[1] The emperor Louis I. is counted as Louis I., king of France.
LOUIS III. (c. 863-882), king of France, was a son of Louis II. and with
his brother Carloman succeeded his father as king in April 879. A strong
party, however, cast some doubts upon the legitimacy of the young
princes, as the marriage of their parents had not been recognized by the
emperor Charles the Bald; consequently it was proposed to offer the
crown to the East Frankish ruler Louis, a son of Louis the German. But
this plan came to nothing, and in September 879 the brothers were
crowned at Ferrières by Ansègisus, archbishop of Sens. A few months
later they divided their kingdom, Louis receiving the part of France
north of the Loire. They acted together against the Northmen, over whom
in August 881 they gained a memorable victory. They also turned against
Boso who had been set up as king in Burgundy and Provence. On the 5th of
August 882 Louis died at St Denis. He left no sons and Carloman became
sole king. (A. W. H.*)
LOUIS IV. (921-954), king of France, surnamed "d'Outremer"
(_Transmarinus_), was the son of Charles III. the Simple. In consequence
of the imprisonment of his father in 922, his mother Odgiva (Eadgyfu),
sister of the English king Æthelstan, fled to England with the young
Louis--a circumstance to which he owes his surname. On the death of the
usurper Rudolph (Raoul), Ralph of Burgundy, Hugh the Great, count of
Paris, and the other nobles between whom France was divided, chose Louis
for their king, and the lad was brought over from England and
consecrated at Laon on the 19th of June 936. Although his _de facto_
sovereignty was confined to the town of Laon and to some places in the
north of France, Louis displayed a zeal beyond his years in procuring
the recognition of his authority by his turbulent vassals. The beginning
of his reign was marked by a disastrous irruption of the Hungarians into
Burgundy and Aquitaine (937). In 939 Louis became involved in a struggle
with the emperor Otto the Great on the question of Lorraine, the nobles
of which district had sworn an oath of fidelity to the king of France.
When Louis married Gerberga, sister of Otto, and widow of Giselbert,
duke of Lorraine, there seemed to be a fair prospect of peace; but the
war was resumed, Otto supporting the rebel lords of the kingdom of
France, and peace was not declared until 942, at the treaty of
Visé-sur-Meuse. On the death of William Longsword, duke of Normandy, who
had been assassinated by Arnulf, count of Flanders, in December 942,
Louis endeavoured to obtain possession of the person of Richard, the
young son and heir of the late duke. After an unsuccessful expedition
into Normandy, Louis fell into the hands of his adversaries, and was for
some time kept prisoner at Rouen (945), and subsequently handed over to
Hugh the Great, who only consented to release him on condition that he
should surrender Laon. Menaced, however, by Louis' brother-in-law, Otto
the Great, and excommunicated by the council of Ingelheim (948), the
powerful vassal was forced to make submission and to restore Laon to his
sovereign. The last years of the reign were troubled by fresh
difficulties with Hugh the Great and also by an irruption of the
Hungarians into the south of France. Louis died on the 10th of September
954, and was succeeded by his son Lothair.
The chief authority for the reign is the chronicler Flodoard. See also
Ph. Lauer, _La Règne de Louis IV d'Outre-Mer_ (Paris, 1900); and A.
Heil, _Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen Otto dem Grossen und
Ludwig IV. von Frankreich_ (Berlin, 1904). (R. Po.)
LOUIS V. (967-987), king of France, succeeded his father Lothair in
March 986 at the age of nineteen, and finally embroiled the Carolingian
dynasty with Hugh Capet and Adalberon, archbishop of Reims. From the
absence of any important event in his one year's reign the medieval
chroniclers designated him by the words "qui nihil fecit," i.e. "le
Fainéant" or "do-nothing." Louis died in May 987, his mother Emma being
accused of having poisoned him. He had married Adelaide, sister of
Geoffrey Grisegonelle, count of Anjou, but had no issue. His heir by
blood was Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, son of Louis IV., but the
defection of the bishops and the treason of Adalberon (Ascelinus),
bishop of Laon, assured the success of Hugh Capet.
See F. Lot, _Les Derniers Carolingiens_ (Paris, 1891); and the
_Recueil des actes de Lothaire et de Louis V_, edited by L. Halphen
and F. Lot (1908). (R. Po.)
LOUIS VI. (1081-1137), king of France, surnamed "the Fat," was the son
of Philip I. of France and Bertha of Holland. He was also surnamed the
"Wide-awake" and "the Bruiser," and lost none of his energy when he
earned the nickname by which he is known in history. In 1098 Louis was
made a knight, and about the same time was associated with his father in
the government, which the growing infirmities of Philip left more and
more to his son, in spite of the opposition of Bertrada, the queen,
whose criminal union with Philip had brought the anathema of the church.
From 1100 to 1108 Louis by his victorious wars on the English and
brigands had secured the army on his side, while the court supported
Bertrada. Unable to make headway against him in war she attempted to
poison him, and contemporary chroniclers attributed to this poison the
pallor of his face, which seems to have been in remarkable contrast to
his stalwart, and later his corpulent figure. Louis' reign is one of the
most important in the history of France. He is little less than the
second founder of the Capetian dynasty. When the feeble and incompetent
Philip I. died (29th of July 1108) Louis was faced by feudal barons as
powerful as himself, and ready to rise against him. He was forced to
have himself hurriedly crowned at Orleans, supported by a handful of
vassals and some ecclesiastics. As king he continued the policy he had
followed during the previous eight years, of securing the roads leading
to Paris by putting down feudal brigands and destroying their
strongholds in the Île-de-France. The castle of the most notorious of
these, Hugues du Puiset, was three times taken and burned by the king's
men, but Hugues was spared to go back each time to his robber life,
until he died on a crusade. In the north, Thomas de Marle, son of
Enguerrand de Coucy, carried on a career of rapine and murder for almost
thirty years before the king succeeded in taking him prisoner (1130).
Twenty-four years of continuous war finally rooted out the robber barons
who lived on the plunder of the roads leading to Paris: the lords of
Montlhéri, who commanded the roads to Orleans, Melun and the south,
those of Montmorency near St Denis on the north (who had to restore what
they had robbed the abbey of St Denis), those of Le Puiset toward the
west, on the way to Chartres, and many others. Parallel with this
consolidation of his power in the ancestral domains Louis met
energetically the Anglo-Norman danger, warring with Henry I. of England
for twenty-five years. After the victory of Tinchebray (1106) Louis
supported the claims of William Clito, son of Robert, duke of Normandy,
against Henry I. A ruthless war followed, in which Louis was at times
reduced to the sorest straits. In 1119, at a council held at Reims under
the presidency of Pope Calixtus II., the enemies were reconciled; but
William Clito's claims were not satisfied, and in 1123 war began again
on a larger scale. Henry I. induced the emperor Henry V. to join in the
attack upon France; and, his heir having been drowned in the loss of the
"White Ship," won the count of Anjou by marrying his only daughter
Matilda to Geoffrey, the Angevin heir (1127). The invasion of Henry V.
was met by something like a national army, which gathered under Louis at
Reims. "For a few days at least, the lord of the Île-de-France was truly
a king of France" (Luchaire). Suger proudly gives the list of barons who
appeared. Henry V. came no farther than Metz. Royalty had won great
prestige. Even Theobald, count of Chartres, the king's greatest enemy,
the soul of feudal coalitions, came with his contingent. Shortly
afterwards (1126), Louis was able to overawe the great count of
Aquitaine, William IX., and force his vassal, the count of Auvergne, to
treat justly the bishop of Clermont. In Flanders Louis interfered upon
the assassination of Charles the Good. He caused the barons to elect as
their count in Arras the same William Clito who claimed Normandy, and
who was closely bound to the king. For a while Louis had Flanders
absolutely at his disposal, but he had hardly left William alone (1127)
when his brutal oppression roused both towns and nobles, who declared
that Louis had no right to interfere in Flanders. The death of William
Clito, and a savage war with his own seneschal, prevented Louis from
effectually resenting this attitude; but Thierry of Alsace, the new
count, consented in 1128 to receive from Louis the investiture of all
his French fiefs, and henceforth lived on good terms with him. In all
his wars--those mentioned are but a part of them--Louis fought in
person. Proud of his strength, reckless in the charge as on the march,
plunging into swollen rivers, entering blazing castles, he gained the
reputation of a national hero, the protector of the poor, the church,
the peasants and the towns. The communal movement grew during his reign,
and he encouraged it on the fiefs of his vassals in order to weaken
them; but the title "Father of the Communes" by which he was known in
history is not deserved, though he did grant some privileges to towns on
his domains. Neither was Louis the author of the movement for the
emancipation of the serfs, as was formerly claimed. His attitude toward
the movement was like that of his predecessors and contemporaries, to
favour emancipation when it promised greater chance of profit, greater
scope for exploitation of the peasants; otherwise to oppose it. He was a
great benefactor to the church, aided the new, reformed monastic
congregations of Cîteau, Prémontré and Fontevrault, and chose his two
chief ministers from the clergy. Étienne de Garlande, whom Louis raised
from obscurity to be archdeacon of Notre Dame at Paris, chancellor and
seneschal of France, was all-powerful with the king from 1108 to 1127.
His relatives monopolized the highest offices of the state. But the
queen Adelaide became his enemy; both Ivo of Chartres and St Bernard
bitterly attacked him; and the king suddenly stripped him of all his
offices and honours. Joining the rebellious barons, Étienne then led a
bitter war against the king for three years. When Louis had reduced him
to terms he pardoned him and restored him to the chancellorship (1132),
but not to his old power. Suger (q.v.), administrator of St Denis,
enters the scene toward the close of this reign, but his great work
belongs to the next. Louis VI. died on the 1st of August 1137, just a
few days after his son, Louis the Young, had set out for the far
south-west, the Aquitaine which had been won by the marriage with
Eleanor. His wife was Adelaide, or Alice, daughter of Humbert II., count
of Savoy, by whom he had seven sons and a daughter.
