Louis XI

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was an adventure something like that of Louis XI, who, whilst he was dauphin, withdrew from the court of Charles VII, his father, to the duke of Burgundy. Louis was, indeed, much more culpable than the czarevitch, by marrying in direct opposition to his father, raising troops, and seeking refuge with a prince, his father’s natural enemy, and never returning to court, not even at the king’s repeated entreaties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Sixtus threatened Florence after the Pazzi conspiracy, 1478, Louis aided Lorenzo dei Medici to form an alliance with Naples, which forced the papacy to come to terms.
More than any other king of France, Louis XI. was a “bourgeois king.” The upper bourgeois, the aristocracy of his “good cities,” were his allies both against the nobles and against the artisan class, whenever they revolted, driven to desperation by the oppressive royal taxes which furnished the money for his wars or diplomacy. He ruled like a modern capitalist ”

“ None of his contemporaries, even the most hostile to Louis XI., and even amongst those who, at the states- general held in 1484, one of them after his death, raised their voices against the trial of the Duke of Nemours, and in favor of his children, has made any mention of this pretended atrocity. Amongst the men who have reigned and governed ably, Louis XI. is one of those who could be most justly taxed with cruel indifference when cruelty might be useful to him ”

“ The king, he said of Louis XI., is always ready. He wanted to provide his future sovereignty with organs analogous Charles the Bold’s imperial dreams. to those of France; a permanent army, and a judiciary and financial administration modelled on the French parlement and exchequer. Since he could not dismember the kingdom of France, his only course was to reconstitute the ancient kingdom of Lotharingia; while the conquest of the principality of Liége and of the duchy of Gelderland, and the temporary occupation of Alsace, pledged to him by Sigismund of Austria, made him greedy for Germany. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. THE HIDDEN TREASURE
Louis XI. was fond of intervening in the affairs of his subjects, and he was always ready to mingle his royal majesty with the burgher life. This taste, severely blamed by some historians, was really only a passion for the “incognito,” one of the greatest pleasures of princes,—a sort of momentary abdication, which enables them to put a little real life into their existence, made insipid by the lack of opposition. Louis XI., however, played the incognito openly. ”

“ On three different occasions (in 1465, 1467 and 1472) , Louis XI.’s own brother, the duke of Berry, urged by the duke of Brittany, the count of Charolais, the duke of Bourbon, and the other feudal lords, attempted to set up six kingdoms in France instead of one, and to impose upon Louis XI. a regency which should give them enormous pensions. ”

“ But Louis XI.‘s deliverance after his quasi-captivity at Peronne, and the new treaty he had concluded with Duke Charles, were and could be only a temporary break in the struggle between these two princes, destined as they were, both by character and position, to irremediable incompatibility. They were too powerful and too different to live at peace when they were such close neighbors, and when their relations were so complicated. ”

“ For Louis XI., partly afraid of injuring the delicate constitution of his only heir, and partly remembering his own dangerous and rebellious childhood, denied any solid education to his son. He never saw the boy, leaving him for years at a time to grow up as best he might alone with his mother at Amboise. “Let the body grow strong first,” said the King; “the mind will look to itself.” And, according to tradition, the sole food 249that he provided for the eager mind of his son was one single Latin maxim: Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare. ”

“ The work of Louis XI. had been nearly lost in the depth of the troubles of the sixteenth century; and that of Henry IV. was compromised by fifteen years of disorder and weakness. To save it from perishing, three things were necessary: that the high nobility should be constrained to obedience to the king and to the law; that Protestantism should cease to be an armed party in the State; that France should be able to choose her allies freely in behalf of her own interest and in that of European independence. ”

“ Speaking in a very general manner, we may say that by the close of the war Feudalism in France was over, and that France had become, partly in spite of the war but more largely by reason of it, not only a great monarchy, but a great nation.
Louis XI. and Charles the Bold of Burgundy.—The foundations of the French monarchy were greatly enlarged and strengthened by the unscrupulous measures of Louis XI. (1461–1483) , who was a perfect Ulysses in cunning and deceit. His maxim was, " He who knows how to deceive, knows how to reign." ”

