afterwards, in 1472, Louis made Lescun Count of Comminges, "wherein he
showed good judgment," adds Commynes, "saying that no peril would come
of putting in his hands that which he did put, for never, during those
past dissensions, had the said Lescun a mind to have any communication
with the English, or to consent that the places of Normandy should be
handed over to them;" and to the end of his life Louis XI. kept up the
confidence which Lescun had inspired by his judicious fidelity in the
case of this great question.  There is no need to make any addition to
the name of Philip de Commynes, the most precious of the politic
conquests made by Louis in the matter of eminent counsellors, to whom he
remained as faithful as they were themselves faithful and useful to him.
The _Memoires of Commynes_ are the most striking proof of the rare and
unfettered political intellect placed by the future historian at the
king's service, and of the estimation in which the king had wit enough
to hold it.

Louis XI. rendered to France, four centuries ago, during a reign of
twenty-two years, three great services, the traces and influence of which
exist to this day.  He prosecuted steadily the work of Joan of Arc and
Charles VII., the expulsion of a foreign kingship and the triumph of
national independence and national dignity.  By means of the provinces
which he successively won, wholly or partly, Burgundy, Franche-Comte,
Artois, Provence, Anjou, Roussillon, and Barrois, he caused France to
make a great stride towards territorial unity within her natural
boundaries.  By the defeat he inflicted on the great vassals, the favor
he showed the middle classes, and the use he had the sense to make of
this new social force, he contributed powerfully to the formation of the
French nation, and to its unity under a national government.  Feudal
society had not an idea of how to form itself into a nation, or
discipline its forces under one head; Louis XI. proved its political
weakness, determined its fall, and labored to place in its stead France
and monarchy.  Herein are the great facts of his reign, and the proofs of
his superior mind.

But side by side with these powerful symptoms of a new regimen appeared
also the vices of which that regimen contained the germ, and those of the
man himself who was laboring to found it.  Feudal society, perceiving
itself to be threatened, at one time attacked Louis XI. with passion, at
another entered into violent disputes against him; and Louis, in order to
struggle with it, employed all the practices, at one time crafty and at
another violent, that belong to absolute power.  Craft usually
predominated in his proceedings, violence being often too perilous
for him to risk it; he did not consider himself in a condition to say
brazen-facedly, "Might before right;" but he disregarded right in the
case of his adversaries, and he did not deny himself any artifice, any
lie, any baseness, however specious, in order to trick them or ruin them
secretly, when he did not feel himself in a position to crush them at a
blow.  "The end justifies the means"--that was his maxim; and the end,
in his case, was sometimes a great and legitimate political object,
nothing less than the dominant interest of France, but far more often his
own personal interest, something necessary to his own success or his own
gratification.  No loftiness, no greatness of soul, was natural to him;
and the more experience of life he had, the more he became selfish and
devoid of moral sense and of sympathy with other men, whether rivals,
tools, or subjects.  All found out before long, not only how little
account he made of them, but also what cruel pleasure he sometimes took
in making them conscious of his disdain and his power.  He was
"familiar," but not by no means "vulgar;" he was in conversation able and
agreeable, with a mixture, however, of petulance and indiscretion, even
when he was meditating some perfidy; and "there is much need," he used to
say, "that my tongue should sometimes serve me; it has hurt me often
enough."  The most puerile superstitions, as well as those most akin to a
blind piety, found their way into his mind.  When he received any bad
news, he would cast aside forever the dress he was wearing when the news
came; and of death he had a dread which was carried to the extent of
pusillanimity and ridiculousness.  "Whilst he was every day," says M. de
Barante, "becoming more suspicious, more absolute, more terrible to his
children, to the princes of the blood, to his old servants, and to his
wisest counsellors, there was one man who, without any fear of his wrath,
treated him with brutal rudeness.  This was James Cattier, his doctor.
When the king would sometimes complain of it before certain confidential
servants, 'I know very well,' Cattier would say, that some fine morning
you'll send me where you've sent so many others; but, 'sdeath, you'll not
live a week after!'"  Then the king would coax him, overwhelm him with
caresses, raise his salary to ten thousand crowns a month, make him a
present of rich lordships; and he ended by making him premier president
of the Court of Exchequer.  All churches and all sanctuaries of any small
celebrity were recipients of his oblations, and it was not the salvation
of his soul, but life and health, that he asked for in return.  One day
there was being repeated, on his account and in his presence, an orison
to St. Eutropius, who was implored to grant health to the soul and health
to the body.  "The latter will be enough," said the king; "it is not
right to bother the saint for too many things at once."  He showed great
devotion for images which had received benediction, and often had one of
them sewn upon his hat.  Hawkers used to come and bring them to him; and
one day he gave a hundred and sixty livres to a pedler who had in his
pack one that had received benediction at Aix-la-Chapelle.

[Illustration: Louis XI. at his Devotions----255]

Whatever may have been, in the middle ages, the taste and the custom in
respect of such practices, they were regarded with less respect in the
fifteenth than in the twelfth century, and many people scoffed at the
trust that Louis XI. placed in them, or doubted his sincerity.

