again or wished at any rate to return. “The time of
+kings is past,” they said, “that of the nobles is come.” The first refusal of
+the regent brought about a civil war. Condé took up arms and published a
+manifesto in which he accused the court of having debased the nobility,
+ruined the finances, and taxed the poor—singular reproaches in the mouth
+of a prince who with his friends had received the best part of this money of
+the poor. He concluded according to custom by demanding the convocation
+of the states-general to work at the reform of existing abuses.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p435.jpg" width="500" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Courtiers, Time of Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Brought up in the Catholic faith, although born of a Protestant family,
+Condé hoped to rally both parties to his cause. A large number of lords
+came to take their places under his standard, at their head the dukes de Vendôme,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_436">[436]</span>de Longueville, de Luxemburg, de Mayenne, de Nevers, de Retz, etc.
+The Calvinists refused to be associated in this rising in arms. “We have all
+the liberty for our consciences,” said they, “which we could desire, and we
+do not wish to abandon our wives and our houses to satisfy the appetite of
+some factious persons.” The Catholics did not take fire either. Since the
+estates of the league, popular passions had been greatly appeased. The
+party of tolerant politicians born with L’Hôpital, and come to power under
+Henry IV, now counted nearly all members of the cloth and bourgeoisie.
+The experience which had been so cruelly bought by the civil war was not
+lost. The nation compared the twelve years of prosperity it had enjoyed,
+with those thirty-eight years of massacres and pillaging, and held close to the
+throne; leaving the great lords to exercise their sterile ambition in space.
+“The people,” wrote Malherbe at that moment, “remain obedient everywhere,
+and without them nothing can be done.” Let a firm hand take the
+rudder and even the most turbulent will return to the quiet in which Henry
+IV had held them. Some of Henry IV’s old ministers, Villeroi, Jeannin,
+counselled the queen to act with vigour. She preferred to make terms at
+Ste. Menehould (May 15th, 1614). The prince of Condé received 450,000
+livres in cash; the duke of Mayenne 300,000 “to get married”; M. de Longueville
+100,000 livres pension, etc. But the court, wanting to gain on one
+side what it had lost on the other, did not pay the stockholders of the Hôtel-de-Ville
+in that year. That was what was done for “the poor.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16f"><a href="#endnote_16f">f</a></span> And the
+court assented to the call of the states-general.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Last Assembly of the States-General</i></h4>
+
+<p>The states-general, assembled at Paris in 1614, demands especial attention,
+not only as the last of these national assemblies previous to the Revolution (at
+the commencement of which it was continually referred to as affording precedent),
+but as a scene in which the political feelings and views of the age
+were completely developed. We have an ample account of the sittings and
+discussions of the commons or third order, written by Florimond Rapine,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16g"><a href="#endnote_16g">g</a></span> a
+member, one of the king’s advocates. From this we learn that the majority
+of the lower chamber were lawyers, and a considerable portion nobles, almost
+all the king’s lieutenant-generals being elected by their several governments.
+The most important consideration in the eyes of all was evidently the respective
+dignity of persons and classes. The first two months were consumed
+in disputes of precedence, in ceremonials, in mutual compliments between the
+orders at first, and afterwards in mutual abuse. Miron, provost of the merchants
+of the city of Paris, was elected president. The address of the commons
+to the king was spoken by this magistrate on his knees; the deputies
+were clothed in simple black, whilst priests and nobles shone in gold, and
+an attempt of the president to wear his city robes of red and blue in a
+procession was looked upon as a monstrous piece of ambition.</p>
+
+<p>The grievance most odious to the nation was the enormity of pensions
+granted to the princes and chief officers. Against these the commons and
+the clergy joined in lifting up their voice. The next demand was to
+abolish the venality of the judicature, and the right of the <i>paulette</i>, a kind
+of annual fine, paid by the officers of parliament, in consideration of which
+their offices were considered hereditary. This demand the chamber of the
+commons could not in decency oppose; but being principally lawyers and
+provincial governors, it was their interest to preserve the <i>paulette</i>, and they
+therefore slurred over the question, and laid greater stress on the necessity
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_437">[437]</span>of abating the <i>taille</i>, which pressed upon the people. Thus, the nobles
+insisting on abolishing the hereditary right to their offices held by the
+legists, the legists or commons retaliated by demanding the retrenchment
+of pensions; and a struggle ensued between them. Savaron, an orator of
+eloquence in the <i>tiers</i>, exclaimed against the mercenary spirit of the noblesse,
+which, he said, had forsaken the pursuit of honour for the worship of the
+goddess Pecune, and bartered even its fidelity for a price. The nobles were
+indignant at this, and demanded an apology. De Mesme, another member
+of the <i>tiers</i>, was deputed to explain, and he made matters infinitely worse.
+“France,” said he, “had three children: The clergy, if not the eldest born,
+had at least, like Jacob, got the heritage and the blessing, and therefore
+were to be considered the eldest. Next came the noblesse, the second son—fiefs,
+counties, and commands, were its share. The youngest born was the
+commons, whose portion was the offices of the judicature. But,” concluded
+the orator, “let not the noblesse presume too much over the <i>tiers</i>; since it
+often happens that the cadets of a great family restore to it that honour and
+illustration which has been thrown away by the elder brethren.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1614-1615 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The difference of interest between the states rendered their meeting
+productive of no effect. The regent would willingly have reduced the
+pensions of the great, and destroyed the <i>paulette</i>, or hereditary right of
+the legists to their offices; but she feared to outrage the princes by the first,
+whilst uncertain of the support of the commons. Nothing accordingly was
+decided on. The <i>cahiers</i> or remonstrances of the states were presented,
+were smilingly received, and slept in the king’s hands. The assembly was
+dissolved. The queen took her own inactivity and inability for prudence.
+It proved the contrary. The party of the princes leagued with that of the
+legists, the union being effected by the exertions and intrigues of the duke
+de Bouillon. As the assembly of the states had proved an empty ceremony,
+all its advice and remonstrance being disregarded, the legists of the parliament
+were urged to put themselves forward as the popular representatives,
+and finish the work that the states had vainly attempted. The chambers of
+parliament accordingly assembled, and began by summoning the great peers
+to join them, and form a court of peers for taking into consideration the
+affairs of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>This bold act was the inspiration of Bouillon. The court was terrified,
+and with good cause; but the parliament itself was almost equally intimidated
+by its own boldness, and showed but hesitation when the queen put
+forth her authority. Nevertheless, the peers being forbidden to join the parliament,—an
+injunction that Condé had the weakness to obey,—the legists
+prepared their remonstrances; amongst which were not only all the demands
+of the states, but also a claim that no act of the king should have
+force unless freely registered by the parliament, and that the parliament
+should have the right of summoning a court of peers and great officers,
+when occasion required. These remonstrances they insisted on reading in
+public before the young king, who showed a favourable and benign countenance,
+whilst that of the regent was convulsed with anger. But this bold
+attempt to put a check on the royal authority utterly failed: an edict of the
+king reproved the audacity of the parliament; and the latter who had been
+urged on more by the intrigues of the princes than by any conscientious or
+firm love of liberty and the public good, yielded pusillanimously, when
+affairs began to assume the appearance of an open rupture. Condé acted
+pusillanimously, also, in not declaring himself, and taking his place in the
+parliament, to which his secret promises of support could not impart sufficient
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_438">[438]</span>confidence. It ended by the court obtaining the upper hand, and in
+the consequent revolt of Condé; the queen resolving, at the same time, to
+fulfil the project of the double marriage with Spain.</p>
+
+<h3>MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII; MARRIAGE WITH ANNE OF AUSTRIA</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1615-1616 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Marie de’ Medici, with the young king, set out for Bordeaux, to meet his
+future spouse. It was a military enterprise rather than a nuptial procession,
+the court marching at the head of an army, whilst it was pursued by Condé
+with an equal force. Both sides avoided an action. The king arrived at
+Bordeaux, despatched his sister Elizabeth, who was to espouse the infante
+of Spain, to the Pyrenees, and received in return Anne of Austria, a young
+and not unlovely princess of fifteen. The marriage was celebrated at Bordeaux
+in November, 1615. Louis XIII was now of age; the possession of
+a wife gave him the consciousness of manhood, and he began accordingly
+to feel and to express a will of his own that disquieted and constrained the
+queen-mother, no longer regent.</p>
+
+<p>One of the young monarch’s most dominant tastes was falconry, and as
+he was not allowed to follow it in the fields, he kept a number of these birds
+of prey in his apartments. A young man, of the name of De Luynes, charged
+with the care of them, interested the king by his knowledge and conversation
+on such subjects. He soon became a favourite. And Marie de’ Medici,
+who discovered the rising sun, made repeated offers to resign her authority,
+which Louis was not prepared to accept. She then sought to conciliate
+Luynes, but he, ambitious and desirous of full power, held aloof, and continued
+in the king’s presence to criticise the feeble administration of Marie
+and the prodigal folly of Concini.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling her influence undermined, and humouring the impatience of the
+young monarch and his queen, who longed to visit Paris, she concluded a
+new accommodation with Condé, greatly to the advantage of that prince.
+He was allowed to participate in the government, and to sign the decrees of
+the council. The queen objected to granting this power, but she was overruled
+by Villeroi, who observed that this would put the prince always in the
+king’s power, by bringing him to the Louvre.</p>
+
+<p>“There is no danger,” said he, “in trusting the pen to a hand, the arm
+of which you hold.” The duke de Longueville superseded the marshal
+D’Ancre in the government of Picardy. The Huguenots, who had armed
+for Condé, had also their recompense. The court and royal authority was,
+in fact, at the feet of this young chief of the noblesse.</p>
+
+<h3>RICHELIEU APPEARS</h3>
+
+<p>The queen-dowager saw the condition to which her weakness had reduced
+her. The marshal D’Ancre was her only friend, and, from the general odium
+borne to him, he proved more a weight than a support. Another counsellor
+indeed she had, a man attached both to her and D’Ancre, and who was well
+capacitated to counsel her in this extremity. This was Armand du Plessis
+Richelieu, bishop of Luçon, who had somewhat distinguished himself in the
+states-general of 1614.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16d2"><a href="#endnote_16d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/fp6.jpg" width="460" height="650" alt="">
+<p class="caption">COMING OF AGE OF LOUIS XIII. (BY RUBENS)</p>
+<p class="caption">(From the painting in the Louvre)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A painter who was remarkably faithful and conscientious in art and in
+life—the Fleming, Philip de Champagne—has left us a true representation
+of the fine, strong, and spare figure of the cardinal De Richelieu. This
+Jansenist painter would have disdained to relieve or enrich the gray image
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_439">[439]</span>with a ray of light, as Rubens or Murillo would have done. That would
+have been changing the nature of the grave, unpromising subject. The eye
+would have been pleased and art better satisfied, but it would not have been
+true to history. It must be remembered that this was the epoch of the
+monochrome, when plain glass was replacing the stained glass of the sixteenth
+century. In France especially the taste for colour was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Gray everywhere. Literary gray in Malherbe. Religious gray in Berulle
+and the Oratory. The new-born Port-Royal aims at dullness, one might
+almost say at mediocrity. Pascal will appear in thirty years. The colour
+is very good here, but moderate in very truth, neither too much nor too
+little. A learned master among masters, the good Philip nevertheless stuck
+so closely to nature and went so deeply into it that he satisfies both the conceptions
+of history and the popular impression. History recognises in this
+gray-bearded phantom with its lustreless gray eye and its fine spare hands
+the grandson of the prevost of Henry III who assassinated Guise. He comes
+towards you, and you do not feel reassured. That personage has indeed the
+appearance of life, but is it truly a man, a soul? Yes, an intellect certainly,
+strong, clear, and shall we say luminous, or dark and sinister? If he would
+take a few steps further we should be face to face. He does not inspire
+anxiety, but one fears that this strong head has nothing in its breast, neither
+heart nor vitals. In trials of witchcraft there have been too many of these
+evil spirits that will not remain in the lower regions, but return and disturb
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>What contrasts in him—so hard, so yielding; so complete, so broken!
+By how many tortures he must have been moulded, formed, and unformed,
+let us say rather disarticulated, to have become that eminently artificial
+thing which goes without going, advances without appearing, and noiselessly,
+as though gliding over a deadened carpet—then, having arrived, overthrows
+everything. He looks at you from the depths of his mystery, this red-robed
+sphinx; one dare not say from the depths of his craftiness. For, in contrast
+with the ancient sphinx, which dies if one divines it, this one seems to say:
+“Whoever divines me shall die.” If one should be densely and profoundly
+ignorant of Richelieu,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16e2"><a href="#endnote_16e">e</a></span> one must read his <i>Mémoires</i>. All the people of this
+race, Sulla, Tiberius, and others, have written memoirs or caused them to be
+written, in order to render history difficult, to baffle men, to disconcert the
+public, and above all to connect the beginning of their lives with the end and
+to disguise somewhat the terrible contradictions of their different periods.</p>
+
+<p>His ill-fortune forced him to have merit early. He was the youngest of
+three brothers. His family was not rich, and had intermarried with plebeians.
+The eldest brother, who was at court, spent everything. The second,
+who held the bishopric of Luçon, became a Carthusian; and as this bishopric
+did not leave the family, the third, our Richelieu, had to become a churchman,
+in spite of his military taste. The eldest brother was killed in a duel,
+too late for his cadet, who would have taken his place and would never have
+become a priest. He perhaps was not born ill-natured, but he became so.
+The contradiction between his character and his robe gave him that rich
+fund of ill humour to which is due his great strength—“the bitterness of
+blood, which alone makes him win battles.” His battles as priest could only
+be theological. He promptly transmitted his theses with great ostentation
+to the Sorbonne, dedicating them to Henry IV, and offering himself to the
+king for important services. Then he went to Rome to be consecrated, to
+offer himself to the pope. Neither the king nor the pope responded to the
+impatience of the ardent young politician.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_440">[440]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then he sadly fell back upon his bishopric of Luçon, which was poor
+enough and in a country of disputes, near to La Rochelle and the Huguenots.
+This nearness caused him annoyance; in spite of violent headaches, he wrote
+against them. He is not without talent. His pen is a sword, short and
+keen, well-fitted for disputation. He does not dwell dully upon the absurd.
+If he writes nonsense he does not do it like a fool. He has a happy insolence
+and bold turns of thought; and retreats haughtily, and by this means
+he makes a very good showing.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, he would have remained in his obscurity at Luçon if he had
+had nothing but his controversy. But he was a handsome fellow, a fine porcelain
+creature. Concini was of faience.
+The handsome Bellegarde, a beau since
+the time of Henry III, was getting worn
+out. These considerations influenced the
+queen-mother, and she took him as her
+almoner.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16b2"><a href="#endnote_16b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1616-1617 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>It was the 30th of November, 1616,
+that Richelieu entered the ministry for
+the first time. The Spanish ambassador,
+the duke of Monteleone, showed
+keen satisfaction at his accession and
+wrote to Madrid that there was “no
+better than he in France for the service
+of God, of the crown of Spain, and of
+the public good”—of the public good,
+as the heirs of Philip II understood it!
+This diplomat had not the gift of divination!</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p440.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costume of the Time of Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The majestic drama of the ministry
+of the great Richelieu thus opens as a
+comedy of intrigue. It is by no means
+probable that he began his career by
+deceiving the pope in order to obtain his
+bishop’s bull, but it seems certain that he
+got into power by deceiving Spain and
+preparing to deceive and supplant Concini.
+He was determined to gain power
+at any price; he felt himself necessary;
+an irresistible force was driving him forward! In this feverish need of
+action by which he is devoured he passes over all obstacles, perhaps even
+over those of conscience and personal dignity as over others. He flatters
+those who despise him, caresses those who hate him, and lowers to vain
+mediocrity that brow which was made for empire. He hides at the bottom
+of his soul all his nobler and better feelings, as one would conceal criminal
+tendencies. Unfortunate novitiate of political greatness! There will always
+be very different opinions of Richelieu according to whether one studies the
+end or the means, the public man or the private man. Richelieu never was
+false to the duties of the statesman toward his country’s greatness, but he
+was unfortunately less faithful to the laws of morality and of humanity.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16h"><a href="#endnote_16h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Marie was not aware of the merit of this personage; yet it may have been
+by his bold counsel that she ventured a stroke of policy, of boldness unusual
+to her, in arresting Condé in the Louvre, and sending him to the Bastille.
+The noblesse, his partisans, instantly fled to raise their followers. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_441">[441]</span>Parisian mob collected, and showed its humour by pillaging the hôtel
+of the marshal D’Ancre; there, however, its fury subsided. The queen was
+victorious, and the fugitive partisans of Condé were reduced to impotent
+exclamation of vengeance and rage. Their cause, however, was not lost.
+The young king had joined his mother in the project for getting rid of
+Condé; but in delivering himself from one master, Louis was mortified to
+find that he had given himself another. The marshal D’Ancre now ruled
+uncontrolled at court and in council; and the pride of Louis was even
+more hurt by the ascendency of the upstart Concini than by that of Condé.
+Luynes, his favourite, and the young nobles who composed his court, flattered
+the monarch’s pride, and fanned his resentment. Marie de’ Medici deemed
+this knot of striplings to be occupied in pleasure, whilst they meditated a
+plot. The arrest of Condé was a precedent and example.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16d3"><a href="#endnote_16d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>ASSASSINATION OF MARSHAL D’ANCRE</h3>
+
+<p>It was well to have arrested the prince de Condé, said Richelieu; one
+might have done as much for Concini. Strange forgetfulness of circumstances;
+the king had no one, and his man Vitry, captain of the guards, did
+not have the guards with him. Concini on the contrary never went anywhere
+unless surrounded by thirty gentlemen. Vitry collected fifteen with
+great difficulty, hid them, and armed them with pistols under their coats.</p>
+
+<p>They chose the moment when Concini came to make his usual morning
+visit to the queen. He was on the Louvre bridge with his large escort.
+Vitry was so frightened that he passed without seeing him, having him
+before his eyes. When told, he returned. “I arrest you!” “<i>A mi!</i>” (“to my
+aid!”) cried Concini. He had not finished when three or four pistol shots
+went off and blew his brains out. “It is by order of the king,” said Vitry.
+Only one of Concini’s men had put his hand to his sword (April 24th,
+1617).</p>
+
+<p>The Corsican Ornano took the king, raised him in his arms, and showed
+him at the window. The people did not understand. It was first said that
+Concini had wounded the king. But when it was known it was he on the
+contrary who had been killed, there was an explosion of joy throughout the
+whole city. The queen-mother was very much frightened. Her one cry
+was “<i>Poveretta di me!</i>” However, what had she to fear? Whatever
+antipathy her son might feel for her he could not dream of bringing her to
+judgment. He was satisfied with removing her guards. The doors of her
+apartments were walled up, save one. She showed no pity for Concini or
+his widow. When someone said to her: “Madame, your majesty alone
+can inform her of the death of her husband”—“Ah, I have many other
+things to do! If you can’t tell it to her, sing it to her; cry in her ears:
+<i>L’Hanno ammazzato</i>.” Terrible word; it was the very same that Concini had
+used to the queen the day of Henry IV’s death, when he told her the news
+that she knew only too well. Leonora tremblingly sought refuge with her.
+She refused it. Then that woman to whom the queen had confided her
+crown diamonds (as a resource in case of misfortune) undressed and went
+to bed, hiding her diamonds under her. She was pulled from her bed;
+everything was ransacked; the room was pillaged. She was taken to the
+Conciergerie. Paris was in a state of celebration. The crowd hunted and
+disinterred her husband’s body, which was solemnly burned in front of
+Henry IV’s statue in token of expiation. It was said that a madman had
+bitten out the heart and eaten a piece of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_442">[442]</span></p>
+
+<p>The life of the queen-mother hung by a thread. Among the murderers,
+several would have liked to kill her, thinking that she might arise later and
+avenge the death of her lover. But Luynes would have dared neither
+to counsel the royal child to do such a thing nor to do it without orders.
+He saved her by surrounding her with the king’s guards. The Capuchin
+Travail, Père Hilaire, who had formerly intrigued against the marriage of
+Marie de’ Medici, and who was actor and executor in the murder of her
+favourite, thought that nothing was accomplished unless she perished. He
+applied to a man of her party who had access to her at will, her equerry
+Bressieux, trying to get him to kill her. The equerry refused. “Never
+mind,” said Travail, “I will bring it about that the king goes to Vincennes;
+and then I will have her
+torn in pieces by the
+people.” Luynes, who
+had promised the Capuchin
+the archbishopric
+of Bourges if he aided
+in killing Concini, did
+not wish to keep his word
+when the deed had been
+done. Instead he profited
+by some sanguinary
+words which this chatterer
+had uttered, out
+of folly and bravado, to
+have him judged and
+broken on the wheel.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/p442.jpg" width="400" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Alfred de Luynes</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The king had caused
+parliament to be informed
+that he had
+ordered the arrest of
+Concini, who, having resisted,
+had been killed.
+He spoke of his mother
+only with respect, saying
+that he had prayed his
+lady and mother to approve
+of his taking the
+rudder of state. Parliament
+came to congratulate him. The action which could so easily be brought
+against Concini and his wife was skilfully stifled and turned from the true
+issue. A case of sorcery was made out of it. That was, moreover, the custom
+of the century. The libidinous tyrannies practised by priests in women’s
+convents, when by chance they came to light, were changed into sorcery,
+and the devil was charged with everything. Leonora herself thought the
+devil was in her body and had herself exorcised in the church of the Augustines
+by priests who had come from Italy at her request. As she suffered
+terribly in her head, Montalte, her Jewish physician, killed a cock, and
+applied it to her head still warm, which was interpreted as a sacrifice to
+hades. An astrological document was also found in her rooms, the nativity
+of the queen and her children. It is not at all improbable that when losing
+her influence she tried to keep her hold on the queen by magic. It was the
+general folly of the age. Luynes believed in it also. Richelieu says that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_443">[443]</span>he had two Piedmontese magicians come to find him powders which he
+might put in the king’s garments, and herbs for his shoes.</p>
+
+<p>However much of truth there may have been in Leonora’s sorcery, it did
+not deserve death, and her thefts even, her brazen-faced sales of places and
+orders, would have merited only the whip. Court tradition, which was very
+favourable to such people, as enemies of Henry IV, has not failed to invent,
+to place in the mouth of Leonora proud and insolently daring words—for
+example: “My charm was that of a mind set on folly.” She was beheaded
+at the Grève and then burned.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16b3"><a href="#endnote_16b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE MINISTRY OF LUYNES (1617-1621 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The position of the queen-mother was mortifying and distressing. She
+had been deceived by the boy-king; stripped of her power; her dearest
+friends had perished. Of the band of courtiers who so lately hung upon her
+smile, Richelieu alone evinced a
+determination to adhere to the fortunes
+of his mistress. Marie de’
+Medici besought an interview with
+her son. This favour was long
+denied. Luynes feared a mother’s
+influence over a being so young and
+so weak as Louis. Marie was allowed
+to retire to Blois, whither
+Richelieu accompanied her.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p443.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The wealth as well as the influence
+of Concini fell to the share of
+Luynes, who was, however, neither
+a foreigner nor so rash and avaricious
+as his predecessor. Louis
+XIII, from his very first moment of
+grasping power, showed the same
+incapacity of wielding it that ever
+distinguished him. The love of the
+chase was the only active quality
+the young monarch seemed to have
+inherited from his father Henry.
+Luynes became hence sole master of
+the state. He found two parties
+aspiring to influence—that of the
+prince of Condé, and that of the queen-mother. One was in prison, and the
+other exiled; so that Luynes found no difficulty in flattering and giving hopes
+alternately to both, whilst he permitted neither the liberation of the prince
+nor the return of Marie de’ Medici. The body of the noblesse, who had
+flown to arms upon Condé’s arrest, and who had returned on learning Concini’s
+fall, thought it a more serious step to rebel against the king than against
+his mother and her favourite. The young court, too, had charms; and the
+prince of Condé was now but ill supported by that aristocratic band that had
+shared his envy and hatred towards the family of Ancre.</p>
+
+<p>Marie de’ Medici bore her disgrace with impatience. For some time she
+lulled herself with the hope that Luynes was sincere in his promises of allowing
+her to return. She expected in vain; and at length resolved to work her
+deliverance by leaguing with the prince of Condé and her former enemies.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_444">[444]</span>These intrigues coming to light, Richelieu, who was considered to be the
+source of them, was ordered to quit Blois, where the queen resided, and retire
+to his bishopric. But Marie had already profited by the advice of this able
+counsellor. She kept up an active correspondence with the duke d’Épernon,
+who was master of Metz, and through him with such of the nobility as were
+envious of Luynes. Having by these means formed a party, Marie escaped
+by night from the château of Blois; was met by Épernon at the head of
+an armed body of gentlemen; and, retreating south, soon found herself at
+the head of a party strong enough to defy her enemies. There cannot be a
+stronger example of the overgrown power of the nobles, and of the manner
+in which they absorbed the whole force of the crown, than the authority
+wielded by Épernon at this time against his sovereign. The duke had no
+less than five governments, viz., the provinces of Saintonge, Auxerrois, the
+Limousin, the Bourbonnais, and the Three Bishoprics. Add to these Metz,
+the bulwark of the kingdom adjoining Lorraine; Loches, the strongest
+fortress of Touraine, which he held, together with the command of all the
+French infantry, as colonel-general; and it can be no longer a wonder that
+the defection of such a grandee should have immediately reduced Louis and
+his favourite to treat with the queen-mother.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1617-1620 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Richelieu was recalled from his diocese, and employed to effect an accommodation,
+which took place. Marie de’ Medici was the principal gainer: she
+obtained the government of Anjou, and the towns of Angers, Chinon, and
+Pont-de-Cé, as fortresses of surety. The king promised to restore Marie de’
+Medici to his confidence, and to her place at court. But this was postponed
+for the time. An interview took place betwixt Louis and his mother.
+A light remark on one side, answered by a cold compliment on the other, is
+all that is recorded of the meeting. “How your majesty has grown!”
+exclaimed Marie. “Grown for your service, madame,” was the young
+monarch’s reply. The queen-mother remained at Angers, whilst the court
+returned to Paris. Épernon received a written pardon for his rebellion,
+from which he had derived no advantage; a circumstance that caused him to
+be taxed with folly by his contemporaries. Disinterestedness was inconceivable
+to the age.</p>
+
+<p>The first step of Luynes, in order to counteract the revived party of
+the queen-mother, was to liberate Condé from Vincennes. But his long
+captivity had secluded this prince from his ancient followers; and Richelieu,
+who saw the object of Luynes, was able to succeed in not only drawing
+over the whole body of the noblesse to the queen-mother, but even in
+exciting the Huguenots to stir in her favour. These measures of Richelieu,
+who was at the same time amusing Luynes by feigned friendship and communications,
+became ripe in 1620, when, upon a fresh refusal to admit Marie
+de’ Medici to court, all the great nobles, who had most of them formerly conspired
+against her, now espoused her cause, and quitted the court. Almost
+all France was in array against Louis and Luynes. Épernon armed
+his five governments and his many towns. Marie herself was in Anjou.
+The duke de Longueville held Normandy; the duke de Vendôme, Brittany;
+the count of Soissons, Perche and Maine; the marshal De Bois-dauphin had
+Poitou; De Retz, La Trémouille, Mayenne, Rouen, and Nemours held the
+southern provinces betwixt them, except Languedoc, where Montmorency
+remained neutral. The Huguenots were also against the court, as was the
+duke de Rohan, their principal leader, and La Rochelle, their chief town.
+This was owing to a decree, issued by Luynes, that the church lands of Béarn,
+where Henry IV had established Protestantism, should be restored to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_445">[445]</span>Catholic priesthood. Thus Richelieu enlisted under the banners of his mistress
+these two great malcontent and independent powers in the monarchy, the
+aristocracy, and the reformers, which it was afterwards the great aim and
+achievement of his policy to crush. In thus wielding them successfully
+against the monarch, Richelieu became acquainted with their danger, their
+strength, and their secret springs.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1620-1621 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Condé, however, inspired Luynes this time with additional vigour. The
+prince himself was excited to avenge his long confinement upon the queen-mother,
+who had caused it; and the king, therefore, was induced to march
+with an army, headed by Condé, to reduce the rebels. He was successful in
+Normandy; the insurgents retired everywhere before the royal army, which
+turned southward, and drove the queen from even Angers, her principal fortress.
+Luynes, contented with these advantages, showed himself willing to
+treat, as did Richelieu, who was somewhat disgusted by the want of alacrity
+and resolution evinced by the noblesse, his partisans. Condé, however,
+pushed on the war; and although a treaty was on the eve of being concluded,
+he attacked the forces of Marie’s adherents, and put them to the rout at
+Pont-de-Cé.</p>
+
+<p>This success, instead of breaking off negotiations, accelerated them; for
+Luynes became instantly jealous of Condé, and feared his predominance, if
+the queen-mother should be completely crushed. A treaty was therefore
+concluded on similar terms to the preceding one, with the important addition
+that the king should become really reconciled to his mother, and that she
+should reside at court. Many doubts and accusations exist as to the good
+faith of Richelieu in these transactions. The loss of Angers, and the defeat
+of Pont-de-Cé, were said to be arranged and allowed by him; and it is more
+than probable that, in disgust with the noblesse, who were at once domineering
+to their friends and feeble towards their enemies, Richelieu had conceived
+the project of reconciling Louis and the queen-mother, as well as their respective
+favourites, Luynes and himself; thus uniting the scattered elements
+of the government, and enabling it to set its turbulent enemies at defiance.
+Richelieu, by this plan, hoped to secure to himself a place in the council,
+where he felt confident he would soon rule such weak spirits as Louis,
+the queen-mother, and Luynes. But the latter had the sagacity to dread
+Richelieu’s superiority. Although the bishop sedulously sought the favourite’s
+friendship, and although an alliance took place betwixt their families,
+nevertheless Luynes persevered in his jealousy; prevented, by his intrigues,
+the cardinal’s hat stipulated for Richelieu in the late treaty, and kept the
+doors of the council chamber inexorably closed against him.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Huguenot Uprising; The Siege of Montauban (1621 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Although Luynes had risen to power as a mere favourite, he still held it
+with a firmer hand than Concini; nor was he without the views or the sagacity
+of a statesman. Even previous to his having at court so able a prompter
+as Richelieu, he had anticipated the future policy of that minister in endeavouring
+to crush the Huguenots. Luynes was determined upon restoring to
+the Catholic priesthood the church lands of Béarn, which had been in the
+hands of the Protestants since the days of Jeanne d’Albret. Louis was
+equally bent on rescuing from heresy the native province of his family.
+After the Treaty of Pont-de-Cé, the king marched into Béarn, and reduced
+not only the church lands to his will, but the little province itself, the privileges
+of which he annulled. The Huguenots were of course indignant and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_446">[446]</span>alarmed. This was not the only infraction of the agreements made with
+them. Favas, their deputy at court, declared that the government intended
+to reduce them altogether. They accordingly summoned a general assembly
+of reform at La Rochelle, despite the prohibition of the king; and their consistory
+published a bold decree, dividing the Protestant regions of France
+into circles, after the manner of Germany, uniting again those circles in a
+general government, and establishing the rules by which this government
+was to raise troops and taxes, to levy war and exercise independent jurisdiction.
+The scheme was a direct imitation of the United Provinces of Holland.
+It manifested fully the republican ideas and leanings of the Huguenots, and
+roused the court, and above all Richelieu, to crush them.</p>
+
+<p>An army was raised by Luynes,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16d4"><a href="#endnote_16d">d</a></span> and Louis XIII left Paris accompanied
+by the good wishes of all zealous Catholics and those who were desirous of
+peace. He had re-established the tax paid by judges, magistrates, and financiers
+on their offices, to secure them to their sons in case of death, contracted
+a loan, and obtained from the clergy an extraordinary tax. On the 19th of
+May, 1621, he occupied Saumur, which he was able to leave to Duplessis-Mornay
+in spite of his neutral attitude. It was necessary to prevent all communication
+between the Protestants, both north and south of the Loire. He
+afterwards received the submission of the towns in Touraine and Poitou,
+with the exception of La Rochelle, and St. Jean d’Angély. This latter
+place belonged to the duke de Rohan, who placed a garrison there under the
+command of Soubise, whilst he himself went to take command in Guienne.</p>
+
+<p>Lesdiguières undertook the siege of it, which lasted twenty-five days,
+from the 30th of May to the 25th of June, and was very murderous. Soubise,
+seeing the royal troops continually increase, ended by capitulating; he
+obtained for the garrison the honours of war, on condition of his promising
+always to serve the king. The fortifications of St. Jean were demolished,
+the trenches filled in, and its privileges suppressed. Deliberations took place
+as to the besieging of La Rochelle, or the advance on Guienne, where Rohan
+and La Force were raising arms on all sides. The taking of La Rochelle
+would have ended the contest; but it offered great difficulties, especially on
+the side next the sea, where the royal fleet would scarcely hold its own
+against the numerous and well-disciplined ships of the Calvinists.</p>
+
+<p>Luynes wished to obtain peace by the quickest means; he believed it
+would be much more rapidly accomplished by dividing the enemy and
+gaining over the leaders. Therefore he sent Épernon with four or five
+thousand men to blockade La Rochelle by land, whilst he himself took the
+Guienne route with the king and the bulk of the army. Mayenne,<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> who commanded
+the first division, carried Nérac by storm on the 9th of July; the
+little towns hastened to throw open their gates. One of the principal Calvinist
+<i>seigneurs</i> of Guienne, De Boisse de Pardaillan, had made his submission
+the moment the royal troops had arrived, so as not to obey La Force. They
+received favourable intelligence on every side. In the north and in the
+centre the Protestants allowed their arms to be taken from them and the
+walls of their towns pulled down, without striking a blow. Condé occupied
+and demolished without resistance the fortress of Sancerre, in his government
+of Berri. They met with resistance only at Clérac, a little town
+upon the Lot. It took the royal army twelve days to gain possession of it;
+it then entered, August 5th, and inflicted the most severe punishment. The
+chancellor Duvair, who accompanied the king, died during this siege;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_447">[447]</span>Luynes did not hurry to appoint a successor, and appropriated the seals
+meantime. This method of monopolising all the power, all the military and
+civil honours, put the finishing touch to the irritation caused by his favours,
+and furnished an inexhaustible subject for the raillery of his enemies.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/p447.jpg" width="350" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Nobleman, Time of Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>La Force was shut up at Montauban, where the minister Chamier, one of
+the most fanatical Calvinists, and the mayor Dupuy, who showed an equal devotion
+to the cause, co-operated with him most energetically. All the future
+of the party lay in the defence of this place. Rohan scoured Languedoc and
+the Cévennes to raise men, and
+to form a relieving army. The
+king had the choice of pursuing
+Rohan, or of besieging Montauban.
+He decided upon this last
+step, in the hopes of striking a
+decisive blow, and after some
+useless parleying, with which
+Sully was intrusted, the works
+were commenced without delay.
+Unfortunately they had not
+taken part in any other siege
+for a long time, except that of
+St. Jean d’Angély; they had
+fallen out of the way of taking
+part in real warfare, and they
+were even obliged to employ
+Italian engineers. The royal
+army found itself hardly sufficient
+for a siege of such importance.
+They believed in vain
+that they might find some
+partisans in the place. They
+attempted to surprise it, but
+were unsuccessful. Mayenne,
+who had opened the trenches
+August 18th, wished to rush
+the attack, before the works were finished. He lost many of his men, and,
+imprudently exposing himself, paid for his temerity with his life.</p>
+
+<p>The news of Mayenne’s death caused a stir in Paris, as his name had acted
+as a spell on the populace, amongst whom the war against the Protestants
+had awakened all the ancient passions of the league. The following day,
+the 18th, they attempted with no better result to make a breach by aid of the
+cannon. On the 28th, Rohan came to the assistance of the place in spite of
+the vigilance of the dukes of Angoulême and Montmorency. He cut himself
+a passage through at the point of the sword, although losing many men, and
+gave to the besieged garrison the means for prolonging their resistance. The
+king called together all the most experienced marshals and military men.
+They recognised the fact that it was impossible to carry Montauban before
+the winter. Luynes, who had become constable without knowing how to
+command an army or direct a siege, incurred the responsibility of this failure,
+but it did not disturb him. He wished to make peace, contrary to the desires
+of the military men and of the earnest Catholics. He asked for an interview
+with Rohan, and tried to bribe him. Rohan refused to desert his party, all the
+more because he was unable to do so, being under the direction of ministers
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_448">[448]</span>whose impassioned ideas allowed him very little personal freedom. The Calvinists
+hoped that, thanks to the resistance of Montauban, they would weary
+the king of his policy. They were not mistaken. A final attack, attempted the
+21st of October, failed like all the previous ones. The royal army, weakened
+by fatigue and sickness, and decimated by little battles, rapidly diminished.
+They had fired uselessly twenty thousand cannon shots, an enormous total
+for the times. On the 2nd of November Luynes decided to raise the siege,
+subject to a renewal in the spring.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1621-1622 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king, on retiring, made his entry into Toulouse, the most Catholic
+of the towns of the south, where he was received with general acclamation.
+He decided to limit himself during the winter to the keeping open of the
+communications between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Accordingly he ordered
+the marshal De Rouquelaure and Bassompierre to besiege the little town of
+Monheur, which the Calvinists occupied near Tonneins. The camp and the
+court were full of divisions, as always happens after great reverses. They
+threw on one another the responsibility for the errors that had been committed.
+Luynes was naturally the one whom they attacked the most. The
+most ardent Catholics reproached him with having desired peace too much;
+the military men with having attempted the siege of Montauban with
+insufficient forces, through avarice, some said. Father Arnoux, the king’s
+confessor, and Puisieux, secretary of state, began to rise up against him and
+tried to destroy his credit. On the 11th of December Monheur capitulated.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Death of Luynes (1621 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Their lives were granted to the garrison, but the town was pillaged and
+burned for having given itself to the Huguenots. Three days after, on the
+14th, Luynes died suddenly of fever. He was just at the pinnacle of his
+success. Nevertheless, Louis XIII, in spite of his caution and his ordinary
+dissimulation, had begun to complain of his yoke, and to lend an ear to the accusations
+of his adversaries. Luynes had had few friends, and his enemies, whose
+numbers were increasing, were already attacking him with extreme vigour.
+His ambition and his avidity, equally unrestrained, had turned everyone against
+him. The greater number of the authors who were contemporary with him,
+animated against him by prejudice and the strongest personal feelings, had
+treated him unfairly, and attributed all sorts of extravagances to him, as, for
+instance, wishing to see himself made prince of Avignon, or king of Austrasia.
+His political talents deserve more justice. Firm without illusion,
+and knowing how to ally moderation with energy, he had conducted the war
+briskly in the desire to arrive more quickly at a peace which he wished to
+make prompt and certain. This end he never ceased to pursue, and Richelieu,
+who gained it, only finished a work that had been begun.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16i"><a href="#endnote_16i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This check saved the Huguenots for the time, although it was counterbalanced
+by the ascendency of Guise in Poitou. The treaty was concluded
+in the following year at Montpellier, by which it was stipulated that affairs
+should be replaced as they were before the war, new conquests restored,
+and new fortifications demolished. One point the king gained; this was
+that the Huguenots should no more have a lay assembly. A synod of ecclesiastics
+was alone allowed them; thus obviating the revival of that republican
+assembly at La Rochelle, which had roused all the suspicions and energy of
+king and court. Louis, returning to his capital, was welcomed as a hero.
+The two queens rivalled each other in the brilliancy of their fêtes. But
+neither applause nor pleasure could prevent the king from relapsing into
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_449">[449]</span>that state of apathy which was natural to him. Louis XIII was as completely
+the <i>roi fainéant</i> as were the last of the race of Clovis and Charlemagne.
+But times were altered; the tree of royalty had taken root, and
+stood as erect, when withered and sapless, as when in spring and leaf.</p>
+
+<h3>RICHELIEU’S RETURN TO THE MINISTRY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1622-1624 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis XIII had been inspired by Luynes with an aversion for Richelieu.
+It was with great difficulty that Marie de’ Medici obtained for him in 1622
+the cardinal’s hat stipulated in a former treaty; but all her efforts in procuring
+him admission to the council were resisted. The marquis de la Vieuville
+was favourite for the moment, and he strengthened the king’s prejudice against
+the cardinal. Marie was persevering; and at length Louis yielded. He
+permitted Richelieu to take his seat at the council table, but on the express
+condition that he was to be without office, and that he should not consider
+himself a minister. The cardinal expressed himself perfectly contented with
+this arrangement: he took his seat; and the inefficacy of all the precautions
+taken against him soon appeared. They had bound the arms of a giant, who
+broke his bonds the instant that it pleased him to be free. From the first
+moment that Richelieu spoke, his genius dominated; and the monarch himself,
+as well as La Vieuville, cowered beneath an ascendency that they
+found it vain to dispute.</p>
+
+<p>To secure this ascendency over the monarch, Richelieu scorned to make
+use of the same means which sufficed La Vieuville and Luynes. Instead of
+flattering Louis, and directing him in the way of pleasure, the cardinal at
+first strove to awaken the young king to a sense of the country’s debasement,
+to its true interests, and its possible glory. He pointed out the turbulent
+disobedience of the great, the sedition of the Huguenot assemblies, the
+weakness of ministers, and the disorder of the finances—the consequent
+poverty and misery of the kingdom, as well as the decay of its influence and
+dignity in its relations with foreign potentates. He pointed to the house of
+Austria, daily increasing its strength and extending its territories, at that
+very moment triumphant from the conquest of the Palatinate, and threatening
+to crush those Protestant states of Germany which had defied the might
+of Charles V. Louis listened, and was excited, not indeed to take vigorous
+counsels himself, but to confide in a minister who had shown himself able to
+conceive and execute them.<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p>
+
+<p>The chief object then coveted by the house of Austria was the possession
+of the Valtelline, a strip of Alpine territory which might serve to connect
+the dominions of that family in Germany and in Italy. It had been in subjection
+to the Grisons, a Protestant race; and Spain seized this pretext to
+conquer it in the name of the pope. France had opposed this with the usual
+feebleness of her diplomacy. The first act of Richelieu was to cut short the
+negotiation, to defy both the pope and Spain, and to send an army under
+the marshal D’Estrées into the Valtelline, which expelled the Spaniards, and
+restored the region to its ancient masters.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu dared to show the same bold front to the Huguenots at the
+same time. Determined on completely reducing them, his first endeavour
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_450">[450]</span>was to drive them from Poitou and La Rochelle, where they could at all
+times receive succours from England, and to circumscribe their influence to
+the provinces of the southeast. He refused to evacuate Montpellier; and the
+Huguenots were thus provoked to rebel. The cardinal at the same time
+deprived them of the aid of the English monarch, with whom he was negotiating
+the marriage of Henrietta of France, sister of Louis. Rohan, and a
+great number of the Protestants, thought it on this account imprudent to
+recommence war; but his impetuous brother, Soubise, made an attack on
+the port of Blavet, seized some ships that were fitting out there, and
+sailing thence made a descent upon the island of Ré. He was defeated,
+the Huguenots being neither decided nor prepared for a general insurrection.
+The consequence of the rash attempt of Soubise was that in the
+accommodation that ensued the royalists kept Fort Louis, merely promising
+not to annoy from it the inhabitants or shipping of La Rochelle.</p>
+
+<h3>CONSPIRACY OF THE COURT AGAINST RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1624-1626 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Richelieu here postponed his design of completely reducing the Huguenots.
+The conquest of La Rochelle could alone do this effectually, and that
+required a large naval force, as well as such preparations of every kind as
+would ensure success. Besides, for the present, the cardinal was aware that
+he would soon have to encounter a court intrigue, a triumph over which
+was more requisite to establish his power than even the subjugation of La
+Rochelle. The marriage of the princess Henrietta with Charles of England,
+which had been desired by Richelieu, as securing the previous neutrality of
+the latter country in a war against the Huguenots, had proved a source of
+difference rather than of alliance. The gallant Buckingham, who had come
+to demand and escort back the princess, had excited the jealousy of the
+cardinal. He had shown at the French court the sample of such a minister
+as the age esteemed—gay, liberal, handsome, looking as well as wielding
+command. He had admired the young queen, and had boldly expressed his
+admiration. His friend, Lord Holland, had paid court to the duchess de
+Chevreuse, the companion of the queen, and the most lovely woman of the
+time. Richelieu admired Madame de Chevreuse, nay, by some, is said to
+have pretended to the queen herself. Whatever was the truth, Richelieu
+and Buckingham conceived for each other a mutual hatred, which afterwards
+produced a rupture between their respective sovereigns. And a
+strong pique at the same time arose between the cardinal and the queen.</p>
+
+<p>Another personage at court, now grown into importance, was Gaston,
+duke of Orleans, brother of the king. Louis was extremely jealous of him.
+A tutor, under whom the young duke improved and began to give promise
+of good conduct and manly virtue, was superseded by a mere courtier,
+calculated to give lessons in vice and dissipation. Ornano, who succeeded
+this man, found the prince absorbed in pleasure, and debased. He endeavoured
+to rouse Gaston, by explaining to him his rank, his hopes; and
+he did succeed in awakening his ambition. The young duke of Orleans
+demanded to enter the council. Richelieu, then in the commencement of
+his influence, replied by banishing Ornano for a time. Gaston relapsed into
+dissipation, and seemed little inclined to give umbrage or uneasiness to the
+government.</p>
+
+<p>The worst part of feudal tyranny was that it interfered with the private
+affections of all men. Richelieu, wielding the power of Louis XIII, was
+not content with commanding the loyal submission of the first prince of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_451">[451]</span>blood. He thought proper to impose a wife upon him, nay, to choose one.
+The lady selected was Mademoiselle de Montpensier, rich, lovely, allied to
+the crown, and heiress of the house of Guise. There could be no objection
+to such a bride, except the compulsion that gave her. Gaston rebelled.
+The projected marriage convulsed the entire court, and wellnigh the kingdom
+also.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p451.jpg" width="250" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Gentleman, Time of Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Richelieu’s object was to provide an heir to the crown, which Louis
+seemed not destined long to wear. Anne of Austria, the little queen, as she
+was called, to distinguish her from the queen-mother,
+was on the other hand averse to Gaston’s
+marriage; and she joined the friends
+of the latter in endeavouring to thwart the
+cardinal’s plan. Ornano had resumed his
+influence and station in the prince’s household;
+and he it was who chiefly urged Gaston
+to resist. Ornano was arrested. This
+increased the rage of the duke of Orleans;
+and at length a plot was entered into and
+approved by him, to get rid of the domineering
+Richelieu in the same manner that Ancre
+had been removed. The cardinal then inhabited
+a country house at Fleury. Gaston’s
+servants were to betake themselves thither,
+under pretence that their master was to
+honour Richelieu on that day with his company
+to dinner, and the murder was to have
+taken place. Richelieu received warning.
+The count de Chalais, who was to have been
+the chief perpetrator, ventured to sound a
+friend, who expressed at once a lively abhorrence
+of the attempt, and threatened to
+denounce it. Chalais became alarmed, and,
+resolving to anticipate the informer, went
+himself to the cardinal, and made a disclosure.
+Gaston was astonished, in consequence,
+by the appearance of the cardinal in his
+apartment, on the morning appointed for the
+deed. “I am sorry,” said Richelieu, smiling,
+“your highness did not give me warning of
+your intention to make use of my residence.
+I should have been prepared. As it is, I abandon it to your service.” Having
+so said, Richelieu handed his shirt to Gaston (one of the ceremonials of
+etiquette observed at a prince’s levée) and then retired.</p>
+
+<p>The cardinal, not content with thus confounding his enemies, was
+resolved to punish them and intimidate others by their example. By probing
+Chalais and his family, it was discovered that the nobles upon whose
+aid Gaston reckoned were the duke de Vendôme and his brother the grand
+prior, illegitimate sons of Henry IV. The former was governor of Brittany.
+Richelieu, dissembling his suspicions, enticed them to repair to the court at
+Blois, where both were instantly arrested. The imprisonment of all his
+friends, and the danger of some, would have roused to serious resistance a
+prince of more energy than Gaston. The young duke was not wanting in
+indignation; but Richelieu had prepossessed the monarch’s mind, and had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_452">[452]</span>taught Louis to believe that his royal life had been aimed at as well as his
+minister’s; that the young queen, Anne of Austria, was privy to the plot;
+and that she was to have married the duke of Orleans on his accession to
+the throne. These accusations hardened and enraged the mind of Louis
+XIII. Gaston, in the power of the court, was forced to espouse Mademoiselle
+de Montpensier; the count de Chalais perished on the scaffold; the
+queen was publicly reproached by her husband with having sought a second
+marriage, to which she indignantly replied that there was not so much to be
+gained by the change. Her friend, Madame de Chevreuse, was banished from
+court. Thus Richelieu, triumphant over his foes, amongst whom the queen
+and the king’s brother were numbered, showed how fatal it was to provoke
+his enmity, how fruitless to resist his power.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16d5"><a href="#endnote_16d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1626-1627 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Treaty of Montpellier in 1626 granted a hollow peace to the Huguenots;
+and a few months later, that is to say in May, peace was signed with
+Spain. Years before, Richelieu, then young and obscure, had often discussed
+with his friend Father Joseph how best to subdue the neighbouring town of
+La Rochelle, the stronghold of the Huguenots; and time had not softened
+his views on the subject. The English people, chafing under the influence
+of their French and Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, longed to assert their
+Protestantism; Buckingham, opposed to her anti-Protestant policy, longed
+to provoke the French court. What then would better serve their ends than
+adoption of the Huguenot cause? So war was begun with France. Richelieu
+brought his forces up under the walls of La Rochelle, and drew a cordon
+of forts around the unhappy town, cutting off all approaches. To shut the
+city off from English aid, Richelieu constructed a wonderful mole across
+the mouth of the harbour. This was built of solid masonry, extending about
+seven yards from one shore and four hundred yards from the other, the
+intervening space of six hundred yards being partially blocked with sunken
+ships and further guarded by a half-circle of ships lashed together with their
+prows outward. Inside the boom a royal fleet watched against sallies, and
+outside another fleet watched for the English.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE DESCRIBED BY SEIGNOBOS</h3>
+
+<p>The work of construction at first went on slowly, and the besieged could
+do little to hinder it. They could only fire off a few guns or post a few
+ambuscades in the path of the staff officers as they went from one part of the
+army to the other; but it was winter time, and bad weather often interrupted
+the work of construction. The besieged had sent to ask the king of England
+to help them; and the latter pledged himself “to the mayor, aldermen,
+peers, and citizens of La Rochelle, to help them by land and sea according
+to his royal power until a firm peace had been established.” As a result he
+promised to send an expedition to help them in the spring, and to furnish
+them with provisions; in the meantime he allowed a collection to be made
+for their benefit in his kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of La Rochelle, on their part, engaged themselves to
+provide pilots for the English, to prepare magazines and shelters on their
+coasts, and to equip vessels to help in the expedition. And if the king of
+France should attack the territories of the king of England, they would do
+all they could to create a diversion. It was agreed that neither the besieged
+nor the king of England should make any treaty without consulting the
+other. The king of England had wished to impose two other conditions;
+he asked the besieged to send him the children of their principal families
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_453">[453]</span>as hostages, and to receive an English garrison within their walls. They
+only consented to receive English ships into their harbour. They accepted
+the king of England as an ally to help them to defend their independence,
+but they did not wish to have him for a master.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1627-1628 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The royal army encamped before La Rochelle did not suffer very much
+from the winter. A tax had been levied in the principal towns in France
+which had made it possible to provide the soldiers with good clothing. The
+construction of the dike provided occupation for the men, and the boats
+were manned by volunteers from picked regiments. Meanwhile Louis XIII
+was wearying of this long siege with no fighting. He declared that his
+health would suffer if he did not go to Paris for a time. Richelieu, fearing
+lest the king’s departure might have a bad effect on the troops, tried to afford
+him some distraction by giving false alarms; several times a sortie was
+announced, and the king remained on horseback all night waiting for it, but
+the besieged did not make any movement. At last Richelieu felt he could
+no longer keep the king with the army, so he wrote to him saying that he
+could now absent himself for a time “without any injury to his cause.”</p>
+
+<p>The king immediately announced his departure. In his absence the
+cardinal was to be commander-in-chief, he was called “lieutenant-general of
+the king in the army before La Rochelle.” He had full power over all the
+troops, cavalry and infantry, and also over the artillery for continuing the
+siege, and was even empowered to receive the submission of the inhabitants
+and take possession of the town. The king admonished all the generals and
+officers to “obey him as implicitly as they would their king.”</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th of February, 1628, Richelieu accompanied the king two
+leagues from the camp; there they separated, embracing each other at parting.
+Louis warned the cardinal to take good care of his health; but Richelieu,
+out of respect for etiquette, had not dared to take his umbrella when accompanying
+the king, and was very much upset by the winter sun and had five
+attacks of intermittent fever. After being absent two months and a half,
+Louis returned to the camp, where he was saluted by salvos from the forts,
+the batteries, and the dike. He found his army stronger and the military
+works considerably advanced. He had left his army reduced by illness to
+eighteen thousand men; but owing to the recruits who had joined from the
+neighbouring provinces, he now found a force twenty-five thousand strong.</p>
+
+<p>The whole line of circumvallation which was to cut off La Rochelle on
+the land side was completed and furnished with redoubts. The shore on
+both sides of the harbour was provided with batteries. The dike was almost
+finished and was defended by a sort of floating palisade formed of ships
+linked together. An attempt to surprise the town had failed, owing to
+bad generalship. But the besieged had been unable to make any sorties
+or to obtain any provisions; and hunger was beginning to make itself felt
+in their ranks. The day after his return, on the 24th of April, Louis XIII
+sent an envoy to call upon the besieged citizens to surrender. According to
+the custom of the time the summons had to be made by a herald-at-arms, but
+there was not one with the army and they could not even find the insignia
+of the office. A tabard had therefore to be prepared in a hurry, a clerk of
+finance put it on and went forth to play the part of a herald. The besieged
+refused to receive the summons. A sort of revolution had taken place in
+La Rochelle. The rich citizens who had hitherto governed the town were
+anxious to bring the siege to an end, for it was ruining their commerce and
+exposing them to the wrath of their king. The sailors, who were on the side
+of resistance, seized the power and elected one of themselves, a captain Guiton,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_454">[454]</span>as mayor. Guiton was a bold corsair, of small stature, but brave and energetic.
+He had a splendidly furnished house, full of flags which he had taken
+from the ships of his enemies; he was fond of showing them and of saying
+from what kings and in what seas he had captured them. He was not anxious
+to be made mayor, but when he took possession of his office, he placed
+his dagger on the table in the town hall and said to his companions: “You
+do not know what you have done in choosing me; you had better think well
+about it, for it will be useless to talk to me about surrendering. If anyone
+mentions it I will kill him.”</p>
+
+<p>Another English fleet set out to relieve the blockade of La Rochelle, or
+at any rate to revictual the town. This fleet consisted of thirty vessels and
+twenty boats laden with provisions and ammunition. It was signalled on
+the 11th of May by three shots fired from the forts on the island of Ré. The
+fleet took up its station near the point of the island, opposite to La Rochelle.
+The besieged fired salvos as a sign of rejoicing, and very soon their ramparts
+were fluttering with red, white, and blue flags. The royal fleet of thirty-eight
+ships was divided into four squadrons which were stationed in front of
+the dike; behind, on the La Rochelle side, the dike was guarded by twenty-six
+galleys. A light English ship succeeded in passing these batteries and in
+reaching the harbour; she carried a captain, a native of La Rochelle on board,
+and he was commissioned to ask his compatriots to open a passage before
+their harbour, so that the ships laden with provisions might come in. The
+English fleet, he said, had not come to fight. The inhabitants of La Rochelle
+and the Protestant refugees on board the English ships begged the admiral to
+force the passage; he replied that he only had orders to cross to facilitate the
+entrance of the convoy with provisions, and that he must spare his fleet. On
+the 18th of May, the English ships set sail, drew close to the harbour, fired
+a salute, and sailed away to the open sea. The besieged, deserted by their
+allies, found themselves in a very critical position. One of them proposed
+to sacrifice himself and save the town by assassinating Richelieu. That was
+the way in which Orleans had formerly escaped from the duke of Guise.
+But he would not commit this deed unless he was certain it was not a sin.
+He consulted Guiton, who replied: “In such matters as this I never give
+advice.” He asked the pastors what they thought; and they answered:
+“If God is going to save us it will not be by means of a crime.” So he gave
+up the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The besieged were suffering much from starvation. The rich still had provisions
+which they kept concealed, but others were dying of hunger. On the
+26th of May they decided to drive out of the town all who were unable to
+fight—women, children, old men, and all who were infirm. These poor
+creatures made for the French camp; the soldiers, by the king’s order,
+received them with a shower of bullets and forced them to go back to the
+town. The royal troops also destroyed the crops of beans which the besieged
+had sown at the bottom of the other side of the escarpment.</p>
+
+<p>On the 1st of June some of the citizens who were anxious for peace succeeded
+in opening communications with Bassompierre, proposing a capitulation;
+but on the 10th a letter reached La Rochelle from the king of England,
+promising that he would see his whole fleet destroyed rather than fail to
+extricate the besieged from the peril they were in. They therefore broke off
+the negotiations and began firing again. For three months they waited
+for the promised help, while Richelieu continued his dike. Towards the open
+sea he had had long beams bound together and fixed in the ground at the
+bottom of the water to prevent access to the dike, and on the harbour side
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_455">[455]</span>he had placed a line of ships anchored and chained together. Every day
+visitors came to the royal camp, and were entertained; and sometimes, to
+amuse them, a skirmish was got up at which they looked on. The king went
+out hunting and kept his court just as if he had been in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Within La Rochelle the famine was becoming terrible. The rich were
+eating horses, donkeys, dogs, and cats; and even for these they had to pay
+well, the price of a cat being 45 livres. The poor were no longer able to go
+and look for dead shellfish cast up by the tide and stranded in the mud, for
+the guns of the besiegers made this dangerous. They had eaten up all the green
+stuff and were reduced to boiling pieces of leather with fat and moist sugar.
+Many left the town and would have given themselves up at the outposts of
+the royal army; but they were sent back, so that the town might not be
+enabled to hold out longer by having fewer mouths to feed. The soldiers
+would take away their clothes and then drive them back to the town with
+sticks or leather thongs. A great number of the inhabitants had died from
+illness or privation. Even those who were defending the town were so weak
+with hunger that they could only walk with sticks; they could hardly drag
+themselves along and were quite unable to bear arms. Often in the mornings
+sentinels were found dead of starvation at their posts. Guiton still
+refused to surrender. He had some of those who wished to capitulate imprisoned,
+and on the 22nd of July he had three or four beheaded as traitors,
+and their heads placed on the gates of the town. On the 9th of August the
+president of the presidial, an inferior court of judicature, was imprisoned
+in his turn. The councillors were so alarmed that two of them took refuge in
+the royal camp.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIII, hearing what great distress prevailed in La Rochelle, on the
+16th of August sent a herald-at-arms to call upon the town to surrender.
+This time it was a real herald in a tabard, cap on head, sceptre in hand.
+Before him rode two trumpeters bearing waving pennants. They presented
+themselves at one of the gates and asked to see the mayor. They were
+kept waiting a long time; then, instead of the mayor, appeared a troop of
+citizens and soldiers, whose leader told the herald with an oath to go away
+at once, and pointed to his men’s guns ready cocked for firing. The herald
+withdrew, placing on the ground two proclamations that he had brought
+with him. The English fleet, on the point of sailing, had been delayed by
+the murder of the duke of Buckingham. The longer the siege went on the
+stronger became the temptation to fly to the royal camp; and the chance of
+being killed seemed preferable to the certainty of being starved to death.
+To rid themselves of these obtrusive fugitives the besiegers adopted a cruel
+plan. They placed gibbets on the line of circumvallation surrounding the
+town and every time a group of fugitives arrived to give themselves up,
+they made them draw lots, and the one on whom the lot fell was hanged
+while the rest were sent back to the town.</p>
+
+<p>On the 29th of August Guiton read the citizens a letter from the king of
+England saying that help was at hand. It was madness, he said, to hope
+for mercy from the king of France: if the town surrendered it would be
+sacked and the men massacred. They must stand firm as long as anyone
+remained alive to shut the gates. “As for me,” he added, “if I am left
+with only one other, and without food, I shall be quite willing to draw lots
+to decide which of us is to eat the other.” On the 3rd of September,
+Guiton, while speaking to the people who had assembled to hear the Sunday
+sermon, was interrupted by a woman crying out that her child’s nurse had
+not tasted food for a fortnight. Guiton to appease the crowd made a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_456">[456]</span>pretence of negotiating. He sent two envoys to the king, who received them
+fairly. But a native of La Rochelle, just arrived from England, managed
+to make his way into the city in broad daylight and announced that the
+English fleet was just setting sail; so again the negotiations were broken
+off. A fortnight later, on the 28th of September, an English fleet of 140
+sail carrying 6,000 soldiers arrived, and taking up a position before the
+harbour, tried to force the passage, which was guarded by the French fleet.
+The French refugees asked to be allowed to manage the fire-ships which
+were to be sent against their king. The English wished to work them
+themselves, but the fire-ships proved a failure, and would not act. They
+waited for a favourable wind, and on the 3rd of October began firing on the
+fleet and batteries of the besiegers. The fighting continued for two days
+without much loss of life, and on the evening of the 4th the English fleet
+withdrew to the isle of Aix. It remained inactive for some days owing to
+stormy weather, and, when the wind was once more favourable, the English,
+instead of making an attack, sent an envoy to Richelieu.</p>
+
+<p>Those inside La Rochelle, seeing they were deserted, resigned themselves
+to the necessity of suing for peace. Richelieu received at the same time the
+envoys from the town and those from the French Protestants on board
+the English fleet. On the 29th of October the capitulation was signed, the
+inhabitants of La Rochelle acknowledged the great offence of which they
+had been guilty, “not only in resisting the just wishes of their king, but in
+joining with foreigners who had taken up arms against the state.” They
+begged the king to pardon them for this crime, and they placed their town
+in his hands. The king, taking into consideration “their repentance and
+protestations of sorrow,” promised them an amnesty, the free exercise of
+their religion, and the restoration of any of their property which had been
+confiscated. The officers and nobles might leave the town wearing their
+swords, and the soldiers carrying white sticks, and they would then be free.
+On the 30th of October the French army entered La Rochelle and the garrison
+came out; they were reduced to seventy-four Frenchmen and sixty-two
+English.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16j"><a href="#endnote_16j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Richelieu showed himself clement towards La Rochelle; there was no
+vengeance taken, no victims were sacrificed. The town lost its independence,
+which was, indeed, incompatible with the idea of sovereignty; but its worship
+and its religious opinions were left free, “the only avowed and open
+toleration,” says Hume<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16c"><a href="#endnote_16c">c</a></span> “which at that time was granted in any European
+kingdom.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_16d6"><a href="#endnote_16d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-16.jpg" width="500" height="100" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> [Henry, duke of Mayenne, son of that duke who was at one time the head of the League.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> [In Richelieu’s <i>Mémoires</i>, which he intended to serve as historical material for his
+biography, it is stated that Richelieu in a single interview dramatically placed this gigantic
+scheme before the young king, and that Louis from this time was obedient to the minister.
+This, however, is hardly in agreement with the facts. Richelieu seems hardly to have found
+his policy at first; and he was not sure of Louis’ constancy until after his success at La Rochelle.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_457">[457]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-17.jpg" width="500" height="275" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Cardinal Richelieu is one of those men in whose favour the tide of
+affairs always turns at the critical moment, and who also have skill
+and courage to take it at the turn. Vigilant, cool, sagacious, and
+absolutely fearless, he never throughout his life missed a single point
+in the great game he played; and even with dramatic force knew how
+to snatch a triumph out of the very clutches of defeat.—<span class="smcap">Kitchin.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17w1"><a href="#endnote_17w">w</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1629-1643 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, grown now through
+the exercise of his own genius to be the mightiest man in all Europe, was
+born at the castle of Richelieu in Poitou, September 5th, 1585. He
+was therefore forty-three years old when the famous siege of La Rochelle,
+by which he broke the power of the Huguenots in France, was brought to a
+close. Chronic invalid though he was, he was destined to live fifteen years
+longer, and during that period to control the fortunes of France, and to
+exercise a dominating influence in European politics at large; to be recognised
+everywhere as the greatest statesman of his age. We have already seen
+enough of him to know that he is a man of the largest ideas, the most
+indomitable courage, and that he is a born master of men; we must understand
+also that he is the wiliest of intriguers, the shrewdest judge of human
+motives; that he has a taste for art and for literature; and that with it all
+he is not restrained from the successes of practical politics by any undue
+niceties of conscience. He is perhaps more similar in his mental equipment
+to Augustus than to any other great man of history; or let us say rather to
+Augustus with a certain share added of the genius of Julius Cæsar, further
+modified by some traits of Louis XI.</p>
+
+<p>But why attempt to characterise? We shall see the great cardinal in the
+full exercise of these powers in the coming years. We shall see him carry
+war into Italy, acting as his own lieutenant-general. We shall see him take
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_458">[458]</span>a hand in the Thirty Years’ War, and accomplish by diplomacy the overthrow
+of the great Wallenstein. We shall see him put down uprisings at home,
+triumphing over Marie de’ Medici and his other enemies; holding King
+Louis XIII as a child in leading strings. We shall see him dominating
+church and state alike, and exercising a permanent influence on the literature
+of his land through the foundation of the French Academy. And all the
+while we must remember that this myriad-minded statesman is the most
+hated of Frenchmen at the same time that he is the most feared. Even those
+he has benefited do not love him. “Let the world speak well or ill of the
+famous cardinal,” says Corneille, “neither in my prose nor in my verse will
+I mention his name; he has done me too much kindness to speak ill of him,
+and too much injury to speak well.” There is none to speak well of this
+strange man; but all speak of him with bated breath; all contemplate him
+with something of apprehension. A weird, incomprehensible figure, he
+stalks across the scene, lonely, hated, feared,—but always masterful. Let
+us follow out the details of his life story.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>RICHELIEU AND THE KING</h3>
+
+<p>The history of Richelieu is obscure as to the essential point, his resources,
+the ways and means. On what did he live and how? This is not to be seen
+either in his memoirs or his documents. All that we have of Richelieu’s
+accounts includes only four years (1636-1640) and in a very confused way
+gives the ordinary receipts, up to eighty millions. Not a word of anything
+extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>In 1636, when France was invaded, a tax on persons in comfortable
+circumstances (<i>des gens aisés</i>) was created, or rather regulated, and the
+agents placed everywhere in 1637, with the triple power of justice, police,
+and finance, collected it with great rigour. But one cannot doubt that
+something similar existed even before, especially in the passages of armies
+through certain provinces. Otherwise it is impossible to understand how,
+with such a deficit under ordinary circumstances, extraordinary and unforeseen
+expenditures, for wars or subsidies to allies, could have been made
+every year.</p>
+
+<p>Hence action was variable, intermittent, sometimes brilliant, with relapses
+due to exhaustion. It was not possible to have a really permanent army.
+That was evident in 1629, when Richelieu finished the war with the
+Huguenots, but that with Italy was still in a critical state. He disbanded
+thirty regiments to raise others six months later. The same way, in 1636,
+he disbanded seven regiments in January to make them up again in June—an
+economy of five months, necessary perhaps, but which nearly lost France.
+In July nothing had been reorganised, and the enemy came to within twenty
+leagues of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The suffering of the great man of affairs who directed this machine with
+its spasmodic movements must have been terrible. And one can easily
+understand that he was always ill. The insufficiency of his resources, the
+continual effort to invent impossible money, on the other hand the court
+intrigues, the pricks of no one knows how many invisible insects, were something
+to keep him in a terrible agitation. But even that was not enough;
+twenty other devils haunted this restless soul, like a great ruined mansion—the
+battle of women, tardy gallantries, moreover theology and the wild desire
+to write, to make verses, tragedies! What tragedy could be more gloomy
+than his very person. Macbeth is gay in comparison. And he had attacks
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_459">[459]</span>of violence in which his inner fury would have strangled him, had he not
+like Hamlet massacred tapestries with the blows of his dagger. More often
+he swallowed his bitterness and fury, covered everything with the outward
+seeming of ecclesiastical decency. His powerlessness, his passion, turned
+within, worked themselves out on his body; the red iron burned his soul
+and he was near to death.</p>
+
+<p>His greatest evil was still the king, who might escape him at any moment.
+Spain, the court, waited for the death of Louis XIII. His wife and his
+brother looked at his face every morning and hoped. Valetudinarian at the
+age of twenty-eight, feverish, subject to abscesses which nearly carried him
+off in 1630, it was in vain he claimed to be alive, to act at times and show
+courage; it was held that he was dead, at least that no one had need of him.
+It was a curious union of two invalids. The king would have thought
+his kingdom lost if Richelieu were wanting. Richelieu knew that, with the
+king dead, he had not two days to live. So well hated, especially by the
+king’s brother, he had to plan to die with Louis XIII. Perhaps it was for
+that reason that he was so pleasing to the king, who was sad, suspicious, and
+malevolent and who never liked him, but who could always say to himself:
+“If I die, that man will be hanged.”</p>
+
+<p>This double chance of death, on which the enemies of Richelieu placed
+their hope, was precisely what made him strong and terrible. He had
+moments when he talked and acted as though in the presence of death; and
+then the sublime, which he had sought so laboriously elsewhere, came of
+itself. He touches it, in fact, in passages of allocution which he had with
+the king on the return from La Rochelle, in the presence of his enemies, the
+queen-mother and the king’s confessor, the suave Jesuit Suffren. In this
+conversation he tells everything, his actual situation, what he has done, what
+received, what he owns, what he has refused. He has a patrimony of 25,000
+livres rental and the king has given him six abbeys. He is obliged to make
+heavy expenditures, especially to pay for guards, being surrounded with
+daggers. He has refused 20,000 crowns pension, refused the appointments
+of the admiralty (40,000 francs), refused the right of admiral (100,000
+crowns), refused a million which financiers had offered him in order not to be
+prosecuted.</p>
+
+<p>He asks for his dismissal, not definitely but temporarily—he may be
+called back later if he is still alive and is needed. He explains clearly that
+he is in great danger and that he is obliged sometimes to conceal himself.
+Does he want to make himself necessary, declare himself indispensable, and
+so make sure of so much the more power? If that is his end, one must say
+that the method is very strange and daring. He speaks with the frankness
+of a man who has no end in view. He dares to give his master, perhaps as a
+last service, an enumeration of the faults of which the king ought to correct
+himself. And this was not one of those flattering satires, where one shows
+a slight fault, a shadow, as a successful method for showing the beauties of
+the portrait. No, it is a firm, hard judgment, like that of a La Bruyère,
+of a Saint-Simon, which would penetrate to the depths of a character after a
+hundred years, a judgment of the dead by a dead person. Quickness of
+mind and instability, suspicions and jealousy, no assiduity, no application
+to great things, impulsive aversions, forgetfulness of services, and ingratitude—not
+a trait is lacking.</p>
+
+<p>The queen-mother must have trembled with indignation, with terror also,
+perhaps, feeling that the man who would venture such a thing would venture
+all—and that a man so composed, with death under his feet, would pay little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_460">[460]</span>regard to the death of others. The Jesuit must have fallen backwards,
+plunged into silence and humility. The king felt all this and received
+it as the testamentary word of one invalid to another, of one dying man to
+another. Richelieu, being begged and entreated, remained in the ministry.
+It was difficult for him to retire with affairs at such a crisis. The war with
+the Huguenots still continued in Languedoc, and the war with Italy was
+commencing. Richelieu, called by the pope as well as by the duke of
+Mantua, had a good opportunity which might relieve him from his embarrassments.
+Victor at La Rochelle, if he saved Italy he might hope that the
+pope would appoint him legate for life as Wolsey and George d’Amboise<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> had
+been—real kings and more than kings, since they united the two powers,
+temporal and spiritual.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17b"><a href="#endnote_17b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>RICHELIEU ENTERS THE EUROPEAN ARENA</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1629-1630 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>France had submitted; six years of power had been sufficient for Richelieu
+to make himself her master; now he turned his incessant activity in the
+direction of Europe. “He feared the repose of peace,” wrote Nani, the ambassador
+to Venice, “and believing himself more secure in the turmoil of
+arms, he was the author of many wars, and of long and weighty calamities.
+We may say that having reunited divided France, succoured Italy, upset the
+empire, harassed England, and weakened Spain, he was the instrument chosen
+by heaven to direct the great events of Europe.”</p>
+
+<p>The liberal, penetrating mind of the Venetian was not mistaken on this
+point; all over Europe the hand of Richelieu was felt. “Far and near, we
+must always negotiate,” he said. He had succeeded with negotiations in
+France, and he carried his ideas further. Numerous treaties had already
+marked the first years of the cardinal’s power; after 1630 his activity in
+external affairs was redoubled. From 1623 to 1640 seventy-four treaties
+were concluded by Richelieu; four with England, twelve with the United
+Provinces, fifteen with the German provinces, six with Sweden, twelve with
+Savoy, six with the Venetian Republic, three with the pope, three with the
+emperor, two with Spain, four with Lorraine, one with the Grison Leagues,
+one with Portugal, two with the rebels of Catalonia and Rousillon, one with
+Russia, and two with the emperor of Morocco; such was the network of
+diplomatic negotiation which the cardinal wove in nineteen years.</p>
+
+<p>While the cardinal was holding La Rochelle in siege, the duke of Mantua
+died in Italy, and his natural heir, Carlo di Gonzaga, living in France as the
+duke de Nevers, hastened to take possession of his estates. Meanwhile
+the duke of Savoy claimed the marquisate of Montferrat. The Spaniards
+upheld him, and entering the duke of Mantua’s states, lay siege to Casale.
+When La Rochelle fell, Casale was still resisting; but the duke of Savoy had
+already seized the greater part of Montferrat, and the duke of Mantua asked
+help of the French king, whose subject he was. This furnished a new field
+of battle against Spain.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17t1"><a href="#endnote_17t">t</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p461.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Richelieu</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nobody could understand why the cardinal thought insignificant possessions
+at a distance from France, like Mantua and Montferrat, were of such
+great importance.<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> He was obliged to explain to the king that Casale and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_461">[461]</span>Mantua were the citadels of Italy—the most valuable military stations in
+the basin of the Po; and then war was decided on. Richelieu left on the
+29th of December with the title of “lieutenant-general representing the
+person of the king.” He had doffed the cardinal’s robe to assume the military
+uniform; under him were the cardinal De la Valette, marshals Montmorency,
+Schomberg, and Bassompierre, with Sourdis, now archbishop of
+Bordeaux, as administrative lieutenant. The duke of Savoy declared himself
+neutral and refused to revictual
+Casale, though he would allow the
+French free passage to go to its
+relief. The cardinal, determined
+in spite of this treacherous ally to
+gain possession of the passes into
+Italy, crossed the Alps at Susa and
+pretended he was about to march
+on Turin; he then rapidly marched
+back and besieged Pinerolo, which
+capitulated (1630). Spinola hastened
+to the defence of Piedmont,
+and owing to his superior forces
+checked the advance of the French.
+Louis XIII then took the command
+of the army himself and conquered
+the whole of Savoy; but he fell ill
+and his place had to be taken by
+the duke de Montmorency, who
+defeated the Spaniards at Vegliana
+and took possession of the marquisate
+of Saluzzo on the 10th of July.
+However, Mantua had been taken
+and Casale was sorely pressed, the
+French army was reduced by sickness,
+reinforcements were expected
+from the army in Champagne and
+money from Paris. The latter, however,
+did not arrive, for the marshal
+De Marillac and his brother the
+chancellor, acting under the influence
+of the queen-mother, neglected
+to send it off. Richelieu, rendered
+uneasy by the intrigues of his enemies,
+effected a truce through the mediation of the abbé Mazarin,<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> who had
+been sent from the court of Rome. Mazarin, who was a man of supple and
+crafty temper, gained and retained the confidence of Richelieu and was destined
+subsequently to carry on the work which the latter had begun. At the
+expiration of this truce the serious events which were passing in Germany
+prevailed on Austria, as we shall see, to conclude a definite peace. This was
+the Peace of Ratisbon, concluded on the 25th of October, 1630.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17d"><a href="#endnote_17d">d</a></span> The emperor
+agreed to invest the duke de Nevers and withdraw the imperial troops
+from his states on the Grison passes provided that France would withdraw
+hers from Pinerolo and Savoy.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_462">[462]</span></p>
+
+<h3>ENMITY OF MARIE DE’ MEDICI AGAINST RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<p>The termination of war was the commencement of new perils for Richelieu.
+He foresaw the fresh efforts of his enemies, and on the return of the
+court to Paris, he used all the resources of his address to avert and conciliate
+the resentment of the queen-mother. She dissembled, and did not forgive.
+Leagued with the Marillacs, and favoured by many of the nobility, Marie
+laboured to overturn the minister, who defended himself with firmness and
+adroitness. Louis XIII was of a feeble mind, still more enfeebled by a weak
+temperament and languid constitution. Resolution was a state above his
+powers; it was to him an unnatural tension, menacing at each instant a
+relapse.</p>
+
+<p>Despite of this, he was clear-sighted. He loved France, was alive to its
+glory and prosperity, and saw that it required the strong hand of Richelieu
+to govern and to guide. He did not love the minister, indeed; and it
+was thus the more to his credit that he upheld him from a sense of his
+talents and utility. When Marie poured into his ear complaints against the
+cardinal’s insolence, against his tyranny and domineering ambition, Louis
+allowed that she was right. He acquiesced; and the queen-mother argued
+from this passive assent that the king shared her aversion and her views
+against the minister. She would hurry home to her palace of the Luxembourg
+after such interviews, and confidently assure her followers that her
+ascendency was complete, that the fall of Richelieu was near. By that hour,
+however, Richelieu was closeted with the monarch, was unfolding to him his
+high and masterly views of policy, was exposing the selfish manœuvres of
+Marie de’ Medici; and had at length gained in his turn such complete
+ascendency that the feeble Louis would not only assent, but kindle up for
+the moment with warmth and friendship towards his minister, and then, in
+confidence, betray the very secrets of his mother’s converse with him.
+Richelieu thus drew from a certain source the hopes, the plans, and the
+names of his enemies.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Day of Dupes</i></h4>
+
+<p>In an interview with his mother, Louis, assenting to the justice of all
+her complaints against the cardinal, had proposed that his niece first,
+and then Richelieu himself, should come publicly and ask pardon of Marie
+at the Luxembourg. The king intended this as a measure of conciliation.
+The queen accepted it for the sake of seeing her enemy humbled. Accordingly,
+on the appointed day, Madame de Combalet, the cardinal’s niece,
+entered, and flung herself at the feet of Marie, imploring her forgiveness.
+The latter, instead of preserving the disdain that suited her purpose, or of
+assuming the air of forgiveness that the king desired, was unable to contain
+her temper, and burst forth in invectives against the suppliant lady.
+Madame de Combalet retreated, terrified and in tears. The cardinal himself
+succeeded, equally suppliant, and was received by the same volley of coarse
+vituperation. Louis XIII, scrupulous in his ideas of dignity and delicacy,
+shocked at the conduct of his mother, took the part of his minister, and
+reproved her; but at the same time bade Richelieu, in the same tone of anger,
+to retire.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17e1"><a href="#endnote_17e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Everyone was convinced of the cardinal’s disgrace; it was already satirised
+on the Pont Neuf, and the little porter of the Samaritaine indulged in a thousand
+grimaces in imitation of his eminence. At the palace all minds were
+occupied with the approaching triumph of M. de Marillac, lord keeper of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_463">[463]</span>great seal and fairly popular with the parliament on account of his being
+known to be for the interests of the queen-mother and Gaston of Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>Already presidents in caps, councillors in scarlet robes, deliberated
+amongst themselves whether it would be made a criminal action to prosecute
+his eminence as guilty of tyranny and peculation. The ambassadors,
+watching the smallest diplomatic step in Paris, announced the inevitable disgrace
+of Cardinal Richelieu to their courts, and the increasing authority of
+the queen-mother. The <i>Mémoires</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17f"><a href="#endnote_17f">f</a></span> relate that Charles I, so ardent a promoter
+of royal prerogative, replied to the despatch of his ambassador: “The
+king of France is making a great mistake in disgracing a minister of so great
+competency.”</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIII had set out for Versailles, that poverty-stricken palace he was
+too parsimonious to restore, and had there sequestered himself. A great
+concourse of people filled the apartments of Marie de’ Medici; the crowd surrounded
+her and Gaston of Orleans; power was about to pass into their
+hands. The queen-mother, smiling graciously, affectionately held the hand
+of Anne of Austria, with whom she conversed amicably. They treated
+each other as mother and daughter, although Anne of Austria, intensely
+proud of her noble Spanish blood, considered herself superior to a member of
+the princely and mercantile house of Florence. The court wore a new
+aspect; it was thought that the days of the regency would be reproduced
+and Marshal de Marillac, then with the army of Italy, seemed a new Concini
+destined to enjoy the favours of Marie de’ Medici. But the queen-mother
+was not sufficiently energetic. Naturally of an indolent disposition, she
+easily yielded to the Italian <i>far niente</i>, to that nerveless temperament which
+prevented her from prompt decision in decisive circumstances. She did not
+join her son at Versailles, but remained to be congratulated by the crowd of
+courtiers that surrounded her.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1630-1631 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>During this time the friends of Richelieu were becoming uneasy. Cardinal
+de la Valette, that devoted prelate, had gone with all speed to Versailles,
+and had had his arrival announced to the king. The cardinal had been
+informed by Saint-Simon, the diminutive equerry and favourite, that Louis
+XIII had spoken of his minister in terms that did not lead one to suppose he
+was out of favour. La Valette was immediately ushered into the king’s
+presence and the king smilingly said to him, “Cousin, I think you are
+surprised at all that is taking place.” “Sire, more than your majesty can
+imagine.” “Well, cousin, return to Cardinal Richelieu and tell him that he
+is a good minister, and I desire him to come instantly.” The minister’s
+friend did not wait to be told a second time. Richelieu, who had retired to
+a small house in the village of Versailles, immediately hastened to the old
+palace. The interview took place in the presence of Saint-Simon, the first
+equerry, and the marquis de Mortemart, the first gentleman of the household.