See A. Luchaire, _Louis le Gros, annales de sa vie et son règne_
(1890), and the same writer's volume, _Les Premiers Capétiens_, in E.
Lavisse's _Histoire de France._ (J. T. S.*)
LOUIS VII. (c. 1121-1180), king of France, son of Louis VI. the Fat,
was associated with his father and anointed by Innocent II. in 1131. In
1137 he succeeded his father, and in the same year married at Bordeaux
Eleanor, heiress of William II., duke of Aquitaine. In the first part of
his reign he was vigorous and jealous of his prerogatives, but after his
crusade his religiosity developed to such an extent as to make him
utterly inefficient. His accession was marked by no disturbances, save
the risings of the burgesses of Orleans and of Poitiers, who wished to
organize communes. But soon he came into violent conflict with Pope
Innocent II. The archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the king
supported as candidate the chancellor Cadurc, against the pope's nominee
Pierre de la Châtre, swearing upon relics that so long as he lived
Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the
king's lands. At the same time he became involved in a war with
Theobald, count of Champagne, by permitting Rodolphe (Raoul), count of
Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife, Theobald's
niece, and to marry Petronille of Aquitaine, sister of the queen of
France. The war, which lasted two years (1142-44), was marked by the
occupation of Champagne by the royal army and the capture of Vitry,
where many persons perished in the burning of the church. Geoffrey the
Handsome, count of Anjou, by his conquest of Normandy threatened the
royal domains, and Louis VII. by a clever manoeuvre threw his army on
the Norman frontier and gained Gisors, one of the keys of Normandy. At
his court which met in Bourges Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 his
intention of going on a crusade. St Bernard assured its popularity by
his preaching at Vézelay (Easter 1146), and Louis set out from Metz in
June 1147, on the overland route to Syria. The expedition was
disastrous, and he regained France in 1149, overcome by the humiliation
of the crusade. In the rest of his reign he showed much feebleness and
poor judgment. He committed a grave political blunder in causing a
council at Beaugency (on the 21st of March 1152) to annul his marriage
with Eleanor of Aquitaine, under pretext of kinship, but really owing to
violent quarrels during the crusade. Eleanor married Henry II. of
England in the following May, and brought him the duchy of Aquitaine.
Louis VII. led a half-hearted war against Henry for having married
without the authorization of his suzerain; but in August 1154 gave up
his rights over Aquitaine, and contented himself with an indemnity. In
1154 Louis married Constance, daughter of the king of Castile, and their
daughter Marguerite he affianced imprudently by the treaty of Gisors
(1158) to Henry, eldest son of the king of England, promising as dowry
the Vexin and Gisors. Five weeks after the death of Constance, on the
4th of October 1160, Louis VII. married Adèle of Champagne, and Henry
II. to counterbalance the aid this would give the king of France, had
the marriage of their infant children celebrated at once. Louis VII.
gave little sign of understanding the danger of the growing Angevin
power, though in 1159 he made an expedition in the south to aid Raymond
V., count of Toulouse, who had been attacked by Henry II. At the same
time the emperor Frederick I. in the east was making good the imperial
claims on Arles. When the schism broke out, Louis took the part of the
pope Alexander III., the enemy of Frederick, and after two comedy-like
failures of Frederick to meet Louis VII. at Saint Jean de Losne (on the
29th of August and the 22nd of September 1162), Louis definitely gave
himself up to the cause of Alexander, who lived at Sens from 1163 to
1165. Alexander gave the king, in return for his loyal support, the
golden rose. Louis VII. received Thomas Becket and tried to reconcile
him with King Henry II. He supported Henry's rebellious sons, but acted
slowly and feebly, and so contributed largely to the break up of the
coalition (1173-1174). Finally in 1177 the pope intervened to bring the
two kings to terms at Vitry. By his third wife, Adèle, Louis had an
heir, the future Philip Augustus, born on the 21st of August 1165. He
had him crowned at Reims in 1179, but, already stricken with paralysis,
he himself was not able to be present at the ceremony, and died on the
18th of September 1180. His reign from the point of view of royal
territory and military power, was a period of retrogression. Yet the
royal authority had made progress in the parts of France distant from
the royal domains. More direct and more frequent connexion was made with
distant feudatories, a result largely due to the alliance of the clergy
with the crown. Louis thus reaped the reward for services rendered the
church during the least successful portion of his reign.
See R. Hirsch, _Studien zur Geschichte König Ludwigs VII. von
Frankreich_ (1892); A. Cartellieri, _Philipp II. August von Frankreich
bis zum Tode seines Vaters, 1165-1180_ (1891); and A. Luchaire in E.
Lavisse's _Histoire de France_, tome iii. 1st part, pp. 1-81.
(J. T. S.*)
LOUIS VIII. (1187-1226), king of France, eldest son of Philip Augustus
and of Isabella of Hainaut, was born in Paris on the 5th of September
1187. Louis was short, thin, pale-faced, with studious tastes, cold and
placid temper, sober and chaste in his life. He left the reputation of a
saint, but was also a warrior prince. In 1213 he led the campaign
against Ferrand, count of Flanders; in 1214, while Philip Augustus was
winning the victory of Bouvines, he held John of England in check, and
was victorious at La Roche-aux-Moines. In the autumn of 1215 Louis
received from a group of English barons, headed by Geoffrey de
Mandeville, a request to "pluck them out of the hand of this tyrant"
(John). Some 7000 French knights were sent over to England during the
winter and two more contingents followed, but it was only after
twenty-four English hostages had arrived in Paris that Louis himself
prepared to invade England. The expedition was forbidden by the papal
legate, but Louis set out from Calais on the 20th and landed at Stonor
on the 22nd of May 1216. In three months he had obtained a strong
foothold in eastern England, and in the end of July he laid siege to
Dover, while part of his army besieged Windsor with a view to securing
the safety of London. The pretexts on which he claimed the English crown
were set down in a memorandum drawn up by French lawyers in 1215. These
claims--that John had forfeited the crown by the murder of his nephew,
Arthur of Brittany, and that the English barons had the right to dispose
of the vacant throne--lost their plausibility on the death of King John
and the accession of his infant son as Henry III. in October 1216. The
papal legate, Gualo, who had forbidden the enterprise, had arrived in
England at the same time as Louis. He excommunicated the French troops
and the English rebels, and Henry III. found a valiant defender in
William Marshal, earl of Pembroke. After the "Fair of Lincoln," in which
his army was defeated, Louis was compelled to resign his pretensions,
though by a secret article of the treaty of Lambeth (September 1217) he
secured a small war indemnity. Louis had assisted Simon de Montfort in
his war against the Albigenses in 1215, and after his return to France
he again joined the crusade. With Simon's son and successor, Amauri de
Montfort, he directed the brutal massacre which followed the capture of
Marmande. Philip II., suspicious of his son until the close of his life,
took precautions to assure his obedience, narrowly watched his
administration in Artois, which Louis held from his mother Isabella,
and, contrary to the custom of the kings of France, did not associate
his son with him by having him crowned. Philip Augustus dying on the
14th of July 1223, Louis VIII. was anointed at Reims on the 6th of
August following. He surrounded himself with councillors whom his father
had chosen and formed, and continued his father's policy. His reign was
taken up with two great designs: to destroy the power of the
Plantagenets, and to conquer the heretical south of France. An
expedition conquered Poitou and Saintonge (1224); in 1226 he led the
crusade against the Albigenses in the south, forced Avignon to
capitulate and received the submission of Languedoc. While passing the
Auvergne on his return to Paris, he was stricken with dysentery, and
died at Montpensier on the 8th of November 1226. His reign, short as it
was, brought gains both to the royal domains and to the power of the
crown over the feudal lords. He had married in 1200 Blanche of Castile,
daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile and granddaughter of Henry II. of
England, who bore him twelve children; his eldest surviving son was his
successor, Louis IX.
See C. Petit-Dutaillis, _Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII._
(Paris, 1894); and E. Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, tome iii. (1901).
(M. Br.)
LOUIS IX. (1214-1270), king of France, known as Saint Louis, was born on
the 25th of April 1214, and was baptized at Poissy. His father, Louis
VIII., died in 1226, leaving the first minority since the accession of
the Capetians, but his mother, Queen Blanche of Castile, proved more
than a match for the feudal nobility. She secured her son's coronation
at Reims on the 29th of November 1226; and, mainly by the aid of the
papal legate, Romano Bonaventura, bishop of Porto (d. 1243), and of
Thibaut IV., count of Champagne, was able to thwart the rebellious plans
of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of Brittany, and Philippe Hurepel, a natural
son of Philip Augustus. Mauclerc's opposition was not finally overcome,
however, until 1234. Then in 1236 Thibaut, who had become king of
Navarre, turned against the queen, formed an alliance with Brittany,
marrying his daughter without royal consent to Jean le Roux, Mauclerc's
son, and attempted to make a new feudal league. The final triumph of the
regent was shown when the king's army assembled at Vincennes. His
summons met with such general and prompt obedience as to awe Thibaut
into submission without striking a blow. Thus the reign of Louis IX.
began with royal prerogatives fully maintained; the kingdom was well
under control, and Mauclerc and Thibaut were both obliged to go on
crusade. But the influence of the strong-willed queen-mother continued
to make itself felt to the close of her life. Louis IX. did not lack
independence of character, but his confidence in his mother had been
amply justified and he always acted in her presence like a child. This
confidence he withheld from his wife, Margaret, daughter of Raymond
Berenger, count of Provence, whom he married at Sens in May 1234. The
reign was comparatively uneventful. A rising of the nobles of the
south-west, stirred up by Isabella, widow of King John of England, and
her husband, Hugh de Lusignan, count of the Marche, upon the occasion of
the investment of Alphonse of Poitiers with the fiefs left him by Louis
VIII. as a result of the Albigensian crusade, reached threatening
dimensions in 1242, but the king's armies easily overran Count Hugh's
territories, and defeated Henry III. of England, who had come to his
aid, at Saintes. Isabella and her husband were forced to submit, and
Raymond VII., count of Toulouse, yielded without resistance upon the
advent of two royal armies, and accepted the peace of Lorris in January
1243. This was the last rising of the nobles in Louis's reign.
At the end of 1244, during an illness, Louis took the cross. He had
already been much distressed by the plight of John of Brienne, emperor
at Constantinople, and bought from him the crown of thorns, parts of the
true cross, the holy lance, and the holy sponge. The Sainte Chapelle in
Paris still stands as a monument to the value of these relics to the
saintly king. But the quarrel between the papacy and the emperor
Frederick II., in which Louis maintained a watchful neutrality--only
interfering to prevent the capture of Innocent IV. at Lyons--and the
difficulties of preparation, delayed the embarkation until August 1248.
