In 1453 the Dauphin still had designs on Italy, and offered to the Venetian Signory his aid in Italy to combat Count Francesco.[[86]] It was arranged that he should come with from eight to ten thousand men, dispossess Sforza, and conquer for himself a Duchy of Milan to extend from Adda to Ticino, from Padua beyond Piacenza. Or, if the King and the Dauphin would guarantee the army, Venice professed herself willing to aid the Duke of Orleans in the same undertaking. But while these princes were arranging their future conquests, a spirit stronger than they was making these conquests impossible—a spirit which, a score of years ago, had begun to draw together Scotland and England, those ancient enemies, to the alarm of France; a spirit which had estranged Burgundy and Brittany from their English companions in so many battles, and which was leading them to the feet of the long-despised and outraged King of France; a spirit which now should reconcile Venice with Sforza, Florence with Milan, and make, for a brief moment of millennium, those immemorial foes at peace together; a spirit which awoke in these middle years of the fifteenth century—aroused Heaven knows whence or how—and strangely changed the world it breathed across: I have named the spirit of Nationality.

At Christmas-time in 1453 the Venetians spared neither pains nor prayers nor promise to induce the Dauphin to come and suppress Count Francesco Sforza. In April of the next year[[89]] they sent to tell him, as delicately as possible, that they had no further need of his services (a refined way of informing him that they would oppose him), since they had made peace with the man whom four months ago they had called the Common Enemy of his countrymen, and whom they had so many times endeavoured to assassinate. And probably the Dauphin was not sorry. For the spirit that animated these Italians inspired him also. Already it had touched his intelligent and sensitive spirit. Already, in 1447,[[88]] he had laughed for joy when the French lost Genoa, and had declared “le Roy se gouvernoit si mal qu’on ne pouvoit pis.” In the five years between 1445 and 1450 the Dauphin had passed from the friendship of Orleans to the friendship of Burgundy, and his ideal had changed. He raged to see the King prefer Italy to the north, and amuse himself with taking Genoa and securing Asti when he should have set to conquering Normandy. He said aloud that the true place for such a King as that was in such a Hermitage as the Duke of Savoy’s. He plotted to seize the government of affairs himself, and leave the King, in prosperous desuetude, to amuse himself with his Belle Agnès and his pleasures. As we know, the plot fell through, and the impatient Dauphin, a discomfited fugitive, was himself the one to seek a hermitage at the Court of Burgundy. There he spent five years of chafing exile and mortification while his father ruled France, not unsuccessfully, after his own fashion, pursuing shadows indeed in Italy, yet at home administering affairs and inventing a regular army with no less zeal and skill for this extraneous ambition. Louis was still at the Court of Philip of Burgundy when, in 1461, he heard the news of his father’s death. And the prince who, of all others, should do most for the reintegration of his country ascended the throne of France.[[87]]

As we know, the law of historic necessity required that the Dauphin should renounce his ambition of a North Italian state—he had, in fact, already renounced it; that he should abandon his early visions and his early friends, and adopt for his counsellors the very men who once had ruined him. Henceforth he must bend the whole strength of his spirit to the furthering of that policy which he had so long, and at so great a sacrifice, resisted and attempted to destroy. The interests of the time required that France should forego all ambitions foreign to herself in order to consolidate herself; that she should sacrifice the south in order to insure the north; that she should also sacrifice the aristocracy to the people; and Louis XI., who, as a prince, had paid so dear for his adherence to the rights of the nobles, became the monarch who more than any other was governed by men of low and base condition—who more than any other oppressed and resisted the pride of feudalism. Those who had been his friends became his enemies; those likewise who had been his enemies became his friends. Francesco Sforza, from whom he had been so eager to take his duchy, became the one man alive whom he admired and respected. Yes, this successful captain of adventure, who for years had prevented him in Milan, in Naples, and in Genoa, who once had been the chief stumbling-block in the path of the Dauphin, became the corner-stone of the policy of the King. Like Catherine de’ Medici, like Rodrigo Borgia, like most unscrupulous rulers, there was something oddly magnanimous in the moral indifference of Louis IX. Sforza never suffered for his enmity of yore. The new King of France was a being as destitute of rancour as devoid of gratitude.

With Savoy, Orleans, Dunois, and Anjou the new king was ill-disposed to treat. He had learned the secret of their intrigues and their ambitions. On May 10, 1463, he wrote to Sforza that he was content to come to an understanding with Milan, if Milan would utterly disavow Savoy. This conspirator, versed since boyhood in all the dismal ins and outs of treachery, was too well aware of the tricks of his confederates.[[90]] It still might be possible that his enemies were honest. They at least were the only people he could trust; and more than any other he confided in Francesco Sforza. In December, 1463, he made to the de facto Duke of Milan the significant cession of the French claim to Genoa.[[91]] He also arranged for the cession of Savona. Negotiations were even begun for yielding Asti to Francesco Sforza; but the inhabitants declared that they would stand by the house of Orleans.

