ST. LOUIS left a truly magnificent kingdom. There was no longer any great dread of the old-line feudal nobility. It still existed, with much wealth, pomp and circumstance, splendid castles, "seigneurial rights," and high claims to social privilege and legal favor; but all knew it was merely an aristocracy, a "bulwark of the throne," demanding the king's favor, indeed, often with peremptory words but not really demanding the lion's share of his sovereign power. Nevertheless, for the next two centuries the royal authority, and with it the happiness of the nation, did not go forward as might be expected. There were three prime reasons for this time of disappointment and even reaction.
In the first place under any real monarchy much always depends on the person of the monarch. The Capetian line had provided several very able princes; now the quality of the royal stock was to degenerate. Several of the kings of this period were very unfit rulers indeed. France paid for their inefficiency. Again, although the old feudal aristocracy was waning, a new royal aristocracy was coming to the front. It was composed of younger scions and kinsmen of the royal house. In theory these princes believed in the unity of France and the greatness of the dynasty. In practice they often quarreled outrageously for the high places at court, the royal governorships, the control (if the king were a weakling) of the monarch's person; and they often sought "appanages"; that is, parts of the royal dominion, which they could govern for themselves as semi-independent viceroys. Some of the worst foes of French monarchy were thus to be in its own household.
Finally against France was to come a great foreign peril. The Norman Kings of England, losing their old duchy, but becoming identified with their new island peoples, were to build up a formidable military power, and to direct systematic attacks upon the Continent, which attacks almost ended in nothing less than the conquest of France.
From 1314 (the death of Philip IV, the grandson of St. Louis) to 1483 (the death of Louis XI) was to be a time of grievous testing for the entire French nation. At least once the entire realm seemed lost. Several times it was in grievous danger of being permanently dismembered and crippled. In the end, the genius of the people enabled them to shake off the foreign peril and to thrust the recalcitrant royal princes into their proper place. The dawn of "modern times" saw France again rich, progressive, and powerful.
It is difficult to characterize this long and troubled period without becoming swamped amid a mass of names and details. Some of the main incidents were these:
Philip III, "the Bold," son of St. Louis, had a somewhat brief and undistinguished reign (1270-85), but his son Philip IV, "the Fair," ruled longer and also wrought mightier deeds (1285- 1314). No man can praise the character of this grandson of the Saint, but Philip IV falls into the catalogue of those grasping, unscrupulous men, who in a wholly 3 way really advance the world's progress. A large part of his reign centered around his famous quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII, himself one of the most self-seeking and imperious pontiffs who ever ruled the Church from Rome.
The immediate issue was whether the King had the right, which he asserted, to tax the wealthy French clergy. Boniface denied this right, and Philip of course was not anxious to have the wealth of at least one fifth of the lands of France escape permanently from his treasurers. Actually behind this contention lay the greater issue whether in secular matters the Pope could override the authority of kings, and constitute himself a kind of super-monarch, merely deputing the temporal government of the world to such princes as would serve faithfully as his crowned viceregents. It was substantially over this issue that there had been bloody wars between the Papacy and the Emperors of Germany, and the Papacy on the whole had seemed the victor. But the Capetian kings had now a much firmer grasp upon their realm than ever the Saxon or Hohenstaufen Emperors had had upon Germany, and Frenchmen were entirely unwilling to have an Italian prince (as Boniface certainly was) intermingle in their own distinctly secular affairs. When after preliminary negotiations and compromises, the Pope came to open threats of putting Philip under the ban of the Church, the King countered by a dramatic stroke.
