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.

[Illustration: Agnes Sorel----175]


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."

[Illustration: Jacques Coeur----165]

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.

[Illustration: Jacques Coeur's Hostel at Bourges----169]

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