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.
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.”
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.]