In 1302 he convoked the States General of France at Paris. Philip was an utter despot in his aims and methods, but in facing so great a power as the Papacy he understood the need of securing the loyal support of all elements of his people. It had been fairly common, long ere this, for the kings to consult about public affairs with Councils of their nobles and their higher clergy. Now, for the first time, the representatives of the "city dwellers" (bourgeois) were invited to be present and to give their support and wisdom to their liege lord. Needless to say, the men from the "Third Estate" were immensely flattered at this association with the secular and clerical nobility. They readily voted their approval of all the royal policy and joined with the upper orders in advising the King to take an uncompromising attitude toward the Pope. From this time onward we have occasional meetings of this States General – the representatives of the three great orders of French society – to aid the king in national issues, although thanks to a multitude of reasons this extraordinary body was never able to develop into a regular legislature with periodic meetings like the English Parliament. France thus stood stoutly behind Philip, and all the threats and anathemas of Rome could not put his throne in danger. The King even sent armed agents into Italy and actually arrested Boniface as a pretender to the Papacy (1303); and although the Pope was soon rescued from prison by his friends, the shock and humiliation of the affair were so great that he soon died utterly discredited. His successors (timid and pliable men) made haste to be reconciled with a monarch who could read them so terrible a lesson. In 1309 they actually withdrew their residence from Rome to Avignon in southern France, there to remain till 1376. During this long "Babylonish Captivity," the Papacy was to be under the very shadow of the formidable "Eldest Son of the Church" who reigned at Paris, and the whole Papal policy was often directed in the secular interests of France: – a matter of terrible ecclesiastical scandal, but something which of course increased the influence of the French kingship in every part of Christendom. Philip IV was survived by three sons. None of them, however, in his turn left sons to succeed him. When, after a colorless reign of two years, Louis X (1314-16) died leaving only a daughter, his next brother came promptly forward with the claim that women could not inherit the crown of France. A weak, female rule was not popular with responsible men; it opened the possibilities of all kinds of confusion. The crown lawyers and the States General therefore confirmed, or rather invented, the socalled "Salic Law" (alleged to be derived from the Salian Franks) that no woman could be a reigning queen over France. Philip V (1316-22) accordingly reigned in his brother's stead, but after another short, uneventful government he also died without a son, and in his place came the third brother, Charles IV (1322-28). No better fortune attended him. Like the rest he died in his prime without male heirs. Pious folk wagged their heads, and said that a curse was resting on the Capetian line for the insult offered Pope Boniface VIII. In any case Charles was the last ruler of the direct Capetian line. The crown passed to his cousin, Philip of Valois, the son of a younger brother of Philip IV. With this change in the dynasty evil days were to come to France.
Philip VI "of Valois" (1328-50) was not an entirely incapable prince, but he was inconsistent, reckless, and anything but an ideal ruler for guiding the nation in a time of dangerous attack from abroad. He was not tactful in dealing with his great nobles, and, in particular, he soon quarreled with Robert of Artois, a prince of the blood, who presently fled to the court of Edward III of England and stirred up mischief. The King also became embroiled in Flemish affairs. The freedom-loving Flemish cities had resisted their local prince, and Philip took sides with his vassal, the Count of Flanders, against them. The wealthy and powerful burghers, "the most industrious, the richest and the freest people in Europe," promptly began negotiating with Edward III, who was impelled to help them because Flanders was the great market for the English raw-wool exports.
Edward was the less disinclined to dip in French affairs because he had colorable claim to the crown of Philip himself. If there had been no Salic Law, Edward would possibly have reigned in Paris as well as in London, thanks to the rights of his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. The English King was a thoroughly capable monarch, a skillful captain, and he possessed (as Europe was soon to know) a military weapon in his "long-bow archers" that was to make him a great power in Europe.
Fighting began in a desultory way in 1337, at first in an attempt of the English to detach Flanders from French control. Nothing decisive eventuated. Then in 1341 the strife deepened, when two claimants struggled for the ducal crown of Brittany. Philip upheld the claims of one faction; the other naturally turned to Edward, who, to give color to his intervention in France, made more or less bold pretensions to the French crown itself. However, the Breton war, although not decisive, in the main favored the French party. It was not until 1346 that Edward found his hands sufficiently free to cross the Channel in considerable force. In July of that year he landed at Cape la Hogue, with 32,000 men: a decidedly large army for mediæval times. Up to this point, the contest had considerably favored Philip. The English had failed to master either Flanders or Brittany. But now Edward trusted no longer to local risings to help him, but to the strength of his good right arm. He quickly captured Caen, swept across Normandy almost to the gates of Paris, then turned north – burning and pillaging the open country but seldom stopping to besiege the cities. If Philip had trusted to Fabian tactics the English must have presently retreated from the devastated land with little really accomplished. But it was intolerable for a king of France to see his country devastated like the fields of a petty baron. He called out the entire levy of the realm. The French nobles responded with alacrity. A great force of Italian cross-bowmen were hired to offset the English archers. At Crécy, near Abbeville in Picardy, on the 26th of August, 1346, the French at last brought their foes to bay and forced a great battle.
Then all the world was to learn that a new factor had come in warfare. Hitherto upon any kind of a fair field, the feudal knights on their great war-horses and clothed in ponderous armor, had been able almost always to ride down even the best and bravest footmen. Edward, however, used his English archers with consummate skill. These long-bowmen with their great yew bows and "cloth-yard" arrows could shoot many scores of paces with remarkable speed and accuracy, and with force enough to penetrate all but the very best armor. The long-bow was in fact more powerful than the later musket, until generations after the coming of gunpowder. All day long, with mad and disastrously brave valor, the French knights strove to charge home through the deadly volleys of the bowmen. In the evening the remnants of the assailants drifted in rout from the field. Never had Frenchmen met so terrible a defeat. The King of Bohemia (Philip's ally) lay slain, and with him eleven princes, eighty knight-bannerets, twelve hundred knights, and, it is alleged, thirty thousand of the rank and file. France was stunned for the moment by the loss. Edward made hard-headed use of his victory. He laid siege to Calais, the chief door into France from across the English Channel, and starved the town out (1347) despite a very brave defense and vain efforts of Philip to send in succor. Henceforth the English had a most convenient sally-port from which to invade France, whenever they listed. Calais was to remain in English hands until 1558.