Whether they were sincere or assumed, the superstitions of Louis XI. did
not prevent him from appreciating and promoting the progress of
civilization, towards which the fifteenth century saw the first real
general impulse.  He favored the free development of industry and trade;
he protected printing, in its infancy, and scientific studies, especially
the study of medicine; by his authorization, it is said, the operation
for the stone was tried, for the first time in France, upon a criminal
under sentence of death, who recovered, and was pardoned; and he welcomed
the philological scholars who were at this time laboring to diffuse
through Western Europe the works of Greek and Roman antiquity.  He
instituted, at first for his own and before long for the public service,
post-horses and the letter-post within his kingdom.  Towards intellectual
and social movement he had not the mistrust and antipathy of an old,
one-grooved, worn-out, unproductive despotism; his kingly despotism was
new, and, one might almost say, innovational, for it sprang and was
growing up from the ruins of feudal rights and liberties which had
inevitably ended in monarchy.  But despotism's good services are
short-lived; it has no need to last long before it generates iniquity and
tyranny; and that of Louis XI., in the latter part of his reign, bore its
natural, unavoidable fruits.  "His mistrust," says M. de Barante, "became
horrible, and almost insane; every year he had surrounded his castle of
Plessis with more walls, ditches, and rails.  On the towers were iron
sheds, a shelter from arrows, and even artillery.  More than eighteen
hundred of those planks bristling with nails, called caltrops, were
distributed over the yonder side of the ditch.  There were every day four
hundred crossbow-men on duty, with orders to fire on whosoever
approached.  Every suspected passer-by was seized, and carried off to
Tristan l'Hermite, the provost-marshal.  No great proofs were required
for a swing on the gibbet, or for the inside of a sack and a plunge in
the Loire.  .  .  .  Men who, like Sire de Commynes, had been the king's
servants, and who had lived in his confidence, had no doubt but that he
had committed cruelties and perpetrated the blackest treachery; still
they asked themselves whether there had not been a necessity, and whether
he had not, in the first instance, been the object of criminal
machinations against which he had to defend himself.  .  .  .  But,
throughout the kingdom, the multitude of his subjects who had not
received kindnesses from him, nor lived in familiarity with him, nor
known of the ability displayed in his plans, nor enjoyed the wit of his
conversation, judged only by that which came out before their eyes; the
imposts had been made much heavier, without any consent on the part of
the states-general; the talliages, which under Charles VII. brought in
only eighteen hundred thousand livres, rose, under Louis XI., to
thirty-seven hundred thousand; the kingdom was ruined, and the people
were at the last extremity of misery; the prisons were full; none was
secure of life or property; the greatest in the land, and even the
princes of the blood, were not safe in their own houses.

An unexpected event occurred at this time to give a little more heart to
Louis XI., who was now very ill, and to mingle with his gloomy broodings
a gleam of future prospects.  Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the
Rash, died at Bruges on the 27th of March, 1482, leaving to her husband,
Maximilian of Austria, a daughter, hardly three years of age, Princess
Marguerite by name, heiress to the Burgundian-Flemish dominions which had
not come into the possession of the King of France.  Louis, as soon as he
heard the news, conceived the idea and the hope of making up for the
reverse he had experienced five years previously through the marriage of
Mary of Burgundy.  He would arrange espousals between his son, the
_dauphin_, Charles, thirteen years old, and the infant princess left by
Mary, and thus recover for the crown of France the beautiful domains he
had allowed to slip from him.  A negotiation was opened at once on the
subject between Louis, Maximilian, and the estates of Flanders, and, on
the 23d of December, 1482, it resulted in a treaty, concluded at Arras,
which arranged for the marriage, and regulated the mutual conditions.  In
January, 1483, the ambassadors from the estates of Flanders and from
Maximilian, who then for the first time assumed the title of archduke,
came to France for the ratification of the treaty.  Having been first
received with great marks of satisfaction at Paris, they repaired to
Plessis-les-Tours.  Great was their surprise at seeing this melancholy
abode, this sort of prison, into which "there was no admittance save
after so many formalities and precautions."  When they had waited a
while, they were introduced, in the evening, into a room badly lighted.
In a dark corner was the king, seated in an arm-chair.  They moved
towards him; and then, in a weak and trembling voice, but still, as it
seemed, in a bantering tone, Louis asked pardon of the Abbot of St.
Peter of Ghent and of the other ambassadors for not being able to rise
and greet them.  After having heard what they had to say, and having held
a short conversation with them, he sent for the Gospels for to make oath.
He excused himself for being obliged to take the holy volume in his left
hand, for his right was paralyzed and his arm supported in a sling.
Then, holding the volume of the Gospels, he raised it up painfully, and
placing upon it the elbow of his right arm, he made oath.  Thus appeared
in the eyes of the Flemings that king who had done them so much harm, and
who was obtaining of them so good a treaty by the fear with which he
inspired them, all dying as he was.

On the 2d of June following, the infant princess, Marguerite of Austria,
was brought by a solemn embassy to Paris first, and then, on the 23d of
June, to Amboise, where her betrothal to the _dauphin_, Charles, was
celebrated.  Louis XI. did not feel fit for removal to Amboise; and he
would not even receive at Plessis-les-Tours the new Flemish embassy.
Assuredly neither the king nor any of the actors in this regal scene
foresaw that this marriage, which they with reason looked upon as a
triumph of French policy, would never be consummated; that, at the
request of the court of France, the pope would annul the betrothal; and
that, nine years after its celebration, in 1492, the Austrian princess,
after having been brought up at Amboise under the guardianship of the
Duchess of Bourbon, Anne, eldest daughter of Louis XI., would be sent
back to her father, Emperor Maximilian, by her affianced, Charles VIII.,
then King of France, who preferred to become the husband of a French
princess with a French province for dowry, Anne, Duchess of Brittany.