At first the cousins of the King could not believe that he had actually abandoned them—he who had begun his career as the pupil of Dunois, and had suffered so long as the champion of the nobles. So late as October 10, 1465, the descendants of Valentine Visconti sent a very secret embassy to Venice[[92]] to propose to the Ten a league between their government and the Duke of Orleans, the Count of Angoulême, and the Duke of Brittany, for the purpose of ousting the usurper, Count Francesco, and delivering the Duchy of Milan to Charles of Orleans. This league, which could not be confirmed by the Pope, a political adversary, might, it was suggested, be headed by the King of France. Probably the Venetians were better informed as to the real intentions of Louis XI. Certainly they knew that it was too late or too early to dream of dislodging the Sforzas from Milan. They replied that they loved the house of France, but that peace also was dear to them: they begged to be excused from attacking Count Francesco.

After this for many years the house of Orleans ceased to struggle. Before the year was out Charles of Orleans was dead, and the French pretender to the crown of Milan was only an infant, three years old. Before the child was six Dunois was also dead. Dunois—who had not suffered the children of his adoptive mother to be cheated of their inheritance in Asti—would, had he lived, have instructed his nephew in the details of his claim to Milan. But Louis II. of Orleans, born in his father’s seventy-second year, was naturally doomed to lose in infancy his father’s contemporaries. As the child grew up every link was severed that might have bound him to the past, and he knew little or nothing of the pretensions of his house. His mother, who had a romantic worship for the memory of Valentine Visconti, related to her son many a legend of the quasi-royal power which during the last century his ancestors possessed. But that supremacy seemed at an end for ever. In France, in Italy, the star of Orleans suffered a long eclipse. By his own experience in rebellion Louis XI. was aware how dangerous to the Crown and how disastrous to the kingdom was the power of the great feudal houses. Alençon and Armagnac and many another he diminished by confiscation and captivity; Dunois, Bourbon, Saint-Vallier, Sancerre, he attached to the Crown by royal marriages. Kinship in subjection, independence in imprisonment: these were the two alternatives presented by the King to the nobles of France. Among the most unfortunate of those who accepted the former gift was the young Louis d’Orléans. Louis XI. had decided that with this young man the house of Orleans should end; and when its representative was eleven years of age, the King married him to Jeanne of France, a gentle girl, deformed, incapable of offspring, and so ugly that when she was brought to court for her wedding the king himself exclaimed: Je ne la croyais pas si laide. To this bride the young duke was married in 1473. “They will have no expense with a nursery,” wrote the malicious King to Dammartin: ils n’auraient guères à besoigner et nourrir les enfans qui viendraient du dit mariage: mais toutefois se feroit-il.

Meanwhile the six sons of Sforza had grown to manhood; and the eldest ruled in Milan, accepted, by the mere fact of his unchallenged succession, as the lawful inheritor of his father’s duchy.

VI.

When Louis II. of Orleans had reached the age of twenty he was the best archer, the most dexterous horseman, the most adroit and brilliant man-at-arms about the Court of France. He was handsome, fond of the arts, and well instructed. He had an engaging manner, gentle, gracious, and benign. A brave and eager cavalier, he was ready for adventures; but a strong hand kept him down, a hand whose cruel restraint was never lifted from that audacious brow. Suddenly the pressure ceased: the hand was gone; on August 30, 1483, King Louis died.

He was succeeded by a child of fourteen, an ugly, ignorant youth, who had grown up neglected in the castle of Amboise, far from the Court, alone with his gentle forsaken mother, Charlotte of Savoy, who had taught him the only thing she knew, the plots of innumerable romances of chivalry. For Louis XI., partly afraid of injuring the delicate constitution of his only heir, and partly remembering his own dangerous and rebellious childhood, denied any solid education to his son. He never saw the boy, leaving him for years at a time to grow up as best he might alone with his mother at Amboise. “Let the body grow strong first,” said the King; “the mind will look to itself.” And, according to tradition, the sole food that he provided for the eager mind of his son was one single Latin maxim: Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare. This was all the Latin that was taught to Charles VIII., and on this solitary morsel of classic attainment he was never known to act. Louis XI., for all his subtlety, had forgotten that by simply withholding one sort of education you cannot insured vacuity. The child at Amboise knew nothing of history, nothing of geography, nothing of the classics. But his mind was stuffed with the deeds of Roland and Ogier, and the beauty of La belle dame sans merci. Suddenly one summer day, unwonted messengers knocked at the gates of Amboise; they fetched the child away to see an old, misshapen, suspicious man, whom he did not know—who was his father. The next day Charles VIII. was king of France under the regency of his married sister, Anne de Bourbon. Madame Anne inherited her father’s dislike and distrust of Orleans; but her sister was his wife and adored him, and her brother, the king, admired him. She did her best to repress Orleans in France; but her hand, though firm, had not the solidity of her father’s. Orleans grew and expanded.