Philip of Valois died in 1350. He had been saved from further defeats and losses more by the advent of the Black Death, a terrible plague which swept over Europe in 1348, destroying French and English impartially, and for the nonce suspending all wars along with almost all peaceful forms of life, than by any forbearance on the part of Edward. In his stead reigned his son John, a brave, impetuous, but entirely light-headed and extravagant prince, who soon emptied the treasury by his luxuries and his careless generosity to his courtiers, and then almost ruined the economic life of the land by his equally reckless debasement of the coinage in a vain attempt to make money out of nothing. Such a king was no leader to confront a second great English attack.
In 1356 Edward, the Prince of Wales, often called the "Black Prince" to distinguish him from his father, commenced another invasion. This time the English started in from Bordeaux and Guienne (a fragment of which they had always retained out of the wreck of the old possessions of Henry of Anjou) and worked northward, headed possibly for Calais. It was an exceedingly risky venture, even if the Black Prince were at least as able a general as his father. His force barely exceeded eight thousand men, and he was in danger of being swallowed up in a hostile land. King John again called out all his liegemen and again the French chivalry loyally responded. With over fifty thousand men, he hemmed in the English upon a hill near Poitiers. The odds seemed so uneven that if the King had only held his lines in a tight blockade the invaders must have been starved into surrender. But no such tame victory would content John and his adventurous counselors. The shame of Crécy must be effaced in a fair battle, therefore battle there was; but it did not efface Crécy. The French horsemen with indescribable folly charged up a narrow lane whereof the hedges on either side were lined with English archers who shot down their foes at ease. When the attacking host reeled back in confusion, the Black Prince counter-attacked. The King's divisions failed to coöperate: they were cut up piecemeal. In the end John, after showing much personal valor, was taken prisoner along with his youngest son, thirteen counts, an archbishop, seventy barons, and some thousands of lesser warriors. It was really a far greater disaster than at Crécy. France was not merely defeated but deprived of her head.
The next few years were little better than anarchy. The King was prisoner in London. The nominal regent was the Crown Prince, the "Dauphin," Charles, as yet inexperienced, weak, and cowardly. Charles the Bad, King of the little country of Navarre, and a great French noble to boot, contested the government in an unscrupulous manner, and added to the terrors of foreign invasion all the miseries of civil war. The Dauphin convened the States General, but no real help came from this gathering of the estates of the realm. A radical party led by Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, seized the opportunity to try to cut down the royal authority, and to set up a kind of government by the representatives of the Third Estate. Moderns will sympathize with this bold move towards democracy; but in truth it was no time for rash political experiments. The radical party soon indulged in deeds of bloody violence. Marcel was presently murdered while trying to surrender Paris to Charles the Bad. A desperate revolt of the demoralized and starving peasants (the Jacquerie) was quenched in blood, and something like peace returned to the land when John was set free following the treaty of Brétigny (1360).
It was not a pleasant treaty for France. Edward did not, indeed, press home his very dubious claim for the French crown, but otherwise his demands were galling. John had to pay a ransom of three million gold crowns (an enormous sum for that age) and cede an absolute sovereignty not merely Calais, but practically the whole of old Aquitaine. The French monarchy thus lost fully half of the South Country, and the Black Prince set up a viceregal court for his father at Bordeaux. The best that could be said was that at last there was peace, and a chance for rehabilitation. No real improvement could be expected under John, however, but that headlong, pleasure-loving King died in 1364.
The Dauphin now took the crown as King Charles V (1364- 80)). His experience and record as crown prince had assuredly been unlucky, but he had learned by adversity. There was nothing heroic about him, but also nothing rash. His physical weakness gave him the aspect of a recluse and student. He was destined to go into history as "Charles the Sage," one of the cleverest monarchs of the whole French line.
The English menace was waning. After all, Edward III disposed of a realm as yet relatively poor and unable to send a succession of new armies year by year to the Continent – the only proceeding that could really endanger France. The Black Prince was presently induced to march from Bordeaux into Spain to reinstate a very evil king of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, whose subjects had justly banished him. The Black Prince was victorious (1367). Pedro was temporarily put back upon his throne, but he proved an ungrateful protégé. The English leader had exhausted the strength of his army, and had weakened the fealty of his new Aquitainian dominions by the heavy taxes he forced upon them. The Southern malcontents soon appealed to Paris, and Charles gave them a ready ear. He had quietly reorganized his army, filled up his treasury, and was ready to throw over the Treaty of Brétigny. In 1370 the war was renewed. Charles was fortunate in finding a very able captain – Bertrand du Guesclin, a valiant Breton knight, who never shunned battle when it promised advantage, but who understood clearly the folly of trying to ride down the English archers by serried lines of horsemen. The Black Prince marched again through the land, but everywhere he met cities with barred gates and with no chance for open fighting. These guerrilla tactics presently wore down the small English armies. "Never was there a king of France who fought less," spoke Edward III angrily, "and yet never one that gave me so much trouble." The Black Prince sickened and returned to England to die (1376). The leaders left in his place were no match for du Guesclin. Troubles at home prevented the coming of English reinforcements. By 1380 the islanders held only the coast towns of Calais, Cherbourg, and Brest in the North, and Bordeaux and Bayonne in the South. The first great English attack on France was over.
