In March, 1435, the Duke of Burgundy went to Paris, taking with him his third wife, Isabel of Portugal, and a magnificent following. There were seen, moreover, in his train, a hundred wagons laden with artillery, armor, salted provisions, cheeses, and wines of Burgundy. There was once more joy in Paris, and the duke received the most affectionate welcome. The university was represented before him, and made him a great speech on the necessity of peace. Two days afterwards a deputation from the city dames of Paris waited upon the Duchess of Burgundy, and implored her to use her influence for the re-establishment of peace. She answered, "My good friends, it is the thing I desire most of all in the world; I pray for it night and day to the Lord our God, for I believe that we all have great need of it, and I know for certain that my lord and husband has the greatest willingness to give up to that purpose his person and his substance." At the bottom of his soul Duke Philip's decision was already taken. He had but lately discussed the condition of France with the constable, De Richemont, and Duke Charles of Bourbon, his brother-in-law, whom he had summoned to Nevers with that design. Being convinced of the necessity for peace, he spoke of it to the King of England's advisers whom he found in Paris, and who dared not show absolute opposition to it. It was agreed that in the month of July a general, and, more properly speaking, a European conference should meet at Arras, that the legates of Pope Eugenius IV. should be invited to it, and that consultation should be held thereat as to the means of putting an end to the sufferings of the two kingdoms.

Towards the end of July, accordingly, whilst the war was being prosecuted with redoubled ardor on both sides at the very gates of Paris, there arrived at Arras the pope's legates and the ambassadors of the Emperor Sigismund, of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark, and of the Dukes of Brittany and Milan. The university of Paris and many of the good towns of France, Flanders, and even Holland, had sent their deputies thither. Many bishops were there in person. The Bishop of Liege came thither with a magnificent train, mounted, says the chroniclers, on two hundred white horses. The Duke of Burgundy made his entrance on the 30th of July, escorted by three hundred archers wearing his livery. All the lords who happened to be in the city went to meet him at a league's distance, except the cardinal-legates of the pope, who confined themselves to sending their people. Two days afterwards arrived the ambassadors of the King of France, having at their head the Duke of Bourbon and the constable De Richemont, together with several of the greatest French lords, and a retinue of four or five hundred persons. Duke Philip, forewarned of their coming, issued from the city with all the princes and lords who happened to be there. The English alone refused to accompany him, wondering at his showing such great honor to the ambassadors of their common enemy. Philip went forward a mile to meet his two brothers-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon and the Count de Richemont, embraced them affectionately, and turned back with them into Arras, amidst the joy and acclamations of the populace. Last of all arrived the Duchess of Burgundy, magnificently dressed, and bringing with her her young son, the Count of Charolais, who was hereafter to be Charles the Rash. The Duke of Bourbon, the constable De Richemont, and all the lords were on horseback around her litter; but the English, who had gone, like the others, to meet her, were unwilling, on turning back to Arras, to form a part of her retinue with the French.

Grand as was the sight, it was not superior in grandeur to the event on the eve of accomplishment. The question was whether France should remain a great nation, in full possession of itself and of its independence under a French king, or whether the King of England should, in London and with the title of King of France, have France in his possession and under his government. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was called upon to solve this problem of the future, that is to say, to decide upon the fate of his lineage and his country.



As soon as the conference was opened, and no matter what attempts were made to veil or adjourn the question, it was put nakedly. The English, instead of peace, began by proposing a long truce, and the marriage of Henry VI. with a daughter of King Charles. The French ambassadors refused, absolutely, to negotiate on this basis; they desired a definitive peace; and their conditions were, that the King and people of England making an end of this situation, so full of clanger for the whole royal house, and of suffering for the people. Nevertheless, the duke showed strong scruples. The treaties he had sworn to, the promises he had made, threw him into a constant fever of anxiety; he would not have any one able to say that he had in any respect forfeited his honor. He asked for three consultations, one with the Italian doctors connected with the pope's legates, another with English doctors, and another with French doctors. He was granted all three, though they were more calculated to furnish him with arguments, each on their own side, than to dissipate his doubts, if he had any real ones. The legates ended by solemnly saying to him, "We do conjure you, by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the authority of our holy father, the pope, of the holy council assembled at Bale, and of the universal Church, to renounce that spirit of vengeance whereby you are moved against King Charles in memory of the late Duke John, your father; nothing can render you more pleasing in the eyes of God, or further augment your fame in this world." For three days Duke Philip remained still undecided; but he heard that the Duke of Bedford, regent of France on behalf of the English, who was his brother-in-law, had just died at Rouen, on the 14th of September. He was, besides the late King of England, Henry V., the only English-man who had received promises from the duke, and who lived in intimacy with him. Ten days afterwards, on the 21th of September, the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, also died at Paris; and thus another of the principal causes of shame to the French kingship, and misfortune to France, disappeared from the stage of the world. Duke Philip felt himself more free and more at rest in his mind, if not rightfully, at any rate so far as political and worldly expedience was concerned. He declared his readiness to accept the proposals which had been communicated to him by the ambassadors of Charles VII.; and on the 21st of September, 1435, peace was signed at Arras between France and Burgundy, without any care for what England might say or do.

There was great and general joy in France. It was peace, and national reconciliation as well; Dauphinizers and Burgundians embraced in the streets; the Burgundians were delighted at being able to call themselves Frenchmen. Charles VII. convoked the states-general at Tours, to consecrate this alliance. On his knees, upon the bare stone, before the Archbishop of Crete, who had just celebrated mass, the king laid his hands upon the Gospels, and swore the peace, saying that "It was his duty to imitate the King of kings, our divine Saviour, who had brought peace amongst men." At the chancellor's order, the princes and great lords, one after the other, took the oath; the nobles and the people of the third estate swore the peace all together, with cries of "Long live the king! Long live the Duke of Burgundy!" "With this hand," said Sire de Lannoy, "I have thrice sworn peace during this war; but I call God to witness that, for my part, this time it shall be kept, and that never will I break it (the peace)." Charles VII., in his emotion, seized the hands of Duke Philip's ambassadors, saying, "For a long while I have languished for this happy day; we must thank God for it." And the Te Deum was intoned with enthusiasm.

Peace was really made amongst Frenchmen; and, in spite of many internal difficulties and quarrels, it was not broken as long as Charles VII. and Duke Philip the Good were living. But the war with the English went on incessantly. They still possessed several of the finest provinces of France; and the treaty of Arras, which had weakened them very much on the Continent, had likewise made them very angry. For twenty-six years, from 1435 to 1461, hostilities continued between the two kingdoms, at one time actively and at another slackly, with occasional suspension by truce, but without any formal termination. There is no use in recounting the details of their monotonous and barren history. Governments and people often persist in maintaining their quarrels and inflicting mutual injuries by the instrumentality of events, acts, and actors that deserve nothing but oblivion. There is no intention here of dwelling upon any events or persons save such as have, for good or for evil, to its glory or its sorrow, exercised a considerable influence upon the condition and fortune of France.

The peace of Arras brought back to the service of France and her king the constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, whom the jealousy of George de la Tremoille and the distrustful indolence of Charles VII. had so long kept out of it. By a somewhat rare privilege, he was in reality, there is reason to suppose, superior to the name he has left behind him in history; and it is only justice to reproduce here the portrait given of him by one of his contemporaries who observed him closely and knew him well. "Never a man of his time," says William Gruet, "loved justice more than he, or took more pains to do it according to his ability. Never was prince more humble, more charitable, more compassionate, more liberal, less avaricious, or more open-handed in a good fashion and without prodigality. He was a proper man, chaste and brave as prince can be; and there was none of his time of better conduct than lie in conducting a great battle, or a great siege, and all sorts of approaches in all sorts of ways. Every day, once at least in the four and twenty hours, his conversation was of war, and he took more pleasure in it than in aught else. Above all things he loved men of valor and good renown, and he more than any other loved and supported the people, and freely did good to poor mendicants and others of God's poor."

Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful again, confirm the truth of this portrait. His first thought and his first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king. The unhappy city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and ruin. "The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it," says an eye-witness, "twenty-four thousand houses empty." The Duke of Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted to supply the Parisians with bread and amusements (panem et circenses); but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy. In 1425, there was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance of Death: Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them dance. In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people. "Four blind men, armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock. They had to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another." The constable resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital of France. In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there and plundered the church. He at once gave orders to march. The Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and would not mount. Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun to St. Denis. "You know the country?" said the constable to Marshal Isle-Adam. "Yes, my lord," answered the other; "and by my faith, in the position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them, though you had ten thousand fighting men." "Ah! but we will," replied Richemont; "God will help us. Keep pressing forward to support the skirmishers." And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English. The population of Paris, being informed of this success, were greatly moved and encouraged. One brave burgess of Paris, Michel Laillier, master of the exchequer, notified to the constable, it is said, that they were ready and quite able to open one of the gates to him, provided that an engagement were entered into in the king's name for a general amnesty and the prevention of all disorder. The constable, on the king's behalf, entered into the required engagement, and presented himself the next day, the 13th of April, with a picked force before the St. Michel gate. The enterprise was discovered. A man posted on the wall made signs to them with his hat, crying out, "Go to the other gate; there's no opening this; work is going on for you in the Market-quarter." The picked force followed the course of the ramparts up to the St. Jacques gate. "Who goes there?" demanded some burghers who had the guard of it. "Some of the constable's people." He himself came up on his big charger, with satisfaction and courtesy in his mien. Some little time was required for opening the gate; a long ladder was let down; and Marshal Isle-Adam was the first to mount, and planted on the wall the standard of France. The fastenings of the drawbridge were burst, and when it was let down, the constable made his entry on horseback, riding calmly down St. Jacques Street, in the midst of a joyous and comforted crowd. "My good friends," he said to them, "the good King Charles, and I on his behalf, do thank you a hundred thousand times for yielding up to him so quietly the chief city of his kingdom. If there be amongst you any, of whatsoever condition he may be, who hath offended against my lord 'the king, all is forgiven, in the case both of the absent and the present."



Then he caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet throughout the streets that none of his people should be so bold, on pain of hanging, as to take up quarters in the house of any burgher against his will, or to use any reproach whatever, or do the least displeasure to any. At sight of the public joy, the English had retired to the Bastille, where the constable was disposed to besiege them. "My lord," said the burghers to him, "they will surrender; do not reject their offer; it is so far a fine thing enough to have thus recovered Paris; often, on the contrary, many constables and many marshals have been driven out of it. Take contentedly what God hath granted you." The burghers' prediction was not unverified. The English sallied out of the Bastille by the gate which opened on the fields, and went and took boat in the rear of the Louvre. Next day abundance of provisions arrived in Paris; and the gates were opened to the country folks. The populace freely manifested their joy at being rid of the English. "It was plain to see," was the saving, "that they were not in France to remain; not one of them had been seen to sow a field with corn or build a house; they destroyed their quarters without a thought of repairing them; they had not restored, peradventure, a single fireplace. There was only their regent, the Duke of Bedford, who was fond of building and making the poor people work; he would have liked peace; but the nature of those English is to be always at war with their neighbors, and accordingly they all made a bad end; thank God there have already died in France more than seventy thousand of them."

Up to the taking of Paris by the constable the Duke of Burgundy had kept himself in reserve, and had maintained a tacit neutrality towards England; he had merely been making, without noisy demonstration, preparations for an enterprise in which he, as Count of Flanders, was very much interested. The success of Richemont inspired him with a hope, and perhaps with a jealous desire, of showing his power and his patriotism as a Frenchman by making war, in his turn, upon the English, from whom he had by the treaty of Arras effected only a pacific separation. In June, 1436, he went and besieged Calais. This was attacking England at one of the points she was bent upon defending most obstinately. Philip had reckoned on the energetic cooperation of the cities of Flanders, and at the first blush the Flemings did display a strong inclination to support him in his enterprise. "When the English," they said, "know that my lords of Ghent are on the way to attack them with all their might they will not await us; they will leave the city and flee away to England." Neither the Flemings nor Philip had correctly estimated the importance which was attached in London to the possession of Calais. When the Duke of Gloucester, lord-protector of England, found this possession threatened, he sent a herald to defy the Duke of Burgundy and declare to him that, if he did not wait for battle beneath the walls of Calais, Humphrey of Gloucester would go after him even into his own dominions. "Tell your lord that he will not need to take so much trouble, and that he will find me here," answered Philip proudly. His pride was over-confident. Whether it were only a people's fickleness or intelligent appreciation of their own commercial interests in their relations with England, the Flemings grew speedily disgusted with the siege of Calais, complained of the tardiness in arrival of the fleet which Philip had despatched thither to close the port against English vessels, and, after having suffered several reverses by sorties of the English garrison, they ended by retiring with such precipitation that they abandoned part of their supplies and artillery. Philip, according to the expression of M. Henri Martin, was reduced to covering their retreat with his cavalry; and then he went away sorrowfully to Lille, to advise about the means of defending his Flemish lordships exposed to the reprisals of the English.

Thus the fortune of Burgundy was tottering whilst that of France was recovering itself. The constable's easy occupation of Paris led the majority of the small places in the neighborhood, St. Denis, Chevreuse, Marcoussis, and Montlhery to decide either upon spontaneous surrender or allowing themselves to be taken after no great resistance. Charles VII., on his way through France to Lyon, in Dauphiny, Languedoc, Auvergne, and along the Loire, recovered several other towns, for instance, Chateau- Landon, Nemours, and Charny. He laid siege in person to Montereau, an important military post with which a recent and sinister reminiscence was connected. A great change now made itself apparent in the king's behavior and disposition. He showed activity and vigilance, and was ready to expose himself without any care for fatigue or danger. On the day of the assault (10th of October, 1437) he went down into the trenches, remained there in water up to his waist, mounted the scaling- ladder sword in hand, and was one of the first assailants who penetrated over the top of the walls right into the place. After the surrender of the castle as well as the town of Montereau, he marched on Paris, and made his solemn re-entry there on the 12th of November, 1437, for the first time since in 1418 Tanneguy-Duchatel had carried him away, whilst still a child, wrapped in his bed-clothes. Charles was received and entertained as became a recovered and a victorious king; but he passed only three weeks there, and went away once more, on the 3d of December, to go and resume at Orleans first, and then at Bourges, the serious cares of government. It is said to have been at this royal entry into Paris that Agnes Sorel or Soreau, who was soon to have the name of Queen of Beauty, and to assume in French history an almost glorious though illegitimate position, appeared with brilliancy in the train of the queen, Mary of Anjou, to whom the king had appointed her a maid of honor. It is a question whether she did not even then exercise over Charles VII. that influence, serviceable alike to the honor of the king and of France, which was to inspire Francis I., a century later, with this gallant quatrain:

"If to win back poor captive France be aught, More honor, gentle Agnes, is thy weed, Than ere was due to deeds of virtue wrought By cloistered nun or pious hermit-breed."

It is worth while perhaps to remark that in 1437 Agnes Sorel was already twenty-seven.



One of the best informed, most impartial, and most sensible historians of that epoch, James Duclercq, merely says on this subject, King Charles, before he had peace with Duke Philip of Burgundy, led a right holy life and said his canonical hours. But after peace was made with the duke, though the king continued to serve God, he joined himself unto a young woman who was afterwards called Fair Agnes.

