Louis XII of France

“ His health was ruined by debauchery in Italy, repeated in France; and yet, towards the end of his reign, he not merely introduced Italian arts, but attempted to reform the State, to rule prudently, to solace the poor; wherefore, when he died in 1498, the people lamented him greatly, for he had been kindly and affable, brave also on the battle-field; and much is forgiven to a king.
His children died before him, so that Louis d'Orleans, his cousin, was nearest heir to the throne, and succeeded as Louis XII. By his accession in 1498 he reunited the fief of Orleans County to the Crown ”

“ Then there was Louis XII., the ‘Most Christian’ King of France, laying claim to a great part of Italy, pushing his influence and power so far as to strike terror into the minds of other princes; assuming to himself the rank of the first prince in Christendom; his chief minister aspiring to succeed Julius II. in the Papal chair; his son Francis ready to become a candidate for the Empire on the death of Maximilian. And, lastly, there was Henry VIII. of England, eager to win his spurs, and to achieve military renown at the first opportunity; reviving old obsolete claims on the crown of France ”

“ Bonhomie and goodness have never been denied to Louis XII., but Rœderer claims more, he claims ability and skill. The Italian wars, considered generally to have been mistakes, he excuses and justifies by showing them in the king’s mind as a means of useful national policy; he needed to obtain from Pope Alexander VI. the dissolution of his marriage with Jeanne de France, in order that he might marry Anne de Bretagne and so unite the duchy with the kingdom. ”

“ Louis XII. and his minister were very confident. “Take Spain, the king of the Romans, or whom you please,” said Cardinal d’Amboise to the two Florentines; “there is none who has observed and kept the alliance more faithfully than the king has; he has done everything at the moment he promised; he has borne upon his shoulders the whole weight of this affair; and I tell you,” he added, with a fixed look at those whom he was addressing, “that his army is a large one, which he will keep up and augment every day.” ”

“ In 1516, the year after Louis XII.‘s death, Andrew Trevisani, Venetian ambassador at Milan, wrote to the Venetian council, “This Duke of Bourbon handles a sword most gallantly and successfully; he fears God, he is devout, humane, and very generous; he has a revenue of one hundred and twenty thousand crowns, twenty thousand from his mother-in-law, Anne of France, and two thousand a month as constable of France; and, according to what is said by M. de Longueville, governor of Paris, he might dispose of half the king’s army for any enterprise he pleased, even if the king did not please.” ”

“ The Earl of Oxford, a clever minister, and Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest geniuses and most eloquent men of his century, were in the ascendant against the famous Duke of Marlborough, and persuaded Queen Anne to [Pg 285] make peace with Louis XIV. France having made peace with England, soon forced the other Powers to terms. Philip IV, grandson of Louis XIV, was beginning a peaceful rule over the ruins of the Spanish monarchy. The Emperor, master of Naples and Flanders, was firmly settled in his vast dominions. The only thing that Louis asked was to finish his long career in peace. ”

“ He enjoyed a genuine popularity, and in 1506 the estates of Tours conferred on him the surname of Père du Peuple. His foreign policy, which was directed wholly towards Italy, was for the most part unskilful; to his claims on Naples he added those on Milan, which he based on the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of Orleans, with Valentina Visconti. He led in person several armies into Italy, and proved as severe and pitiless towards his enemies as he was gentle and clement towards his subjects. Louis had two daughters. ”

“ Louis XII., considering how faithful an ally he had always been, ordered a large body of men at arms and infantry to his assistance, under the command of the duke of Longueville and Dunois. This war was very expensive to the king of France, for the army remained long without striking a blow. In addition to this, the English, excited by the king of Arragon, as well as by a desire to regain Guienne, which they claimed as an inheritance, made a landing near to Roncevaux and St John Pied du Port,—but not being able to effect a junction with the Spaniards, they returned [47] . ”

“ A Discourse on the History of Charles XII.
(Prefixed to the First Edition.)
Few are the princes whose lives merit a particular history. In vain have most of them been the objects of slander, or of flattery. Small is the number of those whose memory is preserved; and that number would be still more inconsiderable were none but the good remembered.
The princes who have the best claim to immortality are such as have benefited mankind. Thus, while France endures, the affection of Louis XII. for his people will ever be held in grateful remembrance. ”