Charles the Sage died at the age of only forty-three. His passing was a national calamity. His eldest son Charles VI (1380- 1422) was only twelve years old, and never developed any great clearness of intellect. In 1392 he became insane, although possessed of recurring lucid intervals which made it impossible actually to depose him and to appoint a regent. His nominal reign was one long misery for his people. First his covetous and incapable uncles quarreled over the possession of his person and of the reins of government: then their place was taken by factions of younger nobles, with the immoral and unprincipled queen-consort Isabella of Bavaria as the guiding spirit in many of their intrigues. Presently the contending parties passed from plottings to assassination. In 1407 the powerful Duke of Orleans was stabbed at the direct instigation of the Duke of Burgundy, his rival. This made the quarrel unhealable. The "Burgundian" party, notwithstanding this crime, lost possession of the kings' person, which fell to the rival "Armagnac" faction of the nobility that soon became the stronger because the young Dauphin had joined them. John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was able, however, to embroil almost all the kingdom in civil war, when suddenly a new terror descended – the English under Henry V (Shakespeare's winsome "Prince Hal") renewed their invasions.
It is difficult to withhold personal admiration for Henry V, but the fact cannot be disguised that he was reviving a worthless claim to the throne of France, and that his coming produced nothing but misery for that already distracted kingdom. He landed at Harfleur in Normandy (1415), took that town, and then began a difficult march across the country to Calais.
His army numbered barely fifteen thousand effective men. If the French Armagnac, princes who claimed to represent the royal government, had known how to handle their forces, they ought to have cut him off, as surely as John might have cut off the Black Prince at Poitiers. But these turbulent leaders had learned nothing from the past sixty years. The mounted knight, with lance couched at full charge, was still their only idea of warfare. With fifty thousand men, under the nominal leadership of the Dauphin, the French attacked Henry at Agincourt near Calais. It was the story of the old battles over again. The wet, slippery ground made quick movements impossible. The closely packed formation of the men-at-arms merely improved the targets for the English archers, when the French strove recklessly to advance. The battle ended almost with a massacre when the longbows had finished their work, and the English charged out upon their demoralized enemies. The Dauphin fled leaving ten thousand men slain on the field, and very many great noblemen captive with Henry. The whole royal power of France was shaken.
Henry used his victory well. He let Armagnac and Burgundian rend one another in the interior, while in 1418 and 1419 he gathered in Caen and Rouen and other strongholds in Normandy. In 1419 the Armagnacs retaliated for the murder of the Duke of
Orleans by assassinating, under circumstances of great treachery, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. The Dauphin was mixed in the plot, and the deed threw Philip of Burgundy, John's son and heir, into the very arms of the English. Burgundy was already a great principality; many of its domains lay outside of France in "the Empire." Philip was more formidable than many kings of his day, and to him had joined the unnatural Queen Isabella, who hated her own son the Dauphin so much that she plotted to dethrone him in favor of Henry. Burgundy and Isabella negotiated in the name of the helpless Charles VI the shameful Treaty of Troyes (1420) whereby the Dauphin was to be disinherited, Henry was to marry Catherine the daughter of King Charles, and on the death of Charles was to become king both of France and of England. The Dauphin was still holding out south of the Loire; nevertheless the grip of the English on all of North France seemed tightening. Paris was in their hands and a great block of the old Capetian lands to boot, when in 1422 Henry V died, followed in a few weeks by the crazed old Charles VI. The latter had had one of the most calamitous reigns in all French annals.
Henry V left by Catherine a ten-months son, the unfortunate Henry VI of England. This child's regents were in actual possession of practically all France north of the Loire, also of the country around Bordeaux. He was recognized as "king" by the Duke of Burgundy and by the Parlement of Paris, the supreme legal body of France. South of the Loire, most districts now acknowledged the Dauphin as Charles VII (1422-61). He was "a young man of nineteen, of engaging manners, but weak in body, pale in countenance, and deficient in courage." He was charged with being engrossed in ignoble pleasures. The taint of the murder of John of Burgundy clung foully to him. No one could deny that he seemed to lack energy, and was all too content while the aggressive English regent – the Duke of Bedford – seemed plucking away his kingdom.
