CHARLES VII. in creating a standing army struck feudalism a deadly
blow. His son, Louis XI., with cold-blooded brutality finished the
work. This man's powerful and crafty intelligence saw in an alliance
with the common people a means of absorbing to himself supreme power.
Not since Tiberius had there been a more blood-thirsty monster on a
throne. But he demolished the political structure of mediaevalism in
his kingdom; and when his cruel reign was ended the Middle Ages had
passed away, and modern life had begun in France.
There was no longer even the pretence of knightly virtues in France.
It was time for the high-born robbers and ruffians in steel helmets to
give place to men with hearts and brains. It is said that of those
thousands, that chivalric host, which was slaughtered at Agincourt, not
one in twenty could write his name. All alike were cruel and had the
instincts of barbarians. While the Duke of Burgundy, the richest
prince in Europe, was starving his enemies in secret dungeons in the
Bastille, his Orleans rival, Count of Armagnac, not having access to
the Bastille, was decapitating Burgundians till his executioners
fainted from fatigue.
It is almost with relief that we read of the slaughter of these
knightly savages at Agincourt. If the shipwreck of a mighty kingdom
was to be averted, two things must be done. The decaying corpse of
feudalism must be thrown overboard, and the Church must be purified.
Both had fallen from the ideals which created them; the ideal of truth,
justice, and spotless honor, and the ideal of divine love and mercy.
Even the semblance of truth and justice and honor had departed from the
one; and unspeakable corruption had crept into the other. From the day
of the Albigensian cruelties, the heart of the Church had turned to
stone, and the spark of life divine within seemed extinguished. Once
the guardian of the helpless, it had deserted the people and made
common cause with their oppressors. One pope at Rome, and another at
Avignon, was a heavy burden to carry. But when _three_ infallible
beings were hurling anathemas at each other, the University of Paris
led Christendom in rejecting them all.
So the two great classes for which the State existed were overweighting
the ship at a time when it was being torn and tossed by a storm of
gigantic proportions.
Well was it for France that Charles VII., as king, developed unexpected
firmness and ability. The creation of a standing army, and the
disbanding of all military organizations existing without the king's
commission, at one sweeping blow completed the wreck of feudalism. It
only remained for Charles's cold-blooded son, Louis XI., to finish the
work, and mediaevalism was a thing of the past in France.
The reign of Charles was imbittered by the conduct of this unnatural
son, whose undisguised impatience to assume the crown so alarmed him
that it is said he shortened his own life by abstaining from food in
the fear that the dauphin might lay the guilt of parricide upon his
soul.
This heart-broken, desolate old man died in 1461. And Louis XI. was
King of France.
The son of Charles VII. was a composite of the wisest and the worst of
his predecessors. Indeed, it is to the Roman emperors we must look for
a parallel to this monster on a throne. And yet, to no other king does
France owe such a debt of gratitude. His remorseless hand placed a
great gulf between the new and the old, in which were forever buried
the men and the system which had fed upon her life.
The antagonism between the son and the father aroused great hopes of a
reversal of policy and a rehabilitation of feudalism. These hopes were
soon undeceived. So inscrutable and so tortuous was the policy of this
strange being, so unexpected his changes of direction, so false and
inconsistent his words and acts, and so unspeakably cruel the means to
his ends, that a cowed and bewildered nation was soon crouching at his
feet, not knowing whither he was leading them.
Warfare played no part in this reign. Invasion was met by diplomacy,
and slaughter and bloodshed were relegated to the executioner.
Incredible as it seems, it is said that from his windows this king
could look out upon an avenue of gibbets upon which hung the bodies of
his enemies. The humorous spirit in which he disposed of obstructive
nobles is illustrated by a note to an unsuspecting victim. "Fair
cousin, come and give us your advice. We have need of so wise a head
as yours." And in the morning the fair cousin's wise head was in a
basket filled with sawdust!
When all was done, a town council meant more than the "Order of the
Golden Fleece"; and, _pari passu_, with the humiliation of the noble
came the elevation of the bourgeois. A nameless adventurer would be
admitted to confidential intimacy when a Montmorenci could not get
beyond his antechamber.
In fact, this levelling up and levelling down was the object of all
this king's odious crimes and the central purpose of his cold-blooded
reign. If a patent of nobility was a pretty good passport to the
scaffold, good service in a town council was an open door to elevation.
So, judged by results, Louis XI. was a better king than many a better
man had been. He buried the ideals of the past fathoms deep and then
stamped them down with remorseless feet. He demolished the political
structure of mediaevalism in his kingdom, and when his terrible reign
was ended, in 1483, the Middle Ages had passed away and modern life had
begun in France.
Almost any reign would have seemed colorless after that of Louis XI.
But that of his son, Charles VIII., was made memorable by one event, an
invasion of Italy, which brought to France a long train of disastrous
consequences.
It will be remembered that in the thirteenth century, Charles, Duke of
Anjou, of Sicilian fame, or infamy, and brother of Louis the Saint,
occupied the throne of Naples by invitation of the pope.