His defeat and capture at Mansura, in February 1250, the next four years
spent in Syria in captivity, in diplomatic intrigues, and finally in
raising the fortifications of Caesarea and Joppa,--these events belong
to the history of the crusades (q.v.). His return to France was urgently
needed, as Blanche of Castile, whom he had left as regent, had died in
November 1252, and upon the removal of her strong hand feudal turbulence
had begun to show itself.
This period between his first and second crusades (1254-1269) is the
real age of Saint Louis in the history of France. He imposed peace
between warring factions of his nobility by mere moral force, backed up
by something like an awakened public opinion. His nobles often chafed
under his unrelenting justice but never dared rebel. The most famous of
his settlements was the treaty of Paris, drawn up in May 1258 and
ratified in December 1259, by which the claims of Henry III. of England
were adjusted. Henry renounced absolutely Normandy, Anjou, Touraine,
Maine and Poitou, and received, on condition of recognizing Louis as
liege suzerain, all the fiefs and domains of the king of France in the
dioceses of Limoges, Cahors and Perigueux, and the expectation of
Saintonge south of the Charente, and Agenais, if they should fall to the
crown of France by the death of Alphonse of Poitiers. In addition, Louis
promised to provide Henry with sufficient money to maintain 500 knights
for two years. This treaty was very unpopular in France, since the king
surrendered a large part of France that Henry had not won; but Louis was
satisfied that the absolute sovereignty over the northern provinces more
than equalled the loss in the south. Historians still disagree as to its
wisdom. Louis made a similar compromise with the king of Aragon in the
treaty of Corbeil, 1258, whereby he gave up the claims of kings of
France to Roussillon and Barcelona, which went back to the conquest of
Charlemagne. The king of Aragon in his turn gave up his claims to part
of Provence and Languedoc, with the exception of Narbonne. Louis's
position was strikingly shown in 1264 when the English barons submitted
their attempt to bind Henry III. by the Provisions of Oxford to his
arbitration. His reply in the "Dit" or Mise of Amiens was a flat denial
of all the claims of the barons and failed to avert the civil war. Louis
was more successful in preventing feuds between his own nobles: between
the counts of Brittany and Champagne over the succession to Navarre; the
dauphin of Vienne (Guigues VII.) and Charles of Anjou; the count of
Burgundy and the count of Châlons; Henry of Luxemburg and the duke of
Lorraine with the count of Bar. Upon the whole he maintained peace with
his neighbours, although both Germany and England were torn with civil
wars. He reluctantly consented to sanction the conquest of Naples by his
brother, Charles, duke of Anjou, and it is possible that he yielded here
in the belief that it was a step toward another crusade.
On the 24th of March 1267, Louis called to Paris such of his knights as
were not with Charles of Anjou in Naples. No one knew why he had called
them; but when the king in full assembly proclaimed his purpose of going
on a second crusade, few ventured to refuse the cross. Three years of
preparation followed; then on the 1st of July 1270 they sailed from
Aigues Mortes for Tunis, whither the expedition seems to have been
directed by the machinations of Charles of Anjou, who, it is claimed,
persuaded his brother that the key to Egypt and to Jerusalem was that
part of Africa which was his own most dangerous neighbour. After
seventeen days' voyage to Carthage, one month of the summer's heat and
plague decimated the army, and when Charles of Anjou arrived he found
that Louis himself had died of the plague on the 25th of August 1270.
Saint Louis stands in history as the ideal king of the middle ages. An
accomplished knight, physically strong in spite of his ascetic
practices, fearless in battle, heroic in adversity, of imperious
temperament, unyielding when sure of the justness of his cause,
energetic and firm, he was indeed "every inch a king." Joinville says
that he was taller by a head than any of his knights. His devotions
would have worn out a less robust saint. He fasted much, loved sermons,
regularly heard two masses a day and all the offices, dressing at
midnight for matins in his chapel, and surrounded even when he travelled
by priests on horseback chanting the hours. After his return from the
first crusade, he wore only grey woollens in winter, dark silks in
summer. He built hospitals, visited and tended the sick himself, gave
charity to over a hundred beggars daily. Yet he safeguarded the royal
dignity by bringing them in at the back door of the palace, and by a
courtly display greater than ever before in France. His naturally cold
temperament was somewhat relieved by a sense of humour, which however
did not prevent his making presents of haircloth shirts to his friends.
He had no favourite, nor prime minister. Louis was canonized in 1297.
As a statesman Louis IX. has left no distinct monument. The famous
"_Établissements_ of St Louis" has been shown in our own day to have
been private compilation. It was a _coutumier_ drawn up before 1273,
including, as well as some royal decrees, the civil and feudal law of
Anjou, Maine and the Orléanais. Recent researches have also denied Louis
the credit of having aided the communes. He exploited them to the full.
His standpoint in this respect was distinctly feudal. He treated his
clergy as he did his barons, enforcing the supremacy of royal justice,
and strongly opposing the exactions of the pope until the latter part of
his reign, when he joined forces with him to extort as much as possible
from the clergy. At the end of the reign most of the sees and
monasteries of France were in debt to the Lombard bankers. Finally, the
reign of Saint Louis saw the introduction of the pontifical inquisition
into France.
There are numerous portraits of St Louis, but they are unauthentic and
contradictory. In 1903 M. Salomon Reinach claimed to have found in the
heads sculptured in the angles of the arches of the chapel at St
Germain portraits of St Louis, his brothers and sisters, and Queen
Marguerite, or Blanche, made between 1235 and 1240. This conjectured
portrait somewhat resembles the modern type, which is based upon a
statue of Charles V. once in the church of the Celestins in Paris, and
which Lenoir mistakenly identified as that of Louis IX. The king had
eleven children, six sons and five daughters, among them being his
successor, Philip III., and Robert, count of Clermont, the ancestor of
Henry IV.
The best contemporary accounts of Louis IX. are the famous Memoirs of
the Sire Jean de Joinville (q.v.), published by N. de Wailly for the
_Soc. de l'Hist. de France_, under the title _Histoire de Saint Louis_
(Paris, 1868), and again with translation (1874); English translation
by J. Hutton (1868). See also William of Nangis, _Gesta Ludovici IX._,
edited by M. Bouquet in vol. xx. of the _Recueil des historiens des
Gaules et de la France_. Of modern works may be mentioned C. V.
Langlois in E. Lavisse's _Histoire de France_, tome iii., with
references to literature; Frederick Perry, _Saint Louis, the Most
Christian King_ (New York, 1901); E. J. Davis, _The Invasion of Egypt
by Louis IX. of France_ (1898); H. A. Wallon, _Saint Louis et son
temps_ (1875); A. Lecoy de la Marche, _Saint Louis_ (Tours, 1891); and
E. Berger, _Saint Louis et Innocent IV_ (Paris, 1893), and _Histoire
de Blanche de Castille_ (1895). See also _The Court of a Saint_, by
Winifred F. Knox (1909). (J. T. S.*)
LOUIS X. (1289-1316), king of France and Navarre, called _le Hutin_ or
"the Quarreller," was the son of Philip IV. and of Jeanne of Navarre. He
was born at Paris on the 4th of October 1289, took the title king of
Navarre on the death of his mother, on the 2nd of April 1305, and
succeeded Philip IV. in France on the 29th of November 1314, being
crowned at Reims in August 1315. The origin of his surname is uncertain.
Louis X. is a somewhat indistinct figure among the kings of France, the
preponderating influence at court during his short reign being that of
his uncle, Charles of Valois. The reign began with reaction against the
policy of Philip IV. Private vengeance was wreaked on Enguerrand de
Marigny, who was hanged, Pierre de Latilli, bishop of Châlons and
chancellor, and Raoul de Presle, advocate of the parlement, who were
imprisoned. The leagues of the lesser country gentry, formed in 1314
before the accession of Louis, continued to demand the ancient
privileges of the nobility,--tourneys, private wars and judgment of
nobles not by king's officers but by their peers--and to protest against
the direct call by the king of their vassals to the royal army. Louis X.
granted them charters in which he made apparent concessions, but used
evasive formulas which in reality ceded nothing. There was a charter to
the Normans, one to the Burgundians, one to the Languedocians (1315).
Robert de Béthune, count of Flanders, refused to do homage, and his
French fiefs were declared confiscate by a court of his peers. In August
1315 Louis X. led an army toward Lille, but the flooded Lys barred his
passage, the ground was so soaked with rains that the army could not
advance, and it was thrown back, without a battle, on Tournai. Need of
money inspired one famous ordinance of this reign; in 1315 the serfs of
the royal domains were invited to buy their civil liberty,--an
invitation which did not meet with great enthusiasm, as the freedman was
merely freed for further exploitation, and Philip V. was obliged to
renew it in 1318. Louis X. died suddenly on the 5th of June 1316. His
first wife was Margaret, daughter of Robert II., duke of Burgundy; she
was accused of adultery and died a prisoner in the château Gaillard. By
her he had one daughter, Jeanne, wife of Philip, count of Evreux and
king of Navarre. By his second wife Clémence, daughter of Charles
Martel, titular king of Hungary, he left a posthumous son, King John I.