“ 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. ”

“ To a total want of scruple, or, it would appear, of any sense whatever of moral obligation, Louis XI added great natural firmness and sagacity of character, with a system of policy so highly refined, considering the times he lived in, that he sometimes overreached himself by giving way to its dictates.
Probably there is no portrait so dark as to be without its softer shades. He understood the interests of France, and faithfully pursued them so long as he could identify them with his own. He carried the country safe through the dangerous crisis of the war termed “for the public good;” ”

“ I told him of my studies in history, and of grandmother’s opinions, which I shared.
“See, child,” he said to me, “you and your [111] grandmother have every reason to admire Louis XI. and Louis XIII., because you both think that under their reigns the nobles were cast down; whereas, they only changed their own condition vis-à-vis to royalty. They became courtiers; they were domesticated by the kings, but they remained much as they were towards the bourgeoisie and the people; they kept the same distance between themselves and their inferiors as the sovereigns had kept with them. ”

“ Thus wrote Louis XI in June. Two days later and he has heard of the truce. He seizes the occasion to express to the Privy Council of Berne his real opinion of the emperor: "So Frederic has deserted us all!"2 Well, it was not the first time! Thirty years previous, when Louis was dauphin, the emperor had tried to turn the Swiss against him. Had not God, knowing the hearts of men, inspired the brave mountaineers, Louis would have been a victim of execrable treachery. ”

“ The government is as a rule in the hands of a comparatively small number of well-to-do bourgeois, who support the King's authority, and from whom is drawn the most efficient class of financiers and administrators. In time of need they help the King with loans and exceptional gifts. Many of the towns are exempt from faille, but the aides fall heavily upon them. Louis XI continued on the same lines. He granted abundant privileges to towns-fairs, markets, nobility to their officers, and the right of purchasing noble fiefs. ”

“ Later on, however, they affected, on the contrary, the greatest generosity towards the vassals who wished to incorporate themselves, when they had understood that these institutions might become powerful auxiliaries against the great titulary feudalists; but from the reign of Louis XI., when the power of the nobles was much diminished, and no longer inspired any terror to royalty, the kings turned against their former allies, the middle classes, and deprived them successively of all the prerogatives which could prejudice the rights of the Crown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The public calamities were charged to the man, not to the monarchy. I know not in all history a king more beloved, more venerated, more adored as king and independently of his personal qualities, than was Louis XV. A child at first, then a young man, without other personal merit than that of leaving Cardinal de Fleury to govern, Louis XV., during twenty years, gathered in peace the fruits of royalty. More humane than Louis XIV. ”

“ Louis XIII. followed his great minister quickly to the grave, and during the minority of his young son, Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, the queen-mother, who was entirely devoted to Mazarin, became regent, and the policy of aggrandisement at the expense of the Austro-Spanish House was vigorously carried on. Within a few months of the accession of the young king, his reign was graced by the most splendid success which had attended the arms of France since the capture of Calais by the duke of Guise. ”

“ There, instead, absolute monarchy in Europe reached its most complete triumph during the long reigns of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and Louis XV (1715-74) , and the splendor of the court life of France captivated all Europe and served to hide the misery which made the splendor possible. There the power of the nobles had been completely broken, and the power of the parliaments completely destroyed. "I am the State," exclaimed Louis XIV, and the almost unlimited despotism of the King and his ministers and favorites fully supported the statement. ”

“ It was the peculiarity of the government of Louis XIV., arising from this fortuitous, but to him fortunate combination of circumstances, that it united the distinctions of rank, family attachments, and ancient ideas of feudal times, with the vigour and efficiency of monarchical government, and the lustre and brilliancy of literary glory. Such a combination could not, in the nature of things, last long; it must soon work out its own destruction. ”