+Richelieu, throwing himself on his knees, his customary attitude, thanked
+the king in humble and submissive terms for the favour he was conferring
+upon him. Louis showed himself kindly and affable. “Cousin, in you I possess
+the most faithful and loving servant it were possible to find. I consider
+myself the more obliged to protect you that I am cognisant of the respect and
+gratitude you bear the queen, my mother. I would have forsaken you, had
+you not shown these evidences of your generous nature. Be assured henceforth
+of my protection. I shall know how to disperse the cabal of your enemies;
+they abuse the credulity of the queen, my mother, who permits herself
+to be easily prejudiced. Continue to serve me faithfully, and I will uphold
+you against all those who have vowed your destruction.” “Sire,” replied
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_464">[464]</span>Richelieu, “solitude is a necessity to me, and I will never remain at your
+court against the desire of the queen-mother.” “Cousin, it is not my mother
+that you need fear, but certain mischief-making spirits about her; I know
+them and I promise you they will do nothing.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17h"><a href="#endnote_17h">h</a></span> Thus the great cardinal
+triumphed, while his enemies were rejoicing at his supposed overthrow. The
+day when the queen-mother and her coterie were thus deceived—the 11th of
+November, 1630—has passed into history as the “Day of Dupes.”<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Exile of Marie de’ Medici</i></h4>
+
+<p>The popular feeling was nevertheless against Richelieu and in favour of
+Marie de’ Medici, whose munificence and fête-loving habits had won the good
+will of the Parisians. This had no small weight in detaining the king at St.
+Germain, where he held his court, and where the two queens appeared,
+although Louis scarcely spoke to them. Marie bore disgrace and contempt
+with impatience; but she could now find no one hardy enough to brave the
+cardinal and espouse her quarrel, except Gaston, her second son, the rash and
+weak duke of Orleans. The prince imagined a singular mode of vengeance.
+Accompanied by a body of young and armed companions, he entered the
+cardinal’s palace, came rudely into his presence, and apostrophised him in a
+rough and menacing speech. After this bootless outrage, Gaston retired,
+left the capital, and proceeded to levy troops in the provinces. Louis, on
+learning this sally of his brother, whom he peculiarly disliked, took up the
+cause of his minister more warmly; and attributing, not unjustly, the turbulence
+of Gaston to their mother, he openly reproached her, and warned her
+to become reconciled to Richelieu. Marie would not abandon her hate; and
+monarch and minister were obliged to proceed to extremities.</p>
+
+<p>It required much address to bring the king to this point; and Richelieu
+was only enabled to reconcile Louis to use harsh measures towards his parent
+by means of the confessors whom he himself had provided for his master.
+These smoothed away the difficulties presented by the king’s conscience, or
+rather by his filial habits. Some months passed in vain attempts at accommodation;
+but the ultimate result was the flight of Gaston and of Marie de’
+Medici out of the kingdom. The latter retired to Brussels. Thus Richelieu
+came triumphant from the second struggle. Bassompierre was sent to the
+Bastille; the duke of Guise<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> was deprived of his office of admiral, and
+went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Even the proud and veteran Épernon
+was obliged to crave pardon. The parliament objected to an ordinance of
+the king declaring the partisans of Gaston guilty of high treason. They
+rightly argued that such a condemnation could not be issued without trial or
+by other than a judge. But even from this just position they were compelled
+to recede. They were summoned to the Louvre; their edict of objection
+was cancelled in the presence of Louis and his minister, and the obnoxious
+ordinance registered in its stead. Richelieu showed a still more culpable
+contempt for the forms of justice in the trial of the marshal De Marillac.
+He was brought before a commission, which sat in the cardinal’s country-house
+at Ruel, accused of a long list of crimes, of all save his true fault of
+conspiring with Marie de’ Medici. Being convicted, he was beheaded in the
+place de Grève.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1631-1632 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Marillac was the second victim sacrificed to the supremacy of the minister.
+The desire of vengeance and of blood grows, like other criminal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_465">[465]</span>tastes, upon those who indulge and gratify it; and Richelieu stained deeply
+his high reputation. Hitherto the nobility bore the tyrannic ascendency of
+the cardinal with jealousy and impatience. They saw plainly that his
+designs were directed against their power and independence. Still, from
+want of union, and from the absence of a spirit amongst them capable of
+coping with their great enemy, they held back, in trembling though indignant
+submission, looked on while their chains were preparing, and even
+aided to forge them. Thus they had helped to put down the Huguenots,
+ever the mainstay of rebellion. They then, when too late, sought to intrigue
+with Marie de’ Medici against the cardinal. The trial of Marillac, not by his
+peers but by a mock commission, and the execution of that marshal on no
+grounds save enmity to the minister, filled
+all the noblesse with fresh indignation and
+alarm. And one who, from birth and position,
+might well take the lead of the highborn
+of France in this its cause, declared
+himself unhesitatingly on this occasion.</p>
+
+<h3>THE REVOLT OF GASTON AND THE EXECUTION OF MONTMORENCY</h3>
+
+<p>The duke de Montmorency was governor
+of Provence. He had distinguished
+himself in the Italian war; had never been
+foremost to complain or to intrigue; but,
+like his family, had been remarked for
+moderate and independent principles; tolerant
+though orthodox in religion; a loyal
+subject though no fawning courtier. In the
+king’s extreme illness, he had given his word
+to protect the minister, and Richelieu had
+other causes of gratitude.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p465.jpg" width="250" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Gallant, First Half of Seventeenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But Montmorency was now indignant
+at the insult offered to his rank in the person
+of Marillac. He felt it equally a shame
+that the king’s brother, the son of Henry IV,
+should be driven into exile by the enmity
+of an upstart minister. Gaston had fled
+to Lorraine, and there passed his time in
+the wooing and espousal of the duke’s
+daughter. Richelieu advanced to Lorraine,
+and Gaston was obliged to fly. He applied
+to Montmorency for protection and support, and the duke was both imprudent
+and generous enough to grant it. This could be done with arms alone.
+The dukes of Orleans and Montmorency therefore raised a little army, cantoned
+themselves in Languedoc, and resolved to fight the royal forces, which
+under Schomberg advanced against them. It appears that the population
+of the south looked with disfavour on the enterprise of the dukes, either in
+dread of Richelieu’s power and vengeance, or in dislike of the aristocratic
+cause. The issue of the rebellion was decided in a skirmish at Castelnaudary,
+where Montmorency, at the head of five hundred followers, charged
+the royalists, and was taken prisoner. The news of his capture dispersed his
+army, and left Gaston no resource but to join his mother at Brussels.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_466">[466]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was now in the power of Richelieu to give an example of his moderation.
+In pardoning Montmorency, he would have gained many hearts; nor
+would his power have been less formidable. Gaston even promised to submit,
+if his generous protector were spared: but Richelieu was inexorable;
+he knew what would be his own fate if overthrown. He recollected the fall
+of Ancre, of every favourite and minister whom the nobles had overthrown;
+and private reasons of vindictiveness concurred with the wish of making a
+striking example, and by the death of Montmorency giving the same salutary
+warning to his order as the execution of Biron had proved in the last reign.
+Richelieu had the power of communicating his own firmness to the king.
+Louis resisted the supplications of all the nobles of his court, of the princess
+of Condé, Montmorency’s sister, and even the clamours of the mob, who
+cried under the windows of the Louvre for mercy. The marshal De Châtillon
+begged the king to show himself to the people, and to grant to their
+prayers the life of the first noble of the land. “Should I obey the suggestions
+of the rabble, I should not act as a king,” replied Louis, displaying that
+extreme of monarchic arrogance which his posterity so deeply cherished and
+so dearly expiated. The kingdom’s safety might have been an excuse for
+cruelty—the pride of the monarch was none.</p>
+
+<p>Montmorency owned his crime, and promised to redeem the disloyalty of
+a moment by devoting his after life to the king; but he made no mean submissions.
+In passing to the place of execution, he regarded the statue of
+Henry IV with emotion. He was the godson of that monarch, who knew
+how to unite clemency with firmness. But, shaking off thoughts of the past,
+he pointed onward to the scaffold, which he said was the surest road to
+heaven. In him perished the last of the lineal descendants of the great constable,
+the most illustrious of which were still said to be only the younger
+branch of that noble family.</p>
+
+<h3>FOREIGN AFFAIRS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1629-1632 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>As soon as Richelieu felt assured that the political dissensions of France
+herself would no longer obstruct his plans abroad, he marched with firm
+step to that weakening of Spain and upsetting of the empire of which Nani
+speaks. Henry IV and Queen Elizabeth, in pursuit of the same ends, had
+sought and found the same allies. But Richelieu had better luck than they
+for the execution of his designs to run across the king of Sweden.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17t2"><a href="#endnote_17t">t</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gustavus Adolphus was young, active, bellicose and surrounded by a
+military halo which permitted him to be looked upon as a future champion
+of Germany against the house of Austria. He had had several clashes with
+the emperor or his lieutenants over the Baltic towns, and the idea occurred
+to Richelieu to make use of his sword.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17l1"><a href="#endnote_17l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Richelieu arranged a truce between the young king and the Poles with
+whom he was at war, in September, 1629; he then granted him by the Treaty
+of Berwald, in January, 1631, a subsidy of 1,200,000 francs, and threw him at
+Germany, pointing out, to excite his ardour, the immense booty to be seized,
+his co-religionists to be avenged, and the great rôle to be played on a
+brilliant stage.</p>
+
+<p>The Thirty Years’ War was then at its height.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> This struggle, both
+religious and political, began in Bohemia in 1618, and had extended little
+by little over the empire. The elector-palatine and the king of Denmark
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_467">[467]</span>(Christian IV) had been, one after the other, vanquished and humiliated.
+The imperial army created and commanded by Wallenstein had penetrated
+as far as the Baltic, crushing under foot on its way, both Germany and her
+secular liberties. The oft-discussed problem of that country—that is, its
+partition among independent princes or its union under a single master, was
+on the point of being solved in favour of unity under the despotism of the
+house of Austria. Cardinal though he was, Richelieu acted like Francis I, like
+Henry II, and like Henry IV; he undertook the cause of the German princes
+without regard to their religion. His confidential agent, Father Joseph,
+managed the electors so well at the diet of Ratisbon in 1630, that they wrung
+from the emperor the recall of Wallenstein and the disbandment of his army,
+after which they refused to give the emperor’s son the title of king of the
+Romans, which Ferdinand II regarded as the implied price of these concessions.
+“A miserable Capuchin,” he cried in anger, “has been clever enough
+to put six electoral hats into his cowl.”</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1632-1634 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Gustavus Adolphus fell upon the empire like a thunderbolt. He invented
+new tactics which disconcerted his adversaries. He defeated Tilly near
+Leipsic, killed him at the passage of the Lech, but was killed himself at
+Lützen (November 8th, 1632). “The world is for others,” he cried, as
+he fell. Richelieu picked up the hope and the fortune of the young hero.
+He was now free from all domestic anxiety and could employ his attention
+and his strength abroad. He boldly substituted in the struggle against the
+Austrian house, for exhausted Denmark and for Sweden bereft of her king,
+France full of youth and ardour.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17u"><a href="#endnote_17u">u</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Richelieu still upheld his alliance with Sweden and the Protestant powers;
+and thus keeping the force of Austria employed, he was enabled to effect his
+next ambitious project, which was the occupation of Lorraine.</p>
+
+<p>That province was in its origin feudatory to the empire, and was totally
+independent of France, except that from vicinity and interest its dukes were
+far more French than German. The Guises had drawn these ties closer.
+And now that the duke of Lorraine had harboured the duke of Orleans, and,
+against the king’s consent, had given him his daughter Margaret in marriage,
+the latter had reason or pretext for anger. Richelieu, as usual, caused an
+army, with the king at its head, to march to Lorraine. The duke was
+alarmed, and sought to parry the attack by offering to espouse Madame de
+Combalet, niece of the cardinal; but Richelieu refused to sacrifice the interests
+of the state to the aggrandisement of his family. Perhaps he saw in the offer
+a trap laid for him. Lorraine was invaded; and Nancy, its capital, besieged.
+The duchess of Orleans contrived to escape from it to Brussels; but Nancy
+fell into the power of the king. In vain did the duke negotiate, and make
+submissions; equally in vain did he resign his duchy in favour of his brother.
+The capital and fortresses were held in firm possession by Richelieu.</p>
+
+<p>Here fell another noble, or rather an independent prince, from having
+espoused the quarrel of the duke of Orleans. Whilst the queen-mother gave
+signs of increased exasperation, by suborning an attempt to carry off the
+cardinal’s niece, Gaston began to be weary of exile. His favourite, Puylaurens,
+who had chief influence with him, was still more anxious; and Richelieu
+offered great advantages to the latter, if he would induce the prince to submit.
+Gaston at length did so, quitted Brussels abruptly, and repaired to Paris,
+where he was graciously and splendidly received. Puylaurens received the
+hand of the cardinal’s niece, and was created duke d’Aiguillon for his services.
+But Richelieu was a dangerous friend, except to an all-devoted servant. He
+sought to break Gaston’s marriage; and Gaston was obstinate in resisting.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_468">[468]</span>The cardinal laid the blame on the new duke d’Aiguillon, and without further
+pretext arrested and shut him up in the Bastille, where he soon after perished.
+Gaston was, as usual, enraged; and, as usual, allowed his rage to evaporate
+in vain menaces, and in vainer enterprises.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Wars with Austria</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1634-1635 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The nobles checked, the Huguenot power destroyed, it remained to abase
+still lower the house of Austria, and to extend the territories of France at its
+expense. To make the Rhine the limit of the empire was the darling aim
+of Richelieu, as of Henry IV. Gustavus Adolphus and the Protestant princes
+of Germany had hitherto been instruments in Richelieu’s hand to effect or
+further this; but, since the death of the king of Sweden, the emperor
+had recovered his superiority, had defeated the Swedes, and reduced his
+enemies. It behooved France no longer to confine her efforts to negotiation;
+but to draw the sword, if she wished to preserve her ascendency or to prosecute
+her political schemes. She demanded certain advantages for thus declaring
+herself; and neither Sweden nor the malcontent Germans were backward
+in paying the price. Oxenstierna, the Swedish chancellor, ceded the fortress
+of Philippsburg to France. The league of Protestants put the whole of
+Alsace and its important fortresses under her protection. Lorraine was
+already occupied; and now Richelieu pushed northwards, and garrisoned
+Treves, forming, at the same time, a defensive alliance with Holland. Spain,
+informed of this treaty, sent an expedition to surprise the town of Treves;
+and war was in consequence declared by France against the emperor and the
+king of Spain, in the commencement of 1635. A herald was sent to Brussels
+to announce it; the last time that this species of feudal etiquette was
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu, the destroyer of the Huguenots, was thus leagued with the
+Protestant powers of Europe against its Catholic princes—a clear proof
+that his principles were politic, not bigoted. This war, which lasted thirteen
+years against the emperor and twenty-five against Spain, produced little glory
+to the minister, at least from its victories, and has brought as little interest
+to history.<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> It is marked by as much want of spirit as of talent. Yet
+the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, then drawing to its close, was marked
+with both. But religious differences had given ferocity to this war, which
+was carried on in the heart of Germany, and which put daily at stake the fate
+of kingdoms, capitals, and creeds. On the other hand, the war which we
+enter on was merely an extended line of frontier skirmishes, idle sieges, and
+fitful expeditions, in which Richelieu had the advantage, not from military
+but ministerial superiority. His vigorous administration enabled France to
+bear the expense and weight of the war, whilst the house of Austria, from
+the bad husbandry of more immense resources, became exhausted, and towards
+the close of it was in a tottering state. As to the lack of able generals, it
+may be observed that great military talent must necessarily be wanting at the
+commencement of a war, and that it requires half a score of years’ campaigning
+for the age and the nation to form its military system anew—the old
+never sufficing—and to find for that system a head and an arm capable of
+directing it. Turenne was a young officer at this epoch. It was not till the
+following reign that he and Condé were able to assert the superiority of
+French generalship.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_469">[469]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1635-1636 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>France entered on the campaign with four armies—one in the Low
+Countries, one on the Rhine, the others in Italy, and the Valtelline. The
+first exploit was one of promise and éclat. The marshal De Brézé was
+marching to join the Dutch through the country of Liège. Prince Thomas
+of Savoy, at the head of the Spanish, sought to prevent the junction. He
+was defeated by Brézé at Avein, and lost all his cannon and colours.
+Tirlemont was given up to the pillage of the victors. Louvain was besieged,
+and Brussels threatened. The unfortunate Marie de’ Medici was obliged to
+fly from the latter town, with the duchess of Orleans, pursued by the good fortune
+of her enemy Richelieu. Chance, however, may give a victory; talents
+can alone make the most of it. The French were obliged to retire behind
+the Maas. They and the Dutch, most ill-assorted allies, laid the blame of
+tardiness upon each other.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year the imperialists had all the advantage. They
+penetrated into Picardy, passed the Somme, and took Corbie. Paris was in
+alarm, and her citizens began to retire southward. It was a critical moment
+for Richelieu. His ascendency over the king consisted solely in the monarch’s
+opinion of his sagacity and good fortune as minister. This opinion was
+greatly shaken; yet Richelieu kept a good countenance, and did all that the
+emergency required. He made the king show himself to the people; he
+despatched reinforcements to the count de Soissons, who commanded in
+Picardy. The Spanish knew as little as the French how to push an advantage.
+Instead of advancing upon the capital, they passed the time in
+pillaging, and were soon obliged to retreat. The court advanced to Amiens,
+whilst the army besieged and endeavoured to retake Corbie.</p>
+
+<h3>ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE CARDINAL</h3>
+
+<p>Here Richelieu’s good fortune saved him from new peril. The count de
+Soissons, son of that prince of the blood whose turbulence made him conspicuous
+in the first year of the regency of Marie de’ Medici, had stepped
+from the obscurity in which he had been kept, on the unexpected invasion
+of his government by the enemy. He had valiantly resisted; but the cardinal,
+who dreaded the renown of a prince of the blood, avoided placing any large
+force at his disposal, and at length brought the king himself to command and
+eclipse Soissons. The count vowed vengeance; he leagued with Gaston,
+ever ready to commence a plot; and they agreed to assassinate the cardinal
+at Amiens. Two gentlemen, named Saint-Ibal and Montrésor, were
+charged with the execution, but were to wait for the signal to be given
+by the duke of Orleans. An opportunity offered. Richelieu was alone at
+the foot of his staircase, which he had descended to his carriage, and in the
+midst of the conspirators. The agents had their hands on pistols, eagerly
+watching the countenances of both the count de Soissons and the duke of
+Orleans for the signal. Neither had the courage to give it, and Richelieu
+walked on; for the moment he was unsuspicious of the danger that he
+had escaped.</p>
+
+<p>On reflection, the princes saw that the danger lay in having meditated
+the deed, rather than in having executed it. They tried other means, leagued
+with the Spaniards, and endeavoured to rouse the nobility to rebel.
+Épernon, to whom they chiefly applied, bade them, in answer, recollect
+the fate of Marillac and Montmorency. They did so, and fled from court;
+the count de Soissons to Sedan, and Gaston to Blois. But the latter was
+soon brought back by fair words.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_470">[470]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHARACTER OF LOUIS</h3>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p470.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Gentleman, Time of Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1615-1638 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In the midst of these intrigues, this warfare, these struggles betwixt nations
+and parties, Louis XIII was perhaps the personage who felt the least interested.
+“He led,” says Madame de Motteville,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17i1"><a href="#endnote_17i">i</a></span> “the most wretched and
+sad life; without court, or friends, or power; spending his time in catching
+birds, whilst his armies were taking towns.” He was plaintive, melancholy,
+retiring; not wanting either in good sense or in any other manly quality,
+perhaps, but cursed with a diffidence that neutralised them all. Thus he
+despaired of ever finding another minister like Richelieu; and, in fear of
+offending the cardinal, whom he might have controlled as well as employed,
+he resigned all authority into his hands. Another idea of his, proceeding
+from the same diffidence, and a great cause
+of discontent and sadness with him, was
+that he despaired to render himself agreeable
+to the fair sex. He was cursed with
+a bashfulness and a backwardness that he
+blushed to avow, and that he concealed
+under the colour of apathy and suspicion.
+This kept Louis XIII for a number of years
+a stranger to his young and not unlovely
+queen; as the same defect produced, in
+after years, a similar result with his descendant,
+Louis XVI. Anne of Austria, piqued
+by this coldness of her spouse, avenged herself
+by ridicule and sarcasm. The king’s
+indifference or distance thus became hatred;
+and Richelieu, who had cause to dread the
+young queen, fanned the latter sentiment.
+Louis nevertheless felt attracted towards
+female society, and he paid a kind of distant
+and formal court to Mademoiselle de
+Hautefort. This young lady as little
+understood his bashful and susceptible
+temper as did the queen, and Louis soon
+accused them both of leaguing together to
+mock him. The attentions of the king
+were then turned towards a new object,
+Mademoiselle de la Fayette, with whom the
+novel of De Genlis has perhaps rendered
+the reader familiar. She, of tenderer feelings
+and more penetration, knew how to
+appreciate the timid affections of the monarch.
+She cherished and returned them;
+never, however, overstepping the bounds of modesty. Louis, whose reserve,
+or “wisdom,” to use the words of Madame de Motteville,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17i2"><a href="#endnote_17i">i</a></span> “equalled that of
+the most modest dame,” at length ventured to propose an apartment at Versailles
+to Mademoiselle de la Fayette, who replied, after some hesitation,
+some intrigue, and certain interference, by retiring to a convent. The king
+wept, and was in despair; but his scruples would not permit him, like Louis
+XIV, to tear a beauty from the altar. He did not cease, however, to visit
+Mademoiselle de la Fayette at her convent; and long conversations were
+wont to pass between them through the <i>grille</i> or iron railing of the parlour.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_471">[471]</span>The monarch felt the influence of this virtuous young woman; her counsels,
+to which her piety now gave weight and her secure position boldness,
+prompted him to mistrust Richelieu, whom she represented as supporting
+heresy against Catholicism, and to give peace to Europe.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1638-1641 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Another voice, of equal weight with the king, was pouring the same sentiments
+into his ear. This was his confessor, the father Caussin, whom
+Richelieu had placed in that station, but who betrayed his confidence. To
+resist at once a mistress and a confessor was difficult, and the influence of
+the minister began to totter. One urgent counsel given to Louis by Mademoiselle
+de la Fayette and Caussin was that he should become reconciled to
+his queen; they showed, and even proved to him, that his suspicions against
+her were unjust. Richelieu, who observed the changed sentiments of the
+king towards Anne of Austria, was alarmed, and tried to prevent the reconciliation
+that he feared. Suspecting that the queen held a correspondence
+with Spain, he caused the police to visit and search her apartments at the
+Val de Grace. But his enemies were too adroit: no discovery was made,
+and the insult served but to display the unfounded rancour of the cardinal.
+After this the pious and generous voice of Mademoiselle de la Fayette had
+more influence; and, obedient to it, Louis XIII became reconciled for the
+time to his queen. The happy and unexpected consequence was the birth
+of a prince (afterwards Louis XIV) on the 5th of September following
+(1638). To this, however, the result was limited. Richelieu regained his
+ascendency over the king; the confessor was banished; Mademoiselle de la
+Fayette forgotten; and the queen, though no longer banished from the king’s
+presence, had as little share as before of his influence or friendship.</p>
+
+<p>The fresh hold which Richelieu here took of the monarch’s confidence
+was owing, in a great measure, to the success of the war. In the beginning
+of the campaign two actions were fought at Rheinfelden, in the first of which
+the gallant duke de Rohan perished; in the second, the duke of Saxe Weimar
+defeated the imperials, and took their two generals, one of whom, the
+famous Johann von Werth, was sent to Paris. The principal consequence of
+this victory was the conquest of Breisach, the chief fortress of Alsace. The
+name of the town reminds us again of the celebrated Father Joseph, a
+Capuchin friar, the follower and confidant of Richelieu. We can scarcely
+imagine a statesman and an ambassador clothed in a monk’s frock and sandals:
+yet such was Father Joseph, a name more or less mingled in all the
+intrigues of the French court, and its negotiations with others. His influence
+was known, and he was dreaded by the court as a kind of evil spirit, in
+fact the demon of Richelieu. Although the latter never procured for his
+monkish friend the cardinal’s hat which he demanded, still the people called
+Father Joseph his “gray eminence,” at once to distinguish him from and
+assimilate him to his “red eminence” the cardinal. They had been friends
+from youth; congenial spirits in ambition, depth, and talent: the monk, however,
+sacrificed his personal elevation to that of the cardinal. Richelieu was
+much indebted to him: it was Joseph that roused and encouraged him, when
+stupefied and intimidated by the invasion of Picardy; and it has been claimed
+that after his death Richelieu showed neither the same firmness nor sagacity.<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_472">[472]</span>When Father Joseph was on his death-bed, Richelieu stood by it: it was a
+scene such as a novelist might love to paint. The conversation of the two
+ecclesiastics was still of this world; and the cardinal’s last exhortation to the
+expiring monk was, “Courage, Father Joseph, Breisach is ours!” a form of
+consolation characteristic of both.</p>
+
+<h3>REVOLT OF THE COUNT DE SOISSONS (1641 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The count de Soissons, on the failure of his scheme against the cardinal,
+had taken refuge with the duke de Bouillon in Sedan. All the enemies of
+the latter, especially the exiles, looked towards this prince of the blood as the
+rallying-point, the support of their cause. Richelieu employed every art to
+pacify the count, remove his distrust, and entice him to court. All efforts
+proved vain; and Richelieu was even obliged to purchase the tranquillity
+of Soissons, and tolerate his independent posture. It was dangerous, however,
+to let such an example of disobedience subsist; and the cardinal
+at length sent an army, under the marshal De Châtillon, to reduce Sedan,
+and take or humble the count de Soissons. Châtillon was both valorous and
+skilful; but nothing could compensate for the ill humour and backwardness
+of the troops, who, with their officers, felt more inclined to a gallant prince of
+the blood than to the domineering cardinal. In an action that took place at
+La Marfée, near Sedan, the royal troops showed neither alacrity nor determination;
+and Châtillon, despite his efforts, was completely put to the rout. No
+obstacle seemed now to prevent the count de Soissons from marching to
+Paris, when the almost miraculous good fortune of Richelieu saved him from
+ruin. As Soissons rode over the field of battle, he pushed up his visor with
+his pistol; it was accidentally discharged, and the victor perished. Report
+did not fail to say that he was assassinated, and, of course, by the order of
+Richelieu; but there is no evidence to support such a rumour. Louis, who, on
+receiving tidings of the defeat, was preparing, with equanimity, to sacrifice
+the obnoxious minister, was now struck with his unvarying good fortune;
+and, with a superstitious feeling, bowed still lower to the cardinal’s will.
+The court did not share the monarch’s obsequiousness.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17e2"><a href="#endnote_17e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CAILLET’S ESTIMATE OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1624-1642 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Having regarded the great minister of Louis XIII as the politician who,
+after having conquered Protestantism and the reawakening of feudalism at
+home, continued abroad the work of Francis I and Henry IV, and finally subdued
+the power of Austria and laid the foundation of French ascendency in
+Europe, we hope now to show that Richelieu was as great an administrator
+as he was a politician, and that the sources of national wealth, as well as what
+was essential for sound administration, were subjects to which he gave deep
+and serious attention. It will be seen that he did not suffer the work of
+regeneration, begun by Henry IV and so disastrously interrupted by the
+dagger of the assassin Ravaillac, to fall to the ground. Undertaking in his
+boundless energy affairs of the most varied nature, this great genius gave a
+powerful impetus in every direction to the national activity, which, having
+been long restrained or wrongly directed, was ripe for producing great
+results.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu really laid the foundations on which Colbert and Louvois afterwards
+built under the eye of Louis XIV. To him is due the final triumph
+of pure monarchy, of that form of government which alone was legitimate at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_473">[473]</span>that time, because it alone could bring about and maintain unity in France.
+The kingship, elevated into a living symbol of the national welfare and of the
+best interests of the country, became a sort of rampart behind which Louis
+XIII’s minister, with indomitable energy, and with that breadth of mind
+which characterises a great man, carried on for eighteen years the work of
+monarchical centralisation. What he accomplished during this immortal dictatorship,
+in the midst of constantly recurring difficulties, is almost incredible.
+By destroying Protestantism as a political power, Richelieu made a
+distinct advance towards unity in the state. He gave a very essential bond
+of union to the higher administration by establishing the council of state,
+which remained practically unaltered till 1789. He rendered the triumph of
+monarchical authority over the new feudalism a certainty by lessening the
+excessive authority which the provincial governors had arrogated to themselves,
+by establishing resident overseers, who were energetic and obedient
+servants of the king, in various parts of the country to see that the law was
+properly administered, that the police were properly organised, and that the
+interests of the state in financial matters were not neglected; by commanding
+fortified places to be destroyed; and finally by his treatment of the most
+important members of the aristocracy as well as of the royal family, whom he
+punished or even banished when necessary, thus showing that the sword of
+the law was long enough to reach any head, however highly placed.</p>
+
+<p>He obliged the parliament to keep strictly within the limits of its own
+judicial functions, and forbade its taking any part whatever in the management
+of public affairs. He maintained a perpetual struggle against provincial
+institutions, whose resistance, usually self-interested and unjust, tended
+continually to fetter the action of the central power. But though he abolished
+the power of all enemies of the royal prerogative, Richelieu himself was
+capable of holding very wide and liberal views. If he destroyed Protestantism
+as a political party, he rose above the religious prejudices of his time by adhering
+strictly to the terms of the treaties which had been concluded with the
+Protestants, and by fearlessly bestowing his favours and his confidence on
+many of them. If he compelled the nobility to renounce their claims to independence,
+he opened up to them new paths to fortune and power, he enabled
+them to engage in maritime commerce without any loss of dignity, he admitted
+them to the royal councils, and he founded schools for them. In short,
+he wished them to take the lead in the country by superiority of culture as
+well as of wealth. If he failed to assemble the states-general, he nevertheless
+did not claim to be independent of public opinion; he frequently summoned
+assemblies of important people and explained to them, in patriotic language,
+his great projects for the good of the country; he more than once took for his
+text the resolutions presented to the states of 1640 by the commons. Lastly,
+he created one of the most powerful engines of modern civilisation, the
+periodical press, by authorising the publication, under his patronage, of
+Renaudot’s <i>Gazette</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed as he was by all these plans and preoccupations, Richelieu
+nevertheless found time to effect important improvements in all the public
+services. The statute of January, 1629, drawn up under the direction of
+Marillac, the keeper of the seals, summarises and completes the great statutes
+of the sixteenth century, and must be regarded as the most important attempt
+at codification previous to the time of Louis XIV. A stricter enforcement of
+police regulations increased the public security, whilst the numerous hospitals
+and benevolent institutions of all kinds founded at this time greatly ameliorated
+the condition of the labouring classes. Nor were manufactures, agriculture,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_474">[474]</span>and internal commerce neglected. Richelieu encouraged the formation
+of many companies whose object was to turn to account all the riches of the
+soil; he had the canal of Briare, begun in the time of Henry IV, finished, and
+he made wise regulations respecting the taxation of the common people and
+the allowance of provisions to be given to the troops, which improved the
+condition of the rural population. He was the creator of military administration;
+he gave France a merchant navy and a military navy, he organised
+consulates, concluded commercial treaties with Russia, Persia, Morocco, etc.,
+and did much to encourage early French colonial enterprise. Literature,
+science, and the arts were also in a flourishing condition during this period.
+The special patronage accorded by Richelieu to artists and men of letters,
+whom he extricated from the precarious and humiliating position they had
+previously occupied; the creation of the French Academy,<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> the reorganisation
+of the Sorbonne, the foundation of the royal botanical gardens, of the
+royal press, and of the mint, prove how large a share in the striking development
+of the national genius which took place during his time may justly be
+claimed by the great cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to believe that one single man can have carried out successfully
+so many plans whilst at the same time laying the foundations of internal
+prosperity and of political ascendency in Europe, and that amid such
+difficulties as no other statesman has ever succeeded in surmounting. And
+what makes all this the more wonderful was the frailty of the body which
+contained this invincible spirit, and which was liable to be prostrated by
+illness at any moment. Although Richelieu’s health was extremely delicate,
+and he was constantly falling ill, this extraordinary man seemed able to make
+his body obey his mind. He usually went to bed at eleven o’clock, and
+would sleep for three or four consecutive hours; then he would do some
+writing himself or dictate to a secretary till about six o’clock, at which time
+he would go to sleep again till between seven and eight, when he rose.
+Avenel has clearly proved that Richelieu kept some confidential secretaries
+night and day about his person, but that he had no offices. The
+secretaries of state, who were nothing more than his head clerks, used to
+come for his orders, get the necessary work done in their own offices, bring
+it when required to the prime minister for his inspection, and then signed
+the documents themselves. Richelieu only signed what was written in his
+own study. Father Joseph himself does not seem to have been permitted,
+any more than were the secretaries, the privilege of supervising the minutes
+signed by the cardinal. The latter wished everything to be seen and done
+by himself. To our thinking, nothing more striking could be conceived than
+the picture of this statesman fighting against sleep and death for every
+moment of his existence, in order to consecrate it to the glory of France.</p>
+
+<p>What is specially characteristic of Richelieu, and gives him a distinct
+position among the founders of unity in France, is the clearness and the
+grandeur of his projects. Without foreseeing all the results of his system,
+results which he would no doubt have been unwilling to accept, he inaugurated
+with power and splendour that last social phase which the modern
+world was to pass through, before the light of a new era should shine upon
+it. Raising the kingship above family ties, and above all the traditions of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_475">[475]</span>precedent, he detached from it all foreign elements, and, isolating it within
+its own sphere, as a pure idea, he made it the living personification of the
+public welfare and the best interests of the nation. Thanks to this formidable
+weapon he broke away definitely from the traditions of the Middle
+Ages, and caused French society to enter once for all on the path of civil
+unity and equality. From the time of Louis the Fat to that of Louis XIV,
+the kingship had always pursued the mission which providence seemed to
+have laid upon it, to draw towards the shadow of the throne all the varied
+and inimical forces which divided the country between them; but there had
+been unfortunate intervals when it seemed almost as if the spirit of disaffection
+and anarchy would finally prevail, as happened after the reigns of
+Philip the Fair, Charles V, Louis XI, and after the death of Henry IV.
+From the time of Richelieu, the work of monarchical centralisation met with
+no further check. The kingship, having reached the height to which this
+great minister had raised it, was only to descend from that position in order
+to make way for a still wider and more productive form of government.</p>
+
+<h3>THE CHURCH AND THE STATE UNDER RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1624-1639 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Two great facts are of paramount importance in the history of the
+church of France during the first half of the seventeenth century. On the
+one hand a sort of intellectual and moral regeneration, a true religious
+renascence, was taking place in her midst, a movement which might be compared
+to the literary renascence which had taken place in lay society in the
+preceding century. On the other hand, the question so long debated
+between the temporal and the spiritual power was at last decided in favour
+of the former. Richelieu fought desperately against ultramontanism and
+loudly proclaimed the absolute independence of the civil power, and the
+necessity of having a national clergy whose interests should be bound up
+with those of the state.</p>
+
+<p>The religious wars had left the French clergy in a deplorable condition.
+The church of France was in such a lax state that she seemed in danger of
+losing the fruits of the victory she had gained, by the incapacity or the
+vices of her members. However, we may say at once that this state of
+religious decadence was not irremediable. It was necessary to take prompt
+measures for reform, but the machinery for the work was there, and in
+greater completeness than appeared at first sight. It was only awaiting the
+workmen who were to set it in motion. If the wars of the league were
+responsible for great crimes and terrible outrages, they had also produced
+great virtues and fine characters. Men’s minds, somewhat enervated at the
+beginning of the sixteenth century by the introduction of a new morality,
+had regained their vigour in the struggle. Having erred temporarily they
+were nevertheless not weakened, and when the combat was over they felt an
+intense craving for action and for a living faith; two forces which, well
+directed, can accomplish wonders.</p>
+
+<p>This condition of mind also explains the very practical tendency shown
+by the religious movement which then took place. Indeed one of the most
+remarkable features of this regeneration of French Catholicism was, as Henri
+Martin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17p1"><a href="#endnote_17p">p</a></span> observes, the predominance of the practical over the ascetic and
+contemplative element.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu did not intend to exclude either the nobility or the clergy from
+the administration of state affairs; on the contrary he treated the clergy
+just as he did the aristocracy. He sought to introduce members of the order
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_476">[476]</span>into the king’s councils, but only on condition that they were sufficiently
+enlightened to be worthy of such a position. He acted in the same way with
+regard to the clergy. We see him giving most important positions, both
+military and naval, to ecclesiastics. What he insisted upon was that these
+two orders of the nobility and clergy should not subordinate the interests of
+the state to their own, as they had been too prone to do in former times. He
+wished the clergy to be part of the state and to belong to the state, and to
+contribute a fair proportion towards public expenses. In a word, he wished
+for a national clergy. Therefore in his struggles to maintain, in the civil
+power as well as in the religious order, the ascendency of the patriotic principles
+of the true Gallican spirit, Richelieu found himself supported by his bitterest
+opponent, the parliament, and deserted by the majority of the clergy,
+who saw in this extension of the civil power the possible abolition of their
+own privileges. In 1625, the clergy, in order to defend themselves from the
+constant demands for money made on them by the government, had decided
+that in future no deputy could vote subsidies under any pretext without
+having expressly received full powers in the matter, and that the opposition
+of a single province should be sufficient to annul the resolutions of the
+assembly. Richelieu replied that he could not admit the principle in virtue
+of which the clergy were claiming absolute immunity from taxation; that
+the needs of the state were real, while those of the church were chimerical
+and arbitrary; that if the king’s armies had not repulsed the enemy the
+clergy would have suffered much more.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle about taxation between the civil power and the clergy
+attained still more formidable proportions in 1638. Richelieu seems to have
+made use of the brothers Dupuy to prepare the ground on which he intended
+openly to attack the immunities of the clergy in the matter of taxation.
+Pierre Dupuy in conjunction with his brother Jacques published anonymously,
+about the middle of 1638, his great work on the <i>Liberties of the Gallican
+Church</i>. He collected in the first volume some very daring tracts on
+the subject; then, following his usual method, he supported them by a
+second volume of official acts and significant precedents, systematically
+arranged under the title <i>Proofs of the Liberties</i>. In the tracts, published
+mostly during the troubles of the league, when the national orthodoxy of
+France was called in question, it was stated amongst other things that the
+pope had exercised no jurisdiction at all over the Gallican church during
+the first six centuries; that in the time of Clovis the sovereign head of the
+church after Jesus Christ was the king, not the pope; that the pope had
+no right to issue excommunications outside his own diocese; that there is no
+instance of either the popes or their legates presiding at any council held in
+Gaul before 742; that the said popes had not then any title which placed
+them above the other archbishops, and indeed did not possess any which was
+not common to them all. As for the proofs, “great care had been taken not
+to draw deductions from the acts; our kings, the assembled bishops of France,
+the parliament, and other sovereign bodies, the universities and some of the
+communities of the kingdom, were the authors of this work.” This was an
+adroit way of assuming the consent of the whole nation during many centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The clergy understood the significance of the attack, and protested
+strongly against doctrines which they thought would declare them independent
+of Rome only to make them the slaves of temporal power. On the
+9th of February, 1639, eighteen bishops met at the house of Cardinal de la
+Rochefoucauld and drew up a letter denouncing “this work of the devil”
+to their colleagues in a most violent manner. The cardinal undertook to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_477">[477]</span>deliver this letter to Richelieu. How the minister replied is not known;
+but from that time edicts more violent than ever were issued against the
+clergy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1639-1640 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Amongst the bishops was one, the bishop of Chartres, who was entirely
+devoted to the cardinal, and who supported him strongly in his struggle
+with the church. He succeeded, it is said, in recovering a copy of all the
+edicts issued against the church in the most disturbed times and sent them
+to the superintendent Bullion. The latter made a report on them to the cardinal,
+and on the 16th of April, 1639, appeared an edict in which it was set
+forth that “ecclesiastics, communities, and other persons falling under the
+statute of mortmain are incapable of holding real property in France, that
+the king can compel them to pay dues on it within a year and a day of
+acquiring it, and in default of this the king may add the said property to
+his own domains; that the king is willing nevertheless to be satisfied with
+the payment of the indemnity for royal and feudal rights, which is due to
+him by his claims under mortmain; his majesty commands that these rights
+shall be sought out wherever they exist, in all sorts of livings, foundations,
+hospitals, confraternities, etc., excepting only the new communities, established
+thirty years ago, of the Jesuits and the Carmelites.” The edict commanded
+that the research should extend as far back as 1520. This was,
+according to financiers, a matter of nearly eighty millions for the state. A
+short time after, an order appeared commanding the alienation of 200,000
+livres a year on the Hôtel-de-Ville, guaranteed for five years only by the
+clergy, and imposing on the latter a perpetual responsibility for these
+200,000 livres, and this without their own consent. The irritation of the
+clergy had reached a climax. They protested forcibly against this measure.
+Richelieu thought it would not be wise to push things to extremities. A
+declaration issued on the 7th of January, 1640, announced that the king
+would be satisfied with a levy of 3,600,000 livres as a compensation for his
+royal rights.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Dupuy, seeing that the king’s authority was waning,
+published a violent discourse in defence of the king. Upon this an obscure
+priest named Hersent undertook in a Latin pamphlet, entitled <i>Optatus gallus</i>,
+to defend the rights of the church and denounce the machinations of those
+who were trying, he said, to foster schism in France. The parliament by a
+decision dated March 23rd, 1640, ordered the <i>Optatus gallus</i> to be torn up
+and burned “as casting doubt on the authority bestowed on sovereign princes
+by God.” On the 28th of the same month, the archbishop of Paris, F. de
+Gondi, with Léonor d’Étampes bishop of Chartres, Nicolas bishop of Orleans,
+and Séguier bishop of Meaux, signed a declaration couched in almost the same
+terms, and having for its special object to repel most decidedly the accusation
+of schism made against the cardinal and a portion of the French clergy
+by the author of the <i>Optatus gallus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As for the government, it recommenced its attacks on the clergy and, no
+longer satisfied with the 3,600,000 livres at first demanded, it called upon all
+holders of livings to pay over the sixth part of their income for two years
+(6th of October, 1640). The edict was published under the seal, and a
+chamber was established at the Louvre composed of councillors of state, both
+ecclesiastic and lay, and magistrates, whose function it was to carry out the
+provisions of the edict and settle the law. Berland, the prior of St. Denis-de-la-Chartre,
+who, having entered the clerical agency and not being recognised
+as an agent, had not the keys of the archives at his disposal, had the
+audacity to break in the doors and carry off the old assessment rolls, amongst
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_478">[478]</span>them that of 1583, and to hand them over to the superintendent. When
+the new assessment was drawn up the agents of the clergy were desired to sign
+it. The abbé Saint-Vincent immediately formed an opposition party. This
+was suppressed by a decision of the 10th of November, which also forbade
+the agents “to hold any meeting either general or particular without the
+king’s permission.” The abbé Saint-Vincent then wrote to the dioceses telling
+them that all was lost. They decided to write to the cardinal and even
+the king, to appeal to his holiness, and to order public prayers to be offered
+up. In short, the clergy were in a state of indescribable tumult. The most
+violent accusations were hurled against this tyrant, this apostate, who was
+violating the privileges of the church, and trying to reduce her to a state of
+slavery which was quite unprecedented. Richelieu, however, who was at this
+time involved in a gigantic struggle against Austria and Spain, was anxious
+to be freed from all these entanglements at home. He appeared to give way
+and agreed to accept from an ecclesiastical assembly what he found it difficult
+to obtain by force. A general assembly was summoned at Mantes at
+the beginning of 1641. The government demanded 6,600,000 livres in all.
+The debate was long and stormy. The sieur d’Émeri was deputed by the
+king to signify to the archbishops of Sens and Toulouse and the bishops of
+Évreux, Maillezais, Bazas, and Toulon that they must leave the town, and
+each one retire to his own diocese without passing through Paris.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the minority, who were devoted to Richelieu, made
+some very bold speeches. The affair finally ended according to Richelieu’s
+desires. The government reduced its claims to five and a half millions, which
+were voted by the majority on the 27th of May.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17r"><a href="#endnote_17r">r</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE CONSPIRACY OF CINQ-MARS (1641-1642 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1641-1642 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>One more effort was made to shake off the trammels of the hated cardinal.
+A conspiracy was entered into to deliver the land by the old Roman method
+of putting the tyrant to death; and the curious part of the design is that it
+was formed almost in the presence of the king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17j"><a href="#endnote_17j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louis XIII had at that time a favourite, Henry d’Effiat, son of the old
+marshal and marquis de Cinq-Mars. He was a young man of twenty-two
+years of age, with a handsome face, finished manners, magnificent and extravagant.
+The king, always gloomy, found the need of an agreeable person,
+capable of diverting his thoughts, and even of amusing him. Having formed
+an affection for Cinq-Mars, he gave him in succession the posts of keeper
+of the wardrobe and grand equerry. Richelieu, whose close observation
+extended even over the intimate friends of Louis XIII, did not take umbrage
+at the favour bestowed upon a young man of so frivolous a nature, son of a
+father who had been one of his most devoted servants, and step-brother of the
+marshal De Meilleraie; on the contrary he felt that the equerry usurped
+the place in the king’s confidence of one of his declared enemies, Mademoiselle
+de Hautefort.</p>
+
+<p>But Cinq-Mars was a young madman and, as Monglat said, too presumptuous.
+Intoxicated by his success, thinking he could do in all things as he
+pleased, he began to show an inordinate ambition. He dreamed of the fortune
+of Luynes; he wished to be a duke and a peer, and to command the
+armies. Richelieu treated him like a child. Louis XIII had enough strength
+of mind to resist these follies, but not sufficient to send him away from him.
+He quarrelled with him, became reconciled again, and treated him as if he
+were a spoiled child. They called the equerry “the king’s plaything.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_479">[479]</span>Cinq-Mars—offended at the way in which the cardinal snubbed him, encouraged,
+moreover, by the society of the Marais in which he was considered a success,
+and which was not afraid to show political opposition, in words at least—thought
+that he could, thanks to the liberty which Louis XIII granted
+him, compass the downfall of Richelieu. Louis XIII, like everyone else,
+felt the burden of his powerful minister’s rule. He allowed his favourite
+to talk; he even listened to him
+willingly, without taking him
+seriously. At heart he looked
+upon Richelieu as a necessary
+man and one whom he could
+not do without, as much from
+habit as from a conviction of
+the superiority of his genius.
+He told Cinq-Mars that he need
+never think of replacing him.
+Cinq-Mars then, with his daring
+and swift imagination, conceived
+the most incoherent ideas, such
+as killing the cardinal, waiting
+for his death, which the failing
+condition of his health made him
+think might be very soon, or bribing
+Gaston who would become
+regent if the king were to die.
+Each day he changed his plans,
+deciding upon no particular one.
+He had made vows, and probably
+more than vows, for the success
+of the count de Soissons. After
+the battle of La Marfée, he was
+advised to leave court, because
+of the suspicions that had arisen
+against him; he refused, hoping
+to refute them by his presence, and to think of some new plan by which he
+could compass the end he desired.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p479.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis de Cinq-Mars</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1620-1642)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the risk, he formed a conspiracy. He tried to come to
+an understanding with the duke of Orleans, who might become regent, and
+also with the duke de Bouillon, whose fortress of Sedan was admirably situated
+to furnish him a refuge should he be obliged to fly from France. It was
+beginning over again the plot of the count de Soissons. Gaston answered
+vaguely, according to his custom, leaving others to act, and doing nothing
+himself. Bouillon showed himself more decided. Although he had accepted
+from the cardinal the command of the Italian army, he believed himself able,
+should the conspiracy prove unsuccessful, to withdraw to Sedan, and there
+await the death of the king. Francis Augustus de Thou, son of the historian,
+an inconsistent, restless, and nervous person, served as a go-between for the
+equerry, with the duke de Bouillon, and even with the queen. Bouillon
+simply observed that an army was necessary to protect Sedan. Cinq-Mars
+and Gaston then sent into Spain an agent, Fontrailles, with some blank signatures,
+to demand troops and a subsidy, and to propose a treaty. Olivares
+seized this opportunity to cause Richelieu trouble. Seriously or not, he
+accepted the proposals which Fontrailles made to him; he signed the treaty,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_480">[480]</span>scarcely discussing the terms of it, and contented himself with exacting from
+the princes a promise to restore to peace all that France had wrested from
+Spain. Fontrailles returned to Narbonne, where he found the conspiracy half
+divulged, and the head equerry decided to undertake nothing until he knew
+how the cardinal’s illness would end. The duke of Orleans, carried away
+by the passion and zeal of some of his followers, but always irresolute and
+full of contradictions, had not left Blois; Bouillon was in Italy at the head
+of the army, they could not even communicate with one another. Fontrailles
+took a great deal of trouble to establish a secret correspondence between
+them. It was not only the illness of the cardinal that induced them to wait,
+but also the striking failure of the king’s health. Cinq-Mars only looked
+upon the treaty as a last resource which they could keep back for a time.
+Gaston demanded that it should be given to him; then when Cinq-Mars,
+after much resistance, decided to send it to him, he kept it without signing
+it, or addressing the ratification to the governors of the Spanish Netherlands,
+as they had agreed to. Fontrailles fled to England.</p>
+
+<h3>RECOVERY AND TRIUMPH OF RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<p>For a whole month Richelieu hung between life and death. At last he
+recovered, not indeed his health, but that energy which even suffering could
+not keep under. Prostrated by infirmity and pain, he appeared to have
+scarcely a spark of life, but, notwithstanding, never has one seen a finer
+example of Bossuet’s <i>mot</i>: “A courageous soul is master of the body it animates.”
+Retiring to Tarascon, a healthful and lonely town, under the care of
+the count d’Alais, governor of Provence, the cardinal, in spite of illness and
+absence, did not cease to rule the king, the government, and the army. A
+rumour was circulated that his retirement was due to fear; his enemies made
+a last attempt to destroy his influence over Louis XIII, but he triumphed
+over them on this as on all former occasions. The king, wearied by the
+length of the siege of Perpignan, and ill himself, left the camp to establish
+himself at Narbonne. There he fell a prey to the most contrary anxieties.
+He saw himself beset and spied upon on one side by Cinq-Mars, on the other
+by Chavigny and the Noyers. But, apart from the fact that he was in no
+wise willing to sacrifice Richelieu, he could perceive that the principal leaders
+and officers of the army were partisans of the cardinal, that the vain boastings
+of the equerry were displeasing to the military men, and that the latter
+indulged the maddest schemes for making himself well thought of. He was
+already very weary of his favourite, when on the 10th of June, 1642, he received
+a copy of the Spanish treaty that Richelieu sent to him at Narbonne by the
+intervention of Chavigny. How did this copy get into the cardinal’s hands?
+No one could tell; according to the most likely conjectures, he obtained it
+through one of his secret agents or by the treachery of the abbé De la Rivière,
+who sought his favour, or through a servant of the duke of Orleans. Louis
+XIII was most indignant, and no longer hesitated. On the 12th he ordered
+Cinq-Mars, De Thou, and two others, to be arrested. Cinq-Mars remained
+concealed all one day in a house in the town, but he was discovered, and
+imprisoned in the citadel of Montpellier. Bouillon was arrested in Italy by
+his brigadiers at the head of the very army that he commanded. Gaston
+only was not pursued. The abbé De la Rivière came in his name to acknowledge
+his fault and to beg for the royal pardon.</p>
+
+<p>The king went to Tarascon to the cardinal to assure him that his sentiments
+had not changed, and that he wished to await with him the end of this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_481">[481]</span>great trial. We are told how Richelieu was in bed; how Louis, himself ill,
+was obliged to have a bed made up for himself by the side of Richelieu, and
+how they discussed thus the measures they ought to take. They decided
+that Gaston should be questioned and then pardoned, but on the condition
+of his making a full confession, the only means of convicting the accused
+parties. Louis XIII was unable to return to the army; he went to Fontainebleau
+by easy stages, arriving there the 23rd of July. Whilst on the road
+he heard of the death of his mother; Marie de’ Medici had left England,
+where her presence was looked upon as a public encumbrance. Not finding
+the inhabitants either of Spain or of Holland willing to receive her, she went
+to Cologne where, at the house of the archbishop elector, she terminated the
+anxieties of her wandering life. The chancellor and the members of parliament
+claimed that a prince could not be cross-examined like anyone else,
+and that it was necessary he should give his declaration in writing. This
+mode of procedure had been adopted towards the duke of Orleans. The judges
+received his declaration at Villefranche on their way to Lyons, where
+the commission would sit. This commission was composed of state counsellors,
+of masters of requests, and of several members of the Grenoble parliament.
+Cinq-Mars had been transferred from the citadel of Montpellier to
+that of Pierre-Scize. De Thou had been taken to Lyons in a boat towed
+up the Rhone by that of the cardinal. Bouillon was brought there from his
+side. Richelieu had started by going up the Rhone slowly, for he could
+not bear the least fatigue. As this navigation was very laborious, he left the
+river at Valence and was placed in a great litter, or room, made expressly
+and carried upon the shoulders of his musketeers, who succeeded each other
+in relays. He was partially paralysed, incapable of moving or even of signing
+anything; nevertheless he never ceased working, having beside his bed in
+this portable room a chair and a table for a secretary. In this fashion he
+arrived at Lyons. He remained there only a few days, leaving before the
+end of the trial, and continuing his strange journey, partly by land, partly
+by the Loire and the recently finished canal of Briare.</p>
+
+<p>Gaston’s declarations left no doubt as to the reality of the plot. Cinq-Mars
+did not deny it; he owned to everything, and appeared before his
+judges with a bearing as noble as it was courageous. As for De Thou, he
+had played an absurd part, and one full of contradictions; “he was concerned
+in everything,” said Fontrailles,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17k"><a href="#endnote_17k">k</a></span> “and denied knowledge of anything.”
+Priding himself upon a scrupulous loyalty and delicacy of conscience, he was
+made the confidant of all the conspirators and all the conspiracies invented
+against the cardinal and against the king. He had got it into his head that
+his name, his character, his title of former minister of state would assure him
+a high place in the government that should succeed to that of Richelieu. He
+was then mixed up with the enemies of the cardinal; he had even, which was
+far more serious, warned the queen of what was being prepared. Of his complicity
+there was no doubt. His guilt was not so certain.</p>
+
+<p>The judges passed a sentence of death. Cinq-Mars was condemned
+unanimously; De Thou unanimously but for one voice. The execution took
+place at once upon a scaffold erected in the middle of the place des Terreaux
+(September 13th). The grand equerry and his friend died with as much
+dignity as resignation. De Thou, whose eager mind was filled with the
+deepest sentiments of religion, showed a martyr’s enthusiasm. Neither of
+them protested against the blow which struck them, but their youth, the
+sensation they had caused, the candour of their answers at the trial, their
+noble bearing upon the scaffold deeply affected the town of Lyons. “M. de
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_482">[482]</span>Thou,” wrote Marca, one of the judges, “died like a Christian and a brave
+man. M. le Grand also showed an equal firmness and met his death with
+an admirable confidence, composure, and Christian devotion.” The sight of
+this execution awoke a very natural pity, seeing that the public knew little
+of the details of the plot. It was regarded as the last act of vengeance of a
+minister who felt his power ebbing with his life.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17l2"><a href="#endnote_17l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST DAYS OF RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1642-1643 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The tempestuous year of 1642 was drawing to a glorious close. Fortune,
+after long wavering, threw itself on the side of France. Austria was humiliated
+and France was in the ascendency. Henry IV had won independence
+for her, Richelieu gave her supremacy; the work of Charles V and Philip II
+was undone forever. France resumed the position at the head of the nations
+which she had held when she led Europe in the Crusades of the Middle Ages.
+This grand symphony of victories resounded about a funeral pyre. All these
+conquered standards were lowered before a dying man. The epic poem that
+astonished the world for eighteen years was not to lack a majestic end; the
+hero was to be buried in the triumph which providence did not permit him
+to complete.</p>
+
+<p>The victory over Cinq-Mars, and above all the general success of the
+French policy, had for a few months brought back the life that was ebbing
+away; but the slow dissolution of the worn-out organism had continued.
+On the evening of the 28th of November Richelieu, after returning from Ruel
+to the palais Cardinal, was taken with a violent fever, with pain in the side, and
+spitting of blood; four bleedings were insufficient to allay the fever. On
+the 2nd of December public prayers were offered for the sick man in all the
+churches of Paris, and the king came from St. Germain to see him. Richelieu
+talked to Louis like a man resigned to death, asked him to protect his
+family in memory of his services, recommended to him the ministers Noyers
+and Chavigny, and especially Mazarin whom he represented, it is said, as
+the person most capable of filling his own place; and finally submitted to the
+king a declaration which he had just had drafted against the duke of Orleans,
+to exclude that prince from all right to the regency and the administration
+of the kingdom in case of the death of the king. This was the last service
+that Richelieu rendered to France.</p>
+
+<p>After the visit of the king the cardinal, feeling worse, asked the physicians
+how long he might still live. They, wishing to flatter the master to
+the very mouth of the tomb, replied that there was no need to despair—that
+God, seeing how necessary he was to the welfare of France, would intervene
+to save him. The cardinal shook his head and calling back one of the
+royal surgeons said, “Speak to me with open heart, not as a physician but
+as a friend.” “Monseigneur,” said the physician, “in twenty-four hours you
+will be dead or well.” “That’s the way to talk!” said Richelieu, “I like
+that.” He sent for the curate of St. Eustace, his parish. “Here is my Judge,”
+he said when the consecrated host was presented to him, “my Judge who is
+soon to pronounce my sentence. I pray him to condemn me if in my ministry
+I have followed any other end than the welfare of religion and of the state.”
+“Do you forgive your enemies?” asked the curé. “I have never had any
+but the enemies of the state.”</p>
+
+<p>Most of those present contemplated the dying man with admiration, some
+with fear. “Here,” said Cospéan, the bishop of Lisieux, “is an assurance
+that dismays me!” Doubtless Richelieu,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17m"><a href="#endnote_17m">m</a></span> in order to fortify his conscience,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_483">[483]</span>repeated the maxims of those two Latin testaments which contain
+his supreme thought; his official will in which he disposes of his dignities
+and his wealth concerns only his family; the other two are addressed to
+posterity. “I have been severe to some,” he said, “in order to be good to
+all. I have loved justice and not vengeance.” Was he very sure of it?
+“I have tried to give to Gaul the boundaries that nature intended for it, to
+identify Gaul with France, and to establish the new Gaul wherever the old
+one was.”</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the 3rd of December the king came to see the cardinal
+for the last time. The physicians, having no more hope, had given up
+the sick man to empirics, who gave him a little relief. But his feebleness
+was increasing; on the morning of the 4th, feeling the approach of death, he
+made his niece, the duchess d’Aiguillon retire, as she was “the person whom
+he had most loved,” according to his own words. This was the only moment,
+not of weakness, but of tenderness, that he had; his indomitable firmness
+had not given way during his long suffering. All present, ministers, generals,
+relatives, and servants, burst into tears; for this terrible man was,
+according to the testimony of his least favourable contemporaries, “the best
+master, relative, and friend that ever was known.” Towards noon he heaved
+a deep sigh, then a feebler one, then his body collapsed and was still; his
+great soul was gone. He had lived fifty-seven years and three months, the
+same number of years as Henry IV.</p>
+
+<p>Human judgments [continues Martin] have been and still are contradictory
+concerning this minister of salutary harshness, this strong-armed
+labourer who is accused of having pulled up from French soil the good grain
+along with the tares. The most opposite opinions are in league for and
+against his memory. Before 1789 lords and commons, after 1789 ultramontanes
+and a large part of the liberals heap abuse upon him. Retz<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17n"><a href="#endnote_17n">n</a></span> claims
+that Cardinal Richelieu traded on all the evil intentions and all the ignorance
+of the last two centuries, in order to form in the most legitimate of monarchies
+the most scandalous and most dangerous tyranny. Montesquieu<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17o"><a href="#endnote_17o">o</a></span>
+believes that “the most harmful citizens of France” were Richelieu and
+Louvois.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the partisans of unity and of strong and vigorous
+power, whether monarchists or democrats, rise in favour of the great man,
+as do all those who put the love of country above all other social or political
+sentiments. The <i>Moniteur</i> of 1789, as the mouthpiece of this party, exclaims
+with the voice of the Revolution itself: “Let the aristocrats rage against the
+memory of this intrepid minister who overthrew their pride and avenged
+the people for the oppression of the great. By sacrificing great victims to the
+tranquillity of the state he became its pacifier. He was the first to apply true
+remedies to the root of the evil by degrading the intermediate powers that
+had enslaved the nation for nearly nine centuries. Nothing that can make a
+vast kingdom powerful and glorious escaped his indefatigable activity.”</p>
+
+<p>The popular instinct however has not decided the question as it has for
+Henry IV. The abstract and half veiled greatness of this invalid who from
+his bed overturned empires has not taken hold of the heart and the imagination
+of the unlettered masses and imprinted its pale mysterious figure in
+ineffaceable lines. The man who did most for the greatness of France
+is little known by the French people: is this the punishment for his severity
+towards the suffering masses and for his harsh maxims? “If the people
+were too much at ease, it would not be possible to hold them within the rules
+of their duty.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17p2"><a href="#endnote_17p">p</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_484">[484]</span></p>
+
+<p>When the king heard of the death of his minister he coldly remarked:
+“A great statesman is dead.” He survived him but six months. A few
+days before his death he named Anne of Austria regent and Gaston, his
+brother, lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Louis XIII felt great remorse
+for the assassination of Marshal d’Ancre and for his treatment of his mother,
+the queen. He died at the château St. Germain, at the age of forty-two
+years. One of his contemporaries says of him that he was so indifferent in
+his government that all the world awaited his death with impatience, even
+those who owed most to him.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17c"><a href="#endnote_17c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>STEPHEN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XIII AND OF RICHELIEU</h3>
+
+<p>Louis XIII [says Stephen] was a man of large and just capacity. His
+ideas of the duties of his station were princely and magnanimous. He lived
+in profound submission to the law of his conscience, in the fear of God,
+and in veneration for all men in whom he saw, or thought he saw, any image,
+however faint, of the divine beneficence and power. But he was of a feeble,
+indolent, and melancholy spirit. He was habitually wrapt in reveries, sometimes
+splendid, though more often gloomy; but he was always incapable of
+prompt or decisive action. Though a king, he never was and never could
+have been a free man. It was among the necessities of his existence to live
+under the government of a master. After selecting and rejecting many
+such, he at length submitted himself to the dominion of Richelieu, and thenceforward
+endured that bondage to the last. He endured it certainly, neither
+from attachment nor from fear, but because, as often as he struggled to
+regain his liberty, his efforts were baffled by his admiration of the genius
+of his great minister, and by his persuasion that no other man could so
+effectually promote the welfare of his state and people.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu, on the other hand, was one of the rulers of mankind, in virtue
+of an inherent and indefeasible birthright. His title to command rested on
+that sublime force of will, and decision of character, by which, in an age
+of great men, he was raised above them all. It is a gift which supposes
+and requires in him on whom it is conferred, convictions too firm to be
+shaken by the discovery of any unperceived or unheeded truths. It is, therefore,
+a gift, which, when bestowed on the governors of nations, also presupposes
+in them the patience to investigate, the capacity to comprehend, and the
+genius to combine, all those views of the national interest, under the guidance
+of which their inflexible policy is to be conducted to its destined consummation.
+For the stoutest hearted of men, if acting in ignorance, or under
+the impulse of haste or of error, must often pause, often hesitate, and not
+seldom recede. Richelieu was exposed to no such danger. He moved
+onwards to his predetermined ends with that unfaltering step which attests,
+not merely a stern immutability of purpose, but a comprehensive survey of
+the path to be trodden, and a profound acquaintance with all its difficulties
+and all its resources. It was a path from which he could be turned aside
+neither by his bad nor by his good genius; neither by fear, lassitude, interest,
+or pleasure; nor by justice, pity, humanity, or conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The idolatrous homage of mere mental power, without reference to the
+motives by which it is governed, or to the ends to which it is addressed,—that
+blind hero-worship, which would place Wallenstein and Gustavus
+Adolphus on the same level, and extol with equal warmth the triumphs of
+Cromwell and of Washington, though it be a modern fashion, has certainly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_485">[485]</span>not the charm of novelty. On the contrary it might, in the language of the
+Puritans, be described as one of the “old follies of the old Adam”; and,
+to the influence of that folly, the reputation of Richelieu is not a little
+indebted.</p>
+
+<p>In his estimate, the absolute dominion of the French crown and the
+grandeur of France were convertible terms. They seemed to him but as
+two different aspects of the great consummation to which every hour of his
+political life was devoted. In approaching that ultimate goal, there were
+to be surmounted many obstacles which lie distinctly perceived, and of
+which he has given a very clear summary in his <i>Testament Politique</i>. “When
+it pleased your majesty,” he says, “to give me not only a place in your
+council, but a great share in the conduct of your affairs, the Huguenots
+divided the state with you. The great lords were acting not as your subjects,
+but as independent chieftains. The governors of your provinces were
+conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes. Foreign affairs and
+alliances were disregarded. The interest of the public was postponed to
+that of private men. In a word, your authority was, at that time, so torn
+to shreds, and so unlike what it ought to be, that, in the confusion, it was
+impossible to recognise the genuine traces of your royal power.”</p>
+
+<p>Before his death, Richelieu had triumphed over all these enemies, and
+had elevated the house of Bourbon upon their ruins. He is, perhaps,
+the only human being who ever conceived and executed, in the spirit of
+philosophy, the design of erecting a political despotism; not, indeed, a
+despotism like that of Constantinople or Teheran, but a power which, being
+restrained by religion, by learning, and by public spirit, was to be exempted
+from all other restraints; a dynasty, which like a kind of subordinate
+province, was to spread wide its arms for the guidance and shelter of the
+subject multitude; itself the while inhabiting a region too lofty to be ever
+darkened by the mists of human weakness, or of human corruption.</p>
+
+<p>To devise schemes worthy of the academies of Laputa, and to pursue
+them with all the relentless perseverance of Cortes or of Clive, has been
+characteristic of many of the statesmen of France, both in remote and in
+recent times. Richelieu was but a more successful Mirabeau. He was not
+so much a minister as a dictator. He was rather the depositary, than
+the agent, of the royal power. A king in all things but the name, he
+reigned with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences, which
+has so often imparted to the papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy,
+and has as often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV, and the ancestor of
+those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the applause
+and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in one unintermitted
+struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies over whom he
+ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed forever the
+political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his strong hand,
+the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial duties, and their claims
+to participate in the government of the state were scattered to the winds.
+Trampling under foot all rules of judicial procedure and the clearest principles
+of justice, he brought to the scaffold one after another of the proudest
+nobles of France, by sentences dictated by himself, to extraordinary judges
+of his own selection; thus teaching the doctrine of social equality, by
+lessons too impressive to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation.
+Both the privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had
+surrendered their independence, and the franchises, for the conquest of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_486">[486]</span>which the cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were alike
+swept away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother, oppressed
+the wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and put to death the
+kinsman and favourites of the king, and compelled the king himself to be
+the instrument of these domestic severities. Though surrounded by enemies
+and by rivals, his power ended only with his life. Though beset by assassins,
+he died in the ordinary course of nature. Though he had waded to dominion
+through slaughter, cruelty, and wrong, he passed to his great account amidst
+the applause of the people, with the benedictions of the Church; and, as
+far as any human eye could perceive, in hope, in tranquillity, and in peace.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17v"><a href="#endnote_17v">v</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/p486.jpg" width="450" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costumes of the Period of Louis XIII</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> [Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530), the celebrated English cardinal, was prime minister of Henry
+VIII. Cardinal George d’Amboise (1460-1510) was the minister of Louis XII of France (see
+pp. 294 and 303).]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> [The war in North Italy cut off Spain from the Netherlands, now that England dominated
+the sea. Hence the great importance of Richelieu’s plan.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> [Giulio Mazarini, born at Piscina, Italy, July 14th, 1602; died at Vincennes, France, March
+9th, 1661. He was to be Richelieu’s successor and scarcely his inferior in power.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> [Charles IV, duke of Guise. He died in exile in Italy in 1640.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> [For the detailed history of the Thirty Years’ War, see vol. XIII.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> [As regards what was done by French armies. But of course the allies entered constantly
+into Richelieu’s plans.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> [Kitchin’s<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_17w2"><a href="#endnote_17w">w</a></span> estimate of Father Joseph seems a just one. He says: “It is impossible to say
+with the Italians, that Richelieu owed everything to him; that Father Joseph not only strengthened
+him in all the crises of his fortune and gave him wise advice, but that he even invented his
+policy for him, and supplied him with ideas; yet we must admit that Richelieu owed more to
+him than to any other person, and that he was thrice happy in such an agent and friend. Yet
+the difference between them is great: Father Joseph lives in history as an able intriguer; Richelieu
+as a king among men.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> [Richelieu formally created the ever afterward famous <i>Académie Française</i> in the year
+1635. Its membership was (and is) limited to forty,—the “forty immortals.” Its object was to
+control the French language, and regulate the literary taste of the people. Its influence has been
+extraordinary; but the wisdom of attempting to dam up the stream of so limpid a medium as
+language may be questioned. Membership in the Academy continues to be the highest honour
+that can be offered a French man of letters. See below, <a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">chapter xxi</a>.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_487">[487]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-18.jpg" width="500" height="300" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII. THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Any other nation, after its Mazarins, its Fouquets, its Louvois, so
+many wars, so many glories, so many heroes, so many rascals, would
+have stayed crushed and never arisen. Nevertheless, France still
+lives.—<span class="smcap">Michelet</span>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18b1"><a href="#endnote_18b">b</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1643-1661 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis XIII had hastened to carry out all the provisions of Richelieu’s
+will. His own did not meet with the same fate, for its most important dispositions
+were immediately modified. While regretfully appointing Anne
+of Austria regent he had put strong restrictions upon her authority and
+provided that the partisans of Richelieu, Mazarin and the prince of Condé,
+were to control the government. He knew the queen had not been unaware
+of the conspiracies of the court, not even of that of Cinq-Mars, and that she
+had always listened to Richelieu’s enemies. Towards the end he had drawn
+nearer to her and his brother, but without granting them his confidence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1643 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Scarcely had Louis closed his eyes when Mazarin resolved to give over
+the entire government to the queen. Unity and power seemed, to the cardinal,
+the most necessary thing: he came to an understanding with the
+bishop of Beauvais, almoner of the queen; he was able to persuade Gaston,
+Condé, and the other councillors, who withdrew opposition in consideration
+of the compensation offered them. Consequently, on the 18th of May, parliament
+met in extraordinary session; the peers were present. The queen
+attended with the young Louis XIV and held a bed of justice. On the
+express renunciation of the duke of Orleans and the prince of Condé the
+assembly unanimously set aside all the restrictions to the queen’s power, and
+decided that the title of lieutenant-general held by the duke of Orleans
+would be simply honorary.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18c1"><a href="#endnote_18c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_488">[488]</span></p>
+
+<p>The queen-mother was now in her forty-second year. She inspired
+almost universal sympathy, by her good looks, agreeable manner, and previous
+misfortunes which now counted for virtues. Age had made her more
+sedate and more devout; her devotion, however, was still mingled with
+gallantry, but it was the serious romantic gallantry of Spain which is not
+incompatible with external dignity and reserve. Facile and genial in ordinary
+intercourse, but altogether impulsive and insincere when her passions
+were aroused; going when necessary as far as perjury—though doubtless
+with the resource of mental reservation—to extricate herself from a wrong
+step; intrepid by temperament, in spite of more than one act of moral cowardice;
+of an unconquerable stubbornness in her prejudices and in certain
+of her attachments, although sensitive to ingratitude; at the same time
+absolute by her temperament and her principles, and unable through inactivity
+to exercise the absolute power, her queenly nature was invaluable to a
+minister capable of making a favourable impression on her head and her
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin made an attack on both of these at the same time, and soon
+occupied an unshakable position with her. Their correspondence leaves
+doubt neither as to the passion which this minister expressed and which he
+inspired in the queen, nor as to the constancy which Anne had at least
+the merit of preserving in this last passion, which the progress of age did not
+extinguish.<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mazarin was of the same age as the queen. We may recall his brilliant
+début as a diplomat thirteen years before, when before Casale he prevented
+two armies from falling upon each other. Since then he had remained faithfully
+attached to the interests of France, which had raised him to the cardinalate
+without his having received holy orders—he never was a priest.<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>
+He gave himself out to be a Roman nobleman. His enemies denied this, and
+asserted that his father, a Sicilian merchant, had taken refuge in the states
+of the holy father, after having gone bankrupt at Palermo. A. Renée<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18e"><a href="#endnote_18e">e</a></span> has
+investigated every version of the cardinal’s origin and concludes that his
+father, the son of a Sicilian artisan, came a fortune-seeker to Rome, where he
+became chamberlain to the constable Colonna. At all events the mind, the
+face, the complaisance, and the dexterity of the young Giulio Mazarini won
+him, at an early age, the patronage of some of the noble houses of Rome, and
+after having tried the sword, the young adventurer felt his vocation and
+assumed the soutane as a stepping-stone to diplomacy; at the age of twenty-eight
+he met Richelieu—we know the rest.</p>
+
+<p>The character and the future of the fortunate Italian were still at this
+moment a problem for the court and for the public.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18d1"><a href="#endnote_18d">d</a></span> As yet he frightened
+no one. He was far from being believed as powerful and especially as much
+a master of the queen’s mind as he already was. He often spoke of returning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_489">[489]</span>to Italy. What then was the astonishment when, on the very evening of
+the bed of justice, it developed that Anne of Austria had designated him
+to preside over the council.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18c2"><a href="#endnote_18c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It would take a simple mind indeed to believe that an event as foreseen
+as the death of the king should have taken the queen unawares, that she
+should not have known which way to turn, and that she should have seriously
+offered the power to this one or to that. The whole affair was certainly settled
+beforehand; and for what reason? By reason of her indolence, which told
+her that a bed already made was better to lounge on, sleep in, than a new
+arrangement which would oblige her to will, to think. She knew that,
+ready to set out from London, from Brussels, from Madrid, there was a
+crowd of exiles, calling themselves martyrs to the queen’s cause, who would
+demand the crown for their martyrdom. How to satisfy them? She was
+all ears to him who taught her the sweetness of ingratitude.</p>
+
+<p>In this Mazarin was admirable. He often varied, but never on this point.
+His character offers the beauty of a well-sustained type which does not contradict
+itself. Ingrate towards Joseph and Chavigny, who made him in
+France, he got out of two scrapes during the Fronde by the same means—ingratitude
+towards Condé and then towards De Retz. Finally he crowned
+his life with what was worse than all—ingratitude towards the queen, his
+old-time sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>The puppets of Richelieu, odious, detested, the Chavignys, the Bouthilliers,
+were impossible; Mazarin was a stranger, with no ties in France, and
+ready to depart as soon as he had put the queen <i>au courant</i>. He was packing
+up his things. A good excuse for remaining. The queen appeared very uncertain.
+She consulted much, hesitated much. Finally Condé came to tell
+Mazarin, “ready to depart,” that the queen made him chief of the council,
+keeping also Chavigny and his father, the chancellor Séguier, the same who
+had conducted the inquiry against her in 1637.</p>
+
+<p>A mortal blow for Beaufort and the Vendômes, the queen’s friends.
+When they demanded an explanation she said that Mazarin would not let
+her forget her friends, that he was <i>au courant</i> of affairs, a stranger, consequently
+the less dangerous, that he was amusing, but above all disinterested.
+This disinterestedness was so extreme, and the poor man remained so poor,
+that after a few years, when he was driven out and wished to return, he was
+able to raise an army with his own money!<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18b2"><a href="#endnote_18b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>BATTLE OF ROCROI (MAY 18TH-19TH, 1643 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>But before anything could happen, Paris was suddenly struck with a
+piece of good news which produced the very greatest effect. While under
+the last reign no great battle had been accomplished by the French armies,
+that of Louis XIV opened with the victory of Rocroi.</p>
+
+<p>Francisco de Mello had advanced to the frontier of the Low Countries
+with 28,000 men, counting on profiting by the uncertainty into
+which the last illness and death of Louis XIII would plunge the French
+government. France had, on her side, an army in the field to observe him,
+and it was Louis XIII’s will that this army be placed in command of the
+duke d’Enghien, son of Condé, a young prince of twenty-two years, the choice
+of whom must attach his house all the more closely to the future regency.
+Enghien had served hitherto only as a volunteer; but he had been instructed,
+exercised, and formed in the best of schools. He had already shown in war a
+vigour and intelligence which everyone applauded. He inspired confidence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_490">[490]</span>both in his officers and his soldiers. They foresaw in him a great captain.
+As an adviser and to moderate his ardour he had been given an able lieutenant-general,
+Duhallier, become Marshal de l’Hôpital, and several excellent
+<i>maréchaux de camp</i>, Gassion, La Ferté-Senneterre, and Sirot.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniards entered Champagne, and besieged Rocroi. The place,
+important by its situation at the head of the Ardennes, was in no condition
+to resist. Enghien, having collected between St. Quentin and Guise
+14,000 infantry and 6,000 horse, marched to its relief. On the way he
+learned of Louis XIII’s death, but the news did not stop him. He resolved
+to give battle to relieve the tedium of methodic warfare—this was
+also the advice of Gassion and Sirot. On the 18th of May he arrived
+before the Spaniards, who, protected by woods through which the French
+had to pass, were not expecting to see them appear; and the time they took
+to range themselves for battle permitted the French prince to approach.
+The day was far advanced and he contented himself with a small amount of
+cannonading. The next day Enghien ordered the attack at daybreak, for
+he wished to forestall the arrival of a corps which General Beck was bringing
+to Francisco de Mello. He himself, with Gassion, charged at the head
+of the right wing and routed the enemy. The left wing, commanded by
+Marshal de l’Hôpital and La Ferté-Senneterre, had less success. It disputed
+its ground but was badly used. Enghien and Gassion, victorious on the right,
+did not neglect their advantages. They immediately fell upon the Spanish
+division which was in action with De l’Hôpital, the moment at which, thinking
+itself victorious, it began to break ranks and was running to pillage the tents
+of the French. Sirot, in command of the reserves, received the order to
+advance, and he waited to execute it until the very moment when Enghien
+and Gassion should have renewed the contest. Then he gave it, and the
+victory was decided. The two divisions of the enemy broken and put to
+flight, there yet remained the Spanish reserve infantry which formed a
+square battalion difficult to penetrate. It was composed of picked veterans
+and commanded by the old count de Fuentes, who had to be carried in a
+litter at the head of his soldiers. The victorious Enghien threw himself
+upon the square, dealt it several sharp attacks, and finally broke it by
+attacking its rear and flanks while his cannon thundered upon it.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18c3"><a href="#endnote_18c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The massacre was appalling. Moved to pity, the duke d’Enghien threw
+himself between the two armies, commanding his men to spare the vanquished.
+“All the Spanish infantry,” says La Moussaie, “crowded round him and his
+commanding officers, seeking shelter from the fury of the French, and more
+particularly of the Swiss, who could not bring themselves to make prisoners
+of any.” After giving orders to the prisoners’ guard, the prince collected his
+troops and prepared to receive Beck, should he have the courage to meet him
+on the plain. But Gassion shortly returned from his pursuit of the enemy
+and informed the duke that he had nothing to fear from the German general.
+Beck had not even passed beyond the edge of the wood, being content with
+rallying the fugitives, and at the approach of Gassion’s cavalry he had fled
+precipitately towards Luxemburg.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing his triumph thus complete, the duke d’Enghien, with the Christian
+piety that never forsook him even in battle, fell on his knees, in company
+with his whole army, and gave thanks to God for the victory. Thus ended
+one of the most bloody and most glorious days in the history of France. The
+battle had lasted four hours. The Spanish army left 8,000 dead upon the field,
+and 6,000 prisoners in the hands of the French. Among the slain was the
+brave count de Fuentes. Don Francisco de Mello had been made a prisoner
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_491">[491]</span>for a few moments, but he managed to escape and took refuge at Mariembourg,
+then at Philippeville, where he collected the fragments of the Spanish
+army. Two hundred flags and sixty standards fell into the hands of the
+French. The Spanish baggage wagons were plundered and were found to
+contain all the money destined for the pay of the troops. The French lost
+about two thousand men.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18f1"><a href="#endnote_18f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Enghien possessed the power of prompt decision and knew the value of
+time. He turned his victory to good account by marching immediately upon
+Thionville, the possession of which was of extreme importance to the Three
+Bishoprics and at the siege of which Feuquières had come to grief in 1639.
+Mazarin approved his plan and furnished all that was necessary for the siege.
+Instead of proceeding with that methodical regularity learned from the Dutch,
+Enghien pressed his attacks; they were very deadly, especially for the officers,
+but his plan was to reach his end the more quickly, to astonish the enemy,
+and to avoid sickness, which was more fatal than artillery in prolonged sieges.
+Thionville surrendered the 8th of August. The little town of Sierck, which
+commanded Luxemburg, capitulated a few days later.</p>
+
+<p>Enghien was placed at a bound above all the captains employed by Richelieu.
+The French army, formed by eight successive years of campaigns,
+equal at least to those of neighbouring nations, leaving nothing to be desired
+in instruction, experience of its officers, discipline, good administration, or
+material organisation, had finally found a leader worthy of it. Enghien,
+with his eagle glance, great promptitude of execution, and an ardour which
+he knew how to moderate, disconcerted the rational and prudent tactics of
+the enemy’s generals. The battle of Rocroi bore witness to the military
+progress of France, and dealt a serious blow to the prestige of the Spanish
+armies, when Spain had, for three years, been seeing her power shaken and
+her resources weakened.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18c4"><a href="#endnote_18c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE IMPORTANTS (1643 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The return of Mazarin to power was received with surprise and mortification
+by the returned exiles, the enemies of Richelieu, those who had deemed
+themselves possessed of the heart and confidence of the queen. They were
+for the most part young men, such as the duke de Beaufort, and a host of
+noble striplings, who were all, nevertheless, profound statesmen in their own
+esteem.</p>
+
+<p>With pretensions to govern, they found it necessary to alter or conceal
+their juvenile and frivolous habits; they affected to be grave and sententious,
+and some even thought it necessary to give time to study and reflection; a
+whim, the characteristic and beneficial consequences of which are seen in the
+<i>Mémoires</i> of De Retz and the <i>Maximes</i> of the duke de la Rochefoucauld.
+The latter was at this time one of the young friends of the queen. Despite
+the talents that some of these youths afterwards displayed, their present pretensions
+and demeanour were considered as absurd, and the party was ironically
+called <i>les Importants</i>, that of the “important.” On the side opposed to
+them were drawn up Cardinal Mazarin, the old partisans of Richelieu, and,
+amongst the noblesse, the prince of Condé and his gallant son, the duke
+d’Enghien.</p>
+
+<p>The queen-regent, as became her position, affected neutrality, but supported
+her newly chosen minister. The <i>importants</i>, however, hoped to regain
+the ascendency through the means of Anne of Austria’s old favourite, Madame
+de Chevreuse, who was now returning from her long exile. This lady had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_492">[492]</span>once been all-powerful with the queen: her misfortunes, occasioned by that
+attachment, gave her, she thought, an increase of claim; she totally put out
+of consideration how far the policy of a regent might interfere with the affections
+of a queen, and her party pretensions were as high as her resentments.