[Illustration: Views of the Castle of Plessis-les-Tours----258]

It was in March, 1481, that Louis XI. had his first attack of that
apoplexy, which, after several repeated strokes, reduced him to such a
state of weakness that in June, 1483, he felt himself and declared
himself not in a fit state to be present at his son's betrothal.  Two
months afterwards, on the 25th of August, St. Louis's day, he had a fresh
stroke, and lost all consciousness and speech.  He soon recovered them;
but remained so weak that he could not raise his hand to his mouth, and,
under the conviction that he was a dead man, he sent for his son-in-law,
Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and "Go," said he, "to Amboise, to the
king, my son; I have intrusted him as well as the government of the
kingdom to your charge and my daughter's care.  You know all I have
enjoined upon him; watch and see that it be observed.  Let him show favor
and confidence towards those who have done me good service and whom I
have named to him.  You know, too, of whom he should beware, and who must
not be suffered to come near him."  He sent for the chancellor from
Paris, and bade him go and take the seals to the king.  "Go to the king,"
he said to the captains of his guards, to his archers, to his huntsmen,
to all his household.  "His speech never failed him after it had come
back to him," says Commynes, "nor his senses; he was constantly saying
something of great sense and never in all his illness, which lasted from
Monday to Saturday evening, did he complain, as do all sorts of folk
when they feel ill.  .  .  . "Notwithstanding all those commands he
recovered heart," adds Commynes, "and had good hope of escaping."  In
conversation at odd times with some of his servants, and even with
Commynes himself, he had begged them, whenever they saw that he was very
ill, not to mention that cruel word death; he had even made a covenant
with them, that they should say no more to him than, "Don't talk much,"
which would be sufficient warning. But his doctor, James Coettier, and
his barber, Oliver the Devil, whom he had ennobled and enriched under
the name of Oliver le Daim, did not treat him with so much indulgence.
"They notified his death to him in brief and harsh terms," says
Commynes; "'Sir, we must do our duty; have no longer hope in your holy
man of Calabria or in other matters, for assuredly all is over with you;
think of your soul; there is no help for it.' 'I have hope in God that
He will aid me,' answered Louis, coldly; 'peradventure I am not so ill
as you think.'

"He endured with manly virtue so cruel a sentence," says Commynes, "and
everything, even to death, more than any man I ever saw die; he spoke as
coolly as if he had never been ill."  He gave minute orders about his
funeral, sepulchre, and tomb.  He would be laid at Notre-Dame de Clery,
and not, like his ancestors, at St. Denis; his statue was to be gilt
bronze, kneeling, face to the altar, head uncovered, and hands clasped
within his hat, as was his ordinary custom.  Not having died on the
battle-field and sword in hand, he would be dressed in hunting-garb,
with jack-boots, a hunting-horn, slung over his shoulder, his hound
lying beside him, his order of St. Michael round his neck, and his sword
at his side.  As to the likeness, he asked to be represented, not as he
was in his latter days, bald, bow-backed, and wasted, but as he was in
his youth and in the vigor of his age, face pretty full, nose aquiline,
hair long, and falling down behind to his shoulders.  After having taken
all these pains about himself after his death, he gave his chief
remaining thoughts to France and his son.  "Orders must be sent," said
he, "to M. d'Esquerdes [Philip de Crevecoeur, Baron d'Esquerdes, a
distinguished warrior, who, after the death of Charles the Rash, had,
through the agency of Commynes, gone over to the service of Louis XI.,
and was in command of his army] to attempt no doings as to Calais.  We
had thought to drive out the English from this the last corner they hold
in the kingdom; but such matters are too weighty; all that business ends
with me.  M. d'Esquerdes must give up such designs, and come and guard
my son without budging from his side for at least six months.  Let an
end be put, also, to all our disputes with Brittany, and let this Duke
Francis be allowed to live in peace without any more causing him trouble
or fear.  This is the way in which we, must now deal with all our
neighbors.  Five or six good years of peace are needful for the kingdom.
My poor people have suffered too much; they are in great desolation.  If
God had been pleased to grant me life, I should have put it all to
rights; it was my thought and my desire, let my son be strictly charged
to remain at peace, especially whilst he is so young. At a later time,
when he is older, and when the kingdom is in good case, he shall do as
he pleases about it."

[Illustration: Louis XI----260]

On Saturday, August 30, 1483, between seven and eight in the evening,
Louis XI. expired, saying, "Our Lady of Embrun, my good mistress, have
pity upon me; the mercies of the Lord will I sing forever (misericordias
Domini in ceternum cantabo)."

"It was a great cause of joy throughout the kingdom," says M. de Barante
with truth, in his _Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne_: "this moment had
been impatiently waited for as a deliverance, and as the ending of so
many woes and fears.  For a long time past no King of France had been so
heavy on his people or so hated by them."

This was certainly just, and at the same time ungrateful.

