CHAPTER IX. “THE CONVALESCENCE OF FRANCE”

Confused as was the long period of the last years of Charles

VII, it may nevertheless be thus summarily defined--the

convalescence of France. France recovered and England fell

ill.--MICHELET.[b]

The sorceress, the she-devil, was burned; the charm was doubtless

broken, the spell removed; there was nothing now to prevent the English

from conquering the kingdom of France. Nevertheless, before they should

recover the power in fact they deemed it right to have the power in law

on their side--to legitimise the young Henry VI by having him crowned.

The coronation to which Charles VII had been led by an agent of the devil

being, by that means itself, null and void, they wished to have for their

little prince a coronation perfectly orthodox and irreprehensible.

[Sidenote: [1431-1432 A.D.]]

The ceremony took place the 17th of December, 1431; not at Rheims, which

the English no longer held, but at Paris. An English prelate, Beaufort,

the cardinal-bishop of Winchester, officiated, to the great discontent

of the bishop of Paris; for assistants there were English lords, not a

single French prince. There was no liberation of prisoners, no reduction

of taxes, no largesse to the people. “A bourgeois marrying off his

daughter,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[i] “would have done better.”[c]

The child king was found to have little intelligence or grace, and the

day after Christmas he was taken from Paris to Rouen, and thence to

England.[d]

Paris was far from prosperous under foreign domination. Public officials

were ill paid. The university was no longer recruited, except from the

English and Burgundian provinces. It lost its pupils; it lost still more

when, a month after his arrival, Bedford established schools of civil

and canon law at Caen, in the midst of the English provinces. Charles

responded by creating, in his turn, a university at Poitiers, and by

according new privileges to the schools of Angers.[e]

It was now that period when the feeble bond that still united the duke of

Burgundy to the English began to give way. His sister, Bedford’s wife,

died in November, 1432. The duke of Burgundy had never had much reason to

like the English, nor had he more to fear them. Their war in France was

becoming ridiculous.[b]

The marshal De Boussac, as the result of a conspiracy, was almost able to

seize Rouen. His advance guard was already in the castle when his bands

began to quarrel over the division of the booty, and the English drove

them off. Dunois was more successful at Chartres; he had an understanding

with a preacher of renown. The latter announced that he would preach

every day in a certain church; the entire English garrison assisted

devoutly at the sermon while the French took the town. The English,

from whom so important a place had been taken, were not even able to

capture a hamlet. A certain French captain, John Foucauld by name, was

stationed at Lagny and greatly harassed the neighbourhood of Paris. The

duke of Bedford and the earl of Warwick went to besiege the place. They

soon made a breach in the wall, but when they saw the besieged bravely

awaiting them, they returned to Paris, where they arrived on Easter eve,

“apparently to confess,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[i] maliciously,

in his journal. Meanwhile several soldiers of fortune in the service of

the king of France had seized St. Valéry, Gerberoy, St. Denis, and other

places (1432).[c]

The Parisians, delighted at this retreat of Bedford from Lagny, made

themselves no less merry on the subject of his second marriage. At

fifty years of age he wedded a girl of seventeen, “sprightly, fair, and

gracious,” a daughter of the count of Saint-Pol, one of the duke of

Burgundy’s vassals, and that abruptly and furtively without saying a word

to his brother-in-law. The duke would not have consented to the match.

The Saint-Pols, raised by him for the purpose of guarding his frontier,

were beginning to play that double game which was to be their ruin;

they were giving the English a footing in the dominions of the duke of

Burgundy.

Beaufort saw more clearly that if the alliance with Burgundy were broken

off, the war would change its aspect; that it would become far more

costly, and that the church would infallibly have to bear the expense.

A beginning had been made with the church of France, from which it was

sought to wrest all the pious donations it had received for sixty years.

In this state of anxiety, he exerted himself strongly for peace, and

had it arranged that a conference should take place between Bedford and

Philip the Good. He succeeded in making the two dukes advance towards

each other as far as St. Omer. But this was all; once in the town,

neither of them would take the first step. Though Bedford ought to have

seen clearly that France was lost for the English if he did not bring

back the duke of Burgundy to their party, he remained peremptory on the

point of etiquette; as the king’s representative, he awaited the visit of

the king’s vassal, who never moved. The rupture was definitive.