+She was warmly and cordially welcomed back by Anne; Mazarin hastened to
+conciliate her, and commenced by placing 50,000 crowns before her, asking
+if he might count her amongst his friends. Madame de Chevreuse required
+the dismissal of Chavigny, and the cardinal instantly consented to sacrifice the
+secretary: then came the great demands of the party, <i>viz.</i>, that Sedan should
+be restored to the duke de Bouillon, the government of Brittany to the duke
+de Vendôme, and that of Guienne to young Épernon; Le Havre, too, was
+required for the future duke de la Rochefoucauld.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p492.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Madame de Montbazon</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>These demands were no less than to re-constitute the power and independence
+of the grandees, that Richelieu had spent his life and steeped his
+memory in blood in order to reduce.
+Anne of Austria and Mazarin, now
+in the place of authority held by
+Richelieu, could not but see with his
+eyes: the adroit Mazarin, however,
+did not give to Madame de Chevreuse
+the flat and peremptory denial
+that would have come from Richelieu’s
+mouth; he looked complaisant
+and yielding, and drew on the negotiatrix
+of the <i>importants</i> to fresh
+pretensions. One of these was to
+supersede the chancellor Séguier by
+Châteauneuf. Now Châteauneuf
+had presided at the commission
+which condemned the duke de Montmorency,
+and to favour him would
+be to outrage the princess of Condé,
+sister of that duke. Mazarin pretended
+to stand out on this point,
+hesitatingly, no doubt; Madame de
+Chevreuse insisted; and the cardinal,
+determined to break with a party
+whose pretensions were exorbitant,
+and which sought to replace the
+aristocracy on its old footing of
+superiority to government and ministry,
+affected to break with them
+rather than insult the family of Condé; thus securing powerful support, and
+averting the suspicions of the young noblesse from the political jealousy
+which he bore them.</p>
+
+<p>A rupture was declared; and a lady’s quarrel soon afterwards occurred
+to precipitate hostilities, and give the minister a pretext for acting. The
+duchess de Longueville, of the family of Condé, and one of the beauties of
+the court, was maligned by Madame de Montbazon, sister-in-law of Madame
+de Chevreuse. The latter found a <i>billet-doux</i> in the handwriting of the
+former, and addressed, she asserted, to the count de Coligny. This piece of
+scandal or calumny convulsed the entire circle of influential personages.
+The duke d’Enghien challenged the duke de Beaufort; the Duke of Guise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_493">[493]</span>and the count de Coligny fought in the Place Royal, Madame de Longueville
+being spectatress of the discomfiture of her chevalier, who died of his
+wounds. The queen in vain endeavoured to bring about an accommodation.
+The <i>importants</i> were too deeply mortified, and nothing short of the disgrace
+of the cardinal would satisfy them. The queen peremptorily refusing this,
+the duke de Beaufort entered into a scheme for making away with the cardinal
+by violence. Circumstances occurred to baffle and interrupt the design.
+Épernon was sounded in the meantime by one of the conspirators, and he
+instantly betrayed it. The duke de Beaufort was consequently arrested on
+the following day. Mesdames de Montbazon and Chevreuse were both
+exiled, as well as the duke and duchess of Vendôme, the dukes of Guise and
+Mercœur, and other less illustrious nobles. Here is the exculpation of
+Richelieu, and the excuse of his severity. No sooner is Anne of Austria,
+his rival and enemy, in the place of power, than she is obliged to adopt his
+policy and his strong measures, notwithstanding that such acts did violence
+to her private feelings. She wept on ordering the arrest of Beaufort; but,
+like the late monarch, she was compelled to sacrifice her feelings to her own
+interest and that of the state. The reign of the <i>importants</i> lasted three
+months and a half.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1643-1647 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The four years which succeeded 1643 were years of tranquillity to
+the regent, triumph to Mazarin, and glory to France. The petulance of the
+noblesse was checked by the discomfiture of the <i>importants</i>. Mazarin, instead
+of imitating Richelieu and reigning by terror alone, sought to captivate
+by giving scope to pleasure, and creating a general taste for light and
+social amusements. He encouraged fêtes and gallantry. He was prodigal
+of favours, of money, of everything save authority. He bound the noblesse,
+and their more froward dames and mistresses, in golden and in flowery
+chains; and those who a year before were clamouring for independent governments,
+then limited their ambition to a duke’s title. The sage La Rochefoucauld
+himself has recorded in his <i>Mémoires</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18m"><a href="#endnote_18m">m</a></span> how he pleaded for this
+important distinction, in order, as he observes, that his wife might enjoy the
+privilege of a <i>tabouret</i> or stool at court.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g1"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG KING</h3>
+
+<p>Louis XIV, born September 5th, 1638, had now (1645) completed his
+seventh year; that being the age at which kings passed from the control of
+women to the control of men, it became necessary to provide him with a
+governor and a tutor. To Cardinal Mazarin the queen desired to hand over
+the supreme control of Louis’ bringing up, and for that purpose created
+for him the post of superintendent of the king’s education.</p>
+
+<p>Several contemporary writers have reproached Mazarin with having
+directed the education of the young Louis carelessly. La Porte, a groom of
+the bed-chamber to the king, accused the cardinal of having no other dream
+than to obtain empire over the young prince’s will by surrounding him with
+his own family and partisans. Madame de Motteville,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18k1"><a href="#endnote_18k">k</a></span> without being quite
+so prejudiced, claims that he thwarted the good intentions of the young
+prince’s governor, the marquis de Villeroi. Nevertheless, an entry in the
+note-books proves that even as early as 1647 Mazarin exerted himself to
+remove from the prince such persons as he thought dangerous. In the case
+of François de Rochechouart, who enjoyed an old-established credit with the
+queen, Mazarin declared that a place must not be given him near the king;
+“for,” he writes, “his incessant flatteries are extremely prejudicial to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_494">[494]</span>king, and prompt him to regard with great displeasure those who speak the
+truth to him.” Yet one must recognise that during a long period the cardinal,
+absorbed in politics, paid little heed to the king’s education. It was
+only during the later years of his life that, having reached the summit of
+power and glory, he helped by his counsels to inspire in the young Louis
+habits of order, of regular work, of strong and tenacious will, of supreme
+and authoritative government. Judging by results, this education was far
+from being sterile. The king’s governor, intrusted to accompany him
+everywhere, to watch over his safety and direct his actions, was Nicolas de
+Neufville, first marquis, then duke and marshal, de Villeroi. This individual
+had gained a certain renown in war, but it was pre-eminently as a clever
+and pliant courtier that he shone. He was a willing tool in the hands of
+the minister. It seems that his rôle was limited to winning the young king’s
+good graces, to teaching him the ways and manners of the court, in which
+he himself excelled, and to giving him for companion and favourite his own
+son, François de Neufville-Villeroi, who became in his turn Duke-Marshal de
+Villeroi.</p>
+
+<p>The post of tutor was filled by Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, doctor
+of the Sorbonne, who ultimately became archbishop of Paris, and to whom
+we owe a <i>History of Henry IV</i> written for the instruction of Louis XIV.
+The classical education of the young king was meagre. Madame de Motteville<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18k2"><a href="#endnote_18k">k</a></span>
+tells us “he was made to translate Cæsar’s <i>Commentaries</i>; he learned
+to dance, to draw, and to ride, and he was very skilful in all bodily exercises.”
+The Venetian ambassador, Nani, asserts that the tutor did neglect
+to teach the young king the principles of virtue.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18f2"><a href="#endnote_18f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>MILITARY GLORY (1644-1648 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1644-1648 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The year 1644 is marked by the brilliant manœuvres of the duke of
+Enghien and Turenne.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g2"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span> After the capture of Sierck, Enghien drove the
+Germans back across the Rhine, and crossed after them; he hastened to
+repair the losses and defeats which the French had met with on the frontier
+after the death of Marshal de Guébriant, which had occurred at the siege of
+Rottweil in Swabia (1643). [Guébriant’s army, now badly led by several
+leaders, had allowed itself to be surprised by the imperials at Tuttlingen.]
+Enghien found Freiburg im Breisgau taken and the Bavarian general Mercy
+beneath its walls with an army greater than his own. Enghien had two
+marshals of France under him, of whom one was Grammont and the other
+Turenne, who had just been created marshal after having served brilliantly
+in Piedmont against the Spaniards. The duke and his two generals attacked
+Mercy’s camp intrenched on two heights. The battle recommenced three
+times on three different days (August 3rd-5th, 1644). It is said that the
+duke of Enghien threw his commander’s baton into the enemy’s entrenchments
+and, sword in hand, went after it at the head of the Conti regiment.<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> The
+battle of Freiburg, more bloody than decisive, was the duke’s second victory.
+Mercy decamped four days afterwards. Philippsburg, Worms, and Mainz
+were the proof and the fruit of the victory.</p>
+
+<p>Enghien returned to Paris, received the acclamation of the people and
+demanded recompense of the court; leaving his army to the prince-marshal
+Turenne. But this general, skilful as he was, was beaten at Marienthal
+(May, 1645). Enghien hastened back to his troops, resumed the command,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_495">[495]</span>and joined to the glory of again commanding Turenne that of repairing his
+defeat. He attacked Mercy on the plains of Nördlingen, and won a great
+battle early in August. Marshal de Grammont was captured, but so was
+General Glen who commanded under Mercy, and the latter himself was among
+the slain. Mercy, who has been reckoned among the great captains of his
+time, was buried close to the battle-field, and on his tomb was graven, “<i>Sta
+Viator; Heroem Calcas</i>” (Halt traveller, thou treadest on a hero).</p>
+
+<p>The name of the duke d’Enghien<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> now eclipsed all others. In October,
+1646, he besieged Dunkirk in sight of the Spanish army, and was the first to
+give that place to the French. Such success and such service brought forth
+less reward than suspicion in the court, and made him as much feared by the
+ministry as by the enemy. Condé [as we must now call him] was therefore
+withdrawn from the scenes of this conquest and glory and sent into Catalonia
+with inefficient and ill-paid troops. He besieged Lerida, but was obliged to
+raise the siege (1647). A wavering state of affairs soon forced the court to
+recall the prince to Flanders. The archduke Leopold, brother of the emperor
+Ferdinand III, was besieging Lens in Artois. Condé, restored to the troops
+which had always been victorious under him, led them straight for the archduke.
+This was the third time he had given battle with disadvantage in
+numbers. He spoke to his soldiers these simple words: “Friends, remember
+Rocroi, Freiburg, and Nördlingen!”<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> (August 20th, 1648).</p>
+
+<p>He himself relieved Marshal de Grammont, who was about to surrender
+with the left wing; he captured General Beck. The archduke saved himself
+with difficulty with the count of Fuensaldaña. The imperials and the
+Spaniards composing the army were scattered; they lost more than a hundred
+banners and thirty-eight pieces of cannon, which was a considerable number
+for that time. Five thousand prisoners were taken; three thousand men
+were killed; the rest deserted and the archduke was left without an army.
+Never since the foundation of the monarchy had the French won so many
+battles in succession, and ones so noted for military ability and courage.</p>
+
+<p>While the prince of Condé was thus counting the years of his youth in
+victories, and the duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII, was upholding
+the reputation of a son of Henry IV and of France by the capture of Gravelines
+(July, 1644), Courtrai, and Mardyck (November, 1644), the viscount
+de Turenne had taken Landau, had driven the Spaniards from Treves, and
+re-established the elector. In November, 1647, with the help of the Swedes
+under Wrangel, Torstenson’s successor, he won the battle of Lawingen, and
+that of Zusmarshausen (May, 1648). He compelled the elector of Bavaria
+to leave his states, at the age of almost eighty. The count d’Harcourt took
+Balaguer and beat the Spaniards. They lost Porto Longone in Italy (1646).
+Twenty vessels and twenty galleys of France, which composed almost the
+whole navy as re-established by Richelieu, defeated the Spanish fleet off the
+Italian coast.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_496">[496]</span></p>
+
+<p>This was not all. The French arms had again invaded Lorraine; and
+Duke Charles IV, a warrior prince, but an inconstant, rash, and unfortunate
+one, saw himself at the same time deprived of his state by France and
+kept prisoner by the Spaniards (May, 1644). The allies of France pressed
+the Austrian power on the north and south. The duke of Albuquerque, the
+Portuguese general, won the battle of Badajoz from Spain in March, 1645.
+Torstenson defeated the imperials near Tabor and obtained a complete victory.
+The prince of Orange, at the head of the Dutch, penetrated as far as
+Brabant.</p>
+
+<p>The king of Spain, beaten on every side, saw Roussillon and Catalonia in
+the hands of the French. Naples in revolt against him had just given itself
+into the hands of the duke of Guise, the last prince of that branch of a house
+fruitful in illustrious and dangerous men. This one, who had passed only
+for a bold adventurer, because he did not succeed, had at least the glory
+of boarding single-handed a bark in the midst of the Spanish fleet and of
+defending Naples with no other resource than his own courage.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of so many misfortunes crushing the house of Austria, so
+many victories accumulated by the French, seconded by the success of their
+allies, one would have believed that Vienna and Madrid were only waiting
+to open their gates, and that the emperor and the king of Spain were almost
+without dominions. Nevertheless these five years of glory, crossed with
+only a few reverses, brought few real advantages and much spilled blood,
+but no revolution. If one was to be feared it was for France. She was on
+the verge of ruin in the midst of this apparent prosperity.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i1"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>TREATY OF WESTPHALIA (1648 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1641-1648 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Negotiations for peace had been going on for a long time. Proposed in
+1641, conferences were opened April 10th, 1643, in two Westphalian cities—Münster
+and Osnabrück. The questions for consideration were the altering
+of the map of Europe after a thirty years’ war; of providing the empire
+with a new constitution; and of regulating the civil and religious rights of
+the several Christian nations. France was represented at this congress by
+able negotiators, the count d’Avaux and Abel Servien; but her best diplomats
+were Condé and Turenne, whose swords had simplified the negotiations
+by rendering peace a necessity. At the last moment Spain withdrew,
+hoping to profit by the troubles of the Fronde, then commencing in France.
+The other countries, in haste to have finished, signed the peace (October
+24th, 1648).</p>
+
+<p>During the Thirty Years’ War Austria had striven to stifle religious and
+political liberty in Germany. Austria being defeated, that against which
+she had fought remained and increased. The Protestants obtained full
+liberty of conscience, and imperial authority, but lately threatening, was
+annulled; the princes of the German states, confirmed in the exercise of
+complete authority over their territories, had the right of alliance with
+foreign powers so long as these alliances (so read a vain restriction) were
+“against neither the emperor nor the empire.”</p>
+
+<p>The two powers which had achieved the defeat of Austria had stipulated
+for themselves important indemnities. Sweden gained the island of Rügen,
+Wismar, western Pomerania with Stettin, the archbishopric of Bremen, and
+the bishopric of Verden—that is to say, the mouths of the three great German
+rivers, the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser—with 5,000,000 crowns and
+three votes in the diet. France continued to occupy Lorraine, promising
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_497">[497]</span>to restore it to its duke when he should have complied with her conditions.
+She obtained the empire’s renunciation of all right over the Three
+Bishoprics—Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which she had possessed for a century;
+over the town of Pinerolo, ceded by the duke of Savoy in 1631; over
+Alsace, which was now—with the exception of Strasburg—given to France,
+carrying her boundaries beyond the Vosges as far as the Rhine. She also
+obtained Breisach, on the right bank of
+that river, and her right to garrison Philippsburg
+was recognised; the right of navigation
+on the Rhine was guaranteed her.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p497.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Officer, Middle of Seventeenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>These were great advantages; because,
+by recovering Alsace, France covered Lorraine
+on the side of Germany and established
+herself to the north of Franche-Comté,
+which since Henry IV she had enveloped
+on the south; so that the return to France
+of these two provinces was only a question
+of time. Not only were her frontiers
+now better outlined for defence, but she
+was able to maintain an offensive position.
+By the acquisition of Pinerolo France
+planted a foot beyond the Alps in Italy;
+by Breisach and Philippsburg, beyond the
+Rhine in Germany. By opening the eyes
+of the German states to their right to contract
+foreign alliances France was always
+able to buy over one or another of their
+indigent princes, and by guaranteeing the
+execution of the treaty, she gave herself
+the right to interfere in German affairs.
+The empire—being now no more than a
+sort of confederation of 360 states, Lutheran
+and Catholic, monarchical and republican,
+laical and ecclesiastical—became of necessity
+the theatre for all sorts of intrigues,
+the battle-field of Europe, as Italy had been
+at the beginning of modern times, and for
+the same reasons—division and anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>The Treaty of Westphalia, which was the foundation for all diplomatic
+conventions from the middle of the seventeenth century until the French
+Revolution, put an end to the supremacy of the house of Austria, and rescued
+the independence of the small states. If the Bourbons had not inherited
+the ambition of the Habsburgs, and roused against themselves the same
+coalitions, the Peace of Westphalia would have accomplished the supremacy
+of France and the political liberty of Europe.</p>
+
+<h3>MAZARIN’S DOMESTIC POLICY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1646-1648 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>While Mazarin gloriously continued the policy of Richelieu, his power in
+France was being destroyed by factions.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18h1"><a href="#endnote_18h">h</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At first he used his power with moderation. He affected, at the beginning
+of his supremacy, as much of simplicity as Richelieu had displayed of
+arrogance. Far from employing guards, and keeping up royal splendour,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_498">[498]</span>he had at first the most modest retinue. He was affable and even gentle
+where his predecessor had shown inflexible pride.</p>
+
+<p>But with all this, taxation was necessary to maintain the war against the
+Spaniards and against the emperor. The finances of France were, since the
+death of Henry IV, as badly administered as those of Spain and Germany.
+The excise offices were in chaos, ignorance was extreme, thievery was paramount.
+The revenue of the state amounted during the first year of the
+regency to between fifteen and sixteen million livres. This was quite
+sufficient if there had been any economy in the ministry; but in 1646 and 1647
+there were deficits. The superintendent of the finances was at times a Sienese
+peasant named Particelli Émery, whose soul was even baser than his birth,
+and whose extravagance and debauchery aroused the nation to indignation.
+This man invented burdensome and ridiculous expedients. He created and
+sold posts of inspectors of fagots, of licensed hay venders, of king’s councillors,
+of wine hawkers; he sold letters of nobility. The debts on the
+Hôtel-de-Ville at Paris then amounted to only about eleven millions, but
+the fund-holders were deprived of several quarterly dividends; import
+duties were increased; several posts of masters of requests (to whom all
+petitions were intrusted) were created; about eighty thousand crowns
+of magistrates’ salaries were held back.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to realise how far the minds of the people were aroused against
+two Italians, both come penniless to France, who had enriched themselves
+at the expense of the nation and who now had such a hold over them. The
+parliament of Paris, the masters of requests, the other courts, the fund-holders,
+rebelled. In vain did Mazarin remove his confidant Émery from
+office and relegate him to one of his estates—there was indignation that this
+man should have estates in France. The cardinal was held in abhorrence,
+although at this very moment he was consummating the great work of the
+Peace of Westphalia; for it must be noted that this famous treaty and
+the “day of barricades” are of the same year, 1648. The civil wars began
+at Paris as they had begun in England, over a little money. In 1647 the parliament
+of Paris, in verifying the tax edicts, showed itself spiritedly opposed to
+them. It acquired the confidence of the people by remonstrances which were
+very wearying to the ministry. But it did not revolt. Its spirit became
+embittered and hardened by degrees. The populace might rush to arms at
+once and choose a leader as they had done with Masaniello at Naples; but
+magistrates and statesmen proceed with more deliberation, and begin by
+observing the proprieties as far as party spirit will permit.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Mazarin had thought that by skilfully dividing the magistracy he
+would prevent all troubles, but his cunning was met with inflexibility. He
+withdrew four years’ salary from all the higher courts, at the same time remitting
+the <i>paulette</i>; that is to say, exempting the judges from paying the
+tax devised by Paulet under Henry IV for assuring the magistrates the permanency
+of their posts and permitting them to sell them. This retrenchment
+was not an injury, but he did not withdraw the four years’ salary from parliament,
+thinking to disarm it by this favour. But parliament scorned this
+mark of grace which exposed it to the reproach of preferring its interests
+to those of the others; and it did not hesitate to issue an <i>arrêt d’union</i>
+with the other courts of justice. Mazarin, who was never able to pronounce
+French, having said that this <i>arrêt d’ognon</i> was an attacking measure, and
+having had it vetoed by the council, this single word <i>ognon</i> made him ridiculous,
+and as one never yields to one that is scorned, parliament became more
+active.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/fp7.jpg" width="460" height="650" alt="">
+<p class="caption">THE ARREST OF BROUSSEL</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_499">[499]</span></p>
+
+<p>It loudly demanded that all the intendants regarded by the people as
+extortioners should be recalled, and that the new kind of magistracy instituted
+under Louis XIII, without the procedure of ordinary forms, should be
+abolished. This was to please the nation as much as to irritate the court.
+It desired that, according to the ancient law, no citizen should be put in
+prison without his natural judges knowing of it within twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament did more; it abolished the intendants by a decree with orders
+to the king’s prosecutors in its jurisdiction to inform against them. Thus
+the hatred of the ministry, supported by the love of the public weal, threatened
+the court with a revolution. The queen yielded; she abandoned the
+intendants and asked only that three be retained. In this she was refused.
+While these troubles were brewing the prince of Condé won the famous
+victory at Lens, which crowned his glory. The king, who was only ten
+years old, exclaimed, “Parliament will be very sorry!” These words make
+it sufficiently evident that the court looked upon the parliament of Paris as
+an assembly of rebels. Indeed, the cardinal and his courtiers gave it no other
+name. But the more the parliamentarians were treated as rebels the more
+resistance they made.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i2"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This state of affairs between ruling power and the parliament expressing
+the feelings of the people brings us to that remarkable revolt known as the
+Fronde, “the last echo of the civil wars of the sixteenth century.”</p>
+
+<p>“The origin of the name,” says Martin,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18d2"><a href="#endnote_18d">d</a></span> “seems to have been the comparison
+made between the young and turbulent <i>conseillers aux enquêtes</i> and
+the urchins who gathered in the city ditches to indulge in mimic fights
+with slings (<i>frondes</i>). The malcontents adopted the name of <i>frondeurs</i>,
+and longed for the glory of ‘slinging the court well’ (<i>bien fronder la cour</i>).
+The first to adopt this title of <i>frondeur</i> was, it is said, the councillor Bachaumont,
+son of the president Le Coigneux.” Kitchin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18q1"><a href="#endnote_18q">q</a></span> says that the name of
+the Fronde was first adopted by the coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris,
+Paul de Gondi, of whom we shall presently speak. “The young lords and
+dames,” says Crowe,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g3"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span> “who afterwards embraced the party, willingly adopted
+a name which so well characterised their petulance, and sportive rather than
+serious rebellion.” But the Fronde, sportive though it may have been to
+the nobles, was the cause of immense misery to the people. Famine and
+pest walked in its train and the country was enormously depopulated.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FIRST INSURRECTION OF THE FRONDE (1648 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1648 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The queen and the cardinal resolved to arrest three of the most stubborn
+magistrates of the parliament: Novion Blancménil president of a court
+of justice, Charton president of a court of inquiry, and Broussel former
+councillor-clerk of the grand chamber. They were the tools of party leaders
+and not leaders themselves. Charton, a man of very limited abilities, was
+known by the nickname of “I say this,” because he always opened and closed
+his remarks with those words. Broussel had nothing to recommend him but
+his white hairs, his hatred for the ministry, and a reputation for always
+raising his voice against the court no matter on what subject. His confrères
+paid little attention to him, but the populace idolised him.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of arresting them without any hubbub in the silence of the night,
+the cardinal thought to impress the people by having them arrested in broad
+daylight, on August 26th, 1648, while the <i>Te Deum</i> was being sung at Notre
+Dame for the victory of Lens and the Swiss of the chamber were carrying
+into the church the seventy-three banners taken from the enemy. It was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_500">[500]</span>precisely this plan that caused the ruin of the kingdom. Charton escaped,
+Blancménil was taken without difficulty, but it was not the same with Broussel.
+An old servant, seeing her master thrown into a coach by Comminges, a
+lieutenant of the bodyguard, collected a mob. It surrounded the coach,
+which was smashed to pieces; but the French guards lent assistance to
+Comminges and got Broussel away from his friends. He was taken out on
+the road to Sedan. The arrest, far from intimidating the people, irritated
+and emboldened them. Shops were closed. The great iron chains which
+at that time were at the entrance to the principal streets were stretched
+across them; barricades were built, and four hundred thousand throats cried
+“Liberty and Broussel!”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i3"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The marshal de la Meilleraie with two hundred guards tried to disperse
+them; he drove some back to the Pont Neuf, where his progress was
+impeded, and where he met Paul de Gondi, coadjutor of the archbishop of
+Paris, so famous later under the name of Cardinal de Retz, who had rushed
+out in his robes amongst the mob. After having harangued and momentarily
+tranquillised the populace, De Retz hurried with the marshal to the Palais
+Royal, to represent the alarming state of the city to the queen. Anne of
+Austria, who knew the coadjutor’s character, suspected him as one more
+likely to throw oil than water on the flame. “It is rebellion itself to imagine
+that the people can rebel,” said she; “you would have me deliver Broussel;
+I will first strangle him with these hands.” This resentment, seconded by
+the jeers of the court, had the ill effect of converting De Retz into a dangerous
+enemy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g4"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Day of the Barricades (August 27th, 1648)</i></h4>
+
+<p>It is difficult to reconcile all the details of what followed, related by Cardinal
+de Retz,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18j1"><a href="#endnote_18j">j</a></span> Madame de Motteville,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18k3"><a href="#endnote_18k">k</a></span> Advocate-General Talon, and many
+others; but all agree upon the principal points. During the night which
+followed the riot the queen had about two thousand troopers, quartered
+a few leagues from Paris, come into the city to protect the king’s residence.
+The chancellor Séguier had already proceeded to the parliament accompanied
+by a lieutenant and several archers to quash all its decrees and even, it
+is said, to suspend that body.</p>
+
+<p>But during that very night the factionists assembled at the house of De
+Retz, and everything was arranged to arm the city. The chancellor’s coach
+was stopped and overturned. He escaped with difficulty, with his daughter
+the duchess de Sully, who in spite of him had insisted on accompanying him.
+He retired in disorder into the hôtel de Luynes, jostled and insulted by the
+populace. The civil lieutenant now took him into his coach, and escorted
+by two Swiss companies and a squadron of gendarmes attempted to bring
+him to the Palais Royal. The people fired on them; several were killed and
+the duchess de Sully was wounded in the arm.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred barricades were formed in an instant; they were pushed to
+within a hundred paces of the Palais Royal. The soldiers, after seeing several
+of their number fall, retreated and looked to see what the bourgeois
+were going to do. The parliament marched on foot in a body to the queen,
+across the barricades which were lowered before it, and demanded the liberation
+of its imprisoned members. The queen was obliged to set them free.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i4"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The barricades were immediately levelled, and the people ceased their
+turbulence and clamour. “Never was disorder more orderly managed,” says
+Madame de Motteville;<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18k4"><a href="#endnote_18k">k</a></span> “the citizens who had taken up arms to prevent the
+ascendency of the rabble and to check pillage were little more peaceable than
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_501">[501]</span>the populace itself, and roared for the liberation of Broussel with equal violence.”
+The court in yielding had but temporised, however; and it soon
+made its escape from the capital to St. Germain. Such was the first insurrection
+of the Fronde.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g5"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cardinal de Retz has boasted of having all by himself armed the whole
+of Paris on that day (August 27th, 1648), which has been called the “Day
+of the Barricades” and which was the second of its kind. This singular
+man is the first bishop of France to plan
+a civil war without religion for a pretext.
+He has described himself in his <i>Mémoires</i>,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18j2"><a href="#endnote_18j">j</a></span>
+written in a grandiose manner with the
+impetuosity of genius and an unevenness
+which are the mirror of his conduct. He
+was a man who, from the depths of debauchery
+and the infamous consequences
+which it brings, preached to the people and
+made them idolise him. He breathed faction
+and conspiracy; he had been at the
+age of twenty-three the soul of a conspiracy
+against the life of Richelieu; he was the
+author of the barricades; he precipitated
+parliament into cabals and the people into
+seditions. His extreme vanity made him
+undertake bold crimes in order that they
+might be talked about. It was this same
+vanity that made him repeat so often, “I
+am of a house of Florence as ancient as that
+of the greatest princes”<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a>—he whose ancestors
+had been merchants like so many of
+his compatriots.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i5"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p501.jpg" width="250" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A French Officer, Middle of the Eighteenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The hopes of the queen were now in the
+young prince of Condé. But that young
+hero, though opposed to the party of the
+<i>importants</i>, was not yet prepared to martyrise
+his popularity for Mazarin. He proposed
+his mediation. Mazarin accepted it, well
+knowing how soon the hot prince would lose
+patience at the formal and democratic pleadings
+of the parliamentary statesmen. De Retz, now the leading man of the
+popular party, made every effort to gain Condé, who replied, “My name is
+Louis de Bourbon: I will not shake the throne.” Through his means negotiations
+were entered into with the court; the elders of the parliament, and
+Molé, the president, at their head, being anxious to avoid a civil war, whilst
+the violent party, bestowing on the pacific chiefs the nickname of <i>barbons</i>,
+pushed matters to extremities. They had revived an old law, passed after
+the fall of the marshal D’Ancre, which prohibited the administration of the
+kingdom by foreigners, thus aiming at Mazarin. Still a second accommodation
+took place: a royal declaration, dated the 28th of October [the very
+day of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia], accepted the principal articles
+of the plan of reformation, and the court returned to the capital.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_502">[502]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1648-1649 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>This proved but a hollow truce, entered into by both parties out of respect
+for Condé, whom both feared and both hoped to gain. The popular party
+was suspicious; De Retz continued his intrigues; whilst the queen urged
+Condé to make preparations for defending the royal authority by force. It
+has been the fate of all attempts to establish liberty in France to be frustrated,
+not by the opposition of the aristocracy, but by their affecting to
+abet and adopt its principles.</p>
+
+<p>In the Fronde, the magistracy of Paris, supported by the citizens,
+endeavoured to supply the want of a national assembly. They framed a
+constitution; forced it on the court without effusion of blood; and might
+have succeeded in upholding and perhaps ameliorating it, when the young
+noblesse interfered, drove the citizens to insurrection first, then to submission,
+and for the sake of their selfish quarrels, which all their light-heartedness
+and valour cannot redeem, they sacrificed the last hope that the French
+had of even a degree of liberty; they pierced the last plank that shut out
+the overwhelming ocean of despotism. We certainly, of the present day,
+can look but with a small degree of hope or approbation on a judicial body
+which grasps at legislative power. But had the noblesse known its true
+interests, and acted its natural part of mediator, the states-general might
+have superseded the parliament in its political functions; the moderation of
+the provincial deputies would have tempered the ardour of the capital, and the
+ever consecutive extremes of insurrection and pusillanimous submission might
+both have been avoided.</p>
+
+<p>The old party of the <i>importants</i> now roused itself. The duke de Beaufort
+escaped from prison. The duke de Bouillon, smarting under the loss of
+Sedan, joined counsels with him; and both intrigued with the violent men
+in the parliament to form an insurrection against the court. The duchess
+de Longueville brought her charms to support the same cause: these decided
+La Rochefoucauld, her lover, to adopt it. She used all her influence to the
+same effect with her brother Condé in vain. In default of him, the prince
+of Conti, his brother, was won over. No cause could subsist, in the opinion
+of these gentlemen, unless it could boast the name of a prince of the blood.
+The duchess de Chevreuse, though still in exile, corresponded with the
+party, and promised to it the accession of the princes of Lorraine. Madame
+de Montbazon was found united in the same cause with her rival, Madame
+de Longueville. The marshal D’Hocquincourt offered the strong and important
+fortress which he commanded, in homage to the charms of the former.
+“Péronne,” wrote he to her, “is at the disposal of the fairest of the fair.”
+A crowd of nobles gaily joined the conspiracy; and the court was once
+more obliged to make its escape from Paris, and retire to St. Germain, in
+January 1649.<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+<p>Strong and extreme measures were at last resolved upon, although not
+prepared with that vigour and foresight that Richelieu would have displayed.
+Troops, under Condé and the duke of Orleans, prepared to invest
+Paris, and occupied on either side of the city the bridges of Charenton and
+St. Cloud; but with only 12,000 men, the utmost of the royalist force, it
+was impossible to invest the metropolis. A royal order, commanding the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_503">[503]</span>parliament to retire to Montargis, was treated by them with contempt. A
+civic guard was raised, to the number of 12,000, the chief officers, it is
+remarkable, being lawyers and officers of parliament; the provost of the
+merchants, however, retained the supreme command. In addition to these,
+a stipendiary force of 20,000 men was raised in a few days, by means of a
+house tax, fixed at so much for every plain house-door, and double the sum
+for the gate which admitted a carriage. The noblesse did not forget their
+petty ambition, even in adopting the bourgeois cause. The duke d’Elbeuf
+had first seized on the chief command, and was reluctant to yield it to the
+prince of Conti. The duke de Beaufort, however, was the most popular
+chief, owing to his affable manners and handsome person. He was called
+the <i>roi des halles</i> (the king of the markets). The war, if it can be called
+such, commenced by the attack of the Bastille, at which the ladies of the
+party assisted. It surrendered gallantly to these fascinating adversaries.
+On his side, Condé began to press towards the walls; and some skirmishes
+took place, in which a few were slain, amongst others the duke de Châtillon.</p>
+
+<p>Two circumstances soon after occurred that much altered the views and
+shook the resolutions of the court. One was the defection of Turenne, who,
+won over by his brother the duke de Bouillon, promised to march the army,
+which he commanded on the Rhine, to the support of the Fronde; the other
+was the connection of the <i>frondeur</i> nobles with Spain, and the public reception
+by the parliament of an envoy from that power. This savoured of
+the inveteracy of the league. The elder magistrates, and principally Molé the
+president, indignant at this alliance with the enemies of the country, began
+to exert themselves to frustrate the violent projects of the young noblesse,
+and to seek an accommodation with the court. The majority of the parliament,
+already disgusted with the froward, frivolous, and arrogant behaviour of
+the nobles, came so far into the same views, that Molé himself, with some
+of his brethren, was despatched to the queen at Ruel, to essay an accommodation.
+The court grasped at the opportunity, but still negotiated for
+advantages; whilst Bouillon stirred the populace of Paris against the moderation
+of the parliament, and urged the alliance with Spain. Molé, determined
+to disappoint the ambitious duke, signed a treaty with the court in haste, on
+the 11th of March, ere Turenne could arrive, or Spain despatch its aid.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the indignation of the populace, and of the seditious leaders,
+at the news of this peace. All cried out treason. Bouillon was confounded,
+and De Retz perplexed. Molé knew that he risked his life by thus balking
+the seditious ardour of both the nobles and the mob; but the thought gave
+him courage, not hesitation. The critical moment was that of declaring the
+treaty to the assembled parliament. A ferocious crowd, crying “Treason!
+no peace! no Mazarin!” surrounded the Palais de Justice; and the throng
+within its walls was scarcely less hostile or less calm. Molé stood up
+and read the treaty; clamour instantly covered his voice. The prince of
+Conti exclaimed against a peace concluded without his knowledge, and that
+of the nobles his friends. “You, then, are the cause,” retorted Molé:
+“whilst we were at Ruel, you were treating with the enemies of France;
+you were inviting the archduke, the Spaniard, and the foe to invade the
+kingdom.” “It is not without the consent of several members of the parliament
+that we took this step,” replied the prince, not denying the charge.
+“Name them,” was Molé’s instant retort; “name the traitors, that we may
+proceed to try and judge them.”</p>
+
+<p>The firmness of the president at once awed the nobles, and won over the
+majority of the assembled magistrates to support him. The only hope of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_504">[504]</span>the favourers of sedition was in the rabble, which, incensed and tumultuous,
+had penetrated into the passages and corridors of the palace. Some, with
+poniards and arms, demanded the head of the president. “Give us up the
+<i>grande barbe</i>” (long beard); so they called the venerable magistrate.
+Others shouted the word “Republic.” Molé heard them with unshaken
+courage. Those around besought him to make his escape by a postern.
+“Justice never skulks,” replied Molé, “nor will I, its representative. I
+may perish, but will never commit an act of cowardice, which would give
+hardihood to the mob.” Accordant to this magnanimous resolution, the
+chief magistrate walked boldly down the principal staircase through the
+mob, awing the most audacious by his firmness. Even De Retz<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18j3"><a href="#endnote_18j">j</a></span> was lost in
+admiration; and has recorded that he could perceive in the countenance of
+Molé, then threatened by the
+fury of the multitude, not a
+motion that did not indicate
+imperturbable firmness, and
+at the same time a presence
+and elevation of mind
+greater than firmness, and
+every way supernatural.
+This is one of the noblest
+exhibitions of courage which
+history has recorded.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/p504.jpg" width="350" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">French Man-of-War, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the chiefs of sedition
+saw that they could
+not conquer, and that the
+treaty would pass in their
+despite, each hastened to
+make his private offers and
+demands of the court. Bouillon
+wanted Sedan; Turenne,
+Alsace; Elbeuf, the government
+of Picardy; Beaufort,
+to be admiral. They were
+not listened to. Angered
+and resolved to proceed to
+extremities, they wrote to
+Turenne to advance, and
+to the archduke to invade
+the north. But Turenne’s
+treason was defeated by
+Erlach, commander of the
+Swiss—himself obliged to
+fly; and the archduke, his support failing, retreated. Thus the moderate
+portion of the parliament, supported by the civic guard, succeeded in restoring
+peace with the court, despite the opposition of the nobles and the mob.
+The reader will not fail to remark how distinct these several classes kept
+from each other, even when in alliance and fighting the same battles; a state
+of society that has not ceased at the present day to characterise France:
+whilst in England, the blending of the lower ranks of the nobly born with
+the higher ranks of the industrious and unennobled, effected by the habits
+and institutions of the country, have rendered the pernicious line of demarcation
+betwixt castes and classes almost invisible to the historian.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_505">[505]</span></p>
+
+<h3>SECOND ACT OF THE FRONDE; ARREST OF CONDÉ</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1649-1650 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The scene now shifts, and another act of the Fronde commences, displaying
+the chief actors in altogether new characters and dresses. No sooner
+was the peace declared than the prince of Condé, jealous of the cardinal,
+united with the nobles whom he so lately combated: he visited his sister,
+Madame de Longueville, became reconciled to her and to La Rochefoucauld;
+the duke de Beaufort and the coadjutor being the only two that remained at the
+same time hostile to Mazarin and jealous of Condé. A few nobles, however,
+were not sufficient to give weight to the demands of the prince, and Mazarin
+resisted them. The prince, in consequence, saw the coadjutor, and planned,
+or pretended to form, an alliance with him and the violent members of
+the parliament. The court, terrified at the prospect of being so abandoned,
+and of seeing Condé at the head of the frondeurs, granted all the
+desires of the latter, who, ashamed to break with his new allies, yet left
+without a pretext to continue his quarrel with Mazarin, “changed his mind
+three hundred times in three days.” The haughty prince, who hated the
+parliament and the rabble, at last decided to disappoint the coadjutor; he
+became reconciled to Mazarin, and of course quarrelled with the frondeurs,
+whom he accused of an attempt to assassinate him. The same imprudence,
+the same haughtiness, petulance, and overbearing temper marked the prince
+to whichever side he leaned, and disgusted both. As a friend he was even
+more troublesome than as an enemy: Mazarin and the queen felt this; they
+could no longer tolerate his insolence; and the present moment, as he had
+left himself no friends in any party, seemed the best opportunity for being
+revenged on him.</p>
+
+<p>To arrest and send the prince to prison was the old monarchic mode of
+treating the froward; but one of the articles stipulated by the parliament,
+and secured to them in the last treaty, was that every prisoner should be
+interrogated in four-and-twenty hours, and delivered over to his lawful
+judges. To infringe upon this law might rouse the parliament, and re-excite
+the rebellion of the Parisians. To secure himself against such an event,
+Mazarin leagued with—whom? The coadjutor himself, and the most violent
+of the frondeurs! They, the populace sharing their sentiments, hated
+Condé for his ancient enmity and his late desertion. De Retz and Mazarin,
+accordingly, had interviews, the former entering the Palais Royal by night
+in disguise. The consequence of this secret understanding soon appeared.
+The prince of Condé, the prince of Conti, his brother, and the duke de
+Longueville were arrested at the door of the council-chamber, and sent to
+Vincennes in January, 1650. The dukes de Bouillon and de la Rochefoucauld,
+as well as the duchess de Longueville, succeeded in escaping;
+the princesses of Condé were ordered to retire to Chantilly. Bonfires,
+illuminations, and every sign of joy on the part of the Parisians marked this
+extreme measure. The popular hatred of Condé and confidence in De Retz
+lulled for the moment their dislike of the cardinal Mazarin.</p>
+
+<p>Two events which mark the spirit of the time, and which occurred previous
+to the prince’s arrest, must not be passed over. The honour of a
+<i>tabouret</i>, or stool at court, was only granted to the ladies of princes of sovereign
+houses, or to the wives of dukes and peers. Exceptions, however, had
+been made in favour of the younger branches of the Rohans, the La Trémouilles,
+and the family of Bouillon. La Rochefoucauld pretended to the
+same distinction: the prince of Condé supported his claim. The noblesse
+instantly assembled to the number of eight hundred, and formed a protest
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_506">[506]</span>against such pretensions, which went, they said, to destroy the natural
+equality that existed amongst all gently born. The dispute led to a discussion
+of political rights and principles, then the dangerous mania of the age,
+and some voices clamoured for the states-general. The French noblesse are
+entitled certainly to the credit of having demanded these national assemblies
+at a time when the judicial body or parliament, in whom the favour and
+confidence of the people were then centred, deprecated any such proposition.
+It may be asked why the chiefs of the judicature, and such upright
+lovers of liberty as Molé, were opposed to the convocation of the states-general.
+The answer is that the example of England, then in the mouths
+and minds of many, terrified them, and made them prefer their own body as
+a constitutional check, to such a representative assembly as that which, in
+the neighbouring kingdom, had begun with civil war, and ended in regicide
+and despotism. It must be owned they had some cause for fear. A revolution
+is bad enough; but an imitative revolution, a parody of such a great
+event, is to be deprecated tenfold, as incurring all the evils and few of the
+advantages of the convulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Already the people of Paris talked of republics and liberty: the monarchy,
+they said, was too old, and it was time it should expire. Nay, the
+duke de Bouillon himself, adopting the revolutionary phrase, proposed on one
+occasion to purge the parliament. The taste for assembling and debating
+was general. The annuities charged on the Hôtel-de-Ville were suspended
+by the troubles: three thousand of these fund-holders, chiefly citizens of
+Paris, met, drew up resolutions, petitioned, and clothed themselves in black,
+the uniform of the tiers or third estate. Molé instantly rebuked them, as
+attempting to form a <i>chambre de communes</i>, a house of commons. The
+citizens were indignant at the comparison: and this very reproach, that they
+were imitating the commons of England, had great effect in dissipating
+their assembly.</p>
+
+<h3>RESISTANCE OF BORDEAUX (1650 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Principles, however, were soon forgotten in the general sympathy which
+the misfortunes of Condé excited. The haughtiness, the imprudences of the
+hero of Rocroi and Lens were now forgotten; and the nobility began to rally
+to his cause as their own. The court were at first successful in reducing
+Normandy, the government of the duke de Longueville; but in Languedoc
+and the provinces on the Gironde, the dukes de la Rochefoucauld and de
+Bouillon soon gathered an army of adherents, and were joined by the wife
+and infant son of the prince.</p>
+
+<p>Clémence de Maillé, princess of Condé, had hitherto commanded little
+respect either from the world or from her husband, who, having married her
+merely as the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, was ashamed of her humble origin
+and his own condescension. She now however displayed a heroism and an
+attachment worthy of the spouse of the Great Condé. The princess escaped
+with her young son, the duke d’Enghien, from Chantilly, and after some
+delay in a fortified place, joined the dukes de la Rochefoucauld and de
+Bouillon in the south. But the noblesse was not then the predominant
+order in the state, and she was obliged to seek more powerful protection in
+the parliament of Bordeaux. This provincial court of justice was highly
+incensed against the duke d’Épernon, governor of Languedoc; and consequently
+ill-disposed towards the queen and the cardinal, who seconded him.
+They of course embraced with ardour the new laws established by the parliament
+of Paris, which gave to the courts of magistracy power to control
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_507">[507]</span>the measures of government, and which forbade arrests without bringing the
+accused to speedy trial. They could little comprehend the manœuvres by
+which De Retz and his violent party induced the parliament of Paris to
+overlook the imprisonment of Condé. They were eager to take his part and
+to admit the princess within their walls; but at the same time had considerable
+distrust of the nobles who supported her, and who were negotiating
+with Spain. To satisfy these scruples, the princess entered Bordeaux
+alone; but the popular clamour
+drowning the voice of the magistrates,
+she soon had the city at her
+command, and the dukes de Bouillon
+and de la Rochefoucauld entered
+with their troops and took the command.</p>
+
+<p>The queen and Mazarin led the
+young king and an army commanded
+by the marshal De la Meilleraie to
+reduce Bordeaux. Its first feat
+was to raze Verteuil, the famous
+château of the La Rochefoucauld
+family, a barbarous act, and inconceivable
+in Mazarin, who loved the
+arts. Bordeaux was then invested,
+and its suburb was carried after a
+valiant defence, in which La Rochefoucauld
+displayed remarkable gallantry.
+To gain footing in the
+town itself was soon found impossible,
+such was the obstinacy of the
+armed citizens. Whilst Mazarin
+and the court thus lay encamped
+before Bordeaux, Turenne had
+entered the north of France, and
+was marching without opposition
+towards the capital, intending to
+liberate the princes from Vincennes. Condé, confined in the donjon of that
+castle, whiled away his captivity by cultivating the few flowers that the
+terrace of his window could contain. “Who would have thought,” exclaimed
+he, in learning the resistance of Bordeaux, “that my wife should be fighting
+whilst I was gardening!” The princes were removed from Vincennes
+to the safer retreat of Marcoussis, and Turenne, who, fearing to indispose
+the parliament of Paris by appearing at the head of foreign troops, retired
+again towards the frontier.</p>
+
+<h3>DISGRACE AND EXILE OF MAZARIN (1650-1651 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p507.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Mazarin</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1650-1651 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The coadjutor and the violent frondeurs grew weary of their alliance
+with Mazarin, into which their fear and hatred of Condé had alone induced
+them to enter. They not only found Mazarin ungrateful and insincere,
+refusing even to De Retz the cardinal’s hat that he demanded, but their
+popularity, which was their chief force, and their influence over the parliament,
+were rapidly diminishing from their union with the court. Mazarin,
+suspecting the intention of the frondeurs, and alarmed by the march of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_508">[508]</span>Turenne, granted peace to Bordeaux, concluding more a truce than a treaty
+with the princess of Condé, La Rochefoucauld, and Bouillon.</p>
+
+<p>The minister then returned to Paris, where he found the parliament no
+longer silent as to the arrest of Condé, but prepared to expostulate, and
+demand his release. Mazarin caused the princes to be instantly conveyed
+from Marcoussis to La Havre, where they were still more in his individual
+power. La Rochefoucauld and Bouillon also returned to Paris; and a
+series of intrigues took place; these partisans of Condé negotiating at the
+same time both with the coadjutor and with Mazarin for his release. An
+alliance with either would effect this, and La Rochefoucauld was in doubt.
+The coadjutor, in the habit of a cavalier, came by night to the rendezvous
+at the house of the princess palatine. La Rochefoucauld went in equal
+secrecy to the Palais Royal. The over-caution of the cardinal lost his cause.
+La Rochefoucauld pressed him at once to conclude the alliance, and give
+orders that Condé should be set at liberty. Mazarin hesitated. Unprincipled
+as he was himself, he could not believe it possible that the friends of
+Condé could unite with De Retz. La Rochefoucauld warned the cardinal in
+parting that the morrow would be too late. Mazarin smiled incredulity
+and irresolution; and the duke, hurrying to the other place of rendezvous,
+concluded the agreement with the coadjutor. The effects of this alliance
+were immediately manifest. The majority of the parliament clamoured for
+the release of Condé, and addressed the queen on the subject. It was necessary
+to yield; and Mazarin saw that, deserted by all parties, he would
+infallibly be the victim.</p>
+
+<p>In his rage he anathematised the parliament before the whole court, called
+it an English house of commons, compared the coadjutor De Retz to Cromwell
+and himself to Strafford, and declared that, in sacrificing its minister to
+popular clamour, the crown would, as in the case of Strafford, sacrifice itself.
+This conversation, being reported to the parliament by De Retz, raised a storm
+indescribable, and terminated in an address to the queen, desiring that Mazarin
+should be banished from her councils, and that the prince should be liberated.
+Nought was left the cardinal but flight. He took his departure immediately.
+It was agreed that the queen and young king were to follow him, and that,
+possessed of La Havre and the persons of the princes, they would be able either
+by open war or negotiation to bring the parliament and the frondeurs to more
+reasonable terms. This project however failed, through the cunning and
+activity of the coadjutor, who, learning the queen’s intention of departing,
+raised a mob round the palace, and made her virtually a prisoner there.
+Cardinal Mazarin alone found himself without authority. He could not
+even gain entrance into Havre unless unattended. He entered, nevertheless,
+saw the captive princes of Condé, Conti, and Longueville, endeavoured
+to cajole them, and set them at liberty, without receiving in return a single
+mark of gratitude or regard. Thus every way disappointed, Mazarin
+resigned himself to his disgrace, and left the kingdom.<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<h3>CONDÉ IN POWER (1651 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The prince of Condé was now all-powerful—the parliament, the Fronde,
+the noblesse, the populace, had all rallied to him; the minister was in exile,
+the queen a prisoner. Many blamed him for not setting aside Anne of
+Austria, and assuming the regency; but he was totally without the qualities
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_509">[509]</span>requisite for taking advantage of his position; he was too lazy, too confident,
+too generous, too rash: and, making not a single exertion, the several
+parties that had united to compel at once his release and the exile of the
+minister were allowed again to fall asunder, and abandon to the court the recovery
+of its ancient influence. The noblesse at this period were animated
+with a strong desire to imitate the magistracy, and, by remaining united, to
+restore or re-establish the influence of the aristocracy, in opposition both
+to crown and judicature. They assembled in the convent of the Cordeliers
+(afterwards doomed to hold a club of a very different kind, that of Danton),
+and formed a house of peers, discussing state affairs, and fixing the privileges
+of the nobles. The parliament took fire at this, and forbade the assemblies.
+The noblesse looked to Condé to head them; but he, without principle or
+aim, and deeming his interests, as prince of the blood, distinct from those of
+the aristocracy, held back at this crisis. The noblesse called the assembly
+of the church, then sitting, to their aid, who protested, and complained that
+the parliament had altered the ancient constitution of the kingdom, by adding
+themselves as a fourth and spurious estate to the three established ones of
+king, lords, and commons. Despite of this, the parliament had force and the
+popular feeling on its side. The noblesse were obliged to succumb, and
+dissolved their assembly; not, however, before they had recourse to the queen
+and the royal authority, who issued a declaration, promising to convoke the
+states-general for the following September.</p>
+
+<p>Here the queen recovered consideration and authority sufficient to enable
+her to aim at and grasp more, by allying with the prince of Condé. One of
+the stipulations betwixt them was that the marriage should be broken off
+betwixt the prince of Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The coadjutor,
+connected by gallantry and friendship with the family of Chevreuse, was
+indignant at this, and a quarrel ensued betwixt Condé and the old party of
+the Fronde. Hence another scene in the drama, which represents Condé
+insulted by those very men who had been so instrumental in releasing him.
+De Retz and the prince nearly came to blows in the Palais de Justice; and
+the former had almost fallen a victim to the passion of La Rochefoucauld, who
+jammed the coadjutor betwixt two folding doors till he was almost suffocated:
+the duke at the same time called to one of his friends to stab De Retz,
+an injunction that was not obeyed, and perhaps not intended to be obeyed.
+It is, nevertheless, startling to the modern reader to find the courtly author
+of the <i>Maximes</i> engaged personally in the office and using the language of
+the assassin.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence of these dissensions was the recovery of her authority
+by Anne of Austria, who, in affecting to ally with Condé, was merely enticing
+him to disgust and desert the Fronde. This achieved, she flung off the
+mask, and Condé found himself as much detested by all parties as a few
+months back he was their favourite and their rallying word. The prince,
+thus deserted, endeavoured to make common cause with the noblesse, and
+clamoured for the states-general; but it was too late: the parliament united
+with the court in opposing their convocation, and Condé in despair retired
+from Paris, obliged to seek support in civil war and an alliance with Spain.</p>
+
+<h3>RETURN OF MAZARIN (1651 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>In September, 1651, Louis XIV, then approaching fourteen years of age,
+was declared to have completed his minority. The day was celebrated with
+great magnificence. The royal authority remained, however, as before, in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_510">[510]</span>hands of the queen: her only thought was the recall of Mazarin. The attachment
+borne by Anne to this prelate-minister is inexplicable. She might have
+reigned supreme, and been the arbiter betwixt contending parties, could she
+have consented to leave Mazarin in exile. De Retz endeavoured to impress
+this necessity upon her; but power appeared to her worthless without the
+cardinal; and no sooner had Condé broken with the parliament, and burst
+into war against the court, than the minister prepared to return. He levied
+an army, made an attempt on Brissac, and soon after joined the court at
+Poitiers, taking as usual the chief seat in the council.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g6"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the first news of his return, Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII,
+who had demanded the removal of the cardinal, levied troops in Paris without
+knowing for what they would be employed. Parliament renewed its decrees;
+it proscribed Mazarin and put a price on his head. This proscription tempted
+no one to earn the 50,000 crowns, which, after all, would never have been
+paid. With another nation and in another age, such a decree would have
+found executors; but here it served simply to incite fresh pleasantries. The
+Blots and the Marignys, wits, who carried gaiety into the tumult of these
+troubles, caused to be placarded all over Paris a distribution of the 50,000
+crowns—so much for whoever should cut off the cardinal’s nose, and so
+much for an ear, so much for an eye, so much to make him a eunuch. This
+ridicule was all the effect of the proscription against the minister’s person,
+but his furniture and library were sold by a second decree. This money
+was destined for the assassin’s pay, but it was dissipated by the depositaries,
+like all funds that had been raised hitherto. The cardinal on his side used
+against his enemies neither poison nor steel and, in spite of the bitterness and
+madness of so much partisanship and hatred, no great crimes were committed.
+The party leaders were less cruel and the people less furious than
+in the days of the league—this was not a war of religion.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/p510.jpg" width="450" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Cannon of the Seventeenth Century</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The spirit of madness which reigned at this time so possessed the whole
+body of the parliament that, after having solemnly ordered an assassination
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_511">[511]</span>which everyone ridiculed, it passed a decree by which several councillors
+should betake themselves to the frontier for information against the army of
+Cardinal Mazarin: that is to say, the royal army. Meanwhile the king
+interdicted the parliament of Paris and transferred it to Pontoise. Fourteen
+members attached to the court obeyed; the others resisted. There were now
+two parliaments, which, to cap the confusion, thundered against each other
+with reciprocating decrees, as in the days of Henry IV and Charles VI.</p>
+
+<p>It was precisely at the time when this company was going to extremities
+with the king’s minister that it declared the prince of Condé, who had only
+armed himself against this minister, guilty of <i>lèse majesté</i>; and by a turn of
+mind which its preceding steps could alone make credible, it ordered the
+new troops of Gaston, duke of Orleans, to march against Mazarin and forbade
+at the same time any money from the public receipts to be used in maintaining
+them. We can expect nought else from a company of magistrates,
+thrown out of their proper sphere, knowing not their rights, their real power,
+political affairs, or war, assembling and deciding amid tumult, making decisions
+of which they had no thought the day before, and at which they themselves
+were afterwards astonished. The parliament of Bordeaux was then serving
+the prince of Condé, but it kept to a little more rational conduct, because
+being further removed from the court it was less agitated by opposing factions.
+More important matters were interesting the whole of France.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LAST PHASE OF THE FRONDE</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1651-1652 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Condé, leagued with the Spaniards, was on a campaign against the king;
+and Turenne, having quitted these same Spaniards, with whom he had been
+beaten at Rethel, had just made his peace with the court and was in command
+of the royal army. The exhausted finances did not permit either of
+the two parties to maintain great armies, but small ones did not the less
+decide the fate of the state. Louis XIV, brought up in adversity, went
+with his mother, his brother, and Cardinal Mazarin from province to province,
+without having as many troops about his person, by a great deal, as
+he had afterwards for a single guard in times of peace. Five to six thousand
+men, some sent from Spain, others raised by the prince of Condé’s partisans,
+pursued him into the very heart of his kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the prince of Condé hastened from Bordeaux to Montauban,
+taking towns and everywhere increasing his party. All the hope of the
+court lay in Marshal Turenne. The royal army found itself near Gien on
+the Loire. The opposing force of Condé was some leagues away, under the
+orders of the dukes de Nemours and de Beaufort. The duke de Beaufort
+was incapable of commanding anything. The duke de Nemours was braver
+and more amiable than he was skilful. Both together had demoralised their
+army. The soldiers of Condé knew that their leader was a hundred leagues
+away and believed themselves lost, when, in the middle of the night, a courier
+presented himself at the outposts in the forest of Orleans. The sentinels
+recognised in this courier the prince of Condé himself, who had come all the
+way across France from Agen, with many adventures and always in disguise,
+to place himself at the head of his army.</p>
+
+<p>His presence did much and his unexpected arrival still more. The royal
+army was divided into two corps. April 7th, 1652, Condé fell upon that
+which was at Bléneau, commanded by Marshal d’Hocquincourt, and his
+corps was dissipated as quickly as it had been attacked. Turenne could not
+even be warned. The terrified Mazarin hastened to Gien in the middle of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_512">[512]</span>the night to awaken the sleeping king and himself tell him the news. The
+little court was in consternation; they proposed to save the king by flight
+and to conduct him secretly to Bourges. The victorious Condé drew near
+to Gien; the desolation and the fear increased. Turenne reassured their
+spirits by his firmness and saved the court by his skill. With the few troops
+that remained to him he made such fortunate movements that he prevented
+Condé from following up his advantage. It is difficult to decide which won
+the more honours, the victorious Condé or Turenne who had robbed him
+of the fruits of victory.<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> It is true that in this fight at Bléneau not four hundred
+men were killed; but the prince of Condé was none the less on the
+point of making himself master of the entire royal family, and of having in
+his hands his enemy Cardinal Mazarin. It would be hard to find in history
+any smaller battle with greater interest and more pressing danger.</p>
+
+<p>Condé, who did not flatter himself that he could surprise Turenne, as he
+had done Hocquincourt, marched his army towards Paris. He hastened to
+that city to enjoy his glory and the favourable disposition of a blind populace.
+The admiration they had for his last fight,—all of whose details had
+exaggerated the hate that was borne for Mazarin,—the name and the presence
+of the Great Condé, seemed at first to make him absolute master of the capital;
+but at the bottom all minds were divided. The coadjutor—now become
+Cardinal de Retz, reconciled in appearance with the court which feared him
+and which he defied—was no longer the master of the people and no longer
+played the principal rôle. He ruled the duke of Orleans and was opposed
+by Condé. Parliament wavered between the court, the duke of Orleans, and
+the prince. Although all were in accord in crying down Mazarin, each one
+was nursing his own particular interests in secret; the people were a stormy
+sea whose waves were driven at chance by many contrary winds.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i6"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Condé hoped to find the parliament his ally against Mazarin: but the
+stern magistrates, though firm in their abhorrence of that minister, were not
+more favourable to Condé, and openly reproached him with his Spanish alliance.
+From the parliament he did not scruple to appeal to the people, whose
+lowest class rose in tumult, and threatened the magistrates. The very courts
+proved no refuge: councillors and judges were insulted and even beaten as
+“Mazarins.”</p>
+
+<p>Condé, thus disappointed in the support of the parliament, and of the
+respectable citizens, could not cope unaided with the royal army. The
+Parisian rabble, very forward in a riot, could not be made to stand the fire
+of regular troops. The prince had recourse to the Spaniards, who, themselves
+busied in the sieges of Gravelines and Dunkirk, induced the duke of
+Lorraine to march into France and support Condé. The skilful strategy of
+Turenne, however, compelled this new auxiliary to retreat; and the prince,
+after a fresh attempt to raise sedition in the capital and control the parliament,
+was reduced to fight Turenne with far inferior forces. The latter
+drove him from St. Cloud, and Condé marched to take post at Charenton,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_513">[513]</span>when, his rival pressing him closely, as he defiled round the walls of Paris,
+the prince was obliged to throw himself into the faubourg St. Antoine,
+behind the entrenchments formerly raised for their defence by the inhabitants.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Battle of St. Antoine (July 2nd, 1652)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The gate of Paris called St. Antoine was then immediately under the
+Bastille, the cannon of which swept the three roads diverging from it.
+Condé, denied entrance into the city, was still secure from attack on this
+side; and, posted in the central position of the gate St. Antoine, he determined
+to make head against the royalists, who approached to attack him by
+the three roads. Mazarin and Louis XIV were on the heights, now covered
+with the cemetery of Père Lachaise, spectators of the ensuing action, the
+young monarch being most anxious to witness the destruction of this rebellious
+prince.</p>
+
+<p>The triple attack commenced: that on the prince’s left, commanded by
+three sworn and personal enemies to him, was defeated by his valour, the
+chiefs all perishing. The hero then rushed to defend the central street: he
+met Turenne in person, and there the conflict was more doubtful. “Did you
+see Condé during the action?” asked someone of Turenne when the affair
+was over. “I must have seen a dozen Condés,” was the reply: “he multiplied
+himself.” On the right the action was most bloody: the nobles of the
+prince’s party were almost all slain or wounded there, amongst the rest La
+Rochefoucauld, who, struck on the head, was carried off by his wounded son.
+Turenne was the most powerful; and no chance appeared of Condé’s saving
+himself and the relics of his army, when the gate of St. Antoine unexpectedly
+opened to receive him, the cannon of the Bastille at the same time sending
+their fire up the three attacked streets, and thus effectually checking the
+progress of the royalists.</p>
+
+<p>This well-timed succour came from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter
+of the duke of Orleans, whose sympathy for the heroic Condé, now in
+distress, was aided by the clamours of the populace, enraged at beholding
+a rash and imprudent but still generous prince sacrificed to the detested
+Mazarin. She wrung from the municipal officers the orders for opening the
+gates; herself directed the firing of the guns of the Bastille; nay, her hand
+is said to have applied the match. Mademoiselle had aspired to the hand of
+Condé, to that of the king, and might hope at least to espouse a sovereign
+prince. But Mazarin observed, on seeing the fire of the Bastille, and
+knowing who commanded it, “That shot has killed the husband of Mademoiselle.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g7"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>SECOND EXILE OF MAZARIN</h3>
+
+<p>After this bloody and useless combat of St. Antoine the king could not
+return to Paris; and the prince did not remain there long. Popular feeling
+and the murder of several citizens, for which he was believed to be responsible,
+made him odious to the people. [He fled from Paris and joined
+the Spanish army, October, 1652.] However, he still had his faction in the
+parliament. This body, now intimidated by a wandering court, and driven
+after a fashion from the capital to Pontoise, pressed by the cabals of
+the duke of Orleans and the prince, declared, by a decree, the duke
+of Orleans lieutenant-general of the realm, although the king was an adult.
+The two parliaments of Paris and Pontoise, contesting the authority one
+with the other and issuing contradictory decrees, agreed in demanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_514">[514]</span>the expulsion of Mazarin—so much did the hatred of this minister seem the
+essential duty of every Frenchman. The court saw itself obliged once more
+to sacrifice Mazarin whom everyone believed the author of the troubles, but
+who was but their pretext. For a second time he left the country, and to
+increase his shame the king must needs make a public declaration dismissing
+his minister, the while praising his services and deploring his exile.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p514.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis XIV as a Young Man</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charles I, king of England, who had just lost his head on the scaffold,
+had in the beginning of his troubles abandoned the blood of Strafford,
+his friend, to his parliament. Louis
+XIV on the contrary became the
+peaceful master of his realm by permitting
+his minister’s exile. Thus
+the same weakness bore different
+results. The king of England, in
+abandoning his favourite, emboldened
+a people that breathed war and
+hated kings; and Louis XIV, or
+rather the queen-mother, by dismissing
+the cardinal, removed all pretext
+for revolt from a people tired of war
+and who loved royalty.</p>
+
+<p>While the state was thus torn
+at home it had been attacked and
+weakened abroad; all the benefits
+of the battles of Rocroi, Lens, and
+Nördlingen were lost; the important
+place of Dunkirk was retaken by the
+Spaniards (September, 1652); they
+drove the French from Barcelona,
+they retook Casale in Italy (October,
+1652).</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the cardinal left for
+Bouillon, place of his new retreat,
+when the citizens of Paris, of their
+own accord, sent to the king and
+asked him to return to his capital. Louis entered Paris October 21st, 1652,
+and all was so peaceful that it would have been difficult to imagine that a
+few days before all was in confusion. Gaston of Orleans, unfortunate in
+his undertakings, which he never knew how to carry out, was relegated to
+Blois, where he passed the rest of his life in repentance; and he was the
+second son of Henry the Great to die without much glory. Cardinal de Retz,
+as imprudent as he was audacious, was arrested in the Louvre, and after having
+been sent from prison to prison long led a wandering life which he
+finished in retreat, where he acquired virtues which his great courage had
+not known in the agitations of his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Several councillors who had most abused their ministry paid for their
+actions with exile; the others withdrew into the limits of the magistracy and
+others attached themselves the closer to their duties with an annual gratuity of
+five hundred crowns which Fouquet, attorney-general and superintendent
+of the finances, gave them surreptitiously. The prince of Condé meanwhile,
+abandoned in France by nearly all his partisans, and badly assisted by the
+Spaniards, continued a disastrous war on the frontiers of Champagne. There
+still remained factions in Bordeaux, but they were soon pacified.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i7"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_515">[515]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1652-1653 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Thus ended the Fronde. Voltaire dismisses it in a few pages, satisfied
+with recording its <i>bon mots</i>. He seems to have looked upon this civil war
+as merely a pastime, entered into by a few froward youths and their mistresses.
+He did not see in it the serious, the sanguinary and unhappy struggle
+of a nation for its liberty. Even later writers, more profound than
+Voltaire, have designated the Fronde as “the last campaign of the noblesse.”
+It was indeed so. But the noblesse formed not the prominent body. It was
+the parliament, the magistracy, that put itself forward to represent the commons,
+of which they claimed and established the privileges for themselves.
+This was, no doubt, an audacious and hopeless enterprise. The states-general,
+the ancient representative assembly of the nation, was the form to which
+they should have rallied. But the extravagance of the English parliament
+deterred them; and they fixed upon their own body, as a less democratic and
+dangerous assembly, to participate in legislative power. The scheme was
+new: it was conceived with boldness, and supported with courage; and if
+the legists failed in arriving at settled liberty by its means, they may plead
+that representative assemblies have frequently failed in the same endeavour.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g8"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>MAZARIN AGAIN IN POWER (1653 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The calm in the kingdom was the result of Cardinal Mazarin’s banishment;
+however, scarcely had he been driven away by the general cry of the
+French people and the king’s decree, when the king made him come back.
+He was astonished to see himself re-enter Paris all powerful. Louis XIV
+received him like a father and the people like a master. He held a great
+reception at the Hôtel-de-Ville amid the acclamations of the citizens; he
+threw money to the populace, but it is said that in his joy for so happy a
+change he showed his scorn for the inconstancy or rather the folly of the
+Parisians. The officers of parliament, after having placed a price on his
+head like a public robber, sued, almost all of them, for the honour of asking
+his protection; and this same parliament a short time after condemned by
+contumacy the prince of Condé to lose his life. They saw the cardinal,
+who urged this condemnation of Condé, marry to the prince of Conti his
+brother, one of his own nieces—a proof that the power of the minister was
+going to be boundless.</p>
+
+<p>The king reunited the parliaments of Paris and of Pontoise; he forbade
+the assembling of the chambers. Parliament wished to remonstrate, one
+councillor was sent to prison; several others were exiled: parliament kept
+quiet; the change had already come.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i8"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1653-1655 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The events of Louis XIV’s youth were such as to inspire him not only
+with high ideas of his kingly rights, but to prove to him the necessity of
+absolute power in the monarch.<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> In the great English rebellion, and in the
+Fronde, he had seen freedom under its most hideous aspect, and followed by
+the vainest of results. We can scarcely then blame him personally for his
+despotic propensities, which, moreover, his manly and ambitious character
+tended to increase. The young king and his brother Philip, then called the
+duke of Anjou, were educated in the privacy of the palace. The nieces of
+the cardinal were their playmates; and Louis formed successive attachments
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_516">[516]</span>for two of these young ladies, especially for Maria Mancini, afterwards the
+wife of the constable Colonna. So intimate was the connection betwixt
+Mazarin and Anne of Austria that many were persuaded of their marriage.<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a>
+Certainly her attachment to him was personal and tender. Louis XIV
+always preserved for the cardinal a sort of filial reverence: he may be said
+to have learned in the school of implicit obedience how to be himself
+despotic.</p>
+
+<p>At intervals, however, the imperious temper of the young monarch burst
+forth, and betrayed itself. In 1655, the parliament, after registering certain
+fiscal edicts, thought proper to re-examine them, to complain, and show
+symptoms of their ancient independence. Louis was at Vincennes, engaged
+in the chase, when he heard of their conduct. Instantly, without consulting
+the cardinal, or even tarrying to change his dress, the young monarch galloped
+to Paris, entered the Palais de Justice and the Hall of Parliament in
+his hunting habit, booted, and with whip in hand. “Gentlemen,” said Louis
+to the astonished legists, “everyone is acquainted with the ill consequences
+of your former assemblies. Their recurrence must be prevented. I command
+you instantly to cease busying yourself with my edicts. And you,
+Mr. President, I forbid either to call or suffer such assemblies.” This bold
+assertion of the royal will from the mouth of a stripling proved sufficient to
+crush the reviving spirit of the magistracy. It was silent, and obeyed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18g9"><a href="#endnote_18g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WAR WITH SPAIN CONTINUES</h3>
+
+<p>Condé, who had become general in the Spanish armies, was unable to
+revive what he had himself weakened at Rocroi and Lens. He was fighting
+with raw troops against the veteran French regiments that had learned to
+conquer under him, and that were now commanded by Turenne. The fate
+of Turenne and of Condé was to be uniformly victorious when they were
+fighting together at the head of the French and to be defeated when they
+were commanding the Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>Turenne had with difficulty saved the wreck of the Spanish army at
+Rethel when, instead of a general of the king of France, he had been made
+the lieutenant of a Spanish general; the prince of Condé had the same fate
+before Arras (August 25th, 1654). He and the archduke besieging this
+city, Turenne attacked them in their camp and forced their lines; the troops
+of the archduke were put to flight; Condé, with two regiments of French
+and Lorrainers, sustained alone the attack of Turenne’s army; and, while
+the archduke was in flight, he defeated Marshal d’Hocquincourt, repulsed
+Marshal de la Ferté, and retired victorious, covering the retreat of the
+defeated Spaniards.</p>
+
+<p>The relief of Arras, the forcing of the lines, and the rout of the archduke
+covered Turenne with glory; and it is to be observed that in the letter
+concerning this victory written in the name of the king to the parliament
+the success of the entire campaign is ascribed to Cardinal Mazarin and that
+Turenne’s name is not even mentioned. The cardinal had been in fact a few
+leagues from Arras with the king. He had even been in the camp at the
+siege of Stenay, which Turenne had taken before relieving Arras. Councils
+of war had been held in the presence of the cardinal. On this basis he
+ascribed to himself the honour of the events; and this vanity brought upon
+him a ridicule that all the authority of his ministry could not suppress. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_517">[517]</span>king was not present at the battle of Arras. He had gone into the trenches
+at the siege of Stenay, but Cardinal Mazarin was unwilling that he should
+further expose his person, upon which the tranquillity of the state and the
+power of the minister seemed to depend.</p>
+
+<p>Thus on the one side, Mazarin, absolute master of France and of the
+young king, and on the other, Don Luis de Haro, who governed Spain and
+Philip IV, continued in the name of their masters to carry on the war, but
+with little vigour.</p>
+
+<p>These two men vied with each other in directing their policies towards
+forming an alliance with Cromwell, the English Protector, who for some
+time enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing himself courted by the two most
+powerful kingdoms of Christendom. The Spanish minister offered to help
+him take Calais; Mazarin proposed to besiege Dunkirk and restore that city
+to him. Cromwell had to choose between the key of France and that of
+Flanders. He was also much solicited by Condé, but he did not wish to
+negotiate with a prince who had nothing left but his name and who was
+without a party in France and without power in Spain.</p>
+
+<h3>ALLIANCE WITH CROMWELL (1655 A.D.); WAR IN FLANDERS (1656-1658 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1655-1657 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In May, 1655, the Protector decided in favour of France, but without
+making any special treaty or a division of conquests in advance. He wished
+to shed lustre on his usurpation by greater enterprises. His design was to
+wrest Mexico from the Spaniards, but the latter were warned in time.
+Cromwell’s admirals, however, took Jamaica from them. It was not until
+after the Jamaican expedition that Cromwell signed his treaty with the king
+of France, but without making any mention of Dunkirk. The Protector
+treated as equal with equal; he forced the king to give him the title of
+brother in his letters. In the copy of the treaty that remained in England
+his secretary signed before the French ambassador; but he negotiated really
+as a superior by forcing the king to drive out of his dominions Charles II
+and the duke of York, the grandsons of Henry IV, to whom France owed
+an asylum. A greater sacrifice of honour to fortune could not have been
+made.</p>
+
+<p>While Mazarin was making this treaty Charles II asked for one of his
+nieces in marriage. The bad condition of his affairs that drove the prince
+to this step also brought upon him a refusal. It has even been suspected
+that the cardinal wished to marry to the son of Cromwell the niece whom he
+refused to the king of England. This much is certain—that when he afterwards
+saw the way to the throne more open to Charles II he wished to renew
+this marriage; but was refused in his turn.</p>
+
+<p>The war continued in Flanders with varying success. Turenne, having
+besieged Valenciennes along with Marshal de la Ferté, suffered the same
+kind of reverse that Condé had sustained at Arras. The prince, assisted this
+time by Don John of Austria, who was more worthy to fight at his side
+than the archduke had been, forced La Ferté’s lines, took him prisoner, and
+relieved Valenciennes (July 17th, 1656). Turenne did what Condé had done
+in a similar rout. He saved the defeated army and opposed the enemy
+everywhere; a little later he even besieged and took the little town of
+La Capelle (September 27th). This was perhaps the first time that a
+defeated army had dared to make a siege.</p>
+
+<p>This famous march of Turenne, which was followed by the taking of
+La Capelle, was eclipsed by an even finer march of the prince of Condé.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_518">[518]</span>Turenne had laid siege to Cambray when Condé, at the head of two thousand
+cavalry, forced a passage through the besieging army, and having
+driven back all who tried to stop him threw himself into the town (May
+31st, 1657). The citizens received their deliverer on bended knees. Thus
+these two men, opposed to each other, exhibited the resources of their genius.
+We admire them in their retreats as well as in their victories, in their good
+conduct and even in their faults, which they were always able to retrieve.
+Their talents alternately arrested the progress of each monarchy; but the
+financial disorder in Spain and in France was a still greater obstacle to their
+success.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1657-1658 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The alliance with Cromwell finally gave France a more marked superiority.
+On the one hand, Admiral Blake was about to burn the Spanish galleons
+and cause the loss of the sole treasure with which the war could be
+maintained. On the other hand, twenty English vessels had just blockaded
+the port of Dunkirk and six thousand veterans of the English Revolution
+reinforced Turenne’s army. Then Dunkirk, the most important place in
+Flanders, was besieged by sea and land. Condé and Don John of Austria,
+having united all their forces, came forward to relieve it. The eyes of
+Europe were upon this event. Cardinal Mazarin brought Louis XIV near
+the scene of war without allowing him to get to it, although he was nearly
+twenty years old. The prince stopped at Calais, and hither Cromwell sent
+to him a pompous embassy, at the head of which was his son-in-law, Lord
+Falconberg. The king sent to him the duke de Créqui, and Mancini, duke
+de Nevers, a nephew of the cardinal, followed by two hundred noblemen.
+Mancini presented the Protector a remarkable letter from Cardinal Mazarin
+in which he said that he was sorry not to be able to pay him in person the
+respect due to the greatest man in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the prince-marshal Turenne attacked the Spanish army, or
+rather the army of Flanders, near the Dunes. The latter was commanded
+by Don John of Austria, son of Philip IV and an actress, who two years
+later became the brother-in-law of Louis XIV. The prince of Condé was
+with this army but not in command; hence it was not difficult for Turenne
+to gain the victory (June 14th, 1658). The six thousand English soldiers
+contributed to the victory, which was complete.</p>
+
+<p>The genius of the Great Condé was of no avail against the best troops of
+France and England. The Spanish army was destroyed. Dunkirk surrendered
+soon afterwards (June 23rd). The king came up with his minister in
+order to see the garrison pass out. The cardinal did not allow Louis XIV to
+appear either as warrior or as king. He had no money to distribute to the
+soldiers, and was poorly attended. When he was with the army he dined
+with Mazarin or with Marshal Turenne. This neglect of royal dignity was
+not in Louis XIV the effect of contempt for pomp, but of the confusion in his
+affairs and of the pains the cardinal took to unite splendour and authority in
+himself. Louis entered Dunkirk only to turn it over to Cromwell’s ambassador,
+Lord Lockhart. Mazarin tried whether by finesse he could not evade
+the treaty and not give up the place; but Lockhart threatened, and English
+firmness got the better of Italian subtlety.</p>
+
+<p>Several persons have asserted that the cardinal, who had attributed to
+himself the victory of Arras, tried to induce Turenne to yield to him again
+the honour of the battle of Dunes. Du Bec-Crépin, count de Moret, it is said,
+came on behalf of the minister and proposed to the general to write a letter
+in which it would appear that the cardinal had himself arranged the entire
+plan of operation. Turenne received these hints with contempt and would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_519">[519]</span>not make a statement that would have brought disgrace upon a general of
+the army and ridicule upon a man of the church. Mazarin, who had been
+so foolish, now had the misfortune of remaining on ill terms with Turenne
+until his death.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1658-1659 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In the midst of this first triumph the king fell ill at Calais and for several
+days was near death. Immediately all the courtiers turned towards his
+brother, Monsieur. Mazarin
+lavished deference and flattery
+upon Marshal du Plessis-Praslin,
+the former tutor of this
+young prince, and upon count
+de Guiche, his favourite. A
+cabal was formed in Paris that
+was bold enough to write to
+Calais against the cardinal. He
+made preparations to leave the
+kingdom and to conceal his immense
+riches. An empiric of
+Abbeville cured the king with
+emetic wine that the court physicians
+called poison. This good
+man seated himself upon the
+king’s bed and said, “This is a
+very sick boy, but he is not going
+to die.” When the king became
+convalescent the cardinal banished
+all who had intrigued
+against him.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p519.jpg" width="300" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Entrance Gate to the Château de Vincennes</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A few months later Cromwell
+died (September 13th, 1658)
+at the age of fifty-five, in the
+midst of his projects for the
+strengthening of his power and
+the glory of his nation. Richard
+Cromwell succeeded peaceably
+and without opposition to the
+protectorate of his father, as a
+prince of Wales would have succeeded
+a king of England. The
+emperor Ferdinand III had died
+in 1657. His son Leopold, who was seventeen years old and already king of
+Hungary and Bohemia, had not been elected king of the Romans during the
+lifetime of his father. Mazarin wished to attempt to make Louis XIV emperor.
+This was a chimerical idea; it would have been necessary either to
+coerce or to bribe the electors. France was neither strong enough to seize
+the empire nor rich enough to buy it; so the first overtures made at Frankfort
+by Marshal de Grammont and by Lionne were abandoned almost as soon
+as they were proposed. Leopold was elected. All that Mazarin’s politics
+accomplished was to form an alliance, known as the League of the Rhine, with
+certain German princes,<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> to observe the Treaty of Westphalia, and to furnish
+a check to the authority of the emperor over the empire (August, 1658).
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_520">[520]</span>France, after the battle of the Dunes, was powerful in her foreign relations
+through her glory and her arms as well as through the condition to
+which the other nations were reduced. But the country itself was suffering;
+it was stripped of money, and there was need of peace.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY OF THE PYRENEES (1659 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The cardinal had to do two things in order to bring his ministry to a
+happy close—make peace and insure the tranquillity of the state by the
+marriage of the king. The intrigues during the latter’s illness made Mazarin
+feel how necessary an heir to the throne was to the splendour of the
+minister. All these considerations determined him to marry Louis XIV
+promptly. Two princesses were proposed—the daughter of the king of
+Spain and the princess of Savoy. The king’s heart had made another
+choice: he was desperately in love with Mademoiselle Mancini, one of the
+cardinal’s nieces. Born with a tender heart and a firm will, full of passion
+and without experience, he would have been capable of resolving to marry
+the lady of his choice.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Motteville, the favourite of the queen-mother, whose <i>Mémoires</i>
+have a great air of truth, claims that Mazarin was tempted to let the
+king’s love have its way and to place his niece on the throne. He had
+already married another niece to the prince de Conti, and one to the duke
+de Mercœur. The one whom Louis XIV loved had been asked in marriage
+by the king of England. These were titles enough to justify his ambitions.
