SIX centuries have failed to efface from the memory of the French people the misery and devastation wrought by the hundred years’ wars, as travellers in rural France will know. Paris saw little of Charles who, after the temporary activity excited by the expulsion of the English, had sunk into his habitual torpor, and his bondage to women. In 1461 the wretched monarch, morbid and half-demented, died of a malignant disease, all the time haunted by fears of poison and filial treachery. The people named him Charles le bien servi (the well-served), for small indeed was the praise due to him for the great deliverance.
When the new king, Louis XI., quitted his asylum at the Burgundian court to be crowned at Rheims and to repair to St. Denis, he was shocked by the contrast between the rich cities and plains of Flanders and the miserable aspect of the country he traversed—ruined villages, fields that were so many deserts, starving creatures clothed in rags, and looking as if they had just escaped from dungeons. The “Universal Spider,” as the Duke of Burgundy called Louis, was ever on the move about France, riding on his mule from dawn to eve. “Our king,” says De Comines, “used to dress so ill that worse could not be—often wearing bad cloth and a shabby hat with a leaden image stuck in it.” When he entered Abbeville with the magnificent Duke of Burgundy, the people said “Benedicite! is that a king of France? Why, his horse and clothes together are not worth twenty francs!” A Venetian ambassador was amazed to see the most mighty and most Christian king take his dinner in a tavern on the market-place of Tours, after hearing mass in the cathedral.
It is not within our province to describe in detail the successful achievement of Louis’ policy of concentrating the whole government in himself as absolute sovereign of France by the overthrow of feudalism and the subjection of the great nobles with their almost royal power and state. His indomitable will, his consummate patience, his profound knowledge of human motives and passions, his cynical indifference to means, make him one of the most remarkable of the kings of France. In 1465, menaced by a coalition of nobles, the so-called League of the Public Good, Louis hastened to the capital. Letters expressing his tender affection for his dear city of Paris preceded him—he was coming to confide to them his queen and hoped-for heir; rather than lose his Paris, which he loved beyond all cities of the world, he would sacrifice half his kingdom. But the Parisians at first were sullen and would not be wooed, for they remembered his refusal to accord them some privileges granted to other cities. The university declined to arm her scholars, Church and Parlement were hostile. The idle, vagabond clercs of the Palais and the Cité composed coarse gibes and satirical songs and ballads against his person. Louis, however, set himself with his insinuating grace of speech to win the favour of the Parisians. He chose six members from the Burgesses, six from the Parlement and six from the university, to form his Council. With daring confidence, he decided to arm Paris. A levy of every male able to bear arms between sixteen and sixty years of age was made, and the citizen army was reviewed near St. Antoine des Champs, in the presence of the king and queen. From 60,000 to 80,000 men, half of them well-armed, marched past, with sixty-seven banners of the trades guilds, not counting those of the municipal officers, the Parlement and the university. The nobles were checkmated, and they were glad to accede to a treaty which gave them ample spoils and Louis, time to recover himself. The “Public Good” was barely mentioned.
The king refused to occupy the palace of the Louvre and chose to dwell in the new Hôtel des Tournelles, near the Porte St. Antoine, built for the Duke of Bedford and subsequently presented to Louis when Dauphin by his royal father; for thither a star led him one evening as he left Notre Dame. Often would he issue en bourgeois from the Tournelles to sup with his gossips in Paris.
The institution of the mid-day Angelus, in 1472, was due to Louis’ devotion to the Virgin. He ordained that the great bell of Notre Dame should be rung at noon as a signal that the good people of Paris should recite the Ave Maria. When in Paris scarcely a day passed without the king being seen at mass, and at leaving he always gave an offering.
In 1475, Louis’ old enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, was seeking an alliance with Edward IV. of England, and once more a mighty army entered France to reassert the claims of the English kings to the French crown. Louis, by his usual policy of flattery and bribery, succeeded in leading Edward to negotiate. If he had had to meet in the flesh the lion rampant on the English king’s escutcheon, he could not have taken ampler precautions. A bridge was built over the Somme, near Amiens, “and in the middle thereof was a strong trellis of wood such as is made for cages of lions, and the holes between the bars were no larger than a man could put his arm through.” On either side of this cage the monarchs and a score of courtiers met and conversed. Louis had divided his enemies; each in turn was cajoled and bribed, and the “Hucksters’ Peace” was concluded.