Nothing is gained by ignoring good even when it is found in company with evil, and there is no intention here of disputing the share of influence exercised by Agnes Sorel upon Charles VII.'s regeneration in politics and war after the treaty of Arras. Nevertheless, in spite of the king's successes at Montereau and during his passage through Central and Northern France, the condition of the country was still so bad in 1440, the disorder was so great, and the king so powerless to apply a remedy, that Richemont, disconsolate, was tempted to rid and disburden himself from the government of France and between the rivers [Seine and Loire, no doubt] and to go or send to the king for that purpose. But one day the prior of the Carthusians at Paris called on the constable and found him in his private chapel. "What need you, fair father?" asked Richemont. The prior answered that he wished to speak with my lord the constable. Richemont replied that it was he himself. "Pardon me, my lord," said the prior, "I did not know you; I wish to speak to you, if you please." "Gladly," said Richemont. "Well, my lord, you yesterday held counsel and considered about disburdening yourself from the government and office you hold hereabouts." "How know you that? Who told you?" "My lord, I do not know it through any person of your council, and do not put yourself out to learn who told me, for it was one of my brethren. My lord, do not do this thing; and be not troubled, for God will help you." "Ah! fair father, how can that be? The king has no mind to aid me or grant me men or money; and the men-at-arms hate me because I have justice done on them, and they have no mind to obey me." "My lord, they will do what you desire; and the king will give you orders to go and lay siege to Meaux, and will send you men and money." "Ah! fair father, Meaux is so strong! How can it be done? The King of England was there for nine months before it." "My lord, be not you troubled; you will not be there so long; keep having good hope in God and He will help you. Be ever humble and grow not proud; you will take Meaux ere long; your men will grow proud; they will then have somewhat to suffer; but you will come out of it to your honor."

The good prior was right. Meaux was taken; and when the constable went to tell the news at Paris the king made him "great cheer." There was a continuance of war to the north of the Loire; and amidst many alternations of successes and reverses the national cause made great way there. Charles resolved, in 1442, to undertake an expedition to the south of the Loire, in Aquitaine, where the English were still dominant; and he was successful. He took from the English Tartas, Saint-Sever, Marmande, La Reole, Blaye, and Bourg-sur-Mer. Their ally, Count John d'Armagnac, submitted to the King of France. These successes cost Charles VII. the brave La Hire, who died at Montauban of his wounds. On returning to Normandy, where he had left Dunois, Charles, in 1443, conducted a prosperous campaign there. The English leaders were getting weary of a war without any definite issue; and they had proposals made to Charles for a truce, accompanied with a demand on the part of their young king, Henry VI., for the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, daughter of King Rena, who wore the three crowns of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, without possessing any one of the kingdoms. The truce and the marriage were concluded at Tours, in 1444. Neither of the arrangements was popular in England; the English people, who had only a far-off touch of suffering from the war, considered that their government made too many concessions to France. In France, too, there was some murmuring; the king, it was said, did not press his advantages with sufficient vigor; everybody was in a hurry to see all Aquitaine reconquered. "But a joy that was boundless and impossible to describe," says Thomas Bazin, the most intelligent of the contemporary historians, "spread abroad through the whole population of the Gauls. Having been a prey for so long to incessant terrors, and shut up within the walls of their towns like convicts in a prison, they rejoiced like people restored to freedom after a long and bitter slavery. Companies of both sexes were seen going forth into the country and visiting temples or oratories dedicated to the saints, to pay the vows which they had made in their distress. One fact especially was admirable and the work of God Himself: before the truce so violent had been the hatred between the two sides, both men-at-arms and people, that none, whether soldier or burgher, could without risk to life go out and pass from one place to another unless under the protection of a safe-conduct. But, so soon as the truce was proclaimed, every one went and came at pleasure, in full liberty and security, whether in the same district or in districts under divided rule; and even those who, before the proclamation of the truce, seemed to take no pleasure in anything but a savage outpouring of human blood, now took delight in the sweets of peace, and passed the days in holiday-making and dancing with enemies who but lately had been as bloodthirsty as themselves."

But for all their rejoicing at the peace, the French, king, lords, and commons, had war still in their hearts; national feelings were waking up afresh; the successes of late years had revived their hopes; and the civil dissensions which were at that time disturbing England let favorable chances peep out. Charles VII. and his advisers employed the leisure afforded by the truce in preparing for a renewal of the struggle. They were the first to begin it again; and from 1449 to 1451 it was pursued by the French king and nation with ever-increasing ardor, and with obstinate courage by the veteran English warriors astounded at no longer being victorious. Normandy and Aquitaine, which was beginning to be called Guyenne only, were throughout this period the constant and the chief theatre of war. Amongst the greatest number of fights and incidents which distinguished the three campaigns in those two provinces, the recapture of Rouen by Dunois in October, 1449, the battle of Formigny, won near Bayeux on the 15th of April, 1450, by the constable De Richemont, and the twofold capitulation of Bordeaux, first on the 28th of June, 1451, and next on the 9th of October, 1453, in order to submit to Charles VII., are the only events to which a place in history is due, for those were the days on which the question was solved touching the independence of the nation and the kingship in France. The Duke of Somerset and Lord Talbot were commanding in Rouen when Dunois presented himself beneath its walls, in hopes that the inhabitants would open the gates to him. Some burgesses, indeed, had him apprised of a certain point in the walls at which they might be able to favor the entry of the French. Dunois, at the same time making a feint of attacking in another quarter, arrived at the spot indicated with four thousand men. The archers drew up before the wall; the men-at-arms dismounted; the burgesses gave the signal, and the planting of scaling-ladders began; but when hardly as many as fifty or sixty men had reached the top of the wall the banner and troops of Talbot were seen advancing. He had been warned in time and had taken his measures. The assailants were repulsed; and Charles VII., who was just arriving at the camp, seeing the abortiveness of the attempt, went back to Pont-de-l'Arehe. But the English had no long joy of their success. They were too weak to make any effectual resistance, and they had no hope of any aid from England. Their leaders authorized the burgesses to demand of the king a safe-conduct in order to treat. The conditions offered by Charles were agreeable to the burgesses, but not to the English; and when the archbishop read them out in the hall of the mansion-house, Somerset and Talbot witnessed an outburst of joy which revealed to them all their peril. Fagots and benches at once began to rain down from the windows; the English shut themselves up precipitately in the castle, in the gate-towers, and in the great tower of the bridge; and the burgesses armed themselves and took possession during the night of the streets and the walls. Dunois, having received notice, arrived in force at the Martainville gate. The inhabitants begged him to march into the city as many men as he pleased. "It shall be as you will," said Dunois. Three hundred men-at-arms and archers seemed sufficient. Charles VII returned before Rouen; the English asked leave to withdraw without loss of life or kit; and "on condition," said the king "that they take nothing on the march without paying." "We have not the wherewithal," they answered; and the king gave them a hundred francs. Negotiations were recommenced. The king required that Harfleur and all the places in the district of Caux should be given up to him. "Ah! as for Harfleur, that cannot be," said the Duke of Somerset; "it is the first town which surrendered to our glorious king, Henry V., thirty-five years ago." There was further parley. The French consented to give up the demand for Harfleur; but they required that Talbot should remain as a hostage until the conditions were fulfilled. The English protested. At last, however, they yielded, and undertook to pay fifty thousand golden crowns to settle all accounts which they owed to the tradesmen in the city, and to give up all places in the district of Caen except Harfleur. The Duchess of Somerset and Lord Talbot remained as hostages; and on the 10th of November, 1449, Charles entered Rouen in state, with the character of a victor who knew how to use victory with moderation.

The battle of Formigny was at first very doubtful. In order to get from Valognes to Bayeux and Caen the English had to cross at the mouth of the Vire great sands which were passable only at low tide. A weak body of French under command of the Count de Clermont had orders to cut them off from this passage. The English, however, succeeded in forcing it; but just as they were taking position, with the village of Formigny to cover their rear, the constable De Richemont was seen coming up with three thousand men in fine order. The English were already strongly intrenched, when the battle began. "Let us go and look close in their faces, admiral," said the constable to Sire de Coetivi. "I doubt whether they will leave their intrenchments," replied the admiral. "I vow to God that with His grace they will not abide in them," rejoined the constable; and he gave orders for the most vigorous assault. It lasted nearly three hours; the English were forced to fly at three points, and lost thirty-seven hundred men; several of their leaders were made prisoners; those who were left retired in good order; Bayeux, Avranches, Caen, Falaise, and Cherbourg fell one after the other into the hands of Charles VII.; and by the end of August, 1450, the whole of Normandy had been completely won back by France.

