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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 ***
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-05-10 17:40:43 +0000