France, on the contrary, was gradually becoming reunited, a result

brought about chiefly by the efforts of the house of Anjou. The old

queen, Yolande of Anjou, the king’s mother-in-law, brought him back

the Bretons; and in concert with the constable Richemont, the duke of

Brittany’s brother, she dismissed the favourite, La Trémouille.[48]

It was more difficult to allure the duke of Burgundy, who was supporting

the pretender Vaudemont, in Lorraine, against René of Anjou, Yolande’s

son.[49] That prince, who has remained in the memory of the Angevins and

Provençals by the name of “the good king René,” possessed all the amiable

qualities of old chivalric France; and with them, too, its imprudence

and levity. He suffered himself to be beaten and taken prisoner at

Bulgnéville, by the Burgundians (July, 1431). The duke of Burgundy

restored him to liberty, under security.[b]

Philip the Good might well have congratulated himself on a victory which

clipped the wings of the royalists in Lorraine, but he made no use of

it, and now showed himself disposed for pacific measures. In September,

1431, at the very moment that the royalist captains were preparing to

invade Charolais and Burgundy, he signed at Chinon a two years’ truce

with Charles VII for his frontiers of Réthelois, Picardy, Burgundy, and

Charolais.[e] The English had no good reason for their complaints of

Philip’s loyalty in this; if he had concluded a separate truce for his

own states, he did not treat for peace on their behalf or without them.

The English ambassadors were called to take part in all negotiations; but

it was very evident, at the conferences of Auxerre (July, 1432) and those

held in the village of Simport (now Seineport) in March, 1433, that while

peace was now almost an easy matter between Charles VII and Philip on

account of the great concessions to which the king resigned himself, it

was next to impossible between Charles VII and Henry VI.[f]

The princes were becoming friends, and there was nothing to hinder

the people from doing likewise, if they had the will. Paris, governed

by Cauchon and other bishops, tried to get rid of them and expel the

English. Normandy, even, that little French England, at last grew weary

of a war of which it was made to bear the whole burden. A vast rising

took place, in 1434, among the rural population of Lower Normandy; the

leader was a peasant named Quatrepieds; but there were knights also

engaged in the affair, which was not a mere Jacquerie. The English could

not fail soon to lose the province.

THE TREATY OF ARRAS (1435 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1435 A.D.]]

They seemed themselves to look on their prospects as desperate.

Bedford abandoned Paris. The poor town, smitten by turns with famine

and pestilence, was too hideous an abode. The duke of Burgundy,

nevertheless, ventured to visit it with his wife and son, on his way

to the great assembly at Arras, where the terms of a treaty of peace

were to be arranged. The Parisians welcomed him, and implored his aid,

as though he had been an angel from God. The assembly in question was

one of all Christendom, including ambassadors from the council, the

pope, the emperor, the sovereigns of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Naples,

Milan, Sicily, Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark. All the French princes,

and all those of the Low Countries, attended in person or by deputy;

so did the University of Paris, and a number of good towns. All these

personages being assembled, England herself arrived, in the person of the

cardinal-bishop of Winchester. The conferences opened August 5th, 1435,

in the chapel of St. Waast.

The first question to be considered was the possibility of an

accommodation between Charles VII and Henry VI. But how was it to be

effected? Each of them claimed the crown. Charles VII offered Aquitaine,

and even Normandy, which was still in the hands of the English. The

latter required that each party should retain what it then had, with

the exception of mutual exchanges for the purpose of rendering the

possessions of each more compact.

Nothing could be made of the English, and they were allowed to depart

from Arras. Everyone turned towards the duke of Burgundy, beseeching him

to have pity on the realm and on Christendom, which suffered so much from

these long wars. But he could not make up his mind; his conscience and

his knightly honour were engaged, he said; he had given his signature;

besides, was he not bound to take vengeance for his father’s murder? The

pope’s legates told him he might make light of such scruples, for they

had power to release him from his oaths. But this did not yet satisfy

him. Ecclesiastical law not seeming sufficient, recourse was had to civil

law, and a fine case was drawn up, in which, to leave the minds of the

jurisconsults the more free, the parties were designated by the names

of Darius and Ahasuerus. The English and the French doctors gave such

opinions as might have been expected of them respectively; but those of

Bologna, whom the legates brought forward, declared, in conformity with

the French lawyers, that Charles VI had no power to conclude the Treaty

of Troyes.

[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN, FIRST PART OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1435-1436 A.D.]]