+He adroitly sounded the queen-mother. “I fear,” he said, “that the king
+has too great a desire to marry my niece.” The queen, who knew the minister,
+understood that he desired what he feigned to fear. She replied to him
+with all the haughtiness of a princess of the blood of Austria, daughter,
+wife, and mother of kings, and with the bitterness which she had felt for
+some time towards a minister who affected to be independent of her. She
+said to him, “If the king were capable of this indignity I would place myself
+with my second son at the head of the whole nation against the king
+and yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin, it is said, never forgave the queen this reply; but he took the wiser
+course of thinking as she did. He made it a point of honour and merit to
+oppose the passion of Louis XIV. His power did not need a queen of his own
+blood to support him. He even feared the character of his niece; and he
+believed he would further strengthen the power of his ministry by avoiding
+the dangerous glory of elevating his own house too high.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1656 he had sent Lionne to Spain to negotiate peace and to
+ask the hand of the infanta; but Don Luis de Haro, convinced that, feeble
+as Spain was, France was not less so, rejected the cardinal’s offer. The infanta,
+daughter of Philip IV by his first wife, was intended for the young
+Leopold. By his second marriage Philip had at that time only a son whose
+sickly infancy caused fears for his life. It was desired that the infanta, who
+might be the heir to many states, should transfer her rights to the house of
+Austria and not to a hostile dynasty; but finally, Philip IV having had
+another son, Don Philip Prosper, and his wife being again <i>enceinte</i>, the danger
+involved in giving the infanta to the king of France seemed to him less
+great, and the battle of the Dunes made peace necessary to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniards promised the infanta and asked for a suspension of hostilities
+(1659). Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro repaired to the isle of Pheasants
+on the frontier of France and Spain. Although general peace and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_521">[521]</span>marriage of the king of France were the objects of their conference, more
+than a month passed in regulating ceremonies and settling difficulties of
+precedence. The cardinals called themselves the equals of the kings and the
+superiors of other sovereigns. France, with greater justice, claimed pre-eminence
+over the other powers. Don Luis de Haro, however, assumed
+perfect equality between France and Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The conferences lasted four months. Mazarin and Don Luis employed all
+the resources of their respective policies; that of the cardinal was strategy,
+that of Don Luis delay. The latter never gave promises: the former only
+equivocal ones. The genius of the Italian was to try to surprise; that of the
+Spaniard, to keep from being surprised.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs that of this famous Peace of the
+Pyrenees, signed November 7th, 1659, not two articles have endured. The
+king of France retained Roussillon which he would have kept anyway, without
+this peace, also Artois and Cerdagne; but the Spanish monarchy has no more
+possessions in Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>But if Don Luis de Haro said that Cardinal Mazarin could deceive, it
+has been said since that he could foresee. He long meditated the alliance
+of the houses of France and Spain. This famous letter of his, written during
+the negotiations at Münster, is cited: “If the most Christian king could
+have the Netherlands and Franche-Comté as dower upon espousing the
+infanta, then we might aspire to the Spanish succession, whatever we might
+have to relinquish to the infanta; and it would not be a very long wait,
+since there is only the life of the prince her brother that could exclude her
+from it.” This prince was Balthazar, who died in 1649.</p>
+
+<p>The cardinal was evidently deceived in thinking that the Netherlands
+and Franche-Comté could be given to the infanta as her marriage portion.
+Not a single city was stipulated for her dower. On the other hand, important
+cities that had been conquered, like St. Omer, Ypres, Menin, Oudenarde,
+and other places, were restored to the Spanish monarchy. Some were
+retained. The cardinal was not mistaken in believing that this relinquishment
+would be useless some day. But those who gave him the honour of
+this prediction make him also foresee that Prince Don Balthazar would die
+in 1649; that later the three children of the second marriage would be cut
+off in the cradle; that Charles, the fifth of the male children, would die
+without issue; and that this Austrian king would one day make a will in
+favour of a grandson of Louis XIV. But at any rate Cardinal Mazarin
+foresaw what value this relinquishment would have in case the male line of
+Philip should become extinct: and after more than fifty years strange events
+justified him.</p>
+
+<p>Maria Theresa, the infanta, able to have as dower the cities that France
+restored, brought by her marriage contract nothing else than 500,000 gold
+crowns; it cost the king more than that to go to receive her at the frontier.
+These 500,000 crowns, equivalent to 2,500,000 livres, were the subject of a
+great deal of dispute between the two ministers. In the end France never
+received but 100,000 francs. Instead of this marriage bringing any other
+real and immediate advantage than that of peace, the infanta renounced all
+rights she might ever have to any of her father’s lands. Louis XIV ratified
+this renunciation in the most solemn manner.<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_522">[522]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1659-1661 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, against whom France and Spain had
+much cause to complain, or rather who had much to complain of against them,
+was included in the treaty; but only as an unfortunate prince who was
+punished, because he could not make himself feared. France restored his
+states to him, demolishing Nancy, however, and forbade him to maintain
+troops. Don Luis de Haro forced Cardinal Mazarin to receive Condé into
+favour again, by threatening to leave in the sovereignty of the prince
+Rocroi, Le Catelet, and other places of which he was in possession. So
+France gained both these towns and the Great Condé. He lost his dignity of
+grand-master of the royal household, which was afterwards given to his son,
+and returned with scarcely anything but his glory.</p>
+
+<p>Finally (August, 1660) Cardinal Mazarin brought the king with his new
+queen to Paris.<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> Mazarin acted exactly like a father who would marry his son
+without giving him charge of his own property. He returned more powerful
+and more jealous of his power, and even of honours, than ever. He required
+parliament to address him through deputies. This was something unparalleled
+in the monarchy, but it was not too great a reparation for the wrong
+that parliament had done him. He no longer gave his hand to the princes
+of the blood as formerly. He who had treated Don Luis de Haro as an
+equal tried to treat the Great Condé as an inferior. He went about with
+royal pomp, having besides his guards a company of musketeers, which was
+ever afterwards the second company of king’s musketeers. There was no
+more freedom of access to him. If anyone was a poor enough courtier to
+ask a favour of the king, he was lost. The queen-mother, so long the stubborn
+protectress of Mazarin against France, was without credit as soon as he
+had no more need of her. Her son, the king, brought up in blind submission
+to this minister, could not shake off the yoke that she had imposed upon
+him as well as upon herself; Louis XIV could not reign during the lifetime
+of Mazarin.</p>
+
+<h3>LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF MAZARIN (1659-1661 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>A minister is excusable for the evil he does when the helm of state is
+forced into his hands by tempests; but during a calm he is answerable for
+the good that he fails to do. Mazarin did good only to himself and his family.
+Eight years of absolute and undisturbed power, from his final return until
+his death, were marked by no glorious or useful establishment; for the
+college of the Four Nations was only created by his will.<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p>
+
+<p>He controlled the finances like the steward of a lord involved in debt.
+The king sometimes asked money of Fouquet, who replied, “Sire, there is
+nothing in your majesty’s coffers, but the cardinal will lend you some.”
+Mazarin was worth about two hundred millions, reckoning in the money
+values of to-day (<i>i.e.</i>, the middle of the eighteenth century). Several
+memoirs say that he amassed part of it by means far beneath the grandeur of
+his position. They relate that he shared with privateer captains the profits
+of their voyages. This has never been proved; but the Dutch suspected
+him of it, and they never would have suspected Cardinal Richelieu.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i9"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_523">[523]</span></p>
+
+<p>In high spirits was Mazarin at the moment of signing the great treaty
+at Bidassoa (Treaty of the Pyrenees). He wrote to Paris: “All will soon
+be over. I shall not stay long in the Basque country, unless I find amusement
+in watching them hunt whales, in learning their language and their
+dances.”</p>
+
+<p>However, the dancer was soon smitten by gout. His lungs became
+affected. The bed of the moribund, covered with cards, was a gaming table
+over which offices were sold. Cards and the sacrament went pell-mell.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18b3"><a href="#endnote_18b">b</a></span> It
+is said that on his death-bed he felt remorse, but outwardly he displayed
+courage. At least, he feared for his property, and he made the king a complete
+donation of it believing that the king would return it to him. He
+was not mistaken; the king returned the gift in three days. Finally he
+died at Vincennes, March 9th, 1661, and no one but the king seemed to
+mourn him, for this prince already knew how to dissemble. The yoke was
+beginning to weigh heavily upon him; he was impatient to reign. Nevertheless
+he wished to seem affected by a death that put him in possession of
+his throne. Louis XIV and the court wore mourning for Cardinal Mazarin,
+an unusual honour, and one which Henry IV had paid to the memory
+of Gabrielle d’Estrées.</p>
+
+<p>We will not undertake [says Voltaire] to decide whether Mazarin was
+a great minister or not; his actions must speak for themselves. There is
+often a popular idea of a vast breadth of mind and an almost divine genius
+in those who have governed empires with some success. It is not a superior
+power of penetration that makes statesmen; it is their character. Men, if
+they have ever so little good sense, nearly all perceive their own interests.
+In this respect a citizen of Amsterdam or of Bern is as wise as Sejanus,
+Ximenes, Buckingham, Richelieu, or Mazarin; but our conduct and our enterprises
+depend solely upon the temper of our soul, and our successes depend
+upon fortune. For example, if such a genius as Pope Alexander VI or his
+son Borgia had had to take La Rochelle, he would have invited the principal
+leaders to his camp under a solemn oath and would have made away with
+them. Mazarin would have entered the city two or three years later by
+winning over and dividing the citizens. Don Luis de Haro would not have
+risked the enterprise. Richelieu built a dyke along the sea, after the example
+of Alexander, entered and took La Rochelle; but a less strong tide or a
+little greater promptness on the part of the English would have saved La
+Rochelle and made Richelieu seem foolhardy.</p>
+
+<p>The character of men can be judged by their enterprises. It may well be
+said that the soul of Richelieu breathed pride and vengeance, that Mazarin
+was wise, pliant, and avaricious. But in order to tell in how far a minister
+has genius one must either have frequently heard him talk, or one must
+read what he has written. What is seen every day among courtiers often
+happens among statesmen: he who has most genius fails, while he who has
+in his character more of patience, force, pliancy, and persistence succeeds.
+On reading the letters of Cardinal Mazarin and the <i>Mémoires</i> of Cardinal de
+Retz<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18j4"><a href="#endnote_18j">j</a></span> one easily sees that De Retz was the superior genius. Nevertheless
+Mazarin was all-powerful and De Retz was overthrown. Finally, it is quite
+true that to make a powerful minister often nothing is needed but a mediocre
+mind, good sense, and luck; but to be a good minister a man must
+have love for the public welfare as his dominant passion. The great statesman
+is he who leaves to his country great and useful memorials.</p>
+
+<p>The memorial that immortalises Cardinal Mazarin is the acquisition
+of Alsace. He gave this province to France at a time when France was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_524">[524]</span>enraged at him; and by a singular fatality he did more good for the kingdom
+when he was persecuted than in the tranquillity of absolute power.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i10"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mazarin’s end [says Michelet] was at least consistent with his life—he
+lived and died a cheat. He believed he had cheated the future. Fortunate
+player, he had all his plans well laid. The prophecies of his youth were
+fulfilled. He had appeared, at the age of twenty-five, upon a field of battle
+crying, “Peace! Peace!” From the noble and serious workers who had
+died painfully in preparing his opportunities, he filched the glory of the
+triumphant Peace of Westphalia and that of the Pyrenees. Richelieu sowed,
+Mazarin harvested. The one created the administration, the army, the navy,
+and died on the eve of Rocroi. The other spoiled everything and succeeded
+in everything. Great through the greatness of Condé, and greater through
+that of Turenne, his position was strengthened by even the futile tempest of
+the Fronde; he retains at least the honour of that forced and fatal peace
+into which France fell through sheer lassitude. This pedestal is still left
+him; his features even after death wear the mask of the Angel of Peace.</p>
+
+<p>Was it really peace? Too late it had arrived: Germany, agonising in
+ruin, found no peace in the Treaty of Westphalia; Spain, dead and done
+with, was in no condition to reap benefit from the Peace of the Pyrenees.
+And France herself, entering by this door into a fifty years’ struggle for the
+Spanish succession, was to find in this peace fiscal war at home and bloody
+strife abroad.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18b4"><a href="#endnote_18b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-18.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> [Michelet<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18b5"><a href="#endnote_18b">b</a></span> believes that the love affair of Mazarin and the queen began even earlier than their
+contemporaries think. He says: “It has been said that Louis XIV was the son of Mazarin—this
+is certainly wrong. He was of France, ballasted by Austria. But his brother, the second
+duke of Orleans (born September 22nd, 1640), like the first, Gaston, was thoroughly Italian in
+spirit and in manner. He was as much Mazarin as Gaston was Concini. I fully appreciate the
+difficulties. Their contemporaries believe that she did not give herself to him until later. There
+was at least one entr’acte in her favour.” To a court tradition, related, among others, by the
+Princess Palatine,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18n"><a href="#endnote_18n">n</a></span> mother of the regent, is due a belief that Mazarin’s continued hold over the
+queen-mother is explained by the fact that they had been secretly married. Kitchin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18o"><a href="#endnote_18o">o</a></span> says “there
+is no reason to doubt that they were actually married.” But Martin assures us that “there is not
+the slightest indication of this, either in their correspondence or in what we know of the <i>Carnets</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18p"><a href="#endnote_18p">p</a></span>
+of Mazarin.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> [He was, however, a deacon, and so in lesser orders.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> [This statement is not substantiated, and is not to be found in any contemporary writing.
+The first book that speaks of it bears the date 1694.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> [The aged prince of Condé (Henry II de Bourbon) died December 26th, 1646, when the
+duke d’Enghien (Louis II de Bourbon) assumed his father’s title. He came to be known as
+“The Great Condé,” and we shall see much of him in the ensuing pages. He was born at Paris,
+September 8th, 1621; died, December 11th, 1686. The first prince of Condé (Louis I de Bourbon),
+whose death at the battle of Jarnac in 1569 will be recalled (see <a href="#Page_363">p. 363</a>), was his great-grand-father.
+This first prince of Condé was the younger brother of Anthony, king of Navarre, the
+father of King Henry IV. So the Great Condé came honestly by his fighting propensities.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> [Some historians refuse to credit Condé with these words. Indeed, Madame de Motteville
+reports a much less stirring harangue: “My friends, have good courage; we must of necessity
+fight to-day. It will be useless to back out. For I promise you that all the brave and the cowardly
+will fight; the ones of good will, the others through compulsion!” “This was perhaps,”
+adds Duruy,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18h2"><a href="#endnote_18h">h</a></span> “the only kind of language to impress the soldiers at that time.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> [Cardinal de Retz was the descendant of a Florentine family that came to the court of
+France in the suite of Catherine de’ Medici; it was his grand-uncle who figured so prominently
+in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. See above, pp. 369, 399.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> [According to Voltaire,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18i11"><a href="#endnote_18i">i</a></span> so low were the royal resources that almost the entire court had
+to sleep, while at St. Germain, on straw. They were obliged to leave the crown jewels as security
+with the usurers. The young king often lacked necessities. The pages of his chamber were
+dismissed because there were no means to keep them. At the same time Louis’ aunt, Henrietta
+Maria of England, in refuge at Paris, was reduced to the extremes of poverty; her daughter,
+afterwards married to Louis’ brother, had to stay in bed to keep warm.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> [He went first to Liège and afterwards to Cologne.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> [In comparing these great rivals, Kitchin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18q2"><a href="#endnote_18q">q</a></span> says: “It has been well said of these two masters
+in war, that as Condé grew older he lost his early fire and military insight, without becoming wiser
+or more prudent, while each campaign made Turenne more daring as well as more skilful. The
+careers of the two great soldiers form a striking contrast: it is genius without industry pitted
+against high talent combined with infinite painstaking, and a belief in the scientific treatment of
+the art of war. The more brilliant Condé was sure to fail when pitted against Turenne.”
+Vicomte de Turenne (Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne) was a grandson of William the Silent. He
+was born in 1611 (September 11th, at Sedan), and was therefore now just over forty. Condé was
+ten years younger (born September 8th, 1621). The span of life of each of the great generals was
+destined to compass almost exactly the same period; Turenne being just under sixty-four, Condé
+just over sixty-five, at death.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> [“Joan of Arc made France a nation against the English; Louis XIV made France a state
+against all Europe. The Fronde had none of these creative ideas—whence its incertitude and
+its weakness. Louis XIV had the idea of state—whence his firmness, his decision, and that
+famous phrase, ‘<i>L’État, c’est moi</i>,’ which has been taken for an expression of pride but was an
+expression of policy.”—<span class="smcap">Saint-Marc Girardin.</span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> [See <a href="#Footnote_96">note, page 488</a>.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> [The three ecclesiastical electors, the duke of Bavaria, the princes of Brunswick and of
+Hesse, the kings of Sweden and Denmark.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> [It has been suggested that Mazarin purposely made the dowry such as Spain could not
+well pay, so that the treaty must be broken. That clause once broken, the renunciation of the
+succession was also void, with the rest of the treaty. If such was really Mazarin’s plan, it was
+an extraordinary one.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> [The marriage had taken place in June, 1660, at Fuenterrabia in the Pyrenees.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> [We may add that he pensioned several writers—among them Descartes and the historian
+Mézeray—and that he provided for the splendid Mazarin library, opened later to the public.
+“Mazarin,” says Duruy,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_18h3"><a href="#endnote_18h">h</a></span> “had the liveliest if not the best taste for art. He brought from Italy
+a number of paintings, statues, and curiosities—even actors and machinists who introduced the
+opera into France. In 1655 he founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_525">[525]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-19.jpg" width="500" height="225" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX. “L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>The two foundations of the absolute throne of Louis XIV were terror
+and admiration: the terror of a power which had subjugated the army,
+the church, the magistracy, the noblesse, and the municipalities; the
+admiration of a power to which literature and art, arms and fortune,
+rendered their richest and their uninterrupted tribute. King-worship
+had never before taken so entire a possession of any Christian state.
+Never had the luxurious pomp of an Oriental court been so intimately
+and so long associated with the energies, the refined tastes, and the intellectual
+culture of an European sovereignty. During fifty successive
+years, Louis continued to be the greatest actor on the noblest stage, and
+in the presence of the most enthusiastic audience, of the world.—<span class="smcap">Stephen.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19p"><a href="#endnote_19p">p</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Never had there been at any court more intrigues and hopes than
+during the last hours of Cardinal Mazarin. Women who had any pretence
+to beauty were flattering themselves that they would now govern a twenty-two-year-old
+prince whom love had already so far seduced as to make him
+offer his crown to his mistress. The young courtiers had hopes that the
+reign of the favourites would return; each minister was expecting the first
+place; none of them thought that a king who had been so excluded from
+affairs would dare take upon himself the burden of government. Mazarin
+had prolonged the king’s childhood as far as he could; and only for a short
+time had been giving him instructions, and that because the king had
+demanded it. So far were they from expecting to be governed by their
+sovereign, that of all those who had hitherto worked with the prime minister
+there was none who asked the king when he wished an audience.
+One and all asked, “To whom shall we now address ourselves?”—and Louis
+XIV replied, “To me.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19b1"><a href="#endnote_19b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The secretary of state for war, Michel le Tellier, hastened with the
+astounding piece of news to the queen-mother, who laughed in his face:
+“In good faith, M. le Tellier, what do you think of it?” This resolution,
+however, was nothing but the accomplishment of the advice twenty times
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_526">[526]</span>given by Mazarin, and if there was any cause for astonishment it was not
+that the king took the advice but that he held to it; he was, as La Bruyère
+says, “his own prime minister and exacted of the chief state functionaries
+that they deal directly with him.” For thirty years he worked regularly
+eight hours a day. He relates in his <i>Mémoires</i>,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19f1"><a href="#endnote_19f">f</a></span> with legitimate pride, the
+effect produced by the announcement of his assumption of authority, and he
+recommends his son in a few truly eloquent words “not to forget that it is
+by work one reigns; to rule without working is to be ungrateful and defiant
+towards God, unjust and tyrannical towards man.”</p>
+
+<p>But what is still more remarkable is that the young prince who so boldly
+assumed the power had already mapped out his policy. Not only did Louis
+XIV rule with the boundless power of some of his predecessors, but he was
+the first to establish in France the theory of an absolute monarchy. In his
+eyes royalty was a divine institution. Sovereigns were the representatives
+of God upon earth—his inspired lieutenants; and on this account participators,
+in a fashion, in his power and infallibility. And as royalty, in
+making itself absolute, had kept to the old principle of feudal law, that sovereignty
+and property are the same thing, Louis not only believed himself
+master of his subjects, but the owner of their possessions—a monstrous
+doctrine which carries us back to oriental monarchies. At all events it did
+not seem to him that authority to which he recognised no limits but those
+imposed by conscience and by religion, ought to remain sterile. He wished it
+active and hard working; he believed that kings had imperious duties to
+fulfil. It was thus that Louis XIV understood his royal profession.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c1"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span> Nor
+can it be denied that he carried out to a large extent in practice the theory
+of royalty that he professed. He was destined to reign for fifty-four years
+after the death of Mazarin; his reign in its entirety being one of the longest
+in history. After Mazarin he had no minister whom he did not dominate: he
+was king in fact as well as in name. He came to be by far the most famous
+monarch of his time. His court at Versailles set a standard of magnificence
+which other monarchs of that and succeeding ages strove to imitate without
+hoping to rival.</p>
+
+<p>In his political relations with his subjects, as has been said, Louis came
+to represent the culmination of that autocratic system which for generations
+had been almost steadily advancing in France,—a system which had known
+such exponents as Louis XI, Francis I, and Henry IV; and which Sully,
+Richelieu, and Mazarin had done so much to fortify. Nor did he confine
+his theory to his own subjects. He came finally to feel almost the same
+proprietary right in the affairs of Europe and he attempted with the aid of
+his armies to dictate to foreign nations somewhat as he dictated within the
+bounds of his own territory. And, having the good fortune to be served
+by two great soldiers, Condé and Turenne, he was enabled, notwithstanding
+his own rather meagre military talents, to carry out the idea here also with
+some measure of success. It was a qualified success, to be sure, for he did not
+secure the control of Holland at which he aimed; he did not very greatly
+extend the boundaries of France; and if his grandson was left finally in
+possession of the Spanish throne, this was a victory tempered with the concession
+that the thrones of Spain and France should never be consolidated.
+Nevertheless, to have embroiled all Europe in war after war; to have been
+the central figure of a long epoch; to have given his name to an important
+period of history; to have placed that name in the small list of those rulers
+to whom posterity concedes the title “Great,”—this surely is to have played
+the part of king right royally.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_527">[527]</span></p>
+
+<p>This reign, then, is a curiously full and vital one. We shall best understand
+it perhaps if we study it first from within, witnessing the activities of
+the great monarch in his relations with his own people before turning (in
+subsequent chapters) to the foreign relations of the kingdom. As preliminary
+to this study of the economic and social development of France during the
+long reign of Louis XIV, we must take a glance at the interesting figure
+of the monarch himself. In the first place it must be remembered that this
+remarkable man had a remarkable heritage. He numbered among his direct
+ancestors not far removed such remarkable characters as Henry IV of France,
+the German emperor Charles V, and the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and
+Isabella. This in itself suggests a strange mixture of races in his ancestry.
+But further examination of his ancestral tree reveals even more striking
+facts. It appears that this greatest of French kings is, so far as his ancestral
+blood is concerned, almost as much Spaniard or Italian as he is French;
+and quite as much German. His father was born in France, his mother in
+Spain; of his four grandparents one was born in France, one in Spain,
+one in Italy, one in Germany. Of his thirty ancestors within four generations
+only eight were born in France while ten were born in Germany
+or in the yet farther outlying regions of Hungary and Bohemia; the remainder
+of the company being distributed between Spain (and Portugal)
+and Italy. The subtended table<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> showing details of the ancestry of Louis
+XIV for four generations will make these facts clear at a glance. It is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_528">[528]</span>worthy of careful study as illustrating in detail the heterogeneity of ethnic
+elements that went to build up the personality of this cosmopolite. Persons
+fond of generalising as to national characteristics will perhaps feel that the
+more conspicuous traits of Louis’ personality are not difficult to account
+for in the light of his conglomerate ancestry.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1683 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Leaving such speculations, however, to whoever may choose to make
+them, let us turn from the ancestry of the king to the king himself. “He
+had,” says Kitchin,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19q"><a href="#endnote_19q">q</a></span> “all the qualities which strike the eye: and was, as
+Bolingbroke acutely remarked, ‘if not the greatest king, the best actor of
+majesty at least that ever filled a throne’; as a king should be, he was
+courteous, dignified, calm, and ‘debonair,’ firm in act and speech, and constant:
+he had a great sense of duty and propriety; and said himself that a
+king should act according to the dictates of good sense; he cultivated that
+habitual discretion and seriousness of manner which often cloak ignorance
+or want of capacity. He spoke but little, that little, however, was to the
+point; he was reserved, was thought rather stingy, did not often laugh.
+These characteristics were backed by one marked quality, strength of will,
+which could be obstinacy: and were all made subservient to one persistent
+passion, the inordinate desire of reputation and glory.” Yet Kitchin sees
+in Louis, on the whole, a “second-rate man,” distinctly inferior in many ways
+to his grandfather, Henry IV. Thus he declares that “In no branch of his
+life’s work does Louis show one spark of originality; even Voltaire confesses
+that there was ‘more uprightness and dignity than spring’ in him: he had
+no boldness and no enthusiasm: ‘he made war without being a warrior,’
+decreed many laws, but had not the slightest idea of legislation; he busied
+himself with administration, but had no real organising gifts. He had that
+sure mark which distinguishes the second-rate man from the great man: he
+loved details for their own sake; he shrank instinctively from all that was
+noble and strong; and chose the inferior agent in preference to the better.”</p>
+
+<p>It seems almost paradoxical to pronounce such a judgment as this upon
+a monarch of such celebrity. Yet perhaps the judgment is not far from
+just. Louis XIV had the good fortune to follow Henry IV and Richelieu
+and Mazarin; the later years of his reign, in which he was in effect gathering
+the harvest of his own sowing, are far less notable than are the earlier ones
+during which he profited by the labours of his forerunners. Yet after all
+allowances are made for Louis’ shortcomings and for his mistakes, it seems
+futile to deny that the famous monarch who for the space of almost three
+average generations dominated the European situation had at least some of
+the elements of greatness.</p>
+
+<p>With this introduction to the personality of Louis XIV, we are now
+prepared to take up in detail the affairs of his government. First of all, as
+has been said, we shall consider those measures through which the internal
+prosperity of France was furthered during the early years of the reign. In
+so doing we shall have occasion to see something of the ministers who aided
+Louis in this work. There are no more Richelieus and Mazarins; yet in
+Colbert we have a man not altogether unworthy to wear the mantle of these
+great predecessors; nor are Le Tellier, Lionne, and Fouquet by any means
+despicable.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE MINISTERS</h3>
+
+<p>The <i>clercs au secret</i> who, in 1547, became ministers of state were four in
+number; each of them administered not only certain affairs, but all the
+affairs of certain provinces. They formed an impracticable organisation.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_529">[529]</span>The religious wars, the troubles of Louis XIII’s minority, prevented any
+change.<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1619 a single member of the ministry was charged with the conduct
+of war and with the correspondence with the <i>chefs de corps</i>; another in 1626
+had the foreign affairs. Finally under Louis XIV the ministry of the king’s
+household was established for ecclesiastical affairs and those of the navy.
+Important posts, raised to offices, that is to say, making their holders irremovable—such
+as the chancellor-keeper of the seals, chief of the magistracy,
+and controller-general of the finances—were like two other ministries. The
+special functions allotted to each of the four secretaries of state did not prevent
+them from keeping, for other affairs, the old-time division by provinces
+which existed until the Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The ministers whom Mazarin had left behind him were Pierre Séguier,
+chancellor and keeper of the seals, a sort of irremovable minister who was
+clever enough, by assuming no political importance, to make himself regarded
+as necessary for fifty years; Michel le Tellier, secretary of state for war,
+Hugues de Lionne who had charge of the marine (the portfolio of which he
+kept till 1669) and of foreign affairs; and Nicholas Fouquet, the superintendent
+of finance. The first two were distinguished men, the third a superior
+man; as for the fourth, Fouquet, by his encouragement of letters, he had
+acquired the reputation of a generous Mæcenas, and he counted illustrious
+persons among his friends—Pellisson, La Fontaine, Gourville, Madame de
+Sévigné and Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who have pleaded his cause before
+posterity without gaining it. He had put, or rather left, the finances in
+extreme disorder and he himself drew without scruple on the treasury. He
+was increasing the king’s expenses and diminishing the receipts; finally,
+what was still more serious, he seemed to seek supporters everywhere, even
+amongst the great nobles, and he fortified the places of which he held command
+as though to prepare for himself, in case of disgrace, an impregnable
+retreat. He was almost a frondeur; he was certainly a knave. Less was
+needed for Louis to strike him.</p>
+
+<p>The king had a secret minister who every evening called his attention to
+the errors and falsehoods of the superintendent. This was Jean-Baptiste
+Colbert, born at Rheims in 1619 of an ancient family of tradesmen and magistrates.
+He had been intendant to Mazarin, who before he died had said to
+the king: “Sire, I owe you everything; but I think I am to some extent
+discharging my debt when I give you Colbert.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c2"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This working together in secret was the cause of the catastrophe of Fouquet,
+in which were involved many others. The fall of this minister, who is
+much less to be reproached than is Cardinal Mazarin, teaches us that it is not
+the privilege of everybody to commit the same faults.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19b2"><a href="#endnote_19b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The precaution of disarming Fouquet was made in advance. His post of
+general prosecutor assured him the privilege of being judged by parliament;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_530">[530]</span>and the king put no trust, and for reason, in the justice of parliament. Fouquet
+therefore was skilfully inveigled into selling his post. It is said that
+he discarded his robe of office in the hope of obtaining the <i>cordon bleu</i>, which
+the king did not wish any longer to give to persons connected with justice.
+Moreover, he was counting on becoming chancellor on the death of the aged
+Séguier. Of the 1,400,000 francs, the price of his office, he offered one million
+as a pure gift to the king, who had expressed to him a desire for ready
+money. He thus prepared the instruments of his own ruin. It was feared
+that at the moment of his arrest his friends would attempt to get him to
+Belle-Île and to agitate Brittany and Normandy where many malcontents
+were under cover. A journey to Brittany was planned for the coming month
+of September, under pretence of holding the provincial estate at Nantes and
+of obtaining a greater gratuitous gift through the presence of the king.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19d1"><a href="#endnote_19d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Fouquet’s undoing was thus already resolved upon when the king accepted
+the magnificent fête which the minister arranged for him at his house at Vaux
+for August 17th, 1661. The palace and its gardens had cost him about eighteen
+millions.<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> He had built the mansion twice over and bought three hamlets
+whose area was included in the enormous gardens, then considered the most
+beautiful in all Europe. The fountains of Vaux, since relegated to mediocrity
+by those of Versailles, Marly, and St. Cloud, were marvels in their day.
+But however magnificent the place, its enormous cost proves that he had
+been served with as little economy as he himself served the king. It was
+also true that St. Germain and Fontainebleau, the only pleasure places used
+by the king, could not compare in beauty with Vaux. Louis XIV felt this
+and it irritated him. All over the mansion were to be seen the arms and
+motto of Fouquet—a squirrel with these words, <i>Quo non ascendam?</i> (To
+what point shall I not mount?)</p>
+
+<p>The king interpreted the device for himself; the ambition of the motto
+did not serve to appease the monarch. The courtiers remarked that the
+squirrel was everywhere painted pursued by a snake which was the arms of
+Colbert. The fête was far beyond those which Mazarin had given, not only
+in magnificence but in taste. The <i>Facheux</i> of Molière was presented for the
+first time: Pellisson had written the prologue, which was much admired.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19b3"><a href="#endnote_19b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The king said to the queen-mother in anger, “Ah, madame, shall we not
+make this fellow disgorge his prey?” And he was tempted to have the
+minister arrested on the spot; however, he restrained himself.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c3"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the 5th of September, during the prearranged sojourn of the court
+of Nantes, D’Artagnan, captain of the musketeers, laid hands on Fouquet as
+he was leaving the cabinet of the king, put him into a coach and conducted
+him under a strong escort to the château of Angers. He had the greatest
+difficulty in protecting the superintendent during the journey from the fury
+of the people. All his houses were sealed and his property was seized.
+Among the latter were found directions as to what his friends should do in
+case he was arrested. The plan, like those that Cardinal de Retz had made
+several times, consisted in procuring for him places, money, and presses by
+means of which France could be inundated with pamphlets. Fouquet was
+transferred without delay to Vincennes and brought before a chamber of
+justice.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19e1"><a href="#endnote_19e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was accused of wasting the revenues, which was only too true, and
+of plotting against the safety of the state, which was never proved. At the
+end of three years nine judges gave their voices for death, thirteen others
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_531">[531]</span>for banishment. The king, aggravating the penalty, changed it into perpetual
+imprisonment and Fouquet was incarcerated in the citadel of Pinerolo,
+where he died after nineteen years of captivity (March 23, 1680).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c4"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Man with the Iron Mask</i></h4>
+
+<p>For a long time Fouquet’s end remained a mystery; and even Voltaire,
+writing little more than a half century afterwards, says, “We do not know
+where died the unfortunate man, whose least actions in the days of his power
+made a stir.” For this reason attempts were afterwards made to connect
+Fouquet with one of the most extraordinary episodes of the secret history
+of Louis XIV’s reign.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We know that a masked and unknown prisoner, object of an extraordinary
+surveillance, died in 1703 in the Bastille, whither he had been brought
+from the Îsle Ste. Marguerite in 1698 (and was buried under the name of
+Marchiali). He had been detained about ten years in these islands, and
+traces of his existence are found in the fortress of Exilles and at Pinerolo as
+far back as 1681. Now no great personage disappeared in Europe about
+this time. What powerful motive had the government of Louis XIV for
+concealing this mysterious visage from human sight? Many explanations
+more or less chimeric, more or less plausible, have been attempted of the
+“man with the iron mask” (an erroneous term; the mask was not of iron
+but of black velvet; it was probably one of those <i>loups</i> so long in use). In
+1837 Le Bibliophile Jacob (Paul la Croix) published an ingenious volume to
+prove that Fouquet was passed off as dead, sequestered anew, and, masked,
+dragged from fortress to fortress until his death in 1703.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19d2"><a href="#endnote_19d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Many other theories have been advanced to account for this person’s
+identity. It has been said that he was a twin brother of Louis XIV, who
+had been made to disappear; the count de Vermandois, natural son of Louis
+XIV and Mademoiselle de la Vallière, who was imprisoned for having struck
+the dauphin; the duke de Beaufort, who disappeared at the siege of Candia
+(1669); the duke of Monmouth, nephew of James II; Count Girolamo
+Mattioli, minister of Mantua, who was abducted from Turin for having prevented
+his master from selling Casale to the king of France (this hypothesis
+is sustained by Topin<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19g"><a href="#endnote_19g">g</a></span>); or Giovanni di Gonzaga, Mattioli’s secretary; a
+son of Anne of Austria by Buckingham or Mazarin; the Armenian patriarch
+Avedick; and, according to a recent theory of M. Bazeries, a certain general
+De Bulonde, imprisoned for raising the siege of Candia in spite of Catinat’s
+orders.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19h"><a href="#endnote_19h">h</a></span> But the very multiplicity of theories sufficiently shows the doubtful
+character of each and all of them; and the identification of the man with the
+iron mask still holds a place among the most curious of the unsolved enigmas
+of history.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE MINISTRY OF COLBERT</h3>
+
+<p>The great trial of Fouquet involved another victim: Pellisson was condemned
+to restore 200,000 livres. But he was one of those skilful persons
+who, having fallen, always rise. From having been a Calvinist he became a
+Catholic and perhaps died a Protestant; from being Fouquet’s friend he became
+the favourite of the king [Louis XIV] and drew up his <i>Mémoires</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19f2"><a href="#endnote_19f">f</a></span> in which he
+speaks of the superintendent’s thefts, and he founded a prize at the Academy
+for an annual eulogy of Louis XIV. Thanks to his verses and his prose,
+which were supple like his conduct, he was very successful in money matters.
+In 1677 he was in receipt of 75,000 livres, just the same sum as Vauban
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_532">[532]</span>received, without counting abbeys and priories. Finally he was a kind of
+prime minister and had charge of the funds devoted to the conversion of
+heretics, and yet he brought so much dignity into his office that posterity
+has forgotten in him the man of business and only remembers the man of
+letters. Colbert succeeded Fouquet with the title of controller-general. In
+1666 Michel le Tellier left his charge to his son, the celebrated Louvois; the
+first ministry of Louis XIV was thus complete.</p>
+
+<p>Colbert directed five of the French departments of administration: the
+king’s household, with the fine arts, the finances, agriculture, with commerce,
+public works, and, after 1669, the navy—a crushing weight under
+which he did not succumb.</p>
+
+<p>“Jean Baptiste Colbert,” says a contemporary, “had naturally a frowning
+countenance. His hollow eyes and thick eyebrows gave him an air of austerity
+and rendered him at first sight savage and forbidding; but afterwards
+when one came to know him, he was sufficiently facile, expeditious, and
+immutably steadfast. He was persuaded that good faith is the solid foundation
+of all business. Infinite application and an insatiable desire to learn
+took with him the place of knowledge. He was a restorer of the finances,
+which on his accession to the ministry he found in a very bad condition. A
+solid but ponderous intelligence, born principally for calculation, he disentangled
+all the embarrassments which the superintendents and royal treasurers
+had purposely introduced into the accounts in order that they might
+fish in troubled waters.” Let us add that this austere and hard financier,
+“this man of marble,” as Gui Patin calls him, had a heart. “We must be
+careful of every five sous in matters which are not of necessity,” he wrote to
+Louis XIV, “and lavish millions when it is a question of your glory. A
+useless banquet costing 3,000 livres gives me incredible pain; and when it
+is a question of millions of gold for the affair of Poland, I would sell all
+my goods, I would pledge my wife and children, and I would go on foot
+all my life to provide them.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>Reorganisation of the Finances</i></h4>
+
+<p>The finances, indeed, had fallen back into the chaos from which Sully had
+rescued them. The public debt was four hundred and thirty millions, the
+revenues were swallowed up three years in advance, and out of eighty-four
+millions in annual imposts the treasury received scarcely thirty-five. Colbert
+began by annulling or reimbursing at the rate of purchase eight millions of
+bonds on the Hôtel-de-Ville, which had been acquired at an insignificant
+price, and caused the <i>chambre de police</i> to make an investigation of the malversations
+committed by officers of finance during the last twenty-five years;
+the very curés had to press their parishioners to denounce abuses. The money
+lenders who had taken advantage of the necessities of the state to lend to it
+at usurious interest were made to disgorge their profits; the fines rose to
+one hundred and ten millions; several money lenders were hanged. These
+were measures in harmony with the spirit of the times but not in accordance
+with good policy; the surest way for the state to avoid having to submit to
+burdensome contracts in evil days is to hold, in good ones, to a promise once
+given, because there are no usurers save for those who are suspected of not
+paying their debts.</p>
+
+<p>Colbert was the true creator of the budget. Hitherto money had been
+dispensed haphazard, without consulting the receipts of the treasury. He
+was the first to draw up annually a provisional statement divided into two
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_533">[533]</span>chapters in which the probable revenues and expenses were set down beforehand.
+When a secretary of state had a disbursement to make he signed an
+order for the intended payment; the persons receiving it presented it at the
+office of the controller-general’s department, when the payment of the sum
+was charged on a particular fund and this assignment was presented for the
+king’s signature.</p>
+
+<p>Colbert modified the form and assessment of the imposts. The <i>taille</i>, or
+tax on landed property, was personal, that is it was paid by the <i>roturiers</i> and
+in certain circumstances two or three times in the same year. He wished to
+make it real as it was in the south, as it now is everywhere—that is to say,
+payable on the landed property, whoever the holders might be. In 1661 it
+had reached fifty-three millions; he
+brought it back to thirty-two. Amid
+the troubles of the Fronde many
+persons had been ennobled on their
+own authority or had bought titles
+of nobility for a few crowns; these
+were so many privileged individuals
+added to the real ones. As early as
+1662 Molière in the <i>École des femmes</i>
+had laughed at this vanity which
+cost the people dear. A royal ordinance
+revoked all the letters of nobility
+granted within the last thirty
+years: Gros-Pierre was obliged to
+show his titles and had none, and
+nearly forty thousand families
+amongst the richest in the parishes
+were once more subjected to the
+impost which proportionately lightened
+the burdens of their neighbours.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p533.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Colbert</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1619-1683)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The controller-general rightfully
+preferred to the <i>taille</i> the <i>aides</i> or
+indirect taxes to which all contributed.
+He diminished the price of
+salt, a commodity of the first necessity
+to the poor; but he increased
+or created taxes on coffee, tobacco,
+wines, cards, etc., and from one million
+five hundred thousand francs brought them up to twenty-one millions.
+Thus the indirect taxes, some of which have been so vigorously attacked in
+our own day, had their origin in an idea of justice and equality.</p>
+
+<p>He disliked loans, not because he did not understand the advantage of
+borrowing at a low price to repay burdensome debts, but he dreaded giving
+Louis XIV facilities for burdening the future to the advantage of the present.
+On leaving the council in which the first loan was decided on, in 1672, he
+bitterly reproached Lamoignon for having approved this measure. “Do you
+know as I do the man with whom we have to deal, his passion for display, for
+great enterprises, for all kinds of expenses? Here is a free course opened for
+loans and by consequence for unlimited expenditure and taxes. You shall
+answer for it to the nation and to posterity.”</p>
+
+<p>In truth a time was to come when Colbert would be no longer there and
+Louis XIV would borrow at 400 per cent. At least the great minister tried
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_534">[534]</span>to protect the treasury against the exigencies of the financiers by inviting the
+small capitalists to pour their funds directly, without costly intermediaries,
+into a loan account which he established for the purpose and into which the
+money flowed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c5"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Colbert’s efforts extended into so many fields that it is impossible to
+follow them in detail. His service to agriculture was most beneficial. He
+exempted very large families from paying tithes, and forbade the seizure of
+implements and beasts of labour for non-payment of taxes. He improved
+the breeds of horses and cattle by crossing them with imported animals. His
+code for water highways and forests is still largely in force.</p>
+
+<p>He assisted industry by sparing no means of obtaining the manufacturing
+secrets of neighbouring countries. In 1669, says Duruy,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c6"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span> there were
+42,220 looms and more than 60,000 workers in wool alone. The draperies
+of Sedan, Louviers, Abbeville, and Elbeuf were unrivalled in Europe; tin
+plate, steel, faience, and morocco leather, which had largely been imported,
+were now made in France; the cloth and serges of Holland, Genoese point,
+and velvets were imitated and equalled, the carpets of Persia and Turkey
+surpassed at the Savonnerie, at Aubusson, and at Beauvais. The rich silken
+stuffs shot with gold and silver were made at Tours and at Lyons; at Tour-la-Ville
+(near Cherbourg) and at Paris they made finer glassware than at
+Venice. The tapestries of Flanders yielded to those of the Gobelins.</p>
+
+<p>For commerce the great minister did much by regulating customs and
+reducing tariffs. He made Dunkirk, Bayonne, and Marseilles free ports, and
+was the projector of the Burgundian canal opened in 1692, and built between
+1664 and 1681, that connected the Mediterranean at Cette with the Garonne
+(and consequently the ocean) at Toulouse. Henry IV’s council of commerce
+was re-established in 1665 and the king presided over its fortnightly meetings.</p>
+
+<p>At that period the Dutch and the English were far ahead of the French
+in foreign trade. The better to compete with these rivals Colbert substituted
+privileged associations for the isolated efforts of individuals. “He established,”
+says Duruy,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c7"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span> “five great companies modelled on the English and
+Dutch societies; those of the <i>Indes Orientales</i> and the <i>Indes Occidentales</i> in
+1664; the <i>Compagnie du Nord</i> and the <i>Compagnie du Levant</i> in 1666, and the
+<i>Compagnie du Sénégal</i> in 1673, according them exclusive commercial monopolies
+and granting them considerable loans. He wished to restore life to the
+colonial system, much neglected since the days of Richelieu. The French
+now possessed only Canada, with Acadia, Cayenne, the Île de Bourbon [Île
+de Réunion], and several establishments in Madagascar and the Indies.
+Colbert purchased, for less than a million, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St.
+Lucia, Grenada, and the Grenadines, Marie Galante, St. Martin, St. Christopher,
+St. Bartholomew, Santa Cruz, and Tortuga (Île de la Tortue) in the
+West Indies. He placed under the protection of France the French filibusters
+of Santo Domingo who had seized the western portion of the island
+(1664). He planted new colonies in Cayenne (1677) and in Canada (1665).
+He took Newfoundland in order to control the entrance to the St. Lawrence,
+and began the occupation of the magnificent valley of the Mississippi, which
+had just been explored by that adventurous captain, Robert de la Salle
+(1680). In Africa he wrested Gorée in Senegal from the Dutch in 1665
+and took possession of the east coast of Madagascar. In Asia the <i>Compagnie
+des Indes</i> established itself at Surat and Chandarnagar and afterwards at
+Pondicherry,” but to offset these achievements he was short-sighted enough
+to close the colonial ports to foreign vessels and to forbid in 1669 the importation
+of sugar and tobacco from Brazil.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_535">[535]</span></p>
+
+<p>Colbert also revived the navy and established the naval inscription by
+which the people of these maritime provinces, in return for certain advantages,
+furnished the necessary recruits for the navy, dividing them according
+to age and family position into different classes (the <i>régime des classes</i>).
+He likewise instituted in 1672 the corps of marine guards, composed of
+one thousand gentlemen, in order to have good officers, a school of cannoneers
+for good marksmen, a school of hydrography, and a board of naval
+construction.</p>
+
+<p>For the encouragement of the fine arts and the sciences, the Academy of
+Inscriptions and Belle-Lettres was founded in 1663, the Academy of Science
+in 1666, the Academy of Music (1669), the Academy of Architecture in
+1671. A school of fine arts established at Rome (1667) received the prize
+pupils of the Academy of Painting in Paris who copied on canvas or in marble
+the masterpieces of antiquity. The cabinet of medals founded also a school
+for the study of oriental languages. The Royal Library received many additions
+and the Mazarine Library was opened to the public. The Jardin des
+Plantes was enlarged and the foundation of academies in the provinces
+encouraged. All the famous littérateurs and artists of the day were generally
+pensioned, including many from foreign countries who were induced to
+take up their residence in France.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Michelet’s Estimate of Colbert</i></h4>
+
+<p>The king in 1683 was relieved of Colbert. He pressed heavily upon
+him, forced him to reckon, was always talking of making the receipts
+balance the expenditures. In his long ministry of twenty years he had
+passed through two phases. During the first he tried to live on the revenue;
+during the second, dragged on and compelled, he borrowed and lived
+on the future. One moment he lightened the taxes and nevertheless collected
+ninety millions; but the king spent one hundred millions.</p>
+
+<p>Between him and the king there was a dispute about everything: concerning
+buildings—he condemned Versailles: concerning religion—he
+upheld the Protestant manufacturers. He died from his public disgrace—died
+because he could do nothing and had lost hope. Ridiculous quarrels
+were forced upon him. The king reproached him for the expense of Versailles,
+which had been built in spite of his advice to the contrary.<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a></p>
+
+<p>He died, detested and cursed. It was found necessary to bury him at
+night to protect his body from the insults of the populace. Songs were
+composed, <i>ponts neufs</i> on the death of the tyrant. Was this word wrongly
+applied? Not at all. This great man had been the tyrant of France in two
+ways at once—tyrant through his position, the times, and the necessity of
+things; tyrant through his violence in well doing and his impatience, through
+his impulsiveness of will.</p>
+
+<p>The war and Louvois, the king and the court, Versailles and the immense
+waste had been blamed very justly. But there was something else. The
+situation was tyrannical. Colbert built on a foundation already ruined, on
+that of the misery which grew in that century without anything being able
+to stop it—political and moral causes come from afar, above all, the indolence
+of the nobility and of the Catholics, which after having ruined Spain
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_536">[536]</span>was about to ruin France. Mazarin had killed Colbert in advance. The
+tax placed by the league of notables on the small landholder, which was
+doubled about 1648, compelled him to sell his field to the lord of the parish.
+But these fields, gathered together under idle hands, produced little. Under
+Colbert there was a famine every three years. To sustain the army and the
+working classes with ease, he himself kept the wheat at a low price, almost
+always forbidding its exportation, thus discouraging agricultural labour.
+From 1600 to 1700 every manufactured article quintupled in value. Wheat
+alone was treated as a natural product, in connection with which labour
+would avail nothing; nothing was done for it; it remained at the same
+price. That evil of Spain, the hatred of work, the taste for a life of ease had
+for a long time been inoculated in France. Colbert revolved in the circle
+of a fatal contradiction. He wanted to discourage idleness, he said; he
+struck at the false nobles. With what? With the authority of the king—of
+the king of nobles, who, attracting everything to the court, “ennobling”
+the nation, drew it into idleness. The dead and unproductive life of the
+courtier, of the priest, more and more deadened everything.</p>
+
+<p>This man of work was devoured by three great unproductive classes: the
+nobles, who more and more lived on the state; the officials, whom the progress
+of order brought into existence; the third class, the permanent army,
+enormously increased. Now, the king drawing little or nothing from the
+large rich body, that is the clergy, Colbert, triply crushed, was obliged to
+create a productive class, to over-stimulate work by driving industry abroad.
+War of customs duties, and soon a war of armies, resulted. He himself, who
+was so interested in maintaining peace, actively engaged in the war against
+Holland, and expected to gain something from it for the navy and for
+industry.</p>
+
+<p>History can cite nothing greater or more terrible than his sudden
+improvisation of the marine. It astonishes, it frightens, both by material
+enormity and by moral violence. Colbert demanded from France the severest
+sacrifice which had ever been asked of her (before the conscription<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>).</p>
+
+<p>He showed the same vehement impatience in commercial regulations, in
+the improvisation of a French industry. He was justly indignant at seeing
+an ingenious people, very artistic in many things, awaiting and receiving
+from elsewhere all the products of the useful arts. Manufactories are not
+only a product of wealth but of education also, a special development of certain
+faculties, of a certain aptitude. A people who did only one thing would
+be very low in the scale of nations. Colbert awakened and revealed in the
+French people an unknown aptitude; he caused a new art to burst forth,
+that above all, which puts good taste and elegance into all the requirements
+for the fitting out of a house, which relieves material life by a noble gleam of
+mind. It was splendid, it was grand of him. But the means were less
+happy. On the one hand, this budding industry he wanted perfect all at
+once; that young plant which could not grow without the liberties of life
+he confined and choked with tyrannical precautions. Almost at the outset,
+his regulations were laws of terror (even to putting a person in the pillory
+for defective merchandise, 1670). By requiring this perfection he hoped to
+gain credit for French goods abroad and to make people buy them with confidence.
+But, on the other hand, he prevented the manufacture of goods of
+inferior quality, to satisfy the less pretentious needs of the poorer classes.</p>
+
+<p>The grandeur of this industrial creation has been told wonderfully well;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_537">[537]</span>but not its fall, its prompt decadence. It perished both from the general
+poverty (no more buyers) and from emigration (the producers left even
+before the death of Colbert). His last glances beheld the decay of the
+edifice which was soon to crumble to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>The great historian of France for the end of this century is Pesant de
+Boisguillebert. He is not acquainted with ancient times and he is wrong
+in thinking that evils date from 1660. He is none the less truthful and
+admirable in the picture he gives of the misery of the country and of the
+crying abuses which continued even under Colbert. The three fiscal terrors
+(<i>tailles</i>, <i>aides</i>, <i>douanes</i>) are found there in characters of fire. One must see
+the unfortunate peasant collectors, who raise the land-tax and are responsible
+for it, march through the village. They
+go only together in companies for fear of being
+killed. But it is impossible to take away anything
+from him who has nothing. Everything
+falls back upon the collectors. The king’s
+bailiff seizes their cattle, the village flocks, then
+even their persons. They are imprisoned.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p537.jpg" width="200" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Costume of a Nobleman, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The case of the aides is much worse. The
+clerks, become merchants, make a fierce war
+on the merchants who wish to buy wine from
+the vine grower and not from them. All communication
+is broken off. “Everything which
+comes from Japan quadruples its price, merely
+on account of the distance. But everything
+here which passes from one province to another
+becomes twenty times dearer, twenty-four
+times. Wine for a sou at Orleans is worth
+twenty-four at Rouen. The salesman alone
+is six times more terrible than pirates and
+tempests, than a sea of four thousand leagues.”
+France pulls up its vines. The people no
+longer drink anything but water. The custom-house
+has killed foreign commerce. No
+merchant dares any longer to put himself in
+the hands of a receiver, who brings a suit
+against him if he wishes and who is judged
+only by his own judges.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the people, thus Colbert, remained
+the miserable slaves of the financiers, of the
+general farmers of the taxes, of negotiators,
+of partisans more powerful than the king.
+Colbert, on his coming to power, had had the
+good fortune to hang several of them. In vain. They survived and flourished
+and in the end strangled him; much worse, they caused his name to be
+cursed. Under Mazarin there was absolute chaos. Under Colbert there
+was relative order. The old abuses subsisted, but with the odious force of
+order which an established government lent to them. Under Mazarin
+France, miserable and in rags, still drank wine; but under Colbert it drank
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Progress was an evil. Under Colbert, the farming of the taxes was not
+given out to favourites, but was sold at auction, to the highest bidder, and thus
+it brought in more. Yes, but on the condition that the farmers were permitted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_538">[538]</span>to use the terrible severity which made tax collecting a war. In his mortal
+effort Colbert thus acted against himself. She escaped him, however, do
+what he would—this France whom he wished to cure, tormented by <i>recors</i>,
+eaten up by bailiffs’ men, expropriated, sold, and executed.</p>
+
+<p>The great malediction under which he died troubled him on his death-bed.
+A letter from the king came to him and he did not wish to read it.
+“If I had done for God,” said he, “what I have done for this man, I would
+be sure of being saved, and I do not know where I am going.” We know
+it, hero! You are going into glory. You remain in the heart of France.
+Great nations, who judge with time like God, are as equitable as he, valuing
+the labour less according to the result than in proportion to the effort, the
+grandeur of the desire.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19l1"><a href="#endnote_19l">l</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After Colbert’s death his ministry was divided. The marquis of Seignelay,
+his son, had the navy; the finances were intrusted to Claude le
+Pelletier (1683-1689), later by the count de Pontchartrain (1689-1699);
+these last succeeded but did not replace him. After 1689 the general penury
+was such, that Louis was obliged to send to the mint the masterpieces in
+chiselled silver which adorned Versailles.</p>
+
+<h3>LOUVOIS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1666-1691 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Colbert had organised peace; Louvois, “the greatest and most brutal of
+clerks,” organised war. François Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, was
+born in 1641. At the age of fifteen years he entered the office of his father,
+the secretary of state, and was initiated by a long apprenticeship into the
+science of military administration, to which he brought an activity equal to
+that of Colbert. When Louis XIV determined to assume the rule, Louvois
+became the real minister of war, although he did not succeed his father,
+Michel le Tellier, till 1666. He reformed the army, and his reforms lasted
+as long as the old monarchy. If he preserved the system of voluntary
+enlistment which had been in practice for three centuries, he diminished
+abuses and dangers by a more exact discipline and more severe regulations.
+He established uniforms by ordering that each regiment should be distinguished
+by the colour of its clothes and by various marks (1670). He
+introduced the use of copper pontoons for crossing rivers; he instituted
+magazines of food and supplies, barracks, military hospitals, the Hôtel des
+Invalides, all things almost unknown before his time. He created the corps
+of engineers whence came the great Vauban’s best pupils; schools of artillery
+at Douai, Metz, and Strasburg, the companies of grenadiers in the
+infantry, the regiments of hussars in the cavalry, and lastly cadet companies,
+a species of military school for the <i>gentilshommes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The army still showed the spirit of feudal times. The soldier belonged
+less to the king than to his colonel; the cavalry was given too much importance
+and the nobility would serve only in it. From this reign the French
+infantry became and long remained the first in the world. Louvois required
+it to march in step and substituted the gun and bayonet for the pike which
+was still prevalent; but it was not till after his time that Vauban succeeded
+in making the gun at once a weapon for projectiles and a weapon for
+fencing, and so rendered it the most formidable instrument of destruction
+which was ever put into the hands of men.</p>
+
+<p>He made a revolution in the army by the <i>ordre du tableau</i> and by the
+creation of the service of inspection. He did not destroy the venality
+of offices which had been introduced into the army, and was exercised
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_539">[539]</span>almost entirely to the profit of the nobles; but in order to merit promotion
+it was no longer sufficient for them to have ancestors—they must have services;
+and the grades, from the rank of colonel, became the prize of seniority—an
+excellent reform in those days, which would be so now no longer.
+The hatred of the nobility pursued the minister who was degrading “those
+born to command others, on the pretext that it is reasonable to learn to obey
+in order to command; who wished to accustom seigneurs to equality and to
+mingle with all the world indiscriminately.” Louvois, with inflexible firmness,
+required that each should perform his duty; to secure this he instituted
+inspectors-general who made the king’s authority and his own everywhere
+present; and severe rebukes awaited negligent officers.</p>
+
+<p>He created recreation camps, a ruinous innovation when these assemblies
+of troops were only a spectacle to divert the ladies of the court and the
+king’s <i>ennui</i>, but an excellent school for officers and generals when preparing
+for the great manœuvres of war. It was only after his death that the order
+of St. Louis was instituted (1693) for the purpose of bestowing honours as
+a reward for military services—this time without distinction of birth, but
+not without distinction of religion; the reformed could not obtain it. By
+such measures France was able to have under arms, in the war of Flanders,
+125,000 men; for that with Holland, 180,000; before Ryswick, 300,000;
+during the War of the Spanish Succession, 450,000.</p>
+
+<h3>VAUBAN</h3>
+
+<p>There was one point, the only one, perhaps, on which the minister of war
+and the minister of marine were in accord: namely, the fortification of the
+kingdom. To accomplish this immense work they found the man who is,
+with Colbert, the greatest of this reign. Le Prestre de Vauban was a
+<i>gentilhomme</i> of no great family, who was born at Saulieu in Burgundy in
+1633. His father died in the service, leaving him only his name. A prior
+of the neighbourhood took him in and brought him up. When he had completed
+his seventeenth year the Fronde was in full swing. Eleven of his
+brothers, uncles, and relatives were under arms; one morning Vauban ran
+away and hastened to join the Great Condé, who received him as a cadet and
+soon made him an officer.</p>
+
+<p>Vauban fought well; he studied more. The good prior had given him
+some notions of geometry; he developed them and these first acquirements
+decided his vocation. Having passed into the royal army he served under
+the chevalier de Clerville, the most renowned engineer of that time, and at
+twenty-five directed the works during the sieges of Gravelines, Ypres, and
+Oudenarde. In 1668 his reputation was so great that Louis XIV charged
+him with the fortification of Dunkirk. This first work of the young engineer
+was a masterpiece: two moles projecting over six thousand feet into
+the water and defended by formidable batteries created a harbour where
+nature had put only an unfavourable shore. The waters inside and those of
+the high tides skilfully manipulated, incessantly hollowed the channel and
+restored to the sea the mud it brought up. Henceforth Vauban was the
+indispensable man whom every general demanded when he had a siege to
+make. In time of war he took towns; in time of peace he fortified them.
+It has been calculated that he worked on 300 old towns, that he constructed
+33 new ones, that he conducted 53 sieges, and was present at 140 important
+actions. He was several times wounded; for in order to reconnoitre the
+situation of a place and to spare the blood of his soldiers, he exposed himself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_540">[540]</span>in such a manner as to call forth the accusation of temerity, had not his
+cool and deliberate courage been like the fulfilment of a duty.</p>
+
+<p>Vauban, who fortified towns, knew still better how to take them. He
+introduced the use of hollow cannon-balls for dispersing earth; ricochet
+firing to dismount the artillery of the besieged and destroy the angles of
+the bastions; above all he perfected the parallels at the siege of Maestricht in
+1673. These parallels joined the trenches which converged towards the
+town, and gave the attack the advantage over the defence. Vauban went
+forward slowly but surely; he marched under cover by lines on which the
+troops were in a position to render each other mutual support, did not hurry
+on attacks when he could dispense with them, took pains to spare the soldiers,
+who had previously been flung away, and attained his object incomparably
+more quickly and with fewer losses, because he first silenced the
+enemy’s fire and left on the ramparts neither a tenable point nor a cannon in
+condition to be fired. There was no longer any impregnable fortress and it
+was easy to look forward to the day when every well-besieged town would
+be taken. It is to him that we also owe the invention of the socket which
+allows the infantry to fire whilst still keeping the bayonet at the end of the
+gun.</p>
+
+<h3>SÉGUIER, LEGISLATIVE WORKS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1665-1685 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In a memorial handed to the king, August 15th, 1665, Colbert had proposed
+to remodel the whole legislation so that there should be in France but
+one law, one system of weights and measures; in addition he asked for gratuitous
+justice, the abolition of the venality of offices, the price of which was
+reckoned at four hundred and twenty millions, and the diminution of the
+number of monks, and the encouragement of useful callings.</p>
+
+<p>A commission was appointed. When the members had held a meeting
+and at last brought their task to a conclusion they discussed the matter
+with eminent members of the parliament in the presence of the ministers,
+under the presidency of the chancellor Séguier, sometimes under that of the
+king. Six codes were the result of these deliberations: in 1667 the civil
+ordinance or Code Louis which abolished some iniquitous procedure belonging
+to the justice of the Middle Ages, “true witness of human imbecility,”
+says Montaigne, shortened its delays and regulated the form of the registers
+of births, marriages, and deaths which, it was ordered, were to be deposited
+at the office of each law-court; in 1669 that of Rivers and Forests which
+continues in its principal dispositions; in 1670 the ordinance of Criminal
+Instruction which the parliaments accepted only after many <i>lettres de cachet</i>
+and decrees of exile; it restricted the application of the torture and various
+cases of provisional imprisonment, fixed rights of jurisdiction so that none
+might be deprived of his natural judges, laid down identical rules for all
+tribunals, thus preparing the way for unity of principle by means of unity
+of form, but did not yet allow either counsel or defender for the accused
+in capital cases, preserved the atrocity of earlier penalties, the wheel and
+quartering, and still made the penalty disproportionate to the crime; in
+1673 the ordinance of Commerce, a true title to glory for Colbert; in 1681
+that of the Navy and the Colonies, which has formed the common law of the
+nations of Europe and serves them to this day as maritime law; in 1685
+the Black Code, which regulated the condition of negroes in the French
+colonies.</p>
+
+<p>These ordinances form the greatest work of codification executed from
+Justinian to Napoleon. Some portions of them are still in operation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_541">[541]</span></p>
+
+<h3>LIONNE, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND DIPLOMACY</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>If Colbert and Louvois, by the re-establishment of the finances, the creation
+of a navy, and the reform of the army, allowed Louis XIV to make
+war successfully, Lionne, secretary of state for foreign affairs, prepared that
+success by his negotiations. “He had,” says Choisy, “a superior genius: his
+understanding, naturally keen and
+penetrating, had been still further
+sharpened in the affairs in which the
+cardinal had early employed him.”
+Saint-Simon, who was no flatterer,
+also says that he did everything with
+a skill and superiority quite unequalled.
+The king indeed watched
+closely over this branch; he himself
+wrote the first despatches to his ambassadors;
+he often wrote minutes
+of the most important letters with his
+own hand, and he always had the
+instructions sent in his name read
+aloud to him.</p>
+
+<p>When Lionne died in 1671 the
+king gave him as successor the marquis
+de Pomponne who had conducted
+several embassies with success
+and was then in Sweden, whose king
+he had succeeded in detaching from
+the Dutch alliance. Pomponne directed
+all the negotiations which
+terminated in the Peace of Nimeguen.
+“But,” said Louis XIV, “the office
+I gave him was found to be too great
+and extensive for him. I was obliged
+to order him to retire, because everything that passed through his hands lost
+something of the grandeur and force which are needed in executing the
+orders of a king of France who is not unfortunate.”</p>
+
+<h3>TRIUMPH OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY</h3>
+
+<p>Some of these ministers of Louis XIV, especially Colbert and Louvois,
+were certainly great administrators; they were not, they could not be,
+great statesmen. Colbert himself aimed at making France richer only in
+order to render the king more powerful; and all laboured to constitute the
+excessive centralisation which enveloped the whole country, its industry
+and commerce, the arms and the brain, with a thousand bonds of a minute
+regulation, so that the initiative of the ministers was everywhere substituted
+for the action of individuals and communities. The result of this system
+was to be that France would live less by her own vitality than by that of her
+government. When age and sickness should freeze that ever-present hand
+all would decline. A great people would be subjected to the vicissitudes of
+one man’s existence.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p541.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A Court Costume, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If the administration of the realm was as much the work of Louis XIV’s
+ministers as his own, one thing belonged to him alone: this was the general
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_542">[542]</span>direction he gave to the government and to society—the skilful and energetic
+manner with which he knew how to control all other powers, to annul
+them, and make them to serve his greatness; it was in fact that art of ruling
+which no other prince, in Saint-Simon’s<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i1"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span> judgment, possessed to a greater
+degree. We have already seen his ideas on the rights of sovereigns; he
+had summed them up in that phrase attributed to him, it is said, in his
+youth, at the end of the Fronde: “<i>L’État, c’est moi</i>—The State, it is I.”<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
+
+<p>He believed this; everybody believed it with him, and the church taught
+it. Bossuet founded the divine right of the monarchy on maxims drawn
+from the Scriptures. “Oh kings, ye are gods,” exclaimed the great bishop
+at the very moment that Lebrun was filling Versailles with the apotheosis
+of Louis XIV. While he lived there was but one uncontrolled and limitless
+will—his own. The states-general might have recalled other wills,
+but he never convoked it; he punished those that spoke of it, and when, at
+the Treaty of Utrecht, the allies, still defying his ambition, tried to exact
+that the conditions of peace should be ratified by a national assembly, he
+haughtily refused and declared that he regarded the demand as an insult to
+the majesty of the throne. The minority of the provinces had their own
+estates, but he suppressed many of them. Those which remained, as in
+Languedoc, Burgundy, Provence, Brittany, etc., never assembled except to
+execute the orders of the ministers. Whatever remained of municipal liberty
+disappeared like that of the provinces. The king, coining money with
+the ancient rights dear to the towns, changed the mayoralties into hereditary
+offices and sold them to the highest bidders. An edict of 1683 placed the
+financial administration of the towns under the direction of the intendants.
+Their finances did not improve. The communities were made responsible for
+the payment of the <i>taille</i> as the <i>curiates</i> had been under the Roman emperors.
+Former fiscal arrangements had ruined the magistrates. The new one held
+them exempt, but ruined the communes.</p>
+
+<p>A phrase sums up this entire policy—unfortunately it was spoken by
+Colbert: “It is not well,” he wrote to a governor, charging him to let an
+elective magistracy fall into desuetude, “that some one should speak in the
+name of all.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>Submission of Parliament</i></h4>
+
+<p>Royalty had taken five centuries to undermine the great body of the
+feudal aristocracy, and the better to perfect this work had formed with its
+own hands another body—that of the judiciary order. In the sixteenth
+century they spoke of the parliaments as “the strong columns on which the
+monarchy is supported,” but in the seventeenth the new royalty wished for
+no other support than its absolute power.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, thanks to the sale of offices, which left the same offices in
+the same hands, thanks to the dignity of the magistrate’s lives, to the political
+rôles they had played on several occasions, to the <i>esprit de corps</i> which
+had quickly been established in the bosom of the great judiciary companies,
+there had been raised alongside the nobility of the sword a nobility of the
+robe, which seemed quite as troublesome as the other because it already had
+its souvenirs and regrets. It was not always easily managed. It parried
+attacks with that force of inertia peculiar to assemblies of aged men, which
+is difficult to overcome at a time when tradition stands for law. The spirit
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_543">[543]</span>of opposition, everywhere punished, took refuge here—political opposition,
+scarcely sensible in the parliament of Paris, provincial opposition in the
+others, all religious opposition, under the form of Jansenism. One of Louis
+XIV’s ideas which he sought to realise with the greatest perseverance was
+to transform the parliaments into simple courts of appeal, to put his state
+councils over them, even the parliament of Paris which had brought about
+the Fronde. In an edict of 1667 he proscribed it from enregistering ordinances
+within a week and he suffered no remonstrance. The following year
+he had torn from the parliament registers the records of all its deliberations
+during the civil war, in order to efface even the memory of its old-time pretensions.
+Besides this he changed its title of sovereign court into that of
+superior court, as if the first were a usurpation of royal sovereignty.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Submission of the Nobility</i></h4>
+
+<p>It appeared a more difficult task to reduce the nobles. Cardinal Richelieu
+had razed their fortresses and cut off the heads of some of the most
+unruly. Mazarin had bought them or vanquished them by ruse. Louis XIV
+made himself their master by drawing them around him by his fêtes, dragging
+them from their domains, where they thought too often of their ancestors
+and still felt themselves free, filling his antechamber and household
+posts with the descendants of those who had made his fathers tremble, and
+forming for royalty such brilliant cortèges as the representative of God on
+earth would wish to be surrounded by.</p>
+
+<p>If they had titles and honours they had no political influence in the state.
+In his councils, the king, after the death of Mazarin, admitted but a single
+one of the old noblesse, the duke de Beauvilliers, governor of the royal children;
+and he chose all his ministers from those of middle conditions, in
+order, according to Saint-Simon’s<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i2"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span> forceful expression, to be able “to plunge
+them into the depths of nothingness from which he had drawn them.” The
+French nobility never knew how, like that of England, to become a political
+class; it was never anything but a military caste.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Third Estate</i></h4>
+
+<p>Louis XIV preferred, following in this the ancient monarchical traditions,
+to be served by the middle class, more educated and, moreover, more devoted,
+because it did not yet feel the inconveniences of absolute power, as it had
+been feeling for centuries those of the feudal régime. Louis turned over to
+it all the financial, political, and judicial functions; he established it peacefully
+in the administration of the realm; he pushed it energetically towards
+commerce and industry—two forces of the new era—and the regard he had
+for those <i>petites gens</i> named Boileau, Racine, Molière, announced the coming
+substitution of the rights of intellect for those of birth. Louis XIV thus unknowingly
+paved the way for democracy in France and the Revolution.
+However he must not be regarded as a sort of bourgeois king, a <i>roi des
+maltôtiers</i>, as Saint-Simon<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i3"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span> disdainfully calls him. His policy, the high idea
+he had of his person, the rigorous ceremonial which made a sort of redoubtable
+and inaccessible divinity of him, the <i>carrousels</i>, the brilliant fêtes—none
+of these recalls to mind the modest pictures of constitutional monarchies.<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a>
+More than that, those nobodies whom Louis made his councillors, his ambassadors,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_544">[544]</span>and his secretaries of state quitted their plebeian state before entering
+his court. They became the marquis de Louvois, the count de Pontchartrain,
+the marquis de Torcy. While working with the bourgeois, the grandson
+of Henry IV always had the desire to remain the king of the noblemen.</p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS XIV AND THE CHURCH</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1685 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis XIV conducted himself towards the clergy as he had done towards
+the nobility—in honouring them he watched to see that they robbed him of
+none of his power. The great lords, with but few exceptions, were removed
+from the church as they had been from the administration. Therefore the
+aristocratic Saint-Simon<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i4"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span> reproaches Louis
+“with having ruined the episcopacy by filling
+it with seminarian pedants and their
+pupils without education and without birth”—a
+strange reproach from the mouth of a
+man who had lived with Bossuet, Fénelon,
+Fléchier, and Massillon, the eternal honour
+of the French church.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p544.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Street Costume, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(From an old French print)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The clergy was therefore under Louis
+XIV one force the more at the disposal of
+royalty. In the affair of the <i>régale</i>, the
+bishops even upheld the king against Rome.
+The <i>régale</i> was the king’s right to enjoy the
+revenues of certain benefices, bishoprics,
+and archbishoprics, during vacancies in
+the sees. In 1673 an edict declared all the
+French sees subject to the <i>régale</i>. Two
+bishops refused to obey and their action was
+approved by the pope. Louis XIV, to end
+the dispute, convoked an assembly of French
+clergy which adopted, in 1682, under the
+inspiration of Bossuet, four propositions
+which were registered by the courts and the
+faculty of theology. They were in substance:
+God gave to St. Peter and his successors
+no power, direct or indirect, over
+temporal affairs. The Gallican church approves
+those decrees of the Council of
+Constance which declare the œcumenical
+councils superior to the pope in spiritual
+affairs. The rules and customs received in
+the kingdom and in the Gallican church
+must remain unalterable. The pope’s decisions, in matter of doctrine, shall
+not be irreformable until the church has accepted them.</p>
+
+<p>Innocent XI neither approved nor quashed these resolutions, but he
+refused to grant bulls of investiture to those bishops, appointed by the government,
+who had been members of the assembly. The consequence was
+that at his death there were twenty dioceses without heads. The matter
+was, however, brought to a conclusion in 1693 by a compromise. Innocent
+XII granted the bulls of investiture and the king ceased to impose upon
+the theological faculties the obligation of teaching the four propositions of
+1682.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_545">[545]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Protestants</i></h4>
+
+<p>The dissenters profited nothing by the quarrel with the court of Rome.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c8"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Since the Peace of Alais the Protestants, being deprived of their political
+organisation, of their “towns of security,” and of everything which had
+helped to form them into a party, had been living in obscurity, doing their
+best to make their enemies forget them, and carefully abstaining from taking
+any part in the civil troubles of the time. During the Fronde not one of
+them had shown any sign of life. Their attitude towards the government
+was that of a child in disgrace, and towards the Catholics that of a disdainful
+enemy. They persisted in isolating themselves from the rest of the
+nation, and continued to correspond with their friends in England and Holland.
+They were law-abiding, peaceable, and industrious citizens, and contributed
+their full share to the greatness and prosperity of their country by
+their courage and their energy.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the nation continued to look on them with mistrust, as if
+they were foreigners; France felt as if there were a little Holland in her
+midst, rejoicing at the success of the greater one (with which it was then
+waging ineffectual war). To reunite the Protestants with the national
+church was a fixed idea with Louis XIV. This desire inspired his policy,
+and was the chief goal of all his efforts; this was to be “the noble work and
+special feature of his reign”; and he looked upon the enterprise as a noble
+one, not only from a political but from a religious point of view. He was
+beginning to get into a narrow devotional groove, and allowed the Jesuits
+to exercise a powerful influence over him. He wished to free himself from
+the reproach of heresy, which his conduct towards the pope had drawn down
+upon him, and to atone for the irregularities of his youth. He resolved to
+revoke the Edict of Nantes. The assembly of the clergy, the parliament of
+Toulouse, the Catholics in the south all advocated this measure so strongly
+that it appeared to be the general desire of the nation; Louvois in his ambition,
+Le Tellier in his fanatical piety, also did their best to urge the king on, and
+last, but not least, Madame de Maintenon, whose influence during the rest of
+his life was to be paramount, threw all the weight of her persuasions into the
+scale in order to bring about the revocation of this edict.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time bribery had been the chief means employed in the
+attempts to convert the Protestants. Richelieu had used this method with
+great success. Louis XIV followed his example with favourable results;
+flattery, favours, rewards of every kind were lavishly bestowed in the attempt
+to gain over the Protestants. Pensions were given to the newly converted,
+they were exempted from taxation, all sorts of offices were given to them
+over the heads of staunch Catholics. A fund was formed for making conversions,
+with Pellisson, a converted Protestant, as director. France was
+flooded with missions, sermons, tracts, and books of dogma.</p>
+
+<p>Calvinism suffered such severe losses that Madame de Maintenon said,
+“Very soon it will be ridiculous to belong to that religion.” But these
+methods of bribery and persuasion were not rapid enough, and harsher
+methods began to be used: royal edicts, parliamentary decisions, and orders
+issued by governors of provinces and cities rendered the preaching of the
+reformed doctrines difficult, made the Protestant pastors very uneasy, forbade
+their synods to assemble. Protestants were deprived of their pensions
+and of their titles of nobility; the chief burden of the taxes was laid on
+them; they were excluded from the king’s household, from the university,
+from holding municipal offices. They were also forbidden to practice as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_546">[546]</span>lawyers or doctors. They were expelled from financial offices, the rights of
+free citizenship were refused to them, they were not allowed to be members
+of corporations, their schools were closed, any of their places of worship
+which had been built since 1598 were destroyed, and their children were
+taken from them to be educated as Catholics. Then the Protestants began
+to fly from France (1682); but emigration was forbidden under pain of
+being sent to the galleys.</p>
+
+<p>The Calvinists in the south made one last appeal to the king in March,
+1684, begging him to allow them to serve God according to the dictates of
+their own conscience, or else to take refuge in some other country. For
+answer, the king sent them a number of missionaries accompanied by a
+detachment of dragoons, who were supposed to be the most cruel of all the
+French soldiers. Every day conversions by the hundred were announced to
+the king. On the 2nd of September all the Protestants of Montauban
+changed their religion by a resolution passed at a meeting in the town hall;
+on the 5th of October Montpellier, Castres, Lunel, etc., followed suit; then
+the dioceses of Gap and Embrun, then the whole of Poitou. The governor
+of Languedoc said that he had seen sixty thousand people converted in three
+days. It was thought that nothing more remained to be done, but to publicly
+announce the destruction of a sect which had only a few adherents left
+in distant provinces, among the rude inhabitants of the mountainous parts;
+it was necessary to strike only one more decisive blow and so complete the
+work for which a long series of unjust acts and the ingenious tyranny of
+the last fifty years had been the preparation. Père Lachaise, the king’s
+confessor, and Louvois promised that not a single drop of blood should
+be shed.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Accordingly on the 22nd of October, 1685, an edict appeared ordaining:
+(1) The suppression of all the privileges which had been accorded to the
+Protestants by Henry IV and Louis XIII; (2) the proscription of Protestant
+worship throughout the kingdom (except Alsace and Strasburg);
+(3) the expulsion of Protestant ministers, the closing of Protestant schools,
+and the demolition of the churches, etc. Numerous rewards were given to
+those who agreed to change their religion; Calvinists were forbidden on pain
+of being sent to the galleys and the confiscation of their property, to go
+out of France; permission was given them to remain on their own property
+and engage in business without their worship being interfered with so long
+as they did not hold public services.</p>
+
+<p>This edict was received in France with the greatest enthusiasm: sermons,
+poems, pictures, medals were produced with astounding rapidity to
+celebrate this great act of unity! At last the whole country was to be under
+one jurisdiction and under one king! Louis XIV was a second Constantine,
+a modern Theodosius. Never had any king performed such a wonderful
+achievement, nor was it likely that any parallel to it would be seen in the
+future. The whole of Europe was amazed at the promptitude and ease with
+which this great king had stamped out a heresy which had defied the efforts
+of six of his predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>The only complaints that arose were directed against the leniency of that
+clause which allowed the Protestants to worship in their own fashion in
+private. This clause was only a lure, and Louvois wrote to the governors
+and those in authority: “His majesty desires that those who refuse to
+embrace his religion should be treated with the utmost rigour, and those
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_547">[547]</span>who foolishly pride themselves on being the last to be converted are to be
+driven to the extremity of their endurance.” Then began a series of bloody
+atrocities which the king had never commanded, and which were not at all
+in accordance with his character for moderation. A defenceless population
+was delivered over to the cruel brutality of the soldiery, men were put to
+the torture, women were subjected to a dishonour worse than death, children
+were torn from their parents, houses and farms were wrecked, converts who
+refused to take the sacraments were sent to the galleys, as were those who
+harboured Protestant ministers or those who attempted to leave the kingdom.
+Sentence of death was pronounced against all who practised any other
+than the Catholic religion, against all Protestant ministers, and all who
+formed themselves into gatherings or held meetings. Those who were weak
+yielded; they were dragged to the altar and, with the executioner standing
+over them, forced to commit sacrilege. “Torture, abjuration, and forced
+communion,” says Saint-Simon,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i5"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span> “often all took place within twenty-four
+hours,” and the executioners were the guides and the sponsors of the convert.
+Almost all the bishops took part in these hasty irreverent practices. Most
+of them urged on the executioners and used every means to swell the number
+of conversions, for they sent an account of their triumphs to the court,
+and were anxious to gain as much glory and substantial recompense as possible.
+The king received from all quarters news and details of these persecutions;
+those who had abjured Protestantism and received the communion
+were counted by the thousand. The king gloried in his power and in his
+piety; the bishops sent him the most fulsome panegyrics on the great work
+he was doing; pulpits rang with his praises.</p>
+
+<p>The Protestants fled from the country. The police were unable to prevent
+them. Certificates of confession were required from all travellers,
+sentence of death was pronounced against anyone who countenanced or assisted
+others in emigrating. The emigrants had been deprived of seventeen millions
+of francs in house and land property, the frontier was guarded by numerous
+troops; but all these measures were vain, and in spite of them fifty
+thousand families left the kingdom, and took refuge in Holland, England,
+Germany, and Switzerland. They consisted of nobles, tradesmen, and manufacturers.
+This active, energetic, and enlightened body of men, placed at
+the service of foreigners their talents, their swords, the secrets of French
+manufactures, their wealth, and a relentless hatred of the tyrant who had
+banished them. Their emigration did an irreparable injury to France.
+They were received everywhere with the greatest kindness; they were even
+invited to leave their country, and good positions were promised them. One
+part of London was peopled with silk-weavers and workers in crystal and
+steel; and England became the leading manufacturing nation. Brandenburg
+rose from its abasement; Berlin became a town; Prussia was opened
+up; the influence of the refugees on Frederick William’s states was so
+marked that it is from this time that their greatness and their subsequent
+weight among European powers may be dated. Amsterdam built a thousand
+houses for them, William gave them pensions, granted them privileges, and
+provided them with places of worship; he formed them into a royal guard
+of six hundred noblemen and two regiments. He made use of their ministers,
+embittered by hatred, to flood Europe with pamphlets against Louis
+XIV. Henceforth on every battle-field the French would meet these emigrants
+filled with a fierce hatred of their country, and, for more than a
+century afterward, French soldiers found that their bitterest enemies in
+Germany were the descendants of these refugees.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19j"><a href="#endnote_19j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_548">[548]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Jansenists</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Nor did Louis protect the Jansenists who were, on certain points, in
+disagreement with the church of Rome. The Jansenists owed their doctrine
+to a bishop of Ypres, named Jansenius, who died in 1638, and to the abbé of
+St. Cyran who had sustained some ancient opinions, which seemed to be new,
+upon grace and predestination. Jansenism deserves at least a passing word
+especially on account of the character of the men who defended it. The most
+illustrious of them, the great Arnauld, Lemaistre de Sacy, Nicole, and
+Lancelot, retired to the ancient Cistercian abbey of Port-Royal des Champs,
+near Versailles, when Pascal also joined them in 1654, and there, leading
+a solitary life, these Catholic puritans set the world an example of assiduous
+works of the hands and the intellect, of lively piety, and of austerity which
+went as far as asceticism. They wrote, for the most part in common, some
+excellent works which are still in use; they had some illustrious pupils,
+among others Racine; they won over to a great part of their doctrine almost
+the entire magistracy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c9"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Jesuits then monopolised the authority and influence of the church,
+whose spirit and moral code they attempted to modify, and adapt to the
+present courtly and despotic times. The studious, reasoning, and ascetic
+brethren of Port-Royal saw the tendency of the Jesuit preaching, the false
+and worldly basis of their creed. It was on the subject of Jansenism that
+the Jesuits had declared themselves, and had come forth in the arena of
+argument. The pious wits of Port-Royal seized the opportunity, took up a
+cause sufficiently absurd in its fundamental dogmas, but which they were
+enabled to support by battering the still more absurd outworks of the Jesuits.