Most of the French governors and nobles of the South Country adhered to Charles. The prejudice against an English king was violent. The Duke of Bedford's armies were small if very efficient, and it was clear enough that Henry was acknowledged as king in the North only because of constant acts of coercion. Nevertheless the case of France seemed almost desperate. Charles's government was so weak that he was usually known as the "Dauphin" not the "King," or was sarcastically called "the King of Bourges," his residence city, the one place he held in fairly sure possession. His captains and noblemen were constantly at odds. His treasury was empty and the taxes were nigh uncollectable. The South Country was regularly harried and terrorized by "free companies" of roving mercenary soldiers, who, when they were not fighting for the pay of some prince, were wandering hither and yon, eating up the land and plundering impartially on every side. Alike in North France and the South commerce and orderly economic and cultural life appeared to be perishing.
Under those circumstances, it seemed to Bedford as if one bold, fierce stroke would win the undisputed crown for his nephew Henry. In October, 1428, the English laid siege to Orléans, one of the chief cities still held by Charles, and the greatest obstacle to the penetration of the invaders southward from the Loire. By May, 1429, the position of Orléans was very serious. The defense had been brave; but efforts at succor had failed, and provisions were running low. The fall of Orléans would probably have seen the English marching victoriously down into Aquitaine.
Already for years there had been a keen sense of national humiliation passing through all thoughtful Frenchmen. The English had been often tactless and brutal in their dealings with the conquered. The terrible miseries of the land, economic prostration, famine, pestilence, massacre, were all traceable to one cause – the invader. Yet the case seemed so hopeless, the Dauphin's government so inert, that, even while men ground their teeth and gripped their sword hilts, they said there was no help possible "save from God." Then came what many have called a miracle, what all must call a heaven-sent leader.It is very hard to exclude the personal story when dealing with Jeanne Darc; but this is a sketch of French history, not a study of even its most important and interesting characters. In bald, matter-of-fact language, what happened was this:1. 1. Jeanne Darc was born a peasant girl in 1409 in the village of Domremy, on the borders of Champagne. The region was one of the few eastern districts still held by Charles. As she grew up as a pious village maid she began to have elaborate visions of a France redeemed from the yoke of the English, and the Virgin kept telling her, " Jeanne, go and deliver the King of France, and restore him to his kingdom." Psychologists may determine of what these visions, her "voices," consisted. There is no doubt she honestly believed that she had them.2. 2. In 1429, when Orléans was at its last gasp, she appeared at the court of the Dauphin at the castle of Chinon, near Tours. She convinced even the skeptical court and the prince that hers was a divine commission and that she should be entrusted with an army to rescue Orléans. The force placed under her command she handled with considerable military skill, conducted it through the English lines into the city, and then directed a successful sortie. The French fought boldly, confident in being under the orders of a saint. The English archers broke in terror, being pitted (so they swore) against a diabolical "sorceress." "All things prospered," wrote Bedford angrily to England, "until a disciple and limb of the Fiende called the Pucelle [maid] used false enchantment and sorcery." Orléans was completely relieved.4. 3. Jeanne now successfully conducted Charles across a country partly held by the enemy to Reims. Here he was crowned King of France in the great cathedral, and was "Dauphin" no longer. At the coronation ceremony Jeanne stood proudly by the altar holding the royal standard.5. 4. Jeanne had now fulfilled her original mission. She is said to have stated "she would be glad to be sent back to her father and mother, that she might tend their sheep and oxen as she was accustomed." But the English still held Paris and a great block of northern France, and she felt bound to attack them. Her warfare was now less successful. At the court, jealous captains and selfish counselors began to intrigue against her. The support of the King grew cold. Was it dignified for a King of France to owe his throne and power to a peasant maiden?6. 5. In 1430 Jeanne was taken prisoner by the Burgundians when she led a sortie from Compiègne. Duke Philip deliberately sold his captive to the English who were greedy for vengeance. The disloyal and subservient Bishop of Beauvais undertook to serve them by acting as her judge and trying her in the Church courts on the charge of "witchcraft." If Charles could be proved to have owed his recent success to an emissary of the Devil, it of course would be a great blow to his prestige! Every art, coercion, and some of the milder forms of torture were used to trap Jeanne into a confession of guilt. At last (although resisting her questioners with great adroitness) she went through the forms of a recantation. It was easy then by a little trickery to allege that she had lapsed back to her former "damnable practices." On May 30, 1431, she was burned alive in the great square at Rouen as an incorrigible sorceress. Her bearing at the stake, however, was heroic and devout, her executioners trembled, and brutal English archers were filled with terror. "We are lost," cried one of King Henry's secretaries, as he turned away; "we have burned a saint!"