See Ch. Dufayard, "La réaction feodale sous les fils de Philippe le
Bel," in _Revue historique_ (1894); Paul Lehugeur, _Histoire de
Philippe le Long, roi de France_ (Paris, 1897); and Joseph Petit,
_Charles de Valois_ (Paris, 1900). (J. T. S.*)
LOUIS XI. (1423-1483), king of France, the son of Charles VII. and his
queen, Marie of Anjou, was born on the 3rd of July 1423, at Bourges,
where his father, then nicknamed the "King of Bourges," had taken refuge
from the English. At the birth of Louis XI. part of France was in
English hands; when he was five years old, Joan of Arc appeared; he was
just six when his father was crowned at Reims. But his boyhood was spent
apart from these stirring events, in the castle of Loches, where his
father visited him rarely. John Gerson, the foremost theologian of
France, wrote a manual of instructions (still extant) for the first of
his tutors, Jean Majoris, a canon of Reims. His second tutor, Bernard of
Armagnac, was noted for his piety and humility. If, as has been claimed,
Louis owed to them any of his tendency to prefer the society of the
poor, or rather of the _bourgeois_, to that of the nobility, their
example was his best lesson in the craft of kingship. In June 1436, when
scarcely thirteen, he was married to Margaret (_c_. 1425-1445), daughter
of James I. of Scotland, a princess of about his own age, but sickly and
romantic, and in every way his opposite. Three years after this unhappy
marriage Louis entered upon his stormy political career. Sent by his
father in 1439 to direct the defence of Languedoc against the English,
and to put down the brigandage in Poitou, he was induced by the
rebellious nobles to betray his trust and place himself at the head of
the Praguerie (q.v.). Charles VII. pardoned him this rebellion, due to
his ambition and the seductive proposal of the nobles to make him
regent. The following year he was fighting the English, and in 1443
aided his father to suppress the revolt of the count of Armagnac. His
first important command, however, was in the next year, when he led an
army of from 15,000 to 20,000 mercenaries and brigands,--the product of
the Hundred Years' War,--against the Swiss of the canton of Basel. The
heroism of some two hundred Swiss, who for a while held thousands of the
French army at bay, made a great impression on the young prince. After
an ineffective siege of Basel, he made peace with the Swiss
confederation, and led his robber soldiers into Alsace to ravage the
country of the Habsburgs, who refused him the promised winter quarters.
Meanwhile his father, making a parallel campaign in Lorraine, had
assembled his first brilliant court at Nancy, and when Louis returned it
was to find the king completely under the spell of Agnes Sorel. He at
first made overtures to members of her party, and upon their rejection
through fear of his ambition, his deadly hatred of her and of them
involved the king. The death in 1445 of his wife Margaret, who was a
great favourite of Charles VII., made the rupture complete. From that
year until the death of the king father and son were enemies. Louis
began his rebellious career by a futile attempt to seduce the cities of
Agenais into treason, and then he prepared a plot to seize the king and
his minister Pierre de Brézé. Antoine de Chabannes, who was to be the
instrument of the plot, revealed it to Charles, and Louis was mildly
punished by being sent off to Dauphiné (1447). He never saw his father
again.
Louis set out to govern his principality as though it were an
independent state. He dismissed the governor; he determined
advantageously to himself the boundaries between his state and the
territories of the duke of Savoy and of the papacy; and he enforced his
authority over perhaps the most unruly nobility in western Europe, both
lay and ecclesiastical. The right of private warfare was abolished; the
bishops were obliged to give up most of their temporal jurisdiction, the
scope of their courts was limited, and appeals to Rome were curtailed.
On the other hand, Louis granted privileges to the towns and
consistently used their alliance to overthrow the nobility. He watched
the roads, built new ones, opened markets, protected the only bankers of
the country, the Jews, and reorganized the administration so as to draw
the utmost revenue possible from the prosperity thus secured. His
ambition led him into foreign entanglements; he made a secret treaty
with the duke of Savoy which was to give him right of way to Genoa, and
made arrangements for a partition of the duchy of Milan. The alliance
with Savoy was sealed by the marriage of Louis with Charlotte, daughter
of Duke Lodovico, in 1452, in spite of the formal prohibition of Charles
VII. The king marched south, but withdrew again leaving his son
unsubdued. Four years later, as Charles came to the Bourbonnais, Louis,
fearing for his life, fled to Flanders to the court of Philip the Good,
duke of Burgundy, leaving Dauphiné to be definitely annexed to the crown
of France. The policy of the dauphin was reversed, his ten years' work
was undone. Meanwhile he was installed in the castle of Genappe, in
Brabant, where he remained until the death of his father. For this he
waited impatiently five years, keeping himself posted by spies of every
stage of the king's last illness, and thus laying himself open to the
accusation, believed in by Charles himself, that he had hastened the end
by poison, a charge which modern historians deny.
On the 15th of August 1461, Louis was anointed at Reims, and Philip of
Burgundy, as _doyen_ of the peers of France, placed the crown on his
head. For two months Philip acted as though the king were still his
protégé. But in the midst of the festivities with which he was
entertaining Paris, the duke found that Louis ventured to refuse his
candidates for office, and on the 24th of September the new king left
abruptly for Touraine. His first act was to strike at the faithful
ministers of Charles VII. Pierre de Brézé and Antoine de Chabannes were
captured and imprisoned, as well as men of sterling worth like Étienne
Chevalier. But the king's shrewdness triumphed before long over his
vengeance, and the more serviceable of the officers of Charles VII. were
for the most part soon reinstated, Louis' advisers were mostly men of
the middle class. He had a ready purse for men of talent, drawing them
from England, Scotland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Such a motley throng
of competent men had never before been seen at the court of France.
Their origin, their previous crimes or virtues, their avarice or
brutality, were indifferent to him so long as they served him loyally.
Torture and imprisonment awaited them, whether of high or low degree, if
he fancied that they were betraying him. Among the most prominent of
these men in addition to Brézé, Chevalier and Chabannes, were Tristan
Lermite, Jean de Daillon, Olivier le Dain (the barber), and after 1472,
Philippe de Commines, drawn from the service of Charles the Bold of
Burgundy, who became his most intimate adviser and biographer.
Surrounded by men like these Louis fought the last great battle of
French royalty with feudalism.
Louis XI. began his reign with the same high-handed treatment of the
nobles which had marked his rule in Dauphiné, going so far as to forbid
them to hunt without his permission. He forced the clergy to pay
long-neglected feudal dues, and intrigued against the great houses of
Anjou and Orleans in Italy. The malcontent nobles soon began to plan
revolt. Discharged officers of Charles VII. like Jean Dunois and John
II. duke of Bourbon, stirred up hostility to the new men of the king,
and Francis II. duke of Brittany was soon embroiled with Louis over an
attempt to assert royal control over that practically independent duchy.
The dissatisfied nobility found their greatest ally in Charles the Bold,
afterwards duke of Burgundy, and in 1465 formed a "league of public
welfare" and declared war on their king. The nominal head was the king's
brother Charles, duke of Berry, then eighteen years old, a weak
character, the tool of the rebels as he was later the dupe of the king.
Every great noble in France was in the league, except Gaston de
Foix--who kept the south of France for the king,--and the counts of
Vendôme and Eu. The whole country seemed on the verge of anarchy. It was
saved by the refusal of the lesser gentry to rise, and by the alliance
of the king with the citizen class, which was not led astray by the
pretences of regard for the public weal which cloaked the designs of the
leaguers. After a successful campaign in the Bourbonnais, Louis fought
an indecisive battle with the Burgundians who had marched on Paris at
Montlhéry, on the 16th of July 1465, and then stood a short siege in
Paris. On the 28th of September he made a truce with Charles the Bold,
and in October the treaties of Conflans and Saint Maur-les-Fossés, ended
the war. The king yielded at all points; gave up the "Somme towns" in
Picardy, for which he had paid 200,000 gold crowns, to Philip the Good,
thus bringing the Burgundians close to Paris and to Normandy. Charles,
the king's brother, was given Normandy as an apanage, thus joining the
territories of the rebellious duke of Brittany with those of Charles the
Bold. The public weal was no longer talked about, while the kingdom was
plundered both by royal tax gatherers and by unsubdued feudal lords to
pay the cost of the war.
After this failure Louis set to work to repair his mistakes. The duke of
Bourbon was won over by the gift of the government of the centre of
France, and Dunois and Chabannes by restoring them their estates. Two
months after he had granted Normandy to Charles, he took advantage of a
quarrel between the duke of Brittany and his brother to take it again,
sending the duke of Bourbon "to aid" Charles, while Dunois and Chabannes
prepared for the struggle with Burgundy. The death of Duke Philip, on
the 15th of June 1467, gave Charles the Bold a free hand. He gained over
Edward IV. of England, whose sister Margaret he married; but while he
was celebrating the wedding Louis invaded Brittany and detached Duke
Francis from alliance with him. Normandy was completely reduced. The
king had won a great triumph. It was followed by his greatest mistake.