+The latter won the pope to their side, and obtained from the head of the
+church a condemnation of the tenets of Jansenius. The polemic writers of
+Port-Royal bowed to his holiness, confessed that he was infallible as a high
+priest, in condemning such and such belief, but most fallible as a critic, since
+not one of these propositions, so lustily condemned, were to be found in
+Jansenius. This ingenious effrontery succeeded; for, under colour of disputing
+about such abstractions, Pascal and Arnauld attacked their enemies
+in more vulnerable points—in their moral laxity, their sophistic logic, their
+worldliness, courtliness, and servility. Louis XIV took the Jesuit side.
+Many of the courtiers, who dared no longer draw the sword in rebellion,
+ventured to move the tongue, and exercise thought at least in independence.
+Amongst the most distinguished sectaries of Port-Royal was the duchess de
+Longueville, sister of Condé, the famous partisan of the Fronde, and mistress
+of La Rochefoucauld. Her hôtel, once the resort of the coadjutor [de Retz]
+and his party, of the hot cavaliers that drove the court from Paris, was now
+the lurking-place and concealment of the Jansenists. She braved the royal
+authority at all times, whether in the cause of the noblesse or of religion;
+gallant and dissolute in the Fronde, in Jansenism rigid and devout. “She
+was Jansenist in truth and heart,” says Brienne, “just as she had indulged
+her gallantries with the same sincerity, and always drums beating” (the
+expression means openly and boldly): “a princess of the blood need fear
+nothing; and Madame de Longueville marched on her way with head erect.”
+Although the Jansenism of Pascal and of Arnauld was the protestation of
+reason, common sense, and deep religious feeling, against the corruptions
+of the Jesuits, that of Madame de Longueville and her class must be considered
+as a kind of covert opposition to the court, and to the despotic will
+of the sovereign. The froward love of independence, that could no longer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_549">[549]</span>exercise itself in political intrigue, found more harmless vent in criticism
+and polemics.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19k"><a href="#endnote_19k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The outcome of the Jansenist disputes was that in 1709 the king caused
+the buildings of Port-Royal des Champs to be levelled to the ground.<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a>
+The bodies of the inoffensive solitaires were disinterred, and dogs were seen
+quarrelling over them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/p549.jpg" width="450" height="300" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Cannon used in the Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE POLICE</h3>
+
+<p>The police was the creation of Louis XIV. In 1687 he appointed a magistrate
+to oversee the Paris police, Nicholas de la Reynie, who was succeeded
+in 1697 by the marquis d’Argenson—these were the first two <i>lieutenants de
+police</i>. They established order, decency, and security in the city. Now
+commenced the system of public lighting; from the 1st of November to
+the 1st of March, lanterns, burning candles, were placed at the ends and in the
+middle of every street. There were five thousand of these lights in Paris.
+The watch was augmented and reorganised. Firemen replaced the Capuchins
+in the fire Service. The narrow streets, often cut up and always filthy, were
+cleaned, widened, and paved; coaches and cabs for the public were introduced;
+Pascal even devised the omnibuses, which did not succeed at that
+time. The custom of going about Paris on horseback was no longer kept
+up except by a few obstinate representatives of the olden times.</p>
+
+<p>The police attended to other things; it censured all writings,<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> it held up
+the post, and read in what was afterwards called the <i>cabinet noir</i>, all suspected
+correspondence, and to relieve the government of too slow methods
+of justice it multiplied the <i>lettres de cachet</i><a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> which removed all guarantee of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_550">[550]</span>personal liberty to citizens. The new power charged with the overseeing
+of persons and opinions, thus became like an ever-open eye, always defiant of
+royalty. Thus were all the orders of state, all the existing authorities, all
+the conditions—parliament, nobility, bourgeois, clergy, and dissenters—reduced
+and dominated. Vauban, Catinat, and Fénelon resisted the contagion.
+Condé himself, in spite of his rank, his services, and his spirit,
+became a courtier. Turenne alone managed to keep a position from which
+he could tell the king many truths which others dared not repeat.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c10"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE COURT OF THE GRAND MONARCH</h3>
+
+<p>Louis XIV put so much brilliancy and magnificence into his court that
+the smallest details of its life seem interesting to posterity, to such an extent
+were they an object of curiosity to all the courts of Europe and to all his
+contemporaries. The splendour of his government shone on his pettiest
+actions.</p>
+
+<p>That is why no historian has failed to write of the early affections of
+Louis XIV for the baroness de Beauvais, for Mademoiselle d’Argencourt,
+for the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who was married to the count de Soissons,
+the father of Prince Eugene, and above all for Marie Mancini, her sister, who
+afterwards married the constable Colonna.</p>
+
+<p>The court, after the triumphant return of Mazarin after the Peace of the
+Pyrenees, busied itself with games, and the ballet, with comedy, which, being
+only new born, had not yet become an art, and with tragedy, which had
+become a sublime art in the hands of Pierre Corneille. A <i>curé</i> of St. Germain
+l’Auxerrois, who inclined to the rigorous ideas of the Jansenists, had
+often written to the queen against these spectacles, ever since the first years
+of the regency. He claimed that a person would be damned for being present
+at them. He even had this anathema signed by seven doctors of the Sorbonne,
+but the abbé de Beaumont, the king’s preceptor, provided himself
+with more approbations of doctors, than the strict <i>curé</i> had with condemnations.
+He thus quieted the scruples of the queen, and, when he became
+archbishop of Paris, he gave his authority to the opinion he had supported
+as abbé.</p>
+
+<p>There had been one continual succession of fêtes, entertainments, and gallantries
+since the marriage of the king. Interrupted by the death of Mazarin,
+they were redoubled on the marriage of Monsieur, brother of the king, with
+Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II [which took place twenty days after
+Mazarin’s death]. After the cardinal’s death the court became the centre of
+amusements and the model for other courts. The king prided himself on
+giving fêtes which should cast those of Vaux into oblivion.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/fp8.jpg" width="460" height="650" alt="">
+<p class="caption">ROCROY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The good taste of society had not yet received its full perfection at court.
+The queen-mother, Anne of Austria, began to be fond of retirement.<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> The
+reigning queen could scarcely speak French and her goodness was her only
+merit. The princess of England, the queen’s sister-in-law, brought to court
+the attraction of a kindly and animated style of conversation, which was soon
+seconded by her reading of good works and her sure and fine taste. She perfected
+herself in the language, which she still wrote poorly at the time of her
+marriage. She inspired a fresh mental stimulus, and introduced graces and
+a politeness into court, of which the rest of Europe had scarcely an idea.
+Madame had all the wit of her brother Charles II, embellished by the charms
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_551">[551]</span>of her sex, by the talent and the desire to please. The court of Louis XIV
+breathed forth a gallantry which a sense of propriety made more piquant.
+That which reigned at the court of Charles II was bolder, and too much
+grossness disfigured its amusements.</p>
+
+<p>There was at first between Madame and the king a great deal of sprightly
+coquetry and a secret understanding, which was shown in little attentions
+often repeated.<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> The king sent her verses; she answered them. It chanced
+that the same man was at once the confidant of the king and of Madame in this
+ingenious intercourse. This was the marquis of Dangeau. He conducted
+the correspondence for both king and princess; thus serving both of them
+without letting one suspect what he was doing for the other.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Mademoiselle de la Vallière</i></h4>
+
+<p>These pastimes gave way to the more serious and more protracted passion
+which the king had for Mademoiselle de la Vallière, maid of honour to
+Madame. He experienced with her the rare pleasure of being loved solely
+for himself. She was for two years the hidden object of all the gallant
+amusements, all the entertainments which the king gave. A young <i>valet de
+chambre</i> of the king, named Belloc, composed several recitals which were
+interspersed between dances, sometimes in the queen’s, sometimes in
+Madame’s apartments, and these recitals expressed with an air of mystery
+the secrets of their hearts, which soon ceased to be a secret.</p>
+
+<p>All these public entertainments which the king gave were so many homages
+to his mistress. In 1662, a tournament (<i>carrousel</i>) was held opposite
+the Tuileries in a large enclosure which has retained its name from this
+event, Place du Carrousel. There were five <i>quadrilles</i>. The king was at the
+head of the Romans; his brother of the Persians, the prince of Condé of
+the Turks, the duke d’Enghien, his son, of the Indians, the duke of Guise
+of the Americans.</p>
+
+<p>The queen-mother, the reigning queen, the queen of England, widow of
+Charles I, forgetting for the moment her misfortunes, were under a dais to
+see this spectacle. The count de Saulx, son of the duke de Lesdiguières, took
+the prize and received it from the hand of the queen-mother. These fêtes
+reanimated more than ever the taste for devices and emblems, which tourneys
+had formerly made the fashion, and which had lasted after them.</p>
+
+<p>In 1662, an antiquarian called D’Ouvrier designed for Louis XIV the
+emblem of a sun darting its rays on a globe, with the words: <i>Nec pluribus
+impar</i>. The idea imitated somewhat a Spanish device made for Philip II,
+and which was more appropriate for the Spanish king, who owned the best
+part of the New World and so many states in the old, than for a young king
+of France who as yet gave only hopes. This device had a prodigious success.
+The <i>armoires</i> of the king, the crown furniture, the tapestries, the carvings,
+were decorated with it. The king never wore it in his tournaments.</p>
+
+<p>The fête of Versailles, in 1664, surpassed that of the carrousel by its
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_552">[552]</span>originality, by its magnificence, and by the pleasures of mind which, being
+joined to the splendours of these diversions, added an attraction and graces
+which no fête before had ever had. Versailles began to be a charming place
+of abode.</p>
+
+<p>The 5th of May the king came there with the court, composed of six
+hundred persons, who, together with their suites, were entertained at his
+expense, as well as all those who assisted in preparing the entertainments.
+Nothing was ever lacking at these fêtes except buildings especially constructed
+for giving them, such as
+were raised by the Greeks and Romans.
+The quickness, however,
+with which theatres, amphitheatres,
+and porticoes were erected, and
+ornamented with as much magnificence
+as good taste, was a marvel
+which added to the illusion and
+which, diversified since in a thousand
+different ways, increased the
+charm of these exhibitions.</p>
+
+<p>There was first a sort of tournament.
+Those who were to take
+part appeared on the first day as in
+a review; they were preceded by
+heralds at arms, by pages and equerries
+who carried their devices and
+their shields. On the shields were
+written verses composed by Périgny
+and Benserade. This latter especially
+had a singular talent for those
+gallant verses in which he always
+made delicate and piquant allusions
+to the character of the persons, to
+the personages of antiquity or of
+fable which were represented, and
+to the passions which animated the
+court. The king represented Roger;
+all the crown diamonds glittered on his coat and on the horse he rode. The
+queens and three hundred ladies, under triumphal arches, watched this
+entrance.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p552.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Mademoiselle de la Vallière</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1644-1710)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The king with all eyes fastened upon him distinguished only those of
+La Vallière. The fête was for her alone; she enjoyed it hidden in the
+crowd. The cavalcade was followed by a gilded car, 18 feet high, 15 feet
+wide, and 24 feet long, representing the chariot of the sun. The four ages,
+of gold, silver, bronze, and iron, the signs of the zodiac, the seasons, the
+hours, followed this car on foot. Everything was in character. Shepherds
+carried pieces of the barrier which were adjusted to the sound of trumpets,
+followed at intervals by bagpipes and violins. Certain persons who followed
+Apollo’s car came first to the queens to recite verses appropriate to the place
+and time, to the king and the ladies. When the races were finished and
+night was come, four thousand great torches lit up the space wherein fêtes
+were given. Tables were served by two hundred persons, representing the
+seasons, fauns, sylvan creatures, dryads, together with shepherds, vintagers,
+harvesters. Pan and Diana advanced on a moving mountain from which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_553">[553]</span>they descended to place on tables the most delicious products of field and
+forest. Behind these tables in the half circle, a theatre filled with performers
+arose. The arcades which surrounded the tables and theatre were
+ornamented with five hundred green and silver chandeliers, holding candles;
+a gilded balustrade shut in this vast enclosure. These fêtes, so far superior
+to those invented in romances, lasted for seven days. The king carried off
+the prize of the games four times, and then let other cavaliers contest for the
+prizes he had gained, which he abandoned to them. The comedy of the
+<i>Princesse d’Élide</i>, although not one of Molière’s best, was one of the most
+agreeable attractions of these entertainments, on account of an infinity of fine
+allegories on the customs of the times and by the apposite observations
+which form an agreeable feature of such entertainments, but which lose
+their point for posterity.</p>
+
+<p>The chief glory of these entertainments, which in France perfected good
+taste, good form, and talent, came from the fact that they detracted nothing
+from the continual labours of the monarch. Without these labours he
+would have been able only to hold a court, he would not have known how
+to reign; and if the magnificent amusements of this court had increased the
+misery of the people, they would have been only odious; but the same man
+who had given these fêtes had also given the people bread in the famine of
+1662. He caused grain to be brought, which the rich bought at a low price,
+and which he gave to poor families at the gate of the Louvre. He had
+returned three millions of taxes to the people; no part of the interior
+administration had been neglected.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19b4"><a href="#endnote_19b">b</a></span> Yet it cannot be overlooked that bad
+economics underlay most of these financial measures,—as, indeed, of all
+Colbert’s work.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The legate Chigi, sent by Pope Alexander VII, arrived at Versailles
+in the midst of all these enjoyments to render satisfaction to the king
+for the assault of the papal guards.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19b5"><a href="#endnote_19b">b</a></span> This attack had taken place on
+August 20th, 1662, at Rome. It precipitated a quarrel very similar to that
+which had taken place in London the preceding year. The liveried servants
+of the duke de Créqui, the ambassador, had a fight with the Corsican guard;
+one of them was killed, the duke was insulted and his coach fired upon.
+Louis XIV demanded reparation. The court of Rome attempted, according
+to the custom of the times, to gain time; the king insisted, sent the papal
+nuncio to the frontier under escort, occupied the county of Venaissin, sent
+troops into the duchies of Parma and Modena in Italy, and finally threatened
+war. Alexander VII, seeing that these menaces were serious, gave in (1664).
+His own brother, the legate Fabio Chigi, brought in person the desired
+satisfaction. Louis XIV then gave back Avignon and Venaissin.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19e2"><a href="#endnote_19e">e</a></span> This
+visit of the papal delegate revealed to the court a new spectacle. The grand
+ceremonies were fêtes for the public. The honours paid him made the
+satisfaction more brilliant. Seated under a dais, he received the greetings
+of the superior courts, of the municipal courts, and of the clergy. He
+entered Paris to the sound of cannon, having the great Condé at his right
+and the son of that prince at his left; and in this manner he came to
+humiliate himself, Rome, and the pope, before a king who had not yet drawn
+a sword. After the audience he dined with Louis XIV, and the chief
+thought of all was to treat him magnificently and give him pleasure.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1669-1679 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>All this gave to the court of Louis XIV an air of grandeur which
+affected all the other courts of Europe. The king wanted this <i>éclat</i>, which
+was attached to his person, to reflect on all that surrounded him. To distinguish
+his principal courtiers he invented blue cassocks embroidered with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_554">[554]</span>gold and silver. The permission to wear them was a great favour to men
+influenced chiefly by vanity. They were sought after almost like the collars
+of the order. We may mention here, since we are speaking of details, that
+it was the fashion then to wear cassocks over a doublet ornamented with
+ribbons, and over this cassock passed a shoulder band to which the sword
+was attached. A kind of lace band was worn around the neck and on the
+head a hat decorated with two rows of feathers. This fashion, which lasted
+until 1684, became that of all Europe with the exception of Spain and
+Poland. Almost everywhere people prided themselves on imitating the
+court of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Louis established order in his household, regulated ranks and factions,
+and created new offices in connection with his person, such as that of the
+grand-master of his wardrobe. He re-established the tables instituted by
+Francis I, and augmented them. There were twelve for the officers of the
+king’s household, which were served with as much niceness and profusion as
+those of many sovereigns. He wanted all strangers to be invited to them,
+and this attention lasted during all his reign. There was another attention
+which was even more select and polite. When he had the pavilions of
+Marly built in 1679, all the ladies found a complete toilet-set in their apartments;
+nothing which belonged to commodious luxury was forgotten.
+Whoever was on a journey could give repasts in his apartments, and was
+served there with the same delicacy as the master. These little things
+acquire value only when they are sustained by greater ones. In everything
+which the king did might be seen splendour and generosity. He made a
+present of 200,000 francs to the daughters of his ministers on their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>One can easily imagine the effect which this magnificence had in Europe.
+The French were not the only ones who praised him: twelve panegyrics
+were pronounced on Louis XIV in different towns of Italy—an homage
+rendered neither from fear nor hope of favour, which the marquis Zampieri
+sent to the king.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to extend his patronage to letters and to the arts. Proofs
+of this are the particular gratuities of about 4,000 livres to Racine, the fortune
+of Despréaux, that of Quinault, and above all that of Lully and of all
+the artists who consecrated their work to him. The king danced in ballets
+until the year 1670. He was then thirty-two years old. The tragedy of
+<i>Britannicus</i> was played before him at St. Germain; he was struck by these
+verses:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Pour mérite premier, pour vertu singulière,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Il excelle à traîner un char dans la carrière,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A disputer des prix indignes de ses mains,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A se donner lui-même en spectacle aux Romains.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">After that he never again danced in public: the poet had reformed the monarch.
+His union with La Vallière still continued in spite of his frequent
+infidelities to her. These infidelities cost him little trouble. He never found
+women who resisted him, and he always came back to the one who, by the
+sweetness and goodness of her character, by her sincere affection, and even
+by the chains of habit, had subjugated him without the aid of art. But
+beginning with the year 1669, La Vallière perceived that Madame de Montespan
+was gaining the ascendency; she fought against it with her usual
+sweetness; she supported for a long time, and almost without complaining,
+the pain of being the witness of her rival’s triumph; she still thought herself
+happy in being even thought of by the king, whom she continued to
+love, and in seeing him without being loved by him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_555">[555]</span></p>
+
+<p>Finally in 1675 she embraced the resource of tender souls, which need
+deep and intense sentiments to subjugate them. She thought that God
+alone could succeed her lover in her heart. Her conversion became just as
+celebrated as her affection. She became a Carmelite at Paris and persevered
+in her resolve. To wear haircloth, to walk with bare feet, to fast rigorously,
+to sing at night in chorus in an unknown tongue—all this did not
+repulse the delicacy of a woman accustomed to so much glory, luxury, and
+pleasure. She lived this austere life from 1675 to 1710, under the simple
+name of Louise de la Miséricorde.</p>
+
+<p>It is known that when Sister Louise de la Miséricorde was told of the
+death of the duke de Vermandois, whom she had borne to the king, she said:
+“I ought to weep for his birth more than for his death.” One daughter was
+left to her, who resembled the king the most of all his children. She married
+the prince Armand de Conti, nephew of the Great Condé.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Madame de Montespan</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1670-1675 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In the meantime the marquise de Montespan was enjoying the king’s
+favour with much <i>éclat</i> and authority. Athénaïs de Mortemar, wife of the
+marquis de Montespan, her elder sister the marquise de Thiange, and her
+younger sister, for whom she obtained the abbey of Fontevrault, were the most
+beautiful women of their day, and
+all three joined to this distinction
+singular attractions of mind. The
+duke de Vivonne, their brother, and
+marshal of France, was also one of
+the men at court who had the most
+good taste and was best read. It
+was to him that the king said one
+day: “But what is the good of reading?”
+The duke de Vivonne, who
+was stout and red faced, answered:
+“Reading does for the mind what
+your partridges do to my cheeks.”</p>
+
+<p>These four persons were universally
+popular by a singular style of
+conversation mingled with pleasantry,
+naïveté, and wit, which was
+known as <i>l’esprit de Mortemar</i>. They
+all wrote with an ease and grace
+peculiar to them.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p555.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Madame de Montespan</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1641-1707)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Madame de Montespan’s triumph
+burst forth during a journey which
+the king made to Flanders in 1670.
+The ruin of the Dutch was prepared
+on this journey in the midst of
+entertainments. It was a continual
+fête, accompanied with great pomp.
+The king, who made all his war
+expeditions on horseback, made this one for the first time in a closed carriage.
+Postchaises had not yet been invented. The queen, Madame, her sister-in-law,
+and the marquise de Montespan were in this superb equipage, followed
+by many others, and when Madame de Montespan was alone she had four
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_556">[556]</span>bodyguards at the doors of her carriage. The dauphin came next with his
+court. Mademoiselle with hers; it was before the fatal event of her marriage;
+she took part in all these triumphs in peace and saw with complaisance her
+lover, the king’s favourite, at the head of his company of guards. The most
+beautiful crown furniture was carried to the towns where they slept. In
+every city they found a masked or dress ball, or fireworks. All his military
+retinue accompanied the king and all his household retinue followed or preceded
+him. The tables were kept as at St. Germain. In this pomp the
+court visited all the conquered cities. The principal ladies of Brussels, of
+Ghent came to see this magnificence. The king invited them to his table.
+He made them very handsome presents. All the officers of the garrison
+troops received gratuities. His liberality cost the king several times fifteen
+hundred gold louis a day.</p>
+
+<p>All the honour, all the homage was for Madame de Montespan, except
+what duty gave to the queen. Nevertheless this lady did not share the
+secrets of state. The king knew how to distinguish affairs of state from
+pleasure. The unfortunate experience of a maid of honour to the queen in
+1673 gave rise to a new court order. The danger attached to the position
+of a young girl in a gallant and voluptuous court caused twelve ladies of the
+palace to be substituted for the twelve maids of honour, who had graced the
+court and the queen’s presence. After that the queens’ households were
+composed in that manner. This arrangement made the court larger and
+more magnificent, by establishing in it the husbands and families of these
+ladies, which increased the society and spread greater opulence.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Poisoning: The Brinvilliers Case</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1670-1685 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>About 1670 the crime of poisoning began to be prevalent in France.
+This revenge of cowards had not been employed during the horrors of the
+civil war, but, by a singular fatality, had infected France in the time of glory
+and of the pleasures which softened manners, even as it found its way into
+ancient Rome in the fairest days of the republic.</p>
+
+<p>Two Italians, one of whom bore the name of Exili, worked for a long time
+with a German apothecary called Glaser, in quest of the philosopher’s stone.
+In this enterprise the two Italians lost the little they had and endeavoured,
+by crime, to repair the harm done by their folly; they secretly sold poisons.
+Confession, the greatest curb to human wickedness but which is abused in
+the idea that one may perform the crimes one is sure of expiating, was the
+means of informing the grand penitentiary of Paris that certain persons had
+died of poison; he apprised the government. The two Italians were suspected,
+and put in the Bastille; one of the two died there; Exili remained there
+without being convicted; and from the depths of his prison he spread
+through Paris those dark secrets which cost the lives of the civil lieutenant
+D’Aubrai and his family, and which finally led to the establishment of the
+Chamber of Poisons, called the <i>Chambre Ardente</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Love was the prime source of these horrible tragedies. The marquis of
+Brinvilliers, son-in-law of the civil lieutenant D’Aubrai, had in his house
+Sainte-Croix, the captain of his regiment, a man with too handsome a face:
+his wife warned him of the consequences; the husband persisted in letting
+the young man remain in the house with his wife, a young, beautiful, and
+susceptible woman. What might have been expected happened: they fell in
+love with each other. The civil lieutenant, father of the marquise, was harsh
+and imprudent enough to solicit a <i>lettre de cachet</i> and get the captain, who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_557">[557]</span>needed only to be returned to his regiment, sent to the Bastille. Sainte-Croix
+was unfortunately put in a room with Exili: this Italian taught him
+how to revenge himself; the results make one shudder. The marquise did
+not attempt the life of her husband, who had had some indulgence for a love
+of which he was himself the cause, but the fury of her vengeance induced
+her to poison her father, her two brothers, and her sister. Amidst so many
+crimes she was religious; she often went to confession, and when she was
+arrested at Liège a general confession was even found written in her handwriting,
+which served not as a proof against her but as presumptive evidence.
+It is not true that she tried her poisons in the hospitals as the people said,
+and as written in the <i>Causes célèbres</i>, the work of a briefless barrister (François
+Gabot de Pitaval) and made for the people; but it is true that she as well as
+Sainte-Croix had secret connections with persons afterwards accused of the
+same crimes. She was burned in 1676 after having had her head cut off. But
+from 1670, when Exili had begun to make poisons, down to 1680 this crime
+infected Paris. It cannot be concealed that Penautier, the receiver-general
+of the clergy and a friend of this woman, was accused some time afterwards
+of having put his secrets in practice and that it cost him half his wealth to
+suppress the indictment.</p>
+
+<p>The Bavarian princess, wife of Monseigneur,<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> at first added brilliancy
+and vivacity to this court. The marquise de Montespan still attracted the
+principal attention but finally she ceased to please, and the violent transports
+of her grief did not bring back a heart that was forsaking her. However,
+she still kept her place at court, through her high position, being superintendent
+of the queen’s household, and with the king through habit and through her
+authority. The youth and beauty of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, a son
+she had borne to the king in 1680, the title of duchess she had received,
+kept Madame de Maintenon away from the first place, to which she did not
+then dare to aspire but which she afterwards obtained. The duchess de
+Fontanges, however, and her son died in 1681.</p>
+
+<p>The marquise de Montespan, although she no longer had an open rival,
+none the less did not possess the heart tired of her and of her complaints.
+When men are no longer in their youth they almost all have need of the
+society of an agreeable woman. Above all the weight of affairs makes this
+consolation necessary. The new favourite, Madame de Maintenon, who felt
+the secret power she was gaining every day, bore herself with that art so
+natural to women and which is never displeasing to men. She wrote one day
+to Madame de Frontenac, her cousin, in whom she placed an entire confidence:
+“I always send him away dissatisfied but never discouraged.” During this
+time, when her favour was increasing and Madame de Montespan was nearing
+her fall, these two rivals saw each other every day, now with a secret bitterness,
+now with a passing confidence which the necessity of speaking to each
+other and the weariness of constraint sometimes put into their interviews.
+They agreed to write, each from her point of view, memoirs of all that happened
+at court. The work never went very far. Madame de Montespan took
+pleasure in reading selections from these memoirs to her friends, in the last
+years of her life. The pious devotion which was joined to all these secret
+intrigues further strengthened the favour of Madame de Maintenon and
+weakened that of Madame de Montespan. The king reproached himself for
+his attachment to a married woman and felt this scruple still more since he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_558">[558]</span>had begun to feel no more love for her. This embarrassing situation continued
+until 1685, a year made memorable by the revocation of the Edict of
+Nantes. Very different scenes were to be seen at that time—on one side
+the despair and flight of a part of the nation, on the other new fêtes at
+Versailles; Trianon and Marly built; nature in all these places forced with
+delights, and gardens in which every art was exhausted. The marriage of
+the grandson of the Great Condé with Mademoiselle de Nantes, daughter
+of the king and Madame de Montespan, was the last triumph of this mistress
+who began to retire from court.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Retirement of Montespan</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1685-1707 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king afterwards gave in marriage two other children he had had by
+her: Mademoiselle de Blois to the duke de Chartres, and the duke du Maine
+to Louise Benédicte de Bourbon, granddaughter of the Great Condé and
+sister of Monsieur le Duc,<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> a princess celebrated for her wit and liking for
+the arts.</p>
+
+<p>Before the celebration of the marriage of Monsieur le Duc with Mademoiselle
+de Nantes, the marquis de Seignelay in honour of that event gave
+the king a fête worthy of that monarch in the gardens of Sceaux, which had
+been planted by Le Nôtre with as much taste as those of Versailles. The
+idyll of Peace composed by Racine was performed on that occasion. At
+Versailles there was a new tournament and after the marriage the king displayed
+a singular magnificence, for which Cardinal Mazarin had given the
+first idea in 1656.</p>
+
+<p>Four booths were put up in the salon at Marly, filled with the richest
+and most select products of the industry of Parisian workmen. These four
+booths were at the same time so many splendid decorations representing the
+four seasons of the year. Madame de Montespan presided over one with
+Monseigneur. Her rival, Madame de Maintenon, was in another with the
+duke du Maine. The newly married couple each had charge of one: Monsieur
+le Duc with Madame de Thiange; and Madame la Duchesse, whom
+propriety did not permit to have one with a man on account of her extreme
+youth, was with the duchess de Chevreuse. The so-called gentlemen and
+ladies <i>du voyage</i> drew lots for the jewels with which the booths were decorated.
+The king then made presents to the whole court in a manner
+worthy of a king. Cardinal Mazarin’s lottery was less ingenious and less
+brilliant. These lotteries had been formerly put into fashion by the Roman
+emperors, but not one of them ever relieved its magnificence with so much
+gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>After the marriage of her daughter Madame de Montespan did not again
+appear at court. She lived a very dignified life at Paris. She had a large
+income, but it was a life annuity, and the king always paid her a pension of
+1,000 gold louis a month. She went every year to take the waters at Bourbon,
+and there married off the girls of the neighbourhood, whom she endowed.
+She was no longer at the age when the imagination, affected by lively
+impressions, sends one to the Carmelites. She died at Bourbon in 1707.</p>
+
+<p>One year after the marriage of Mademoiselle de Nantes with Monsieur
+le Duc, the prince of Condé died at Fontainebleau, at the age of sixty-six, of
+an illness which was hastened by his desire to go to see Madame la Duchesse,
+who had smallpox.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_559">[559]</span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Madame de Maintenon</i></h4>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, after the marriage of Madame la Duchesse, after the total
+eclipse of the mother, the victorious Madame de Maintenon achieved such an
+influence and inspired Louis XIV with so much tenderness and such scruples,
+that the king, by the advice of Père
+Lachaise, married her secretly in
+the month of January, 1686,<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> in the
+small chapel in the apartments occupied
+afterwards by the duke of
+Burgundy. There was no contract,
+no stipulation. The archbishop of
+Paris, Harlay de Chanvalon, pronounced
+the benediction, the confessor
+assisting. Montchevreuil and
+Bontemps, first valet de chambre,
+were the witnesses. Louis XIV was
+at the time in his forty-eighth year
+and the woman he espoused in
+her fifty-second. This sovereign,
+crowned with glory, desired to combine
+with the fatigues of governing
+the innocent joys of private life;
+this marriage bound him to nothing
+incompatible with his rank; it was
+always a problem to the court. Since
+Madame de Maintenon was really
+married, it respected her as the
+king’s choice, without treating her
+as queen.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p559.jpg" width="300" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Madame de Maintenon</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1635-1719)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>She was of an old family, granddaughter
+of Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné,
+gentleman of the chamber to Henry IV. His father, Constant d’Aubigné,
+wishing to establish himself in business in the Carolinas, applied to the English
+government, and was thrown into the prison of the château Trompette,
+from which he escaped with the assistance of the daughter of the governor
+of the prison, a gentleman from Bordeaux named Cadillac. Constant d’Aubigné
+married his benefactress in 1627 and took her with him to the Carolinas.
+Returning with her to France after several years, both were imprisoned at
+Niort in Poitou, by order of the court. In this prison was born, in 1635,
+Françoise d’Aubigné, destined to know all the greatest hardships of life as
+well as the highest favours of fortune. Taken at the age of three to
+America (Martinique), brought back an orphan of twelve years, brought
+up with the greatest severity by Madame de Neuillant, mother of the duchess
+de Navailles her relative, she was only too glad to marry in 1651 Paul
+Scarron, who lived near her in the rue d’Enfer. Scarron came of an old
+family of parliament, distinguished by its important matrimonial alliances;
+but his profession of burlesque poet lowered him while making him popular.
+It was nevertheless a stroke of fortune for Mademoiselle d’Aubigné to marry
+this man, deformed in mind and body, and with very modest means. She
+abjured Calvinism, her own religion as well as that of her ancestors, before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_560">[560]</span>this marriage. Her beauty and wit soon made her distinguished. She was
+eagerly sought after by the best society of Paris, and this time of her youth
+was no doubt the happiest period of her life. After the death of her husband,
+in 1660, she was for a long time unable to obtain from the king a
+modest pension of 1,500 livres which Scarron had enjoyed. Finally, after
+several years, the king granted her one of two thousand, saying, “Madame,
+I have made you wait a long time, but you have so many friends that my
+only distinction could be in not being one of them.” Meanwhile it is proved,
+by the letters of Madame de Maintenon, that she owed to Madame de Montespan
+the slight assistance she received to relieve her poverty. It was
+remembered several years later, when it became necessary to bring up
+secretly the duke du Maine, son of the king by the marquise de Montespan,
+born in 1672. The duke du Maine was born with a deformed foot. The
+chief physician, D’Aquin, who was in the secret, decided that the child should
+be taken to the baths at Barèges. It was necessary to find a confidential
+person to be intrusted with this charge. The king suggested Madame Scarron.
+Louvois went secretly to Paris to propose this journey to her. From
+that time on she was in charge of the education of the duke du Maine—chosen
+for this duty by the king and not by Madame de Montespan, as has
+erroneously been said.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote directly to the king; her letters pleased him greatly. This
+was the origin of her good fortune—her shrewdness did the rest. The king,
+who at first did not like her, passed from aversion to confidence and from
+confidence to love. The letters which we have of hers are of much greater
+importance than they would seem: they show that mixture of religion and
+gallantry, of dignity and weakness, which are often found in the human heart,
+and which certainly were in that of Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon seemed
+to be filled at the same time with an ambition and a devoutness which never
+appeared to conflict. Her confessor, Gobelin, approved equally of both: he
+was spiritual guide as well as courtier; his penitent, having become ungrateful
+towards Madame de Montespan, always dissembled this feeling. Her confessor
+encouraged her in her aspirations. She called religion to the assistance
+of her waning charms to supplant her benefactress, now become her rival.</p>
+
+<p>This strange mixture of love and scruple on the part of the king, of
+ambition and devoutness on the part of the new mistress, seemed to have
+lasted from 1681 to 1686, the date of their marriage. Her elevation was for
+her only a seclusion. Shut up in her apartments, which were on the same
+floor as those of the king, she limited herself to the society of two or three
+ladies, retiring like herself—she saw even them very rarely. The king came
+to her apartments every day after supper, and remained until midnight.
+There he worked with his ministers, while Madame de Maintenon read, or
+occupied herself with needlework; she never attempted to speak on affairs of
+state, seemed often to ignore them, putting far from her any appearance
+of intrigue or plotting; much more occupied in humouring him who governed
+than seeking to govern, in managing her income, and expending it
+with the greatest cautiousness.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV in marrying Madame de Maintenon gained only an agreeable
+and submissive companion. The sole public distinction which testified to
+her secret elevation was, that during mass she occupied one of those small
+gilded stalls which were supposed to be only for the king and queen. Beyond
+that, no display, no grandeur. The devoutness with which she had inspired
+the king and which had led to her marriage, became gradually a true and
+profound sentiment, which age and ennui served to strengthen. She already
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_561">[561]</span>posed at the court and before the king as a foundress by gathering together
+at Noisy several young girls of the nobility; and the king had already set
+apart the revenues of the abbey of St. Denis for that budding community.
+St. Cyr was built at the foot of the park of Versailles in 1686.</p>
+
+<p>On the death of the king she retired for life to St. Cyr. What is surprising,
+is that the king left her almost nothing. He simply recommended
+her to the duke of Orleans. She asked for a pension of only 24,000 livres,
+which was scrupulously paid her, until her death on April 15th, 1719.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19b6"><a href="#endnote_19b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Turning now from this survey of the court, let us examine the effect of
+Louis XIV’s policy on the nation at large.</p>
+
+<h3>EFFECT OF LOUIS XIV’S POLICY ON THE NATION</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis XIV’s reign falls into two parts, easy to distinguish, the one from
+the other; the first covers from 1661 to 1683, the second, and much the longer,
+from 1683 to 1715. In the first period, Louis XIV found four men of genius,
+who were also scrupulously honest men, to uphold and even direct him in
+everything concerning the internal government, diplomacy, warfare, and
+defence of the kingdom. In an equal degree Colbert, Lionne, Turenne, and
+Vauban exercised a salutary and fruitful influence over the king’s mind, never
+divorcing the welfare of the kingdom from that of the king, and seeking
+before all else the greatness or the security of the empire by adopting the best
+of the measures which had proved so successful under Henry IV, Richelieu,
+and Mazarin. The profound reverence which Colbert, more especially, had
+for the memory of Richelieu, whom he wished the king to take as his model,
+provoked Louis’ jests. “When any important matter was under discussion,”
+says a contemporary chronicle, “the late king would often exclaim, ‘Colbert
+there will tell us: Sire, the great Cardinal Richelieu.’ Which, however, did
+not prevent Colbert from pursuing his object, and moulding the king in
+Richelieu’s likeness.”</p>
+
+<p>In the second period, Louis, prematurely aged, disillusioned, and ill,
+reduced to a stern performance of his duties as a man and a Christian by
+the froward influence of an obstinate and ambitious woman, drew inspiration
+from none but narrow ideals, applying the most fatal maxims to home government
+and foreign policy. He yielded to the advice of persons whom he
+had for long encouraged to flatter his prejudices, and who urged him along
+a path of bloody repressions. Louvois, Madame de Maintenon, Chamillard,
+and Villeroi were the real wielders of authority. They sacrificed the well-being
+of the kingdom to their own interest, which they sought to confound
+with the interests of the crown. They prepared the way for the ruin of the
+state by the most disastrous home measures, while they ruined the prestige
+of France abroad by changing the character of her policy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19m"><a href="#endnote_19m">m</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The trouble was not only in the royal household; it also threatened to
+be in the state; for Louis, violating all laws civil and religious, placed the
+legitimated princes side by side with the princes of the blood. He forced
+the court to pay equal respect to both; and public morality received a blow
+from which it was slow to recover. The lessons in scandal which came from
+the throne were not lost, and the corruption, which was fermenting in
+spite of the apparent austerity of the last years, was to break out under the
+new reign without restraint and without shame. Those dukes of Orleans
+and Vendôme, given up to filthy debauches, that duke d’Antin surprised
+in a flagrant act of theft, and so many others who contrived at play to correct
+the chances of fortune; those princesses of the blood who at Marly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_562">[562]</span>within two steps of the king and Madame de Maintenon, send for such
+strange pastimes<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a>—that court in fine which, according to Saint-Simon,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i6"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span>
+“sweated hypocrisy,” all shows, under a king who plays the devotee, when
+he is no longer able to do otherwise, that human morality, conscience, and
+dignity can never be violated with impunity. Already, even in the very
+heart of Versailles, a premonitory cry is heard. In face of these gilded
+lives La Bruyère writes: “The great have no soul; I would be of the
+people.” It was at Versailles that the French nobility ruined themselves.
+There official ennui led to secret debauches; the habit of receiving everything
+from the monarch led to the belief that all was due not to services but
+to servility.</p>
+
+<p>One irrefutable witness of the wretchedness of this period has been left
+to us—the memorials which the king demanded of the intendants on the
+condition of their provinces in order that his grandson the duke of Burgundy
+might by studying them become acquainted with the affairs of the
+administration. At every page these distressing words recur, “War, mortality,
+the continual quartering and passage of the soldiers, the militia, the
+great prerogatives, the withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined this
+country.” Bridges, roads were in a deplorable state and commerce was
+annihilated. The frontier provinces were further crushed by requisitions
+and the pillage of the soldiers who, receiving neither pay nor food, helped
+themselves. In the generality of Rouen, out of 700,000 inhabitants 650,000
+had a bundle of straw for their beds. In certain provinces the peasant was
+returning to a state of savagery: living for the most part on herbs and roots
+like the beasts; and, wild as they were, he fled if one approached. “There
+is no nation more savage than these people,” the intendant of Bourges says
+of those under his administration; “sometimes troops of them are to be
+seen in the country, seated in a circle in the middle of a field and always
+far from the roads; if one approach the band immediately disperses.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19c11"><a href="#endnote_19c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We have seen Louis XIV at home; let us now turn to his relations with
+other countries.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 225px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-19.jpg" width="225" height="200" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> Table of the direct ancestors of Louis XIV for four generations, showing birthplace of
+each ancestor. It will be noted that Ferdinand I and Anna of Hungary appear twice in the fourth
+generation column. The actual number of persons, therefore, is twenty-eight instead of thirty.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/genealogy4.jpg" width="700" height="575" alt="Genealogical table">
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> There were in Louis XIV’s day three councils: (1) The supreme council, to which the king
+summoned the secretaries of state and sometimes the princes of the blood. It had the general
+direction of the governmental policy and important affairs. It judged appeals from the state
+council. (2) The state council, placed beneath the ministry but above the higher courts. It
+was the great administrative body of the realm, meeting four times a week, the chancellor presiding.
+On one day it read and discussed the reports of the provincial governors; on another it
+discussed financial questions; on another it listened to complaints on taxation; on another
+it adjudged differences between the courts. The state councillors were eighteen in number.
+(3) The grand council, which occupied itself with cases covering the bishoprics and the benefices
+at the king’s disposal. It judged the edicts of the sovereign courts and the conflicts between
+the parliament and the lower courts. Its decisions were executive throughout the whole kingdom,
+while the sentences of each parliament applied only to its own territory.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> [Voltaire is wrong here, says Martin:<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19d3"><a href="#endnote_19d">d</a></span> “Fouquet had spent about nine millions” (almost
+eighteen nowadays and perhaps forty-five in relative value).]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> [Louis XIV had little love for Paris and created Versailles, or rather greatly enlarged the
+old château of Louis XIII, by making immense additions, and by constructing the fine façade
+on the park side which, with its extended wings, made it the most superb and vast abode in the
+world.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19e3"><a href="#endnote_19e">e</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> [The above mentioned <i>régime des classes</i>.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> [If the words were not uttered the thought was certainly present. Louis XIV is known to
+have written on one occasion, “The nation does not constitute a body in France; it resides
+entirely in the person of the king.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> [In 1680 the Paris <i>corps de ville</i>
+    solemnly conferred on the king the title of Louis the Great,
+which, hitherto used sometimes on medals, now became <i>de rigueur</i> in official language.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19d4"><a href="#endnote_19d">d</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> In 1669 the sister house of Port-Royal de Paris was placed under Jesuit management. It
+was to this house that Clement XI ordered the transference of the property of Port-Royal des
+Champs, the year before the buildings were destroyed. The aged sisters were dispersed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> In 1694 a printer and a publisher were hanged for libel, by sentence of De la Reynie. Several
+persons were interrogated or died in the Bastille for the same reason. The author of the pamphlet
+against the archbishop of Rheims was imprisoned in an iron cage at Mont St. Michel.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> These were letters written by order of the king, countersigned by a secretary of state, and
+sealed with the king’s seal, by virtue of which the police arrested a citizen, and imprisoned him
+without trial, as long as it pleased the government, without his being seen or allowed to receive
+letters from anyone.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> [Anne of Austria died of cancer January 20th, 1666.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> [Madame’s husband, Philip duke of Orleans, who had assumed that title on the death of
+Gaston in 1660, was a man of licentious habits, and although he distinguished himself in war, as
+we shall see, his effeminacy was of a most marked type. There is no doubt that Monsieur was
+most indifferent to his wife, and many historians, including Michelet,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19l2"><a href="#endnote_19l">l</a></span> believe that Louis XIV
+was the father of her children. Of these, two daughters arrived at maturity—Marie Louise, who
+married Charles II of Spain, and Anne Marie, who married Victor Amadeus of Savoy, afterwards
+king of Sardinia. Madame died 1670, under circumstances which will be related in the next
+chapter, and which were open to the suspicion of poison. The following year Monsieur married
+the princess palatine—Charlotte Elizabeth. She was the mother of the duke of Orleans, regent
+of the realm, and died in 1722.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> [By this title was known the “grand dauphin” Louis, only child of Louis XIV and his
+queen, born in 1661. The dauphin married in 1680 the princess Marie Anne Christine Victoire
+of Bavaria.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> [Louis de Bourbon-Condé, who was the father of Louis XV’s prime minister.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> [The queen Maria Theresa had died July 30th, 1683, quite suddenly. She held so little
+place at court that the event was scarcely noticed.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19e4"><a href="#endnote_19e">e</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> Monseigneur played late in the salon. On withdrawing to his own apartments he went up to
+the princesses (the duchesses de Chartres and de Bourbon) and found them smoking with pipes
+which they had sent for from the Swiss guardhouse. Monseigneur made them stop this diversion,
+but the smoke betrayed them. Next morning the king administered a rough rebuke.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19i7"><a href="#endnote_19i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The duchess de la Ferté assembled her purveyors at her house and played a kind of lansquenet
+with them. She whispered in my ear, “I cheat them but they rob me.” <i>Mémoires</i> of
+Madame de Staal.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_19o"><a href="#endnote_19o">o</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_563">[563]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-20.jpg" width="500" height="325" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX. LOUIS XIV, SPAIN, AND HOLLAND</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>I doubt whether any human being ever enjoyed, in greater perfection,
+the blessing of nerves toned to habitual energy, and exempt from all
+morbid sensitiveness. Heat, cold, pain, fatigue, and hunger seemed to
+have no power over him. Not only his delicate courtiers but his hardy
+veterans admired the stoicism of their invulnerable king; and his mental
+composure was on a level with his bodily hardihood. No provocation
+could excite him to unseemly anger, and no calamity could depress him
+to unmanly dejection. If he was often the victim, he was never the
+slave of appetite or passion. Though constantly exposed to the allurements
+of the most exquisite flattery, and the most fascinating caresses,
+he never yielded himself to the guidance of any favourite, male or female;
+but adhered, with immutable constancy and calmness, to the
+ministers whom he had either trained or chosen.—<span class="smcap">Stephen.</span><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20n"><a href="#endnote_20n">n</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1679 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The foreign situation in 1661 was most favourable. If it was necessary
+to wind up the affairs of Mazarin, all that had to be done abroad was to
+gather the fruits and enjoy the glory acquired. Europe was basking in a
+peace so profound that not a cloud seemed to threaten it. The powers were
+all occupied in reorganising their forces, some like England in reconstructing
+their government. Louis XIV was one of the freest of sovereigns; he
+was the most powerful, thanks to Mazarin; and he became the wealthiest,
+thanks to Colbert.</p>
+
+<p>He desired them to preserve peace and give no offence to Europe.
+Nevertheless he had inherited from Mazarin a fixed plan, and certain projects
+in harmony with the spirit of his government. His ambition was to
+invalidate the renunciation of Maria Theresa, in such a manner as to create
+a right for himself or his sons to the Spanish succession, or at least to the
+Netherlands.<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p>
+
+<p>He charged the archbishop of Embrun, his ambassador at Madrid, to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_564">[564]</span>demand that the renunciation be revoked. He maintained that it was not
+<i>ipso facto</i>, the infanta not having renounced her rights and the court of
+Spain having itself thus decided; that in all respects it had failed to obtain
+the necessary ratification; finally that the condition on which it had been
+made, the payment of a dowry of 500,000 crowns, had not been complied
+with. He offered, in case his plea was accepted, to ally himself the more
+closely with Spain, and even abandon all claims to Portugal in her favour;
+but Philip and his ministers eluded the question and refused to give an
+opinion.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1661-1662 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>During the negotiations a serious affair occurred in London, where
+the baron de Vatteville, the Spanish ambassador, claimed precedence
+over the count d’Estrades, the ambassador of France. On October 8th,
+1661, the Swedish envoy, the count de Brahé, was to be presented to the
+king of England. As the procession was about to start, D’Estrades tried
+to make his coach pass first, and a troop of armed men under orders from
+Vatteville stopped it. The Londoners took the part of the Spaniards;
+there was a fight—some were killed and wounded. In the end the French
+were obliged to retire.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b1"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At this news Louis XIV ordered the Spanish ambassador to leave France,
+and the French ambassador to Spain to demand the punishment of Vatteville
+and a reparation which should make such affairs henceforth impossible.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c1"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Philip IV granted this without much difficulty. Vatteville was recalled;
+and March 22nd, 1662, the marquis de Fuentes declared at the Louvre before
+the assembled court that the Spanish envoys would claim no precedence over
+those of France, except at the court of Vienna where they had long been
+accustomed to occupy the first place on account of the close ties which
+united the two branches of the house of Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Spain still refused to recognise the rights of the infanta, and
+Louis XIV continued to uphold the Portuguese;<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> he even assisted in bringing
+about the marriage of Charles of England to a princess of the house of
+Braganza, who received Tangier, Bombay, and a considerable sum as dowry.
+Charles II sought, as did Cromwell, to develop English commerce and the
+navy, but he was needy, extravagant, and he feared the parsimony of parliament.
+Louis XIV advanced him money in secret and offered to buy back
+Dunkirk and Mardyck.<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> The bargain was concluded November 27th, 1662,
+and France recovered the two towns which Mazarin had turned over to
+Cromwell with regret.</p>
+
+<p>By this acquisition Louis XIV took a first step towards the Netherlands,
+the object of his whole ambition. He awaited the moment when the question
+of Philip IV’s successor should be opened to uphold the rights of the
+infanta in the Belgian provinces, even though the determination of these
+rights was still a matter of debate. He wavered between the desire to
+reunite the major part of the Spanish Netherlands to France, giving the rest
+to Holland, or to occupy only a few places and erect the ten Belgian provinces
+into a republic or a neutral state. The latter plan was the less brilliant,
+but the easiest to carry out; and a state thus constituted would oppose a
+barrier to foreign invasion. Louis XIV negotiated in secret to obtain the
+eventual concurrence of Holland in his plans, but in spite of the efforts of
+the grand pensionary, the celebrated Jan de Witt, he could not obtain this.
+The Dutch understood too well that a Belgian republic would be dependent
+on Louis and would not oppose his ambitions.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b2"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span> Besides this the Dutch had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_565">[565]</span>a cause for complaint in the tax of 50 sous a ton, placed by Fouquet in 1659,
+upon foreign ships trading in French ports. After long debates this tax
+was reduced by half for Dutch ships and a defensive and commercial treaty
+was signed in 1662 in which France and Holland agreed to protect each
+other’s rights on land and sea.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The duchies of Lorraine and Bar had been returned to Duke Charles
+IV in 1661 only on condition that he would not rebuild the ramparts of
+the towns, that he would only maintain one fortress, Marsal, and that French
+troops should have the right of passing through his territory. These conditions
+were not fulfilled. Louis lost patience and sent an army corps to
+Marsal. The duke bent before the necessity, and gave up Marsal on condition
+that he might hold the rest of his estates according to the terms of
+the treaty of 1661.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c2"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louis, admirably counselled by Lionne, took care in preparing the execution
+of his designs against the Netherlands not to arouse the defiance of
+Europe. He managed only ostensibly to sustain the Portuguese; simply
+authorising them to take into their service Marshal de Schomberg and a
+body of French volunteers which helped them defend their liberties.<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1663-1665 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>While Louis was feeling his strength he eagerly seized any opportunity
+for military enterprise which would give a high idea of himself and serve
+his policy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b3"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span> In spite of his rough treatment of the head of the church
+in 1662-1664, he displayed zeal for the interests of Christianity against its
+great enemy the Turks, who continued to press the siege of Crete<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> and
+extend their conquests in Hungary and to desolate by piracy the entire
+coast of the Mediterranean. Divers plans were proposed in the king’s
+council for attacking the Ottoman power on the Barbary coasts and repressing
+the pirates. A squadron commanded by the duke de Beaufort, the
+former hero of the Fronde, landed 5,000 picked soldiers at Jijelli, a small
+Algerian port between Bougie and Bona. Jijelli was taken without difficulty
+(July 22nd, 1664), but discord arose between Beaufort and his officers.
+They were soon hard pressed by the Turks of Algiers, reinforced by numerous
+Arab and Kabyle bands, while Beaufort cruised in front of Tunis
+instead of making a diversion against Algiers, as the king had ordered.
+The military resources of the Algerians and especially their artillery were
+greater than the French had imagined; discord broke out, and after having
+repelled a few attacks the French were compelled to re-embark in such haste
+that they left their cannon behind.</p>
+
+<p>But the successes of Beaufort’s squadron, which the famous Chevalier
+Paul commanded, soon wiped out the stigma of this reverse; two Algerian
+flotillas were annihilated during the course of the year 1665.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c3"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A touching example of self-sacrifice was an incident of this war. The
+dey of Algiers had among his captives an officer from St. Malo, named Porcon
+de la Barbinais; he sent him to offer to the king proposals of peace,
+making him promise to return in case his mission failed. The lives of 600
+Christians were dependent upon his keeping his word. The propositions
+were not accepted. Porcon knew it. He went to St. Malo, regulated his
+affairs, then returned to Algiers, certain of the fate which awaited him.
+The dey had him decapitated. This man was the equal of Regulus, yet
+he is little known to fame.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d1"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_566">[566]</span></p>
+
+<p>Reasons and pretexts for war with the porte were not long wanting. In
+1664 some acts of bad faith on the part of the viziers were taken as an excuse
+for sending 6,000 men under the orders of Coligny-Saligny into Hungary,
+which the Turks were invading. This was a means of dissipating the religious
+clouds which the threats against the pope had raised at Rome and elsewhere.
+Louis XIV had still another reason. He had undertaken in obtaining a
+[three years’] prorogation of the league of the Rhine (1663) to furnish
+a contingent to his imperial allies in case the empire should be threatened.
+He attached the highest importance to maintaining a league whose principal
+object would be to close the road to the Netherlands to Austrian troops if
+ever war should break out between France and Austria, and he believed
+it all the more easy to play the rôle of protector in Germany since the
+emperor’s power there had sensibly declined since the Treaty of Westphalia.</p>
+
+<p>Coligny-Saligny joined the Austro-German army commanded by Montecuculi;
+the French took a considerable part in the combat at Körmend,
+and especially in the battle of St. Gotthard (August 1st, 1664), where
+they paid dear for the principal honour of the victory. But the emperor
+and Austria, grateful though they were, could not pardon the French for
+having claimed to have saved the empire. Leopold hastened to treat with
+the Turks, and was as eager to deliver himself from his auxiliaries as he was
+from his enemies.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b4"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Indeed the emperor was alarmed, and not without reason, to encounter
+the hand of Louis everywhere. A defensive alliance was concluded in
+August, 1663, between France and Denmark, as the result of a commercial
+treaty, advantageous to the French marine. A secret negotiation of the
+very highest importance was, about the same time, entered upon with
+Poland. Since 1661 that republic had taken Louis XIV as arbiter in its
+quarrels with Moscovy. In 1663, King John Casimir Vasa, discouraged by
+Poland’s constant woes, determined to lay down the crown: his wife, a
+princess of that branch of the Gonzagas which had long been established in
+France, entered into communication with Louis XIV to bring about the
+election of the duke d’Enghien, son of the Great Condé, to the Polish throne.
+With regret Louis saw Poland plunging to her own ruin, and decided to
+arrest the disaster by doing again that in which Henry III had so disgracefully
+failed—infusing French spirit into the land of the Jagellons. Colbert
+pushed the king to the same policy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c4"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE WAR OF THE QUEEN’S RIGHTS (1667-1668 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Louis XIV had not succeeded in having Maria Theresa’s act
+of renunciation revoked, and he now thought of compelling Madrid to recognise
+the right of devolution.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the name given in Brabant and some of the other Belgian
+provinces to the law, by virtue of which, when there were children of two
+different marriages, those of the first inherited in preference to those of the
+second. Louis XIV claimed Brabant and its annexes, in the name of Maria
+Theresa. Philip IV rejected this new claim, which was most contestable,
+since if the rule of devolution really existed in the above-mentioned provinces,
+it had to be proven that it applied to the succession of princes as well as
+to those of private individuals. Moreover all the acts emanating from Spanish
+sovereigns since Charles V were manifestly contradictory of this. Nevertheless
+both parties remained on pacific terms until the death of Philip IV
+and Anne of Austria. The king of Spain expired after a lingering illness
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_567">[567]</span>September 17th, 1665. The queen-mother, his sister, died of a cancer January
+20th, 1666, after constant efforts to maintain peace between the two crowns.</p>
+
+<p>Philip IV directed in his will that the 500,000 crowns constituting Maria
+Theresa’s dowry should be paid, but he regulated the succession in such
+a manner as to confirm the renunciation of that princess and to exclude all
+pretensions of the house of France to any portion whatsoever of his estates.
+He left the throne of Spain to a sickly infant scarcely able to walk, and
+who nobody believed would live. Foreseeing the contingency by which
+the death of this child, the young Charles II, would extinguish the male line,
+he stipulated that the throne should pass in that event to his second daughter
+Margaret and her children. Margaret was then fourteen years of age;
+she was betrothed to the emperor Leopold, and did in fact marry him the
+following year.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of an infant under the regency of a foreigner, his mother,
+Maria Anna of Austria, the exhausted condition of the Spanish realm on
+account of the Portuguese war, offered a magnificent opportunity for Louis
+XIV’s ambition, but he waited until 1667 before declaring his project.
+Impatient as he was, a maritime war between England and Holland retarded
+the execution of his plans.</p>
+
+<p>Under Charles II, as under Cromwell, England had in Holland a rival in
+commerce and the marine. Charles II, who was desirous of flattering public
+sentiment and who had the same reason as the Protector to seek in foreign
+war a diversion to calm restless spirits, entertained, moreover, a profound
+antipathy for De Witt and other leaders of the republican government at
+the Hague. He wished to re-establish the stadholdership to the profit of the
+young William of Orange, his sister’s son.<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> In this state of feeling it only
+required a hostile meeting between some Dutch and English ships off the
+African coast to precipitate the two navies into a fearful war.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch convinced themselves that they were the attacked party and
+demanded assistance of Louis XIV in fulfilment of the guarantee he had
+given them in 1662. At first Louis refused, alleging that it was not proved
+that the English were the aggressors, and he offered his mediation. His
+desire was to act cautiously with regard to England and not drive her to an
+alliance which Spain was seeking. As to the Dutch, he was beginning to
+regard them with distrust. The grand pensionary De Witt joined to his
+fine qualities a shrewdness, a proud reserve, and a talent for making
+advances without committing himself, which were little to the taste of the
+French agents. D’Estrades, ambassador to the Hague in 1665, considered
+an English alliance more desirable for France than one with Holland.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1665-1667 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The offer of mediation was declined. Louis XIV tried at least to confine
+his struggle to a naval war, for he did not wish to see the English on the
+continent. Meanwhile the states-general were insisting on the complete
+execution of the guarantee treaty. Louis ended by deciding to declare
+war on England. He gave out that he wished to convert the world to the
+religion which kept him to his word. But he informs us himself that there
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_568">[568]</span>were still other reasons; he wished to keep Holland from carrying out her
+projects against the Netherlands, and prevent a reconciliation with England
+that might some day be a serious danger to France. He therefore upheld
+her, but he kept as much as possible to the rôle of a looker-on, and let the
+English and Dutch fleets almost annihilate each other in the four great combats
+of two campaigns. The duke de Beaufort and the Brest squadron never
+left the Channel. The French never fought the English except in the West
+Indies, where they captured a portion of the island of St. Christopher.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p568.jpg" width="300" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1611-1675)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the beginning of 1667 Louis XIV supported Sweden’s offer of mediation,
+and Breda was chosen as the seat of a congress. Besides the war,
+England was suffering from another scourge—the plague of 1666. Charles
+II was satisfied with France’s promise of a personal subsidy and with the
+restitution of St. Christopher without
+indemnity. The treaty was
+signed July 31st. Louis XIV did
+not await this moment to enter
+Flanders. He based his aggression
+on the formal refusal of all his
+demands by the court of Madrid,
+declaring that, having exhausted all
+peaceful means of obtaining justice,
+he was now going to take possession
+of what belonged to Maria
+Theresa.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b5"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The league of the Rhine assured
+Louis of at least the neutrality of
+Germany; the emperor was not prepared
+for war; Europe, favourable
+or intimidated, beheld with astonishment
+King Louis XIV take the field
+in the month of May, 1667. He had
+collected an army of fifty thousand
+men carefully armed and equipped
+under the direction of Turenne, whom
+Louvois still obeyed with docility.
+This fine army was not unequal to the
+task of vindicating the queen’s rights
+to the duchy of Brabant, the marquisate
+of Antwerp, Limburg, Hainault,
+the county of Namur, and other territories.
+“Heaven not having established a tribunal on earth from which
+the kings of France may demand justice, the most Christian king can expect
+it only of his arms,” said the manifesto sent to the court of Spain. Louis XIV
+set out with Turenne. Marshal de Créqui was commissioned to keep a watch
+on Germany.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniards were caught unprepared; Armentières, Charleroi, Douai,
+and Tournay had but inadequate garrisons and succumbed almost without a
+blow. While the army was occupied with the siege of Courtrai, Louis XIV
+returned to meet the queen at Compiègne; the whole court followed him to
+the camp. “I brought the queen to Flanders,” said Louis XIV, “to show
+her to the people of that country, who indeed received her with all the joy
+imaginable, showing that they were sorry there had not been more time to
+prepare themselves to receive her more worthily.” It was at Courtrai that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_569">[569]</span>the queen took up her residence. Marshal de Turenne had gone in the direction
+of Dendermonde, but the Flemings had opened their sluices and the
+country was inundated; he was obliged to fall back on Oudenarde; the town
+was taken in two days. The king, still followed by the court, laid siege to
+Lille. Vauban, already celebrated as an engineer, formed his lines of circumvallation.
+Créqui’s army rejoined that of Turenne; an effort on the part of
+the governor of the Netherlands to relieve the town was anticipated; the
+Spanish troops sent for that purpose arrived too late and were defeated as
+they retired; the citizens of Lille had forced the garrison to capitulate;
+Louis XIV entered the place on the 27th of August, ten days after the
+trenches were opened. On the 2nd of September the king set out on the way
+back to St. Germain; Turenne also took the town of Alost before going into
+winter quarters.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1667-1668 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The first campaign of Louis XIV had been merely a warlike game almost
+without danger or bloodshed; it had nevertheless sufficed to alarm Europe.
+Scarcely had peace been concluded at Breda before another negotiation
+was secretly entered into between England, Holland, and Sweden. It was
+in vain that King Charles II was personally inclined to an alliance with
+France; his people had their eyes open to the dangers which Europe incurred
+from the arms of Louis XIV. On the 23rd of January, 1668, the celebrated
+Treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed at the Hague. The three powers
+requested the king of France to grant the Netherlands a truce till the month
+of May, in order to give time to treat with Spain and obtain from her, as
+France demanded, the final cession of the places conquered or of Franche-Comté
+in exchange. In reality the triple alliance was resolved to protect
+helpless Spain against France; a secret article pledged the three allies to
+take arms to restrain Louis XIV and if possible to bring him back to the
+position fixed by the Treaty of the Pyrenees. At the same moment Portugal
+made peace with Spain, which recognised her independence.</p>
+
+<p>The king refused to concede the prolonged armistice which had been
+demanded of him: “I grant it till the 31st of March,” he had said, “as I do
+not wish to miss the season for taking the field.” The marquis of Castel
+Rodrigo laughed at this: “I am content,” he said, “with the suspension of
+arms which winter imposes on the king of France.” The governor of the
+Netherlands was mistaken; Louis XIV was about to prove that his soldiers,
+like those of Gustavus Adolphus, did not know what winter was. He had
+confided the command of his new army to the prince of Condé, who had been
+amnestied nine years before but had hitherto been a stranger to the royal
+favours.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20g1"><a href="#endnote_20g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Under pretext of being in Burgundy for the estates, Monsieur le Prince
+had made careful note that Franche-Comté was without troops and unsuspecting,
+because the inhabitants did not doubt that the king would grant
+them neutrality as in the last war, since they had sent to him to demand it.
+He kept up the delusion.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20e1"><a href="#endnote_20e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The gaieties of St. Germain were at their height, when in the depth of
+winter in the month of January, 1668, all were astonished to see troops
+marching in all directions, coming and going on the roads of Champagne and
+in the Three Bishoprics—trains of artillery, wagons of munitions stopping
+under various pretexts in the roads which lead from Champagne to Burgundy.
+That part of France was filled with movement of which the cause
+was unknown. The uninitiated out of interest, and the courtiers out of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_570">[570]</span>curiosity, exhausted themselves in conjectures; Germany was alarmed; the
+object of these preparations and peculiar actions was a mystery to everybody.
+The secrets of conspiracies were never more closely guarded than in this
+enterprise of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, on February 2nd, the king left St. Germain with the young duke
+d’Enghien, son of the Great Condé, and several courtiers; the other officers
+being at the rendezvous with their troops. He travelled on horseback
+by long stages and arrived at Dijon. Twenty thousand men, assembled by
+twenty different routes, found themselves on the same day in Franche-Comté,
+several leagues from Besançon, the Great Condé at their head.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20f1"><a href="#endnote_20f">f</a></span> Besançon
+and Salins surrendered at sight of the troops. When the king arrived he
+went to Dôle and caused counterscarps and demilunes to be set up. Four
+or five hundred men were killed here. The amazed inhabitants, seeing themselves
+surrounded by troops and without hope of succour, surrendered on
+Shrove Tuesday, February 14th. The king at the same time marched to
+Gray. The governor made as though he would defend himself, but the marquis
+d’Yenne, governor-general under Castel Rodrigo, who was of the country
+and had all his property there, came to surrender to the king and, going to
+Gray, persuaded the governor to surrender. The king entered Gray on
+Sunday, the 19th of February, and there caused a <i>Te Deum</i> to be sung,
+having the governor-general at his right hand and the governor of the town
+itself on his left; and the same day he set out to return. Thus in twenty-two
+days of the month of February he had started from St. Germain, had
+been to Franche-Comté, taken complete possession of it, and returned to St.
+Germain.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20e2"><a href="#endnote_20e">e</a></span> The king was back at St. Germain preparing enormous armaments
+for the month of April; he had given the prince of Condé the
+government of Franche-Comté.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>War seemed imminent. The last days of the armistice were at hand.
+“The opinion of peace which prevails in France is a malady which is becoming
+widespread,” Louvois wrote in the middle of March; “but we shall
+soon be cured, since the time to take the field is drawing near. You must
+give out everywhere that the Spaniards will not have peace.” Louvois was
+uttering a shameless falsehood; the Spaniards were without resources, but
+they had still less courage than resources; and consented to the abandonment
+of all the places in the Netherlands conquered in 1667.</p>
+
+<p>A congress was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle and was presided over by the
+nuncio of the new pope Clement IX, who was as favourable to France as his
+predecessor Innocent X had been to Spain—“a phantom arbitrator between
+phantom plenipotentiaries,” says Voltaire. The real negotiations took
+place at St. Germain. “I did not only take care,” writes Louis XIV, “to
+profit by the present conjuncture, but also to put myself in a position to turn
+to good account those which seemed likely to ensue. Amid the great augmentations
+which my fortune might receive, nothing seemed to me more necessary
+than to acquire for myself, among my smaller neighbours, a reputation for
+moderation and probity which might quiet in them those emotions of terror
+which all naturally feel at the aspect of too great power. I must not lack
+the means of breaking with Spain when I wish to do so; Franche-Comté
+which I surrendered might be reduced to such a condition that I could
+be master of it at any time, and my new conquests, well secured, would open
+me a surer entry to the Netherlands.” Determined by these wise motives,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_571">[571]</span>the king gave the order to sign; and the 2nd of May, 1668, the Peace of
+Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded. Before surrendering Franche-Comté the
+king gave orders to demolish the fortifications of Dôle and Gray; at the
+same time he commissioned Vauban to fortify Ath, Lille, and Tournay.
+The triple alliance was triumphant, the Dutch especially.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20g2"><a href="#endnote_20g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PROJECTS AGAINST HOLLAND (1668-1672 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The first period of the diplomatic and military history of Louis XIV
+closes with the treaty that ended the War of the Queen’s Rights. A new
+era is about to open in which Louis will cast aside the compass that was so
+safely directing the ship of France to follow no other guides than his passion
+and his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Recent events had succeeded in crushing the old French sympathies for
+Holland, much weakened since the Dutch defection of 1648. Resentment
+against the unfaithful ally, very keen in the active and military element of
+the nation, had reached a point of exasperation with the king, who was not
+unaware of the secret clauses of the Treaty of the Hague.<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> Louis, who had
+laid down his arms much less for the confederates of the Hague than for the
+sake of the future Spanish succession, bore a grudge against Holland, not so
+much for having really arrested his progress [by having formed the triple
+alliance] as for having boasted of doing so. Pride had turned the head of
+the little republic, which plumed itself on having laid colossal Spain low,
+saved Denmark from the blows of Sweden, beaten, or at least quit even with
+England, set a limit on French conquests, and drawn into its hands three-quarters
+of European commerce and sea trade.</p>
+
+<p>But wounded pride was far from being the only motive that turned
+Louis XIV against Holland. He was convinced that he must crush her in
+order to get Belgium, and consequently he must appear, momentarily, to
+forget the end in order to remove the obstacle. He might then, strictly
+speaking, imagine to himself that he was still pursuing his old plans, and
+was only changing the means of French policy; but passion might easily
+make him take the means for the end. This passion, generated by diplomatic
+disappointments, was nourished and envenomed by the dissimilarity
+between the institutions, principles, and beliefs of the French and Dutch
+governments. Holland was not only an unfaithful ally—she was a republican
+and Protestant nation, the home of religious and political liberty, which
+Louis hated with a growing hatred as his monarchy became more clearly
+outlined in his head.</p>
+
+<p>After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the ruin of Holland became the
+king’s fixed idea. It was no longer a question of the commercial war so
+ably conducted by Colbert with his tariffs and his differential rights—it was
+a war of invasion and conquest that Louis was planning.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c5"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The resolution taken, he adjourned its execution until such time as he
+had completed the organisation of his sea forces, which were not then on a
+level with those of the land, and until he could assure himself that Europe
+would not interfere with his plan. The able and indefatigable Lionne consecrated
+the last three years of his life (he died in 1671) to performing
+diplomatic wonders to acquire this certitude.</p>
+
+<p>While he was waiting, Louis XIV neglected no opportunities that presented
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_572">[572]</span>themselves to feed warlike passions and provide employment for his
+unengaged officers and troops. In 1669 he sent a volunteer corps to Crete
+to assist the Venetians, threatened in the capital of that island. Beaufort
+disappeared in a combat, and Vivonne ineffectually bombarded the grand
+vizier’s camp. But this was only a diversion from more important projects.
+Louis XIV wished to isolate Holland, and for that reason to break the triple
+alliance. He began by trying to detach England from it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1669-1670 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The English were not less jealous than the Dutch of France’s maritime
+progress; they were not less frightened at Louis’ ambitions. But Charles
+II did not share these feelings. Although he had experienced all the hazards
+of fortune, the vicissitudes of his life had in nowise elevated his character.
+After the Treaty of Breda, he signed that of the Triple Alliance and
+united with the Dutch, as a concession to national sentiment. But he did
+not like parliament, and felt an especial aversion for the Presbyterian spirit,
+and the religious passions which had brought about the English Revolution.
+Finally, about 1670, he resolved to become a Catholic, perhaps through real
+conviction, perhaps through the influence of his brother, the duke of York,
+a secret convert to the church of Rome, who was animated by the true
+ardour of a neophyte; perhaps because he hoped to find in Catholicism a
+more solid support for his throne and his royal prerogative than in Anglicanism.</p>
+
+<p>To realise his object a French alliance was indispensable. France alone
+could provide him with the money he needed; his court was wasteful and in
+debt, and parliament measured out subsidies with jealous parsimony. If
+France demanded the sacrifice of Holland, he was ready to make it.</p>
+
+<p>Under these conditions he readily lent ear to the overtures of the French
+ambassadors, Ruvigny and Colbert de Croissy, the minister’s brother. He
+did not delay to let Louis XIV into the secret of his plans. Louis asked
+nothing better than to grant much on condition that England would join
+him in war on Holland. Nevertheless the negotiations dragged on account
+of the precautions necessary to secrecy, and it took more than a year to
+arrive finally at an understanding. When all was arranged Charles II
+demanded that his sister, the duchess of Orleans, should come to England
+and sign the treaty.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b6"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Treaty of Dover: Death of Madame (1670 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>On the 24th of May Madame Henrietta suddenly left the court which
+was at Lille and embarked at Dunkirk for Dover where Charles II was
+awaiting her. She persuaded Charles to sign the treaty without delay
+(June 1st). The English monarch led his sister to hope that he would consent
+that the attack on Holland should precede his declaration of Catholicism.
+This is what Louis XIV most wished for. The treaty, however, far from
+committing Charles to this course, stipulated that after Charles should have
+made “the said declaration,” Louis might choose the moment of attack on
+Holland.<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> Louis was to give Charles two millions, payable two and three
+months after the exchange of ratification and was to assist him with six
+thousand foot soldiers, if the return to Catholicism should excite trouble.
+Charles was to furnish Louis at least four thousand foot soldiers against
+Holland, Louis to reinforce the English fleet by thirty vessels, of at least
+forty guns, and to pay Charles an annual subsidy of three millions during the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_573">[573]</span>continuation of the war. The island of Walcheren (with Sluys and Causand
+at the mouth of the Schelde) were to go to England.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1670-1672 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>An unforeseen catastrophe fell now like a thunder-clap upon the two
+royal families which had just sealed the pact of Dover. The household
+of Louis XIV’s brother had long been disturbed by domestic
+tempests. The amiable and brilliant Henrietta, adored by the court,
+esteemed by the king, who confided to her the most secret springs of his
+policy, inspired nothing but antipathy in her husband, an effeminate prince,
+as mediocre in mind as in heart, whose childish and strange habits have
+given rise to suspicion of shameful practices. The king had recently intervened
+in the family quarrels by imprisoning and afterwards exiling the
+chevalier de Lorraine, Monsieur’s favourite. After this the king had had
+great difficulty in compelling his brother to allow Madame Henrietta to go
+to Dover.</p>
+
+<p>She returned in triumph; leaving Dover on the 12th of June, she
+appeared for a moment at St. Germain where the court was established;
+the 24th of June her husband took her to St. Cloud, where she had scarcely
+arrived when she complained of pains in her stomach and side. For several
+days she lingered, and on the 29th, after having drunk a glass of chicory-water,
+she was seized with a violent pain in the side; the next day before
+daybreak she was dead. In her last agony she repeated several times that
+she was dying of poison.</p>
+
+<p>An outbreak of terrible suspicion against her husband and his people
+occurred at once. The king had an autopsy performed by the most celebrated
+physicians and surgeons of Paris, who agreed that death was due to
+natural causes, and that it was a wonder the princess had lived so long with
+her lungs and liver so gravely affected. The question, however, has
+remained a question of controversy among historians to this day.<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> The
+news of this tragic event made a great stir in England; but the real sorrow
+expressed by Louis XIV and the report of the physicians calmed Charles II
+and his court.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c6"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Treaties with Other Powers (1670-1672 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Already, as early as 1667, Louis XIV had privately provided for the
+neutrality of the empire by a secret treaty regulating the eventual partition
+of the Spanish monarchy. In case the little king of Spain should die without
+children, France was to receive the Netherlands, Franche-Comté, Navarre,
+Naples, and Sicily; Austria would keep Spain and the Milanese. Accordingly
+the emperor Leopold turned a deaf ear to the solicitations of the Dutch,
+who would have persuaded him to join the triple alliance; and a new agreement
+between France and the empire, signed secretly November 1st, 1670,
+reciprocally bound the two princes not to give help to their enemies. The
+German princes were more difficult to win over; they were beginning to be
+alarmed at the pretensions of France. The electors of Treves and Mainz
+had already assembled troops on the Rhine; and the duke of Lorraine seemed
+disposed to give them assistance. Louis XIV took as a pretext the erection
+of some fortifications contrary to the Treaty of Marsal; on the 23rd of
+August, 1670, he sent Marshal de Créqui into Lorraine; in the beginning of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_574">[574]</span>September the duchy was entirely subdued and the duke a refugee. To the
+emperor’s protest, the king responded that he did not want Lorraine for
+himself, but that he would never surrender it to anyone’s petitions. Brandenburg
+and Saxony alone refused neutrality point-blank; France had
+renounced the Protestant alliances in Germany, and the Protestant electors
+recognised the danger which threatened them.</p>
+
+<p>Sweden also recognised it, but Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna were
+no longer there; the memory of former alliances with France alone remained;
+the Swedish senators, one after another, allowed themselves to be bought.
+The treaty was signed the 14th of April, 1672; for an annual subsidy of
+600,000 livres Sweden pledged herself to offer armed opposition to the
+princes of the empire who should attempt to succour the United Provinces;
+a space was being cleared round Holland.<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p>
+
+<p>In spite of the secrecy which surrounded the negotiations of Louis XIV,
+De Witt was filled with anxiety; always favourable to the French alliance,
+he had sought to calm the irritation of France which imputed the triple
+alliance to the Dutch. Jan de Witt negotiated everywhere; Charles’ treaty
+with France had remained a profound secret, and the Dutch thought they
+could count on the good will of the English nation. They effaced the arms
+of England on the <i>Royal Charles</i>, a vessel taken by Tromp in 1667, and hid
+from sight a picture in the town hall of Dordrecht which represented the
+victory of Chatham with the <i>ruart</i><a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> Cornelis de Witt leaning against a cannon.
+These concessions to the pride of England were not made without a contest.</p>
+
+<h3>THE WAR WITH HOLLAND BEGINS (1672 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The apprehensions of the grand pensionary were not without foundation;
+in the spring of 1672 all the negotiations of Louis XIV had been
+successful; his armaments were complete; he was at last about to crush the
+little power which had so long presented an obstacle to his designs. The
+king wrote in an unpublished memoir: “Amidst all my prosperity in my
+campaign of 1667, neither England nor the empire, both convinced of the
+justice of my cause, opposed themselves to the rapidity of my conquests,
+whatever interest they may have had to stop them. I found in my path
+only my good, faithful, and old-time friends, the Dutch, who instead of
+identifying themselves with my fortune as with the foundation of their
+state, sought to dictate to me and to compel me to peace, and even dared to
+threaten violence in case I refused to accept their interference. I confess
+that their insolence stung me keenly and that I was ready, at the risk of
+what might happen to my conquests in the Spanish Netherlands, to turn all
+my forces against this haughty and ungrateful nation; but having summoned
+prudence to my aid and considering that I had neither the number of troops
+nor the allies requisite for such an enterprise, I dissimulated and concluded
+peace on honourable conditions, resolved to postpone the punishment of this
+perfidy to another time.” The time had come; to the last effort at conciliation
+attempted in the name of the states-general, by De Groot, son of the
+celebrated Grotius, the king answered with a haughty threat: “When I
+heard that the United Provinces were endeavouring to corrupt my allies,
+and were urging kings, my relatives, to enter into offensive leagues against
+me, I sought to put myself in a position to defend myself, and I raised some
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_575">[575]</span>troops; but I intend to have still more towards the spring, and I will then
+use them in the manner which I may judge the best adapted for the welfare
+of my states and for my glory.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20g3"><a href="#endnote_20g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p575.jpg" width="300" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1621-1686)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A public treaty had just been signed between France and England (February
+12th), and the English, according to their custom, attacked without
+declaration of war. On March 23rd an English squadron assailed a Dutch merchant
+fleet returning from Smyrna off the isle of Wight. The Dutch
+defended themselves so well that
+the aggressors after two days of
+fighting were only able to capture
+two or three merchant ships and one
+man-of-war. Charles II’s declaration
+of war was published March
+29th, six days after this fight. That
+of Louis XIV was launched on the
+6th of April.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c7"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“The king sets out to-morrow,
+my daughter,” writes Madame de
+Sévigné<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20i"><a href="#endnote_20i">i</a></span> to Madame de Grignan
+on the 27th of April; “there will be
+100,000 men outside Paris, the two
+armies will join hands; the king will
+give orders to Monsieur, Monsieur
+to Monsieur le Prince, Monsieur le
+Prince to M. de Turenne, and M.
+de Turenne to the two marshals,
+and even to the army of Marshal de
+Créqui.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20g4"><a href="#endnote_20g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ninety thousand men were
+gathered from Sedan to Charleroi;
+the bishop of Münster, the bishop of
+Cologne, and other German princes
+furnished about 20,000 more. The
+king led this magnificent army in
+person; Condé, Turenne, Luxemburg, Chamilly, were in command under
+him. Vauban was to take the towns, Pellisson to record the victories.