The conquest of Guyenne, which was undertaken immediately after that of Normandy, was at the outset more easy and more speedy. Amongst the lords of Southern France several hearty patriots, such as John of Blois, Count of Perigord, and Arnold Amanieu, Sire d'Albret, of their own accord began the strife, and on the 1st of November, 1450, inflicted a somewhat severe reverse upon the English, near Blanquefort. In the spring of the following year Charles VII. authorized the Count of Armagnac to take the field, and sent Dunois to assume the command-in-chief. An army of twenty thousand men mustered under his orders; and, in the course of May, 1451, some of the principal places of Guyenne, such as St. Emillon, Blaye, Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Libourne, and Dax were taken by assault or capitulated. Bordeaux and Bayonne held out for some weeks; but, on the 12th of June, a treaty concluded between the Bordelese and Dunois secured to the three estates of the district the liberties and privileges which they had enjoyed under English supremacy; and it was further stipulated that, if by the 24th of June the city had not been succored by English forces, the estates of Guyenne should recognize the sovereignty of King Charles. When the 24th of June came, a herald went up to one of the towers of the castle and shouted, "Succor from the King of England for them of Bordeaux!!" None replied to this appeal; so Bordeaux surrendered, and on the 29th of June Dunois took possession of it in the name of the King of France. The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the 6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar treaty. Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still had a considerable following there. They had held it for three centuries; and they had always treated it well in respect of local liberties, agriculture, and commerce. Charles VII., on recovering it, was less wise. He determined to establish there forthwith the taxes, the laws, and the whole regimen of Northern France; and the Bordelese were as prompt in protesting against these measures as the king was in employing them. In August, 1452, a deputation from the three estates of the province waited upon Charles at Bourges, but did not obtain their demands. On their return to Bordeaux an insurrection was organized; and Peter de Montferrand, Sire de Lesparre, repaired to London and proposed to the English government to resume possession of Guyenne. On the 22d of October, 1452, Talbot appeared before Bordeaux with a body of five thousand men; the inhabitants opened their gates to him; and he installed himself there as lieutenant of the King of England, Henry VI. Nearly all the places in the neighborhood, with the exception of Bourg and Blaye, returned beneath the sway of the English; considerable reenforcements were sent to Talbot from England; and at the same time an English fleet threatened the coast of Normandy. But Charles VII. was no longer the blind and indolent king he had been in his youth. Nor can the prompt and effectual energy he displayed in 1453 be any longer attributed to the influence of Agnes Sorel, for she died on the 9th of February, 1450. Charles left Richemont and Dunois to hold Normandy; and, in the early days of spring, moved in person to the south of France with a strong army and the principal Gascon lords who two years previously had brought Guyenne back under his power. On the 2d of June, 1453, he opened the campaign at St. Jean-d'Angely. Several places surrendered to him as soon as he appeared before their walls; and on the 13th of July he laid siege to Castillon, on the Dordogne, which had shortly before fallen into the hands of the English. The Bordelese grew alarmed and urged Talbot to oppose the advance of the French. "We may very well let them come nearer yet," said the old warrior, then eighty years of age; "rest assured that, if it please God, I will fulfil my promise when I see that the time and the hour have come."

On the night between the 16th and 17th of July, however, Talbot set out with his troops to raise the siege of Castillon. He marched all night and came suddenly in the early morning upon the French archers, quartered in an abbey, who formed the advanced guard of their army, which was strongly intrenched before the place. A panic set in amongst this small body, and some of them took to flight. "Ha! you would desert me then?" said Sire de Rouault, who was in command of them; "have I not promised you to live and die with you?" They thereupon rallied and managed to join the camp. Talbot, content for the time with this petty success, sent for a chaplain to come and say mass; and, whilst waiting for an opportunity to resume the fight, he permitted the tapping of some casks of wine which had been found in the abbey, and his men set themselves to drinking. A countryman of those parts came hurrying up, and said to Talbot, "My lord, the French are deserting their park and taking to flight; now or never is the hour for fulfilling your promise." Talbot arose and left the mass, shouting, "Never may I hear mass again if I put not to rout the French who are in yonder park." When he arrived in front of the Frenchmen's intrenchment, "My lord," said Sir Thomas Cunningham, an aged gentleman who had for a long time past been his standard-bearer, "they have made a false report to you; observe the depth of the ditch and the faces of yonder men; they don't look like retreating; my opinion is, that for the present we should turn back; the country is for us, we have no lack of provisions, and with a little patience we shall starve out the French." Talbot flew into a passion, gave Sir Thomas a sword-cut across the face, had his banner planted on the edge of the ditch, and began the attack. The banner was torn down and Sir Thomas Cunningham killed. "Dismount!" shouted Talbot to his men-at-arms, English and Gascon. The French camp was defended by a more than usually strong artillery; a body of Bretons, held in reserve, advanced to sustain the shock of the English; and a shot from a culverin struck Talbot, who was already wounded in the face, shattered his thigh, and brought him to the ground. Lord Lisle, his son, flew to him to raise him. "Let me be," said Talbot; "the day is the enemies'; it will be no shame for thee to fly, for this is thy first battle." But the son remained with his father, and was slain at his side. The defeat of the English was complete. Talbot's body, pierced with wounds, was left on the field of battle. He was so disfigured that, when the dead were removed, he was not recognized. Notice, however, was taken of an old man wearing a cuirass covered with red velvet; this, it was presumed, was he; and he was placed upon a shield and carried into the camp. An English herald came with a request that he might look for Lord' Talbot's body. "Would you know him?" he was asked. "Take me to see him," joyfully answered the poor servant, thinking that his master was a prisoner and alive. When he saw him, he hesitated to identify him; he knelt down, put his finger in the mouth of the corpse, and recognized Talbot by the loss of a molar tooth. Throwing off immediately his coat-of-arms with the colors and bearings of Talbot, "Ah! my lord and master," he cried, "can this be verily you? May God forgive your sins! For forty years and more I have been your officer-at-arms and worn your livery, and thus I give it back to you!" And he covered with his coat-of-arms the stark-stripped body of the old hero.

The English being beaten and Talbot dead, Castillon surrendered; and at unequal intervals Libourne, St. Emillon, Chateau-Neuf de Medoc, Blanquefort, St. Macaire, Cadillac, &c., followed the example. At the commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux alone was still holding out. The promoters of the insurrection which had been concerted with the English, amongst others Sires de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance rather in their own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the population; the king's artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea a king's fleet from Rochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the Gironde. "The majority of the king's officers," says the contemporary historian, Thomas Basin, "advised him to punish by at least the destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to their city; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused." He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal privileges, which, however, she soon partially recovered, and to imposing upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to thirty thousand; he caused to be built at the expense of the city two fortresses, the Fort of the Ila and the Castle of Trompette, to keep in check so bold and fickle a population; and an amnesty was proclaimed for all but twenty specified persons, who were banished. On these conditions the capitulation was concluded and signed on the 17th of October; the English re-embarked; and Charles, without entering Bordeaux, returned to Touraine. The English had no longer any possession in France but Calais and Guines; the Hundred Years' War was over.

And to whom was the glory?