The duke of Burgundy allowed the suppliants to argue and implore. But, in

reality, the desired change had already taken place in him; he was weary

of the English. The Flemings, who had so often forced their counts to

remain united with England, were becoming hostile to that nation; they

suffered from the forays of the garrison of Calais, and were maltreated

when they went to that great wool market. England was then becoming a

rival and enemy of Flanders; had she been friendly to that country, her

friendship would henceforth have availed little. The duke of Burgundy

had gained the barrier of the Somme, through the English alliance, and

rounded and completed his Burgundy; but their alliance could no longer

guarantee him the possession of his new acquisitions. Divided as they

were, it was with difficulty they could defend themselves. Bedford alone

could maintain some sort of balance between Winchester and Gloucester;

but he died, at Rouen in September, 1435, and his decease was a further

alleviation to the conscience of the duke of Burgundy. Thenceforth the

treaties concluded with Bedford, as regent of France, appeared to him

less sacred; such was the strictly literal mode of viewing things in the

Middle Ages; he deemed himself bound during the lifetime of him to whom

he had given his signature.

The duke of Burgundy’s two brothers-in-law, the duke de Bourbon and the

constable De Richemont, contributed not a little to fix his wavering

purposes. They plied him so hard that he vouchsafed at last to yield

to their entreaties and grant mercy. The Treaty of Arras cannot be

characterised by any other phrase. The king asked pardon of the duke for

the murder of John the Fearless, and the duke did not pay him homage;

thereby he became himself king, as it were. He retained for himself

and his heirs all he had acquired: on the one side Péronne and all the

fortresses on the Somme, on the other Auxerre and Mâcon.

The explanations and reparations for the death of Duke John were very

humiliating. The king was to say, or have it said, that at that time

he was very young, had as yet little knowledge, and had not been

sufficiently advised to see duly into the matter, but that at present

he was about to use all diligence in searching out the guilty parties.

He was to found a chapel in the church at Montereau, and a convent for

twelve Carthusians; and to erect, moreover, on the bridge where the act

had been perpetrated, a stone cross, which was to be kept in repair at

the king’s expense. The ceremony of forgiveness took place in the church

of St. Waast. The dean of Paris, Jean Tudert, threw himself at the feet

of Duke Philip, and cried him mercy, on the king’s part, for the murder

of John the Fearless. The duke appeared moved, raised and embraced him,

and told him there should never be war between King Charles and himself.

The duke de Bourbon and the constable then swore a peace, as did the

French and Burgundian ambassadors and lords.

[Sidenote: [1436-1438 A.D.]]

But the reconciliation would not have been complete if the duke

of Burgundy had not concluded a definitive arrangement with the

brother-in-law of Charles VII, René of Anjou. René, not having been able

to adhere to the terms of the first treaty, had preferred returning

to prison. Philip the Good released him and gave him back part of his

ransom money, in consideration of the marriage of his niece, Mary de

Bourbon, with René’s son. Thus were the houses of Burgundy, Bourbon, and

Anjou united with each other and with the king. That of Brittany still

vacillated; the duke did not declare himself; he found great profit

in the war; it was said that thirty thousand Normans had taken refuge

in Brittany. But whether the duke was English or French, his brother

Richemont was constable of France: the Bretons followed him cheerfully;

the Breton bands were the main force of Charles VII, and were called the

_bons corps_.

THE FRENCH RETURN TO PARIS (1436-1437 A.D.)

This self-reconciliation of France drove the English distracted; their

wrath blinded them, and they plunged as it were wilfully into their ill

fortune. The duke of Burgundy wished to keep some terms with them, and

offered them his mediation; but they rejected it, and plundered and

killed the Flemish merchants in London. Flanders becoming incensed in

its turn, the duke seized the opportunity to lead the communes to the

siege of Calais.[b] For this he collected a large army in 1436, the

Flemings, especially the Ghenters, answering his call to the number of

forty thousand, and promising not merely to second his enterprise, but to

accomplish it themselves. They found the task, however, so much beyond

their power, that they grew disheartened, accused the Burgundians of

betraying them, and marched off leaving the duke to extricate himself

with his other forces as best he could.[g]

The Burgundian party turned round like the duke; those of Paris, of the

_halles_ even, the Burgundian quarter _par excellence_, called in the

king’s forces and his constable, and installed them in the town. The

English, who had still fifteen hundred men-at-arms there, and at first

made a show of resisting, shut themselves pitiably in the Bastille,

and then, apprehensive of famine, obtained leave to embark and descend

the river to Rouen. The people, who had been harshly governed by three

bishops on behalf of the English, pursued them with hootings, and

shouted, “Fox! fox!” after the bishop of Thérouanne, the chancellor of

the English. The Parisians were loath to let them off so cheaply, for

they calculated that the ransom of so many rich nobles would bring in at

least 200,000 livres; but it would have been necessary to besiege the

Bastille, and the constable himself was at his shifts, money failing him.