Eager as he always was to try diplomacy instead of war, Louis sent a
gift of 60,000 golden crowns to Charles and secured a safe conduct from
him for an interview. The interview took place on the 9th of October
1468 at Péronne. News came on the 11th that, instigated by the king of
France, the people of Liége had massacred their bishop and the ducal
governor. The news was false, but Charles, furious at such apparent
duplicity, took Louis prisoner, only releasing him, three days later, on
the king signing a treaty which granted Flanders freedom from
interference from the parlement of Paris, and agreeing to accompany
Charles to the siege of his own ally, Liége. Louis made light of the
whole incident in his letters, but it marked the greatest humiliation of
his life, and he was only too glad to find a scapegoat in Cardinal Jean
Balue, who was accused of having plotted the treason of Péronne. Balue
thereupon joined Guillaume de Harancourt, bishop of Verdun, in an
intrigue to induce Charles of France to demand Champagne and Brie in
accordance with the king's promise to Charles the Bold, instead of
distant Guienne where the king was determined to place him. The
discovery of this conspiracy placed these two high dignitaries in prison
(April 1469). Balue (q.v.) spent eleven years in prison quarters,
comfortable enough, in spite of the legend to the contrary, while
Harancourt was shut up in an iron cage until 1482. Then Louis, inducing
his brother to accept Guienne,--where, surrounded by faithful royal
officers, he was harmless for the time being,--undertook to play off the
Lancastrians against Edward IV. who, as the ally of Charles the Bold,
was menacing the coast of Normandy. Warwick, the king-maker, and Queen
Margaret were aided in the expedition which in 1470 again placed Henry
VI. upon the English throne. In the autumn Louis himself took the
offensive, and royal troops overran Picardy and the Maconnais to
Burgundy itself. But the tide turned against Louis in 1471. While Edward
IV. won back England by the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, Charles
the Bold besieged Amiens, and Louis was glad to make a truce, availing
himself of the double dealing of the constable, the count of Saint Pol,
who, trying to win an independent position for himself in Picardy,
refused his aid to Charles unless he would definitely join the French
nobility in another rising against the king. This rising was to be aided
by the invasion of France by John II. of Aragon, Yolande, duchess of
Savoy, and Edward IV. of England, who was to be given the old
Plantagenet inheritance. The country was saved a desperate civil war by
the death of the king's brother, Charles, the nominal head of the
coalition, on the 24th of May 1472. Louis' joy on receiving news of this
death knew no bounds. Charles the Bold, who had again invaded France,
failed to take Beauvais, and was obliged to make a lasting truce. His
projects were henceforth to be directed towards Germany. Louis then
forced the duke of Brittany to make peace, and turned against John V.
count of Armagnac, whose death at the opening of March 1473 ended the
power of one of the most dangerous houses of the south. The first period
of Louis' reign was closed, and with it closed for ever the danger of
dismemberment of France. John of Aragon continued the war in Roussillon
and Cerdagne, which Louis had seized ten years before, and a most
desperate rising of the inhabitants protracted the struggle for two
years. After the capture of Perpignan on the 10th of March 1475, the
wise and temperate government of Imbert de Batarnay and Boffile de Juge
slowly pacified the new provinces. The death of Gaston IV. count of Foix
in 1472 opened up the long diplomatic struggle for Navarre, which was
destined to pass to the loyal family of Albret shortly after the death
of Louis. His policy had won the line of the Pyrenees for France.
The overthrow of Charles the Bold was the second great task of Louis XI.
This he accomplished by a policy much like that of Pitt against
Napoleon. Louis was the soul of all hostile coalitions, especially
urging on the Swiss and Sigismund of Austria, who ruled Tirol and
Alsace. Charles's ally, Edward IV., invaded France in June 1475, but
Louis bought him off on the 29th of August at Picquigny--where the two
sovereigns met on a bridge over the Somme, with a strong grille between
them, Edward receiving 75,000 crowns, and a promise of a pension of
50,000 crowns annually. The dauphin Charles was to marry Edward's
daughter. Bribery of the English ministers was not spared, and in
September the invaders recrossed to England. The count of Saint Pol, who
had continued to play his double part, was surrendered by Charles to
Louis, and executed, as was also Jacques d'Armagnac, duke of Nemours.
With his vassals terrorized and subdued, Louis continued to subsidize
the Swiss and René II. of Lorraine in their war upon Charles. The defeat
and death of the duke of Burgundy at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477
was the crowning triumph of Louis' diplomacy. But in his eagerness to
seize the whole inheritance of his rival, Louis drove his daughter and
heiress, Mary of Burgundy, into marriage with Maximilian of Austria
(afterwards the emperor Maximilian I.), who successfully defended
Flanders after a savage raid by Antoine de Chabannes. The battle of
Guinegate on the 7th of August 1479 was indecisive, and definite peace
was not established until after the death of Mary, when by the treaty of
Arras (1482) Louis received Picardy, Artois and the Boulonnais, as well
as the duchy of Burgundy and Franche Comté. The Austrians were left in
Flanders, a menace and a danger. Louis failed here and in Spain; this
failure being an indirect cause of that vast family compact which
surrounded France later with the empire of Charles V. His interference
in Spain had made both John II. of Aragon and Henry IV. of Castile his
enemies, and so he was unable to prevent the marriage of their heirs,
Ferdinand and Isabella. But the results of these marriages could not be
foreseen, and the unification of France proved of more value than the
possession of so widespread an empire. This unification was completed
(except for Brittany) and the frontiers enlarged by the acquisition,
upon the death of René of Anjou in 1480, of the duchies of Anjou and
Bar, and in 1481 of Maine and Provence upon the death of Charles II.,
count of Maine. Of the inheritance of the house of Anjou only Lorraine
escaped the king.
Failure in Spain was compensated for in Italy. Without waging war Louis
made himself virtual arbiter of the fate of the principalities in the
north, and his court was always besieged by ambassadors from them. After
the death of Charles the Bold, Yolande, duchess of Savoy, was obliged to
accept the control of Louis, who was her brother. In Milan he helped to
place Lodovico il Moro in power in 1479, but he reaped less from this
supple tyrant than he had expected. Pope Sixtus IV. the enemy of the
Medici, was also the enemy of the king of France. Louis, who at the
opening of his reign had denounced the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, had
played fast and loose with the papacy. When Sixtus threatened Florence
after the Pazzi conspiracy, 1478, Louis aided Lorenzo dei Medici to form
an alliance with Naples, which forced the papacy to come to terms.
More than any other king of France, Louis XI. was a "bourgeois king."
The upper bourgeois, the aristocracy of his "good cities," were his
allies both against the nobles and against the artisan class, whenever
they revolted, driven to desperation by the oppressive royal taxes which
furnished the money for his wars or diplomacy. He ruled like a modern
capitalist; placed his bribes like investments in the courts of his
enemies; and, while draining the land of enormous sums, was pitiless
toward the two productive portions of his realm, the country population
and the artisans. His heartlessness toward the former provoked even an
accomplice like Commines to protest. The latter were kept down by
numerous edicts, tending to restrict to certain privileged families the
rank of master workman in the gilds. There was the paternalism of a
Frederick the Great in his encouragement of the silk industry,--"which
all idle people ought to be made to work at,"--in his encouragement of
commerce through the newly acquired port of Marseilles and the opening
up of market placed. He even dreamed of a great trading company "of two
hundred thousand livres or more," to monopolize the trade of the
Mediterranean, and planned to unify the various systems of weights and
measures. In 1479 he called a meeting of two burgesses from each "good
city" of his realm to consider means for preventing the influx of
foreign coin. Impatient of all restraint upon his personal rule, he was
continually in violent dispute with the parlement of Paris, and made
"justice" another name for arbitrary government; yet he dreamed of a
unification of the local customary laws (_coûtumes_) of France. He was
the perfect model of a tyrant. The states-general met but once in his
reign, in 1468, and then no talk of grievances was allowed; his object
was only to get them to declare Normandy inalienable from the crown.
They were informed that the king could raise his revenue without
consulting them. Yet his budgets were enormously greater than ever
before. In 1481 the _taille_ alone brought in 4,600,000 livres, and even
at the peaceful close of his reign his whole budget was 4,655,000
livres--as against 1,800,000 livres at the close of his father's reign.
The king who did most for French royalty would have made a sorry figure
at the court of a Louis XIV. He was ungainly, with rickety legs. His
eyes were keen and piercing, but a long hooked nose lent grotesqueness
to a face marked with cunning rather than with dignity. Its ugliness was
emphasized by the old felt hat which he wore,--its sole ornament the
leaden figure of a saint. Until the close of his life, when he tried to
mislead ambassadors as to the state of his health by gorgeous robes, he
wore the meanest clothes. Dressed in grey like a pilgrim, and
accompanied by five or six trustworthy servants, he would set out on his
interminable travels, "ambling along on a good mule." Thus he traversed
France, avoiding all ceremony, entering towns by back streets, receiving
ambassadors in wayside huts, dining in public houses, enjoying the loose
manners and language of his associates, and incidentally learning at
first hand the condition of his people and the possibilities of using or
taxing them--his needs of them rather than theirs of him. He loved to
win men, especially those of the middle class, by affability and
familiarity, employing all his arts to cajole and seduce those whom he
needed. Yet his honied words easily turned to gall. He talked rapidly
and much, sometimes for hours at a time, and most indiscreetly. He was
not an agreeable companion, violent in his passions, nervous, restless,
and in old age extremely irascible. Utterly unscrupulous, and without a
trace of pity, he treated men like pawns, and was content only with
absolute obedience.
But this Machiavellian prince was the genuine son of St Louis. His
religiosity was genuine if degenerate. He lavished presents on
influential saints, built shrines, sent gifts to churches, went on
frequent pilgrimages and spent much time in prayer--employing his
consummate diplomacy to win celestial allies, and rewarding them richly
when their aid secured him any advantage. St Martin of Tours received
1200 crowns after the capture of Perpignan. He tried to bribe the saints
of his enemies, as he did their ministers. An unfaltering faith taught
him the value of religion--as a branch of politics. Finally, more in the
spirit of orthodoxy, he used the same arts to make sure of heaven. When
the ring of St Zanobius and the blood of Cape Verde turtles gave him no
relief from his last illness, he showered gifts upon his patron saints,
secured for his own benefit the masses of his clergy, and the most
potent prayers in Christendom, those of the two most effective saints of
his day, Bernardin of Doulins and Francis of Paolo.