Charles VII. himself decided the question. When in 1455, twenty-four years after the death of Joan of Are, he at Rome and at Rouen prosecuted her claims for restoration of character and did for her fame and her memory all that was still possible, he was but relieving his conscience from a load of ingratitude and remorse which in general weighs but lightly upon men, and especially upon kings; and he was discharging towards the Maid of Domremy the debt due by France and the French kingship when he thus proclaimed that to Joan above all they owed their deliverance and their independence. Before men and before God Charles was justified in so thinking; the moral are not the sole, but they are the most powerful forces which decide the fates of people; and Joan had roused the feelings of the soul, and given to the struggles between France and England its religious and national character. At Rheims, when she repaired thither for the king's coronation, she said of her own banner, "It has a right to the honor, for it has been at the pains." She, first amongst all, had a right to the glory, for she had been the first to contribute to the success.

Next to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richemont was the most effective and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France and of the king. He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous and pitiless towards his enemies, especially towards such as he despised, severe in regard to himself, dignified in his manners, never guilty of swearing himself and punishing swearing as a breach of discipline amongst the troops placed under his orders. Like a true patriot and royalist, he had more at heart his duty towards France and the king than he had his own personal interests. He was fond of war, and conducted it bravely and skilfully, without rashness, but without timidity: "Wherever the constable is," said Charles VII., "there I am free from anxiety; he will do all that is possible!" He set his title and office of constable of France above his rank as a great lord; and when, after the death of his brother, Duke Peter II., he himself became Duke of Brittany, he always had the constable's sword carried before him, saying, "I wish to honor in my old age a function which did me honor in my youth." His good services were not confined to the wars of his time; he was one of the principal reformers of the military system in France by the substitution of regular troops for feudal service. He has not obtained, it is to be feared, in the history of the fifteenth century, the place which properly belongs to him.

Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and Marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette were, under Charles VII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of the king and of Fiance; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it is questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De Richemont, amongst the liberators of national independence. There are degrees of glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute it too readily and as it were by handfuls.

Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence, both brought to a melancholy termination by a conviction and a consequent ruin from which at the approach of old age he was still striving to recover by means of fresh ventures. Jacques Coeur was born at Bourges at the close of the fourteenth century. His father was a furrier, already sufficiently well established and sufficiently rich to allow of his son's marrying, in 1418, the provost's daughter of his own city. Some years afterwards Jacques Coeur underwent a troublesome trial for infraction of the rules touching the coinage of money; but thanks to a commutation of the penalty, graciously accorded by Charles VII., he got off with a fine, and from that time forward directed all his energies towards commerce. In 1432 a squire in the service of the Duke of Burgundy was travelling in the Holy Land, and met him at Damascus in company with several Venetians, Genoese, Florentine, and Catalan traders with whom he was doing business. "He was," says his contemporary, Thomas Basin, "a man unlettered and of plebeian family, but of great and ingenious mind, well versed in the practical affairs of that age. He was the first in all France to build and man ships which transported to Africa and the East woollen stuffs and other produce of the kingdom, penetrated as far as Egypt, and brought back with them silken stuffs and all manner of spices, which they distributed not only in France, but in Catalonia and the neighboring countries, whereas heretofore it was by means of the Venetians, the Genoese, or the Barcelonese that such supplies found their way into France."



Jacques Coeur, temporarily established at Montpellier, became a great and a celebrated merchant. In 1433 Charles VII. put into his hands the direction of the mint at Paris, and began to take his advice as to the administration of the crown's finances. In 1440 he was appointed moneyman to the king, ennobled together with his wife and children, commissioned soon afterwards to draw up new regulations for the manufacture of cloth at Bourges, and invested on his own private account with numerous commercial privileges. He had already at this period, it was said, three hundred manufacturing hands in his employment, and he was working at the same time silver, lead, and copper mines situated in the environs of Tarare and Lyons. Between 1442 and 1446 he had one of his nephews sent as ambassador to Egypt, and obtained for the French consuls in the Levant the same advantages as were enjoyed by those of the most favored nations. Not only his favor in the eyes of the king, but his administrative and even his political appointments, went on constantly increasing. Between 1444 and 1446 the king several times named him one of his commissioners to the estates of Languedoc and for the installation of the new parliament of Toulouse. In 1446 he formed one of an embassy sent to Italy to try and acquire for France the possession of Genoa, which was harassed by civil dissensions. In 1447 he received from Charles VII. a still more important commission, to bring about an arrangement between the two popes elected, one under the name of Felix V., and the other under that of Nicholas V.; and he was successful. His immense wealth greatly contributed to his influence. M. Pierre Clement [Jacques Coeur et Charles WE, ou la France au quinzieme siecle; t. ii., pp. 1-46] has given a list of thirty-two estates and lordships which Jacques Coeur had bought either in Berry or in the neighboring provinces. He possessed, besides, four mansions and two hostels at Lyons; mansions at Beaucaire, at Beziers, at St. Pourcain, at Marseilles, and at Montpellier; and he had built, for his own residence, at Bourges, the celebrated hostel which still exists as an admirable model of Gothic and national art in the fifteenth century, attempting combination with the art of Italian renaissance.



M. Clement, in his table of Jacques Coeur's wealth does not count either the mines which he worked at various spots in France, nor the vast capital, unknown, which he turned to profit in his commercial enterprises; but, on the other hand, he names, with certain et ceteras, forty-two court-personages, or king's officers, indebted to Jacques Coeur for large or small sums he had lent them. We will quote but two instances of Jacques Coeur's financial connection, not with courtiers, however, but with the royal family and the king himself. Margaret of Scotland, wife of the dauphin, who became Louis XI., wrote with her own hand, on the 20th of July, 1445, "We, Margaret, dauphiness of Viennois, do acknowledge to have received from Master Stephen Petit, secretary of my lord the king, and receiver-general of his finances for Languedoc and Guienne, two thousand livres of Tours, to us given by my said lord, and to us advanced by the hands of Jacques Coeur, his moneyman, we being but lately in Lorraine, for to get silken stuff and sables to make robes for our person." In 1449, when Charles VII. determined to drive the English from Normandy, his treasury was exhausted, and he had recourse to Jacques Coeur. "Sir," said the trader to the king, "what I have is yours," and lent him two hundred thousand crowns; "the effect of which was," says Jacques Duclercq, "that during, this conquest, all the men-at-arms of the King of France, and all those who were in his service, were paid their wages month by month."

An original document, dated 1450, which exists in the "cabinet des titres" of the National Library, bears upon it a receipt for sixty thousand livres from Jacques Coeur to the king's receiver-general in Normandy, "in restitution of the like sum lent by me in ready money to the said lord in the month of August last past, on occasion of the surrendering to his authority of the towns and castle of Cherbourg, at that time held by the English, the ancient enemies of this realm." It was probably a partial repayment of the two hundred thousand crowns lent by Jacques Coeur to the king at this juncture, according to all the contemporary chroniclers.