Louis XI. had rendered France great service, but in a manner void of
frankness, dignity, or lustre; he had made the contemporary generation
pay dearly for it by reason of the spectacle he presented of trickery,
perfidy, and vindictive cruelty, and by his arbitrary and tyrannical
exercise of kingly power.  People are not content to have useful service;
they must admire or love; and Louis XI. inspired France with neither of
those sentiments.  He has had the good fortune to be described and
appraised, in his own day too, by the most distinguished and independent
of his councillors, Philip de Commynes, and, three centuries afterwards,
by one of the most thoughtful and the soundest intellects amongst the
philosophers of the eighteenth century, Duclos, who, moreover, had the
advantage of being historiographer of France, and of having studied the
history of that reign in authentic documents.  We reproduce here the two
judgments, the agreement of which is remarkable:--

"God," says Commynes, "had created our king more wise, liberal, and full
of manly virtue than the princes who reigned with him and in his day, and
who were his enemies and neighbors.  In all there was good and evil, for
they were men; but without flattery, in him were more things appertaining
to the office of king than in any of the rest.  I saw them nearly all,
and knew what they could do."

"Louis XI.," says Duclos, "was far from being without reproach; few
princes have deserved so much; but it may be said that he was equally
celebrated for his vices and his virtues, and that, everything being put
in the balance, he was a king."

We will be more exacting than Commynes and Duclos; we will not consent to
apply to Louis XI. the words liberal, virtuous, and virtue; he had nor
greatness of soul, nor uprightness of character, nor kindness of heart;
he was neither a great king nor a good king; but we may assent to Duclos'
last word--he was a king.




CHAPTER XXVI.----THE WARS OF ITALY.-- CHARLES VIII.-- 1483-1498.

[Illustration: CHARLES VIII.----263]

Louis XI. had by the queen his wife, Charlotte of Savoy, six children;
three of them survived him: Charles VIII., his successor; Anne, his
eldest daughter, who had espoused Peter of Bourbon, Sire de Beaujeu; and
Joan, whom he had married to the Duke of Orleans, who became Louis XII.
At their father's death, Charles was thirteen; Anne twenty-two or
twenty-three; and Joan nineteen.  According to Charles V.'s decree, which
had fixed fourteen as the age for the king's majority, Charles VIII., on
his accession, was very nearly a major; but Louis XI., with good reason,
considered him very far from capable of reigning as yet.  On the other
hand, he had a very high opinion of his daughter Anne, and it was to her
far more than to Sire de Beaujeu, her husband, that, six days before his
death, and by his last instructions, he intrusted the guardian-ship of
his son, to whom he already gave the title of King, and the government of
the realm.  They were oral instructions not set forth in or confirmed by
any regular testament; but the words of Louis XI. had great weight, even
after his death.  Opposition to his last wishes was not wanting.  Louis,
Duke of Orleans, was a natural claimant to the regency; but Anne de
Beaujeu, immediately and without consulting anybody, took up the position
which had been intrusted to her by her father, and the fact was accepted
without ceasing to be questioned.  Louis XI. had not been mistaken in his
choice; there was none more fitted than his daughter Anne to continue his
policy under the reign and in the name of his successor; "a shrewd and
clever woman, if ever there was one," says Brantome, "and the true image
in everything of King Louis, her father."

[Illustration: Anne de Beaujeu----264]

She began by acts of intelligent discretion.  She tried, not to subdue by
force the rivals and malcontents, but to put them in the wrong in the
eyes of the public, and to cause embarrassment to themselves by treating
them with fearless favor.  Her brother-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon, was
vexed at being only in appearance and name the head of his own house; and
she made him constable of France and lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
The friends of Duke Louis of Orleans, amongst others his chief confidant,
George of Amboise, Bishop of Montauban, and Count Dunois, son of Charles
VII.'s hero, persistently supported the duke's rights to the regency; and
_Madame_ (the title Anne de Beaujeu had assumed) made Duke Louis governor
of Ile-de-France and of Champagne, and sent Dunois as governor to
Dauphiny.  She kept those of Louis XI.'s advisers for whom the public had
not conceived a perfect hatred like that felt for their master; and
Commynes alone was set aside, as having received from the late king too
many personal favors, and as having too much inclination towards
independent criticism of the new regency.  Two of Louis XI.'s subordinate
and detested servants, Oliver de Daim and John Doyac, were prosecuted,
and one was hanged and the other banished; and his doctor, James Cattier,
was condemned to disgorge fifty thousand crowns out of the enormous
presents he had received from his patient.  At the same time that she
thus gave some satisfaction to the cravings of popular wrath, Anne de
Beaujeu threw open the prisons, recalled exiles, forgave the people a
quarter of the talliage, cut down expenses by dismissing six thousand
Swiss whom the late king had taken into his pay, re-established some sort
of order in the administration of the domains of the crown, and, in fine,
whether in general measures or in respect of persons, displayed
impartiality without paying court, and firmness without using severity.
Here was, in fact, a young and gracious woman who gloried solely in
signing herself simply Anne of France, whilst respectfully following out
the policy of her father, a veteran king, able, mistrustful, and
pitiless.