During the last two or three years of his life Louis lived in great
isolation, "seeing no one, speaking with no one, except such as he
commanded," in the château of Plessis-les-Tours, that "spider's nest"
bristling with watch towers, and guarded only by the most trusty
servitors. A swarm of astrologers and physicians preyed upon his
fears--and his purse. But, however foolish in his credulity, he still
made his strong hand felt both in France and in Italy, remaining to the
last "the terrible king." His fervent prayers were interrupted by
instructions for the regency which was to follow. He died on the 30th of
August 1483, and was buried, according to his own wish, without royal
state, in the church at Cléry, instead of at St Denis. He left a son,
his successor, Charles VIII., and two daughters.
See the admirable résumé by Charles Petit-Dutaillis in Lavisse's
_Histoire de France_, tome iv. pt. ii. (1902), and bibliographical
indications given there. Michelet's wonderful depiction in his
_Histoire de France_ (livres 13 to 17) has never been surpassed for
graphic word-painting, but it is inaccurate in details, and superseded
in scholarship. Of the original sources for the reign the _Lettres de
Louis XI_. (edited by Charavay and Vaesen, 8 vols., 1883-1902), the
celebrated _Mémoires_ of Philippe de Commines and the _Journal_ of
Jean de Royl naturally come first. The great mass of literature on the
period is analysed in masterly fashion by A. Molinier, _Sources de
l'histoire de France_ (tome v. pp. 1-146), and to this exhaustive
bibliography the reader is referred for further research. See also C.
Hare, _The Life of Louis XI_. (London, 1907). (J. T. S.*)
LOUIS XII. (1462-1515), king of France, was grandson of Louis of
Orleans, the brother of Charles VI., and son of the poet prince, Charles
of Orleans, who, after the battle of Agincourt, spent twenty-five years
of captivity in England. Louis was duke of Orleans until his accession
to the throne, and he was fourteen years old when Louis XI. gave him the
hand of his second daughter, Joan the Lame. In the first years of the
reign of Charles VIII., Louis made a determined stand against the
government of the Beaujeus, stirred up coalitions of the feudal nobles
against them, and was finally defeated and taken prisoner at St Aubin du
Cormier in 1488. Charles VIII. set him at liberty in 1491. These
successive checks tamed him a little. In the Italian expedition of 1494
he commanded the vanguard of the royal army, occupied Genoa, and
remained in the north of Italy, menacing Milan, on which he was already
dreaming of asserting his rights. The children of Charles VIII. having
died in infancy, he became heir-presumptive to the throne, and succeeded
Charles in 1499. Louis was then thirty-six years old, but he seems to
have grown old prematurely. He was fragile, narrow-shouldered and of a
sickly constitution. His intelligence was mediocre, his character weak,
and he allowed himself to be dominated by his wife, Anne of Brittany,
and his favourite the Cardinal d'Amboise. He was a good king, full of
moderation and humanity, and bent upon maintaining order and improving
the administration of justice. He enjoyed a genuine popularity, and in
1506 the estates of Tours conferred on him the surname of _Père du
Peuple_. His foreign policy, which was directed wholly towards Italy,
was for the most part unskilful; to his claims on Naples he added those
on Milan, which he based on the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of
Orleans, with Valentina Visconti. He led in person several armies into
Italy, and proved as severe and pitiless towards his enemies as he was
gentle and clement towards his subjects. Louis had two daughters. After
his accession he had divorced his virtuous and ill-favoured queen, Joan,
and had married, in 1499, Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII.
On her death in January 1514, in order to detach England from the
alliance against him, he married on the 9th of October 1514, Mary Tudor,
sister of Henry VIII. of England (see MARY, queen of France). He died on
the 1st of January 1515.
For a bibliography of the printed sources see Henri Hauser, _Les
Sources de l'histoire de France, XVI^e siècle_, vol. 1. (Paris, 1906).
The principal secondary authorities are De Maulde, _Histoire de Louis
XII_. (Paris, 1889-1893); Le Roux de Lincy, _Vie de la reine Anne de
Bretagne_ (Paris, 1860); H. Lemonnier, _Les Guerres d'Italie_ (Paris,
1903) in the _Histoire de France_ by E. Lavisse. (J. I.)
LOUIS XIII. (1601-1643), king of France, was the son of Henry IV. and of
Marie de' Medici. He became king on his father's assassination in 1610;
but his mother at once seized the full powers of regent. She determined
to reverse the policy of her husband and to bring France into alliance
with Spain and the Austrian house, upon which power Henry had been
meditating an attack at the time of his death. Two marriages were
designed to cement this alliance. Louis was to marry Anne of Austria,
daughter of the Spanish king, Philip III., and the Spanish prince,
afterwards Philip IV., himself was to marry the Princess Elizabeth, the
king's sister. Notwithstanding the opposition of the Protestants and
nobles of France, the queen carried through her purpose and the
marriages were concluded in 1615. The next years were full of civil war
and political intrigue, during which the queen relied upon the Marshal
d'Ancre. Louis XIII. was a backward boy, and his education had been much
neglected. We have the fullest details of his private life, and yet his
character remains something of a mystery. He was fond of field sports
and seemed to acquiesce in his mother's occupation of power and in the
rule of her favourites. But throughout his life he concealed his
purposes even from his closest friends; sometimes it seems as if he were
hardly conscious of them himself. In 1617 he was much attached to
Charles d'Albert, sieur de Luynes; and with his help he arrested Marshal
d'Ancre, and on his resistance had him assassinated. From this time to
her death the relation between the king and his mother was one of
concealed or open hostility. The article on FRANCE must be consulted for
the intricate events of the following years.
The decisive incident for his private life as well as for his reign was
the entrance of Cardinal Richelieu, hitherto the queen's chief adviser,
into the king's council in 1624. Henceforth the policy of France was
directed by Richelieu, who took up in its main features the system of
Protestant alliances and opposition to the power of Austria and Spain,
which had been begun by Henry IV. and had been interrupted by the
queen-mother during the regency; while he asserted the power of the
crown against all rivals at home. This policy had remarkable results for
the king's private life. It not only brought him into unremitting
conflict with the Protestants and the nobles of France, but also made
him the enemy of his mother, of his brother Gaston of Orleans, who made
himself the champion of the cause of the nobles, and sometimes even of
his wife. It is not easy to define his relations to Richelieu. He was
convinced of his loyalty and of his genius, and in the end always
supported his policy. But he disliked the friction with his family
circle which this policy produced. In the difficulty with which he
expressed himself and in a certain indecision of character the king was
curiously unlike his father, the frank and impetuous Henry of Navarre,
and his absolute son Louis XIV. He took a great interest in all the
externals of war. He was present, and is said to have played an
important part at the passage of Susa in 1629, and also eagerly
participated in the siege of Rochelle, which surrendered in the same
year. But for the most part his share in the great events of the reign
was a passive one. The one all-important fact was that he supported his
great minister. There were certain occasions when it seemed as if that
support would be denied. The chief of these was what is known as the
"Day of Dupes" (1630). Then the queen-mother and the king's brother
passionately attacked the minister, and for a moment it was believed
that Richelieu was dismissed and that the queen-mother and a Spanish
policy had triumphed. But the sequel only strengthened the power of the
minister. He regained his ascendancy over the king, punished his enemies
and forced Marie de' Medici and Gaston of Orleans to sue for pardon. In
1631 Gaston fled to Lorraine and the queen-mother to Brussels. Gaston
soon returned, to plot, to fail and to sue for pardon again and again;
but Marie de'Medici ended her life in exile.
Richelieu's position was much strengthened by these incidents, but to
the end of life he had to struggle against conspiracies which were
designed to deprive him of the king's support, and usually Gaston of
Orleans had some share in these movements. In 1632 the duke of
Montmorency's conspiracy brought its leader to the scaffold. But the
last great effort to overthrow Richelieu was closely connected with the
king. Louis XIII. had from the beginning of his reign had
favourites--young men for the most part with whom he lived freely and
intimately and spoke of public affairs lightly and unreservedly; and who
in consequence often exaggerated their influence over him. Henri
d'Effiat, marquis de Cinq-Mars, was the last of these favourites. The
king is said to have allowed him to speak hostilely of Richelieu and
even to recall the assassination of Marshal d'Ancre. Cinq-Mars believed
himself secure of the king's favour. He entered into negotiations with
Spain and was secretly supported by Gaston of Orleans. But Richelieu
discovered his treasonous relations with Spain and by this means
defeated his plot. Louis was reconciled to his minister. "We have lived
too long together to be separated" he is reported to have said
(September 1642). Yet when Richelieu died in December of the same year
he allowed himself to speak of him in a jealous and satirical tone. He
died himself a few months later (May 1643).
His nature was timid, lethargic and melancholy, and his court was not
marked by the scandals which had been seen under Henry IV. Yet
Mademoiselle de la Fayette and Madame d'Hautefort and others are said to
have been his mistresses. His brother Gaston survived him, but gave
unexpectedly little trouble during the wars of the Fronde which ensued
on the death of Louis XIII.
The chief source of information on Louis XIII.'s life is to be found
in the contemporary memoirs, of which the chief are: Bassompierre,
Fontenay-Mareuil, Gaston d'Orléans, Montrésor, Omer Talon. Richelieu's
own Memoirs are chiefly concerned with politics and diplomacy. Of
modern works those most directly bearing on the king's personal life
are R. de Beauchamp, _Louis XIII. d'après sa correspondance avec le
cardinal de Richelieu_; G. Hanotaux, _Histoire du cardinal de
Richelieu_ (1893-1896); Rossignol, _Louis XIII. avant Richelieu_; M.
Topin, _Louis XIII. et Richelieu_ (1876). See too Professor R. Lodge,
_Richelieu_; J. B. H. R. Capefigue, _Richelieu, Mazarin et la Fronde_
(1835-1836); and Dr J. H. Bridges, _Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert_
(1866).