“ He believed, and many others, no doubt, believed with him, that his conquest of Naples, of that portion at least which was assigned to him by his treaty with the King of Spain, was accomplished. The senate of Venice sent to him, in December, 1501, a solemn embassy to congratulate him. In giving the senate an account of his mission, one of the ambassadors, Dominic of Treviso, drew the following portrait of Louis XII.: “The king is in stature tall and thin, and temperate in eating, taking scarcely anything but boiled beef; he is by nature miserly and retentive; his great pleasure is hawking ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was with the aid of the Swiss that the pope designed to liberate Italy. He admired the valour and piety of that warlike people; he saw, with pleasure, that cupidity had become their ruling passion. The Italians, who needed the defence of the Swiss, were rich enough to pay them; and a wise policy conspired for once with avarice; for the Swiss republics could not be safe if liberty were not re-established in Italy. Louis XII, by his prejudice in favour of nobility, had offended those proud mountaineers, whom, even in his own army, he considered only as revolted peasants. ”

“ What one of us would not confide to him his life, his fortune, his honor? The man whom we should all wish as a friend, we have as King. Ah! Let us try to make him forget the sacrifices of his life! May the crown weigh lightly on the white head of this Christian Knight! Pious as Saint Louis, affable, compassionate, and just as Louis XII., courtly as Francis I., frank as Henry IV., may he be happy with all the happiness he has missed in his long past! May the throne where so many monarchs have encountered tempests, be for him a place of repose! ”

“ He succeeded in winning the support of the French court, which, however, was not difficult, as Louis XII was then very anxious for the Pope to allow him to lead his army out of Tuscany, through the States of the Church, into Naples, which he could not do without the secret consent of his Holiness. ”

“ 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 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 XIII, falsifying the pledge which he had given to [pg 230] the Queen-mother and Monsieur, had abandoned his sceptre to the grasp of an ambitious and unscrupulous minister, whose adherents, emulating the example of their sovereign, made no attempt to limit his power, or to contend against his will; while, with the sole exception of the King himself, all the royal family were leagued against an usurpation as monstrous as it was dishonouring. The sky of the courtly horizon was big with clouds, and all awaited with anxiety the outburst of the impending tempest. ”

“ Frederic Augustus, Elector of Saxony, whom neither the eloquence and schemes of the Abbé de Polignac, nor the great qualifications of the Prince of Conti, his competitor for the throne, had been able to deprive of election as King of Poland, was a prince still more famed for his courage and chivalrous ideals, than for his incredible physical strength. His court, after that of Louis XII, was second to none in Europe in distinction. There was never a prince more generous or liberal, nor one who gave with so good a grace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Louis IX appeared to be a prince destined to reform Europe, if she could have been reformed, to render France triumphant and civilized, and to be in all things a pattern for men. His piety which was that of an anchorite, did not deprive him of any kingly virtue. A wise economy took nothing from his liberality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The reign of Louis XIV is the time to which ultra-royalists refer as the golden age of France. It was, in truth, one of those periods which shine with an unnatural and delusive splendor. Concerning Louis XIV himself, the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the word, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James I would have called kingcraft—of all those arts which most advantageously display the merits of a prince and most completely hide his defects. ”

“ When Louis XIV. laid down, one September day in the year 1715, the crown which he had worn with such splendour for more than seventy years, his sceptre fell into the hands of his nephew Philippe, Duc d'Orléans, who for eight years ruled France as Regent, and as guardian of the child-King, the fifteenth Louis.
Seldom in the world's history has a reign, so splendid as that of the Sun-King, closed in such darkness and tragedy. The disastrous war of the Spanish Succession had drained France of her strength and her gold. ”

“ At the present day they are more enlightened, and would only love the sovereign whose sole desire is the happiness of his people, and such a king—the first citizens of a great nation—not Paris and its suburbs, but all France, will be eager to love and obey. As for kings like Louis XV., they have become totally impracticable ”