Anne's discretion was soon put to a great trial.  A general cry was
raised for the convocation of the states-general.  The ambitious hoped
thus to open a road to power; the public looked forward to it for a
return to legalized government.  No doubt Anne would have preferred to
remain more free and less responsible in the exercise of her authority;
for it was still very far from the time when national assemblies could be
considered as a permanent power and a regular means of government.  But
Anne and her advisers did not waver; they were too wise and too weak to
oppose a great public wish.  The states-general were convoked at Tours
for the 5th of January, 1484.  On the 15th they met in the great hall of
the arch-bishop's palace.  Around the king's throne sat two hundred and
fifty deputies, whom the successive arrivals of absentees raised to two
hundred and eighty-four.  "France in all its entirety," says M. Picot,
"found itself, for the first time, represented; Flanders alone sent no
deputies until the end of the session; but Provence, Roussillon,
Burgundy, and Dauphiny were eager to join their commissioners to the
delegates from the provinces united from the oldest times to the crown."
[_Histoire des Etats Generaux_ from 1355 to 1614, by George Picot,
t. i. p. 360.]

We have the journal of these states-general drawn up with precision and
detail by one of the chief actors, John Masselin, canon of and deputy for
Rouen, "an eminent speaker," says a contemporary Norman chronicle, "who
delivered on behalf of the common weal, in the presence of kings and
princes, speeches full of elegance."  We may agree that, compared with
the pompous pedantry of most speakers of his day, the oratorical style of
John Masselin is not without a certain elegance, but that is not his
great and his original distinction; what marks him out and gives him so
high a place in the history of the fifteenth century, is the judicious
and firm political spirit displayed in his conduct as deputy and in his
narrative as historian.  [The Journal, written by the author in Latin,
was translated into French and published, original and translation,
by M. A.  Bernier, in 1835, in the _Collection des Documents inedits
relatifs d l'Histoire de France._] And it is not John Masselin only, but
the very assembly itself in which he sat, that appears to us, at the end
of five centuries, seriously moved by a desire for a free government, and
not far from comprehending and following out the essential conditions of
it.  France had no lack of states-general, full of brilliancy and power,
between 1356 and 1789, from the reign of Charles V. to that of
Louis XVI.; but in the majority of these assemblies, for all the
ambitious soarings of liberty, it was at one time religious party-spirit
and at another the spirit of revolution that ruled and determined both
acts and events.  Nothing of that kind appeared in the states-general
assembled at Tours in 1484; the assembly was profoundly monarchical, not
only on general principles, but in respect of the reigning house and the
young king seated on the throne.  There was no fierce struggle, either,
between the aristocracy and the democracy of the day, between the
ecclesiastical body and the secular body; although widely differing and
widely separated, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate were not
at war, even in their hearts, between themselves.  One and the same idea,
one and the same desire, animated the three orders; to such a degree
that, as has been well pointed out by M. Picot, "in the majority of the
towns they proceeded in common to the choice of deputies: the clergy,
nobles, and commons who arrived at Tours were not the representatives
exclusively of the clergy, the nobles, or the third estate: they combined
in their persons a triple commission;" and when, after having examined
together their different memorials, by the agency of a committee of
thirty-six members taken in equal numbers from the three orders, they
came to a conclusion to bring their grievances and their wishes before
the government of Charles VIII., they decided that a single spokesman
should be commissioned to sum up, in a speech delivered in solemn
session, the report of the committee of Thirty-six; and it was the canon,
Master John Masselin, who received the commission to speak in the name of
all.  They all had at heart one and the same idea; they desired to turn
the old and undisputed monarchy into a legalized and free government.
Clergy, nobles, and third estate, there was not in any of their minds any
revolutionary yearning or any thought of social war.  It is the peculiar
and the beautiful characteristic of the states-general of 1484 that they
had an eye to nothing but a great political reform, a regimen of legality
and freedom.