For full bibliography see G. Monod, _Bibliographie de l'histoire de
France_; _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. iv. ("The Thirty Years'
War"); Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire générale_, vol. v. ("Guerres de
religion"). (A. J. G.*)
LOUIS XIV. (1638-1715), king of France, was born at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the 5th of September 1638. His father, Louis
XIII., had married Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III., king of
Spain, in 1615, but for twenty years the marriage had remained without
issue. The childlessness of the king was a constant threat to the policy
of his great minister Richelieu; for the king's brother and heir, Gaston
of Orleans, was a determined opponent of that policy. The birth of the
prince who was destined to reign as Louis XIV. was therefore hailed as a
triumph, not less important than any of those won by diplomacy or arms.
The death of his father made Louis XIV. king on the 14th of May 1643,
but he had to wait sixteen years before he began to rule. Power lay for
some time in the hands of the queen-mother and in those of her minister,
Cardinal Mazarin, who found it difficult to maintain the power of the
throne and the integrity of French territory during the domestic
troubles of the Fronde and the last stages of the Thirty Year's War. The
minister was hated as a foreigner, and the childhood of the king
weakened the royal authority. Twice the court had to flee from Paris;
once when there was a rumour of intended flight the populace was
admitted to see the king in his bed. The memory of these humiliations
played their part in developing later the autocratic ideas of Louis.
Mazarin, in spite of all disadvantages, triumphed alike over his
domestic and his foreign opponents. The Fronde was at an end by 1653;
the peace of Westphalia (1648) and the peace of the Pyrenees (1659)
marked the success of the arms and of the diplomacy of France. Louis
XIV. was now twenty-one years of age and was anxious to rule as well as
to reign. The peace of the Pyrenees was a decisive event in his personal
history as well as in that of France, for one of its most important
stipulations referred to his marriage. He had already been strongly
attracted to one of the nieces of Mazarin, but reasons of state
triumphed over personal impulse; and it was agreed that the new
friendship with Spain should be cemented by the marriage of Louis to his
cousin, the Infanta Maria Theresa. A large dowry was stipulated for; and
in consideration of this the king promised to forgo all claims that his
wife might otherwise possess to the Spanish crown or any part of its
territories. The dowry was never paid, and the king held himself free of
his promise.
The marriage took place at once, and the king entered Paris in triumph
in 1660. Mazarin died in the next year; but so strong was the feeling
that the kings of France could only rule through a first minister that
it was generally expected that Mazarin would soon have a successor. The
king, however, at once announced his intention of being his own first
minister; and from this resolution he never swerved. Whatever great
qualities he may have lacked he certainly possessed industry and
patience in the highest degree. He built up a thoroughly personal system
of government, and presided constantly over the council and many of its
committees. He was fond of gaiety and of sport; but neither ever turned
him away from the punctual and laborious discharge of his royal duties.
Even the greatest of his ministers found themselves controlled by the
king. Fouquet, the finance minister, had accumulated enormous wealth
during the late disturbances, and seemed to possess power and ambition
too great for a subject. Louis XIV. found it necessary almost to
conspire against him; he was overthrown and condemned to perpetual
imprisonment. Those who had most of the king's confidence afterwards
were Colbert for home affairs; Lionne for diplomacy; Louvois for war;
but as his reign proceeded he became more self-confident and more
intolerant of independence of judgment in his ministers.
His court was from the first one of great brilliance. In art and in
literature, the great period, which is usually called by the king's
name, had in some respects passed its zenith when he began to reign. But
France was unquestionably the first state in Europe both in arms and
arts, and within France the authority of the king was practically
undisputed. The nation, proud of its pre-eminence and weary of civil
war, saw in the king its true representative and the guarantee of its
unity and success. Louis was singularly well fitted by his physical and
intellectual gifts for the rôle of _Grand Monarque_ and he played it to
perfection. His wife Maria Theresa bore him children but there was no
community of tastes between them, and the chief influence at court is to
be found not in the queen but in the succession of avowed mistresses.
Mademoiselle de la Vallière held the position from 1662 to 1670; she was
then ousted by Madame de Montespan, who had fiercely intrigued for it,
and whose proud and ambitious temper offered a great contrast to her
rival. She held her position from 1670 to 1679 and then gave place to
the still more famous Madame de Maintenon, who ruled, however, not as
mistress but as wife. The events that brought about this incident form
the strangest episode in the king's private life. Madame de Maintenon
was the widow of the dramatist Scarron, and first came into relationship
with the king as governess to his illegitimate children. She was a woman
of unstained life and strongly religious temperament; and it was by this
that she gained so great an influence over the king. Through her
influence the king was reconciled to his wife, and, when Maria Theresa
died in 1683, Madame de Maintenon shortly afterwards (in 1684) became
the king's wife, though this was never officially declared. Under her
influence the court lost most of its gaiety, and religion came to
exercise much control over the life and the policy of the king.
The first years of the king's rule were marked by the great schemes of
Colbert for the financial, commercial, industrial and naval
reorganization of France, and in these schemes Louis took a deep
interest. But in 1667 began the long series of wars, which lasted with
little real intermission to the end of the reign (see FRANCE). In the
steps that led to these wars and in their conduct the egotistic ambition
and the vanity of the king played an important part; though he never
showed real military skill and took no share in any military operations
except in certain sieges. The War of Devolution (or the Queen's War) in
1667-68 to enforce the queen's claim to certain districts in the Spanish
Netherlands, led to the Dutch War (1672-78), and in both these wars the
supremacy of the French armies was clearly apparent. The next decade
(1678-1688) was the real turning-point in the history of the reign, and
the strength of France was seriously diminished. The chief cause of this
is to be found in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The church had
always opposed this settlement and had succeeded in altering it in many
points. Now the new religious zeal and the autocratic temper of Louis
XIV. came to the support of the church. The French Huguenots found their
privileges decreased, and then, in 1685, the edict was altogether
withdrawn. The results were ruinous to France. It was not only that she
lost many thousands of her best citizens, but this blow against
Protestantism deprived her of those Protestant alliances in Europe which
had been in the past her great diplomatic support. Then the English
Revolution came in 1688 and changed England from a wavering ally into
the most determined of the enemies of France.
The war with the Grand Alliance, of which King William III. was the
heart and soul, lasted from 1688 to 1697; and the treaty of Ryswick,
which brought it to an end, deprived France of certain territories on
her frontier. But Louis saw in the Spanish question a chance of more
than making up for this loss. The Spanish king Charles II. was dying,
and the future of the possessions of Spain was doubtful. The astute
diplomacy of Louis succeeded in winning the inheritance for his grandson
Philip. But this involved France and Europe in an immense war (1700) and
by the peace of Utrecht (1713), though the French prince retained the
Spanish crown, France had again to make concessions of territory.
Louis XIV. had shown wonderful tenacity of purpose during this
disastrous war, and sometimes a nobler and more national spirit than
during the years of his triumphs. But the condition of France was
terrible. She was burdened with debt; the reforms of Colbert were
ruined; and opposition to the king's régime began to make itself felt.
Peace brought some relief to France, but the last years of the king's
life were gloomy in the extreme. His numerous descendants seemed at one
time to place the succession beyond all difficulty. But his eldest son,
the dauphin, died in April 1711; his eldest grandson the duke of
Burgundy in February 1712; and his great-grandson the duke of Brittany
in March 1712. The heir to the throne was now the duke of Burgundy's
son, the duke of Anjou, afterwards Louis XV. The king died on the 1st of
September 1715, after the longest recorded reign in European history.
The judgment of posterity has not repeated the flattering verdict of his
contemporaries; but he remains the model of a great king in all that
concerns the externals of kingship.
The reign of Louis XIV. is particularly rich in memoirs describing the
life of the court. The chief are Madame de Motteville's memoirs for
the period of the Fronde, and the letters cf Madame de Sévigné and the
memoirs of Saint-Simon for the later period. The king's ideas are best
seen in the _Mémoires de Louis XIV. pour l'instruction du dauphin_
(edited by Dreyss, 2 vols.). His private life is revealed in the
letters of Madame de Maintenon and in those of Madame, Duchesse
d'Orléans. Of the ordinary historians of France Michelet is fullest on
the private life of the king. Mention may also be made of Voltaire,
_Siècle de Louis XIV._; P. Clément, _Histoire de la vie et de
l'administration de Colbert_; Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries de lundi_. Full
bibliographies of the reign will be found in G. Monod's
_Bibliographie de l'histoire de France_; vol. v. ("The Age of Louis
XIV.") of the _Cambridge Modern History_; and vol. vi. ("Louis XIV.")
of the _Histoire générale_ of Lavisse and Rambaud. (A. J. G.*)
LOUIS XV. (1710-1774), king of France, was the great-grandson of Louis
XIV. and the third son of Louis, duke of Burgundy, and Marie Adelaide,
princess of Savoy. The first son had died in 1705, and in 1712 the
second son, the duke of Brittany, as well as his father and mother, was
carried off by a mysterious disease. Louis was thus unexpectedly brought
into the line of the succession, and was only five years old when Louis
XIV. died. The dead king had endeavoured by his will to control the
administration even after his death by a carefully selected council of
regency, in which the duke of Orleans should have only the nominal
presidency; but with the help of the parlement of Paris the arrangement
was at once set aside, and the duke was declared regent with full
traditional powers. The duke had capacity, but his life was so
licentious that what influence he had upon the king was for evil.
Fleury, bishop of Fréjus, was appointed his tutor, and the little king
was sincerely attached to him. The king attained his legal majority at
the age of thirteen, shortly before the death of the duke of Orleans.
His first minister was the incapable duke of Bourbon, who in 1725
procured the repudiation of the Spanish princess, to whom the king had
been betrothed, and his marriage to Maria Leszczynska, daughter of the
exiled king of Poland, then resident in Alsace. In 1726 the duke of
Bourbon was displaced by the king's tutor, Bishop (afterwards Cardinal)
Fleury, who exercised almost absolute power, for the king took little
interest in affairs of state. His administration was successful and
peaceful until the year 1734, when a disputed succession in Poland
brought about the interference of France on behalf of the queen's
father. France was unsuccessful in her immediate object, but at the
peace of Vienna (1735) secured the possession of Lorraine. Up to this
point the reign had been prosperous; but from this time on it is a
record of declining national strength, which was not compensated by some
days of military glory. Fleury's great age (he died still in office at
the age of ninety) prevented him from really controlling the policy of
France and of Europe. In 1740 the war of the Austrian Succession broke
out and France drifted into it as an ally of Frederick of Prussia and
the enemy of England, and of Maria Theresa of Austria.
