Philip de Commines has been called the Father of Modern History.
“His Memoirs,” says Mr. Hallam, “almost make an epoch in historical
literature. He is the first modern writer who in any degree has
displayed sagacity in reasoning on the characters of men and the
consequences of their actions, or who has been able to generalise his
observations by comparison and reflection.” This ability to discuss
motives as well as events renders him far superior to Froissart, who,
on the other hand, greatly exceeds him in picturesqueness of style and
fertility of invention. Froissart merely described notable occurrences;
Commines delineated great men. “The one,” says Sir James Stephen, “had
contemplated the strife of kings and kingdoms as a spectator of the
Isthmian Games may have gazed at that heart-stirring spectacle. The other
had watched the schemes of statesmen and the conflict of nations, with
some approach to that judicial serenity which we ascribe to a member of
the Amphictyonic Council.” If Froissart may be termed the Livy of France,
she had her Tacitus in Commines.
The Memoirs of Philip de Commines relate to one of the most interesting
periods of history. In the words of the Preface to the old English
translation of 1723: “He gives us a prospect of all the most memorable
occurrences in the reigns of Louis XI., his son Charles VIII., Charles
the last Duke of Burgundy, and Mary his only daughter and heir; as
likewise a description of the most remarkable passages in England,
Flanders, Germany, Italy, Spain, and other neighbouring countries,
which happened in the space of thirty-four years, from 1464 to 1498. He
teaches with as much verity as plainness and simplicity of style, such
fair lessons as will show princes the way of governing their people with
gentleness and order. There it is to be seen how kings can never be at
peace with their subjects, whilst they are at variance with the King of
kings, to whom all mankind, of what dignity or qualification soever, must
give an account. There it is to be seen how justice, equity, moderation,
and uprightness in all things, is that which gives them a quiet and happy
dominion over the hearts of their subjects, without employing either
menaces or force. In short, his book is a pleasant and profitable field,
full of infinite good fruits, useful for all conditions, in good fortune
as well as bad,—for him that commands as well as him that obeys; and all
enforced with such Christian-like persuasions, and fortified with such
important and excellent precepts, that it is impossible to read them
without being affected.”
On the peculiar interest attaching to the Memoirs of Commines, Dr. Arnold
has the following remarks: “The Memoirs of Philip de Commines terminate
about twenty years before the Reformation, six years after the first
voyage of Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately
preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage of an old
state of things, now on the point of passing away. Such periods, the lull
before the burst of the hurricane, the almost oppressive stillness which
announces the eruption, or, to use Campbell’s beautiful image,
‘The torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below,’
are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is not
from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow, nor yet
from the solemnity which all things wear when their dissolution is
fast approaching—the interest has yet another source: our knowledge,
namely, that in that tranquil period lay the germs of the great changes
following, taking their shape for good or for evil, and sometimes
irreversibly, while all wore an outside of unconsciousness. We,
enlightened by experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we
wish in vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing hour.
And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we are curious to
know whether his previous words or behaviour indicated any sense of
his coming fate, so we examine the records of a state of things just
expiring, anxious to observe whether in any point there may be discerned
an anticipation of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
insensibility. In this respect, Commines’ Memoirs are striking from their
perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle ages had been already
sounded, yet Commines has no other notions than such as they had tended
to foster; he describes their events, their characters, their relations,
as if they were to continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the
simplest form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the instability
of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common mortality, or in the tone
of that beautiful dialogue between Solon and Crœsus, when the philosopher
assured the king that to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But
resembling Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in
another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly of all men
without respect of persons, Philip de Commines praises his master Louis
the Eleventh as one of the best of princes, although he witnessed not
only the crimes of his life, but the miserable fears and suspicions of
his latter end, and has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect,
Philip de Commines is in no degree superior to Froissart, with whom the
crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere with his
general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and respect was too
strong to be broken, and the facts which he himself relates to their
discredit, appear to have produced on his mind no impression.”[1]
This tendency on the part of Commines to praise the princes who
successively enjoyed his aid and allegiance, is thus noticed by Sir James
Stephen:—“He regards Charles the Rash with that affectionate interest
which the heroism even of the unwise will excite in the bosoms of the
wisest. He contemplates Louis XI. with that combination of curiosity,
attachment, and awe, which minds of more than ordinary power so often
cherish for each other. The images of the fiery duke and of the crafty
king were projected in bold relief on the imagination of this acute
and vigilant observer; and the truth and distinctness of those images
forms the great charm of his retrospect of his own eventful life. The
higher charm of a just sensibility, whether to moral beauty or to the
absence of it, is, however, wanting in his pages. He is the unqualified
admirer, if not the unscrupulous apologist, of his royal master, and
seems insensible alike to the injustice of the ends at which he aimed,
and to the baseness of the means by which he pursued them. Yet man is
not less inconsistent in his faults and errors than in his virtues, and
thus, even the utilitarian Commines is unable to survey the revolutions
in which he so largely participated without an occasional, and apparently
heartfelt acknowledgment that, in bringing to pass the disastrous
catastrophes of the world’s history, the will and agency of man are
but instruments by which the Divine will accomplishes its immutable
purposes of wisdom and of justice. In the subtlety of his analysis of
the great characters of his generation—in the force and discrimination
of his portraits of them—in the sagacity with which he explores, and the
perspicuity with which he interprets, the hidden causes of the events in
which they acted,—and in the vigorous dispersion of the mists with which
ignorance or passion obscures the true aspect of human affairs, Commines
is emphatically a Frenchman. In the reverence with which, on reaching
the impassable limits of human investigation, he ceases to inquire, and
pauses to adore, he rises higher still, and becomes not only a citizen,
but a teacher of the great Christian Commonwealth.”[2]
The composition of his Memoirs was the occupation of the last years of
the life of Commines, when circumstances had, sorely against his will,
condemned him to retirement and repose. He wrote the first six books
in the years 1488-1494, and the last two, probably, in 1497-1501. They
remained in manuscript until 1524, when the first edition was published
by Galliot du Pré. This contained only so much of the work as related
to the reign of Louis XI.; but as the book immediately became popular,
the remainder was put to press and published in 1528. In 1552, Denys
Sauvage republished the whole work, under the title which it now bears,
and divided into books and chapters. This was the standard edition of
Commines until 1649, when Denys Godefroy, historiographer of France,
brought out a new one, in which he corrected numerous errors into
which Sauvage had fallen. This edition was printed at the Royal Press
in the Louvre, and Louis XIV. assisted with his own hands in pulling
some of the copies of the first sheet. In 1747, another and still more
accurate edition, with a copious appendix, was brought out by the
celebrated Lenglet Dufresnoy. This has recently been superseded by
the edition published by Mdlle. Dupont, who has carefully collated the
various manuscripts and editions of the text, and added biographical,
genealogical, and historical notes, of great value and accuracy.
The present translation has been made from the text as restored by Mdlle.
Dupont, and the notes are mostly taken from her edition. The various
treaties mentioned in the Memoirs are given at large in their proper
places; and with a view to render the work more complete as a history of
Louis XI., the “Chronique Scandaleuse” of Jean de Troyes is printed at
the end of the second volume.