The guilt of her destruction was shared by many: by the venal Burgundians, by the infamous bishop, by the terrified and pitiless English, and last but not least by Charles VII himself, who callously let the woman who had probably rescued his crown be done to death, and yet never stirred, although he could readily have saved her by the threat of retaliation upon several great English noblemen he held as prisoners.
Even at the moment, not many took the charge of "sorcery" against Jeanne very seriously. The English gained nothing by her murder. In 1456 the Pope solemnly annulled the decision against her and declared her blameless. In 1908 she was enrolled at Rome among the "Blessed," as an immediate preliminary to canonization by the Church.
The English were still in the land for some time after the martyrdom of Jeanne, but her work was accomplished. The French patriotism had been roused, the invaders thrust upon the defensive, and finally a new spirit seemed to possess King Charles. He fell under the influence of a mistress, Agnes Sorel, who (however irregular their connection) seems to have been a contributing cause to his improvement. He discovered wise counselors and skillful captains. The Duke Philip of Burgundy was wearying of the English alliance, and began to quarrel with his old associates. In 1435 the Duke of Bedford, a great friend of Burgundy, died. The English thus lost their best leader and Duke Philip openly went over to the French. Charles made solemn avowals of sorrow at the murder of the Duke's father, and as a more material consideration, ceded considerable territory. The results of this shift in allegiance came quickly. In 1436 Paris opened its gates to the King, and the English garrison filed gloomily forth, departing under a capitulation.
After that the war lagged. The French won back Normandy and the other occupied countries bit by bit. There were inter. mittent truces. England was now becoming involved in home difficulties, thanks to the feeble reign of Henry VI. She no longer had archers and men-at-arms available to pour across the Channel. In 1453 came the last important battle. It was in the South Country near Bordeaux. There at Castillon Charles's troops defeated a last English army sent over under the old Earl of Talbot. The English were roundly beaten. Bordeaux was besieged and surrendered (1453). For the first time, therefore, since the days of Louis VII the English kings held not a single fortress in the South Country. Nothing now was left of all the conquests of Edward III, the Black Prince, and Henry V, but Calais and two adjacent villages in the extreme North.
The "Hundred Years' War" was over. It left France terribly scourged and desolated. Misgovernment, outrageous taxation, the devastations of hostile armies, the demoralization of trade and commerce, the exactions of the hosts of mercenaries employed by all the combatants had almost ruined many once flourishing districts. Probably France was a less populous, civilized, progressive land in 1453 than in 1328, the year of the first Valois King. But in any case, the nation had been welded together, as were then few mediæval kingdoms, by this awful visitation of constant war. The necessary common effort to expel the alien naturally redounded to the advantage of the royal power. One direct and important consequence was that it became recognized that for the defense of the realm, the King might continue to levy taxes (beyond the recognized "feudal dues") without the consent of the States General. The other, of equal consequence, was that royalty became possessed of a permanent standing army entirely apart from any feudal levies. These new forces, "lances" of cavalry, "free archers," etc., could be used by the King without any essential outside control, noble or democratic. An irresponsible use of the public purse and an obedient standing army have rightly been counted as corner-stones of autocracy.
Charles VII, after so feeble a beginning to his reign, died in a blaze of glory. His son Louis XI (1461-83) had lived on very bad terms with his father, and was actually in exile at Duke Philip of Burgundy's court when Charles died. It was generally expected the new King would prove merely the adjunct of his formidable vassal, but within two months after Philip had aided in crowning Louis at Reims, the twain quarreled. As a matter of fact the greater part of Louis's reign was to be taken up in a struggle with Burgundy, the swelling greatness whereof had become a standing menace to the safety of France.
Louis XI has made an interesting place for himself in French annals. "A bad man but a good king" is a phrase that describes his policy and deeds not inexactly. Majestic in his person he certainly was not. "Ungainly with rickety legs, eyes keen and piercing, but with a long hooked nose which lent grotesqueness to a face marked with cunning rather than dignity," such was his aspect. We are told also that he delighted in wearing mean gray clothes, that he would travel on a mule with only five or six servants, and that he invariably wore an old felt hat, ornamented with the leaden saint's figure, whereon he superstitiously set much store. He was wont to wander about incognito, and to select as his associates men of the middle or even the lowest stations of life, who were delighted to find themselves on familiar terms with "their lord the King." He distrusted (not unjustly) the loyalty of many of the higher nobility; by contrast therefore many of his councillors and even ministers of state were menials or little better. To be the King's barber meant probably to have more influence than to be a prince of the blood. This King, too, was superstitious, pouring out money on gifts to the shrines of influential saints, worshiping holy relics of dubious authenticity, and surrounding himself with astrologers and quack doctors. He was careless of human life and suffering. His dungeons were usually full, his hangman close at his hand and always busy. His most solemn promise was likely to prove unreliable. And yet – and herein lies the antithesis to all the above statements – his deeds in the end greatly redounded to the weal of France. Most of his victims deserved few tears; and as has been well written of him, "Louis was one of the few men destined to do really great things, and yet not himself be great."