On Fleury's death in 1743 no one took his place, and the king professed
to adopt the example of Louis XIV. and to establish a personal
autocracy. But he was not strong enough in will or intellect to give
unity to the administration. The marquis d'Argenson writes that at the
council table Louis "opened his mouth, said little and thought not at
all," and again that "under the appearance of personal monarchy it was
really anarchy that reigned." He had followed too in his domestic life
the example of his predecessors. The queen for some time seems to have
secured his affections, and she bore him seven children. But soon we
hear of the royal mistresses. The first to acquire notoriety was the
duchess of Châteauroux, the third sister of one family who held this
position. She was at least in part the cause of the only moment of
popularity which the king enjoyed. She urged him to take part personally
in the war. France had just received a humiliating check at Dettingen,
and the invasion of the north-eastern frontier was feared. The king went
to Metz in 1744, and his presence there did something to ward off the
danger. While the nation felt genuine gratitude for his energy and its
success, he was reported to have fallen dangerously ill. The king, of
whom it was said that the fear of hell was the only part of religion
which had any reality for him, now dismissed the duchess of Châteauroux
and promised amendment. Prayers were offered everywhere for his
recovery, and the country was swept by a delirium of loyal enthusiasm,
which conferred on him the title of _Louis le bien aimé_. But his future
life disappointed all these hopes. The duchess of Châteauroux died in
the same year, but her place was taken in 1745 by Madame de Pompadour.
This woman had philanthropic impulses and some real interest in art and
letters; but her influence on public affairs was a fatal one. She had
many rivals during her lifetime and on her death in 1764 she was
succeeded by Madame du Barry (q.v.). But the mention of these three
women gives no idea of the degradation of the king's life. There has
doubtless been exaggeration as to certain details, and the story of his
seraglio at the _Parc aux cerfs_ is largely apocryphal. But it would be
difficult to mention the name of any European king whose private life
shows such a record of vulgar vice unredeemed by higher aims of any
kind. He was not without ambition, but without sufficient tenacity of
purpose to come near to realizing it. To the last he maintained the
pretence of personal rule, but the machinery of government fell out of
gear, and the disorder of the finances was never remedied before the
revolution of 1789.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the war of the Austrian
Succession, brought no gains to France in spite of her victories at
Fontenoy and Raucoux; and the king was blamed for the diplomatic
failure. The interval between this war and the Seven Years' War (1756)
saw that great reversal of alliances which is sometimes called the
"Diplomatic Revolution"; whereby France repudiated the alliance of
Frederick the Great and joined hands with her old enemy Austria. The
intrigues of Madame de Pompadour played in this change an important
though not a decisive part. It was the cause of immense disasters to
France; for after a promising beginning, both by land and sea, France
suffered reverses which lost her both India and Canada and deprived her
of the leading position which she had so long held in Europe. Her
humiliation was declared by the peace of Paris (1763).
The article on the history of France (q.v.) shows how there arose during
the last years of Louis XV.'s reign a strong reaction against the
monarchy and its methods. Military success had given it its strength;
and its prestige was ruined by military failure. In the parlements,
provincial and Parisian; in religion and in literature, a note of
opposition is struck which was never to die until the monarchy was
overthrown. France annexed Corsica in 1768, but this was felt to be the
work of the minister Chauvelin, and reflected no credit on the king. He
died in 1774 of smallpox. If the reign of his predecessor shows us
almost the ideal of personal monarchy we may see in that of Louis XV.
all the vices and errors exemplified which lie in wait for absolute
hereditary rule which has survived the period of its usefulness.
For the king's life generally see the memoirs of Saint-Simon,
d'Argenson, Villars and Barbier, and for the details of his private
life E. Boutaric, _Correspondance secrète de Louis XV._; Madame de
Pompadour's _Correspondance_ published by P. Malassi; Dietric, _Les
Maîtresses de Louis XV._; and Fleury, _Louis XV. intimes et les
petites maîtresses_ (1909).
For the system of secret diplomacy and organized espionage, known as
the _Secret du roi_, carried on under the auspices of Louis XV., see
Albert duc de Broglie, _Le Secret du roi. Correspondance secrète de
Louis XV. avec ses agents diplomatiques 1752-1774_ (Paris, 1878); and
for a general account of the reign, H. Carré, _La France sous Louis
XV._ (Paris, 1891). For other works, general and special, see G.
Monod, _Bibliographie de la France_, and the bibliography in the
_Histoire générale_ of Lavisse and Rambaud, vol. vii., and the
_Cambridge Modern History_, vol. vi. (A. J. G.*)
LOUIS XVI. (1754-1793), king of France, was the son of Louis, dauphin of
France, the son of Louis XV., and of Marie Joseph of Saxony, and was
born at Versailles on the 23rd of August 1754, being baptized as Louis
Augustus. His father's death in 1765 made him heir to the throne, and in
1770 he was married to Marie Antoinette, daughter of the empress Maria
Theresa. He was just twenty years old when the death of Louis XV. on the
10th of May 1774 placed him on the throne. He began his reign under good
auspices, with Turgot, the greatest living French statesman, in charge
of the disorganized finances; but in less than two years he had yielded
to the demand of the vested interests attacked by Turgot's reforms, and
dismissed him. Turgot's successor, Necker, however, continued the régime
of reform until 1781, and it was only with Necker's dismissal that the
period of reaction began. Marie Antoinette then obtained that ascendancy
over her husband which was partly responsible for the extravagance of
the ministry of Calonne, and brought on the Revolution by the resulting
financial embarrassment.[1] The third part of his reign began with the
meeting of the states-general on the 4th of May 1789, which marked the
opening of the Revolution. The revolt of Paris and the taking of the
Bastille on the 14th of July were its results. The suspicion, not
without justification, of a second attempt at a _coup d'état_ led on the
6th of October to the "capture" of the king and royal family at
Versailles by a mob from Paris, and their transference to the Tuileries.
In spite of the growing radicalism of the clubs, however, loyalty to the
king remained surprisingly strong. When he swore to maintain the
constitution, then in progress of construction, at the festival of the
federation on the 14th of July 1790, he was at the height of his
popularity. Even his attempted flight on the 20th of June 1791 did not
entirely turn the nation against him, although he left documents which
proved his opposition to the whole Revolution. Arrested at Varennes, and
brought back to Paris, he was maintained as a constitutional king, and
took his oath on the 13th of September 1791. But already a party was
forming in Paris which demanded his deposition. This first became
noticeable in connexion with the affair of the Champ de Mars on the 17th
of July 1791. Crushed for a time the party gained strength through the
winter of 1791-1792. The declaration of war against the emperor Francis
II., nephew of Marie Antoinette, was forced upon the king by those who
wished to discredit him by failure, or to compel him to declare himself
openly an enemy to the Revolution. Their policy proved effective. The
failure of the war, which intensified popular hatred of the Austrian
queen, involved the king; and the invasion of the Tuileries on the 20th
of June 1792 was but the prelude to the conspiracy which resulted, on
the 10th of August, in the capture of the palace and the "suspension" of
royalty by the Legislative Assembly until the convocation of a national
convention in September. On the 21st of September 1792 the Convention
declared royalty abolished, and in January it tried the king for his
treason against the nation, and condemned him to death. He was executed
on the 21st of January 1793.
Louis XVI. was weak in character and mentally dull. His courage and
dignity during his trial and on the scaffold has left him a better
reputation than he deserves. His diary shows how little he understood,
or cared for, the business of a king. Days on which he had not shot
anything at the hunt were blank days for him. The entry on the 14th of
July 1789 was "nothing"! The greater part of his time was spent hunting.
He also amused himself making locks, and a little at masonry. Awkward
and uncourtly, at heart shy, he was but a poor figurehead for the
stately court of France. At first he did not care for Marie Antoinette,
but after he came under her influence, her thoughtless conduct
compromised him, and it was largely she who encouraged him in underhand
opposition to the Revolution while he pretended to accept it. The only
point on which he had of his own initiative shown a strong objection to
revolutionary measures was in the matter of the civil constitution of
the clergy. A devoted and sincere Roman Catholic, he refused at first to
sanction a constitution for the church in France without the pope's
approval, and after he had been compelled to allow the constitution to
become law he resolved to oppose the Revolution definitely by intrigues.
His policy was both feeble and false. He was singularly unfortunate even
when he gave in, delaying his acquiescence until it had the air of a
surrender. It is often said that Louis XVI. was the victim of the faults
of his predecessors. He was also the victim of his own.
Having lost his elder son in 1789 Louis left two children, Louis
Charles, usually known as Louis XVII., and Marie Thérèse Charlotte
(1778-1851), who married her cousin, Louis, duke of Angoulême, son of
Charles X., in 1799. The "orphan of the Temple," as the princess was
called, was in prison for three years, during which time she remained
ignorant of the fate which had befallen her parents. She died on the
19th of October 1851. Her life by G. Lenôtre has been translated into
English by J. L. May (1908).
See the articles FRENCH REVOLUTION and MARIE ANTOINETTE. F. X. J.
Droz, _Histoire du règne de Louis XVI._ (3 vols., Paris, 1860), a sane
and good history of the period; and Arsène Houssaye, _Louis XVI._
(Paris, 1891). See also the numerous memoirs of the time, and the
marquis de Ségur's _Au couchant de la monarchie, Louis XVI. et Turgot_
(1910).
For bibliographies see G. Monod, _Bibl. de la France_; Lavisse et
Rambaud, _Hist. Univ._, vols. vii. and viii.; and the _Cambridge Modem
History_, vol. viii. (R. A.*)