+What had Holland to bring in opposition to such an enemy? She had a
+formidable navy; two admirals, regarded to this day as the greatest of their
+century, Tromp and De Ruyter; rich colonies, and an immense commerce;
+but she had neglected her land-forces, so often dangerous in a republic; she
+could hardly count upon 25,000 militia, badly equipped and wholly without
+discipline, and 20,000 men promised by the elector of Brandenburg were at
+the same time very insufficient and very far away. The intestine struggles
+also enfeebled her; there were two parties, the one led by Jan de Witt,
+and entirely devoted to the cause of ancient liberty. The other aimed at the
+restoration of the young prince of Orange to the heritage of his ancestors,
+and profiting by the present danger nominated him captain-general at the age
+of twenty-two.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Passage of the Rhine (June, 1672 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Louis XIV advanced along the Maas, upon the lands of the
+bishop of Liège, his ally, in order not to invade Spanish territory, thence
+along the right bank of the Rhine from Wesel to Toll-Huys. There the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_576">[576]</span>inhabitants informed the prince of Condé that the dryness of the season had
+made the river fordable. Crossing was easy. On the other shore only 400
+to 500 cavalry were to be seen and two feeble regiments of infantry without
+cannon. The artillery mowed down their flank. While the king’s household
+and the crack regiments of cavalry, in number about 15,000 men,
+were crossing in safety, the prince of Condé went beside them in a copper-bottomed
+boat. A small number of the Dutch cavalry rode into the river
+to give at least a semblance of resistance, but took flight immediately before
+the approaching multitude. Their infantry laid down their arms and
+begged for their lives. The French lost in that passage only the count
+de Nogent, and several cavalrymen who strayed from the ford and were
+drowned. No one would have been killed on that day had it not been for
+the imprudence of the young duke de Longueville. It was said that, being
+intoxicated, he fired his pistol at the enemy, who were begging on their
+knees for their lives, crying, “No quarter for that rabble!” One of their
+officers was killed by his shot. The Dutch infantry despairingly resumed
+their weapons for a moment and fired a charge which killed the duke de
+Longueville. A captain of cavalry, who had not taken flight with the others,
+ran to the prince of Condé who was mounting his horse, and pressed his
+pistol against the prince’s head, who by a movement turned aside and had
+his wrist shattered by the bullet. This was the only wound Condé ever
+received. The French, exasperated, charged upon that infantry, which took
+flight in all directions. Louis XIV crossed on a pontoon bridge with his
+infantry (June 12th, 1672).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d2"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such was the passage of the Rhine, celebrated ever after as one of the
+great events which should occupy the memories of men. That air of greatness
+with which the king surrounded all his actions, the fortunate rapidity of
+his conquests, the splendour of his reign, the idolatry of his courtiers, finally
+the tendency the French, above all the Parisians, have towards exaggeration
+joined to their ignorance concerning war which ruled in the idle life of
+the large cities—all this caused the passage of the Rhine to be regarded as a
+prodigious achievement whose fame continued to be exaggerated. The common
+belief was that the whole army had crossed the river swimming, in the
+face of a thoroughly entrenched army, and in spite of the artillery of an
+impregnable fortress called Tholus (Toll-Huys). It was very true that nothing
+could have been a more imposing sight to the foe than this passage, and
+if there had been a corps of serviceable troops on the other side the enterprise
+would have been very perilous.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20f2"><a href="#endnote_20f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years later Bossuet said in his funeral oration of the prince of
+Condé, “Let us leave the passage of the Rhine the prodigy of our century and
+of the life of Louis the Great.” But Bossuet was not writing history in his
+funeral orations. Neither does Napoleon in his <i>Mémoires</i> share the enthusiasm
+of the sacred orator: “The passage of the Rhine is a military operation of
+the fourth order, since in that place the river is fordable, impoverished by the
+Waal, and moreover was defended by only a handful of men.” “I have seen
+a woman,” says Voltaire, “who crossed the Rhine twenty times at that place
+to defraud the customs.” The Toll-Huys was exactly what its name indicates.</p>
+
+<h3>THE FRENCH IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY (1672-1673 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1672-1673 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>With the Rhine crossed, Holland was open to invasion. The provinces
+of Overyssel, of Gelderland, and Utrecht submitted without trying to defend
+themselves; there were very few hours during the day in which the king did
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_577">[577]</span>not receive news of some victory. An officer wrote to Turenne: “If you
+will send me fifty cavalrymen I will take two or three fortresses with them.”</p>
+
+<p>Four soldiers became in a few moments masters of Muiden, the key to
+Amsterdam, because the sluices by which the country surrounding the capital
+could be flooded were in this village. The generals called to council were
+anxious to march at once upon Amsterdam, Louvois thought it better to garrison
+the forts; the army was in this manner enfeebled and its operations
+retarded. Upon this the Dutch took courage once more, and concentrating
+the state forces into the hands of one man, raised William of Orange to the
+stadholdership (July 6th, 1672). This prince was to save the independence
+of his country.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d3"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span> Soon afterward an infuriated populace slaughtered the
+illustrious chiefs of the republican party, Jan and Cornelis de Witt. French
+historians charge William with complicity in these murders. Burnett, however,
+says that William “always spoke of it to me with the greatest horror
+possible,” and there seems no good ground to doubt that this sentiment was
+genuine. To suppose otherwise would seem to belie the character of this
+far seeing, cautious, unconquerable man.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The military dictatorship confided to the prince of Orange gave a new
+aspect to the situation; he had the dykes cut, flooding all the country surrounding
+Amsterdam, and forced the French to retreat before the inundation.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d4"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The French king, in the meantime, in answer to the Dutch deputies who
+sought for peace (De Groot was of the number), demanded for himself the
+limit of the Rhine, and the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in Holland,
+besides satisfaction to the demands of the English. The Dutch magnanimously
+refused such terms. The capital was for this year secure behind
+its waters; the French army being weakened by garrisoning so many towns.
+Condé pressed the monarch to dismantle these towns, and unite the army to
+reduce Amsterdam; but Louvois, minister-at-war, biased by his peculiar pursuits,
+would not consent to the demolition of a single bulwark. The consequence
+was that nothing more could be effected, and Louis returned, to enjoy
+the congratulations of his capital and the flatteries of his court.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20j"><a href="#endnote_20j">j</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE NEW COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1673 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>This is an epoch of great importance. The state system of the treaty of
+Westphalia was really upset by Louis’ aggressions, <i>e.g.</i> the German states
+making common cause with Emperor; and the fear of French predominance
+acted from now on through the Dutch war and the War of the Spanish Succession
+as a new and dominant force in European politics, much as the pre-eminence
+of the Hapsburgs had acted before Westphalia. From now to the
+treaty of Utrecht, European history is on another track, and the treaty of
+Utrecht, which closes the foreign policy of Louis XIV, is the real end of the
+chapter of history we are now beginning.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Neither Spain nor Germany could remain indifferent spectators of Louis
+XIV’s progress and Holland’s peril. Although Spain had not pronounced herself,
+Monterey, the governor of Brussels, had furnished the prince of Orange
+some auxiliary troops. The elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William—“the
+Great Elector”—promised his assistance to the states-general by a
+secret treaty. He also agitated the north German courts and that of Vienna,
+representing to them the necessity of a coalition. Austria, more reserved,
+was none the less exasperated in spite of the arrangement to which she had
+consented, and concluded a ten years’ defensive alliance with the great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_578">[578]</span>elector. The emperor likewise concluded another treaty with the states-general,
+promising auxiliary troops for a subsidy.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV, warned by these events, gave these princes the most solemn
+assurances of his intention to respect the Treaty of Westphalia as well as the
+imperial territory. But as these assurances had no effect, he finally declared
+that the continuation of their armed condition would be regarded as an act
+of hostility against his allies of Cologne and Münster, and he declined the
+responsibility of any war that might ensue.</p>
+
+<p>Montecuculi [the imperial general] and the great elector united their
+forces, which with the German contingents amounted to 40,000 men. Louis
+XIV gave orders to Turenne to leave to
+Luxemburg the protection of the conquered
+towns in Holland, and to betake himself
+with 16,000 men to the lower Rhine, keeping
+the Germans from crossing, and to protect
+the territories of Cologne and Münster.
+Condé was charged with covering the upper
+Rhine and Alsace with an equal number of
+troops. The Germans’ plan was to march
+upon the Maas, to establish themselves there,
+and then to bring thither the prince of
+Orange and cut off in this manner communication
+between France and the French garrisons
+in Holland. But Turenne, stationed
+at Andernach, kept them a long time on the
+banks of the Rhine. They tried to cross
+higher up; Condé had destroyed the bridge
+at Strasburg, but after several weeks they
+succeeded (on November 23rd) in building
+a bridge of boats near Mainz. Turenne
+doubled on his track to cover the Maas.
+The Germans spread themselves over the
+electorate of Treves and the Palatinate;
+but this country being already ruined they
+could find no sustenance, and they recrossed
+the Rhine to live on the lands of Cologne
+and Münster. Turenne followed them.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p578.jpg" width="200" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Soldier, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Orange rallied a Spanish
+corps commanded by Marchin; he drove off
+Duras who was guarding the Maas with
+several French regiments, and conceived
+the bold idea of occupying Charleroi. He undertook the siege on the 15th
+of December, but he did not have sufficient material and had to retire before
+the arrival of Condé’s troops and the Flemish garrisons which Louis XIV
+ordered to Charleroi. [Notwithstanding the lack of troops, withheld through
+the jealousy of Louvois, these are said to have been Turenne’s most brilliant
+campaigns.]</p>
+
+<p>By March, 1673, Turenne had driven the Germans across the Weser, and
+Frederick William, convinced of his powerlessness, and discontented with
+his allies, asked for peace. Louis XIV was eager to grant it, for he was in
+a hurry to dissolve the coalition, and simply imposed conditions that the
+elector should not assist Holland, or maintain troops beyond the Weser.
+Louis consented to withdraw his own troops from Frederick’s territory
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_579">[579]</span>except from the towns in the duchy of Cleves, which he intended to hold
+until peace should be declared. This treaty was made definite the 6th of
+June, 1673, at Vossem, and Louis XIV almost at the same time signed two
+others with the duke of Hanover and the elector of Cologne, assuring defensive
+and offensive alliances on the part of France. Henceforth he regarded
+himself as delivered from all fear on the side of northern Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Louis was not willing to submit to a mediation purposed by the emperor
+with arms in his hand. In the month of December, 1672, he accepted that
+which the Swedes offered. The mediation of Sweden was accepted by the
+other belligerents; it was agreed that a congress should be held at Cologne,
+but various delays postponed the first <i>pourparlers</i> until June, 1673.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV in agreeing to this congress had attached little importance to
+it and counted in reality upon war alone. For the campaign of 1673 he
+disposed of 800,000 men without counting the garrisons of Roussillon,
+Pinerolo, and Lorraine. In the month of June he sent Turenne into Hesse
+to watch the imperials who were reorganising their army. He gave Condé
+the command of the Dutch garrisons and placed Luxemburg under him.
+He himself went to besiege Maestricht with 45,000 of his best troops. He
+had no desire to declare war upon the Spaniards although Monterey had
+upheld the Dutch; nevertheless he traversed their territory and made a false
+demonstration upon Brussels in order to deceive them.</p>
+
+<p>The 10th of June he arrived before Maestricht. He had reserved for
+himself the chief command, which he wished to share with no one. But
+Vauban was with him and alone conducted and directed the work of
+approach. This was begun on the 17th and on the 29th the miner was
+under the town. The next day the garrison, although strong and well commanded,
+was obliged to capitulate.</p>
+
+<p>If the taking of Maestricht was a brilliant success, the king really sacrificed
+to it the campaign in the Netherlands, which had an unfortunate ending.
+The Anglo-French fleet had, on its side, appeared in the arena.
+It numbered 90 ships of the line of which 30 were French. Parliament
+had voted a subsidy, but as it suspected King Charles’ project of
+becoming a Catholic, it had made a condition that a declaration of conformity
+to the Anglican church should be imposed upon all officers of the crown.
+The duke of York was unwilling to submit to the obligation of the “test”
+and had been dismissed from the admiralty. De Ruyter took command of
+the Dutch fleet with Tromp second in command, and advanced against the
+enemy, giving two battles on the 7th and 14th of June which remained
+undecided. The Anglo-French fleet having put back into the Thames for
+repairs embarked the troops under Schomberg’s command and set sail
+for the shores of the Netherlands. De Ruyter on the 21st of August gave
+a more decisive battle, in that it prevented the landing of the forces, and
+compelled the fleet to retire.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch, emboldened by this success, raised little by little their tone
+and their claims at the congress of Cologne. They cut down greatly the
+concessions they were offering France and reduced to almost nothing those
+they consented to grant the king of England, the elector of Cologne, and
+the bishop of Münster. They intended to make no sacrifice essential to
+keeping their rank as a great power. Louis XIV held out for a long time
+and obtained nothing; finally, on the 30th of September, he reduced his
+claims to Aire, St. Omer, Cambray, Ypres, and their dependencies and the
+two castellanies of Bailleul and Cassel. As these places belonged to Spain,
+he demanded that Spain should be indemnified by the United Provinces,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_580">[580]</span>which would have recovered all that they had lost. This proposition was
+rejected like the others.</p>
+
+<p>Holland was now counting on more important alliances than those of 1672.
+She no longer feared England, where the reawakening of the Protestant
+spirit would reduce Charles II to powerlessness. She had signed on the 30th
+of August three treaties, with Spain, with Austria, and with the duke of
+Lorraine. Spain had not declared war on Louis XIV, as she did not wish to
+enter the arena except with a European coalition; but now, having procured
+resources by extraordinary taxation and having succeeded in overcoming
+the irresolution of the court of Vienna, she made a twenty-five-years’ treaty
+of offensive and defensive alliance with the republic, promising to furnish
+8,000 men.</p>
+
+<p>Austria, assured of Spain and the military co-operation of several German
+states, among others Saxony, resolved to recommence her preceding
+campaign. She made a point of war of Turenne’s presence on the right
+bank of the Rhine and demanded the restitution of the places of the empire,
+that of Lorraine for Duke Charles IV, and the abandonment of France’s
+claims to the fiefs of Alsace and the Three Bishoprics. On Louis XIV’s
+refusal, Leopold addressed a declaration to the diet of Ratisbon, making
+known his intentions, and signed with Holland a ten-years’ treaty of offensive
+and defensive alliance, enjoining himself for a subsidy to furnish 30,000
+men. As for the duke of Lorraine, he put, on consideration of a subsidy,
+his sword and his troops at the service of the Dutch. Thus the latter were
+paying for the war, and the war under these conditions was changing its
+character, becoming European, and little by little withdrawing from their
+territory.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV recalled Condé to Flanders, where he left him with but few
+troops. He gave Luxemburg the supreme command of the Dutch garrisons,
+and he planned himself to lead the army which had taken Maestricht to
+the Rhine, to occupy the bridges, and to support Turenne. Up to the last
+minute he refused to believe in the coalition, but when he saw it an accomplished
+fact he resolved to face it. Treves was occupied August 26th; Louis
+XIV then visited Alsace and Lorraine, strengthening fortifications without
+taking into consideration the privileges the towns enjoyed from the Treaty
+of Münster. Montecuculi, at the head of the imperials, left Bohemia in
+September and marched towards the Rhine. Turenne tried without success
+to stop him at the Tauber and at the crossing of the Main. He turned
+north, crossed the Rhine on a bridge of boats near Mainz, and finally marched
+upon Bonn, before which he joined the 25,000 Spanish and Dutch troops
+led by the prince of Orange, at the end of October.</p>
+
+<p>Orange had taken the offensive, and captured Naerden in six days (September),
+crossed the Spanish Netherlands, where Condé had not sufficient
+force to stop him, and gained the electorate of Cologne, to join hands with
+the imperials. [This juncture of imperial and Dutch troops constituted an
+important success for the coalition.] United they attacked Bonn and took
+it on November 12th.</p>
+
+<p>The taking of Bonn detached Germany from Louis XIV. Louvois had
+already a few days before given Luxemburg orders to evacuate Utrecht and
+the more distant places, keeping only those on the Maas, Waal, and Rhine,
+to destroy as far as possible abandoned fortifications, to reduce garrisons to
+20,000, and to send home 30,000; but these orders took time to execute, and
+their execution, being compulsory, was a fresh subject of triumph for Holland
+and Europe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_581">[581]</span></p>
+
+<p>The winter stopped hostilities, without ending the reverses; for Louis
+XIV now saw himself abandoned by England and the whole empire aroused
+against him.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b7"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Defection of England and the Imperial Allies (1674 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1674-1675 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Protestant inquietude of the English parliament had not yielded to
+the influence of the marquis de Ruvigny, French ambassador to London,
+and the nation wanted peace with the Dutch. Charles II yielded in appearance
+at least to the wishes of his people. On February 21st, 1674, he went
+to parliament to announce to the two houses that he had concluded with the
+United Provinces a prompt, honourable, and, he hoped, durable peace, as they
+had asked for. At the same time he wrote to Louis XIV asking him to pity
+rather than accuse him of a consent that had been dragged from him. The
+English and Irish regiments remained, without remark, in the service of
+France, and the king did not withdraw his subsidy from his royal pensioner.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, link by link, the chain of alliance which Louis XIV had cast around
+Holland was coming apart. In her turn France was finding herself alone.
+The congress of Cologne had dissolved. None of the belligerents was looking
+for peace.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20g5"><a href="#endnote_20g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The bishop of Münster, who could no longer count on the help of the
+French, had already secretly approached the emperor, and in April, 1674,
+agreed to defend by arms the decisions of the diet of Ratisbon, and
+restore all that he had taken from the Dutch. The electors of Treves and
+Mainz concluded an offensive pact with the emperor. So did the elector
+palatine, that eternal enemy of Austria. As early as January, Denmark,
+seeing Sweden inclined towards France, had thrown herself on the side of the
+emperor. The dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg promised auxiliaries to
+Leopold for a subsidy. In May the elector of Cologne treated with the United
+Provinces, and then gave them back the places he had taken. Like the
+king of England, in abandoning France he at least left the soldiers he had
+furnished. On the 28th of May the Germanic diet finally pronounced
+against France and declared that the emperor’s war was a war of the empire.
+The great work of French politics was destroyed; Austria had regained,
+thanks to Louis XIV’s excesses, the supremacy and the direction of Germany
+against France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c8"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>OPERATIONS IN FRANCHE-COMTÉ; TURENNE IN ALSACE (1674-1675 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>With the war thus become European, Louis XIV changed its object with
+a decision that did him honour. He abandoned Holland, which he was not
+strong enough to retain, and turned all his forces against Spain, the weakest
+of the states of the league. With 20,000 men and Vauban, he took the
+direction of Franche-Comté. The second conquest was almost as rapid
+as the first; Besançon was taken in nine days, and the entire province in six
+weeks (May, 1674).</p>
+
+<p>The allies had planned for this year a double and formidable invasion
+of France by way of Lorraine and through the Netherlands. Turenne was
+to stop the one, Condé the other. But the enemy was so slow in beginning
+operations that the conquest of Franche-Comté was finished before they had
+decided on their movements. Turenne was thus enabled to take the offensive:
+he crossed the Rhine at Philippsburg with 20,000 men, destroyed
+with fire the whole Palatinate in order to prevent the enemy from subsisting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_582">[582]</span>there, and fought a number of unimportant engagements at Sinsheim and
+at Ladenburg in July, 1674, where he showed resources of tactics unheard
+of until then.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d5"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span> To this day numberless ruins of castles along the Rhine
+bear witness to the savage work of Turenne.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p582.jpg" width="250" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">A Captain, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The imperials numbered 40,000 men. Moreover it was known that the
+elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, was coming with all haste
+at the head of 20,000 men to assist Bournonville [who replaced Montecuculi,
+who was ill, in the command of the imperial troops], and to crush the French
+by superiority of numbers. This juncture
+once effected, the French would be done
+for. Already in Germany they spoke of
+nothing less than marching on Paris itself.
+Many princesses accompanied the elector,
+saying they would “make the acquaintance
+of the French ladies, to learn manners from
+this polite nation.”</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately Turenne was on the watch.
+To prevent the two armies joining, he began
+by attacking that which was nearer.
+He approached Bournonville by a forced
+march of forty hours, and, without even
+giving his soldiers time to rest, fell on the
+surprised imperialists at Enzheim and forced
+them to retire under the walls of Strasburg
+in the greatest disorder (October 4th, 1674).
+It was a great victory, but the numerical
+inferiority of his troops hindered his reaping
+its full fruits. Ten days after this
+victory the elector of Brandenburg in his
+turn passed the Kehl bridge and joined
+his 20,000 men to Bournonville’s army.
+Turenne received scarcely sufficient reinforcements
+to repair his losses at Enzheim.
+The situation became more and more serious.
+How could it be thought that the
+genius of a single man could compensate
+for such an overwhelming disparity of
+forces—how believe that 20,000 Frenchmen
+could hold their own against 60,000
+Germans? No one doubted that the nation would soon be swallowed up in
+defeat. Fear gained ground in the northeast provinces; peasants abandoned
+their fields and flocked into the towns to seek shelter from the enemy. Even
+at Paris great anxiety prevailed. It seemed as if the capital of France would
+soon be at the mercy of the German army.</p>
+
+<p>Alsace comprises the country between the Rhine and the Vosges, forming,
+from Hüningen or Belfort at the south, to Weissenburg on the Lauter at the
+north, a long band of territory of almost constant breadth. The river and
+mountain which serve for limits for this province in the east and west run
+nearly parallel one with the other. The Vosges separate Alsace from Lorraine.
+After the juncture of the two armies near Strasburg on the 14th of
+October, Turenne retired slowly in good order in the direction of the defiles
+which assured communication between Alsace and Lorraine. The Germans
+followed the same route in this retrograde march. By this time November
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_583">[583]</span>had arrived with its cold and snow. The German generals, reassured by
+Turenne’s retreat, thought the campaign over. So they postponed military
+operations until the following spring, as well as the invasion of Lorraine or
+Franche-Comté, and thought of wintering quietly in Alsace. To get more
+supplies, they spread their troops all through the province and installed
+them in quarters separated one from the other. Seventy thousand imperials
+or Brandenburgers thus took up quarters from Strasburg to Belfort in upper
+and lower Alsace. Frederick William installed himself at Colmar, where his
+wife and court joined him. The only thought now was how to speed the cold
+and rainy season by the help of <i>fêtes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Turenne was quietly marching on Lorraine with his troops.
+On the 29th of November the last French soldier left Alsace by the defile of
+Lützelstein, in the north of Zabern. The news reached Paris. The court
+murmured; Louvois let loose his wrath against the marshal who had failed
+to save Alsace; the people, who had had a momentary hope after the success
+at Enzheim, gave themselves up again to despair.</p>
+
+<p>Turenne, not condescending to reassure public opinion—an opinion clearly
+against him—began to put into execution the admirable plan he had conceived.
+He divided his army into many detachments, placed them under
+the direction of experienced officers, to whom his only instructions were
+that they should defile from north to south along the western slopes of the
+Vosges; and reunite on a given day in the neighbourhood of Belfort. Thus,
+while the enemy dispersed itself imprudently in its winter quarters, the
+French army, concealing its intention by means of the Vosges chain, concentrated
+itself in upper Alsace. Issuing from the province near Zabern
+in the north, it re-entered at forty leagues from there, near Belfort in the
+south. Success complete, unheard of, crowned this splendid stroke of genius.
+Such was the devotion of the French soldiers to their chief that they accepted
+without murmuring the necessity of marching in the depths of winter, in a
+country without roads, covered with snow and intersected with torrents.
+From the 5th to the 27th of December, the army, at the cost of incredible
+fatigue, marched from Lützelstein to the pass of Belfort. There the marshal
+reassumed in person the command of the troops, which he had divided
+up to facilitate the march. On the 29th of December he came upon the first
+body of the enemy, near Mülhausen, and destroyed it. Horrified at this
+sudden appearance, in upper Alsace, of an army they had thought to be
+encamped in Lorraine, near Nancy or Metz, the German generals realised
+the mistake they had made in dispersing their forces. They tried to
+repair the fault by sending orders for concentration in every direction.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late. Turenne advanced with lightning speed. From Mülhausen,
+the place of his first victory, he went northwards. Near Colmar,
+by Türkheim, the imperials showed fight. He attacked them furiously on
+the 5th of January, 1675, and put them to flight. The remnant of the
+enemy retired on Schlettstadt. The marshal pursued them without giving
+them any rest. From Schlettstadt he pursued them at the sword’s point to
+Strasburg, making an immense number of prisoners and carrying off cannon
+and standards. On the 11th of January the small number of Germans who
+had not been put <i>hors de combat</i>, killed, or taken, during this terrible campaign,
+recrossed the bridge of Kehl in the greatest disorder (1675). Alsace
+was delivered. A formidable invasion was spared to France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20k"><a href="#endnote_20k">k</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This campaign prepared with such secrecy, executed with an adroitness
+so prudent, was ended in less than six weeks, and excited the enthusiasm of
+the whole of France; Louis XIV wrote to the marshal: “I hope you will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_584">[584]</span>soon return, as I am most impatient to see you to demonstrate to you by
+word of mouth how much I appreciate the great and important services you
+have rendered me, in the last victory you have gained over my enemies.”
+On the entire route the inhabitants whom Turenne had saved from the
+ravages of war turned out filled with admiration and gratitude, so that his
+return was a march of triumph until he reached St. Germain.</p>
+
+<h3>CONDÉ IN THE NETHERLANDS</h3>
+
+<p>While Turenne was victorious in foiling the invasion from the east,
+Condé arrested that of the north. He prevented 90,000 Spaniards and
+Dutch from invading Champagne. He entrenched himself at Charleroi,
+with the Sambre behind him, in a position where the prince of Orange dared
+not attack him. Condé, who did not voluntarily prolong the war of defence,
+pursued the enemy to his retreat and attacked the rearguard at Seneffe, near
+Mons (August, 1674), routing it completely, broke through the centre, and
+attacked and threw into disorder the remainder of the army, which was
+drawn up in a very strong position. When night came, he had had three
+horses shot under him, and the victory was still undecided. “He now,” says
+an eye-witness, La Fare,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20l"><a href="#endnote_20l">l</a></span> “ordered new battalions to advance and cannon to
+be brought forward to attack the enemy at daybreak. All who heard this
+order trembled, and it was very evident that he was the only one who still
+desired to continue the battle.” The following day, the two armies separated
+with an equal loss of from seven to eight thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>The prince of Orange, in order to prove that he had not been defeated,
+besieged Oudenarde. Condé proved himself the victor, and forced him to
+abandon this enterprise; but Grave, the last of the French conquests in
+Holland, opened its gates. Chamilly had defended it ninety-three days, and
+caused the loss of 16,000 men to the assailants.</p>
+
+<h3>LAST CAMPAIGNS OF TURENNE AND CONDÉ (1675 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>In the early summer (June, 1675) Turenne returned at the head of his
+army of the Rhine. He moved into the Palatinate. The emperor opposed
+him with Montecuculi, who passed for a consummate tactician. They took
+six weeks to follow and observe each other, and their reputations which had
+seemed to have reached their apogee were still more augmented by these
+actions. Finally they decided to come to battle near the village of Salzbach
+in a place chosen by Turenne; where he believed himself certain of victory,
+when the marshal on examining the position of a battery was struck by a
+stray shot, which also tore off the arm of Saint-Hilaire, lieutenant-general of
+the army (July 27th, 1675). The latter’s son burst into tears. “It is not
+for me that you should weep,” said Saint-Hilaire to him, “but for this great
+man.” Turenne’s death was truly a national calamity. Louis XIV, in order
+to show honour to the greatest military leader of his century, had him
+interred at St. Denis, in the royal sepulchre. But in time, the memory
+of the services of Turenne grew fainter, at least at court, and his reputation
+appeared overestimated. In 1710 in the midst of the distress of the War of
+the Succession, his family built a mausoleum for him in the chapel of St.
+Eustace. By order of the king, the ornamentations and armorial bearings
+were destroyed, under the pretext that they were not suitable to such a
+sacred spot.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_585">[585]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1675-1676 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The death of Turenne undid the whole result of an able campaign. The
+French, discouraged and seemingly seized with a panic of terror, fled in the
+direction of the Rhine. Montecuculi penetrated into Alsace by the bridge
+of Strasburg. At the same time the duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, hastened
+to besiege the city of Treves with 20,000 men. Créqui tried to come to
+his assistance, but was beaten at Consarbrück. He rushed into the town,
+and after several weeks of heroic defence was obliged to capitulate through
+the cowardice of the garrison (September, 1675). “His misfortune,” says
+Condé, “made him a great general.” Condé was right.</p>
+
+<p>After the death of Turenne, Condé was sent to Alsace to arrest the progress
+of Montecuculi and to reanimate the confidence of the troops. He
+forced the imperials to raise the sieges of Zabern and Hagenau, and to recross
+the Rhine. This was his last victory; he never again appeared at the head
+of the armies, but retired to Chantilly, where he lived thereafter in the society
+of men of letters and philosophers. During the campaign in Holland,
+he sought an interview with Spinoza, and when Malebranche published his
+<i>Recherche de la vérité</i> he sought to meet the author. He enjoyed holding
+erudite conversations as much as fighting battles, taking part in them with
+intelligence, with ardour, and sometimes, says La Fontaine, took reason, like
+victory, by the throat! If in conversations on literature he was sustaining
+a good cause he spoke with much grace and gentleness, but if he upheld
+a bad one it was not wise to contradict him. Boileau was once so astonished,
+relates Louis Racine, by the fire of his eyes in a dispute of that nature, that
+he prudently yielded, and said in a low voice to his neighbour, “From now
+on I shall always agree with the prince whenever he is in the wrong.” Bossuet
+says, “What a charming picture is presented to us in the avenues of
+Chantilly, where the fountains play unceasingly by day and by night, and
+our greatest poets debate with one of our greatest warriors.”</p>
+
+<h3>EVENTS OF 1676; AFFAIRS IN SICILY</h3>
+
+<p>In the following year (1676) the same campaign of sieges of which Louis
+was so fond was recommenced. Condé and Bouchain were taken; Maestricht,
+besieged by the prince of Orange, was delivered; but the Germans re-entered
+Philippsburg, which Fay defended three months and did not give up until he
+ran out of powder. An unexpected victory, however, consoled France for
+these slight successes and reverses. The inhabitants of Messina, in Sicily,
+revolting against Spain, had placed themselves under the protection of Louis
+XIV in 1675. He sent them a fleet commanded by the duke de Vivonne,
+brother of Madame de Montespan, who had Duquesne under him. This
+illustrious sailor, born at Dieppe in 1610, had begun life as a privateer and
+pirate; after which he had entered the service of Sweden, where he acquired
+some reputation. Returning to France in order to enter the royal navy, he
+passed through all grades, became lieutenant-general, but could not rise any
+higher as he was a Protestant. On the coasts of Sicily his adversaries were
+De Ruyter and the Spanish. The first battle fought near the island of
+Stromboli was undecided (1676); a second combat off Syracuse was a complete
+victory; De Ruyter was killed there.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV ordered military honours to be paid by all French ports to
+the vessel which transported to Holland the remains of that great naval
+hero. Finally Duquesne, Vivonne, and Tourville, in a last encounter at
+Palermo, crushed the hostile fleets. France had for a time the control of
+the Mediterranean (1676).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_586">[586]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1676-1678 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Dutch had taken Cayenne in that same year, and ravaged the French
+Antilles. The vice-admiral D’Estrées armed, at his own expense, eight ships
+with which the king intrusted him, in consideration of reserving half the
+prizes. He retook Cayenne and destroyed ten ships of the enemy in the harbour
+of Tobago where they had thought themselves to be in security. In 1678
+he took the island itself and all the Dutch factories in Senegal. The French
+flag now floated over the Atlantic as it did over the Mediterranean.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d6"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In spite of the sufferings of his kingdom Louis XIV persisted in 1676 in
+the conditions he wished to impose on England and the empire, and which
+these two powers were unwilling to accept. He was still flattering himself
+over being able to keep England in the
+neutrality [she had committed herself to
+by the treaty of peace with Holland in 1674].
+England’s neutrality was indeed what concerned
+him most. He gave money to
+Charles II and gave orders to the ambassadors,
+Ruvigny and Courtin, to distribute
+more money, among such ministers, courtiers,
+and members of parliament as they
+could win over. But the English desired
+that, at any price, Louis should return his
+conquests or that Charles II should join the
+Dutch to crush him. Parliament demanded
+the recall of those English troops which
+Churchill was commanding in the army of
+the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>Charles himself was only desirous of
+satisfying public opinion, and of conciliating
+that satisfaction with what he had
+promised Louis. He believed he would do
+this by assuming the rôle of a mediator.
+He started the idea of a congress that it was
+difficult for the powers to reject, and which
+was particularly pleasing to Holland, overcome
+by the burden of maritime war. During
+the preliminary negotiations of the
+congress, for which the town of Nimeguen
+was chosen, Charles signed a new secret
+treaty with Louis XIV (February, 1676),
+the two kings reciprocally engaging to make
+no separate peace with the Dutch. Louis
+XIV on his side overwhelmed the prince of Orange with offers that would
+detach him from Spain. All was useless.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/p586.jpg" width="200" height="450" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Soldier, Time of Louis XIV</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The campaign of 1677 was preceded like that of 1676 by several attempts
+at negotiations in England and Holland. Courtin, who had replaced Ruvigny
+in England, wrote to Louis XIV that it was absolutely necessary to detach
+the prince of Orange from his allies, which might be accomplished by the
+intervention of Charles II. In consequence the king renewed to Orange
+and the states-general his former offers. He proposed to abandon the places
+necessary to cover Ghent and Brussels, to make a commercial treaty with
+Holland, and to conclude with her an eight years’ truce which would give
+Spain the time to reflect. If, on the expiration of the delay, Spain persisted
+in sustaining other claims, France and Holland would divide the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_587">[587]</span>Netherlands between them. William did not absolutely repel these conditions,
+but replied that he could not abandon his allies without dishonour.</p>
+
+<p>In order to have some faith placed in his pretended moderation, Louis
+signed with Charles II, on February 24th, a commercial treaty which offered
+some advantage to the English. Charles II insisted that France should
+make peace. He represented that Holland would not separate from her
+allies, that in the end he would be obliged to uphold her, and that he could
+not continually go against the sentiments and interests of his subjects.</p>
+
+<p>The enterprises in Sicily had brought England’s uneasiness to a climax.
+She already saw the ruin of her trade with the Levant, and Charles II proposed
+a project of peace, the basis of which was that France should keep
+Franche-Comté and a part of the places conquered in the Netherlands; that
+she should grant the Dutch a barrier and a commercial treaty; that she
+should indemnify the duke of Lorraine and abandon Sicily; but it remained
+to come to an understanding on a number of particular points and on the
+determination of the places that should remain to Louis XIV. The latter
+wished to give up only three—Charleroi, Ath, Oudenarde; and he demanded
+that Spain should cede him Ypres, Charlemont, and Luxemburg in exchange.
+He was all the more obstinate because he knew the states-general were tired
+of war and the damage inflicted upon commerce. He hoped to separate
+them from the prince of Orange, through the establishment of a barrier
+and some tariff concessions, but these concessions were so weak that the
+Dutch only laughed at them. As for the congress of Nimeguen, where
+the discussion of the propositions between the plenipotentiaries of the various
+countries began on the 6th of May, 1677, it would necessarily take too
+much time to put a stop to military events.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b8"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CAMPAIGN OF 1677; NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE</h3>
+
+<p>Créqui had succeeded Turenne in Germany, Luxemburg replaced Condé
+in the Netherlands. The former made amends for his defeat at Consarbrück
+by a campaign worthy of Turenne. By a succession of quick marches, which
+kept him constantly between the enemy and the French frontier, he covered
+Alsace and Lorraine against an adversary superior in numbers, defeated
+him at Kochersberg, between Strasburg and Zabern (October 7th, 1677), and
+took Freiburg from him, thus taking the war to the right bank of the Rhine.
+Luxemburg, who resembled more the victor of Rocroi, captured Valenciennes
+in conjunction with the king, where the musketeers raised formidable works
+in broad daylight, then Cambray, and with Monsieur, against the prince
+of Orange, fought the battle of Cassel, near St. Omer, which capitulated
+(April, 1677).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d7"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The coalition was now seriously shaken. Orange was everywhere accused
+of small ability for leadership. At Brussels and at Ghent the people broke
+loose against the Dutch. Even in Holland the peace party began to be
+demonstrative. Louis XIV reduced his tariff by half, in October, 1677, in
+order to stimulate the pacific desires of the Dutch. The latter, exhausted and
+tired of continually paying useless subsidies to their allies, complained that the
+Spaniards were always behindhand in fulfilling their engagements, that
+the Germans never left Germany, and that the prince of Orange never found
+provisions or stores in Belgium.</p>
+
+<p>William and his partisans replied to these complaints that the honour of
+the country was at stake, that the United Provinces could not abandon the
+allies to whom they owed their salvation, and he had still one resource.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_588">[588]</span>This was to force England, which according to him was alone capable of
+doing it, to call a halt to the armies of Louis XIV. He went to London,
+where Charles II not only authorised but desired his presence, believing
+that it would be a convincing response to the defiances and murmurs of
+the nation. Scarcely had the prince arrived when he asked the hand of Mary,
+daughter of the duke of York. The king, who had long judged this alliance
+necessary, hastened to grant it. The marriage was celebrated on the 15th
+of November.</p>
+
+<p>Charles II believed that Louis XIV would now raise no obstacle to
+accepting the proposals of peace: but he was mistaken—Louis rejected
+them, as going too far beyond those he had proposed himself, and which he
+already considered too moderate. The other powers, Spain and the empire,
+also declined them and preferred to continue the war. Charles II, having
+signed a treaty with the states-general on January 10th, 1678, found himself
+compelled to go further than he wished. He was obliged to recall the
+English troops serving in the French army and to prepare armaments.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV took little notice of these demonstrations, strengthened the
+remainder of his armies, and decided to strike a great blow in the Netherlands,
+where Vauban had just retaken St. Ghislain in the depths of winter.</p>
+
+<p>At the opening of the campaign of 1678, France could count on 219,000
+men under arms, of whom half, it is true, were only fit for garrison service.
+Louvois was resolved to capture Ghent, and deceived the enemy by false
+demonstrations on other places, which led them to reduce the garrison at
+Ghent. When this had been done, he suddenly appeared under the walls of
+the town on the 1st of March. In less than two days 70,000 men were
+assembled and the siege was begun. Louis XIV, who had gone on a journey to
+Metz and the borders of the Maas to outwit the Spaniards, suddenly changed
+his direction and arrived on the 4th. The queen and the court followed
+closely, but stopped at Tournay. Four marshals, Humières, Luxemburg,
+Schomberg, and Lorges, assisted the king, Vauban pressed the works. The
+town, in spite of its siege and the number of watercourses and canals protecting
+it, was promptly surrounded. The 500 men forming the garrison
+declined to defend it. It surrendered the 9th, and on the 11th the castle
+capitulated. The army now marched upon Ypres, which it took on the 25th
+after eight days of entrenchment and in spite of a bloody resistance. The
+king, after this rapid campaign and its two important acquisitions, returned
+to St. Germain on the 7th of April.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV now believed himself secure in imposing his conditions. He
+sent them the 9th of April to Nimeguen and to London: they were the same
+as before the taking of Ghent and Ypres. He allowed his plenipotentiary a
+month to have them accepted, but this term was further extended to the 10th
+of August. The latest successes of the French had had the effect that Louis
+XIV hoped for, that of strengthening the peace party in Holland. Amsterdam
+and the large towns refused to prolong these sacrifices. Charles II
+hastened to approve the French conditions. The Dutch, ready to agree to
+Louis’ commercial stipulations, did not find his proposed restitution of places
+sufficient to form such an efficient barrier that they could oblige Spain to
+accept. Suddenly Villa-Hermosa (successor of Monterey in the governorship
+of the Spanish Netherlands) received the order from his court to lay
+down his arms. The Madrid cabinet, divided and exhausted, had resigned
+itself to the abandonment of that which had been lost, from fear of losing
+that which was still retained. This decision relieved the states of Holland
+of their last scruples. Louis XIV then put forward a condition which was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_589">[589]</span>nearly the ruin of everything. He declared that, in engaging to restore
+Maestricht and the other places on the Maas of which he was master, he
+intended to maintain garrisons in them until his ally Sweden should have
+recovered that which Denmark and Brandenburg had taken from her. This
+exigence aroused the Spaniards, disconcerted the Dutch, exasperated the
+English, and drove Charles II to despair. They gave up all hope of ending
+the war. On July 26th, Charles II signed a treaty of defensive alliance
+with the states-general.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV realised the necessity of getting out of this hole, and as he
+did not wish to recede, he engaged Sweden to ask the withdrawal of this
+condition, which Charles XI generously did. The Dutch plenipotentiaries
+at Nimeguen, Van Beverningk, Odyk, and Van Haren asked on August 7th
+for a conference with the French plenipotentiaries, D’Estrades, D’Avaux, and
+Colbert. They debated together for more than twenty-four hours, and finally,
+before midnight on the 10th, they signed a treaty of peace and a treaty of
+commerce with France.<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a></p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS XIV SETTLES WITH THE COALITION (1678-1679 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1678-1679 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The first treaty returned to the states-general Maestricht and the little
+towns which Louis XIV had kept in the vicinity and in Limburg, on sole
+condition that free exercise of the Catholic religion should be allowed. The
+second re-established freedom of commerce and navigation between the two
+peoples.</p>
+
+<p>D’Estrades brought in person the news of the treaty to Marshal de Luxemburg,
+encamped on the plateau of Casteaux not far from Mons, which a
+detachment of his troops was blockading. The prince of Orange, who had
+come face to face with the French army with almost equal forces (45,000
+men), knew of the Peace of Nimeguen, but had not yet received official
+notice. He began a sharp attack upon Luxemburg, and the battle raged for
+six hours around the abbey of St. Denis. It was a hard fight. A regiment
+of French refugees fighting under the Dutch flag was literally hacked to
+pieces. The day remained undecisive; and on the next the courier announcing
+the peace arrived in the Dutch camp, and the two armies separated.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch having signed the peace were assailed with violent recriminations
+on the part of their German allies, especially the elector of Brandenburg,
+the king of Denmark, and the bishop of Münster. But the great point
+for them was to obtain the definite adhesion of Spain. The latter country, exhausted
+and ill-governed, had long shown a great repugnance to making
+peace. But as soon as Charles II had attained the age of fourteen, his
+majority, the great personages of the kingdom forced the queen to drive
+Valenzuela out; then they compelled her to accept exile herself. Don John
+took the title of prime minister and seized the government (June 20th, 1677).
+As the emperor insisted on the re-establishment of his sister, Maria Anna,
+Don John, almost embroiled with the court of Vienna, was compelled to lend
+his ear to pacific propositions.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty between France and the court of Madrid was finally signed
+September 17th, 1678. Louis XIV restituted Courtrai, Oudenarde, Ath, and
+Charleroi, which the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had given him; also Binche,
+St. Ghislain, Ghent Leuw, and Puigcerda in Catalonia, which Marshal de
+Navailles had taken that same year. On his side he retained with definite
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_590">[590]</span>title St. Omer, Cassel, Aire, Bailleul, Poperinghe, Ypres, Wervicq, Warneton,
+Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, Condé, Bavay, Mauberge, and the
+whole of Franche-Comté. The treaty of 1668 had in reality only been a
+truce, giving France advance posts in the heart of Belgium and leaving Spain
+with other places, isolated spots in the midst of French possessions, particularly
+on the borders of the Schelde. The treaty of 1678 established a much
+more regular border, by assuring France a series of strongholds bound one
+to the other, and closing all avenues to the kingdom from Dunkirk to the
+Maas, and leaving the Spanish Netherlands another series of places which
+offered the same advantages though in a less degree. The Treaty of Nimeguen
+was, in spite of a few restitutions demanded by Europe as a guarantee
+of peace, one of the most glorious and most advantageous that France had
+ever signed.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor and the empire remained to be reckoned with. They were
+left out of the Dutch and Spanish treaties. They began by protesting and
+continuing the war. The imperial army, without stopping at the negotiations
+of Nimeguen, undertook, under the duke of Lorraine, to retake Freiburg
+in Breisgau, and to penetrate into Alsace. In May it appeared on the
+Rhine between Offenburg and Wilstett. Créqui was again charged with
+protecting Freiburg; and conducted a campaign which was as fortunate as
+it was able, and which placed a seal upon his fame. The Germans, reduced
+to powerlessness at every turn, quickly ended the campaign. The emperor,
+abandoned by the Dutch and embroiled with the Spaniards, ended by
+desiring peace. The possession of Philippsburg indemnified him for the loss of
+Strasburg. The princes of the empire, with the exception of a few in the
+north, refused to pursue the now objectless war. The subsidies of Spain
+and Holland had ceased. Leopold consented to a treaty which was signed
+January 15th, 1679, between the emperor, the empire, and France. The
+whole difficulty centred around the allies, whom Austria refused to abandon
+and for whom she demanded satisfaction. The king made a few concessions;
+but he would not give up Lorraine to Duke Charles except in retaining
+Nancy and four military routes. The duke rejected these conditions.
+Louis XIV also reserved to himself the right of passage through eight towns
+of the empire, to join the duchy of Cleves, and to continue the struggle with
+the elector of Brandenburg.</p>
+
+<p>The imperial princes, interested in keeping their conquests over the
+Swedes, were the only ones who would not lay down their arms. They did
+not have to wait long to see themselves forced to do so, for Louis XIV was
+not willing at any price to abandon unfortunate allies whose actions had
+been of service to him. Pecuniary indemnity served to interest the dukes
+of Brunswick, Lüneburg, and the bishop of Münster. The elector of Brandenburg
+refused this sort of compensation. Créqui entered the duchy of
+Cleves, occupied the county of Mark, [the two possessions of the elector by
+the Rhine] and the town of Lippstadt beyond the Rhine, and advanced as
+far as the Weser, whose passage he forced June 30th, near Minden. The
+elector, incapable of continuing this unequal struggle, had on the eve of that
+day made his submission. His envoy signed at St. Germain a treaty by
+which he restored to the Swedes that which he had taken from them, stipulating
+a rectification of the Pomeranian frontier, and an indemnity of 300,000
+crowns which France paid. The king of Denmark was the last to treat.
+He restored the towns he had taken, but received no pecuniary indemnity.
+These successive treaties, consequent upon those of Nimeguen, re-established
+things in Germany almost upon the footing of the Treaty of Westphalia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_591">[591]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1680 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>All the powers had been weakened in the eight years’ war. Holland
+alone escaped almost intact from the storm which had threatened to destroy
+her. As for Louis XIV, he emerged from the struggle aggrandised and
+triumphant. He triumphed all the more in that he owed nothing to anyone—not
+even to the king of England, who, having shown himself equally
+incapable of making war or peace, now raised against himself as much scorn
+in France as hatred in his own state. If France had suffered considerably
+from a prolonged struggle which demanded enormous sacrifices, she had displayed
+resources superior to those of any other power, although Holland had
+shown herself the richer in proportion. France had struggled single-handed
+against the empire. The king’s proud device, “<i>Nec pluribus impar</i>,” was
+justified. The courtiers and the soldiers were unanimous in granting him
+the title of Louis the Great; an equestrian statue representing him in the
+costume of a Roman emperor was raised a short time after in Paris in a
+square which was called the Place des Victoirés.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b9"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/footer-france-20.jpg" width="400" height="375" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> [See Volumes X and XIII.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> [Richelieu’s interference in Portuguese affairs will be recalled.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> [The price paid was five millions.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> [These 4,000 veterans under Marshal de Schomberg assisted in 1665, by the battle of Villaviciosa,
+to settle the house of Braganza on its throne.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> [Louis aided the Venetians to defend Crete. Between 1665 and 1669 more than fifty thousand
+men went there at different times.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20d8"><a href="#endnote_20d">d</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> [In 1650 a violent attempt of the young William II of Nassau against the states-general had
+failed and the stadholder died a few months after, leaving an unborn son who was to become the
+famous William III. The stadholdership had been abolished and the grand pensionary of the
+province of Holland became the first personage of the United Provinces, like the president of
+the states-general. Jan de Witt had been filling these high functions since 1653. Elected at the
+age of twenty-five, he showed at once the ripeness of a great statesman and the devotion of a great
+citizen. With a mind at once practical and philosophic, loving letters and the arts as much
+as affairs, a wise administrator and skilful diplomat, he was not unlike the last great men of
+Greece; and a contemporary—a very competent judge, the count d’Estrades—has compared his
+mind to that of Richelieu.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20c9"><a href="#endnote_20c">c</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> [By these secret articles England and Holland agreed to make war on Louis XIV if he
+went back on his word, and they proposed to compel him to make peace without including Portugal,
+if Spain was determined on this point.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> It was afterwards decided to defer the execution of the attack on Holland until 1672. A
+new treaty was signed at Dover, December 31st, 1670, modifying the first in several points.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> [The chevalier de Lorraine and a maître d’hôtel of Monsieur, Morel by name, were among
+those suspected of poison. We have seen in the preceding chapter how epidemic that crime
+became about that time. However, the theory of natural death, the result of an abscess of the
+liver, hastened by domestic troubles, is now generally accepted as the cause of Madame’s death.
+Dareste<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_20b10"><a href="#endnote_20b">b</a></span> says it was due to cholera morbus. Madame was only twenty-six years old.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> [This was an important departure from the old policy of Francis I and of Richelieu, who,
+for political reasons, made Protestant alliances abroad, though upholding Catholicism at home.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> Ruart means inspector of the dykes.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> [The commercial party (the old one of De Witt) was attracted by Louis’ offering commercial
+advantage, and thus forced the peace against the will of William of Orange.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_592">[592]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-21.jpg" width="500" height="200" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI. THE HEIGHT AND DECLINE OF THE BOURBON MONARCHY</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Louis had many royal qualities—a noble presence; manners full of
+grace and dignity; an elocution at once majestic and seductive; unwearied
+assiduity in business; a luminous understanding; an instinctive
+taste for whatever is magnificent in thought or action; and a
+genuine zeal for the welfare of his people. But for the high office of
+moulding and conducting the policy of the greatest of the nations of the
+civilised world, he wanted three indispensable gifts—an education so
+liberal as to have revealed to him the real interests and resources of his
+kingdom; the faculty by which a true statesman, in the silence of all
+established precedents, originates measures adapted to the innovations,
+whether progressive or immediate, of his times; and that dominion
+over passion and appetite which is the one essential condition of all true
+mental independence. Without such knowledge, such invention, and
+such self-control, Louis could not really think, and therefore could
+not really act for himself.—<i>Stephen.</i><span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21j"><a href="#endnote_21j">j</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1679-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>After Nimeguen, Louis XIV was at the climax of his fortunes. He had
+no equal among the other sovereigns of Europe. If he had not realised all
+his ambitions, if he had made political mistakes and military mistakes he had
+none the less shown a vigour, a spirit of continuity, a power of calculation
+and often a rectitude of judgment which placed him far above contemporary
+princes. He was served by great men, and he had always known how to
+direct them and appropriate their work to himself, although he had sometimes
+conceded too much to Louvois, and yielded too much to the desire to
+display in war the brilliance of his court. He continually saw everything
+and did everything himself in order to train himself by work, and, as he said,
+by this means to complete his ideas.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1679-1680 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In 1679 France, instead of returning to her ancient peace footing, preserved
+an effective force of 140,000 men, part of which was so organised as
+to be able to take the field immediately. The maintenance of this armament
+had for its object the support of certain pretensions relative to the regulation
+of the frontiers. At Nimeguen the territories ceded on either side had
+not been delimited in a definite manner. Louis XIV and Louvois calculated
+on profiting by this circumstance to make new acquisitions. Louvois was
+ambitious of deriving as much advantage from peace as from war.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_593">[593]</span></p>
+
+<p>Louvois no longer directed military affairs alone. For a long time he
+had been encroaching on the office of the secretary of state for foreign affairs.
+Pomponne, who complained of this and who lacked the authority and energy
+necessary to resist him, was disgraced. His successor was Colbert’s own
+brother, Colbert de Croissy, formerly ambassador to London and plenipotentiary
+to the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle and Nimeguen; but Louvois’
+influence in diplomacy remained none the less preponderant.</p>
+
+<h3>ACQUISITION OF FRONTIER PLACES (1679-1681 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The regulation of the frontiers on the side of the Spanish Netherlands was
+debated in a conference which was opened at Courtrai in the month of December,
+1679. During the long discussions which occupied it Louvois’ ambition
+was particularly directed towards the eastern frontier, where he could proceed
+by other means than diplomatic arguments. As early as 1679 he occupied
+Homburg and Bitche, dependencies of Lorraine which had been pledged
+by Duke Charles IV to the electors of Treves and Mainz. He made the
+parliament of Besançon pronounce two decrees, the one of September 8th,
+1679, which declared the reunion to Franche-Comté of the castellanies of
+Clermont, Châtelet, and Blamont—that is to say, more than eighty villages,
+forming part of the principality of Montbéliard, the property of the dukes
+of Würtemberg; the other, dated the 31st of August, 1680, declared the
+reunion of the principality itself.</p>
+
+<p>At the parliament of Metz Louis instituted a <i>chambre de réunion</i>, intended
+to search out all the dependencies of the Three Bishoprics, that is to say, the
+territories which might be claimed as their fiefs by any title whatsoever.
+This question of dependencies had been the subject of old disputes between
+France and the empire. Louvois resolved to settle them finally by simple
+judiciary decrees and without beginning vexatious lawsuits with the empire
+and the German princes. He drew up himself, or caused to be drawn up
+under his own eyes, detailed instructions for the king’s <i>procureur</i> of the
+<i>chambre de réunion</i> at Metz. The result of this inquiry was to reunite to
+France about eighty fiefs. The county of Zweibrücken was vacant and
+several competitors were disputing for it; Louvois seized it in virtue of a
+very ancient feudal right found in the title deeds of the bishopric of Metz.
+The king of Sweden, Charles XI, one of the principal claimants, protested;
+he was offered a sum of money to indemnify him. He refused to sell his
+rights and abandoned France, whose ally he had been in the late wars, to
+throw himself on the side of her enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Another dispute—less old, since it dated only from the Treaty of Westphalia,
+but not less important—had for object the empire’s jurisdiction in
+Alsace and the territories of ten towns reunited to France in 1648. Louis
+XIV had never recognised this jurisdiction; he had imposed oaths on the
+towns of Alsace which reserved his own rights and had taken little account
+of their privileges when these inconvenienced his armies. He had contented
+himself with conceding them, after the war, certain abatements of taxes
+under the name of compensation. In 1680 the sovereign council of Alsace,
+instituted by Mazarin at Ensisheim and afterwards transferred to Breisach,
+decreed the suppression of all imperial jurisdictions in the province and proceeded
+to reunions of territories, similar to those of the Three Bishoprics.</p>
+
+<p>The reunion of Strasburg which was the most considerable was accomplished
+in another fashion. Strasburg, a free imperial city, had given good
+grounds for complaint, inasmuch as she had observed her neutrality but ill
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_594">[594]</span>during the last war; she had on several occasions delivered the bridge over
+the Rhine to the imperial troops. Louvois began by withdrawing certain
+neighbouring territories from the jurisdiction of Strasburg; then, eluding
+the vigilance of the imperial troops, he sent into Alsace 35,000 men, whom
+he scattered, but in such a manner as to be able to assemble them again at a
+given point. He watched for a favourable opportunity. The arrival in the
+city of an officer of the emperor having furnished him with the pretext he was
+seeking, he caused the approaches and the passage of the Rhine to be suddenly
+occupied by his troops during the
+night of the 27-28th of September,
+1681. The inhabitants, taken by
+surprise, demanded explanations.
+The French resident knew nothing;
+the officer who led the troops referred
+them to Montclar, the military
+commandant of Alsace. The
+latter informed them that he had
+orders to obtain their recognition
+of the sovereignty of France; but
+that otherwise their municipal, religious,
+and other privileges would
+be preserved.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p594.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">François Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1641-1691)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1680-1681 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The magistrates wrote to the
+diet and to the emperor to notify
+them of the extremity to which they
+found themselves reduced; their
+letters were intercepted. As they
+were not in a position to offer the
+least resistance they demanded to be
+allowed to consult the people. This
+consultation could be only a matter
+of form; acquiescence was a matter
+of necessity. On the 30th the city
+capitulated. Louvois’ first act was
+to restore the cathedral to the Catholic
+clergy, whilst guaranteeing religious liberty to the Protestants. Without
+loss of time the construction of a citadel, barracks, and entrenched cantonments
+was taken in hand, less for security against the inhabitants than to
+oppose a powerful bulwark to the empire. On the 24th of October Louis
+XIV came to make a triumphal entry into his new acquisition.</p>
+
+<p>On the 30th of September, 1681, the day of the entry of a French corps
+into Strasburg, another entered Casale. Louvois had long aimed at dominating
+Piedmont and through Piedmont Italy. Casale, added to Pinerolo,
+should furnish him the means. Casale was a possession of the duke of
+Mantua. This duke was a debauched and prodigal prince, in pressing need
+of money.</p>
+
+<p>On the 8th of July, 1681, a treaty was secretly signed at Mantua, between
+the duke and a French agent who had no official character, the abbé
+Morel. Some troops had been collected in Dauphiné and at Pinerolo. A
+passage for these troops was requested of the duchess of Savoy [widow of
+Charles Emmanuel and regent for the infant duke], with the threat that it
+would be insisted on. Finally, on the 30th of September, Catinat, who had
+been at Pinerolo incognito for several months, took possession not only of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_595">[595]</span>the citadel but of the castle and town of Casale in the name of Louis
+XIV.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p595.jpg" width="250" height="475" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Marquis Abraham Duquesne</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1610-1688)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Henceforth Piedmont was shut in between two French fortresses and
+Louvois assumed towards her the tone of a master. But the regent of Savoy
+resisted with extreme vigour; it was almost necessary to employ violence to
+obtain from her a free passage for the French troops passing from Pinerolo
+to Montferrat. Finally, in order to save the independence of Savoy, she
+accepted the condition of marrying her son to Mademoiselle d’Orléans,
+Monsieur’s daughter (in 1684). Louis XIV thought that this marriage would
+complete the deliverance into his hands of Piedmont and secure him the
+entrance into Italy. He believed that the other Italian states were now
+condemned to submit to his dictation. The contrary was the case. Italy
+kept silence; but as soon as Victor Amadeus found an opportunity of escaping
+from France, which he detested, he had no difficulty in raising the
+peninsula against her.</p>
+
+<p>The reunions declared in the Three Bishoprics and Alsace, and the occupation
+of Strasburg and Casale, did not make Louvois forget the conferences
+of Courtrai. The Spaniards showed in these
+conferences as much ill-will as weakness
+and sought to prolong them. They had
+pledged themselves to hand over Charlemont
+in exchange for Dinant, which was
+to be restored to them. They did not do
+so until 1681 after an infinite amount of
+chicanery. Louvois profited by these
+delays; he had the address to negotiate
+with the bishop of Liège, to whom Dinant
+belonged, a direct cession of that town to
+France and made use of this cession as an
+authority for not surrendering it to Spain.
+Almost immediately afterwards he occupied
+the little county of Chiny in Luxemburg,
+in virtue of an ancient title of the bishopric
+of Metz. He sent troops thither to make
+what was called a “pacific execution”; the
+country was reunited to the crown, and
+the work of hunting up his dependencies
+was taken in hand.</p>
+
+<p>At last, on the 4th of August, 1681,
+Louis XIV notified the conference of Courtrai
+of his claims. They comprehended
+the castellany of Alost, the towns of Grammont,
+Ninove, Lessines, and various territories.
+He offered, it is true, to exchange
+those towns and territories which might
+be necessary for the defence of Brussels,
+in return for “equivalents.” The Spaniards
+protesting against these pretensions, Louvois
+increased the French troops of the
+county of Chiny, established a sort of blockade round Luxemburg, seized the
+first difficulty which arose in consequence as a <i>casus belli</i>, pressed the blockade
+still closer during the winter, and made every preparation to make himself
+master of the place in the spring.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_596">[596]</span></p>
+
+<p>Nothing was more popular in France than this policy of aggrandisement.
+Men took little trouble to find out whether it were just or safe. It was
+enough that it should flatter national feeling and the military passions then
+greatly over-excited.</p>
+
+<h3>PREPARATIONS FOR A SECOND COALITION (1681-1682 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1681-1682 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But if France thus made herself the accomplice of the enterprises and
+the ambition of the king, it was not possible for Europe to content herself
+with being a passive spectator. Whilst Spain was discussing and protesting
+at Courtrai, Germany was discussing and protesting at Ratisbon and Frankfort.
+Sweden was irritated, Italy discontented, Holland embarrassed. All
+the powers showed themselves attentive and anxious. None was strong
+enough to struggle alone; the question was whether, after a coalition dissolved
+at Nimeguen they would succeed in again drawing together and
+coming to an understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV had reason to fear it. Therefore, in spite of the disdainful
+majesty of his diplomacy, he endeavoured to make some of them advances
+of a nature calculated to flatter. The year which followed the Treaty of
+Nimeguen he married the eldest of his nieces, a very young girl, the eldest
+daughter of Monsieur and of Henrietta of England, to the king of Spain,
+Charles II. The young princess Marie Louise was the victim of policy and
+obliged to accept a union repugnant to her. The same year the dauphin,
+aged scarcely eighteen years, married a princess of Bavaria. The king was
+eager to secure the elector of Bavaria, who had been faithful to him since
+1670; he hoped to strengthen himself in Germany by this alliance. The
+marriage of Monsieur’s second daughter to the duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus,
+which was concluded soon after, in 1684, had for object the extension
+of French influence in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Dutch patriotism had been on the watch against the ambition of Louis
+XIV. William had no difficulty in seizing the weapons the king gave
+him. He denounced French policy to Europe in a host of pamphlets which
+circulated everywhere. The answers which Louis XIV in his turn circulated,
+the language which he dictated to his envoys, did not bring
+reassurance.</p>
+
+<p>The prince of Orange believed that in order to form another stronger
+and more solid coalition it was needful to provide a centre and a head. The
+centre should be Holland; the head himself. He began by joining with the
+king of Sweden, Charles XI, who, despoiled of his pretensions to the duchy
+of Zweibrücken, was the more irritated against France because he had been
+her ally. Sweden and Holland signed a treaty at the Hague, September
+30th, 1681, to guarantee those of Westphalia and Nimeguen. The two
+princes solicited adhesions everywhere; they obtained that of the emperor
+on the 28th of February, 1682. Louis XIV did not choose to wait till the
+coalition should have grown or till William had succoured Luxemburg. In
+March he gave his troops the order to withdraw from the positions they
+occupied before the town and abandoned his claims. That the coalition was
+formidable is proved by the fact that Spain entered into it on the second of
+May and that this example was followed in the course of the year by an
+infinity of German princes, even by the elector of Bavaria.</p>
+
+<p>In 1682 Louis XIV had stopped his progress before Luxemburg and had
+submitted his claims to the arbitration of the king of England who had already
+been mediator at Nimeguen. He had recoiled before the threat of a coalition
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_597">[597]</span>and the indignation of the Germans, although in this direction he had
+secured the alliance of the elector of Brandenburg and of the king of Denmark,
+both recently his enemies but disposed to serve him since he was on
+bad terms with Sweden. In spite of the generosity he affected he seized
+an opportunity which presented itself to make the prince of Orange feel his
+vengeance. William had a lawsuit with the duchess de Nemours; the king
+gave the order to occupy his principality. The town of Orange was dismantled
+and its sovereignty declared to have devolved on the crown (August,
+1682).<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> The prince sent Heinsius (the grand pensionary) to make complaint
+at Paris; he could obtain nothing and preserved keen resentment in
+consequence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1682-1684 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The empire through the diet at Ratisbon and the congress of Frankfort
+claimed various restitutions from France. However, Germany being then
+greatly threatened by the Turks, the majority of the princes restrained their
+irritation; they had even tried to obtain the king’s support and assistance.
+Louis XIV held out hopes to them, but solely for the purpose of resuming in
+the empire the influence which he had had there at the time of the league
+of the Rhine, and in order to play the part of saviour.</p>
+
+<p>In 1683 Louis organised practice camps in Flanders, on the Saar, in
+Alsace, and on the Saône. On the 1st of September, just as Vienna was
+thought to be on the point of succumbing [to the Turks], 35,000 men
+entered Belgium. The Spaniards protested, retaliated by occupying French
+territories in their turn, and on the 26th of October launched a declaration
+of war. The French invested Courtrai which was dismantled, entered both
+it and Dixmude without difficulty and bombarded Luxemburg. In March,
+1684, Humières bombarded Oudenarde. In April Créqui, accompanied by
+Vauban, besieged Luxemburg which, strong in natural fortifications, was
+also heroically defended; but the genius of Vauban and the great resources
+of which he disposed triumphed over these difficulties and this resistance.
+On the 4th of June the garrison surrendered. Créqui then marched on
+Treves and filled up the town moats, in defiance of the elector’s protest.
+At the same time Schomberg assisted the elector of Cologne, an ally of
+France, to restore his authority at Liège, which had shaken it off. Finally
+a French division under the command of Marshal de Bellefonds was sent
+into Catalonia.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Spain, in no condition to continue the war alone, was asking
+the Dutch and the emperor for their support or mediation. The struggle
+which the Germans were continuing in Hungary against the Turks compelled
+the powers to postpone their plans for a coalition. The Dutch
+assumed the character of mediators. Louis XIV again assumed an attitude
+of generosity and accepted their proposals on condition that they should
+recall a body of troops furnished by them to the governor of the Spanish
+Netherlands. A twenty years’ truce was signed at Ratisbon—with Spain on
+the 11th of August, with the empire on the 15th. France kept Luxemburg,
+Beaumont, Bouvines, and Chimay, on consideration of restoring Courtrai
+and Dixmude. The empire recognised all the reunions effected, even that
+of Strasburg and of Kehl, on the sole condition that Louis XIV should
+abandon Tökely and the Hungarian rebels.<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_598">[598]</span></p>
+
+<h3>RELATIONS WITH TURKS AND BERBERS</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1681-1685 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>During this time the Turks were again beginning to threaten Europe.
+Led by the Köprilis, viziers who were also great men, they had fallen on
+Poland, whose divisions seemed to deliver her up to them as a prey; and
+as they were suzerains of Transylvania they incessantly fomented revolts in
+Hungary against Austria. Louis XIV, in order to keep the empire’s forces
+in check, took care to constantly favour the disturbances in Hungary and
+to maintain good relations with the porte.</p>
+
+<p>The Turks were too proud and too distrustful; commercial privileges,
+annulled or evaded by the hostility of the pashas, were nothing but a cause
+of perpetual dispute. The piracies committed by the Berbers, tributaries of
+the grand seignior, were another. In 1681 some corsairs of Tripoli, pursued
+by Duquesne, took refuge under the protection of the pasha of Chios.
+Duquesne required that they should be delivered up to him and on the
+pasha’s refusal cannonaded the town. The sultan sent his fleet to Chios;
+the French ambassador, Guilleragues, only succeeded in appeasing him by
+considerable presents. The following year Louis XIV, displeased with the
+divan, gave orders to Duquesne to punish the pirates of Algiers.</p>
+
+<p>A shipbuilder of Bayonne, Renau, had just conceived the idea of a new
+form of vessel for use in bombardments. Duquesne made trial of it at
+Algiers and the trial was a complete success. The town was bombarded
+a first time August 30th, 1682, then twice more in June and August, 1683.
+The Algerians by way of reprisals set the European prisoners at the mouth
+of their cannons; the dey, who would have yielded, was put to death and
+replaced by one of his officers. The lack of ammunition, for these maritime
+bombardments were extremely costly, compelled Duquesne to retire before
+he had brought the enemy to terms. However, the Algerians ended by
+negotiating. Tourville, whom the admiral had left to cruise about with a
+squadron in sight of their port, signed the peace April 25th, 1684. The
+Algerians made reparation, restored the merchandise and captives they
+had carried off, engaged not to countenance other pirates, and gave all the
+guarantees required of them. Morocco had not expected to be attacked.
+In 1682 it had granted all the stipulations desirable, renewed the treaty of
+1631, and consented to the institution or reorganisation of French consulates.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b1"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a Christian city had been treated as though it were a den
+of pirates. The Genoese had sold arms and powder to the Algerians, and had
+built in their shipyards four war vessels for Spain, which had none of her
+own. Louis XIV forbade the Genoese to equip these ships; and, on their
+refusal, Duquesne and Seignelay in a few days threw 14,000 shells into the
+city, destroying a number of the palaces of Genoa la Superba (May, 1684).
+The doge had to come to Versailles to implore the king’s pardon, in spite
+of an ancient law requiring the chief magistrate never to absent himself from
+the city. He was asked what was the strangest thing he saw at Versailles:
+“To see myself there,” he replied.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c1"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The significance of this humbling of Genoa is that this power was forced
+to abandon Spain, with which it had so long been in alliance, and become
+dependent upon France. Such a turn of affairs on the Mediterranean, added
+to the aggressions already made on the frontier, made war inevitable; but
+the old ally of Francis I, the Turk, was again the friend of the most Christian
+king. The emperor was too busy on his eastern frontier to pay attention to
+the west; and the accession of James II in England made William of Orange
+hesitate to act. In another year, however, the situation had changed.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_599">[599]</span></p>
+
+<h3>SECOND COALITION: THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG (1686 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1686-1689 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In the first months of 1686 various treaties were signed between Holland
+and Sweden, Sweden and Brandenburg, Brandenburg and the empire. All
+these states pledged themselves to guarantee the treaties of Westphalia, of
+Nimeguen, and of Ratisbon, and protested against the reunions effected by
+Louis XIV. On the 9th of July the emperor, Spain, and Sweden as members
+of the empire, the elector of Bavaria, the circles of Bavaria and of Franconia,
+the princes of Saxony and others besides, formed at Augsburg a secret league,
+ostensibly for the preservation of the twenty years’ truce, in reality to put
+an army of 60,000 men into the field against France. The league was to last
+for three years unless it were prorogued, and the command was to be given
+to the elector of Bavaria. The reason or pretext was the claim brought forward
+by Louis XIV to some territories which he maintained should belong
+to Madame as the heritage from her father, the elector palatine, who had
+died the preceding year.</p>
+
+<p>William of Orange was again the soul of this coalition, although for
+the moment he affected to remain outside it; the king of Sweden was its
+principal promoter. The league was soon completed by the adhesion of
+Victor Amadeus and the other princes of Italy, though this was secret.
+The league in spite of very heterogeneous elements acquired a cohesive
+force which was quite new and held itself in readiness to take the offensive
+as soon as required.</p>
+
+<p>Louis had flattered himself on converting the twenty years’ truce into
+a definite peace, but the diet of Ratisbon formally refused this in January,
+1687. He felt that he could not take a step without unchaining the tempest.
+Nevertheless he braved the pope and picked a quarrel with him.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b2"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Catholic ambassadors at Rome had stretched the right of asylum and
+immunity assumed from all time, and with reason, for their residences to the
+quarter in which they lived. Innocent XI wished to abolish this abuse
+which turned half the city into a den of criminals. He obtained without
+difficulty the consent of the other kings, but Louis, irritated against the
+pontiff on account of the <i>régal</i> (see chapter XIX) replied with haughtiness,
+that he had never acted on the example of others, and that it was for him
+to serve as an example. He sent the marquis de Lavardin with 800
+armed <i>gentilshommes</i> to maintain himself in the possession of this unjust
+privilege. The pope excommunicated the ambassador; the king seized
+Avignon.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was straightened out under Innocent XI’s successor, but
+this pontiff conceived an intense dislike for him that was not without influence
+in the war of 1688. The occasion of this war was indeed the pope’s
+opposition to France’s candidate for the archiepiscopal see of Cologne, the
+cardinal von Fürstenberg who had thrown open the gates of Strasburg. He
+was elected by a majority of the chapter, fifteen votes against nine for his
+opponent, Clement of Bavaria. Nevertheless Innocent gave the latter the
+investiture.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c2"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span> Louis XIV had the papal nuncio put in prison and the Venaissin
+occupied by one of his officers, La Trousse, who expelled the vice-legate.</p>
+
+<p>War was now begun against Europe and against the pope. Louis resolved
+to occupy Kaiserslautern and the cities of the Rhine. The dauphin, then
+twenty-six years old, was put at the head of the army of Germany. To
+assist him he was given Marshal de Duras, nephew of Turenne, and as lieutenant-generals
+Catinat, Montclar, Vauban, and Chamlay. “In sending you
+to command my army,” Louis XIV said to him, “I give you opportunities of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_600">[600]</span>exhibiting your merit; go and show it to all Europe, so that when I come to
+die it may not be noticed that the king is dead.”</p>
+
+<p>Open preparations had been avoided, but the dispositions had been so
+well taken that a few days sufficed to collect the troops before Philippsburg.
+The necessary artillery was drawn from Strasburg and Breisach, and the
+siege began the 27th of September; whilst Humières occupied the district of
+Liège with a first division, Bouffiers with a second invaded the Cis-Rhenish
+Palatinate and seized Kaiserslautern, and finally Huxelles entered Speier with
+a third. Philippsburg was defended by the graf von Starhemberg. Vauban
+pressed the siege with his usual prudence and vigour in spite of the difficulties
+offered by the marshes which formed a girdle round the place. These
+difficulties were still further augmented by continual rains and a disastrous
+season.</p>
+
+<p>Louvois requested the electors of Mainz and Treves to allow him to
+occupy Mainz and Coblenz. He had no idea of using moderation. The
+elector of Mainz admitted a French garrison into the capital. The markgraf
+of Baden-Durlach surrendered Durlach and Pforzheim. Heilbronn and
+Heidelberg opened their gates. But the elector of Treves refused to allow
+Coblenz to be occupied. The town was bombarded by Bouffiers under
+Louvois’ orders; the elector persisted in his refusal. Philippsburg capitulated
+on the 29th of October. The siege was murderous, especially for the
+engineers whom Vauban calls the “martyrs of the infantry.” The siege of
+Mannheim was proceeded to without delay and occupied only a few days; the
+ill-paid soldiers of the elector palatine forced the governor to deliver up the
+town and citadel. Frankenthal surrendered in less than forty-eight hours
+and the French beheld themselves complete masters of the Palatinate.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto the French had had only inadequate garrisons to contend with.
+The only hostile force which had appeared was a corps of 3,000 men from
+Brandenburg which had entered Cologne under the orders of Schomberg,
+one of the refugee French Protestants. But Louvois permitted himself no
+illusions: all Germany was to be agitated in the ensuing campaign and if
+William of Orange, the soul of the league of Augsburg, had not taken the field,
+it was because he was at that very moment (November, 1688) taking possession
+of the throne of England. On the 26th of November war was declared
+between France and Holland. It did in fact exist between France
+and the emperor and the empire, although the official declaration of the diet of
+Ratisbon did not take place till somewhat later, the 24th of January, 1689.</p>
+
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND (1688 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The English Revolution gave the greatest hopes to the league of Augsburg
+and the European coalition. Charles II had died in 1685. James II
+(the duke of York), who succeeded him, joined to the courage of a tried
+soldier more pride and decision of character. But his mediocrity, which
+afterwards impressed everyone in France, was early pointed out by the
+French envoys to the court of London. He resumed the projects formed
+before the Treaty of Dover—that is to say, he aimed at restoring Catholicism
+in his dominions, giving himself a permanent army, and suppressing the
+laws, such as that of <i>habeas corpus</i>, which seemed to encroach on his prerogative.
+These plans obliged him to seek the alliance of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Now this alliance harmed more than it served him. The revocation of
+the Edict of Nantes alarmed the English Protestants, who believed, or
+affected to believe, that with a Catholic sovereign allied to Louis XIV their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_601">[601]</span>faith was in peril. James II addressed to all the foreign courts, as well
+as to his own subjects, declarations in which he blamed the persecution of
+the Huguenots; nowhere did he obtain credence.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b3"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1689-1690 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The Revolution which overthrew this “tyranny,” and gave William III
+the throne of James II, was more than a mere substitution of royal personages.
+It changed royalty by divine right into royalty by consent, and founded
+the English constitutional or parliamentary monarchy. A new right, that
+of peoples, now arose in modern society, in the face of the absolute right of
+kings, which for two centuries had ruled them, and which was now finding in
+France its most glorious personification. There was nothing astonishing
+in the fearful struggle which now broke out between France and England.
+There was something more than two opposing interests; there were two
+different political ideas. In the sixteenth century, France had defended
+Protestantism and the liberties of Europe. In the seventeenth she threatened
+the conscience of the people and the independence of the states.</p>
+
+<p>The rôle which France abandoned England now took up; she was to be
+the centre of all the coalitions against the house of Bourbon, as France had
+been the centre of resistance to the house of Austria. This political change
+upset all the conditions of war. While Louis was keeping England neutral
+by pensioning her kings, France had no one to fear on the continent, for,
+protected by the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the sea, she could face the Rhine and
+fight with both hands, without having to look behind. England now openly
+joined the league (1689). It was now necessary, not only to have armies on
+the Schelde, the Rhine, and in the Alps, but also fleets on the ocean, and in
+the most distant seas. It was the double effort that exhausted France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c3"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG (1688-1697 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>War was declared on France by the diet of the empire, in the month
+of January, 1689; by England and Holland, in March; in April, by the
+elector of Brandenburg, and in May by Spain.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b4"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Louis had, to oppose the coalition, 350,000 soldiers and 264 vessels or
+frigates. Single-handed against these princes, badly united among themselves,
+and obeying each other but badly, he mapped out a plan at the same
+time simple and bold. To overthrow William III would end the war at one
+stroke. Louis XIV intrusted a fleet to James II to aid him to remount
+his throne. Spain and Savoy were the two most feeble states of the league;
+the king turned against them the majority of his forces. On this side he
+attacked; on the Rhine, the whole of whose left bank almost to Coblenz
+he was occupying, he assumed the defensive, calculating that the Turks,
+whom he had just succeeded in inducing to break off negotiations with the
+emperor, would give that prince so much occupation on the lower Danube
+that France would have no fear of his sending a large force to the Rhine.
+Turenne, Condé, and Duquesne were dead; but Louis found able leaders
+to replace them—Luxemburg, Catinat, Boufflers, Lorges, and Tourville.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Attempts to restore James II (1689-1692 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The war in favour of James II was fortunate at first. A squadron of
+thirteen large vessels carried the prince in May, 1689, to Ireland, Catholic
+like himself, and always groaning under the yoke of England. Convoys of
+troops, arms, and munitions left Le Havre, Brest, and Rochefort, protected
+by Château Renaud, D’Estrées, and Tourville. The English and Dutch
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_602">[602]</span>attempted to head them off. Château Renaud defeated one of these fleets
+in Bantry Bay; Tourville with 78 sail attacked their fleet off Beachy Head
+on the Sussex coast. Sixteen of the enemies’ ships were sunk or burned on
+the shore, July 10th, 1690. This brilliant victory gave the empire of the
+ocean to Louis XIV for some time. But James II did not know how to follow
+it up. He had lost precious time at the siege of Londonderry, and
+William III attacked him on the Boyne, July 11th, 1690. The Irish, with
+their king, fled at the first attack; the
+French alone made some resistance. A
+regiment of Calvinist refugees under Marshal
+de Schomberg were especially prominent
+in routing the French. James II
+returned to France.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p602.jpg" width="250" height="500" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Anne Hilarion de Cotentin, Comte de Tourville</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1642-1701)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1690-1692 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Louis XIV now prepared a descent on
+England itself; 20,000 men were assembled
+between Cherbourg and La Hogue; 300
+transports were made ready at Brest. Tourville
+was to escort them with the 44 vessels
+he commanded and 30 others which D’Estrées
+was bringing him from Toulon. But
+the wind changed, and the Mediterranean
+fleet could not arrive in time. Louis XIV,
+accustomed to force a victory, and reckoning
+that a number of the English captains
+would pass to him, ordered his admiral to
+go seek the enemy, 99 sail strong. This
+was the battle of La Hogue, May 29th,
+1692. Although there was no defection,
+Tourville held his own victoriously, for ten
+hours, against the Anglo-Dutch, who in
+spite of their numbers were more badly
+battered than the French. But it was
+impossible the next day to renew this heroic
+temerity: Tourville would at least have
+made a glorious retreat if he had had a
+port behind him; the breakwater at Cherbourg
+was not built at that time. He gave
+the signal to retire to Brest and St. Malo.
+Seven of his vessels gained the former port;
+the rest of the fleet entered the navigable
+channel off the Cotentin shore; twenty-two passed through the race at
+Blanchard and arrived at St. Malo, but the tide reached low ebb, and the rest
+were prevented from following. Three stopped in front of Cherbourg and
+their captains, unable to defend them, set them on fire. Twelve took refuge
+in the harbour of La Hogue, which was no better prepared to offer shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Tourville landed his guns, his stores, and his fittings, and on the approach
+of the English applied the torch to the hulls of his ships. The enemy could
+not boast of having taken a single one. This was the first blow dealt to the
+French navy, but it is not true, as has often been said, that it was its tomb,
+for the next year France was able to oppose equal if not superior fleets to
+the English and the Dutch. At any rate the re-establishment of the Stuarts
+in England was becoming an impossibility and the most important part of
+Louis XIV’s plan had fallen through.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c4"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_603">[603]</span></p>
+
+<h3>DEVASTATION OF THE PALATINATE (1688-1689 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1688-1689 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The attention of Louis XIV and Louvois was especially directed to the
+side of Germany where France would have to face the coalition. Philippsburg
+and the Palatinate having been occupied, Louvois wished to remain on
+the defensive. France was already secured by a girdle of towns, of which the
+principal were Hüningen, Belfort, Landau, Philippsburg, and Mont-Royal,
+an important position on the Moselle which had been occupied and fortified
+after having been taken under various pretexts from the elector of Treves.
+Louvois resolved to demolish all the towns beyond it and to ravage the country
+for a great distance so as to oppose a desert to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Louvois according to his custom kept his plan a profound secret. He
+began by giving Montclar orders to blow up the walls of Heilbronn and
+ravage Würtemberg as far as the Danube (November and December, 1688).
+This order being executed he gave one to destroy the castle and town of
+Heidelberg; 432 houses, delivered over to the flames, were demolished or
+suffered enormous damage. Mannheim was likewise razed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p603.jpg" width="500" height="225" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Ruins of Heidelberg Castle</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(Destroyed by order of Louvois)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Devastation, savage and systematic, such as had not been seen even in
+the Thirty Years’ War, was spread over the Palatinate and the territories
+of the three ecclesiastical electors. The sinister glow of conflagrations
+lighted the passage of the French troops. Trees and vines were cut down;
+palaces, temples, convents, and hospitals were destroyed. At Heidelberg the
+castle of the elector palatine, was destroyed like the rest. At Mannheim
+the very stones of the ruins were thrown into the Rhine. A crowd of unfortunates
+dying of cold and hunger and reduced to expatriating themselves
+streamed along the snow-covered roads. The greater part, refusing the
+shelter offered to them in Alsace or Lorraine, went to beg from the enemies
+of France and still further to raise their indignation against her. This treatment
+was meted out to the elector palatine without any scruple.</p>
+
+<p>There was at first some hesitation to sacrifice Speier and Worms, but
+Duras and Chamlay represented that it was important not to spare them.
+In consequence Worms and Oppenheim were burned on the 31st of May,
+1689, and Speier on the 1st of June. Bingen also had its turn. The fire
+spared neither churches nor palaces. All, say the memoirs of the times, was
+burned and reburned. The cathedral of Speier contained the tombs of eight
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_604">[604]</span>emperors; the tombs were burned and the ashes they enclosed thrown to the
+winds. Treves had been condemned; Louis XIV withdrew the order as
+though frightened at the general cry called forth by this work of destruction.
+A concert of recriminations rose against him. Whilst he accused the
+Catholic princes of supporting the Protestant states, Europe reproached
+him for allying himself with the Turks and carrying on a war more
+cruel and more barbarous than the Turks themselves. English caricatures
+called him the Most Christian Turk.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b5"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The king’s discontent with these actions might have been the prelude of
+a disgrace had not Louvois died of apoplexy in July, 1691. He was replaced
+by his son, Barbezieux, who, with many more deficiencies, had none of his
+good qualities. The duke de Lorges, Turenne’s nephew, and successor to
+Marshal de Duras in 1691, contented himself with covering Alsace against
+the imperials, who finding themselves as in a desert in the Palatinate could
+not subsist there. Therefore the war remained defensive on the Rhine, and
+the great blows were struck elsewhere.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The War in Savoy and Piedmont (1689-1693 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1689-1693 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Catinat was now commanding in Italy. This general, without birth,
+had raised himself by force of merit. Like Vauban, whose friend he was,
+he joined civic virtues to military qualities and by his wise and methodic
+tactics resembled, although slightly, Turenne. He was opposed by Victor
+Amadeus, duke of Savoy. In order to bring his adversary to decisive
+action before the arrival of the German troops, Catinat devastated the fields
+of Piedmont, cut the trees, tore up the vines, and burned the villages.