Two men, one a Norman and the other a Burgundian, the canon John Masselin
and Philip Pot, lord of la Roche, a former counsellor of Philip the Good,
Duke of Burgundy, were the exponents of this political spirit, at once
bold and prudent, conservative and reformative.  The nation's sovereignty
and the right of the estates not only to vote imposts but to exercise a
real influence over the choice and conduct of the officers of the crown,
this was what they affirmed in principle, and what, in fact, they labored
to get established.  "I should like," said Philip de la Roche, "to see
you quite convinced that the government of the state is the people's
affair; and by the people I mean not only the multitude of those who are
simply subjects of this crown, but indeed all persons of each estate,
including the princes also.  Since you consider yourselves deputies from
all the estates of the kingdom, why are you afraid to conclude that you
have been especially summoned to direct by your counsels the commonwealth
during its quasi-interregnum caused by the king's minority?  Far be it
from me to say that the reigning, properly so called, the dominion, in
fact, passes into any hands but those of the king; it is only the
administration, the guardianship of the kingdom, which is conferred for a
time upon the people or their elect.  Why tremble at the idea of taking
in hand the regulation, arrangement, and nomination of the council of the
crown?  You are here to say and to advise freely that which, by
inspiration of God and your conscience, you believe to be useful for the
realm.  What is the obstacle that prevents you from accomplishing so
excellent and meritorious a work?  I can find none, unless it be your own
weakness and the pusillanimity which causes fear in your minds.  Come,
then, most illustrious lords, have great confidence in yourselves, have
great hopes, have great manly virtue, and let not this liberty of the
estates, that your ancestors were so zealous in defending, be imperilled
by reason of your soft-heartedness."  "This speech," says Masselin, "was
listened to by the whole assembly very attentively and very favorably."
Masselin, being called upon to give the king "in his privy chamber,
before the Dukes of Orleans and Lorraine and a numerous company of
nobles," an exact account of the estates' first deliberations, held in
his turn language more reserved than, but similar to, that of Lord Philip
de la Roche, whose views he shared and whose proud openness he admired.
The question touching the composition of the king's council and the part
to be taken in it by the estates was for five weeks the absorbing idea
with the government and with the assembly.  There were made, on both
sides, concessions which satisfied neither the estates nor the court, for
their object was always on the part of the estates to exercise a real
influence on the government, and on the part of the court to escape being
under any real influence of the estates.  Side by side with the question
of the king's council was ranged that of the imposts; and here it was no
easier to effect an understanding: the crown asked more than the estates
thought they ought or were able to vote; and, after a long and obscure
controversy about expenses and receipts, Masselin was again commissioned
to set-before the king's council the views of the assembly and its
ultimate resolution.  "When we saw," said he, "that the aforesaid
accounts or estimates contained elements of extreme difficulty, and that
to balance and verify them would subject us to interminable discussions
and longer labor than would be to our and the people's advantage, we
hastened to adopt by way of expedient, but nevertheless resolutely, the
decision I am about to declare to you.  .  .  .  Wishing to meet
liberally the king's and your desires, we offer to pay the sum that King
Charles VII. used to take for the impost of talliages, provided, however,
that this sum be equally and proportionately distributed between the
provinces of the kingdom, and that in the shape of an aid.  And this
contribution be only for two years, after which the estates shall be
assembled as they are to-day to discuss the public needs; and if at that
time or previously they see the advantage thereof, the said sum shall be
diminished or augmented.  Further, the said my lords the deputies do
demand that their next meeting be now appointed and declared, and that an
irrevocable decision do fix and decree that assembly."

This was providing at one and the same time for the wants of the present
and the rights of the future.  The impost of talliage was, indeed, voted
just as it had stood under Charles VII., but it became a temporary aid
granted for two years only; at the end of them the estates were to be
convoked and the tax augmented or diminished according to the public
wants.  The great question appeared decided; by means of the vote,
necessary and at the same time temporary, in the case of the impost, the
states-general entered into real possession of a decisive influence in
the government; but the behavior and language of the officers of the
crown and of the great lords of the court rendered the situation as
difficult as ever.  In a long and confused harangue the chancellor,
William de Rochefort, did not confine himself to declaring the sum voted,
twelve hundred thousand livres, to be insufficient, and demanding three
hundred thousand livres more; he passed over in complete silence the
limitation to two years of the tax voted and the requirement that at the
end of that time the states-general should be convoked.  "Whilst the
chancellor was thus speaking," says Masselin, "many deputies of a more
independent spirit kept groaning, and all the hall resounded with a
slight murmuring because it seemed that he was not expressing himself
well as to the power and liberty of the people."  The deputies asked
leave to deliberate in the afternoon, promising a speedy answer.  "As you
wish to deliberate, do so, but briefly," said the chancellor; "it would
be better for you to hold counsel now so as to answer in the afternoon."
The deputies took their time; and the discussion was a long and a hot
one.  "We see quite well how it is," said the princes and the majority of
the great lords; "to curtail the king's power, and pare down his nails to
the quick, is the object of your efforts; you forbid the subjects to pay
their prince as much as the wants of the state require: are they masters,
pray, and no longer subjects?  You would set up the laws of some fanciful
monarchy, and abolish the old ones."  "I know the rascals," said one of
the great lords [according to one historian, it was the Duke of Bourbon,
Anne de Beaujeu's brother-in-law]; "if they are not kept down by
over-weighting them, they will soon become insolent; for my part, I
consider this tax the surest curb for holding them in."  "Strange words,"
says Masselin, "unworthy of utterance from the mouth of a man so eminent;
but in his soul, as in that of all old men, covetousness had increased
with age, and he appeared to fear a diminution of his pension."

After having deliberated upon it, the states-general persisted in their
vote of a tax of twelve hundred thousand livres, at which figure it had
stood under King Charles VII., but for two years only, and as a gift or
grant, not as a permanent talliage any more, and on condition that at the
end of that time the states should be necessarily convoked.  At the same
time, however, "and over and above this, the said estates, who do desire
the well-being, honor, prosperity, and augmentation of the lord king and
of his kingdom, and in order to obey him and please him in all ways
possible, do grant him the sum of three hundred thousand livres of Tours,
for this once only, and without being a precedent, on account of his late
joyful accession to the throne of France, and for to aid and support the
outlay which it is suitable to make for his holy consecration,
coronation, and entry into Paris."