Enormous and unexpected wealth excites envy and suspicion at the same time that it confers influence; and the envious before long become enemies. Sullen murmurs against Jacques Coeur were raised in the king's own circle; and the way in which he had begun to make his fortune—the coinage of questionable money—furnished some specious ground for them. There is too general an inclination amongst potentates of the earth to give an easy ear to reasons, good or bad, for dispensing with the gratitude and respect otherwise due to those who serve them. Charles VII., after having long been the patron and debtor of Jacques Coeur, all at once, in 1451, shared the suspicions aroused against him. To accusations of grave abuses and malversations in money matters was added one of even more importance. Agnes Sorel had died eighteen months previously (February 9, 1450); and on her death-bed she had appointed Jacques Coeur one of the three executors of her will. In July, 1451, Jacques was at Taillebourg, in Guyenne, whence he wrote to his wife that "he was in as good case and was as well with the king as ever he had been, whatever anybody might say." Indeed, on the 22d of July Charles VII. granted him a "sum of seven hundred and seventy-two livres of Tours to help him to keep up his condition and to be more honorably equipped for his service;" and, nevertheless, on the 31st of July, on the information of two persons of the court, who accused Jacques Coeur of having poisoned Agnes Sorel, Charles ordered his arrest and the seizure of his goods, on which he immediately levied a hundred thousand crowns for the purposes of the war. Commissioners extraordinary, taken from amongst the king's grand council, were charged to try him; and Charles VII. declared, it is said, that "if the said moneyman were not found liable to the charge of having poisoned or caused to be poisoned Agnes Sorel, he threw up and forgave all the other cases against him." The accusation of poisoning was soon acknowledged to be false, and the two informers were condemned as calumniators; but the trial was, nevertheless, proceeded with. Jacques Coeur was accused "of having sold arms to the infidels, of having coined light crowns, of having pressed on board of his vessels, at Montpellier, several individuals, of whom one had thrown himself into the sea from desperation, and lastly of having appropriated to himself presents made to the king, in several towns of Languedoc, and of having practised in that country frequent exaction, to the prejudice of the king as well as of his subjects." After twenty-two months of imprisonment, Jacques Coeur, on the 29th of May, 1453, was convicted, in the king's name, on divers charges, of which several entailed a capital penalty; but "whereas Pope Nicholas V. had issued a rescript and made request in favor of Jacques Coeur, and regard also being had to services received from him," Charles VII. spared his life, "on condition that he should pay to the king a hundred thousand crowns by way of restitution, three hundred thousand by way of fine, and should be kept in prison until the whole claim was satisfied;" and the decree ended as follows: "We have declared and do declare all the goods of the said Jacques Coeur confiscated to us, and we have banished and do banish this Jacques Coeur forever from this realm, reserving thereanent our own good pleasure."

After having spent nearly three years more in prison, transported from dungeon to dungeon, Jacques Coeur, thanks to the faithful and zealous affection of a few friends, managed to escape from Beaucaire, to embark at Nice and to reach Rome, where Pope Nicholas V. welcomed him with tokens of lively interest. Nicholas died shortly afterwards, just when he was preparing an expedition against the Turks. His successor, Calixtus III., carried out his design, and equipped a fleet of sixteen galleys. This fleet required a commander of energy, resolution, and celebrity. Jacques Coeur had lived and fought with Dunois, Xaintrailles, La Hire, and the most valiant French captains; he was known and popular in Italy and the Levant; and the pope appointed him captain-general of the expedition. Charles VII.'s moneyman, ruined, convicted, and banished from France, sailed away at the head of the pope's squadron and of some Catalan pirates to carry help against the Turks to Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos, Lemnos, and the whole Grecian archipelago. On arriving at Chios, in November, 1456, he fell ill there, and perceiving his end approaching, he wrote to his king "to commend to him his children, and to beg that, considering the great wealth and honors he had in his time enjoyed in the king's service, it might be the king's good pleasure to give something to his children, in order that they, even those of them who were secular, might be able to live honestly, without coming to want." He died at Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John d'Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur's children, "he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that island, at the centre of the choir."

We have felt bound to represent with some detail the active and energetic life, prosperous for a long while and afterwards so grievous and hazardous up to its very last day, of this great French merchant at the close of the middle ages, who was the first to extend afar in Europe, Africa, and Asia the commercial relations of France, and, after the example of the great Italian merchants, to make an attempt to combine politics with commerce, and to promote at one and the same time the material interests of his country and the influence of his government. There can be no doubt but that Jacques Coeur was unscrupulous and frequently visionary as a man of business; but, at the same time, he was inventive, able, and bold, and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the utmost, he contributed a great deal to develop, in the ways of peace, the commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France. In his relations towards his king, Jacques Coeur was to Charles VII. a servant often over-adventurous, slippery, and compromising, but often also useful, full of resource, efficient, and devoted in the hour of difficulty. Charles VII. was to Jacques Coeur a selfish and ungrateful patron, who contemptuously deserted the man whose brains he had sucked, and ruined him pitilessly after having himself contributed to enrich him unscrupulously.

We have now reached the end of events under this long reign; all that remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles VII.'s government, and the melancholy imbroglios of his latter years with his son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able born-conspirator, who was to succeed him under the name of Louis XI.

One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon; it at the first blush appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of Northern France, or Langue d'oil, at another of Southern France, or Langue d'oc. Twenty-four such assemblies took place during this period at Bourges, at Selles in Berry, at Le Puy in Velay, at Mean-sur-Yevre, at Chinon, at Sully-sur-Loire, at Tours, at Orleans, at Nevers, at Carcassonne, and at different spots in Languedoc. It was the time of the great war between France on the one side and England and Burgundy allied on the other, the time of intrigues incessantly recurring at court, and the time likewise of carelessness and indolence on the part of Charles VII., more devoted to his pleasures than regardful of his government. He had incessant need of states-general to supply him with money and men, and support him through the difficulties of his position. But when, dating from the peace of Arras (September 21, 1435), Charles VII., having become reconciled with the Duke of Burgundy, was deliverer from civil war, and was at grips with none but England alone already half beaten by the divine inspiration, the triumph, and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, his posture and his behavior underwent a rare transformation. Without ceasing to be coldly selfish and scandalously licentious king he became practical, hard-working, statesman-like king, jealous and disposed to govern by himself, but at the same time watchful and skilful in availing himself of the able advisers who, whether it were by a happy accident or by his own choice, were grouped around him. "He had his days and hours for dealing with all sorts of men, one hour with the clergy, another with the nobles, another with foreigners, another with mechanical folks, armorers, and gunners; and in respect of all these persons he had a full remembrance of their cases and their appointed day. On Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday he worked with the chancellor, and got through all claims connected with justice. On Wednesday he first of all gave audience to the marshals, captains, and men of war. On the same day he held a council of finance, independently of another council which was also held on the same subject every Friday." It was by such assiduous toil that Charles VII., in concert with his advisers, was able to take in hand and accomplish, in the military, financial, and judicial system of the realm, those bold and at the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country from the state of disorder, pillage, and general insecurity to which it had been a prey, and commenced the era of that great monarchical administration, which, in spite of many troubles and vicissitudes, was destined to be, during more than three centuries, the government of France. The constable De Richemont and marshal De la Fayette were, in respect of military matters, Charles VII.'s principal advisers; and it was by their counsel and with their co-operation that he substituted for feudal service and for the bands of wandering mercenaries (routiers), mustered and maintained by hap-hazard, a permanent army, regularly levied, provided for, paid, and commanded, and charged with the duty of keeping order at home, and at the same time subserving abroad the interests and policy of the state. In connection with, and as a natural consequence of this military system, Charles VII., on his own sole authority, established certain permanent imposts with the object of making up any deficiency in the royal treasury, whilst waiting for a vote of such taxes extraordinary as might be demanded of the states-general. Jacques Coeur, the two brothers Bureau, Martin Gouge, Michel Lailler, William Cousinot, and many other councillors, of burgher origin, labored zealously to establish this administrative system, so prompt and freed from all independent discussion. Weary of wars, irregularities, and sufferings, France, in the fifteenth century, asked for nothing but peace and security; and so soon as the kingship showed that it had an intention and was in a condition to provide her with them, the nation took little or no trouble about political guarantees which as yet it knew neither how to establish nor how to exercise; its right to them was not disputed in principle, they were merely permitted to fall into desuetude; and Charles VII., who during the first half of his reign had twenty-four times assembled the states-general to ask them for taxes and soldiers, was able in the second to raise personally both soldiers and taxes without drawing forth any complaint hardly, save from his contemporary historian, the Bishop of Lisieux, Thomas Basin, who said, "Into such misery and servitude is fallen the realm of France, heretofore so noble and free, that all the inhabitants are openly declared by the generals of finance and their clerks taxable at the will of the king, without anybody's daring to murmur or even ask for mercy." There is at every juncture, and in all ages of the world, a certain amount, though varying very much, of good order, justice, and security, without which men cannot get on; and when they lack it, either through the fault of those who govern them or through their own fault, they seek after it with the blind eyes of passion, and are ready to accept it, no matter what power may procure it for them, or what price it may cost them. Charles VII. was a prince neither to be respected nor to be loved, and during many years his reign had not been a prosperous one; but "he re-quickened justice, which had been a long while dead," says a chronicler devoted to the Duke of Burgundy; "he put an end to the tyrannies and exactions of the men-at-arms, and out of an infinity of murderers and robbers he formed men of resolution and honest life; he made regular paths in murderous woods and forests, all roads safe, all towns peaceful, all nationalities of his kingdom tranquil; he chastised the evil and honored the good, and he was sparing of human blood."