The family of Anjou having recently become extinct, Charles was now the
rightful heir to that throne. So as there was nothing in especial for
him to do at home, and as his new army, created and equipped by his
father, was a very splendid affair for that day, and as Charles was
young and ambitious of a name, he determined to take forcible
possession of his inheritance in Italy.
The success of the enterprise was quite dazzling. Milan, Florence,
Rome, were successively occupied, and finally Charles was actually
seated upon the throne in Naples (1495).
But the seat was not comfortable. The Neapolitans did not want him;
and, what was more important, Spain, England, and Austria talked of
uniting to drive him out. And so he and his army returned to France,
and all that had been gained by the enterprise was a wide-open door
between France and Italy at the very time when it might better have
been kept closed, and the discovery by Europe that the Italian
peninsula was an easy prey to any ambitious European power. What
Charles had done might also, and more effectually, be done by England,
Spain, or Austria. All of which bore bitter fruit in the next century.
But for France the fruit was of a more deadly kind. The princely and
noble blood of Italy began to be mingled with hers, bringing a vicious
and corrupt strain at a critical period.
Old as she was in centuries, France was but a child in civilization.
An uncouth, untutored child, just emerging from barbarism, was suddenly
brought under the influence of a fascinating, highly developed
civilization, old in wickedness. A nation in which the ruling class
had only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled by
this sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of the
ages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment; who after
having run the whole gamut of human experience, drunk at every known
fountain, had arrived at the code summed up by Machiavelli as the best
by which to live! It was an easy task for the Medici to control the
policy, as they did for generations, of such simple barbarians.
Italy presents a strange spectacle in this closing fifteenth century:
All the concentrated splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging over
her like a luminous cloud before dispersing as the Renaissance; Lorenzo
de' Medici, at Florence, directing the intellectual currents of Europe;
Angelo and Raphael creating the world's sublimest masterpieces in art;
her great Genoese son uncovering another hemisphere; Savonarola, like
an inspired prophet of old, calling upon men to "repent, repent, while
there is yet time"; Machiavelli instructing the nations of the earth in
villainy as a fine art; and Alexander VI., the basest man in Europe,
poisoner, father of every crime, claiming to be Vicegerent of Christ
upon earth!
But the currents were moving swiftly toward a crisis which was to
change all this. One more pope, that magnificent patron of art, Julius
II., creator of the Vatican Museum, with the recently found Apollo
Belvedere, and the Laocoön as a splendid nucleus, and projector and
builder of St. Peter's. And then Leo X. (Medicean Pope) and Luther!
The year 1492 contained three important events: the discovery of a new
world, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the death of Lorenzo
de' Medici. Spain's crusade of seven hundred years was over. We must
search in vain for any struggle to match this in singleness and
persistence of purpose. Commencing one hundred years before
Charlemagne created a Holy Roman Empire, it ended triumphantly under a
king and queen who were to play a leading part in the _Reformation_.
The stage was making ready, and the characters were assembling for the
great modern drama, in a century even more significant than the one
then closing.
The reign of Charles VIII. ended in 1498. And as he left no son, the
succession once more passed to a collateral branch: Louis XII., of the
House of Orleans, wore the crown of France. It is interesting to
recall that these two kings, Charles and Louis, were respectively
grandsons of those two ambitious dukes whose personal feud brought
France to the verge of ruin a few decades earlier: Louis XII. being the
descendant of that Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., the
reigning king, who was murdered in the streets of Paris; while Charles
VIII. was the descendant of his slayer, the terrible Duke of Burgundy,
evil genius of France at that time.
The principal event in the reign of the new king was the reopening of
the Italian War by the combined and successful action of Spain and
France. But this proved a barren triumph for Louis, who, when all was
done, found that he had been simply aiding that artful diplomatist,
Ferdinand, in securing the whole prize for Spain. The disagreement
growing out of the distribution of the spoil resulted in a war between
the late allies; and it was in this wretched conflict that Bayard,
_chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_, was sacrificed.
Louis died in 1515, also without an heir; and so the crown passed to
still another collateral branch of the main Capetian line. The Count
of Angoulême, cousin of the dead king, was proclaimed Francis I.
The fall of Constantinople in the East, and the discovery of a new
world in the West, were changing the whole aspect of Europe. The art
of printing, coming almost simultaneously with these transforming
events, sent vitalizing currents reaching even to the humblest. France
partook of the general awakening and was throwing off the torpor of
centuries. New ambitions were aroused, and her slumbering genius began
to be stirred. This was a propitious moment for an ambitious young
king who aimed not only at being the greatest of military heroes, but
also the splendid patron of art and letters, and wisest of men! The
role he had set for himself being, in fact, a Charlemagne and a Lorenzo
de' Medici in one. All that was needed for success in this large field
was ability. Personal valor Francis certainly possessed. His reign
opened brilliantly with a campaign in the Italian peninsula, which left
him after the battle of Marignano, master of the Milanese and of
northern Italy. He need not trouble himself as had his predecessors
about recalcitrant and scheming nobles. They had never been heard from
since Louis XI. took them in hand. Neither were the States-General
going to annoy him by assertion of rights and demands for reforms.