The king had only 1,000 livres to give him for the purpose of retaking

Paris (1436).[b]

At length, in November, 1437, Charles made his solemn entrance into

his capital, from which he had been an exile nearly twenty years. The

constable rode on the monarch’s right hand, the count de Vendôme on his

left, and the royal cavalcade was met at the Porte St. Denis by “the

seven virtues and the seven mortal sins, well clad, mounted upon various

beasts.” Charles had previously reunited the parliament of Poitiers to

that of Paris, and the new judges and councillors returned to take their

seats, and thus restore Paris to the rank of judicial capital of the

_languedoïl_.[g]

THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION (1438 A.D.)

In that vast and multitudinous wretchedness, amid so many ruins, two

things were still standing--the nobility and the church. The nobility had

served the king against the English, gratuitously served a beggared king;

it had consumed much of its own wealth, at the same time that it devoured

the people’s substance, and it looked for compensation. The church, on

its part, represented itself as very poor and afflicted; but there was

this notable difference, that its poverty consisted in the suspension

of its revenues--in general the capital remained. The king, indebted

to the nobility, could discharge his obligations only at the church’s

expense, either by forcing it to pay for him, which seemed difficult and

dangerous, or rather by gently and indirectly, for the sake ostensibly

of the ecclesiastical liberties, re-establishing the elections in which

the lords had the paramount influence, and thus enabling them to dispose

of benefices. These were often bestowed by the pope on the partisans

of England; Charles VII had no inducement to respect his claims. He

adopted in his _pragmatique_ of Bourges (July 7th, 1438) the decrees of

the council of Bâle, which re-established elections, and recognised the

rights of the noble patrons of churches to present to benefices. These

patrons, descendants of the pious founders or protectors, regarded the

churches as portions severed from their fiefs, and desired nothing better

than to protect them still, that is to say, to put their own men into

them, by causing them to be elected by the monks or canons.

What delighted France in its then extreme poverty was that the

_pragmatique_ would stop the outgoing of money from the kingdom. The

absence of gold was acutely felt. Under Charles VII it was really

necessary as an instrument of war and a means of rapid action. The

bankers were turning their speculations in that direction; previously

occupied with the exchange of Rome and the transmission of the

ecclesiastic tithes, they were about to draw on the English that bill of

exchange which was paid with Normandy.

One thing, however, was to be feared, namely, that a church so completely

closed against papal influence might become not national but purely

seigniorial. It was not the king or the state that would inherit what the

pope lost, but the lords and the nobles. At a period when organisation

was still so feeble, it was not very practicable to act with effect from

a distance; now at every election the lord was on the spot to present or

recommend, and the chapters obsequiously elected his nominee; the king

was very far away. It was a question whether the nobility were worthy

of being intrusted with the chief active part in the affairs of the

church--whether the lords on whom really devolved the choice of pastors

and the responsibility for the salvation of souls were themselves the

pure souls whom the Holy Spirit would enlighten in so delicate a matter.

THE ATROCIOUS CRIMES OF THE BARONS

[Sidenote: [1435-1440 A.D.]]

In his fief the baron of the twelfth century, haughty and stern as he

might be, had yet a rule of conduct which, though unwritten, seemed but

the more inviolable. This rule was “usage,” custom. In his most violent

proceedings he saw himself accosted by his men, who said respectfully to

him: “Messire, it is not the ‘usage’ of the good people here.” The fear

of God and respect for usage, those two bridles of the feudal times, were

broken in the fifteenth century. The lord was no longer a resident on his

estate, and knew neither his people nor their customs. If he returns,

it is with soldiers to raise money abruptly; he falls on the country

occasionally like storm and hail, everyone hides at his approach, and the

whole district is seized with a panic.

This lord, though bearing his father’s seigniorial name, was not the

more a lord for all that; he was commonly a rough captain, a barbarian,

scarcely a Christian. Often he was a leader of _houspilleurs_,

_tondeurs_, or _écorcheurs_, like the bastard de Bourbon, the bastard of

Vaurus, a Chabannes, or a La Hire. _Écorcheurs_ (flayers) was their right

name: ruining the ruined, taking away the shirt from him who had been

left with nothing but a shirt to cover him; and if nothing remained but

the skin, then stripping off the skin.