Let it be added, in accordance with contemporary testimony, that at the same time that he established an all but arbitrary rule in military and financial matters, Charles VII. took care that "practical justice, in the case of every individual, was promptly rendered to poor as well as rich, to small as well as great; he forbade all trafficking in the offices of the magistracy, and every time that a place became vacant in a parliament he made no nomination to it, save on the presentations of the court."

Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were not the only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII. He attacked also ecclesiastical questions, which were at that period a subject of passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the councils of the Church and in the closets of princes. The celebrated ordinance, known by the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles VII. issued at Bourges on the 7th of July, 1438, with the concurrence of a grand national council, laic and ecclesiastical, was directed towards the carrying out, in the internal regulations of the French Church, and in the relations either of the State with the Church in France, or of the Church of France with the papacy, of reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers and interests. It would be impossible to touch here upon these difficult and delicate questions without going far beyond the limits imposed upon the writer of this history. All that can be said is, that there was no lack of a religious spirit, or of a liberal spirit, in the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and that the majority of the measures contained in it were adopted with the approbation of the greater part of the French clergy, as well as of educated laymen in France.

In whatever light it is regarded, the government of Charles VII. in the latter part of his reign brought him not only in France, but throughout Europe, a great deal of fame and power. When he had driven the English out of his kingdom, he was called Charles the Victorious; and when he had introduced into the internal regulations of the state so many important and effective reforms, he was called Charles the Well-served. "The sense he had by nature," says his historian Chastellain, "had been increased to twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and perilous dangers, which sharpened his wits perforce." "He is the king of kings," was said of him by the Doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good judge of policy; "there is no doing without him."

Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his reign, Charles VII. was, in his individual and private life, the most desolate, the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom. In 1442 and 1450 he had lost the two women who had been, respectively, the most devoted and most useful, and the most delightful and dearest to him, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and his favorite, Agnes Sorel. His avowed intimacy with Agnes, and even, independently of her and after her death, the scandalous licentiousness of his morals, had justly offended his virtuous wife, Mary of Anjou, the only lady of the royal establishment who survived him. She had brought him twelve children, and the eldest, the dauphin Louis, after having from his very youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the king his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a venomous conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth in 1423, he had been named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor, St. Louis, and in hopes that he would resemble him. In 1440, at seventeen years of age, he allied himself with the great lords, who were displeased with the new military system established by Charles VII., and allowed himself to be drawn by them into the transient rebellion known by the name of Praguery. When the king, having put it down, refused to receive the rebels to favor, the dauphin said to his father, "My lord, I must go back with them, then; for so I promised them." "Louis," replied the king, "the gates are open, and if they are not high enough I will have sixteen or twenty fathom of wall knocked down for you, that you may go whither it seems best to you." Charles VII. had made his son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that charming princess who was so smitten with the language and literature of France that, coming one day upon the poet Alan Chartier asleep upon a bench, she kissed him on the forehead in the presence of her mightily astonished train, for he was very ugly. The dauphin rendered his wife so wretched that she died in 1445, at the age of one and twenty, with these words upon her lips: "O! fie on life! Speak to me no more of it!" In 1449, just when the king his father was taking up arms to drive the English out of Normandy, the dauphin Louis, who was now living entirely in Dauphiny, concluded at Briancon a secret league with the Duke of Savoy "against the ministers of the King of France, his enemies." In 1456, in order to escape from the perils brought upon him by the plots which he, in the heart of Dauphiny, was incessantly hatching against his father, Louis fled from Grenoble and went to take refuge in Brussels with the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who willingly received him, at the same time excusing himself to Charles VII. "on the ground of the respect he owed to the son of his suzerain," and putting at the disposal of Louis, "his guest," a pension of thirty-six thousand livres. "He has received the fox at his court," said Charles: "he will soon see what will become of his chickens." But the pleasantries of the king did not chase away the sorrows of the father. "Mine enemies have full trust in me," said Charles, "but my son will have none. If he had but once spoken with me, he would have known full well that he ought to have neither doubts nor fears. On my royal word, if he will but come to me, when he has opened his heart and learned my intentions, he may go away again whithersoever it seems good to him." Charles, in his old age and his sorrow, forgot how distrustful and how fearful he himself had been. "It is ever your pleasure," wrote one of his councillors to him in a burst of frankness, "to be shut up in castles, wretched places, and all sorts of little closets, without showing yourself and listening to the complaints of your poor people." Charles VII. had shown scarcely more confidence to his son than to his people. Louis yielded neither to words, nor to sorrows of which proofs were reaching him nearly every day. He remained impassive at the Duke of Burgundy's, where he seemed to be waiting with scandalous indifference for the news of his father's death. Charles sank into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. He had his doctor, Adam Fumee, put in prison; persuaded himself that his son had wished, and was still wishing, to poison him; and refused to take any kind of nourishment. No representation, no solicitation, could win him from his depression and obstinacy. It was in vain that Charles, Duke of Berry, his favorite child, offered to first taste the food set before him. It was in vain that his servants "represented to him with tears," says Bossuet, "what madness it was to cause his own death for fear of dying; when at last he would have made an effort to eat, it was too late, and he must die." On the 2nd of July, 1461, he asked what day it was, and was told that it was St. Magdalen's day. "Ah!" said he, "I do laud my God, and thank Him for that it hath pleased Him that the most sinful man in the world should die on the sinful woman's day! Dampmartin," said he to the count of that name, who was leaning over his bed, "I do beseech you that after my death you will serve so far as you can the little lord, my son Charles." He called his confessor, received the sacraments, gave orders that he should be buried at St. Denis beside the king his father, and expired. No more than his son Louis, though for different reasons, was his wife, Queen Mary of Anjou, at his side. She was living at Chinon, whither she had removed a long while before by order of the king her husband. Thus, deserted by them of his own household, and disgusted with his own life, died that king of whom a contemporary chronicler, whilst recommending his soul to God, re-marked, "When he was alive, he was a right wise and valiant lord, and he left his kingdom united, and in good case as to justice and tranquillity."



CHAPTER XXV.——LOUIS XI. (1461-1483.)

Louis XI. was thirty-eight years old, and had been living for five years in voluntary exile at the castle of Genappe, in Hainault, beyond the dominions of the king his father, and within those of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, when, on the 23d of July, 1461, the day after Charles VII.'s death, he learned that he was King of France. He started at once to return to his own country, and take possession of his kingdom. He arrived at Rheims on the 14th of August, was solemnly crowned there on the 18th, in presence of the two courts of France and Burgundy, and on the 30th made his entry into Paris, within which he had not set foot for six and twenty years. In 1482, twenty-one years afterwards, he, sick and almost dying in his turn at his castle of Plessis-les-Tours, went, nevertheless, to Amboise, where his son the dauphin, who was about to become Charles VIII., and whom he had not seen for several years, was living. "I do expressly enjoin upon you," said the father to the son, "as my last counsel and my last instructions, not to change a single one of the chief officers of the crown. When my father. King Charles VII., went to God, and I myself came to the throne, I disappointed [i.e., deprived of their appointments] all the good and notable knights of the kingdom who had aided and served my said father in conquering Normandy and Guienne, in driving the English out of the kingdom, and in restoring it to peace and good order, for so I found it, and right rich also. Therefrom much mischief came to me, for thence I had the war called the Common Weal, which all but cost me my crown."

