Louis VI of France

“ The acknowledgment of the free cities by Louis VI., was the first move toward an alliance between the king and the people; an alliance which would eventually wrest the power from the hands of the nobles. But that end was still far off. Another accession to the kingly power came in the succeeding reign when Louis VII. married Eleanor, daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine; and her great inheritance, the largest of the feudal states, was thereby annexed to the crown: a marriage which made some troublesome chapters in the history of two kingdoms, of which we shall hear later. ”

“ However, the royal authority had begun to be respected by 1137, when Louis VI. died, having just effected the marriage of his son, Louis VII., with Eleanor, the heiress of the Dukes of Aquitaine—thus hoping to make the crown really more powerful than the great princes who owed it homage. At this time lived the great St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a wonderful influence over men's minds. ”

“ In art and in literature, the great period, which is usually called by the king’s name, had in some respects passed its zenith when he began to reign. But France was unquestionably the first state in Europe both in arms and arts, and within France the authority of the king was practically undisputed. The nation, proud of its pre-eminence and weary of civil war, saw in the king its true representative and the guarantee of its unity and success. Louis was singularly well fitted by his physical and intellectual gifts for the rôle of Grand Monarque and he played it to perfection. ”

“ To the westward of him a far subtler monarch, by far subtler means, was strengthening the power of France and making smooth her way toward that supremacy over European affairs which she was later to assert. Louis XI (1461-1483) is called the first modern king, though it is little flattery to modern statecraft to compare its methods with his, and perhaps our recent governments have truly outgrown them. Louis was no warrior, although under compulsion he showed possibilities of becoming an able general. ”

“ As it came in sight the people cried with one voice, "Long live the law! Long live the Nation!" Then the storm broke over Paris, and amidst such exclamations, mingled with the crashing of thunder, Louis XVI entered as a prisoner the palace of his fathers.
Such was the blindness of the Assembly in its bourgeois egotism, in its mistrust of the people, in its absurd hatred of republican government, that it still thought to impose upon France the authority of this King, disgraced, despised even by his own partisans, and convicted of perjury, treason, and conspiracy with the foreigner. ”

“ From here the boy merges into the man, and we must leave him. Strong of purpose, clear-headed and masterful, Louis the Fourteenth ruled as King of France for seventy-two years—the most powerful monarch in Christendom. Handsome in person, majestic in bearing, dignified, lavish, and proud; ruling France in one of the most splendid periods of its history—a period styled "the Augustan age" of France; flattered, feared, and absolutely obeyed, one would think, boys and girls, that so powerful a monarch must have been a happy man. ”

“ If a patent of nobility was a pretty good passport to the scaffold, good service in a town council was an open door to elevation.
So, judged by results, Louis XI. was a better king than many a better man had been. He buried the ideals of the past fathoms deep and then stamped them down with remorseless feet. He demolished the political structure of mediaevalism in his kingdom, and when his terrible reign was ended, in 1483, the Middle Ages had passed away and modern life had begun in France. ”

“ By the defeat he inflicted on the great vassals, the favor he showed the middle classes, and the use he had the sense to make of this new social force, he contributed powerfully to the formation of the French nation, and to its unity under a national government. Feudal society had not an idea of how to form itself into a nation, or discipline its forces under one head; Louis XI. proved its political weakness, determined its fall, and labored to place in its stead France and monarchy. Herein are the great facts of his reign, and the proofs of his superior mind. ”

“ Louis of France is as clear a figure as any in the Middle Ages. From all sides his life is known. We see him as a painstaking sovereign meting out even justice, and maintaining his royal rights against feudal turbulence and also against ecclesiastical encroachment. During his reign the monarchy of France continues to advance in power and repute. And yet there was no jot of worldly wisdom, and scant consideration of a realm sorely needing its ruler, in the Quixotic religious devotion which drew him twice across the sea on crusades unparalleled in their foolishness. ”

“ But the king’s shrewdness triumphed before long over his vengeance, and the more serviceable of the officers of Charles VII. were for the most part soon reinstated, Louis’ advisers were mostly men of the middle class. He had a ready purse for men of talent, drawing them from England, Scotland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Such a motley throng of competent men had never before been seen at the court of France. Their origin, their previous crimes or virtues, their avarice or brutality, were indifferent to him so long as they served him loyally. ”

“ After the fall of the Bastille, he wrote to the Duke of Leeds that “the greatest Revolution that we know of has been effected with, comparatively speaking, ... the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country, the King as a very limited monarch, and the nobility as reduced to a level with the rest of the nation.” He described the tactful visit of Louis XVI to Paris on 17th July as the most humiliating step he could possibly take. “He was actually led in triumph like a tame bear by the deputies and the city militia.” ”

“ Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyed his work by a colossal blunder, although circumstances seemed much in his favour. Germany and England, the two powers especially to be dreaded, were busy with Louis VII. the Young (1137-1180) . internal troubles and quarrels of succession. On the other hand, thanks to his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis’s own domains had been increased by the greater part of the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees; while his father’s minister, the monk Suger, continued to assist him with his moderation and prudence. ”

“ THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV The brilliant reign of the French king cast its spell upon the rest of Europe. Kings and princes looked to Louis as the model of what a king should be and set themselves to imitate the splendor of his court. During this period the French language, manners, dress, art, literature, and science became the accepted standards of good society in all civilized lands. France still retains in large measure the preeminent position which she secured under the "Grand Monarch." ”