It would be a mistake to suppose that it was only the captains of the

_écorcheurs_, the bastards, the lords without lordship, that were so

ferocious. The grandees and the princes had acquired a strange appetite

for blood in these hideous wars. What shall we say when we see John of

Ligny, of the house of Luxemburg, exercising his nephew, the count of

Saint-Pol, a boy of fifteen, in massacring fugitives?

They treated their relations just as they did their enemies; in fact,

as regarded safety, the enemy was better off than the relation. It

would seem as though there were no fathers, no brothers in those days.

The count d’Harcourt keeps his father a prisoner all his life; the

countess de Foix poisons her sister, the sire de Giac his wife; the

duke of Brittany starves his brother to death, and that publicly--the

horror-stricken passer-by heard his piteous voice imploring a morsel of

bread for charity. One evening, on the 10th of January, Count Adolphus of

Gelderland drags his old father out of bed, marches him five leagues on

foot through the snow without hose, and throws him into a subterraneous

dungeon (1440). The son, indeed, might have said in his own behalf that

parricide was matter of usage in the family. But we find it likewise in

most of the great houses of the time, in all those of the Low Countries,

in those of Bar, Verdun, Armagnac, etc.

_Gilles de Retz_

[Sidenote: [1426-1440 A.D.]]

People were well inured to these things, but one such that came to light

stupefied all men with wonder and horror. The duke of Brittany being at

Nantes, the bishop, who was his cousin and his chancellor, was emboldened

by his presence to proceed against a great lord of the neighbourhood,

regarded with singular awe, a Retz of the house of Laval, which was

itself a branch of the Montforts, of the lineage of the dukes of

Brittany. Such was the terror inspired by that name that it had silenced

every tongue for fourteen years.

The accusation was a strange one. An old woman called La Meffraie used

to travel about the country and the heaths, and make up to the children

who kept cattle or begged. Caressing and cajoling them, but all the while

keeping her face half covered with a piece of black gauze, she used to

entice them to the château of the sire de Retz, and they were never seen

again. This Gilles de Retz was a very great lord, rich both in patrimony

and by his marriage into the house of Thouars, besides which he had

inherited the wealth of his maternal grandfather, John de Craon, lord of

La Suze, Chantocé, and Ingrande.

There was found in the tower of Chantocé a tunful of calcined children’s

bones, the remains, it was calculated, of some forty victims. Similar

discoveries were made in the château de la Suze, and in every other

place where he had made his abode. Murder accompanied him wherever he

went. The number of children slaughtered by this beast of extermination

is estimated at 140. How slaughtered, and why? In the answer to this

question lay something more horrible than death itself. They were

offerings to the devil. He invoked the fiends Barron, Orient, Beelzebub,

Satan, and Belial, praying them to grant him “gold, knowledge, and

power.”[50]

He was condemned to the flames and placed at the stake, but not burned.

Out of deference for his powerful family and the nobility in general, he

was strangled before the flames reached him. The body was not reduced to

ashes. “Damsels of high condition,” says Jean Chartier,[h] went to the

meadows of Nantes, where the execution had taken place, raised the body

with their noble hands, and, with the aid of some nuns, gave it very

honourable burial in the Carmelite church (1440).

Barbarism had returned, only without what was good in it, simplicity and

faith. Feudalism had come back, but without its traits of devotedness and

fidelity, and its chivalry. These ghosts of buried feudalism appeared

like damned souls bringing unknown crimes to earth from their infernal

abode. It mattered not that the English withdrew; France still continued

the work of self-extermination. The provinces of the north were becoming

a desert; the waste heaths were spreading. In the centre, Beauce was

becoming overrun with briers and thickets; two armies sought and could

hardly find each other there. The towns in which the whole population of

the rural districts sought refuge, absorbed that miserable multitude, and

yet remained not the less desolate. A vast number of houses were empty,

says the Bourgeois de Paris,[i] and many a door was closed to open no

more. The poor took from those houses whatever they could for firing.

Paris was burning Paris. We may judge of the other towns from this one,

the most populous of all, the town in which the government had held its

seat, and where resided those great corporations, the university and the

parliament. Famine and wretchedness had made it a focus of disgusting

contagious maladies, the nature of which was not very accurately

discriminated, but which were called at random the plague. Charles VII

had a glimpse of that hideous thing which was still called Paris, was

struck with horror, and hurried away. The English did not try to return

thither. The two parties withdrew as if by a common understanding. The

wolves alone were voluntary visitors, entering at evening in search of

carrion; for as they no longer found food in the fields, they were rabid

with hunger, and attacked men. The contemporary historian, who no doubt

exaggerates, alleges that in September, 1438, they devoured fourteen

persons between Montmartre and the Porte St. Antoine.