On this fresh vote, full of fidelity to the monarchy and at the same time
of patriotic independence, negotiations began between the estates and the
court; and they lasted from the 28th of February to the 12th of March,
but without result.  At bottom, the question lay between absolute power
and free government, between arbitrariness and legality; and, on this
field, both parties were determined not to accept a serious and final
defeat.  Unmoved by the loyal concessions and assurances they received,
the advisers of the crown thought no longer of anything but getting
speedily rid of the presence of the estates, so as to be free from the
trouble of maintaining the discussion with them.  The deputies saw
through the device; their speeches were stifled, and the necessity of
replying was eluded.  "My lord chancellor," said they, at an interview on
the 2d of March, 1484, "if we are not to have a hearing, why are we here?
Why have you summoned us?  Let us withdraw.  If you behave thus, you do
not require our presence.  We did not at all expect to see the fruits of
our vigils, and the decisions adopted after so much trouble by so
illustrious an assembly rejected so carelessly."  The complaints were not
always so temperate.  A theologian, whom Masselin quotes without giving
his name, "a bold and fiery partisan of the people," says he, added these
almost insulting words: "As soon as our consent had been obtained for
raising the money, there is no doubt but that we have been cajoled, that
everything has been treated with contempt, the demands set down in our
memorials, our final resolutions, and the limits we fixed.  Speak we of
the money.  On this point, our decisions have been conformed to only so
far as to tell us, 'This impost shall no longer be called talliage; it
shall be a free grant.' Is it in words, pray, and not in things, that our
labor and the well-being of the state consist?  Verily, we would rather
still call this impost _talliage,_ and even blackmail (_maltote_), or
give it a still viler name, if there be any, than see it increasing
immeasurably and crushing the people.  The curse of God and the
execration of men upon those whose deeds and plots have caused such woes!
They are the most dangerous foes of the people and of the commonwealth."
"The theologian burned with a desire to continue," adds Masselin; "but
though he had not wandered far from the truth, many deputies chid him and
constrained him to be silent.  .  .  .  Already lethargy had fallen upon
the most notable amongst us; glutted with favors and promises, they no
longer possessed that ardor of will which had animated them at first;
when we were prosecuting our business, they remained motionless at home;
when we spoke before them, they held their peace or added but a few
feeble words.  We were wasting our time."

On the 12th of March, 1484, the deputies from Normandy, twenty-five in
number, happened to hold a meeting at Montils-les-Tours.  The Bishop of
Coutances told them that there was no occasion for the estates to hold
any more meetings; that it would be enough if each of the six sections
appointed three or four delegates to follow the course of affairs; and
that, moreover, the compensation granted to all the deputies of the
estates would cease on the 14th of March, and after that would be granted
only to their delegates.  This compensation had already, amongst the
estates, been the subject of a long discussion.  The clergy and the
nobility had attempted to throw the whole burden of it upon the third
estate; the third estate had very properly claimed that each of the three
orders should, share proportionately in this expense, and the chancellor
had with some difficulty got it decided that the matter should stand so.
On the 14th of March, accordingly, the six sections of the estates met
and elected three or four deputies apiece.  The deputies were a little
surprised, on entering their sessions-hall, to find it completely
dismantled: carpets, hangings, benches, table, all had been removed,
so certainly did the government consider the session over.  Some members,
in disgust, thought and maintained that the estates ought not to separate
without carrying away with them the resolutions set down in their general
memorial, formally approved and accompanied by an order to the judges to
have them executed.  "But a much larger number," says Masselin, "were
afraid of remaining too long, and many of our colleagues, in spite of the
zeal which they had once shown, had a burning desire to depart, according
to the princes' good pleasure and orders.  As for us, we enjoined upon
the three deputies of our Norman nationality not to devote themselves
solely to certain special affairs which had not yet been terminated, but
to use redoubled care and diligence in all that concerned the general
memorial and the aggregate of the estates.  And having thus left our
commissioners at Tours and put matters to rights, we went away well
content; and we pray God that our labors and all that has been done may
be useful for the people's welfare."

Neither Masselin nor his descendants for more than three centuries were
destined to see the labors of the states-general of 1484 obtain
substantial and durable results.  The work they had conceived and
attempted was premature.  The establishment of a free government demands
either spontaneous and simple virtues, such as may be found in a young
and small community, or the lights, the scientific method, and the
wisdom, painfully acquired and still so imperfect, of great and civilized
nations.  France of the fifteenth century was in neither of these
conditions.  But it is a crown of glory to have felt that honest and
patriotic ambition which animated Masselin and his friends at their
exodus from the corrupt and corrupting despotism of Louis XI.  Who would
dare to say that their attempt, vain as it was for them, was so also for
generations separated from them by centuries?  Time and space are as
nothing in the mysterious development of God's designs towards men, and
it is the privilege of mankind to get instruction and example from
far-off memories of their own history.  It was a duty to render to the
states-general of 1484 the homage to which they have a right by reason of
their intentions and their efforts on behalf of the good cause and in
spite of their unsuccess.