Louis did indeed many things, but the most important of his deeds was this – he blasted the attempt of the House of Burgundy to found a "Middle Kingdom" between Germany and France, hemming in France and tearing away from her many essential provinces. In 1467 Duke Philip, "the Good," died. His son and heir was Charles the Bold. Charles's "ducal" crown was worth far more than the "royal" crowns of Scotland, Portugal, or Denmark as those kingdoms then went. Probably he seemed richer and more powerful than the King of England, now that the latter was driven back to his island. Thanks to inheritance, conquest, marriage treaties and the like, the Burgundian dukes, besides their old French duchy, held a great scattering of territories from the North Sea to the Alps. They were Counts of Holland and of Flanders, controlling the lion's share of the Belgium and Holland of to-day, and drew enormous revenues from all the teeming industrious Flemish cities. They had a considerable sprinkling of territories going into modern Alsace. The Holy Roman (German) Empire was now becoming very weak and its Emperor, Frederick III, was no stronger than the Empire. Charles confidently expected to be able to bribe or browbeat him into giving him a royal crown. Then he could write as an equal to his one-time suzerain and soon-to-be "brother" at Paris.
There were still obstacles in the way of Burgundian greatness. Charles's territories were large, but very scattered and heterogeneous. The weavers of Ghent and the peasants near the Swiss cantons had little in common. Charles's title to some of his dominions also was not beyond fair dispute. But the new Duke was a man of much ability as well as ambition. His resources were vast, he was brother-in-law to Edward IV, the new King of England, and his energy was too great rather than too little. Charles the Bold has indeed gone into many histories as Charles "the Rash." His project on the whole seemed very feasible. He would take advantage of all the disaffection of many great French nobles against their niggardly, uncourtly king; he would egg on the English to renew their invasions to recover their lost provinces; then he would strike home hard for himself. The blow at the future of France might have been almost as deadly in the end as that which Jeanne Darc averted. It was averted now by a very different character: by Louis XI, one of the most skillful human foxes who ever knew when to run and when to bite.
Charles was of course greatly assisted by the fact that Louis had bitter foes in his own household. Especially did his own brother, the Duke of Berri, systematically conspire with the common enemy of France in order to wring money and governorships out of the King. Louis fought back with all the subtle weapons at his command. He is alleged never to have met his enemies face to face in fair battle. No man was ever the incarnation of the word "policy" more than this son of Charles VII. A contemporary likened him to a spider who quietly spun his web, then calmly waited for the unlucky gnats. There was much force in the simile.
In 1465 Louis had to confront a general uprising of the French nobility headed by the Duke of Berri and boldly championed by the Burgundians. The insurgents hypocritically called themselves "The League of the Public Weal," and made cynical professions of anxiety for the oppressed bourgeoisie and peasants (who were indeed being very sorely taxed), but there had actually never been a movement more selfish. Louis's armies seemed overmatched. He unhesitatingly made peace with his rebellious subjects, giving concessions right and left to their leaders; especially Berri was given the great government of Normandy, and to Burgundy was awarded various towns, especially Boulogne and Péronne. Louis had only done this to make his foes quiet down, that he might divide them and ruin them piecemeal.
It took him some years to do this. There were more combinations and re-combinations against him. Presently the Duke of Berri was induced to exchange Normandy for Guienne, a pleasant principality, but one that put him at a greater distance from his ally in Burgundy. Charles the Bold was alternately fought with and cozened. In a lucky moment for Louis, his brother Berri died (1472), and Charles could now be treated more roundly. War was renewed (1472), and the Burgundian with a great army forced his way down from the North towards Paris. The Duke penetrated as far as Beauvais. He had sworn to teach Louis a lesson by putting all his subjects and lands to the fire or sword; and the country along the Somme was ravaged almost as pitilessly as in a greater war in more recent times. At Nesle the Burgundians slaughtered a multitude of men, women, and children who had taken refuge in the village church. Such "frightfulness" usually brings its own punishment. When Charles appeared before Beauvais the inhabitants nerved themselves up to a desperate defense. A stalwart young woman, Jeanne Hachette, distinguished herself by leading on the fighting men. The Burgundians lost fifteen hundred men in their assaults and then had to decamp discomfited. The result was a truce, which was really equivalent to a great defeat for Charles. The King was coercing or buying off his French allies one by one, and the Burgundian would have to face his nominal suzerain without their help.