+Victor Amadeus could not contain himself in the face of these ravages, and
+gave battle at Staffarda near Saluzzo on August 18th, 1690. He lost 4,000
+men while the French numbered scarcely 500 killed. Savoy, Nice, and
+the greater part of Piedmont found themselves in the power of the
+French. But a relative of the duke, Prince Eugene, whose services Louis
+XIV had refused and who then had offered them to Austria, arrived with
+strong reinforcements. The French returned to France, whither the Piedmontese
+followed them. Dauphiné suffered a cruel retaliation for the
+burning of the Palatinate and the ravages in Piedmont (1692). Catinat,
+however, recrossed the Alps and a second battle took place near Marsaglia,
+a few leagues from Staffarda, on October 4th, 1693. It was as disastrous for
+Victor Amadeus as the first had been. Nothing now remained to him but
+Turin, and Catinat would have taken this also if the ministry had not
+reduced his forces. All that he could do was to keep his conquests.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The War in the Netherlands (1690-1692 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>Luxemburg, posthumous son of that count de Bouteville whom Richelieu
+had had decapitated, began his military career under the Great Condé, whom
+he resembled in boldness and accuracy of prompt decision. In 1690, he
+found himself near Fleurus in front of the prince of Waldeck. By a bold
+and skilful manœuvre he carried his right wing across a small stream which
+covered the hostile army. The prince suddenly attacked in his flank, made
+a backward movement. Luxemburg took advantage of this, came upon
+him suddenly in the midst of a disorderly march, killed 6,000 of his men,
+captured 100 flags, his guns, his baggage, and 8,000 prisoners. This was
+the first French victory of Fleurus, July 1st, 1690. Master of the region,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_605">[605]</span>Luxemburg invested Mons, the capital of Hainault. Louis XIV assisted
+at the siege.</p>
+
+<p>William III, rid of James II, hastened thither with 80,000 men, but was
+unable to prevent the capitulation of the city in April, 1691, after nine days of
+entrenchment. The following year Luxemburg besieged Namur, the strongest
+place in the Netherlands and at the confluence of the Sambre and the Maas,
+and took it, again under the eyes of Louis XIV and the army of the enemy
+(June, 1692). This was one of the great sieges of the seventeenth century.
+Vauban’s rival, Coehoorn, defended the place, a part of whose fortifications
+he had built. But William, always beaten, never gave in. On August 3rd,
+1692, he surprised Luxemburg at Steenkerke (Steinkirk) in Hainault.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c5"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Steenkerke and Neerwinden (1692-1693 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>A spy whom the French general had in William’s ranks was discovered; he
+was forced, before being put to death, to write a false despatch to Marshal
+de Luxemburg.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21d1"><a href="#endnote_21d">d</a></span> The latter was thrown off his guard, persuaded by the false
+despatch that William had a totally different plan than to take the offensive
+on that day.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21e1"><a href="#endnote_21e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sleeping army was attacked at daybreak, and a brigade was already
+in flight before the general knew what was happening. Without an excess
+of diligence and bravery all would have been lost. Luxemburg was lying
+ill—a fatal circumstance at a moment demanding strong activity: but the
+danger gave him strength; prodigies were necessary to be kept from being
+beaten, and he performed them. To change his position, to give a battle-field
+to the army which had none, to re-form the right wing where all was
+confusion, to rally the troops three times, to charge three times at the head of
+the household cavalry, was the work of less than ten hours. Luxemburg had
+in his army Philip, duke de Chartres, the future duke of Orleans and regent,
+who was just eighteen years of age. He could not be useful in striking a
+decisive blow, but it was a great thing to spur the soldiers on that a grandson
+of France should be charging with the king’s household troops, be
+wounded in the fight, and return again to the charge in spite of his wound.</p>
+
+<p>A grandson and a grand-nephew of the Great Condé were both serving
+as lieutenant-generals—the one, Louis de Bourbon, commonly addressed as
+Monsieur le Duc, and the other François Louis, prince of Conti, his rival in
+courage, spirit, ambition, and reputation. The prince of Conti was the first
+to restore order, rallying some of the brigades and making others advance.
+M. le Duc accomplished the same manœuvre without need of emulation.
+The duke de Vendôme, grandson of Henry IV, was also lieutenant-general in
+the army, where he had been serving since the age of twelve, and although
+he was forty he had never been given a leading command. It was necessary
+for all these princes, with the duke de Choiseul, to put themselves at the
+head of the household troops, to drive off a body of English who were holding
+an advantageous position upon the possession of which the success of
+the battle depended.</p>
+
+<p>The household troops and the English were the finest soldiers in the world
+and the carnage was great. The French, encouraged by the number of
+princes and young nobles who fought around their general, finally carried
+the position. The Champagne regiment routed King William’s English
+guards, and when the English were beaten the rest had to give in. Boufflers,
+afterwards marshal of France, rushed up at this moment from another part of
+the battle-field with the dragoons and completed the victory. King William,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_606">[606]</span>having lost about 7,000 men retreated in as fine order as he had attacked;
+and always beaten, though always to be feared, still kept up the campaign.
+The victory due to the valour of the young princes and the finest scions of
+the nobility created an effect at the court, in Paris, and in the provinces
+which no victory had ever done before.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1693-1695 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>M. le Duc, the prince of Conti, Vendôme, and their friends found, on
+returning, the roads lined with people; the acclamations and joy mounted
+to frenzy; all the women were eager to attract their glance. The men were
+wearing at that time lace cravats which were arranged at the expense of
+much time and trouble; but the princes, who had jumped into their clothes
+for the battle, twisted their cravats carelessly around their necks. Women
+now wore ornaments in imitation of this; they were called <i>Stein Kerques</i>.
+All novelties of ornament were <i>à la steinkerque</i>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21d2"><a href="#endnote_21d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The following year Louis XIV had a fine opportunity to conquer, perhaps,
+the Netherlands and make peace. William ventured close to Louvain with
+only 50,000 men. Louis was in the neighbourhood with more than 100,000.
+The whole army believed that a great blow would be struck; but it was represented
+to the king that he could not commit his person to the hazards of
+a battle, and in spite of Luxemburg, who, it is said, threw himself on his
+knees, he declared the campaign at an end and returned to Versailles. From
+that day he never appeared with the army. His reputation suffered much
+from this abroad; biting satires paraphrased Boileau’s famous verses:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Louis, les animant du feu de son courage,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Se plaint de sa grandeur qui l’attache au rivage.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it was not personal courage that was wanting. His conduct
+in camp was perfectly conventional—no particular recklessness, but no
+timidity. He exposed himself sufficiently. At the siege of Namur, if
+Dangeau is to be believed, men behind him were wounded. The victories
+of Namur and Steenkerke had delivered Hainault and the province of Namur
+into Luxemburg’s hands; he penetrated into southern Brabant but found
+William, strongly entrenched in the village of Neerwinden between Liège
+and Louvain opposing him, July 29th, 1693. Few days were more murderous;
+Neerwinden was carried in two assaults by the infantry which, the first
+time, made a stout bayonet charge, an example which Catinat’s regiments
+followed two months later at Marsaglia. For four hours the French cavalry
+were under the deluging fire of 80 pieces of cannon; and William, who
+observed them waver only to close up their ranks as the rows were mowed
+down, exclaimed in admiration and vexation, “Oh the insolent nation!”</p>
+
+<p>There were about 20,000 dead, of which 12,000 were on the side of the
+allies. After this success it might have been possible to march upon
+Brussels and dictate terms of peace, but the French were content to besiege
+and take Charleroi. It is true that by doing this they held the important
+line of the Sambre, whence an army might dominate the Netherlands and
+make most perilous any attempt of the enemy against Flanders or Artois.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Last Years of the War; Treaty with Savoy (1693-1696 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The victory of Neerwinden was the last triumph of Luxemburg, “the
+upholsterer of Notre Dame,” as he was called by the prince of Conti on
+account of the many banners with which he had decorated that cathedral.
+The following campaign was uneventful, and he died in the month of January,
+1695. His successor, the duke de Villeroi, did not accomplish very
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_607">[607]</span>much, in spite of an army of 80,000 men; he did not even prevent the prince
+of Orange from retaking Namur (August, 1695). But in Spain Vendôme
+entered Barcelona (August, 1695), after a memorable siege and a victory
+over the army of relief. The year 1695 passed without any military events.
+The allies destroyed the French stores gathered together at Givet, and the
+two armies of the Netherlands had enough to do to exist, without thinking
+of attacking.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1695-1696 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>On the sea Tourville had avenged in 1693 the disaster of La Hogue, by
+a victory in the bay of Lagos near Cape St. Vincent. During the following
+years the great armaments were suspended,
+because Seignelay was dead; but the corsairs,
+Jean Bart, Duguay-Trouin, Pointis,
+Nesmond, destroyed the commerce of the
+English and the Dutch, who to revenge
+themselves attempted to land on the French
+coasts, and trained engines of war against
+St. Malo, Le Havre, Dieppe, Calais, and
+Dunkirk—vain and ruinous threats which
+terminated “in breaking windows with
+guineas.” Dieppe alone suffered from them.
+In America the count de Frontenac bravely
+defended Canada, by taking the offensive
+always, although the province had not above
+eleven or twelve thousand inhabitants and
+the English colonies had ten times as many.
+Hudson’s Bay, and nearly the whole of Newfoundland
+were conquered.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the war languished; everybody
+was exhausted. An attempted assassination
+of William, which would have been
+followed by a French invasion, having failed,
+Louis proposed peace. Charles II of Spain
+was near death, this time in real earnest;
+he was leaving no child, and the question of
+the Spanish succession began to be raised.
+It was important to the king that the European
+coalition should be dissolved before
+this great event. He showed an unaccustomed
+moderation; in the first place detaching from the league the duke of
+Savoy (1696), he gave back to him all his towns, not excepting Pinerolo, and
+proposed to him the marriage of his daughter with the young duke of Burgundy,
+son of the Grand Dauphin. In return the duke had to promise the
+neutrality of Italy, and in case of need to join his forces with those of
+France.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c6"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p607.jpg" width="250" height="425" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Jean Bart</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1651-1702)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>After the treaty with Savoy Louis XIV made the concessions which had
+hitherto been most repugnant to his pride. He consented to accept the
+treaties of Westphalia and Nimeguen as bases of the negotiations, taking
+into consideration certain reservations with regard to Luxemburg and Strasburg,
+and to recognise William III as king of England. Henceforth the
+war had no further object. Commerce between France and Holland was
+re-established October 1st, 1696. Preliminary <i>pourparlers</i> between France
+and the maritime powers took place at the Hague. Sweden obtained acceptance
+of the mediation she had proposed several years before and a congress
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_608">[608]</span>was agreed upon which was to be held at Ryswick, a country house belonging
+to William and situated between the Hague and Delft. Caillères,
+Crécy, and Harlay were designated to represent France.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1696-1697 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The king intended to bring pressure to bear on the deliberations of the
+congress of Ryswick, to render the empire and Spain more tractable and to
+bring the maritime powers to abandon them or force their hands. He counted
+the more on this since William III, a mark for the recriminations of his allies,
+was already replying to them with acrimony and a deserved haughtiness.</p>
+
+<p>France made for the campaign of 1697 the same preparations as in other
+years. One hundred and fifty thousand men, forming three armies under
+the orders of Villeroi, Bouffiers, and Catinat, entered Belgium, whilst two
+other armies under Choiseul and Vendôme were carrying on campaigns in
+Germany and Catalonia. All that was done in the Netherlands reduced itself
+to the taking of Ath which Catinat and Vauban forced to capitulate on June
+7th; a demonstration was made against Brussels but William hurried up and
+covered the town. In Germany, the opposing armies contented themselves
+with watching one another. It was otherwise in Catalonia. Louis XIV had
+long meditated the taking of Barcelona but he could only execute this project
+on condition of being master of the sea. He took advantage of the circumstance
+that this year the Anglo-Dutch fleet did not appear in the Mediterranean.
+The Toulon squadron, commanded by Vice-admiral D’Estrées and the
+bailli de Noailles, surrounded the harbour. Vendôme, who had 30,000 men,
+repulsed a relieving army and forced Barcelona to surrender, August 10th,
+fifty-two days after the trenches had been opened and after two assaults.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before, a squadron composed of ships belonging to the state but
+equipped at the expense of private persons and commanded by an experienced
+sailor, Pointis, had made a successful and brilliant cruise in America.
+Pointis attacked Cartagena de las Indias, in New Granada, the principal
+<i>entrepôt</i> of the trade of Spain with Peru. He took possession of the town
+and carried thence bullion to the value of nine millions, besides rich merchandise.
+He had the address to escape the enemy’s fleets which set out in
+pursuit of him and to return safely to France with his prize.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY OF RYSWICK (1697 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The congress which had begun at Ryswick May 9th, 1697, proceeded with
+the usual slowness. On the 10th of September three treaties were signed
+with Holland, England, and Spain. By the first two France on the one side,
+Holland and England on the other mutually restored all that they had taken
+on the continent, on the seas, and in the colonies. The most important of
+these restitutions were that of Pondicherry, which the English had taken
+from France in 1693, and that of Orange which was surrendered to William.
+Liberty of trade was completely re-established. Louis XIV recognised
+William as king of England. A reciprocal amnesty was granted to the
+French and English who had borne arms against their own country, but
+Louis XIV refused to recall the banished Calvinists to France; he maintained
+that questions of religion were questions of the internal government
+of each state and he would not allow even a discussion of this point.</p>
+
+<p>By the treaty with Spain France restored her conquests in Catalonia, the
+town and duchy of Luxemburg, with the county of Chiny, Charleroi, Mons,
+Ath, Courtrai, with their dependencies, and the dependencies of Namur. She
+surrendered Dinant to the bishop of Liège. She retained only a small
+number of towns or villages dependent on Charlemont and Maubeuge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_609">[609]</span></p>
+
+<p>On the 30th of October a fourth treaty was signed between France and the
+empire and the emperor. Louis XIV surrendered all that he had occupied
+in Germany except Strasburg, which was ceded to him in full sovereignty.
+Kehl, Hüningen, and the forts of the Rhine were to be razed so as to secure
+the free navigation of the river which had now become a frontier from Hüningen
+to Landau. It was the same with Trarbach and Mont-Royal on the
+Moselle. Louis XIV restored Lorraine to Duke Leopold on the terms of
+the treaty of 1670, that is to say, while retaining Marsal and a right of passage,
+besides Longwy and Saarlouis. It was agreed that the duke should
+marry a daughter of Monsieur. Prince Clement of Bavaria remained in possession
+of the electorate of Cologne; but Cardinal von Fürstenberg recovered
+his titles and his confiscated property. The claims of Madame, duchess
+of Orleans, on the heritage of her father, the former elector palatine, were
+compounded for in money. The official gazettes and the panegyrics still
+vaunted the glory acquired by ten years of struggle against Europe in coalition,
+the brilliance of the captures of cities, and that of victories. But if
+these are noble subjects of pride or rather of consolation, the majesty with
+which Louis XIV effected to give peace rather than to submit to it created
+no more illusion in France than in the rest of Europe. No one could believe
+in his moderation or his generosity. Those most disposed to admire his
+policy imagined that he had had a deep laid scheme and a secret design.</p>
+
+<p>In reality Louis XIV had been obliged to go back to the year 1679 or at
+least to 1681. The necessity for making restitutions had always been admitted
+but there was no idea that they would have to be so complete. On the
+whole, if the Peace of Ryswick saved the honour of the country, it was
+impossible not to see in it the final check and condemnation of the policy
+pursued since Nimeguen.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b6"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>LOUIS XIV AND THE POLISH THRONE (1697 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>While Louis was arranging the Peace of Ryswick, the throne of Poland
+became vacant. This was the only one in the world which at that time was
+elective—citizens and even foreigners might aspire to it.</p>
+
+<p>The abbé de Polignac, afterwards cardinal, had the ability to incline the
+suffrage in favour of that prince of Conti, known for his valourous actions at
+Steenkerke and at Neerwinden. He balanced with eloquence and promises
+the money which Augustus, elector of Saxony, lavished for the same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The prince of Conti was elected king by a majority, June 27th, 1697, and
+proclaimed by the primate of the realm. Augustus was elected two hours
+later by a much smaller vote, but he was a sovereign and powerful prince,
+and had troops ready on the Polish frontier. The prince of Conti was absent,
+without money, without troops, and without power; he had nothing in his
+favour but his name and Polignac. It was necessary that Louis XIV should
+either prevent Conti from accepting the throne or provide him the means of
+taking it from his rival. The French ministry took the stand that they had
+already done too much in sending the prince of Conti, and too little in giving
+him only a feeble squadron and a few letters of credit with which he
+arrived in the harbour of Dantzic. The prince was not only not received at
+Dantzic, but his letters of credit were protested. The intrigues of the pope,
+those of the emperor, the money and troops of Saxony already assured the
+crown to his rival. Conti returned with the glory of having been elected.
+France had the mortification of letting it be seen that she had not enough
+strength to create a king of Poland.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21d3"><a href="#endnote_21d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_610">[610]</span></p>
+
+<h3>THE QUESTION OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (1697-1700 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1697-1700 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Immediately the Peace of Ryswick was signed, the attention of the powers
+became fastened on the uncertainties of the Spanish succession. Charles
+II had, since his infancy, gone entirely against all the unfavourable prophecies
+inspired by his frail and sickly constitution. He had grown to manhood
+and even married. Louis XIV had made him, in 1679, wed, as we have
+seen, a daughter of the duke of Orleans in the hope of fortifying French
+influence at Madrid and circumventing the designs of Austria; for the
+emperor was leaving nothing undone to assure to himself the alliance of
+Spain for the present and the succession for the future. The indefinite
+treaty of partition, signed in 1669 between the courts of Versailles and
+Vienna, had been entirely abandoned. Leopold, uneasy at the thought of
+the influence a French queen might acquire, insisted that one of his own
+sons, the archduke Charles, be accorded the title of heir presumptive at
+Madrid as long as Charles II had no children; but France succeeded in
+preventing this.</p>
+
+<p>Marie Louise of Orleans, queen of Spain, succumbed in 1689, like her
+mother, to a sudden illness and at the same age. Charles II remarried—this
+time a German princess, Maria Anna of Neuburg, the empress’ sister. The
+new queen, vain, pretentious, and extremely hostile to France, never ceased
+to favour the wishes and schemes of Austria at Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>Two things were very necessary to Spain—that the heir to the crown
+should be designated in advance, and that the already enfeebled monarchy
+should not be dismembered. Charles II adopted the electoral prince of
+Bavaria and by will declared him his heir.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to enumerate here the claimants and give an idea of their
+relationship. Philip III had two daughters—Anne of Austria married to
+Louis XIII, and Maria Anna married to the emperor Ferdinand III. Philip
+IV had married his two daughters in the same fashion—Maria Theresa to
+Louis XIV and Margarita Theresa to the emperor Leopold. The Spanish
+princesses married in France were the elder in their generations, but had
+renounced the succession. The question was whether these renunciations
+were valid. Louis XIV claimed that they were not, at least as regards
+Maria Theresa. In this case the closest heirs to the Spanish crown were the
+dauphin and his three sons, the dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri. If, on
+the contrary, the French branch was outlawed, the succession passed to the
+German line. Leopold had had a single daughter by his marriage with
+Margarita Theresa, Maria Antonia-Josepha, the wife of the Bavarian elector;
+who in turn had one son, still a child, whom Charles II designated his heir.</p>
+
+<p>But Leopold, although maternal grandfather of the young Bavarian
+prince, raised another claim. On marrying his daughter he had imposed
+a renunciation upon her, and henceforth he claimed that he himself was the
+nearest heir through his mother Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III; and
+his scheme was to transmit his personal rights to the sons of his second marriage
+with Elizabeth of Neuburg. As the elder of these princes, Joseph,
+elected king of the Romans in 1690, would succeed him in the empire, Leopold
+aspired to make the second, the archduke Charles, king of Spain—a
+combination which, without confounding the empire and Spain, would
+perpetuate the rule of both branches of the Austrian house in these two
+countries and recommence the work of Charles V.</p>
+
+<p>Count von Harrach, Leopold’s envoy at Madrid, obtained with the queen’s
+aid the annulment of the will in favour of the Bavarian prince. But he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_611">[611]</span>wanted more, and insisted that the archduke Charles be declared heir presumptive.
+The unfortunate king, worn out with these insistances, and believing
+at moments that he had a new hold on life, announced that he would
+await the day when the viaticum should be brought him before again appointing
+his successor.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV sent the marquis d’Harcourt to Madrid in the month of
+December, 1697, with instructions to keep watch on Charles’ court and to
+obstruct the emperor’s plots; but knowing that he would obtain nothing
+directly from the court of Madrid, he thought the surest and wisest plan was
+to negotiate the bases of a partition with England and Holland, which would
+be a means of proving his pacific disposition to Europe and would also bear
+upon the emperor and the empire. Consequently Pomponne, whom he had
+recalled to the head of foreign affairs, and Torcy, son of Colbert de Croissy,
+invested with the office of secretary of state since 1689, in March, 1699, made
+overtures to Lord Portland (Bentinck), English ambassador at Paris. Tallard
+was sent to London to come to an agreement with William III directly.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations, embarrassed by conflicting claims, lasted six months.
+Finally a first treaty of partition was signed at the Hague on October 11th
+by Tallard and Briord, ambassadors of France to England and Holland. It
+was agreed that the dauphin should have Naples, Sicily, the Spanish towns
+on the coasts of Tuscany, the marquisate of Finale and Guipuzcoa, that the
+archduke should have the Milanese, and that the electoral prince of Bavaria
+should reign over Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands. As this last prince
+was only four years old and might die, it was decided that in that event the
+elector, his father, should succeed him.</p>
+
+<p>Charles II was not long in hearing that the succession had been regulated
+without consulting him. He therefore convened an extraordinary council,
+and to prevent the dismemberment of his state he constituted the prince of
+Bavaria his sole heir (November, 1698) in spite of the fact that the elector,
+father of the young prince, had consented to the treaty of partition. This
+decision, in cutting short the dispute, was of a nature to satisfy neither
+France nor Austria, and the death of the young prince of Bavaria, which
+occurred unexpectedly at Brussels, on the 8th of February, 1699, reopened
+the question. It annulled not only the will of the king of Spain, but also
+the signed treaty of partition between France and the maritime powers.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV immediately undertook negotiations for a second treaty with
+the powers, only more secretly, in order to be considerate of the last days of
+Charles II and not to wound the susceptibilities of the Spaniards. Tallard
+demanded that the Milanese should be added to the dauphin’s portion, in
+consideration of which he offered to let the archduke rule over Spain and the
+Indies, and to allow England and Holland the choice of a sovereign for the
+Netherlands. Louis XIV hoped to attain with the help of the maritime power
+the adherence of the emperor, if necessary, by force, if Leopold made war.</p>
+
+<p>Villars had left for Vienna in June, 1699, with the title of envoy extraordinary
+and a suite of unusual splendour. But to his vague overtures he
+received even more vague replies. Leopold had a rather undecided character,
+and he was convinced that he would obtain from Charles II a will in
+favour of the archduke Charles. He contested the fundamental principles
+of the arrangement proposed by France, and finally formally declined the
+acceptance of any treaty whatever (October, 1699).</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV then resolved to go further, and a second treaty was signed
+in London and at the Hague, the 13th and 25th of May, 1700. It was agreed
+that the dauphin should have all that had been assigned to him in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_612">[612]</span>partition treaty of 1698, plus the duchy of Lorraine; that the duke of Lorraine
+should have the duchy of Milan, and that the remainder of the Spanish monarchy,
+comprising Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands, should pass to the
+archduke Charles. Three months were given to the emperor to accept this
+arrangement; if at the close of that time he had not consented, another
+prince was to be substituted for the archduke.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1700-1701 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Rarely had Louis XIV shown himself as wise, as prudent, and as able,
+as in forming these last combinations. He restored Lorraine to the crown,
+with one stroke of the pen and without striking one blow—an important
+province, and one which had been French for a long time. As for Naples
+and Sicily, he offered them to Victor Amadeus in exchange for Nice and
+Savoy, which would procure for France the natural barrier of the Alps
+and repair the set-back of Ryswick.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the precautions which ought to have assured its secrecy, the
+second treaty of partition was known in Madrid as quickly as the first had
+been, and produced the same effect there. The king was much affected, the
+queen became so enraged that, according to one story, she broke the furniture
+of her apartment. The nation, wounded that the treaty should have been
+concluded without consulting it, burst into recriminations against the maritime
+powers; the thought only of dismemberment aroused its pride.</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy king then resolved to make a new will, the third. He
+consulted jurists, theologians, the pope himself—to quiet his conscience,
+alarmed by the thought of disinheriting the house of Austria. Restrained
+by his scruples, he again feared that Louis XIV would not accept a will
+made in favour of a French prince, and would prefer to hold to the treaty
+of partition. Finally, feeling the approach of death, he signed his third last
+will and testament, on the second of October. He could not have put it off
+much longer, for he died on the first of November.</p>
+
+<p>The will was at once made public; Charles II declared the Spanish
+monarchy to be indivisible. Recognising the rights of Maria Theresa and
+her children, he designated as his successor the second of the grandsons of
+Louis XIV, the duke of Anjou; and pending the arrival of the young
+prince he confided the government to a junta, or council of regency, presided
+over by the queen his widow. In case of non-acceptance of the duke
+of Anjou, he substituted for him his brother the duke de Berri, third son of
+the dauphin, and the duke of Savoy successively.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b7"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The only doubt now remaining was whether Louis XIV would accept
+the will of the late king of Spain in favour of his grandson, or whether he
+would adhere to the treaty of partition. There was a long debate respecting
+this in his council, which council consisted of but three ministers, the chancellor
+Pontchartrain, the duke de Beauvilliers, and Torcy. They were
+divided in opinion; but the dauphin, “drowned as he habitually was in
+apathy and fat,” says Saint-Simon,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21h"><a href="#endnote_21h">h</a></span> gathered warmth and energy on this
+occasion, and spoke eloquently in behalf of his son’s rights. Madame de
+Maintenon, who had also a voice in this council, adopted the same views;
+and Louis decided.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f1"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>ACCESSION OF THE BOURBONS IN SPAIN</h3>
+
+<p>The duke of Anjou took the title of Philip V and left on the 4th of
+December to live among his new subjects. Louis XIV wished that the
+departure of his grandson should take place amid extraordinary solemnity.
+It is at this time the celebrated phrase, “There are no more Pyrenees,” is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_613">[613]</span>attributed to him.<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a>
+    The young prince travelled with the customary pomp
+and slowness of royal cortèges. On the 21st of April, 1701, he was received
+at Madrid, by the noisy acclamation of the Spaniards, who flattered themselves
+with having saved the integrity of their monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>In the whole of Europe the surprise was the same. Holland and
+England believed that they had been duped, that Louis XIV had had an
+understanding with Charles II, and that for the last two years he had been
+playing a continuous comedy. However, they contained themselves and
+made no manifestations. William contented himself with saying to Tailard,
+“It is well. I recognise the loyalty of your master.” In Austria, where
+until the last moment there was hope of a will in favour of the archduke,
+there was both despondency and irritation. The emperor protested against
+the will of Charles II, against its acceptance by France, and sent his
+agents in hot haste to the different courts in order to resuscitate the coalition;
+at the same time making preparations for a war of which he resolutely
+counted the duration and extent.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21b8"><a href="#endnote_21b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>France had two great interests. The first was that Spain should be her
+friend, to assure peace on the southern frontier; the second that the northeastern
+frontier should be as far as possible from Paris and that the Netherlands
+should at least be her ally. The first point seemed gained by the
+advent to the throne of Charles V, of a Bourbon whom the people received
+with enthusiasm, and whom the other states recognised. The emperor protested
+and armed, but alone he could do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The second end was more difficult to attain, for neither England nor
+Holland was willing to see the French at the mouth of the Schelde. To get
+there much tact and prudence was necessary. The king unfortunately
+unmasked his plans too quickly and braved Europe as if it was his pleasure
+to do so. In spite of the formal clauses of Charles II’s will, Louis did not
+exact from Philip V a renunciation of the French throne, and by letters
+patent issued in December, 1700, preserved to him his hereditary rank
+between the duke of Burgundy and the duke de Berri. This would make
+possible a union of the two monarchies and show an alarmed world France
+and Spain one day governed by the same king, which would not have been
+a good thing for either country, and still less so for Europe. A little later
+Louis drove the Dutch from the places they occupied in the Netherlands by
+virtue of the Treaty of Ryswick, and replaced them with French garrisons.<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>
+Finally on the death of James II he acknowledged the prince of Wales, his
+son, as king of England, Ireland, and Scotland, in spite of the advice of all
+his ministers. This insult to the English people and to William III made
+war inevitable.</p>
+
+<h3>THE GRAND ALLIANCE OR THIRD COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1701 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1701-1702 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>A third coalition was formed in September, 1701. This was the grand
+league of the Hague into which England, Holland, Austria, and the empire
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_614">[614]</span>entered, and a little later Portugal, which became an enemy of France<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a>
+    since
+a French prince was king of Spain, and especially since French ports had
+been closed to her products. No allies in the whole of Europe remained to
+Louis but the elector of Bavaria,<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> to whom the Netherlands were secretly
+promised, and the dukes of Modena and of Savoy, who were however soon
+to change sides. Spain was with him, but having no soldiers or money or
+ships was, as Torcy said, “A body without a soul whom France must nourish
+and sustain at her own expense.”</p>
+
+<p>William III scarcely saw the opening of the war. He died in the month
+of March, 1702, but his policy survived him because it was a national one.
+Three men, famous for their hatred
+of France, Heinsius, Marlborough,
+and Prince Eugene, replaced in
+close union the leader of the league.
+Heinsius was grand pensionary of
+Holland, and he directed the republic
+with the authority of a monarch
+when the stadholdership was abolished
+on the death of William.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p614.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Claude Louis Hector, Duc de Villars</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1653-1734)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Churchill, duke of Marlborough,
+received his first taste of war under
+Turenne. He governed Queen
+Anne through his wife, parliament
+through his friends, the ministry
+through his son-in-law Sunderland,
+secretary of state for war, and
+through the great treasurer Godolphin,
+father-in-law of one of his
+daughters. Prince Eugene, born
+in France about 1663, of the count
+de Soissons and a niece of Mazarin,
+that Olympe Mancini whom Louis
+had for one moment favoured, belonged
+to the house of Savoy. Destined
+to an ecclesiastical career he
+preferred the profession of arms,
+and, at the age of nineteen, demanded
+a regiment of Louis XIV, who refused to make a colonel of the
+“Savoyard abbé.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c7"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span> Disappointed in his hopes of obtaining a command in
+the armies of France, he turned to the Empire and became its greatest protector
+against the ambition of his former sovereign. During one campaign
+of 1692 he had foiled Catinat in Italy and by a bold raid from Piedmont
+into France had spread alarm far into the kingdom.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> After the Peace of
+Ryswick he resisted the Turks who had invaded Hungary and won at Zenta,
+in 1697, a signal victory which placed him in the opinion of his contemporaries
+by the side of Sobieski, the saviour of Vienna. Now appointed president
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_615">[615]</span>of the council of war and planning as a minister the expeditions which
+he was to carry out as a general, he had a decisive influence on the events
+which were to follow. By his good understanding with Marlborough he
+was about to give the European coalition that thing which it had always
+lacked—union.</p>
+
+<p>To triumph over such adversaries France would have had to have the
+great men of the preceding generation. But Louis had used them up.
+However, some of the leaders that France still had, Villars, Catinat, Boufflers,
+and Vendôme, deserved confidence and freedom. It is true that such
+as Villeroi, Tailard, Marchin, and La Feuillade had every need of good
+counsel and guidance, but it was not by holding these generals by the leash
+that they were prevented from inflicting irreparable disaster upon the
+French arms.</p>
+
+<p>To Louis XIV’s idea the war should be defensive at all points except in
+Germany, whither the elector of Bavaria summoned the French. Boufflers
+was sent to the Netherlands to oppose Marlborough, who commanded the
+Anglo-Batavian army; Catinat to Italy to shut the entrance to the Milanese
+upon Prince Eugene and the imperials; Villars to Germany to join
+the elector and march upon Vienna.<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p>
+
+<h3>WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION: THE FRENCH VICTORIES (1701-1704 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>For three years (1701-1704) the successes balanced each other. However,
+Marlborough penetrated, in 1702 into the Netherlands in spite of Boufflers,
+who with two armies on his hands did not know how to manœuvre between
+them and abandoned without combat the places on the Maas as far as Namur;
+at least he saved Antwerp the following year by the victory of Eeckeren over
+the Dutch. In 1701 Prince Eugene descended into Lombardy in spite of
+Catinat, who had a superior force, but who, badly obeyed and perhaps
+betrayed by some Spanish officers, did not prevent him swooping down from
+the Tyrol. Eugene threatened the whole line of the Adige, and crossed that
+river without resistance at Castelbaldo on the plain, while Catinat was
+waiting for him at Rivoli in the mountains. He forced the passage of the
+Blanc canal in a fight at Carpi, July 9th, when Catinat might again have
+stopped him; but the marshal, confused by manœuvres as bold as they were
+able, retired behind the Mincio and further still behind the Oglio which
+opened the Milanese to the enemy. The court degraded him and gave his
+army to Villeroi.</p>
+
+<p>This protégé of Madame de Maintenon was a good courtier but a bad
+general. From the very first he wanted to take the offensive. He recrossed
+the Oglio hoping to surprise Eugene at Chiari, but the duke of Savoy kept
+the imperials informed of all his movements, and Villeroi, surprised himself,
+was beaten in 1701.</p>
+
+<p>However, the enemy could advance no farther, so long as it did not have
+the stronghold of Mantua. Villeroi let the count de Tessé make a brilliant
+defence there and took up winter quarters in Cremona. Once while he was
+sleeping in supposed security he was awakened by sudden firing. He dressed
+in haste, rushed from his lodging, and fell among an Austrian squadron. It
+was Eugene, who was making a sudden attack on Cremona. He would
+have succeeded had it not been for a regiment which since four o’clock in
+the morning had been assembled for review by the colonel. The enemy,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_616">[616]</span>arrived in the centre of the town, were driven back through the gates; but
+they took the marshal with them (February, 1702). [Ballads were sung in
+the streets of Paris to celebrate the double stroke of fortune,—Cremona
+saved and Villeroi captured.] Vendôme replaced him and for two years carried
+on a successful warfare against the imperials. At first he forced them
+to retreat beyond the Mincio, which delivered Mantua, then by a rapid
+march he went to seize their stores at Luzzara, on the right bank of the Po
+(1702), so that he might approach the Tyrol. At this moment the concealed
+treasons of the duke of Savoy changed to open defection, the Bourbons
+having refused, very stupidly, to cede him the Milanese in exchange
+for Savoy (1703). It was necessary for Vendôme to turn against him to
+assure communication with France. He seized the greater part of Piedmont
+and threatened Turin, but he no longer threatened Austria.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1702-1703 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The same success in Germany. Catinat, called to the Rhine, did not
+re-establish the reputation he compromised in Italy. He had allowed the
+prince of Baden to cross the river and take Landau, Weissenburg, and
+Haguenau. A diversion of the elector of Bavaria recalled the imperials to
+Germany. Catinat, urged to follow them, dare not do so; but one of his
+lieutenants, Villars, did. He attacked the prince of Baden in the Black
+Forest near Friedlingen, and won his marshal’s baton on the field of battle
+(October, 1702).<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c8"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span> The victory was as absurd as that of Charles the Bold
+at Montchery. The French infantry drove back the German and then
+broke and fled in a panic. Villars was swept back with his men, and was
+in utter despair when an officer rode up to say that the cavalry had saved
+the day. It was not much to be proud of, for the German troops were still
+in good order as they withdrew, but it gave the court its chance to honour
+its favourite.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The most decisive blow was struck at sea. Sir George Rooke and the
+duke of Ormond made amends for an unsuccessful attack upon Cadiz, by
+forcing the port of Vigo, and capturing and destroying the fleet of the
+enemy, together with the galleons containing the treasures from South
+America.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1703 passed in Flanders without any action of importance.
+Marlborough took Bonn and Luxemburg, and manœuvred with a view to
+capture Antwerp and Ostend, without success. More important movements
+were taking place on the Rhine, where Villars commanded. The object of
+the French king’s pushing the war into Germany, contrary to his usual practice,
+was to succour his ally, the elector of Bavaria, who was so sorely pressed
+by the imperialists that it was feared he would be obliged to abandon the
+alliance of France. Villars employed the winter months advantageously in
+making himself master of Kehl, opposite Strasburg. In the spring he
+succeeded fully in breaking through the imperialist lines, and joining the
+elector of Bavaria at Ratisbon; thus transferring the seat of war from the
+Rhine to the Danube. If we are to credit Villars himself, he conceived
+the idea of marching by Passau upon Vienna. The elector, of a more sober
+school of tactics, could not share the French general’s ardour. A difference
+of opinion, and subsequent coolness, sprang up betwixt them. Even the
+more sage advice of Villars, to pass the Danube and attack the imperialists
+before they could be joined by an approaching army, was but reluctantly
+followed. The marshal was obliged to shame his ally by threatening to
+make the attack alone. It took place near Donauwörth, between Höchstädt
+and Blenheim (September, 1703), and the French were here victorious on a
+field which was destined to be so fatal to them in the ensuing year. Unable
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_617">[617]</span>to bring the elector into his designs, Villars agreed to a plan to invade the
+Tyrol, and open a communication through that country with the duke de
+Vendôme, who commanded in Italy. The scheme was unsuccessful. Vendôme
+was kept in check, not only by Prince Eugene, but by the duke of
+Savoy himself, and the Tyrolese drove the elector from their valley. He
+made loud complaints against Villars, and that able general in disgust threw
+up his command.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f2"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1703-1704 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>In November, 1703, the imperialists suffered a bloody defeat near Speier,
+which gave Landau back to France. The victor was Tallard. He wrote to
+the king, “Sire: Your army has taken more standards and flags than it has
+lost common soldiers.”</p>
+
+<h3>THE CAMISARDS</h3>
+
+<p>This victory put an end to France’s success. Louis XIV sent Villars
+against the revolting Protestants of the Cévennes, the <i>camisards</i>. These
+unfortunate people had just seen Pope Clement XI renew the preaching of
+a crusade against them (the bull of May 1st, 1703). Bewildered with terror
+they accepted the help of England and the duke of Savoy, who were anxious
+to foster civil war in the heart of France; and as they had been cruelly
+treated, they revenged themselves in turn with similar cruelties.</p>
+
+<p>Villars had it at heart to save the province and bring back these exasperated
+men. “They are,” he said, “Frenchmen, very brave and very
+strong—three qualities to be considered.” He used force against those who
+persisted in fighting and was indulgent to those who put faith in his word.
+He won over one of their leaders, Cavalier, and one campaign was almost
+sufficient to re-establish peace in these provinces; but 100,000 men had
+perished in this horrible war.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c9"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION—FRENCH REVERSES (1704-1713 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>The elector of Bavaria, however, remained master of the whole course of
+the Danube as far as Passau. The small army of 20,000 men brought by
+Villars, but now commanded by Marshal de Marchin [Marsin], swelled his
+force, whilst Marshal Tallard, with 40,000 men on the Rhine, was ready to
+march in the spring of 1704 and join Marchin and the elector. These prospects
+made the court of Vienna tremble. That government was at the same
+time pressed by the Hungarian insurgents, so that even the recall of Prince
+Eugene from Italy with all the troops that could be spared from keeping
+the duke of Vendôme in check, might not prove sufficient for defending
+the Austrian capital—to such distress was the emperor reduced in the spring
+of the year 1704.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Marlborough conceived the bold and generous design of
+abandoning Flanders, that beaten field, so known and trodden by commanders,
+so thickly sown with fortresses and cut with lines of defence as to
+render decisive actions impracticable, and of marching on the Danube, to the
+relief of the empire. Concealing his intentions, the duke crossed the Rhine
+at Bonn, the Main near Frankfort, and marched towards Bavaria.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f3"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span> At
+Mondelsheim near Heilbronn he had a conference with Eugene and together
+they agreed upon the plan of campaign which was to bring the victory of
+Blenheim and one of the greatest epochs in English military history.
+The plan was Marlborough’s; he had laid it before William III before his
+death and it had been rejected by the great Dutchman. Now he staked
+all upon it and executed it in the face of the opposition of England and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_618">[618]</span>Holland. From this time on, the greatest triumvirate of Marlborough,
+Eugene and Heinsius direct the fortunes of the allies.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The French had in the meantime mustered another army on the Rhine
+under Villeroi. Him Prince Eugene undertook to observe, whilst Marlborough,
+seconded by the prince of Baden, undertook to pass the Danube,
+penetrate into Bavaria, and either force the elector to abandon the French
+alliance, or punish him for his hostility to the empire. Marlborough lost no
+time in manœuvring or counter-marches, but advanced straight against the
+French and Bavarians, who were entrenched at Schellenberg, before Donauwörth,
+a town that commands a bridge on the Danube. Marlborough’s
+attack was decisive. The entrenchments were forced, the enemy were
+defeated and fled, leaving many thousand men and several generals on the
+field, as well as the passage of the Danube free. The English and imperialists
+instantly poured over the river, crossed the Lech, and, whilst the elector
+took refuge in Augsburg, until Marshal de Tallard could reinforce him,
+Marlborough overran Bavaria to the gates of Munich, ravaging and punishing
+the country for the hostilities of its chief. This wretched and cruel
+system of warfare did not bring the elector to terms. It irritated him,
+however, and drove his temper to seek vengeance in a general engagement.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to subsist south of the Danube in a country which he could
+not occupy, and which he purposely ravaged, Marlborough withdrew to
+the north of that river. Hoping to draw the enemy after him, he caused
+the prince of Baden to lay siege to Ingolstadt. What he sought, took place.
+The elector of Bavaria, anxious for revenge, and Tallard, who had joined
+him, sharing his ardour, they passed the Danube, and posted themselves at
+Höchstädt, on the very spot where Villars and the elector had in the last
+year been victorious. Prince Eugene at the same time contrived to deceive
+Villeroi, quitting his position, in front of that general, so as himself to
+arrive with his army in time to join in the action, whilst Villeroi remained
+perplexed or engaged in uncertain and tedious pursuit.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Blenheim</i></h4>
+
+<p>On the morning of the 13th of August, 1704, the French and Bavarians
+drew up before their camp. Their armies did not mingle, but remained
+separate, that of Tallard on the right touching the Danube, that of Marchin
+and the elector in continuance of the line on the left. Before the front of
+Tallard was the village of Blenheim, on a rising ground, occupied by his
+infantry. At some distance in advance of the French and Bavarians ran a
+rivulet with marshy banks, on the other side of which were drawn up the
+imperials, the Dutch and English; Marlborough commanding the latter
+next the Danube, Prince Eugene the former. The elector committed a
+capital fault in not posting his army near to the rivulet, so as either to dispute
+its passage or to attack the enemy when they had partially crossed it.
+But he did not suspect an intention to fight on the part of Marlborough.
+Eugene began the action by attacking the elector and Marchin, from whom he
+met with a stubborn resistance. Marlborough in the meantime crossed the
+rivulet, and formed a strong body of infantry opposite the centre of his antagonists.
+This centre was composed of cavalry; for Tallard and the elector,
+remaining separate, had each drawn up his army, according to rule, with its
+horse upon the wings.</p>
+
+<p>But these wings, united, formed the centre of the combined army. And
+thus a body of cavalry, destined by its nature to act offensively, was posted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_619">[619]</span>in the principal, the central, the fixed position of the army. Tallard no
+doubt reckoned that Marlborough would attack Blenheim, and, as Condé
+would have done, spend a world of lives and heroic efforts to master the position.
+Tallard knew this would cost hours; and he accordingly rode off to
+the left to see how the elector was faring, whilst his antagonists were drawing
+up, after having crossed the rivulet. Marlborough in the meantime did
+despatch troops to attack Blenheim, with the view of distracting Tallard from
+the principal movement. This was his advance upon the centre, the weak,
+divided centre of cavalry. In fact it made no resistance. Marlborough rushed
+in betwixt the elector and Tallard, cutting the French and Bavarian line in
+two. This manœuvre decided the victory. The elector with Marchin, taken in
+flank, gave up the advantage they had gained over Eugene, wavered, retreated,
+fled; whilst Tallard, hemmed betwixt the English and the Danube, ended
+by laying down their arms and surrendering. As for the marshal himself,
+he was taken whilst endeavouring to return from the elector’s division of
+the army to his own. The entire glory of this victory was Marlborough’s;
+and he enhanced it by that modesty and those attentions towards the vanquished
+which had so redounded to the fame of the Black Prince after
+Poitiers. From French writers we learn that Marlborough first set the
+example of treating prisoners not only with clemency but with the politeness
+due to misfortune; a trait that redeems those ravages in Bavaria which
+the custom of war had unjustly sanctioned. The battle of Blenheim, in
+which about 60,000 French and Bavarians against 52,000 of the allies were
+engaged, cost to the vanquished 12,000 men killed, besides a greater number
+made prisoners. The quantity of cannon, colours, and other trophies, was
+immense. But its effects were greater than all. The French armies were
+obliged to evacuate Germany altogether, abandon Bavaria, and retire behind
+the Rhine. Marlborough proved to Vienna another Sobieski. His victory
+re-established the imperial throne; nor was the house of Austria ungrateful.
+[It created him a prince of the empire, while Queen Anne made him a duke.]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1704-1706 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>War was in the meantime raging in the Spanish peninsula. The archduke
+Charles had been enabled by England to land with a respectable force
+in that country, which he continued to dispute against Philip, the grandson
+of Louis. Portugal had been won over to the side of England and the archduke,
+and her aid proved of the greatest importance. It was singular to
+observe in this campaign the armies of France and Spain commanded by an
+Englishman, the duke of Berwick, while Ruvigny, created earl of Galway,
+a native of France and a Huguenot <i>émigré</i>, commanded the English forces.
+Sir George Rooke took Gibraltar in the same year in which the victory of
+Blenheim was won.</p>
+
+<p>Marlborough had delivered Germany from the French, and driven them
+beyond the Rhine: he then turned his attention to the north, and aimed at
+expelling them from those provinces of Spanish Flanders which they had
+taken possession of in the beginning of the war. During the entire campaign
+of 1705, the duke manœuvred in vain to attain this object by bringing
+the French to action. A signal victory could alone enable him to reduce a
+host of strong towns by a single blow; long watching for this opportunity,
+it did not offer till the spring of the year 1706. Marshal de Villeroi took
+the command in Flanders, and with orders to give battle. Louis was weary
+of the tedious war, so many enemies besetting him; the mere expense of
+resisting on every side being sufficient to crush the monarchy. He was no
+longer in a condition to await the effect of Louvois’ preparations, or
+Turenne’s manœuvres. Experience, sagacity, skill no longer presided over
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_620">[620]</span>either his councils or his armies: Louis cried out for something decisive—for
+battle; like the gamester, whom prudence has deserted, and who is
+anxious to stake all in a decisive throw, which may relieve or ruin him. He
+bade Villeroi, therefore, give battle. Had he even selected Villars for the
+important task! But Villars was an indifferent courtier, being rude, independent,
+and proud. The “short-geniused and superb Villeroi” was preferred,
+and despatched on the difficult errand of giving battle to Marlborough.</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Ramillies, 1706</i></h4>
+
+<p>The French army, of about 80,000 men, reached the banks of the Mehaigne
+near Ramillies, about half distance betwixt Namur and Tirlemont, on the
+23rd of May, 1706. Despite the king’s order and his own ardour to fight,
+it was Marlborough who marched to the attack. Villeroi was waiting to be
+joined by Marchin; but, knowing himself to have a force stronger than the
+English general, he resolved to await the attack, drawing up his army in the
+position that chance had placed it, at an acute angle with the Mehaigne.
+The French right wing was near this river, with the village of Ramillies on
+a rising ground in front of it, precisely as Blenheim had been with respect to
+the French army in the action called by that name. Villeroi’s left was here
+covered by a little marshy river called the Gheete, which rendered it unassailable
+indeed, but also rendered it useless unless as supporting his right.</p>
+
+<p>Marlborough did not arrive with his army till it was already past noon;
+he reconnoitred, drew up in line corresponding to the French, and the cannonade
+began. The duke in an instant had perceived that the Gheete covering
+the enemy’s left rendered engagement on that side impossible; he
+therefore drew all his force from that side, and drafting it in the most concealed
+manner possible behind the troops about to attack Ramillies and the
+French right, he concentrated his force on this point. This manœuvre took
+a long time to execute, and yet Villeroi took no step to defeat it. When
+Marlborough advanced, the French household cavalry charged him with such
+impetuosity and valour as to break the attacking battalions, and to endanger
+the duke himself; but the English, rallying in front, and allowing these
+rash enemies to pass to the rear, where there was force enough to deal with
+them, pushed on both upon Ramillies and upon the French line behind it.
+The English, being in much superior numbers on this point, owing to the
+inactivity of the French right, formed in one unbroken line and charged,
+numbers breaking in between the intervals of the French, who were drawn
+up in separate battalions, and taking them in flank. Their rearguard failed
+to support those in front: the baggage, it was said, impeded them: at all
+events the battle, though begun late, proved ere sunset a decisive victory on
+one side and rout on the other. The pursuit lasted the whole night, the fugitives
+suffering greatly in their passage through the defile of Judoigne, which
+was blocked with cannon and wagons. Here the day of Blenheim was renewed,
+the loss of the French in killed and captive not being, however, so great.
+The consequences were not less important; being the loss to France of all
+the Spanish Netherlands, including Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Brussels,
+Mechlin, and Louvain. The fortresses of Menin and Dendermonde
+surrendered also. Namur and Mons remained, the only towns unconquered.</p>
+
+<p>The court was struck with consternation on learning of this second
+defeat, of which the details were for a long time unknown. No courier
+arrived, so that Louis was obliged to despatch Chamillart himself, his minister,
+to Flanders. Villeroi was distracted, and had lost all self-possession;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_621">[621]</span>everyone condemned a general whose imprudence had placed the kingdom
+“within two fingers of its ruin.” Still Louis was generous to his unfortunate
+general, and wrote him to give in his resignation, in order to avoid
+the harshness of deprival. The duke de Vendôme was recalled from Italy
+to take the command in Flanders; and the duke of Orleans, the king’s
+nephew, succeeded Vendôme. This last appointment surprised the court,
+which was aware of the extreme repugnance felt by Louis to employ any of
+the princes of the blood; but so unfortunate had proved his choice of late
+that the monarch resolved at last to trust the defence of the kingdom to the
+zeal of his family.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f4"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1706-1707 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Orleans found the army in Italy in great disorder, the generals divided and
+insubordinate; Turin was besieged according to the plans of La Feuillade
+[the most frivolous and incompetent of the favourites of Louis], contrary
+to the advice of Vauban; the prince in irritation turned over his
+powers to Marshal de Marchin. Prince Eugene, who had effected his
+junction with Victor Amadeus, encountered the French army between the
+Dora and Stura rivers. Orleans was seriously wounded at the battle of
+Turin, September 7th, 1706; Marchin was killed and discouragement seized
+the generals and the troops. The siege of Turin was raised and before the
+end of the year almost all the places were lost and Dauphiné threatened.
+Victor Amadeus refused to agree to a special peace and in March, 1707, the
+prince of Vaudemont, governor of the Milanese for the king of Spain, signed
+a capitulation at Mantua and sent back to France the troops that still
+remained there. The imperials were masters of Naples. Spain possessed
+nothing more in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Philip V had been threatened with the loss of Spain as of Italy. In
+the past two years the archduke Charles of Austria under the name of
+Charles III, with the support of England and Portugal, disputed the crown
+with the young king. Philip V had lost Catalonia and had just failed in an
+attempt to retake Barcelona, which had surrendered to Lord Peterborough.
+The road to Madrid was cut off; the army was obliged to pass through
+Roussillon and Béarn to resume the campaign. The king shut himself up
+in the capital whither he was conducted by Marshal Berwick, a natural son
+of James II; but Philip could not remain in Madrid, threatened by the
+enemy. He betook himself to Burgos. The English entered the capital
+and proclaimed Charles III.</p>
+
+<p>But this was too much. The Spaniards could not allow an Austrian
+king to be imposed upon them by heretics and the Portuguese. The cities
+arose; a handful of cavalry was sufficient to enable Berwick to regain
+possession of Madrid, and the king returned on the 4th of October amid the
+acclamations of the people. Charles III now held only Aragon and Catalonia
+in Spain. The French garrison, unoccupied since the evacuation of
+Italy, came to the assistance of the Spaniards.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV had made his grandson understand that a great sacrifice
+would be necessary to obtain the peace he believed would soon be due to
+their peoples. The Dutch refused their mediation. The campaign of 1707
+was signalled in Spain by the victory of Almansa, won on the 15th of April
+by Marshal Berwick over the Anglo-Portuguese army and by the taking of
+Lerida which surrendered on November 11th to the duke of Orleans. In
+Germany Villars drove the enemy from the banks of the Rhine,<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> advanced
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_622">[622]</span>into Swabia, and ravaged the Palatinate, levying contributions on the
+country of which he openly kept a part for himself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1707-1708 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The inexhaustible elasticity and marvellous resources of France had
+somewhat revived hopes in 1707. An invasion of Provence by Victor
+Amadeus and Prince Eugene, a check before Toulon and their retreat,
+precipitated by a rising of the peasants, had irritated the allies. Attempts
+at negotiation at the Hague undertaken by the king remained without
+result.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21i1"><a href="#endnote_21i">i</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the emperor made a treaty of neutrality for Italy, and that brought to
+the Rhine frontier the soldiers in Italy.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> The allies hoped to reduce the king
+lower; and certainly the prospects of France were never more gloomy. The
+finances were in the greatest disorder. Chamillart had the management of
+both war and finance departments: the exertion, united with ill success, was
+too much; it was killing him. He wrote a piteous letter to this effect, tendering
+his resignation to the king: Louis read it, and writing on the margin of
+the letter, “Well, we will perish together,” sent it back to the minister.
+One active genius, nevertheless, was employed at this time to provide a
+remedy for the poverty of the government, and a reform in the financial
+system: this was Vauban, the celebrated engineer. The product of his
+labours was a plan for abolishing the numerous and intricate branches of
+taxation, and substituting in its place one uniform tax on property. He
+proposed to take a tenth of its yearly value, which he called a <i>dîme royale</i>.
+This simple mode would have proved the ruin of the financiers, the farmers
+of the revenue, and the pensioners, that were paid out of divers intricate
+receipts ere they reached the treasury. The scheme of Vauban was set
+aside; and paper money now made its appearance in France for the first
+time.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f5"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span> The use of credit was not understood, however, in France as it was
+being learned in England. The establishment of the Bank of England, which
+enabled the small kingdom to use all her resources without undue strain or
+present exhaustion, had no parallel in France, where finances were managed
+in secret councils of the king, and the nearest approach to national banking
+was to anticipate future revenues to the utmost limit. To meet or guarantee
+these anticipations, more imposts must be levied; more distress and suffering
+resulted. In England the war furnished people with a safe and new means
+of investment. In France the absence of a regular institution of credit prevented
+that use of its resources which was to be the astounding achievement
+of the Bank of France two centuries and a half later.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Despite his distresses, Louis was not inactive. He fitted out an expedition
+for the pretender to Scotland, which failed. Funds were wanting to supply
+the armies. Desmarets, who had succeeded Chamillart, told the monarch
+that it was impossible to obtain money, except from Samuel Bernard the
+banker. Louis saw Bernard, asked him to Marly, and showed him the wonders
+of the place with a condescension that made the courtiers stare. Bernard
+was so set beside himself by the honour, that he declared he would rather
+see himself ruined than the empire of so gracious a monarch in want; and
+the loan was instantly effected.</p>
+
+<p>Villars commanded with his usual activity and success on the Rhine in
+1708, whilst the duke of Burgundy, grandson to Louis, aided by Vendôme,
+commanded against Marlborough in Flanders. The allies had not troops
+sufficient to garrison the numerous towns which they had taken in Flanders,
+and which were far more inclined to French rule than to the Dutch and
+English. Ghent and Bruges were, owing to these causes, surprised. Emboldened
+by success, the French pushed across the Schelde towards Brussels
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_623">[623]</span>with rather uncertain intentions. Hearing that Marlborough was approaching,
+they retired, and invested Oudenarde, which intercepted the passage on
+the Schelde betwixt the French towns and Ghent. They hoped to take it
+ere Marlborough could arrive. But that general making forced marches,
+the French at his approach decamped from before Oudenarde to retire to
+Ghent. The duke reached them on their retreat, and a partial action took
+place, in which the French were routed, and driven, with great loss, back to
+Ghent. The dukes of Vendôme and Burgundy had a serious difference and
+quarrel on the field. Whilst the commanders were squabbling, their
+army was beaten. The prince Eugene then invested Lille, a bulwark not
+yet reduced. Lille surrendered in October, 1708: with it fell Ghent and
+Bruges; and, with the exception of one or two towns, the frontier of France
+lay completely open. [This was the darkest hour for Louis XIV. Even
+the capital seemed no longer safe.]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1708-1709 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>The year 1709 commenced by one of the most rigorous winters ever known.
+The populace began to clamour under present sufferings, and with the prospects
+of still greater. Seeing the disastrous and disturbed state of the population,
+the parliament thought proper to assemble in the great chamber, to
+consider the state of things. It was proposed to appoint deputies to visit the
+provinces, buy corn, and watch over the public peace. It was a bold attempt
+under Louis XIV. He reprimanded the parliament, and told them that they
+had as little to do with corn as with taxation. The magistrates obeyed, and
+were silent.</p>
+
+<p>In such a state of threatened famine, aggravated by the oppression of war,
+commerce remained at a stand: money was no longer forthcoming. Bernard,
+the great banker, became a bankrupt. Even the insufficient revenue could
+not be collected; and an adulteration of the coin was had recourse to as the
+only expedient. Louis despatched the president Rouillé to Holland to sue
+for peace; and soon after the marquis de Torcy, minister, he might be called,
+of foreign affairs, was sent on the same humiliating errand. The states of
+Holland, or their agents, here repaid the French king all his past insults and
+pride. His envoys and his offers were slighted, yet these last were sufficiently
+ample. Louis consented to abandon his grandson the king of Spain,
+reserving for him merely Naples. The states refused even Naples. Torcy
+offered them towns to form a barrier in the Netherlands. In this nothing
+less than Lille and Tournay would content them. They demanded Strasburg
+and Landau, tantamount to Alsace, and the demolition of Dunkirk.
+Louis consented to demolish the port of Dunkirk, as also the fortifications of
+Strasburg. In short, the demands of the allies went not only to reduce France
+to what it was at the accession of Louis, but prince Eugene claimed to keep
+possession of his conquests in Dauphiné. Moreover, the allies insisted not
+only upon the French king’s abandoning his grandson, but upon his aiding to
+dethrone him. “If I am to continue warring,” replied Louis, “I had rather
+fight my enemies than my children.”</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations were thus broken off. The monarch gained much by
+them. He showed his sincere desire for peace; and now making known, in
+a printed appeal to his subjects, the terms that he had offered and that had
+been rejected, the national feeling was roused to indignation. The rich sent
+their plate to the mint, the king and royal family not excepted; the poor
+hurried to the armies; and Louis was in a condition to face his inveterate
+foes. The obduracy of Marlborough, of Prince Eugene, and of the Dutch
+was certainly impolitic; for Spain might in one campaign have been reduced,
+the French remaining neutral. France, herself, offered to make every fair
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_624">[624]</span>concession; and the commanders, in refusing, might well incur the reproach
+of being actuated by selfish views, if the state of distress in France had not
+warranted any hopes or pretensions on their part. A great portion of the
+court of Versailles itself was for abandoning Philip V, and withdrawing the
+troops from Spain; a measure which did take place in part, owing, however,
+to a quarrel betwixt Madame de Maintenon and the princess Orsini.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the allies had entered the field, well supplied from the copious
+magazines of Holland. The French army, in a state of starvation and nudity,
+opposed them. Its commander was the marshal de Villars. He was indignant
+at the arrogance of the confederates, and the despondency of the court:
+it was he who roused the drooping spirits of Louis and of his ministers, and
+who alone preserved a confidence in the French soldiery and in the fate of
+arms. Villars appears to be one of the truest and finest specimens of the
+French soldier: he was ardent, bold, and valiant; qualities which he enhanced
+by an air and habit of boasting. Full of resources, he never lost confidence
+in himself, firmly believing that neither Marlborough nor any other general
+could contend with him. At the same time he was blunt and rude; could
+not brook to be commanded; too independent to be a courtier, all ministers
+hated him and the butterflies of the court joined them. “I am going to fight
+your enemies,” said he to the monarch, as he was departing for a campaign;
+“I leave you amongst mine.”</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Battle of Malplaquet (1709 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<p>The duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene had taken Tournay, and
+now menaced Mons. Villars advanced by the road from Valenciennes to
+succour it, and posted himself to the right of the road, in an interval betwixt
+two woods, near Malplaquet. By advancing, he might have routed Prince
+Eugene, who was at first inferior in numbers; but Marlborough coming up,
+the two generals determined to attack Villars, who on his side, anxious to
+measure himself with them and secure an advantage, had covered his strong
+position by entrenchments and <i>abatis</i>, or trees felled and thrown with their
+branches towards the enemy. The envoys of the Dutch states dissuaded
+Marlborough from fighting; and they were right. Mons was in the rear
+of the allied army, and Villars was in no condition to disturb its siege,
+without at least quitting his entrenchments. Marlborough, however, accustomed
+to conquer, somewhat undervalued his enemies, and resolved on the
+attack.</p>
+
+<p>The battle of Malplaquet was fought on the 11th of September. Each
+wing of the French was in a wood, covered and entrenched, whilst the centre,
+occupying the interval, had taken scarcely less care to cover itself. Opposite
+the French centre, however, was a farm and a little wood, which Prince
+Eugene occupied, and filled with troops that did not appear. The action
+began on the wings, Marlborough charging Villars and driving him back
+after a struggle. To support himself, Villars drew reinforcements from the
+centre, and was making fresh head against the English, when a ball struck
+his knee, and incapacitated him from commanding. Prince Eugene, watching
+his opportunity, seized the moment that Villars had weakened his centre, and,
+leading his infantry from the farm and wood, rushed on the centre, and broke
+it, carrying their entrenchments. This was victory. In the meantime, the
+Dutch attack on the other wing, where Boufflers commanded, was defeated.
+Despite the valour of the young prince of Orange, he could not establish
+himself in the wood or within the entrenchment; and he was driven back.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_625">[625]</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1709-1711 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>But the success of Boufflers was to no purpose. The French left and
+centre were broken; and all that its victorious right could accomplish was
+to cover the retreat, and prevent Malplaquet from being converted into the
+same rout as Ramillies. The allies lost a prodigious number of men in the
+attack of the woods and entrenchments. The number of French slain was
+much less. Villars, in consequence, was as proud as if he had gained the
+battle. “If God should grant us another such defeat, our enemies would
+be destroyed,” wrote he to Louis. He afterwards boasted that but for his
+wound he would have won the victory: Voltaire, who was present, remarks
+that few believed the boast. Mons surrendered immediately. This was the
+last victory of Marlborough.</p>
+
+<p>In the next campaign, indeed, he showed his decided military superiority
+to Villars, by breaking through lines that the marshal had declared impregnable,
+and this without losing a man. But whilst France, with the languor
+of an exhausted but still valiant combatant, was warding off these blows,
+which the Dutch, in their anxiety for capturing towns and forming a barrier,
+prevented from being straightforward and vital, fortune was pleased to
+prostrate Marlborough, and rescue Louis from ruin by the means of a canting
+clergyman and an obscure woman, who rose to court favour. Sacheverell
+and Mrs. Masham effected what all the warriors and statesmen of Versailles
+despaired to do. Marlborough was overthrown, and with him England’s
+inveteracy and force.</p>
+
+<p>Previous to affairs taking this unexpected turn, the situation of Louis was
+desperate. Again he sent envoys to sue for peace, and they were treated
+with the same contempt. Sympathy is here excited for the monarch, struggling
+bravely not for his conquests but for his crown and country. Louis
+on this occasion showed a spirit that more entitled him to the name of Great,
+than all his early triumphs. What were his intentions, in case of the war’s
+continuing, and of Marlborough’s invading France? He has himself recorded
+them in a letter to Villars: “I reckoned,” said he, “on going to Péronne or
+St. Quentin, gathering there every disposable troop, wherewith to make a
+last effort with you, that we might perish together; for never could I remain
+a witness of the enemy’s approaching my capital.” This, indeed, breathes
+the pride of Louis XIV, but at the same time his magnanimity and heroism.
+The battle of Villaviciosa, gained by the French over the Austrian party
+in Spain, revived his hopes; the disgrace of Marlborough, and the blunted
+hostilities of England, restored him to security and confidence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1711-1712 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Whilst the clouds in the political sky were thus clearing up for Louis, a
+mass of private misfortune, almost unexampled, fell upon him. His pride
+had been brought low. He was now stricken in his nearest affections: his
+only son, the dauphin, died of the smallpox, April 14th, 1711. The son of
+this prince became, in consequence, heir-apparent to the crown. The greatest
+hopes were entertained of this youth. He had been the pupil of Fénelon.
+Though naturally most violent and extreme in his passions and temper, a
+sense of religion had worked a reformation in him, and he became forbearing,
+pious, just. His reign promised to be a golden one for France. Such was
+the young duke of Burgundy. His duchess [Marie Adelaide of Savoy] was
+of a character as rare. With the most buoyant spirits and the aptest wit, she
+was the delight of her royal grandfather, who could not take a journey without
+her; and with him she took all kinds of liberties. It was she who remarked,
+on hearing him speak of the triumphs of Queen Anne’s reign, that
+“queens reigned more prosperously than kings; because under a queen men
+governed, and women under a king.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_626">[626]</span></p>
+
+<p>This prince and princess were both carried off suddenly by some unknown
+disease [the former on February 18th, the latter on February 12th, 1712];
+possibly by the smallpox, which was then universally prevalent and fatal:
+but none of the external marks of that malady appeared on them. The title
+of dauphin fell, within a very short time, upon a third head [the duke of
+Brittany]; and it too was carried to the grave on March 8th. The second
+child of the late duke of Burgundy, the duke of Anjou, was then at nurse,
+and about two years old. The same malady seized it; and it was saved, probably,
+by its superintendent, who would not permit either bleeding or emetic
+to be employed—the favourite remedies of the time for every ailment. This
+infant lived, and soon after became Louis XV.</p>
+
+<p>Popular belief could not assign so many deaths of such important personages
+to the cause of nature or disease. They were attributed to poison; and
+the physicians, either through alarm and ignorance, or to excuse their want
+of skill, corroborated, all save one blunt man, the same opinion. Who could
+be guilty of such crimes? All eyes turned towards the duke of Orleans,
+nephew of Louis. His life was profligate, his character reckless, and his
+pride seemed to be to brave public opinion. The king, with his wonted
+jealousy, had kept the prince from all high or martial employ, except on one
+or two occasions. In Italy he had shown courage. In Spain, contemning
+the dullness of Philip V, who at that time had meditated retiring to the
+Indies, he had intrigued, it was averred, to take his place. This put him in
+disgrace at court.</p>
+
+<p>Even his studies gave handle to calumny. Chemistry was what he most
+delighted in, and in this pursuit he was said to be actuated by an unholy
+curiosity to read and influence his future destinies. Of a sarcastic spirit, that
+despised and mocked humanity, the duke perhaps encouraged these opinions
+of him in order to cater to his own amusement. The cry of suspicion was
+now serious. The court entertained it. The people clamoured about the
+Palais Royal, and were only prevented by the police from breaking in and
+tearing the “poisoner” in pieces. To such accusers the duke scorned to
+justify himself. He sought, however, an interview with the king, who,
+worn with sorrow and tormented with suspicion, granted it. Orleans
+demanded to be sent to the Bastille, confronted with witnesses, and tried.
+Louis for answer could but shrug his shoulders. The monarch’s mind was
+paralysed with his misfortune. The duke’s teacher of chemistry was arrested,
+and there the matter ended. Posterity seems to have acquitted Orleans of
+the crime; but his contemporaries, more credulous, were far from resigning
+themselves to the same opinion. Some indeed accused the house of
+Austria; and the absurdity of this supposition, upheld by many creditable
+persons, has the effect of invalidating the other. But none at that time
+dared to doubt the agency of poison.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Battle of Denain (1712 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>)</i></h4>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1712-1714 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Conferences for peace had opened at Utrecht in the commencement of
+1712. It was no longer Marlborough but the duke of Ormonde, who now
+commanded in Flanders. He concluded a suspension of hostilities with the
+French; and Villars, delivered from the English, undertook to strike a blow
+against the prince Eugene. That commander besieged Landrecies, communicating
+with his magazines through the entrenched camp of Denain. Villars,
+pretending to assault the besieging army round Landrecies, made a side
+march suddenly, broke into the fortified lines, called arrogantly by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_627">[627]</span>imperials the road to Paris, and advanced upon Denain. His officers
+cried for fascines to fill up the ditch. “Eugene will not allow you time,”
+cried Villars, “the bodies of the first slain must be our fascines.” They
+advanced, stormed the camp, which was commanded by Lord Albemarle, a
+Dutch general, and carried it ere the prince could arrive. This gallant
+action roused the spirits and fortunes of the French, and gave weight to
+their efforts at Utrecht. By their own writers Denain is almost swelled into
+comparison with Ramillies; its success is said to have saved the kingdom.
+The defection of the English, under their tory minister, from the grand alliance
+was, however, the true and only cause of their safety. Without it Villars
+could not have won the day of Denain, nor Louis made peace at Utrecht
+on any terms less than the abandonment of the crown of Spain by the house
+of Bourbon.</p>
+
+<h3>TREATIES OF UTRECHT AND RASTATT (1713-1714 A.D.)</h3>
+
+<p>In April, 1713, the plenipotentiaries of France signed the Treaties of
+Utrecht with England, Holland, and Savoy. The former country was gratified
+by the demolition of the port of Dunkirk, the cession of Gibraltar and
+Minorca, together with Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and the island of
+St. Christopher’s. Spain remained to Philip V on his renouncing forever all
+right of succession to the crown of France. The English ministry endeavoured
+to render this unwelcome part of the treaty palatable to the parliament
+by a number of advantages stipulated in favour of British commerce, which,
+however, as savouring of free trade, and inimical to the connection with Portugal,
+failed of being well received. The duke of Savoy, in addition to his
+paternal dominions already recovered by him, had Sicily thrown into his lot.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty with Holland was but provisional till the following year.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f6"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span>
+The emperor and the empire alone remained outside the general peace. War
+was resumed in Germany and on the Rhine. Villars seized Speier and
+Kaiserslautern, and laid siege to Landau. Landau capitulated August 20th,
+and on September 30th Villars entered Freiburg; the citadel surrendered
+November 13th. The imperials now began to make pacific overtures; Villars
+and Prince Eugene were charged with the negotiations. The peace was
+finally signed at Rastatt March 6th, 1714.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21i2"><a href="#endnote_21i">i</a></span> The Rhine was here acknowledged
+the frontier line on the side of Alsace. The elector of Bavaria was
+restored to his dominions. The emperor, in lieu of Spain, received Naples,
+Milan, and Sardinia, together with Spanish Flanders, in which, however, the
+Dutch retained the right of garrisoning the principal towns, forming, as it
+was called, the barrier against France. Namur, Tournay, Menin, and Ypres
+were amongst these. Lille and French Flanders remained to Louis. He
+retained this important conquest, as well as Alsace; advantages which the
+triumphs of Villars materially tended to gain. The title of the king of Prussia
+was acknowledged, and a certain accession of territory procured to him.
+The Protestant succession to the throne of England was also guaranteed by
+France.</p>
+
+<p>One of the principal difficulties of the treaty was to procure from the
+kings of France and Spain a valid renunciation of their mutual rights to
+either crown, so as to obviate the possibility of their being united upon one
+head. The verbal renunciation, or even the oath of the monarch, was found
+insufficient, and not without reason, seeing how lightly the declaration of
+Louis XIV on his marriage had been set aside. The English required the
+guarantee of a national assembly corresponding to their parliament, that, in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_628">[628]</span>short, of a states-general. Louis was, however, more indignant and hurt at
+this suggestion than at the most arrogant demands of the allies. He represented
+the nullity of the states, and his own omnipotence. Still his sovereign
+word was not sufficient. Different modes were suggested. Saint-Simon
+advised the calling of an assembly of dukes to affix their signatures. Others
+proposed the entire peerage: but Louis was as jealous of noble as plebeian,
+and could not tolerate the aristocracy except in the garb and in the submissive
+office of a courtier. All the guarantee he could give was the solemn
+registry of the renunciation in his parliament or assembly of legists; and
+even to this he took care to invite the peers with less than the ordinary form
+and solemnity.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f7"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span> The treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt mark a distinct epoch
+in European history. The age of the Habsburg supremacy, which had
+ended in the great Peace of Westphalia, was succeeded by that of Bourbon
+predominance; and Utrecht and Rastatt mark its fall as decisively as the
+Peace of 1648 had ended the dreams of Habsburg ambition. For a while
+the French monarchy still stands erect, and by the splendour of its show it
+still imposes upon the eye. But its tottering structure is doomed when the
+first great shock of revolution is felt. From now till 1789 the main interest
+in the history of France is the trend toward the new era which was to replace
+the old, worn, battered, and ruined edifice of the absolute monarchy with a
+reconstructed society.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/p628.jpg" width="700" height="600" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Europe after the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1713-1714)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_629">[629]</span></p>
+
+<p>Louis now began to feel his health seriously decay. The hour of his dissolution
+could not be distant. The future fate of his family and kingdom
+occupied his thoughts. Of his legitimate descendants but one feeble infant
+remained, with the exception of the king of Spain, who by his renunciation
+was set aside from inheriting the crown of France. The duke of Orleans
+thus filled the place of heir presumptive, and from his station aspired
+to the regency. Louis dreaded to trust the infant Louis XV to the keeping
+of this prince, who bore the worst of characters. Though unconvicted,
+suspicion still rested upon him of having poisoned his relatives. Louis did
+him more justice in calling him a <i>fanfaron de crimes</i>, a braggard of crimes.
+But still the objection in the royal breast was not removed. Actuated by
+these motives, as well as by tenderness for the children born to him of
+Madame de Montespan, Louis issued a decree, giving to the illegitimate
+princes the full rights of the legitimate blood, calling them in succession to
+the throne immediately after the young dauphin. Nothing marks the
+extreme submissiveness of the parliament more than their registry of this
+decree. But this obsequiousness was evidently owing to the inutility of
+disturbing the last moments of the monarch. Louis completed this attempt
+in favour of his illegitimate children by a testament which gave to the duke
+du Maine, the eldest of these princes, the command of the household troops
+and the chief power during the minority.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21f8"><a href="#endnote_21f">f</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>DEATH OF LOUIS XIV</h3>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1714-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>Since the summer of 1714 Louis XIV, already cruelly shaken in health
+in 1712, had been gradually failing. His chief physician, Fagon, himself
+enfeebled by age, did not perceive in time the slow fever which was undermining
+the king’s health and did not take advantage of the resources still
+offered by that powerful constitution. After the 11th of August, 1715,
+Louis XIV did not again leave the château of Versailles. The fever increased,
+sleep vanished. On the 24th one of the king’s legs which had been causing
+him acute pain showed marks of gangrene. The next day Louis received the
+sacrament with calm and firmness. He manifested some scruples respecting
+what he had been made to do in regard to the bull <i>Unigenitus</i>.<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> He would
+have liked to see his archbishop, Noailles, once more, and to be reconciled to
+him; means were found to prevent this. On the 26th he bade farewell in
+moving terms to the principal personages of his court. He also took leave
+of the prince and princesses, addressed kindly words to the duke of Orleans
+as though to banish evil designs from his heart if he should have conceived
+any, and then sent for the dauphin, a beautiful child of five years of age, sole
+relic of all his legitimate line in France.</p>
+
+<p>“My child,” he said to him, “you will soon be the king of a great realm.
+Never forget your obligations towards God; remember that you owe him all
+that you are. Try to preserve peace with your neighbours. I have been too
+fond of war. Do not imitate me in that, nor in the too great expenditure
+which I have made. Lighten the burdens of your people as soon as you can
+and do that which I have had the misfortune not to do myself.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_630">[630]</span></p>
+
+<p>Touching, but vain words! The successor of Louis XIV was not reserved
+for a work of reparation but for a work of dissolution and ruin. On the
+morning of the 28th the king said to Madame de Maintenon that in leaving
+her he was consoled by the hope that they would soon meet again. She did
+not respond to this idea of meeting in eternity and appeared to see in this sign
+of affection only a token of egoism. Thinking the end was near, she set out
+that very evening for St. Cyr; the next day Louis, being still fully conscious,
+asked for her; she returned, but only to leave again finally on the
+evening of the 30th, thus abandoning on his death-bed the man who had so
+constantly loved her. Her excuse was in her extreme weariness of the existence
+which Louis had imposed on her. He had overwhelmed her with his
+absorbing personality; for more than thirty years she had not had a single
+day to herself; the necessity of perpetually finding new resources to occupy
+and interest this active but infertile mind, accustomed to live, so to speak, on
+the substance of others, had exhausted and crushed her.</p>
+
+<p>Louis was now only conscious at moments. The day of the 31st of
+August passed in this manner: the gangrene was gaining on him. In the
+night Louis revived to recite with the clergy the prayers for the dying. He
+repeated several times in a firm voice: “<i>Nunc et in hora mortis—Mon Dieu,
+aidez moi!</i>” then he entered on a long death-agony. On the 1st of September,
+at a quarter past eight in the morning, the king drew his last breath.
+He had lived seventy-seven years, reigned seventy-two, governed fifty-four.
+It was the longest as well as the greatest reign in the history of France. It
+was not one man, it was a world that was ended.</p>
+
+<p>Before descending, in the train of feudalism, into that night of the past
+in which one after another the perishable forms of eternal society are plunged,
+the monarchy, that symbolic form of national unity, had been manifested in a
+supreme personification which will remain forever engraved in the memory
+of peoples. Louis XIV is, and will remain, the king, the royal type, for
+foreign nations as well as for France. All that monarchy, after having
+brought under one yoke the divergent elements of the multiplex world of
+the Middle Ages, succeeded in producing in the fullness of her power, she
+produced in Louis the Great. Flourishing in her prime with the Great
+King, she grew old with him. The signs of decay multiplied; the gangrene
+was manifested in her as in him and, if monarchy did not die the same day
+as the monarch, the silent work of decomposition was no longer to be arrested
+in her organs. We are about to watch the dissolution of that vast frame
+until the day in which the real unity, the sovereign nation, shall for the first
+time break through the worn-out covering in its own true essence, without
+figure and without symbol.</p>
+
+<p>France prospered under Louis XIV so long as he continued in the ideas
+of Richelieu; she suffered, then declined, when she became unfaithful to
+them. He himself condemned the excess of his wars and expenditure; his
+expenditure on luxury and art, though doubtless very considerable, has been
+much exaggerated by tradition; as to his wars, they were, some justifiable,
+others excusable in their principle, but not in the inhuman character which
+he allowed to be imprinted on them, nor, at times, in the fashion in which
+they were conducted politically. France desired her natural completion, and,
+in the respective condition of the nations, the action of France to achieve her
+retransformation into the larger territory of Gaul was enough to overthrow
+the equilibrium of Europe and to provoke coalitions. Louis XIV committed
+the error of claiming to be able to do still more, and, above all, of making the
+claim believed. The two gravest charges which he merited are not those on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_631">[631]</span>which he condemned himself; they were: in economics, that of having
+wrought harm and rejected the remedy, ruined the finances and refused the
+radical reform which might have restored them; in religion, that of having
+destroyed the great work of Henry IV which Richelieu had continued. But
+the responsibility of the revocation may well be divided: the revocation of
+the Edict of Nantes was the logical consequence of monarchy according to
+Bossuet, and this great crime against the state condemns the monarchy still
+more than the monarch. The more we blame the monarchical theory as
+contrary to the true ends of man and of the citizen, the more we are disposed
+to indulgence towards the prince who was carried away by this theory as by
+an almost irresistible fatality.</p>
+
+<p>When the New Era, which opened amid the tempests [of the eighteenth
+century], shall have found its shape and position; when society, free and
+democratic, shall be definitely founded and recognised; when parties cease
+to seek weapons in history, the name of Louis XIV will no longer excite
+the anger of the French people, as the expression of a hostile principle; and
+his statue, alternately adored and broken, will finally repose amid the great
+images of the national Pantheon. If the French people do not forget the
+culpable and fatal errors of Louis, they will also remember that Louis has
+deserved to be identified with the most brilliant century yet seen in modern
+civilisation. France pardons willingly, too willingly perhaps, all those who
+have loved her, even with a selfish and tyrannical love—all those who have
+made her glorious, even at the expense of her happiness; she is only implacable
+towards the memory of those leaders who have degraded her.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21e2"><a href="#endnote_21e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/p631.jpg" width="500" height="350" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Louis XIV at the Death-bed of James II</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> [It must be remembered however that the great opponent of France took his title from the
+principality of Orange, which is now in the department of Vaucluse by the Rhone, in southern
+France.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> [Tökely was a Hungarian magnate—a Calvinist, who, implicated in a conspiracy, had
+aroused a portion of Hungary against the emperor. Louis XIV supported him in his war.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> [As to the saying, “There are no more Pyrenees,” its history is this. The ambassador to
+Spain, as reported by Dangeau, spoke these words: “The journey became easy and presently
+the Pyrenees melted away,” which the <i>Mercure</i> on the following day rendered as follows:
+“What joy! There are no more Pyrenees, they are levelled, and we are one.” However, the
+phrase well expresses the situation and the aim of Louis XIV. If it did not fall from his lips, it
+was in the minds of all.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_21c10"><a href="#endnote_21c">c</a></span>]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> [This was done by Marshal de Boufflers in February, 1701, and effected with the help of the
+elector of Bavaria, governor of these provinces. Holland took fresh alarm at this act.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> [Louis XIV at first won Portugal to his side, and, in return for certain advantages, a treaty
+was signed with France and Spain on June 18th, 1701. But the provisions were not kept. Dom
+Pedro entered the coalition in May, 1703.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> [The elector Maximilian believed himself ill used by Austria, and deserted the allies he had
+supported in the League of Augsburg. The second treaty with France was signed March 9th, 1701.