When the states-general had separated, Anne de Beaujeu, without
difficulty or uproar, resumed, as she had assumed on her father's death,
the government of France; and she kept it yet for seven years, from 1484
to 1491.  During all this time she had a rival and foe in Louis, Duke of
Orleans, who was one day to be Louis XII.  "I have heard tell," says
Brantome, "how that, at the first, she showed affection towards him, nay,
even love; in such sort that, if M. d'Orleans had been minded to give
heed thereto, he might have done well, as I know from a good source; but
he could not bring himself to it; especially as he found her too
ambitious, and he would that she should be dependent on him, as premier
prince and nearest to the throne, and not he on her; whereas she desired
the contrary, for she was minded to have the high place and rule
everything.  .  .  .  They used to have," adds Brantome, "prickings of
jealousy, love, and ambition."  If Brantome's anecdote is true, as one is
inclined to believe, though several historians have cast doubts upon it,
Anne de Beaujeu had, in their prickings of jealousy, love, and ambition,
a great advantage over Louis of Orleans.  They were both young, and
exactly of the same age; but Louis had all the defects of youth, whilst
Anne had all the qualities of mature age.  He was handsome, volatile,
inconsiderate, impudent, brave, and of a generous, open nature, combined
with kindliness; she was thoughtful, judicious, persistent, and probably
a little cold and hard, such, in fact, as she must needs have become in
the school of her father, Louis XI.  As soon as the struggle between them
began, the diversity of their characters appeared and bore fruit.  The
Duke of Orleans plunged into all sorts of intrigues and ventures against
the fair regent, exciting civil war, and, when he was too much
compromised or too hard pressed, withdrawing to the court of Francis II.,
Duke of Brittany, an unruly vassal of the King of France.  Louis of
Orleans even made alliance, at need, with foreign princes, Henry VII.,
King of England, Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Arragon, and Maximilian,
archduke of Austria, without much regard for the interests of his own
kingly house and his own country.  Anne, on the contrary, in possession
of official and legal authority, wielded it and guarded it with prudence
and moderation in the interests of France and of the crown, never taking
the initiative in war, but having the wit to foresee, maintain, and,
after victory, end it.  She encountered from time to time, at her own
court and in her own immediate circle, a serious difficulty: the young
king, Charles, was charmed by the Duke of Orleans's brilliant qualities,
especially by the skill and bravery that Louis displayed at tournaments.
One day, interrupting the Bishop of Montauban, George of Amboise, who was
reading the breviary to him, "Send word to the Duke of Orleans," said the
king, "to go on with his enterprise, and that I would fain be with him."
Another day he said to Count Dunois, "Do take me away, uncle: I'm longing
to be out of this company."  Dunois and George of Amboise, both of them
partisans of the Duke of Orleans, carefully encouraged the king in
sentiments so favorable to the fair regent's rival.  Incidents of another
sort occurred to still further embarrass the position for Anne de
Beaujeu.  The eldest daughter of Francis II., Duke of Brittany, herself
also named Anne, would inherit his duchy, and on this ground she was
ardently wooed by many competitors.  She was born in 1477; and at four
years of age, in 1481, she had been promised in marriage to Edward,
Prince of Wales, son of Edward IV., King of England.  But two years
afterwards, in 1483, this young prince was murdered, or, according to
other accounts, imprisoned by his uncle Richard III., who seized the
crown; and the Breton promise vanished with him.  The number of claimants
to the hand of Anne of Brittany increased rapidly; and the policy of the
duke her father consisted, it was said, in making for himself five or six
sons-in-law by means of one daughter.  Towards the end of 1484, the Duke
of Orleans, having embroiled himself with Anne de Beaujeu, sought refuge
in Brittany; and many historians have said that he not only at that time
aspired to the hand of Anne of Brittany, but that he paid her assiduous
court and obtained from her marks of tender interest.  Count Darn, in his
_Histoire de Bretagne_ (t. iii. p. 82), has put the falsehood of this
assertion beyond a doubt; the Breton princess was then only seven and the
Duke of Orleans had been eight years married to Joan of France, younger
daughter of Louis XI.  But in succeeding years and amidst the continual
alternations of war and negotiation between the King of France and the
Duke of Brittany, Anne de Beaujeu and the Duke of Orleans, competition
and strife between the various claimants to the hand of Anne of Brittany
became very active; Alan, Sire d'Albret, called the Great because of his
reputation for being the richest lord of the realm, Viscount James de
Rohan, and Archduke Maximilian of Austria, all three believed themselves
to have hopes of success, and prosecuted them assiduously.  Sire
d'Albret, a widower and the father of eight children already, was
forty-five, with a pimply face, a hard eye, a hoarse voice, and a
quarrelsome and gloomy temper; and Anne, being pressed to answer his
suit, finally declared that she would turn nun rather than marry him.
James de Rohan, in spite of his powerful backers at the court of Rennes,
was likewise dismissed; his father, Viscount John II., was in the service
of the King of France.  Archduke Maximilian remained the only claimant
with any pretensions.  He was nine and twenty, of gigantic stature,
justly renowned for valor and ability in war, and of more literary
culture than any of the princes his contemporaries, a trait he had in
common with Princess Anne, whose education had been very carefully
attended to.  She showed herself to be favorably disposed towards him;
and the Duke of Orleans, whose name, married though he was, was still
sometimes associated with that of the Breton princess, formally declared,
on the 26th of January, 1486, that, "when he came to the Duke of
Brittany's, it was solely to visit him and advise him on certain points
touching the defence of his duchy, and not to talk to him of marriage
with the princesses his daughters."  But, whilst the negotiation was thus
inclining towards the Austrian prince, Anne de Beaujeu, ever far-sighted
and energetic, was vigorously pushing on the war against the Duke of
Brittany and his allies.  She had found in Louis de la Tremoille an able
and a bold warrior, whom Guicciardini calls the greatest captain in the
world.  In July, 1488, he came suddenly down upon Brittany, took one
after the other Chateaubriant, Ancenis, and Fougeres, and, on the 28th,
gained at St. Aubin-du-Cormier, near Rennes, over the army of the Duke of
Brittany and his English, German, and Gascon allies, a victory which
decided the campaign: six thousand of the Breton army were killed, and