With the experience and paternal care of an old man, whom the near prospect of death rendered perfectly disinterested, wholly selfish as his own life had been, Louis's heart was bent upon saving his son from the first error which he himself had committed on mounting the throne. "Gentlemen," said Dunois on rising from table at the funeral-banquet held at the abbey of St. Denis in honor of the obsequies of King Charles VII., "we have lost our master; let each look after himself." The old warrior foresaw that the new reign would not be like that which had just ended. Charles VII. had been a prince of indolent disposition, more inclined to pleasure than ambition, whom the long and severe trials of his life had moulded to government without his having any passion for governing, and who had become in a quiet way a wise and powerful king, without any eager desire to be incessantly and everywhere chief actor and master. His son Louis, on the contrary, was completely possessed with a craving for doing, talking, agitating, domineering, and reaching, no matter by what means, the different and manifold ends he proposed to himself. Anything but prepossessing in appearance, supported on long and thin shanks, vulgar in looks and often designedly ill-dressed, and undignified in his manners though haughty in mind, he was powerful by the sheer force of a mind marvellously lively, subtle, unerring, ready, and inventive, and of a character indefatigably active, and pursuing success as a passion without any scruple or embarrassment in the employment of means. His contemporaries, after observing his reign for some time, gave him the name of the universal spider, so relentlessly did he labor to weave a web of which he himself occupied the centre and extended the filaments in all directions.

As soon as he was king, he indulged himself with that first piece of vindictive satisfaction of which he was in his last moments obliged to acknowledge the mistake. At Rheims, at the time of his coronation, the aged and judicious Duke Philip of Burgundy had begged him to forgive all those who had offended him. Louis promised to do so, with the exception, however, of seven persons whom he did not name. They were the most faithful and most able advisers of the king his father, those who had best served Charles VII. even in his embroilments with the dauphin, his conspiring and rebellious son, viz., Anthony de Chabannes, Count of Dampmartin, Peter de Breze, Andrew de Laval, Juvenal des Ursins, &c. Some lost their places, and were even, for a while, subjected to persecution; the others, remaining still at court, received there many marks of the king's disfavor. On the other hand, Louis made a show of treating graciously the men who had most incurred and deserved disgrace at his father's hands, notably the Duke of Alencon and the Count of Armagnac. Nor was it only in respect of persons that he departed from paternal tradition; he rejected it openly in the case of one of the most important acts of Charles VII.'s reign, the Pragmatic Sanction, issued by that prince at Bourses, in 1438, touching the internal regulations of the Church of France and its relations towards the papacy. The popes, and especially Pius II., Louis XI.'s contemporary, had constantly and vigorously protested against that act. Barely four months after his accession, on the 27th of November, 1461, Louis, in order to gain favor with the pope, abrogated the Pragmatic Sanction, and informed the pope of the fact in a letter full of devotion. There was great joy at Rome, and the pope replied to the king's letter in the strongest terms of gratitude and commendation. But Louis's courtesy had not been so disinterested as it was prompt. He had hoped that Pius II. would abandon the cause of Ferdinand of Arragon, a claimant to the throne of Naples, and would uphold that of his rival, the French prince, John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, whose champion Louis had declared himself. He bade his ambassador at Rome to remind the pope of the royal hopes. "You know," said the ambassador to Pius II., "it is only on this condition that the king my master abolished the Pragmatic; he was pleased to desire that in his kingdom full obedience should be rendered to you; he demands, on the other hand, that you should be pleased to be a friend to France; otherwise I have orders to bid all the French cardinals withdraw, and you cannot doubt but that they will obey." But Pius II. was more proud than Louis XI. dared to be imperious. He answered, "We are under very great obligations to the King of France, but that gives him no right to exact from us things contrary to justice and to our honor; we have sent aid to Ferdinand by virtue of the treaties we have with him; let the king your master compel the Duke of Anjou to lay down arms and prosecute his rights by course of justice, and if Ferdinand refuse to submit thereto we will declare against him; but we cannot promise more. If the French who are at our court wish to withdraw, the gates are open to them." The king, a little ashamed at the fruitlessness of his concession and of his threat, had for an instant some desire to re-establish the Pragmatic Sanction, for which the parliament of Paris had taken up the cudgels; but, all considered, he thought it better to put up in silence with his rebuff, and pay the penalty for a rash concession, than to get involved with the court of Rome in a struggle of which he could not measure the gravity; and he contented himself with letting the parliament maintain in principle and partially keep up the Pragmatic. This was his first apprenticeship in that outward resignation and patience, amidst his own mistakes, of which he was destined to be called upon more than once in the course of his life to make a humble but skilful use.

At the same time that at the pinnacle of government and in his court Louis was thus making his power felt, and was engaging a new set of servants, he was zealously endeavoring to win over, everywhere, the middle classes and the populace. He left Rouen in the hands of its own inhabitants; in Guienne, in Auvergne, at Tours, he gave the burgesses authority to assemble, and his orders to the royal agents were, "Whatever is done see that it be answered for unto us by two of the most notable burgesses of the principal cities." At Rheims the rumor ran that under King Louis there would be no more tax or talliage. When deputations went before him to complain of the weight of imposts, he would say, "I thank you, my dear and good friends, for making such remonstrances to me; I have nothing more at heart than to put an end to all sorts of exactions, and to re-establish my kingdom in its ancient liberties. I have just been passing five years in the countries of my uncle of Burgundy; and there I saw good cities mighty rich and full of inhabitants, and folks well clad, well housed, well off, lacking nothing; the commerce there is great, and the communes there have fine privileges. When I came into my own kingdom I saw, on the contrary, houses in ruins, fields without tillage, men and women in rags, faces pinched and pale. It is a great pity, and my soul is filled with sorrow at it. All my desire is to apply a remedy thereto, and, with God's help, we will bring it to pass." The good folks departed, charmed with such familiarity, so prodigal of hope; but facts before long gave the lie to words. "When the time came for renewing at Rheims the claim for local taxes, the people showed opposition, and all the papers were burned in the open street. The king employed stratagem. In order not to encounter overt resistance, he caused a large number of his folks to disguise themselves as tillers or artisans; and so entering the town, they were masters of it before the people could think of defending themselves. The ringleaders of the rebellion were drawn and quartered, and about a hundred persons were beheaded or hanged. At Angers, at Alencon, and at Aurillac, there were similar outbursts similarly punished." From that moment it was easy to prognosticate that with the new king familiarity would not prevent severity, or even cruelty. According to the requirements of the crisis Louis had no more hesitation about violating than about making promises; and, all the while that he was seeking after popularity, he intended to make his power felt at any price.

How could he have done without heavy imposts and submission on the part of the tax-payers? For it was not only at home in his own kingdom that he desired to be chief actor and master. He pushed his ambition and his activity abroad into divers European states. In Italy he had his own claimant to the throne of Naples in opposition to the King of Arragon's. In Spain the Kings of Arragon and of Castile were in a state of rivalry and war. A sedition broke out in Catalonia. Louis XI. lent the King of Arragon three hundred and fifty thousand golden crowns to help him in raising eleven hundred lances, and reducing the rebels. Civil war was devastating England. The houses of York and Lancaster were disputing the crown. Louis XI. kept up relations with both sides; and without embroiling himself with the Duke of York, who became Edward IV., he received at Chinon the heroic Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., and lent twenty thousand pounds sterling to that prince, then disthroned, who undertook either to repay them within a year or to hand over Calais, when he was re-established upon his throne, to the King of France. In the same way John II., King of Arragon, had put Roussillon and Cerdagne into the hands of Louis XI., as a security for the loan of three hundred and fifty thousand crowns he had borrowed. Amidst all the plans and enterprises of his personal ambition Louis was seriously concerned for the greatness of France; but he drew upon her resources, and compromised her far beyond what was compatible with her real interests, by mixing himself up, at every opportunity and by every sort of intrigue, with the affairs and quarrels of the kings and peoples around him.