Charles had still great hopes from the English alliance. In 1475 Edward IV crossed to Calais with a fine army, but Louis promptly sought an interview with the invader, convinced him there was little to gain by playing the selfish game of Burgundy, and sweetened his arguments by seventy-five thousand crowns cash in hand, and the promise of a pension of fifty thousand more each year. Edward rather ingloriously went home. Charles found himself most decidedly left in the lurch.
He had still brave prospects and a great power, but he believed he could gain more by attacking the weak principalities near Germany than by another attack on Louis. In 1475 he seized the Duchy of Lorraine, and then in an evil hour he decided to subdue the free Swiss cantons. For many years now the Swiss mountaineers had defied the military power of Austria, but Charles had learned no lessons from the old stories of Mortgarten and Sempach, and other Swiss victories. Louis sat back quietly, allowed Charles to march his pretentious armies into difficult mountain country where his formidable cavalry and artillery were useless against the rush of the Swiss pike and halberd men, and shrewdly waited the results. The King had calculated very correctly. Charles was disgracefully routed at Granson, and fled for his life (1476). With furious energy he assembled another army and invaded Switzerland again. This time the highlanders caught him at Morat, on the verge of a lake, and slew eight thousand to ten thousand Burgundians besides those who were drowned.
The exiled Duke of Lorraine now came on the scene to reclaim his heritage, and seized his old capital of Nancy. Charles had strength enough to collect still another army to retake it, but now Louis sent active help to his rival and urged on the Swiss to take the offensive. In January, 1477, Charles the Bold fought his last battle under the walls of Nancy. His army was scattered or slain, and the prince who had almost founded a new independent kingdom in Europe was among the fallen. Louis did not conceal his joy.
Charles the Bold left only a daughter, Mary, eight years old. Louis promptly seized the greater part of her father's possessions in eastern and northern France. He did not have the power or hardihood to make a stroke for the great domains in the Low Countries which were eventually to pass under the influence of Hapsburg Austria. In 1482, by a treaty with Mary's guardians, France acquired Picardy, Artois, the Duchy of Burgundy – all with many dependent lands. Louis had also gained territory
toward Spain, and absorbed many of the provinces held as governments by the great nobles. Since the expulsion of the English no French king had added such territories to the realm as did he.
Louis did not spend all of his reign either in intrigue or in battle. Unable to trust the loyalty of the nobles, he not merely filled many of his great offices with members of the bourgeoisie ("city-folk") or even low-born peasants, but he did not a little to elevate the whole lot of the lower classes, to better their legal condition, and to extend the rights of self-government in their towns. We find him improving highways, summoning to his court expert merchants to advise on the means of promoting French commerce and industries, creating new fairs and public markets, and encouraging Italian craftsmen to settle in France to manufacture glass. His interests ranged as widely as from the promotion of mining to considering schemes for the scientific codification of the royal laws; and last but not least we find him founding new universities and schools of law and medicine, and giving his patronage to the young invention of printing.
Louis XI thus deserves exceedingly high praise for having been able to fend off the Burgundian danger, and actually to turn it to the enlargement and strengthening of France, for, reverting to Philip IV's usage, introducing the non-noble classes into a share in the government offices, and for once more putting the great lords in their proper place. He "contributed more than any one else to establish the French monarchy, and is in certain respects the representative of the new spirit in politics." Nevertheless, when we return to the personality of this sordid King, a sense of his repulsiveness returns also. He won necessary battles with despicable weapons. He not merely kept high-born conspirators and rebels in needful custody; he held them for years in noisome "cages" and dungeons with all the refinements of mediæval cruelty. To this day the crypts and dark cells of his grim castle of Loches are a potent reminder of how cruel were the mercies of this wicked King; and if he was pitiless to the great lords who defied his power, he was equally pitiless to such of the wretched bourgeoisie as resisted his grinding taxation. On one occasion when these revolted, we hear of the leading insurgents being hanged on trees all along the roadsides, or being flung into a river, sewed in sacks, whereon was written, "Let the King's justice pass!"
His superstition continued to the end. In 1482 the Flemish envoys came to him to get his oath to the treaty of peace with Mary of Burgundy. The King lay dying of paralysis: he caused the Gospel to be brought, upon which he was to swear to the pact. "If I swear with my left hand," spoke he, "I pray you excuse it, my right is a little weak." But then, fearful a treaty sworn with the left hand might seem invalid, by a painful effort he touched the Holy Book with his right elbow! – He duly exhausted every possible appeal to the saints and to saints' relics to prolong his life, but the end came in August, 1483.
It is well written that "there was nothing noble about Louis XI but his aims, and nothing great but the results he attained," yet, however different he might have been, he could not have done more, for what he achieved was the making of France.
In 1483, at the end of the Middle Ages, France was the most populous, the richest, most consolidated country in Europe, and probably the best governed. Thanks to the marvelous recuperative power of the French people, so often displayed, the ravages of the Hundred Years' War had been completely eliminated. A great future seemed about to open before the nation.