They too had become almost non-existent; it having been well
established that only the direst emergency would ever call them into
being again. So kingship held sole and undisputed sway, and Francis
was looking about to see where he might make it even stronger.
The residence of the popes, at Avignon, during the period of the Great
Schism, had led to the establishment by Charles VII. of an ordinance
called the _Pragmatic Sanction_; its object being the limitation of the
papal power in France. The pope by this ordinance was cut off from
certain lucrative sources of income; to offset which the king was
deprived of the right of appointing officers for vacant bishoprics and
abbeys.
Francis I. and Leo X. came together, and, after conferring, determined
that the Pragmatic Sanction should be repudiated; Leo, because he must
increase his revenues, and Francis, because he desired to use
appointments to rich vacancies as rewards for his friends. Leo's
tastes, as we know, were magnificent, and needed much more money than
he could command; a fact which led to grave results, and changed the
course of events in the world!
In 1516 Ferdinand I., King of Spain, died, leaving his enormous
possessions to his grandson, Charles, a youth not yet twenty. The
mother of this boy was Joanna, the insane daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella, who was married to the son and heir of Maxmilian I., Emperor
of Germany.
The young Charles, by the death of his father, had already inherited
the Netherlands and Flanders; to which by the death of his maternal
grandfather there was now added Spain, the kingdom of Naples, Mexico,
and Peru. A heavy enough burden, one would think, for young shoulders.
But it was to become still heavier. In 1519 his other grandfather,
Maximilian I., died, leaving the throne of the empire vacant.
This office by ancient custom, established by Charlemagne, was
elective, and theoretically was open to any prince in Europe. But with
the seven princes known as electors, with whom rested choice of the
successor, hereditary claim had great weight. Europe saw with dismay
the imminent creation of an empire greater than that of Charlemagne--an
empire which would cover a large part of the map of Europe and of
America. For none was this so alarming as for France, which would in
fact be enveloped upon almost every side by this giant among the
nations. A French king would indeed have been dull and spiritless not
to realize the magnitude of the danger, and Francis was neither. There
was only a youth of nineteen standing between him and the greatest
dignity in Europe. It was not alone an opportunity to save France from
this overshadowing power, but to reunite the crowns of France and the
empire as originally designed by Charlemagne. No role could have
better pleased Francis I. He announced himself a claimant for the
vacant throne (under the clause opening it to European princes),
claiming that his ownership of the adjacent territory of Northern Italy
made him the natural successor to the imperial throne.
Then another ambitious young king appeared as another rival claimant,
Henry VIII. of England, with his astute Minister Woolsey to fight the
diplomatic battles for his master. It was a brilliant game, played by
great players for a great stake: Francis lavishly bribing and dazzling
by theatrical displays of splendor; Henry arrogant, ostentatious, vain,
and Charles silent, inscrutable, cold-blooded, and false, whispering to
Woolsey that he might make him pope at the next election. From that
moment the powerful influence of the Cardinal was used for this sedate
youth, this wise youth, who saw that the fitting place for him
(Woolsey) was the chair of St. Peter!
The diplomacy of the boy of nineteen won the prize. The electors gave
the crown to Charles V. Leo X. died soon after. Woolsey waited in
hourly expectation of the summons to Rome. But it never came!
Then Francis resolved to win by force what he had lost by diplomacy.
Charles succeeded in winning the pope to his side of the contest with
the purpose of driving the French out of Italy. The attempt quickly
ended in the defeat of the French, and for Francis capture, and a
year's imprisonment in Madrid; his release only obtained by abandoning
all claims upon Italy; and in 1547 the showy and ineffectual reign of
Francis I. was terminated by his death, which occurred almost
immediately after that of Henry VIII. in England.
While these events were taking place, a less conspicuous but vastly
more significant conflict had developed. In 1517, Martin Luther, the
obscure monk, had hurled defiance at the Church of Rome, arraigning Leo
X. for corrupt practices; especially the enrichment of the Church by
the sale of indulgences. Germany was shaken to its centre by
Protestantism, and the reign of Charles V. was to be spent in
ineffectual conflict with the Reformation, which would ultimately tear
the Empire asunder.
The new heresy had found congenial soil in France. England was openly
and avowedly Protestant, while Spain and Italy remained unchangeably
Catholic.
For Francis, destined to spend his life in fruitless contest with the
more able, wily, and astute Charles V., the religious question upon
which Europe was divided meant nothing except at he could use it in his
duel with the emperor. He was in turn the ally of Henry VIII. or the
willing tool of Charles V. If he needed the English king's friendship,
the Protestants had protection. If he desired to placate Charles V.,
the roastings and torturings commenced again.
In 1547 Francis and Henry VIII. each went to his reward, and a few
years later Charles V. had laid down his crown and carried his weary,
unsatisfied heart to St. Yuste. The brilliant pageant was over; but
Protestantism was expanding.