+The elector of Cologne, in spite of the trouble of 1688, also treated with Louis, and threw open
+her territory to French troops. So did the bishop of Münster and three other powers of the
+empire.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> [Duclos calls the War of the Spanish Succession “The only <i>just</i> one that Louis ever
+undertook.”]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> Villars’ achievements had been noteworthy for some time. In 1706 he raised the blockade
+of Fort Louis on the Rhine. In 1707 he forced the lines of Stollhofen which, extending from
+Philippsburg to the Black Forest, were regarded as the rampart of Germany.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> [The enemies of the Jansenists obtained a decree from the king, interdicting a work entitled
+<i>Réflections Morales sur le Nouveau Testament</i> by Father Quesnel, which Cardinal de Noailles
+had already approved of. Clement XI launched the bull <i>Unigenitus</i> condemning one hundred
+and one propositions extracted from the <i>Réflections Morales</i>. Eight prelates headed by Noailles
+protested against the bull. The king’s confessor, Le Tellier, urged the king to have Noailles
+deposed. The affair dragged a long time at Rome. The king was about to bring the affair
+to his bed of justice when he fell ill.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_632">[632]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/header-france-22.jpg" width="500" height="150" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV:<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Augustus, Leo X, Louis XIV appear to us in the illumination of art
+and poetry. Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon are greater, but have
+they such a divine cortège?—<span class="smcap">Arsène Houssaye</span>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22f1"><a href="#endnote_22f">f</a></span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">[1610-1715 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>]</div>
+
+<p>That development of French civilisation and letters which attained its
+apogee in the second half of the seventeenth century, the progress of science
+and the taste for art, was not the work of Louis XIV. The movement was
+begun; Louis XIV had only to support it and give it a particular direction.</p>
+
+<p>In order to seek and determine the causes, it is necessary to go further
+back. They will be found in the language, which became polished through the
+aspiration of society, which was reformed after the religious wars, in a better
+education which had reacted on manners, in a more general education and
+one more appropriate to the time—in fact, in the development of all the
+moral energies of France since Henry IV and Richelieu. Those great and
+independent geniuses, Richelieu, Corneille, and Descartes, gave the impulse,
+aroused writers or thinkers, and inspired the best society with that love, that
+admiration of the beautiful, which elevates the soul of a nation.</p>
+
+<p>The cares of war and of power were far from engrossing all the attention
+of Richelieu. He completed the construction of the Palais Cardinal, which
+was one of the most sumptuous dwellings ever seen, and which during his
+lifetime he bequeathed to the king, with the sole proviso that only a prince
+should ever inhabit it. He likewise embellished his house at Ruel, and his
+château at Richelieu in Touraine. He patronised Simon Vouet, recalled
+Poussin from Rome, bought paintings of Lesueur and Philippe de Champagne.
+He established the royal printing house, and tried, although with
+little success, to re-establish the royal manufactures established under the
+preceding reign and almost abandoned since then.</p>
+
+<h3>FOUNDATION OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY</h3>
+
+<p>In 1635 Richelieu conceived the idea of founding an association whose
+mission should be the perfecting of the language, and which should be the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_633">[633]</span>highest authority in the criticism of literary works submitted by their authors.
+Boisrobert, Conrart, Chapelain, Rotrou, and the great Corneille are counted
+among the founders of this association, which was the Académie Française.
+The men of letters, until then placed only too often in the “domesticity” of
+the great—a name then far removed from the sense given to it to-day—by
+means of this association acquired more independence and influence. Formerly
+they had flattered the powerful; now they began to develop a power
+of their own and to be flattered in their turn. The parliament made some
+difficulty about the incorporation of the academy, because it had an invincible
+distrust of the cardinal’s ideas, whose works seemed to it always despotic,
+and because it feared the new company might be invested with too great
+privileges and with jurisdiction. It was far from imagining that the academy
+was to become one of the glories of France, in a time when Corneille
+led the list of great French writers, when Descartes wrote the <i>Méthode</i>, when
+French society was the most polished in Europe, when Europe already borrowed
+the language of France, and took France for a model in everything.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22b1"><a href="#endnote_22b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM</h3>
+
+<p>In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century royalty did not yet
+seek to exercise any influence in intellectual matters. Richelieu is the first
+to have had the idea of offering royal patronage to the “Nurselings of the
+Muses.” He distributed a few pensions.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c1"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of all styles of literature the drama was most encouraged by Richelieu.
+Until then it had hardly been more than a popular amusement; it now became
+that of the most refined and most polished society. Doubtless, the talent of
+Rotrou and the genius of Corneille bore the principal part in this, but Richelieu
+aided them. His wish was to replace the ballets and other ordinary
+diversions of the court by amusements of a nobler sort, by tragedies and
+comedies of intrigue. He had a theatre in the Palais Cardinal and another
+in his mansion at Ruel. He often had plays represented there whose plan
+had been submitted to him. He gave advice to authors, worked with them,
+and even wrote himself.</p>
+
+<p>His patronage extended also to tuition and studies. An important transformation
+was taking place in the schools. The reform of the university
+under Henry IV had had the effect of substituting the study of the great
+authors for that of scholasticism. Since then the teaching of theology had
+been renewed; it is well known what brilliancy it gave to the seventeenth
+century. The teaching of literature was not long delayed, and it is not to
+be doubted that a more healthful direction of men’s minds had largely contributed
+to prepare the intellectual superiority of this century over those
+preceding it. Richelieu built the Sorbonne. He favoured competition
+between the university and the Jesuits and showed his usual superiority in
+discussing questions of education.</p>
+
+<p>He thought moreover that liberal education was not for everybody, and
+that the greatest number of families ought to prepare their children for trade
+or for war. Therefore he founded at his own expense an academy,—a military
+college for the education of the young nobility.</p>
+
+<p>However, until the end of the Fronde, the court, filled with soldiers, or
+given up to ambitious rivalries of the noble, full of intrigues with Marie de’
+Medici, of sadness with Louis XIII, of suspicions with Richelieu, of agitations
+under Anne of Austria, could not assume to be the supreme regulator
+of taste, the theatre of the arts, and impose rules or regulations upon genius.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_634">[634]</span>After the Fronde it was different. The refined elegance and magnificence
+of Mazarin, the brilliant festivities of the first years of the personal reign of
+Louis XIV, the transformation of the great into courtiers, the spirit of
+subordination substituted for a spirit of independence, increased the importance
+of the court. Gradually one became accustomed to look to it alone.
+It surrounded royalty like a luminous circle, and its brilliancy made all else
+pale. It became even a means of government. It contributed by its preponderance
+to annul parliaments and other national bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV, who instinctively sought everywhere for aids to his grandeur,
+understood how to nourish the brilliant society which surrounded the persons
+and the works of the great writers and artists. He offered the latter
+a magnificent theatre and unparalleled publicity. He united the scattered
+forces into a mighty group, displaying their talents in a strong light, making
+of them a majestic whole. He had all the qualities necessary for this—disposition,
+taste, the feeling for the beautiful, and particularly the sense of
+rule and harmony. He established a sort of concert of the great writers, in
+the same manner as he put the great ministers in harmony with each other.</p>
+
+<p>From this time, with the striking uniformity, regularity, and discipline
+which was the character of letters and arts under his reign, the men of
+genius had full sway, nothing held them back. But their place was determined
+in the great ensemble, and they felt they were obeying a law. A
+great and noble harmony was established among literary efforts of the most
+diverse character, as among the arts destined to compete in the grandeur of
+the same edifice.</p>
+
+<p>Less spontaneous, less audacious, perhaps even less original than in the
+time of the preceding generation, literature attained a perfection under
+Louis XIV which it never had to such a degree in any other epoch. It
+attained this perfection because it addressed itself less to the king and sovereign
+than to the flower of society grouped around him. The highest
+society had never before formed such a public. Bred in a grand school of
+admiration and surrounded by masterpieces, it evinced the greatest interest
+in matters of intellect. Conversation was an art and a talent, the literary
+taste an affectation of fashion, in fact a point of honour. The women took
+part in the movement, and to such a degree that it is to one of them that
+we owe most of our appreciation of it. Madame de Sévigné<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22h"><a href="#endnote_22h">h</a></span> in her correspondence,
+so well named written conversation, immortalised the society of
+the great century in painting it from life.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22b2"><a href="#endnote_22b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Colbert took up the idea of pensions with more liberality and amplitude
+than did Richelieu. He created the <i>feuille des pensions</i>, which was a sort of
+pendant to the <i>feuille des bénéfices</i>. It was started in 1663 partly on the
+suggestion of Chapelain. Among those on the list was Chapelain, who
+called himself “the greatest French poet that has ever lived, and the one
+with the soundest judgment,” but whom Boileau simply characterises as
+“the wealthiest of all the <i>beaux esprits</i>”; also some of the great names of
+literature—Molière, the two Corneilles, Racine, Fléchier, Mézeray, Quinault,
+Charles Perrault, later Boileau himself, besides many mediocrities.
+Along with Frenchmen were foreigners—Graziani, the littérateur; the
+jurisconsult Conring; Ferrari, professor of oratory at the University of
+Padua; the erudites Böklerus, Gevartius, Heinsius, and Vossius; mathematicians
+and astronomers, such as Cassini of Bologna, Viviani of Florence,
+Huygens of the Hague and Helvelius of Dantzic. Louis XIV did more
+than pension some of the artists. He ennobled Lully, Le Nôtre, Mansart,
+and Lebrun. To the savants Colbert gave not only money but means of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_635">[635]</span>working; for them he created new chairs in the Jardin du Roi, built the
+Observatory of Paris, and subsidised missions and scientific expeditions.
+He was the founder of the <i>Journal des Savants</i> which exists to-day.<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Renaissance was above all things a period of freedom. The age of
+Louis XIV is characterised by order and monarchical discipline. The historians
+soon perceived that the king was a more exacting protector than the
+lords of olden times. The latter, provided their families were eulogised, left
+their clients perfect liberty in other matters, but the history of Louis XIV’s
+ancestors was the history of the whole country, and as his glory reached out
+in all directions, the historian was no longer free in anything. Colbert let
+Mézeray know that if he wished to keep his pension of 4,000 livres he would
+have to speak with more discretion of the <i>gabelle</i> and the <i>taille</i> and to
+abstain from too free reflections on the policies of former kings. Mézeray
+only half understood, and half his pension was suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly the royal protection had its good effect, but there was caprice in
+the king’s favours. For a sovereign to control letters and art without making
+mistakes, he would have to be infallible and with a mind to embrace and
+understand everything. But Louis XIV did not understand everything
+and was often mistaken. When, in 1667, he forbade the funeral eulogy
+of Descartes did he know that the latter was the most eminent thinker of
+the age?</p>
+
+<h3>LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS</h3>
+
+<p>In the literary history of the seventeenth century a division must be
+noted. Voltaire<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22i1"><a href="#endnote_22i">i</a></span> has neglected it when he introduces into what he calls the
+<i>Siècle de Louis XIV</i> such dissimilar geniuses as Corneille and Racine, Bossuet
+and Fénelon. But even while retaining this time-honoured expression,
+it should be applied only to that period during which Louis XIV’s personality,
+the prestige of his glory and the action of his laws and institutions were predominant.
+Now during an entirely earlier period of more than sixty years a
+whole group of writers was absolutely outside his influence. Régnier, Rotrou,
+Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal, to speak only of the greatest ones, had
+accomplished their labours before the personal government of Louis XIV
+began. On the contrary Racine, Bossuet, La Fontaine, and Boileau, and for
+the greater part of his work Molière, belong to the generation which saw the
+splendour of Louis XIV, and which disappeared from the scene before the decadence
+of the monarchy had commenced. Finally La Bruyère, Fénelon,
+Vauban, and Bois-Guilbert, without mentioning the great Protestant writers
+of France, are the products of an entirely different period. In reality the
+true “century” of Louis XIV did not last more than a quarter of that time,
+from 1661 to 1685.</p>
+
+<p>The seventeenth century may thus be divided into three periods which
+present certain common characteristics, and are also distinguished by special
+characteristics. All three are equally a continuation of the sixteenth-century
+Renaissance. The charm of antiquity revealed by the humanists is still felt.
+The gods of the <i>littérateur</i> are those of Greece, or rather Greek gods under
+Roman names. If the French literature of the seventeenth century had
+perished in some great cataclysm, and if after a score of centuries some
+erudite Australian or American had found some of its fragments, he might
+have believed that the contemporaries of Louis XIV worshipped the same
+gods as the Athenians and the Romans. However, the French, so smitten
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_636">[636]</span>with antiquity, knew little about it. They were, after all, so original, so
+French, and so steeped in their own age that they showed a singular inability
+to imagine what was really the civilisation of Athens and of Rome. Louis
+XIV’s contemporaries studied Demosthenes, Plato, and Plutarch to no purpose;
+they got from them nothing but a deification of the monarchy. They
+read the ancient authors with keen pleasure, but it did not occur to them to
+do so in the light of the conditions of ancient life, and they applied to them
+the same rules of criticism as to the authors of their own day. Since journeys
+to the East were at that time most infrequent, and no archæological research
+had yet been undertaken, the age had no idea as to what were the architecture,
+the furnishings, the costumes, and the manners of antiquity. The French
+dramatic poets give the title of “prince” to Agamemnon or Theseus, and addressed
+Phædra or Andromache as “madame,” as though these personages
+had been their contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the cult, well or ill understood, of pagan antiquity, no century
+was so profoundly Christian as the seventeenth. The absence of the marvellous,
+from a Christian point of view, in literary works is explained not by
+indifference for Christianity, but by respect and scruple. Corneille wrote
+<i>Polyeucte</i> and other sacred pieces; but let his <i>Cid</i> be compared with those
+of the Spaniards; all the supernatural is banished to such a degree that the
+type of the Castilian champion is transformed and almost mutilated.
+Santiago no longer appears on the battle-field to revive the hero’s courage.
+One of the rules of taste in the seventeenth century is precisely to avoid a
+mixture of the sacred and the profane.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeenth-century literature chose its subjects from antiquity, from contemporaneous
+society, from human psychology, but almost never from nature.
+The world of letters no longer lived in the field as in the sixteenth century;
+it lived in the cities, especially in Paris, or at the court. Malherbe boasts of
+going to learn the real French language on the place Maubert; Régnier,
+Chapelle, Bachaumont, and many others were habitués of the Parisian <i>cabarets</i>,
+and in the narrow streets of the capital formed, as we say nowadays, a
+literary Bohemia. Racan and some others claimed to have composed <i>idylles
+champêtres</i>, but what is their background? It is no more the French countryside
+than their shepherds and shepherdesses are French peasants.</p>
+
+<p>A strophe of Malherbe on the banks of the Orne, a few laboured alexandrines
+of Boileau upon his country house and its trees; one fine page of
+Honoré d’Urfé upon a valley of Forez—this is almost all that Louis XIV’s
+contemporaries have to say about nature. They looked too much into their
+ancient authors and too much at themselves to see it well. It is for the
+same reasons that Le Nôtre was able to create that strange and unreal nature
+in the gardens of Versailles, and that in painting the genre of pure landscape
+is almost unknown in the seventeenth century.</p>
+
+<p>As for the special characteristics in the first period—an Italian and Spanish
+influence is perceptible. Corneille takes from Spanish history the story
+of the <i>Cid</i>, and Molière that of <i>Don Juan</i>. After Louis XIV assumed the
+government, the French borrowed almost nothing from their neighbours.
+French taste is formed; it is original; it is exquisite.</p>
+
+<p>The first period is a period of freedom; it continues the sixteenth century.
+Literature has not yet felt the yoke of literary rules. All forms are
+attempted—tragedy, comedy, and burlesque, and the three are even combined
+without scruple.</p>
+
+<p>The theatre, the Christian pulpit itself, have singular license. Descartes
+creates a philosophy and Pascal polemics. On the contrary the first twenty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_637">[637]</span>years of Louis XIV’s government are signalled at once by the domination of
+rules and by the apotheosis of the king. Parnassus has a legislator, Boileau,
+and a sort of Congregation of the Index, the French Academy.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c2"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>SCIENCE</h3>
+
+<p>The seventeenth century was one of the great scientific ages of humanity.
+It saw the birth of analytical geometry and of the infinitesimal calculus, the
+formulation of the astronomical laws of Kepler and Newton, and the workings
+of astronomical discovery. It witnessed the first great stride of physics,
+the progress of optics and acoustics, the invention of the barometer, the
+thermometer, the manometer, the air-pump, the electrical machine; the first
+rudiments of the steam-engine; the first researches on plant life, and the
+first attempt at botanical classification. Anatomy and physiology were revolutionised
+by the discovery of the circulation of the blood, of the chyliferous
+and lymphatic systems, by the beginning of histology and microscopic
+research. Medicine made progress in all its branches and was enriched
+by new medicaments.</p>
+
+<p>But much of this was accomplished outside of France. In mathematics
+the French may place the names of Descartes, Pascal, and Fermat alongside
+of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Leibnitz; but the great Keplerian and
+Newtonian laws of universal gravitation; the great Leibnitzian theories on
+the formation of our globe; the astronomic discoveries of Galileo, Huygens,
+and Helvelius surpassed the work of Gassendi, Picard, Cassini, Bouillaud,
+and Cassegrain. In physics, Pascal, Descartes, Mariotte, and Denis Papin upheld
+the French name, but they have but one zoölogist<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> (Claude Perrault also
+a physician and architect) to place alongside with those of Italy, England, and
+especially Holland; in botany Tournefort let himself be outdistanced by
+the English; in geology the French had but Descartes and Maillet; in the
+medical sciences they had only Pacquet, Duverney, and a few skilful practitioners.
+This comparative inferiority of French science to art and letters
+proves that it needs an organisation for work, and a liberality on the part
+of the public powers which at that time it did not have. The yoke of
+authority, so harmful to free research, was heavier in France than in the
+Protestant countries, where scientific progress especially manifested itself.
+The French superiority in mathematics is due perhaps to the fact that mathematics
+never had and cannot have an Aristotle. Finally we must take into
+account the bent of the French mind in that period when the people were
+above all artists, orators, and moralists. “The physical sciences,” said Dacier
+at a later date, “were little cultivated in an age which seems to find no charm
+but in literature.” We might correct wherein this judgment goes perhaps
+too far by this appreciation of Cuvier: he says that Francis I was the first to
+make erudition flourish in France, Richelieu literature, and Louis XIV science.</p>
+
+<p>René Descartes, descendant of a noble family, was born in La Haye, Touraine,
+in 1596. In 1612 he terminated his studies with the Jesuits at La
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_638">[638]</span>Flèche. The period between 1612 and 1629 was spent in travel, which was
+followed by his stay in Holland. Just one year after the appearance of the
+masterpiece of Corneille, <i>The Cid</i>, Descartes gave to the world, in 1637,
+the <i>Discourse on Method</i>. This and his <i>Metaphysical Meditations</i> (1641) are
+his two chief works. In 1644 appeared his third great work, <i>Principles of
+Philosophy</i>, in which is propounded his theory of the world and the doctrine
+of Vortices. Descartes never married. In 1647 the French court granted
+him a pension; and shortly after he went to the Swedish court, where he had
+been visited by Queen Christina.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p638.jpg" width="250" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">René Descartes</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1596-1650)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>France held it an honour to have given birth to René Descartes. While
+still very young he solves certain famous mathematical problems; writes,
+under the name of D’Abrégé, a treatise on music; and shuts himself up for
+twenty years in a sort of retreat in Holland,
+where he devotes himself with admirable
+assiduity to the research of truth, and composes
+those works which are to have such
+an influence on the future progress, not
+alone of science, but of civilisation. In
+1629 he promulgates the law of refraction,
+aspires to make clear the cause of celestial
+movements, already demonstrated by
+Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, by reducing
+them all to a mechanical system. He
+conceives the idea of whirling clouds of
+rarefied matter, in the centre of which he
+places the sun and planets, supposing that
+the movement of the planets carries around
+with them the satellites, and that planets
+and satellites are in turn swept in a circular
+orbit round the sun. His theories
+seize upon the popular imagination, and
+arouse keen enthusiasm; by what he calls
+his system of “methodical doubting” he
+points out to humanity the true road that
+leads to the intuitive perception of nature’s
+laws, and succeeds in so impressing his
+lessons upon all minds that the absolute
+empire given by the Arabs and their imitators to the theories of Aristotle—an
+empire that would have been disavowed by that immortal man himself—is
+completely destroyed. One of his aims is also to obtain command over
+the human heart, that he may thereby fortify the basis of morality all over the
+world, and to this end he gives forth his meditations on the existence of God
+and the immortality of the soul.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22q1"><a href="#endnote_22q">q</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the theories of Descartes were invading France and all Europe.
+In 1650, when occurred the death at Stockholm, at the age of fifty-four, of
+the man who had given back to the modern world Pythagoras, Socrates, and
+Plato, victory was assured, the science of philosophy was founded. There
+are gaps and imperfections in the system which may expose it to temporary
+eclipse, but as a whole it will never perish.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22g1"><a href="#endnote_22g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of the fifty-four years which Descartes thus passed on earth, more than
+thirty were spent in a state of self-abnegation such as no anchorite has ever
+emulated. It was little that his sleep and diet and exercise were exactly
+regulated by the single purpose of securing, to the utmost possible extent,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_639">[639]</span>the independence of his soul on his body. His mental appetites were subjugated
+to a still more rigid discipline. To secure to his reason an undisputed
+supremacy over all his other faculties, he laboured, not only to cast down
+every idol of the cavern, but to consign to oblivion all the interests, the
+sentiments, and the events with which either his heart or his imagination
+had ever been occupied. He even attempted to emancipate himself from the
+memory of those deceptive languages, Greek and Latin, in which such subtle
+disguises have been found for so many mental illusions. That he might
+ascend to the sanctuary of truth, he thus aspired to become a pure abstraction
+of defæcated intellect.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Cogito, ergo sum</i>” is the massive foundation stone of the colossal edifice
+erected by Descartes. That famous proposition, though really “the well-ripened
+fruit of long delay,” may perhaps sound not only as a truism, but
+as of all truisms the most meagre. Such a judgment would, however, prove
+nothing except the ignorance and incompetency of the judge.</p>
+
+<p>“I think, therefore I exist,” is not the fragment of a syllogism which
+might be reconstructed thus: “Whatever thinks, exists. But I think.
+Therefore I exist.” It is rather an enthymeme—that is, an immediate
+sequence of two propositions, of which the second is the necessary offspring
+of the first. “I think”—that is, I am conscious of the act of thinking.
+Myself and my thoughts are a plurality, not a unity. They are the objects
+of which I am the subject. My consciousness of them is my adjudication
+that such objects exist. Or suppose that I can doubt even the existence
+of my own thoughts. Well, even so; that very doubt is itself a thought of
+which I am conscious. Let my scepticism be so absolute, and so universal,
+as to involve in uncertainty every other conceivable position, yet that very
+scepticism is the affirmation of myself as a thinking being.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, the naked reason has at length set her foot upon one resting-place,
+narrow, if you will, but yet firm and immovable. Here is one truth
+which cannot be assailed, even by doubt itself; or, rather, here is a truth which
+doubt itself does but verify and confirm. Nor is this a barren position. It
+is rather a ground which, when duly cultivated, is prolific of results of the
+highest moment to every thinking being.</p>
+
+<p>Francis Bacon was not more the founder of rationalism in England, than
+René Descartes was the founder of it in France. Nor was he content to
+vindicate the rights of reason. He laboured, also, to determine and enforce
+her obligations. In Descartes the characteristic logic of the French understanding
+attained its perfection, as, in his writings, it found its model.</p>
+
+<p>Blaise Pascal was a Cartesian. Like Descartes he began with doubt, in
+order that he might end in certainty. Like him he renounced all allegiance
+to merely human authorities, however exalted, and however venerable. In
+the spirit of his master, he received what was passing in the microcosm of his
+own mind, as being, at least to himself, the primary and indispensable witness
+of truth. As a true disciple of that severe school, he not only revered his own
+reason as the supreme earthly judge of every question so brought under his
+cognisance, but conducted all such investigations by the aid of the same geometrical
+logic by which Descartes himself had been guided.</p>
+
+<p>But here the similitude ended, and the divergence began. Descartes
+impersonated the “Pure reason,” sojourning among men, to occupy herself,
+not with the business of their lives, but with the mysteries of their nature.
+Pascal impersonated human sympathy, yearning over the world from which
+he had withdrawn, and still responding to all the sorrows by which it was
+agitated. Lofty as was the range of his thoughts, they were never averted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_640">[640]</span>from that great human family to which he belonged. Every afflicted member
+of it had in him a fellow-sufferer.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22g2"><a href="#endnote_22g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p640.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Blaise Pascal</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1623-1662)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand (1623), and died at Paris (1662).
+He was, like Descartes, a universal scientist. His health, naturally feeble,
+was still more injured by his intense thought. He was deeply religious,
+and saw Christianity in Jansenism. A carriage accident, which occurred
+on the Neuilly bridge, and which endangered
+his life, caused him to become rigorously
+devout. He even became subject to visions
+and hallucinations, and finally withdrew to
+Port-Royal, where he lived in retirement.
+He devoted the last years of his life to collecting
+material for a great work, destined
+to prove the truth of the Christian religion.
+The fragments of this great work, notes,
+pieces of paper, strung together without
+order or system, were found after his death.
+His friends at Port-Royal made selections
+from these, and published them in 1670,—the
+first edition, very incomplete, of his
+<i>Thoughts</i> (<i>Pensées</i>). This book of thoughts
+is above all a history of a great soul, tormented
+by doubt, terrified, at the same time
+attracted, by the mysteries of the faith.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c3"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span>
+<i>The Provincial Letters</i> (1656), considered by
+many his masterpiece, was a biting satire on
+the Jesuits. The greatest French critics,
+including Voltaire and D’Alembert, agree
+in the statement that this work contributed
+more than any other composition to form and
+polish the French language. His ascetic life
+tended to shorten his life. He died in Paris, aged 39.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span> After his death,
+appeared also two other little tracts, one of which is <i>Equilibrium of Fluids</i>,
+the other <i>The Weight of the Mass of Air</i>. To err on the side of rigour, is
+not the usual fault of genius: but Pascal was in all respects singular, and
+differed, not only from ordinary men, but from other men of genius. With
+every deduction that can be made for a few errors arising out of his education,
+Pascal was undoubtedly one of the ornaments of human nature; and
+if a few have rivalled him in talents, no man of equal eminence, perhaps, can
+be found who lived so innocently as Pascal.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22r"><a href="#endnote_22r">r</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>POETRY: BOILEAU</h3>
+
+<p>The writings of Descartes and Pascal, the doctrines of the French
+Academy and of Port-Royal, had perfected the art of prose writing. This
+had not been done for poetry nor yet for the art of writing in verse, which
+constitutes the perfection of poetry. On this head much still remained to
+be done, after the time of Malherbe, to consolidate his work. This was the
+task of Boileau. To the glory of Port-Royal must be added that of having
+enlightened, both by precept and example in the art of writing in prose, the
+poet who best understood and perhaps best practised the art of writing in verse.</p>
+
+<p>For two centuries Boileau has been a bugbear, whom all poets fear. All
+of them, in fact, find him on their road, threatening with innumerable
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_641">[641]</span>difficulties, with fatigue and labour, who so would aspire to the glory of verse.
+The dramatic poet, the lyrist, the elegist, the writer of comedies, and even the
+writer of sonnets, must take him into consideration. They are all tormented
+by the ideal of style which Boileau has set up, and by that other ideal of perfection
+of language—indispensable to all styles, and without which nothing
+lasting can be written.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22d"><a href="#endnote_22d">d</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The taste of the great and the noble—in one word, the particular taste
+of Louis XIV—dominated everything. Gallic and burlesque literature disappeared.
+The admiration of Louis was universal, profound, and of such
+sincerity that it excluded, in the grossest flatteries, all reproach of flattery;
+love of the king was confused with love of the country, and one would not
+have been believed more of an adulator in glorifying the king than he would
+be to-day in glorifying France. The great care of writers was studied elegance
+and perfection of form. Never was literature so completely and exclusively
+literary and, with the exception of a few works, especially those of Molière,
+one might say that it was void of new ideas. The ideas which antiquity or
+Christian tradition furnished, the great general ideas which belong to all ages
+and all countries, the commonplaces of morality and human psychology were
+sufficient. It was on this foundation that Racine pushed the analysis of passion
+to perfection, that La Bruyère<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22j"><a href="#endnote_22j">j</a></span> struck off, as clean-cut and brilliant as medals
+from the mint, his <i>Caractères</i>, and La Rochefoucauld<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22k"><a href="#endnote_22k">k</a></span> his <i>Maximes</i>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c4"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>ORATORY: BOSSUET</h3>
+
+<p>The moral and social side of this great literature showed itself above all
+in works of another kind. La Rochefoucauld wrote the thoughts of a courtier,
+Nicole those of a director of consciences. The Christian pulpit rose with
+Bossuet to an unparalleled greatness to keep with Bourdaloue in that middle
+course, calm and regular, where wisdom tempers strength, and dignity never
+lowers itself. Bourdaloue was the ordinary preacher of the king and the
+court, and made for his audience as his audience was made for him. In the
+pulpit he had the nobility and perfection of Racine. As to Bossuet, he is
+above all comparison. If he does not for one instant lose sight of rule and
+law, without which strength cannot be sure of itself, he obeyed less the spirit
+of his time than he dominated it. While leading the funeral cortège of all the
+grandeurs of the age, he surrounded it with an incomparable lustre, which
+still retains the illusion, by the majesty of his eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Bossuet has not treated of political subjects any more than Nicole or
+Bourdaloue. He viewed society only from the heights of Christianity. If
+he exalts the splendours of the court and the king, it is to humiliate them
+all the more profoundly under the hand of God. The root of his eloquence
+is in religion, as the form of it is in the Bible, the language of which he
+applied so marvellously to the things of his time. He touched on history and
+politics in only two works,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22l"><a href="#endnote_22l">l</a></span> written for the dauphin. Even there it is the
+preacher who speaks. He unrolls before the dauphin the sequence of the purposes
+of God. He demonstrated to him according to the Bible the sacredness
+of royalty, and if he deduced from this sacredness the duty of obedience for
+subjects, he also deduced corelative duties for kings. He recognises the fundamental
+law that kings should be respected; he warns them against the danger
+of their passions, above all against the mania for conquests which ruin the
+people. The clergy of the seventeenth century ruled the court and the world
+because it was disinterested. It took the temporal government of France,
+such as Louis XIV had made it, and strove to raise it to a Christian ideal.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_642">[642]</span>The government had a panegyrist of another disposition—Louis XIV
+himself. Louis XIV was not content to be the author or inspirator of
+the acts of his reign, he was also its first, one might say its only political
+writer. His <i>Mémoires</i>,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22m"><a href="#endnote_22m">m</a></span> of which the basis belongs to him, and of which
+it matters little that the style has been polished by Périgny or Pellisson,
+explain his conduct admirably. It is drawn there with the fidelity which
+he himself admired and which he hoped would win so much public admiration,
+that there was nothing to hide.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22b3"><a href="#endnote_22b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/p642.jpg" width="350" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Jacques Bénigne Bossuet</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1627-1704)</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE THIRD PERIOD</h3>
+
+<p>The third period has an entirely different aspect. Royalty has so much
+abused its principle that it is being discussed. The Revocation, whose aim
+was to complete the reign of silence at home, caused an outbreak of a thousand
+rebellious voices beyond the frontiers which had its echoes in France. The
+war which Louis XIV waged for one idea brought back the reign of ideas.
+That confusion of king and country which hitherto had been complete suddenly
+ceased. Formerly everything was admired; everything was well.
+The plaints which arose from devastated fields and ruined industries dealt
+a blow to this optimism. La Bruyère in a few lines paints a terrifying picture
+of the French peasant. Fénelon
+in a letter to Louis XIV judges
+with mournful severity both the
+government and the character
+of the king. Now everything
+is not all right and other things
+are sought for. Vauban proposes
+tax reform; Bois-Guilbert,
+a whole new economic
+system. To this desolate reality
+Fénelon opposes in his <i>Télémaque</i>
+a Utopia, an ideal city—the
+Salento of King Idomeneus.
+To the perpetual warfare the
+abbé de Saint-Pierre<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22n"><a href="#endnote_22n">n</a></span> would
+substitute his project for perpetual
+peace, which appeared in
+1713, and to the government by
+one man a government by several.
+Finally in a room in his
+hôtel at Versailles a man, a
+duke and a peer, every evening—his
+day as a courtier over—shuts
+himself up and with what
+he has seen and heard still vivid
+in his mind, adds a few pages to that colossal monument known as the <i>Mémoires
+de Saint-Simon</i>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22o1"><a href="#endnote_22o">o</a></span> It is from this that posterity, disabused of eulogy and
+panegyric, will learn to know another king, another Versailles from those
+which Racine and Bossuet have shown it. In that period of French literature
+what is uppermost are new ideas. What matters it now whether the
+form be elegant and harmonious as with Fénelon, energetic and incorrect as
+with Saint-Simon, diffuse and dull as with the abbé de Saint-Pierre? The
+interest no longer lies here; the day of marvellous style and the time of art
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_643">[643]</span>for art’s sake is past. Henceforth the great writers will write only to
+uphold a thesis, propose a reform, or prepare a revolution. Their greatness
+will be measured by their success. The eighteenth century has begun.</p>
+
+<h3>THE DRAMA: TRAGEDY</h3>
+
+<p>The sixteenth century handed down, in France, two forms of dramatic
+poetry, the mystery plays—that is to say, the religious drama—and the
+tragedy, a so-called imitation of the ancient form. Mystery plays were,
+in 1548, forbidden in Paris; the ancient tragedy had become sterile. The
+real French theatre remained to be founded.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c5"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Corneille</i></h4>
+
+<p>At last Corneille appears. <i>Mélite</i> is the play given and the public applauds
+it with transports under which there seems to lurk premonition of the
+glory to which dramatic art is later to attain in France. Corneille surpasses
+rather than falls short of this expectation. Having made a deep study of the
+ancient tragic writers and the dramatic authors of modern times, he weighs
+carefully all the rules which he observes them to have used, and, while slavishly
+following none, adopts those which he finds most conformable to his
+own needs. With the ease of one who is their superior, or at least their
+equal, he reveals the inmost workings of the minds and hearts of the famous
+men whom he introduces on the stage; breathes into them, as it were, his own
+enthusiasms, raises them up to his own high stature. He presents his characters
+with the fidelity of history, but in proportions that would alone command
+admiration. He paints portraits of a resemblance so striking that they
+seem to have come from the hand of the subtlest of political writers, the
+most consummate of statesmen, or the greatest of military leaders. To his
+astonished and enraptured countrymen he gives <i>The Cid</i>, <i>Les Horaces</i>, <i>Cinna</i>,
+<i>Polyeucte</i>, <i>Pompée</i>, <i>Rodogune</i>, and <i>Héraclius</i>, and may be said to create
+French comedy when he writes <i>Le Menteur</i>. This genius seems the more
+sublime when it is compared with the simplicity and modesty of his private
+life. In his old age his head is crowned with laurels, and it is of him that
+the great Racine says, “It is not easy to find a poet who unites such a number
+of talents, so many excellent manifestations of art, force, judgment, wit.
+We cannot too greatly admire the nobility and economy of his subjects, the
+vehemence of his passion, the depth and gravity of his sentiments, and
+the dignity as well as the prodigious variety of his characters.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22q2"><a href="#endnote_22q">q</a></span> Pierre
+Corneille was born at Rouen, 1606, and according to a time-worn chronicle,<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a>
+“of considerable parents, his father holding no small places under Louis
+XIII.” He was brought up to the bar but soon deserted it. His great
+success brought upon him the enmity of his rivals, even Richelieu entering
+into this cabal. He was chosen a member of the French Academy. His
+private life was uneventful, due perhaps to the fact that his manners were
+simple and he was never successful in paying court to the great. He
+died in Paris in 1684, leaving several children. Corneille’s works consist
+of thirty plays, tragedies and comedies.<span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The drama of Corneille preserves a certain freedom of manner that is not
+found in the succeeding generation. Thus he chooses sacred as well as profane
+subjects; he restores Christianity to the theatre whence the prejudices
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_644">[644]</span>of a good society had banished it; from the acts of the martyrs he borrowed
+the subject of <i>Polyeucte</i> and <i>Théodore</i>. In such works as <i>Nicomède</i> or <i>Don
+Sanche</i> the comic element mingles with
+the tragic. Above all he finds it difficult
+to conform to the prescriptions of
+Aristotle’s <i>Poetics</i> to the rule of the three
+unities. Now Chapelain had just discovered
+the <i>Poetics</i>; he had recommended
+its precepts to Mairet for his <i>Sophonisbe</i>,
+Leagued with the Academy against the
+success of the <i>Cid</i>, he tried to impose
+them on Corneille. Being commissioned
+to draw up “the sentiments of the Academy”
+concerning this play, he did not
+fail to denounce the author’s violations
+of the unity of time and the unity of
+place. Corneille defended his tragedies.
+Finally, seized with scruples and intimidated
+by this phantom of a system of
+poetics made for a theatre wholly different
+from the French, Corneille submits.
+He writes plays following all the rules,
+such as <i>Pertharite</i>, <i>Agésilas</i>, <i>Attila</i>; but
+it is just these which are his weakest.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c6"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Racine</i></h4>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/p644.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Jean Baptiste Racine</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1639-1699)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Racine, who rose when Corneille
+declined, founded his dramas on a very
+different principle. With him the great
+motive is passion, and passion no longer
+arrested by the conflict of duty. His characters are as though carried away
+by their frenzies. The type of Racine’s tragedy is indeed the drama of
+passion. What he excels in painting is love, furious and cruel with Hermione,
+Roxane, Phædra; plaintive and resigned with Iphigenia or Junia;
+grave and ready for sacrifice with Monima; full of tears and of gentle
+reproaches with Bérénice.</p>
+
+<p>This man, who divided with Corneille the glory of French classical
+tragedy, was born in Ferté-Milon (1639) of bourgeois parents. He received
+his education at the college of Beauvais and at Port-Royal. Becoming disgusted
+with theology, which study he had entered into, he went to Paris,
+where he formed his friendships with Molière and Boileau. It was his ode
+on the marriage of Louis XIV, for which he received a pension, which first
+brought him into prominence. Of a sensitive disposition and inclined to
+melancholy, the criticisms and intrigues of the court made him renounce
+dramatic composition. However after his marriage in 1677 he became
+reconciled with the gentlemen of Port-Royal and was appointed historiographer
+by Louis XIV. At the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon he
+wrote <i>Esther</i> and afterward, <i>Athalie</i>. His tragedies are <i>Andromaque</i>, <i>Britannicus</i>,
+<i>Bérénice</i>, <i>Mithridate</i>, <i>Iphigénie</i>, and <i>Phèdre</i>. “I avow,” says Voltaire,<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22i2"><a href="#endnote_22i">i</a></span>
+“that I regard <i>Iphigénie</i> as the chef-d’œuvre of the stage.” Racine was
+admitted to the Academy in 1673. The ill reception of his <i>Athalie</i> caused
+him to entirely renounce poetry. Hurt by a disapproving criticism of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_645">[645]</span>king on a memorial he had written, “he conceived dreadful ideas of the king’s
+displeasure: and indulging his chagrin and fears, brought on a fever, which
+surpassed the power of medicine, for he died of it, after being grievously
+afflicted with pains, in 1699.”<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a><span class="enanchor"><a href="#endnote_a">a</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With Racine French classical tragedy is finally constituted. It is a quite
+peculiar species of literature, and one which could have arisen only at one
+particular period of French history. It differs from Greek tragedy for it
+dispenses with the accompaniment of music and does not admit choruses.<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a>
+It is the antipodes of the Shakespearian drama. The latter journeys freely
+through time and space, multiplies characters, allows the interposition of the
+crowd, mingles the comic with the tragic, speaks alternately in the most
+poetic and the most trivial language, evokes spectres from the tomb, brings
+shipwrecks, battles, murders, executions on the scene. French tragedy makes
+the entire action take place in a period which, according to the precepts laid
+down, must not exceed twenty-four hours; it never changes the scene and
+to avoid difficulties everything generally takes place in the vestibule of a
+palace or the square of a city; it admits no more than three or at most four
+characters, to whom are added confidants whose mission is to listen to what
+the chief personages have to say to the public; when a valiant army or an
+immense crowd is to be indicated an accessory character is made to follow
+the principal actor. It never unbends, never exhibits either a buffoon or a
+poltroon, it seldom takes its subjects from elsewhere than Greek and Roman
+antiquity; it brings on the stage only noble personages, gods, demigods,
+heroes, emperors, kings, or princes, or servants who are not less dignified and
+who know how to keep their places. It speaks the noblest and purest language;
+it leaves the spectres in their vaults, and reduces the fantastic element
+to the recital of some dream; all murders, the assassination of Pyrrhus,
+the poisoning of Britannicus, the strangling of Monima, the execution of
+Haman or of Athaliah are relegated behind the scenes, out of sight of the
+spectator. If the actor cannot do otherwise than kill himself on the stage,
+he kills himself neatly with a poniard or sword of a temper peculiar to tragedy,
+for they do not draw blood. There is no action on the stage: we only
+see the impression which the action produces on the characters, and hear the
+reflections with which it inspires them.</p>
+
+<p>This mould of classical tragedy maintained itself intact for nearly two
+centuries. It contented the contemporaries of Louis XIV, of Louis XV, of
+Robespierre and of Napoleon successively. The neighbouring nations hastened
+to adopt it: even England herself did so though she continued to play
+Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<h3>COMEDY</h3>
+
+<p>French comedy, during more than half the seventeenth century, was feeling
+her way. She was hesitating between two types—antique comedy, so
+difficult to transport to the French stage, and naturally cold because it
+represented manners so very different from those of France; and Italian
+comedy, in which under the most diverse names there incessantly recur the
+old good-man who is deceived, the shrewd ward, the bold lover, the cunning
+valet, or the complaisant soubrette. Most of the comedies on which
+Corneille tried his hand and the first which came from Molière belong to
+the Italian type.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_646">[646]</span></p>
+
+<p>When, in 1659, Molière put the <i>Précieuses ridicules</i> on the stage, there
+was a surprise almost equal to that which had been occasioned by the <i>Cid</i>.
+After French tragedy, French comedy was now revealing itself. The comical
+element proceeded not from some flimsy plot, a hundred times repeated,
+but from the lively painting of contemporary manners. Molière was to rise
+higher still and to paint not the absurdities of a day but the eternal characters
+of humanity. Those whom he brings before us in his great comedies—the
+hypocrite and dupe of his <i>Tartuffe</i>, the Alceste, the Philinte and Célimène
+of his <i>Misanthrope</i>; the Harpagon of his <i>Avare</i>; the vain <i>roturier</i> of
+his <i>Bourgeois gentilhomme</i>, his <i>Femmes savantes</i>, his <i>Malade imaginaire</i>—are
+so far as concerns their main characteristics, of all times and all countries.
+Yet these personages, though they are universal types, are quite specially of
+the time and country in which Molière lived. Molière’s destiny required
+that he should have to please three sorts of public: the court, the men of
+letters, and the people. For the king he wrote <i>Amphitryon</i> and the comic
+ballets; for the literary men he drew his immortal types; for the people he
+returned to the comic elements of the Italian theatre and the theatres at the
+fairs and he raised them to the level of high art. If any one of these three
+very diverse influences had been exercised alone upon the genius of Molière,
+it might have refined, or ennobled, or vulgarised him to excess; but by
+a happy combination he owed to the one that elegance and nobility, to one
+that depth and knowledge, to the third that overflowing <i>verve</i>, that power at
+once comic and dramatic, which are the characteristics of his genius. He
+was not exclusively either the poet of the court or of the Academy or of the
+crowd; this is why he has been and will remain the national poet <i>par
+excellence</i>.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c7"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Molière, whose true name was Jean Baptiste Pocquelin, was born at Paris
+about 1620. He was both son and grandson to <i>valets de chambres</i> on one
+side, and tapestry-makers on the other, to Louis XIII and was designed for
+the latter business, with a view of succeeding his father in that place. But
+the grandfather being very fond of the boy, and at the same time a great
+lover of plays, used to take him often with him to the hôtel de Bourgogne;
+which presently roused up Molière’s natural genius and taste for dramatic
+representations, and created in him such a disgust to the trade of tapestry-making,
+that at last his father consented to let him go, and study under the
+Jesuits, at the college of Clermont. He finished his studies there in five
+years’ time, in which he contracted an intimate friendship with Chapelle,
+Bernier, and Cyrano. Chapelle, with whom Bernier was an associate in his
+studies, had the famous Gassendi for his tutor, who willingly admitted
+Molière to his lectures, as he afterwards also admitted Cyrano. It was here
+that Molière deeply drank of that sound philosophy, and stored himself with
+those great principles of knowledge, which served as a foundation to all his
+comic productions. When Louis XIII went to Narbonne, in 1641, his
+studies were interrupted; for his father, who was grown infirm, not being
+able to attend the court, Molière was obliged to go there to supply his place.
+Upon his return to Paris, however, when his father was dead, his passion for
+the stage, which had induced him first to study, revived more strongly than
+ever; and if it be true, as some have said, that he, for a time studied the law,
+and was admitted an advocate, he soon yielded to the influence of his stars,
+which had destined him to be the restorer of comedy in France.</p>
+
+<p>What became of him from 1648 to 1652 we know not, this interval being
+the time of the civil wars, which caused disturbances in Paris; but it is probable,
+that he was employed in composing some of those pieces which were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_647">[647]</span>afterwards exhibited to the public. La Béjart, an actress of Champagne,
+waiting, as well as he, for a favourable time to display her talents, Molière
+was particularly kind to her; and as their interests became mutual, they
+formed a company together, and went to Lyons in 1653, where Molière produced
+his first play, called, <i>L’Étourdi</i>, or <i>The Blunderers</i>. In 1663, Molière
+obtained a pension of a thousand livres; and, in 1665, his company was
+altogether in his majesty’s service.</p>
+
+<p>His last comedy was <i>Le malade imaginaire</i>, or <i>The Hypochondriac</i>;
+and it was acted for the fourth time, February 17th, 1673. Upon this very
+day Molière died.</p>
+
+<h3>ARCHITECTURE</h3>
+
+<p>The fine arts, even more than literature, bear the impress of the period,
+because a government has more means to act on them. If it cannot create
+them, nor supply individual inspiration, it can at least impress a certain
+direction by the nature of the works it
+orders from artists, and the nature of
+the patronage which it affords them.
+For instance, Louis XIV had a passion
+for building. His architectural constructions
+are of a style apart, in harmony
+with his tastes, the needs of his court,
+and the characteristics of his royalty.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22b4"><a href="#endnote_22b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The French architecture of the Renaissance
+happily blended the elements
+of ogival art and those of ancient art
+recovered in Italy. The seventeenth
+century broke more completely with the
+national past. One of the latest cathedrals
+is that of Orleans, constructed
+under Henry IV and his successors, but
+which had been designed in the sixteenth
+century. The ogival style was no longer
+in fashion; it was freely regarded as a
+relic of ancient barbarism, and it was
+branded with the epithet of “Gothic.”
+Numerous acts of vandalism were committed
+on the most venerable monuments
+of the past. In 1699 Robert de Cotte,
+under the pretext of “restoring” the interior
+of Notre Dame de Paris, destroyed the close, pulled down the rood-loft,
+burned the wooden stalls, tore out the tombs and stone effigies, and broke
+the coloured glass windows.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/p647.jpg" width="300" height="375" alt="">
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon</span></p>
+<p class="caption">(1651-1715)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The dominating influence of the age was that of the Italian monuments,
+not only of the first epoch of the Renaissance but also that of its decadence.
+However, French artists did not limit themselves to imitation; and under
+the inspiration of those ideas of grandeur and majesty which are the cachet
+of the seventeenth century, they created a truly original art, as characteristic
+of Louis XIV’s reign as was its literature.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain more imposing façades, instead of dividing them up as in the
+preceding epoch into almost equal stories, each distinguished by a different
+ornamentation, now only one principal story was admitted. Below, it rests
+on a ground floor which sometimes is almost a basement; above, it is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_648">[648]</span>surmounted by an attic which was only half or two-thirds the height of the
+principal story. Everything is sacrificed to the latter. To enhance still
+further the desired impression of unity and grandeur the ornamentation is
+greatly reduced. None of those architectural accidents, those happy caprices,
+or that ingenious variety which in sixteenth century monuments interested
+the eye and the mind—nothing but great sober lines severe to monotony.
+This is what is called the colossal style and what might be called the Louis
+XIV style.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c8"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Versailles is the indestructible monument of the royalty of Louis XIV.
+One is struck at first by its large proportions; it is above all its majestic
+regularity which produces such imposing effects. All is in harmony with the
+habits of the court of the great king. One may criticise the arrangements,
+and Saint-Simon<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22o2"><a href="#endnote_22o">o</a></span> without being an artist has done so with humour, sometimes
+with truth. But the ensemble leaves a profound impression of admiration,
+almost of respect. One feels that Versailles, to-day a vast solitude,
+was built to be peopled by an immense court, where Louis XIV lived in the
+midst of a France made in his image. Versailles, with its grandeur, its regularity,
+its majestic and classic ornamentation, merits to be the type of an
+architecture truly royal. If nobility is one of the principal conceptions of
+the ideal of beauty, this ideal has never been attained in an equal degree.
+Also, even as the court of Louis XIV gave the tone to the greater part of
+European courts, Versailles has become the type and model of the greater
+part of royal and foreign châteaux and gardens.</p>
+
+<p>Other châteaux, like those of St. Cloud and Marly, were built almost in
+the same style by Mansart and Le Nôtre, the one the architect of the palace,
+and the other of the gardens of Versailles. St. Cloud was the residence of
+Monsieur, brother of the king. Marly, which was begun after Nimeguen,
+could offer a sort of retreat to the court fatigued by magnificence. Meudon,
+Sceaux, Choisy, built for princes, princesses, or ministers, produced in their
+more restricted proportions the essential characteristics of this royal
+architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Paris has kept fewer traces of Louis XIV; he rarely made long sojourns
+there. The principal monuments he raised there were the triumphal arches
+at the portes du Trône, St. Antoine, St. Bernard, St. Denis, and St. Martin,
+monuments erected to celebrate his re-entry into Paris after the Peace of the
+Pyrenees, or his victories during the war with Holland. Meanwhile he also
+joined the Louvre to the Tuileries by means of the magnificent colonnade
+designed by Perrault. To this reign also belongs the northern boulevards
+arranged as great avenues, the Champs-Élysées, and finally the garden of the
+Tuileries.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22b5"><a href="#endnote_22b">b</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>SCULPTURE AND PAINTING</h3>
+
+<p>The taste for statuary did not revive until the time of the Italian regent
+Marie de’ Medici. Puget (1622-1694) was an independent. The other
+sculptors of the time bent themselves to monarchical discipline. They
+entered academies of sculpture and painting and placed themselves under the
+direction of Lebrun, for at that time it seemed natural to subordinate
+sculpture to painting. The sculpture of the great epoch of Louis XIV
+shows the influence of the vigorous studies the artists made from the
+antique. It is a diversified sculpture, but skilful and strong.</p>
+
+<p>The Renaissance had been in France more brilliant for architecture and
+even sculpture than for painting. The French had still much to learn from
+the Italians and the Flemish. They had a few painters, but they had no French
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_649">[649]</span>school. Besides it was in Italy that the first generation of French artists of
+the seventeenth century was formed. Lesueur is perhaps the sole great painter
+who did not leave France. Of these illustrious travellers, some preferred to
+apply themselves to imitation of the severe design of the Roman school;
+others stopped in the Venetian cities and sought to worm from the canvases
+of Titian and Paul Veronese the secret of their admirable colouring
+and obtain a knowledge of the science of composition on a large scale.
+Whence comes the great variety in the French school. But all got the feeling
+of classical beauty, from the brilliant sky, the living types, and the
+magnificent antiquities of Italy. Moreover the French artists found a
+hospitable welcome in the peninsula; at a time when their kings were not
+rich enough to furnish artists means of support, work was ordered of them
+by the popes, cardinals, sovereigns, and great lords of Italy. Colbert’s
+foundation of the Academy of Rome was to assure the education of French
+genius, for centuries, by the genius of antiquity and of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>In France the painters were organised as a corporation which was known
+as the Academy of St. Luke, and into which no one was received, as in the
+corporation of joiners or hatters, until he had served an apprenticeship
+or had produced a masterpiece. The academy was all powerful in the art-world
+until in 1648 it was confronted with a rival that eclipsed it—the
+Academy of Painting and Sculpture. We must not forget that in 1673 the
+first exhibition of painting took place in the court of the Palais Royal.
+Hitherto there had been open-air exhibitions—a kind of picture fairs, as for
+example that held in the place Dauphine. In 1699 the exposition was held
+in the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre.</p>
+
+<p>As in political and literary history, the history of painting in the seventeenth
+century may be divided into three periods. The first sixty years are
+years of artistic freedom; with the personal government of the king the
+rule of Lebrun over the fine arts was established. At the latter’s death a
+transformation took place. When the regent Marie de’ Medici wished to
+decorate the vast galleries of the Luxembourg palace, she believed that she
+could not do better than to summon the great Flemish painter, Peter Paul
+Rubens. But she soon became better acquainted with the artistic resources
+of France, and sent for a number of Frenchmen to collaborate in the decoration
+of the Luxembourg. Among them were Simon Vouet (1590-1649),
+Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), and Philippe de Champagne (1602-1674).
+If we examine the dates of the deaths of these artists and others, such
+as Claude Lorraine (1600-1682), Lesueur (1616-1655), or better, perhaps,
+the most brilliant period of their productiveness it will be admitted that
+Louis XIV and Lebrun had no influence over them whatever.</p>
+
+<p>In the second period, Charles Lebrun of Paris (1619-1690) was the
+leader of the French school. He might have, as has been said, paraphrased
+the saying attributed to the king and have said “<i>L’Art, c’est moi</i>.” He was
+the Louis XIV of the fine arts. The artist, whose genius sympathised so
+completely with that of his sovereign, was nevertheless a very great painter.
+He possessed the sacred fire; at the age of fifteen he had produced two
+paintings that attracted attention, and he developed his natural gift by
+arduous labour and incessant study. He went to Rome and received
+instruction from Poussin. He painted for Louis XIV those immense
+canvases representing the exploits of Alexander—the <i>Crossing the Granicus</i>,
+the <i>Battle of Arbela</i>, the <i>Defeat of Porus</i>, and the <i>Entrance into Babylon</i>—which
+form an epic series. Lebrun pushed perfection of detail so far as to
+have horses sketched in Syria, so that they would be typically Asiatic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_650">[650]</span></p>
+
+<h3>MUSIC AND THE OPERA</h3>
+
+<p>It is easy to count the musicians that France produced in the sixteenth
+century; the true home of their art was then in Italy. Nevertheless the
+French court acquired a taste for lyric representations, and the kings, to
+free the art from religious domination, founded troops of lay artists, and at
+the head of their singers and instrumentalists they placed a superintendent
+of music.</p>
+
+<p>These representations which the French called <i>ballets</i> or <i>mascarades</i> were
+an incoherent mixture of the three arts of poetry, music, and dancing which
+the modern opera has brought into harmony. A ballet was divided into
+<i>parties</i> or acts, and the <i>parties</i> into <i>entrées</i> or scenes, both of variable
+number. There was no fixed plan for the composition—or rather there
+was no composition. In front of a great canvas the king and the nobles
+who were taking part in the <i>divertissement</i> composed or had composed
+the words at their fancy, accommodated them to or made them accommodate
+familiar airs, putting the words into the hands of the ladies, in order that
+they might follow the piece, abandoning themselves in the end to the
+<i>boutade</i>, that is to say to the inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Music was considered such an inferior art that the instrumentalists were
+recruited from among the lackeys, and to be a violin player was almost a
+sign of servitude. The airs were vulgar; the instruments were reduced to
+lutes and viols, the dances were slow and monotonous like the <i>bourrée</i> of the
+peasant of central France. Such was the court ballet, such, for example,
+the ballet of the <i>Délivrance de Renaud</i> danced by Louis XIII and his
+courtiers in 1614. The court was lost in admiration and it was declared
+that Europe had never heard anything so ravishing.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin tried to revive the fashion by bringing dancers, singers, and
+musicians from Italy, obtaining the libretti and the music from composers
+of the same country. The courtiers admired in order to please the cardinal
+and the queen-regent, but Madame de Motteville<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22p"><a href="#endnote_22p">p</a></span> admits in all frankness
+that these representations seemed to her mortally long and tiresome. It is
+probable that French ears were not yet trained to Italian music and that
+Madame de Motteville, like Molière’s Alceste, would have given all the
+operas for one of the old popular airs like “<i>J’aime mieux ma mie, au gué</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The taste of the court was too frivolous, the actors in their quality of
+king or noble too unruly for opera thus conceived to raise itself to the level
+of a serious art. Therefore the public but privileged theatres succeeded to
+the aristocratic or court theatre. The abbé Perrin, a prolific writer of <i>livrets</i>,
+although a most mediocre poet, associated himself with Cambert, the most
+distinguished of French composers and with the marquis de Sourdéac, who
+understood scenery and stage mechanism. He obtained letters patent on
+June 28th, 1669. Thus was founded the Royal Academy of Music, which
+has nothing in common with the learned academies of the age; for the
+Italian word <i>accademia</i> signifies simply concert. The first result of this
+association was the representation of <i>Pomone</i>, in 1671, words by Perrin;
+music by Cambert. The associates were preparing to mount another opera
+when misunderstandings broke out among them. Lully took advantage of
+this and through Madame de Montespan’s influence was given the privilege.
+Cambert in vexation went to England where, although he was well received
+by Charles II, he died of chagrin. Lully [himself an Italian], who had
+claimed that it was impossible to write an elegant score to French words,
+now became director of the first French National Theatre of Music (1672).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_651">[651]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lully created a music distinctly French in spirit and his influence extended
+over his contemporaries and successors, but his was the only original work
+that appeared at the Academy. Its organisation was too authoritative
+to lend itself easily to innovations. A large portion of the public was
+not interested in that solemn monotonous music which only concerned itself
+with mythological tragedies. Already in the seventeenth century (1640)
+the <i>Comédie des Chansons</i>, sometimes attributed to Timothy de Chillac and
+sometimes to Charles Beys, had furnished the type of a kind that resembles
+both vaudeville and the French <i>opéra-comique</i>. It was called the <i>comédie à
+ariettes</i> and became universally popular. In 1678 at the St. Laurent fair
+Allard and Maurice Vanderberg presented the <i>Forces of Love and Magic</i>,
+which had a great success. This irritated Lully, and invoking the privilege
+of the Academy he had an order served upon these two itinerant directors
+to reduce their orchestra to four violins and one oboe. The Academy
+decided however to sign a contract with Catherine Vanderberg, permitting
+her to give pieces with song, orchestra, and dance. Such was the origin of
+the <i>opéra-comique</i>, a term first employed by Le Sage, in 1715.</p>
+
+<h3>RAPID DECLINE OF THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV</h3>
+
+<p>One characteristic of this age was that the efflorescence of arts and letters
+was of short duration. The age was great so long as Louis was surrounded
+by men whose talent had already seen the light when he began to protect
+them; but new geniuses were not born and when that generation was
+exhausted another did not arise to replace it.</p>
+
+<p>The personal government presents but a single and very short period of
+literary and artistic splendour. The last great work of secular literature,
+<i>Athalie</i>, dates from 1691. If Bossuet, Fénelon, Bourdaloue, and Massillon—that
+is to say the group of churchmen—were not there; if Saint-Simon were
+not secretly writing his accusing <i>Mémoires</i>, one might say that not a single
+work of high literary value was written in France after the Peace of Ryswick
+(1697). The same observation may be made of the arts. Many of the
+great painters of the seventeenth century owed nothing to Louis XIV, for Le
+Valentin died in 1632, Lesueur in 1655, Laurent de Lahire in 1656, Poussin
+in 1665. Claude Lorraine and Philippe de Champagne, who died, the one in
+1682, the other in 1674, were already in the fullness of their genius when
+the king began to govern. Of the four great architects of the age, Mansart,
+Claude Perrault, Blondel, and Bruant, none lived to see the year 1697.
+Puget, the great sculptor, died in 1694, Lully in 1687. The poet Quinault,
+who usually furnished the latter the libretto of his operas, died the following
+year. After these there is certainly a wide gap in the history of
+French art.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22c9"><a href="#endnote_22c">c</a></span> Indeed, as Buckle says: “At the moment when Louis XIV
+died, there was scarcely a writer or an artist in France who enjoyed European
+reputation.”<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22e"><a href="#endnote_22e">e</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>A FRENCH VIEW OF THE EFFECT OF THE AGE</h3>
+
+<p>But it had been a royal epoch! Louis XIV had the rôle of a demi-god.
+His Olympus was only a theatre, his <i>fêtes</i> were only fairy-like scenes and
+masquerades, but all was on a grandiose scale. Before his time the king of
+France lived in a strong castle. He was, even after the time of Francis I, a
+mighty baron shut up behind his battlements, his thick walls, his deep moats.
+One can see the gloomy shadow of the monarch flitting from window to window
+in the vast halls of the Château de Blois, isolated, cold, imprisoned, anxious.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_652">[652]</span>Spies, guards, armed men; courts where echoed the tread of sentinels;
+secret staircases where men charged with dark errands mounted and descended—all
+proclaimed a shadowy king watching with his hand upon his sword, spying
+out all, sharing the fear which he inspired in others. But under Louis
+XIV all was changed. The staircases widened, air and light circulated in
+the royal house; <i>fêtes</i> replaced the gloomy official receptions; courtiers succeeded
+soldiers. This time royalty was sure of victory. It trod on laurels,
+as half a century later it walked on roses, without dreaming that either the
+laurel- or the rose-strewn path would lead to the scaffold.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22f2"><a href="#endnote_22f">f</a></span> On that splendid
+horizon of the seventeenth century great storm clouds appeared one by one,
+lightning still unaccompanied by thunder flashed through space; but the eyes
+of the multitude, blinded by the royal sun, did not perceive these threatening
+gleams. Intoxicated France abandoned herself to the contemplation of her
+present glory, without thinking to seize or to understand the true reasons of
+that glory, and did not realise that she was being dragged to a yawning
+chasm.</p>
+
+<p>Never was error more excusable. How resist that seduction which all
+realised, but which all contributed to exercise? Society is like an immense
+concert all of whose parts mingle together to form, by their divers accents, a
+universal harmony. Every class, every man, gave all that he had to give to
+the work of common grandeur. The mass of the people, confident in the
+good intentions of their prince, comforted by the good order of the administration,
+bore their burden the more lightly, and patiently awaited from the
+future a still greater relief. The clergy, more worthy and more enlightened
+than in any other epoch of French history, instructed and guided the society
+it no longer governed. The nobility, which had gained in discipline not less
+than in polish what it had lost in independence, furnished the majority of the
+warriors; the third estate furnished almost all the rest, especially the great
+administration and the great writers. By means of intellectual and moral
+energy, of practical sense, of inventive and active force, the French bourgeoisie
+reached the highest degree of its development—what a bourgeoisie,
+to have produced within a half century Colbert, Corneille, Pascal, Molière,
+Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Arnauld, Nicole, Domat,
+Fabert, Poussin, Lesueur, Lorraine, Lebrun, the Perraults, and Puget, without
+counting those men as powerful and more for evil than for good—Fouquet
+and Louvois!</p>
+
+<p>Marvellous assemblage of the most highly developed and complete society
+that has appeared in the world since ancient times; vast and living picture
+whose aspect produced on those who regarded it an enduring fascination!
+All peoples admired and imitated it. The language, the fashions, the ideas
+of France invaded Europe. Literary styles, like the styles of costume, like
+the styles of objects of art and of luxury, like the habits of life, formed themselves,
+at least in the upper classes, and for long, after the French. It was
+not the breath of a momentary fancy, but it was an atmosphere which enveloped
+little by little all objects and all beings, a medium outside of which it
+became impossible for man to live.<span class="enanchor" id="enanchor_22g3"><a href="#endnote_22g">g</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> By this term is meant the period covering the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV (1610-1715
+<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> [Colbert’s foundation of learned academies is described in <a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">chapter XIX</a>.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> An anecdote will show how much the science of zoölogy was still in its infancy. In 1613
+some fossil bones, probably those of a mammoth or some other prehistoric quadruped, were
+exhumed near the Château of Langon in Dauphiné. A surgeon, Habicot by name, recognised
+them as the bones of the giant Teutobochus, king of the Teutons, and published a ridiculous
+poem entitled <i>Gigantéostologie</i>. A physician named Riolan suspected that they might be the
+bones of an elephant, but as that animal was then unknown in France he searched for a description
+of it in the Greek authors; then he abandoned this trail, which was the right one, and came
+to believe that these bones were simply stones to which a caprice of nature had given extraordinary
+forms. At that time the custom was to explain thus what could not be understood.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> <i>Biographical Dictionary</i>, London, 1798, 15 vols.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> <i>Biographical Dictionary</i>, London, 1798, 15 vols.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> [Except in <i>Esther</i> and <i>Athalie</i>; but these two sacred dramas are not, for Racine, dramas
+for the theatre.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_653">[653]</span></p>
+
+<h2 id="REFERENCES">BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS</h2>
+
+<p id="endnote_a" class="center">[The letter <span class="enanchor">a</span> is reserved for Editorial Matter.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter I. The Later Carlovingians</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_1b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>Histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1c">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Théophile Lavallée</span>, <i>Histoire des Français depuis le temps des Gaulois jusqu’à nos jours</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Theodose Burette</span>, <i>Histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Eyre Evans Crowe</span>, <i>History of France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Ordericus Vitalis</span>, <i>Historia ecclesiastica</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1j">j</a></span> <i>Chronique de St. Denis.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Richer</span>, <i>Chronique</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_1l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_1l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Adhémar Chabannes</span>, in <i>Monumenta Germaniæ historica</i>, Scriptores iv.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter II. The Foundation of the Capetian Dynasty</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_2b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Émile de Bonnechose</span>, <i>Histoire de France depuis l’invasion des Francs sous Clovis jusqu’à l’avénement de Louis Philippe</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>History of France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Ordericus Vitalis</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Guizot</span>, <i>Collections des Mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. C. L. S. de Sismondi</span>, <i>Histoire des Français</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2j"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->j</span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Suger</span>, <i>Vie de Louis VI</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. H. Lewes</span>, <i>Biographical History of Philosophy</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_2m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_2m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Hastings Rashdall</span>, <i>The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter III. The Development of the Absolute Monarchy</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_3b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>Histoire du Moyen Âge depuis la chute de l’empire d’occident jusqu’au milieu du XVᵉ siècle</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>Histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3g">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henry Hallam</span>, <i>View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Wallon</span>, <i>St. Louis et son temps</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean de Joinville</span>, <i>Vie de St. Louis</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3j1">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Matthew Paris</span>, <i>Chronica Majora</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">William le Breton</span> (William of Armorica), <i>Histoire des gestes de Philippe Auguste</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Geoffroy de Beaulieu</span>, <i>Vie de St. Louis</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3m1">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Guizot</span>, <i>History of Civilisation in Europe</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">S. Astley Dunham</span>, <i>History of Europe during the Middle Ages</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_3o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_3o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Abel François Villemain</span>, <i>Cours de Littérature Française</i> (Table du Moyen Âge).</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter IV. Philip III to the House of Valois</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_4b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. Boutaric</span>, <i>La France sous Philippe le Bel</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Sauvage</span>, <i>Chronique traditionnelle continuée</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis</span>, <i>Chroniques des rois de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Dante Alighieri</span>, <i>Paradiso</i>, Canto XIX.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4j"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->j</span> <span class="smcap">Philip de Beaumanoir</span>, <i>Coutumes de Beauvaisis</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Guillaume de Nogaret</span>, in <i>Chronique de St. Denis</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Giovanni Villani</span>, <i>Istorie Fiorentini</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Thomas Walsingham</span>, <i>Historia Anglicana</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4o">o</a></span> <i>Chronique de St. Denis.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_4p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_4p">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Guizot</span>, <i>Histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter V. The Opening of the Hundred Years’ War</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_5b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">John Froissart</span>, <i>Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and Adjoining Countries</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">V. Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5h1">h</a></span> <i>Chronique de St. Denis.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henry Knighton</span>, <i>Chronica</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_5j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_5j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Thomas Walsingham</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_654">[654]</span></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter VI. John the Good and Charles the Wise</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_6b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Continuator of Guilaume de Nangis</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>Histoire du Moyen Âge</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">John Froissart</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Simon Luce</span>, <i>Histoire de la Jacquerie</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. T. Perrens</span>, <i>La Démocratie en France au Moyen Âge</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6j1">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Pierre Robiquet</span>, <i>Histoire Municipale de Paris</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6l1">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>Histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">M. Leber</span>, <i>Essai sur l’appréciation de la fortune privée au Moyen Âge</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6n1">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6o1">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean Lefebvre</span> (Sieur de Saint Rémy), <i>Chronique</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6p">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Christine de Pisan</span>, <i>Le livre des faicts et bonnes mœurs du sage roy Charles V</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_6q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_6q">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">Matteo Villani</span>, continuation by Jean Villani, <i>Istorie Florentine</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter VII. The Betrayal of the Kingdom</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_7b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">John Froissart</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7d1">d</a></span> <i>Chronique de St. Denis.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Eudes de Mézeray</span>, <i>Histoire de France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7h1">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Juvénal des Ursins</span>, <i>Histoire de Charles VI</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7j1">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean Lefebvre</span> (Sieur de Saint Rémy), <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean de Vaurin</span>, <i>Recueil des croniques et anciennes histoires de la Grant Bretaigne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Titus Livy</span>, <i>Vita Henrici Quinti regis Angliæ</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Thomas Walsingham</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7n1">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Enguerrand de Monstrelet</span>, <i>Chronique</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Baron Brugière de Barante</span>, <i>Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7p1">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7q1">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">Le Bourgeois de Paris</span>, <i>Journal</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7r"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7r">r</a></span> <span class="smcap">Thomas Rymer</span>, <i>Fœdera</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7s"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7s">s</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Endell Tyler</span>, <i>Henry of Monmouth: or Memoirs of the Life and Elevation of Henry the Fifth as Prince of Wales and King of England</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_7t"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_7t">t</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. F. Villemain</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter VIII. The Rescue of the Realm</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_8b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Georges Chastelain</span>, <i>Chronique de Normandie</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Enguerrand de Monstrelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8h">h</a></span> <i>Chronique de la Pucelle.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Quicherat</span>, <i>Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8j"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->j</span> <span class="smcap">Lavisse et Rambaud</span>, <i>Histoire générale du IVᵉ siècle à nos jours</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_8k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_8k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter IX. The Convalescence of the Realm</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_9b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9h1">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean Chartier</span>, <i>Histoire de Charles VII</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Le Bourgeois de Paris</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Georges Chastelain</span>, <i>Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9l1">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Pierre de Bourdeilles</span> (Seigneur de Brantôme), <i>Vie des dames galantes</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Olivier de la Marche</span>, <i>La Parement et le Triomphe des dames d’honneur</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. du Fresne de Beaucourt</span>, <i>Histoire de Charles VII</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9o1">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Baude</span>, <i>Éloge ou portrait historique de Charles VII</i> (in Jean Chartier’s <i>Chronique de Charles VII</i>).</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_9p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_9p1">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Alfred Rambaud</span>, <i>Histoire de la civilisation française</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter X. The Reign of Louis XI</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_10b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Georges Chastelain</span>, <i>Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Philippe de Commines</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Nicolo Macchiavelli</span>, <i>Le Prince</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. C. L. S. de Sismondi</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Olivier de la Marche</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10j1">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Urbain Legeay</span>, <i>Histoire de Louis XI</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Charles P. Duclos</span>, <i>Histoire de Louis XI</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10n1">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Alexis Belloc</span>, <i>Les Postes Françaises; Recherches historiques sur leur origine</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10p1">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Continuator of Monstrelet.</span></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_10q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_10q1">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. de Monstrelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XI. Charles VII and Louis XII, The Invasion of Italy</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_11b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11b">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Pierre de B. Brantôme</span>, <i>Vie des hommes illustres et grandes capitaines français</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Ph. de Commines</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Symphorien Champier</span>, <i>La Vie de Bayard</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Claude de Seyssel</span>, <i>Louanges de Louis XII</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Pierre L. Roederer</span>, <i>Louis XII et François I</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henry Hallam</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_11k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_11k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_655">[655]</span></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XII. Imperial Struggles. Francis I and Henry II</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_12b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12b">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12c">c</a></span> <i>Mémoires du Chevalier de Bayard.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. C. L. S. de Sismondi</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12e"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->e</span> <span class="smcap">Lucien A. Prévost-Paradol</span>, <i>Essai sur l’histoire universelle</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12g">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Guillaume du Bellay</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12h1">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. A. M. Mignet</span>, <i>Rivalité de François I et de Charles Quint</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Martin du Bellay</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Rosseeuw St. Hillaire</span>, <i>Histoire d’Espagne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12m1">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Julia Pardoe</span>, <i>Court and Reign of François I</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Gabriel Henri Gaillard</span>, <i>Histoire de François I</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12p1">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Pierre de Bourdeilles Brantôme</span>, <i>Œuvres complètes</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12q">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">Marguerite de Valois</span>, <i>L’Heptameron</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12r"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12r">r</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean Marot</span>, <i>Le Recueil de Jehan Marot de Caen</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12s"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12s">s</a></span> <span class="smcap">Leopold von Ranke</span>, <i>Französische Geschichte</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12v"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_12v1">v</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_12w"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->w</span> <span class="smcap">H. Forneron</span>, <i>Les ducs de Guise et leur époque</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XIII. Catherine de’ Medici and the Religious Wars</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_13b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13b">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Bernard de Lacombe</span>, <i>Catherine de Medici</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">P. de B. Brantôme</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Michel de Castelnau</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Michel Eyquem de Montaigne</span>, <i>Essais</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri-Catherin Davila</span>, <i>Histoire des guerres civiles de France depuis la mort de Henri II jusqu’à la paix de Vervins</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13j1">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Maximilian de Béthune</span> (Duc de Sully), <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">W. S. Browning</span>, <i>The History of the Huguenots</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13l1">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13m1">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13n1">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné</span>, <i>Histoire Universelle</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13o1">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Pierre de l’Estoile</span>, <i>Journal</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13p">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">M. Cavalli</span>, <i>Relation de Marino Cavalli</i> (Ambassador to France from Venice).</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13q">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">François de la Noue</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13r"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->r</span> <span class="smcap">Marguerite de Valois</span> (La Reine Margot), <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13s"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13s">s</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Forneron</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13t"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13t">t</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. Sorbin</span>, <i>Histoire contenant un ibrégé de la vie, mœurs et vertus du Roy très chrétien et débonnaire, Charles IX</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_13w"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_13w1">w</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>Lectures on the History of France</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XIV. Henry of Navarre, the First of the Bourbons</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_14b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">James White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">T. A. d’Aubigné</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. C. Davila</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. C. L. S. de Sismondi</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14h1">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Charles Mercier de Lacombe</span>, <i>Henri IV et sa politique</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">M. E. de Montaigne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">C. F. Lenient</span>, <i>La Satire en France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14l1">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. W. Kitchin</span>, <i>History of France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14n1">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">François de Bassompierre</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14p1">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">M. de Béthune</span> (Duc de Sully), <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14q">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">François Marie Arouet de Voltaire</span>, <i>Le siècle de Louis XIV</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_14r"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_14r">r</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>Lectures on the History of France</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XV. The Literary Progress of France in the Sixteenth Century</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_15b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_15b">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. F. Villemain</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_15c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_15c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_15d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_15d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_15e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_15e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. E. Saintsbury</span>, article on “Rabelais” in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_15f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_15f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XVI. The Early Years of Louis XIII</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_16b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16c">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">David Hume</span>, <i>Histoire naturelle de la religion, 1752</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Armand du Plessis</span> (Cardinal de Richelieu), <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16f">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Victor Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16g">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Florimond Rapine</span>, <i>Relation des États de 1614</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_16j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_16j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Charles Seignobos</span>, <i>Scènes et épisodes de l’histoire nationale</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XVII. The Dictatorship of Richelieu</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_17b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17b">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Michelet</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17c">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. de Bonnechose</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">Théophile Lavallée</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17f">f</a></span> <i>Mémoires de Pontis 1630</i> (Journal de Bassompierre).</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17g"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->g</span> <span class="smcap">François de Bassompierre</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. B. Raymond Capefigue</span>, <i>Richelieu, Mazarin, La Fronde et le règne de Louis XIV</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Françoise Bertaut de Motteville</span>, <i>Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire d’Anne d’Autriche</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. White</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">L. d’Astarac de Frontrailles</span>, <i>Relation des choses particulières de la cour pendant la faveur de M. de Cinq-Mars</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17l1">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Armand du Plessis</span> (Richelieu), <i>Testament Politique</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. F. Paul de Gondi</span> (Cardinal de Retz), <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Ch. de Secondat de Montesquieu</span>, <i>Pensées diverses</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17p1">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henri Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17q"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->q</span> <span class="smcap">Pierre et Jacques Dupuy</span>, <i>Traité des droits et libertés de l’Église Gallicane, avec les Preuves</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_656">[656]</span></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17r"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17r">r</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Caillet</span>, <i>L’Administration en France sous le ministère du Cardinal Richelieu</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17s"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->s</span> <span class="smcap">Corneille.</span></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17t"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17t1">t</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17u"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17u">u</a></span> <span class="smcap">V. Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17v"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17v">v</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_17w"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_17w1">w</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. W. Kitchin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XVIII. The Supremacy of Mazarin</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_18b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>Richelieu et la Fronde</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. Renée</span>, <i>Les Nièces de Mazarin</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Adolphe Chéruel</span>, <i>Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18h1">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">V. Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. M. A. de Voltaire</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18j1">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Paul de Gondi</span> (Cardinal de Retz), <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18k1">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Françoise Bertaut de Motteville</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18l"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->l</span> <span class="smcap">François, duc de la Rochefoucauld</span>, <i>Maximes</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">François, duc de la Rochefoucauld</span>, <i>Mémoires sur le règne d’Anne d’Autriche</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Charlotte Elizabeth de Bavière</span> (Princesse Palatine, Duchesse d’Orléans), <i>Correspondance</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. W. Kitchin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18p">p</a></span> <i>Les Carnets de Mazarin.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_18q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_18q1">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. W. Kitchin</span>, article on “France” in the Ninth Edition of the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>.</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XIX. L’État, c’est Moi</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_19b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. M. A. de Voltaire</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">V. Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Louis XIV</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19g">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">Marius Topin</span>, <i>L’Homme au masque de fer</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">M. N. Bouillet</span>, <i>Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et de géographie</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">L. de Rouvroy</span> (Duc de Saint-Simon), <i>Mémoires de Louis XIV</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Théophile Lavallée</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19l1">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jules Michelet</span>, <i>Louis XIV et la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. B. Paquier</span>, <i>Histoire de l’unité politique et territoriale de la France</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19n"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->n</span> <span class="smcap">Pierre le Pesant de Boisguillebert</span>, <i>Detail de la France sous Louis XIV</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19o">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">La Baronne de Staal</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19p">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_19q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_19q">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">G. W. Kitchin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XX. Louis XIV, Spain and Holland</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_20b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">V. Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Olivier d’Ormesson</span>, <i>Journal</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. M. A. de Voltaire</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20h"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->h</span> <span class="smcap">F. Mignet</span>, <i>Négotiations relative à la succession d’Espagne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20i">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">Mme. la Marquise de Sévigné</span>, <i>Lettres</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">Georges Duruy</span>, <i>Vie de Turenne</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Le Marquis de la Fare</span>, <i>Mémoires sur Louis XIV</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20m"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->m</span> <span class="smcap">Louis Racine</span>, <i>Mémoires sur la Vie de J. Racine</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_20n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_20n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XXI. The Height and Decline of the Bourbon Monarchy</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_21b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">V. Duruy</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21d1">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. M. A. de Voltaire</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21e1">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">E. E. Crowe</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21g"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->g</span> <span class="smcap">Mme. la Comtesse de La Fayette</span>, <i>Œuvres</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Duc de Saint-Simon</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. Guizot</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_21j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_21j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter XXII. The Age of Louis XIV</span></h3>
+
+<p id="endnote_22b"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22b1">b</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. E. C. Dareste de la Chavanne</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22c"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22c1">c</a></span> <span class="smcap">A. Rambaud</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22d"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22d">d</a></span> <span class="smcap">D. Nisard</span>, <i>Histoire de la littérature française</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22e"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22e">e</a></span> <span class="smcap">Henry Thomas Buckle</span>, <i>History of Civilisation in England</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22f"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22f1">f</a></span> <span class="smcap">Arsène Houssaye</span>, <i>La Régence</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22g"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22g1">g</a></span> <span class="smcap">H. Martin</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22h"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22h">h</a></span> <span class="smcap">Mme. de Sévigné</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22i"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22i1">i</a></span> <span class="smcap">F. M. A. de Voltaire</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22j"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22j">j</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jean de la Bruyère</span>, <i>Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce siècle</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22k"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22k">k</a></span> <span class="smcap">François, duc de la Rochefoucauld</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22l"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22l">l</a></span> <span class="smcap">Jacques Bénigne Bossuet</span>, <i>Discours sur l’histoire universelle</i>. <i>Politique tirée de l’écriture sainte.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22m"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22m">m</a></span> <span class="smcap">Louis XIV</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22n"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22n">n</a></span> <span class="smcap">Charles Castel</span> (Abbé de Saint Pierre), <i>Projet de paix perpétuelle.</i> <i>Discours sur la Polysynodie.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22o"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22o1">o</a></span> <span class="smcap">Duc de Saint-Simon</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22p"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22p">p</a></span> <span class="smcap">Françoise Bertaut de Motteville</span>, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22q"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22q1">q</a></span> <span class="smcap">Bernard Germain Étienne de la Ville de Lacépède</span>, <i>Histoire de l’Europe, Paris</i>, 1833.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22r"><span class="enanchor"><a href="#enanchor_22r">r</a></span> <i>A New and General Biographical Dictionary</i>, London, 1798, 15 vols.</p>
+
+<p id="endnote_22s"><span class="enanchor"><!-- no anchor in text -->s</span> <span class="smcap">J. Stephen</span>, <i>Lectures on the History of France</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a href="images/map.jpg"><img src="images/map-thumbnail.jpg" width="225" height="300" alt="Map"></a>
+<p class="caption">MAP SHOWING THE DATES OF INCORPORATION OF THE PROVINCES INTO THE
+KINGDOM OF FRANCE.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77058 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77058
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77058)