“ They had not the resources possessed by the poorer scions of the British nobility, who are free now to act as directors of public companies, stock-brokers, wine merchants, or railway managers; who may own collieries, or hansom cabs, or breed cattle without loss of caste or privilege.
As to the king, Louis XVI., he was a man of no decision of character, incapable of reading the signs of the times, or of realizing that the future of the monarchy, of France itself, depended on the reforms required in the State. ”

“ A great and terrible prince, Louis XI. failed in having little or no constructive power; he was strong to throw down the older society, he built little in its room. Most serious of all was his action with respect to the district of the River Somme, at that time the northern frontier of France. The towns there had been handed over to Philip of Burgundy by the Treaty of Arras, with a stipulation that the Crown might ransom them at any time, and this Louis succeeded in doing in 1463. ”

“ It is beyond the scope of the present work to describe the successful achievement of Louis' policy of concentrating the whole government in himself as absolute sovereign of France, by the overthrow of feudalism and the subjection of the great nobles with their almost royal power and state. ”

“ Peter. Pope Innocent III. and Abbot Suger were his disciples. Prelates, princes, and monarchs glorified themselves in following his counsels, believing that God spoke by his mouth.
When the ambassadors from the East arrived in Europe, Louis VII. had just ascended the throne of France. The reign of this young monarch began under the most happy auspices. Most of the great vassals who had revolted against the royal authority had laid down their arms and renounced their pretensions. By a marriage with the daughter of William IX., Louis had added the duchy of Aquitaine to his kingdom. ”

“ The interests of the time required that France should forego all ambitions foreign to herself in order to consolidate herself; that she should sacrifice the south in order to insure the north; that she should also sacrifice the aristocracy to the people; and Louis XI., who, as a prince, had paid so dear for his adherence to the rights of the nobles, became the monarch who more than any other was governed by men of low and base condition—who more than any other oppressed and resisted the pride of feudalism. ”

“ Made dubious by this balance between evils, Europe abandoned the war. So there were two Bourbon kingdoms after all—but both too exhausted to be dangerous.
Louis had indeed outlived his fame. He had roused the opposition of all his neighbors, and ruined France in the effort to extend her greatness. The praises and flattery of his earlier years reached him now only from the lips of a few determined courtiers. His people hated him, and in 1715 celebrated his death as a release. Frenchmen high and low had begun the career which ended in their terrific Revolution. ”

“ He forced the clergy to pay long-neglected feudal dues, and intrigued against the great houses of Anjou and Orleans in Italy. The malcontent nobles soon began to plan revolt. Discharged officers of Charles VII. like Jean Dunois and John II. duke of Bourbon, stirred up hostility to the new men of the king, and Francis II. duke of Brittany was soon embroiled with Louis over an attempt to assert royal control over that practically independent duchy. ”

“ Moreover, the most all-pervading and obtrusive of French monarchs was succeeded by the most retiring, the one most ready of all to let the world take what course it would. Louis XV chanced to reign during this entire period, from 1715 to 1774, and that is equivalent to saying that France, which had become the chief state of Europe, was ungoverned, was only robbed and bullied for the support of a [Pg xiv] profligate court. So long as citizens paid taxes, they might think—and say—wellnigh what they pleased. ”

“ Indeed, could Louis XVI. have foreseen—when, in order not to expose the character of his predecessor and to honour the dignity of the throne and monarchy of France, he destroyed the papers of his grandfather—what an arm of strength he would have possessed in preserving them, against the accusers of his unfortunate Queen and himself, he never could have thrown away such means of establishing a most honourable contrast between his own and former reigns. His career exhibits no superfluous expenditure. Its economy was most rigid. No sovereign was ever more scrupulous with the public money. ”

“ When Louis XI dismissed from the court those faithful nobles and distinguished citizens, who had stood by his father and saved the monarch and his throne in the hour of adversity, and filled their places with men taken from the lowest and meanest condition of life, with no other merit than that possessed by the eunuch guard of the Medio-Persian monarch, of adhering to the king, because despised by all the world besides, he conquered, for the time at least, the virtue, the chivalry, the real greatness of France. ”

“ Louis XV. was great in all things, and he would have had no faults if flattery had not forced them upon him. But how could he possibly have supposed himself faulty in anything when everyone around him repeated constantly that he was the best of kings? A king, in the opinion of which he was imbued respecting his own person, was a being of a nature by far too superior to ordinary men for him not to have the right to consider himself akin to a god. ”

“ Charles the Dauphin was engaged to marry the little Margaret, Maximilian's daughter, and as her dower she was to bring Franche Comte and sundry places on the border line disputed between the two princes. In these last days Louis XI. shut himself up in gloomy seclusion in his castle of Plessis near Tours, and there he died in 1483. A great king and a terrible one, he has left an indellible mark on the history of France, for he was the founder of France in its later form, as an absolute monarchy ruled with little regard to its own true welfare. ”

“ Upon the death of the duke, Louis, without clear right, seized a great part of his dominions, which were almost large and rich enough to sustain the dignity of a king. By inheritance and treaty, Louis also gained large accessions of territory in the South of France, which gave his kingdom a wide frontage upon the Mediterranean, and made the Pyrenees its southern defence. ”

“ A weak, hypochondriac prince, putting his kingdom under the protection of the Virgin, after assassinating the favorites of his mother, he possessed no other merit than that of allowing himself to be governed by Richelieu. Louis XIV., with a proud genius and true kingly qualities, united gallantry to bigotry, and we shall have occasion to see that in his strange compromises with his conscience, the more scandal he occasioned to his court by his licentiousness, the more he made it a point to edify it by his severity against the Reformed. ”