These terrible miseries are expressed, very feebly indeed, in the

_Complaint of the poor Commonalty and the poor Labourers_. It is a medley

of lamentations and threats; the starving wretches warn the church,

the king, the burghers and merchants, and, above all, the lords, that

“the fire is very near their hôtels.” They call the king to their aid.

But what could Charles VII do--that king of Bourges, that weak and

mean-looking personage,[51] how could they expect him to impose respect

and obedience on so many audacious men? With what forces was he to put

down the _écorcheurs_ of the rural districts, and the terrible petty

kings of châteaux? They were his own captains;[52] it was with them and

through them he was waging war against the English.

CHARLES BEGINS THE WORK OF REFORM (1439 A.D.)

On the 2nd of November, 1439, Charles VII ordained in the states of

Orleans, and at their request: that henceforth the king alone shall

nominate the captains; that the lords, as well as the royal captains,

shall be responsible for the acts of their men; and that both alike must

answer before the king’s functionaries, that is to say, that henceforth

war shall be subjected to the control of justice. The barons shall no

longer take anything beyond their seigniorial rights, under pretext of

war. War becomes the king’s affair, and he undertakes, in consideration

of 1,200,000 livres a year granted him by the states, to maintain fifteen

hundred lances with six men to each. By and by we shall see him back this

cavalry with a newly created infantry of the communes. Contraveners shall

obtain no grace; should the king pardon, his servants should take no

heed thereof. The ordinance subjoined a more direct and more efficacious

threat: the spoils of the contraveners shall belong to whoever shall

take them. This was a tremendous clause; it armed the peasant, and

sounded, as it were, the tocsin in the village.

What partially explains the boldness of the measure is that the

self-styled royal captains, the pillagers and _écorcheurs_, had recently

damaged their own strength. They had attempted an expedition to Bâle

with the hopes of extorting ransom-money from the council, but instead

of this they were themselves very roughly handled on their march by the

peasants of Alsace; and then, seeing the Swiss ready to receive them,

they returned with their tails between their legs. The king, who had

taken Montereau, valiantly leading the assault in person (1437), took

Meaux with his artillery (1439); then feeling himself in strength, he

listened to the complaints made against the soldiery, and lent a gracious

ear to the lamentations of his good subjects. Acts of justice were done

with rapid despatch; the constable De Richemont, willingly exchanging his

functions for those of provost-martial, hanged and drowned all along his

route. His brother, the duke of Brittany, did not delay to strike that

great blow, the sentencing and burning of Marshal de Retz. This first

instance of justice done upon a lord was effected only in God’s name, and

with the aid of the church; but it was, nevertheless, a warning to the

nobility that their impunity was at an end.[b]

The most important effect of the memorable meeting of the states-general

of 1439 was to render further meetings of that body unnecessary. In

effect, the king was given the exclusive right to raise troops and to

levy taxes. This virtually amounted to the creation of a permanent army,

and, by implications, to the imposition of a perpetual tax. So at least

the king interpreted it. From then on the king, having no need of the

authorisation of the estates for the imposition of taxes, took good pains

to dispense with its services. In point of fact it assembled but once

more during the remaining period of his reign.[p]

Who were the intrepid advisers that urged the king upon this course of

proceeding? Who were the servants that could have prompted him to these

reforms, and procured for him the name given by contemporaries: Charles

“the well served”?

Along with the princes in the council of Charles VII, the count of Maine,

the cadet of Brittany, and the bastard of Orleans, there were also petty

nobles, the brave Saintrailles, and those wise and politic men, the

Brézés, nobles, but men who were nothing without the king. We find in

it two burghers, Jacques Cœur, the money-changer, and the master of the

artillery, Jean Bureau, both very humble _roturier_ names. Bureau was a

man of the robe, a master of the accounts. He threw down his pen, and by

this remarkable transformation exemplified the truth that an able mind

can apply itself to anything. Henry IV reformed the finances through a

man of the sword; Charles VII waged war through a financier. Bureau was

the first who made an able and scientific use of artillery.

War needs money, and Jacques Cœur contrived to supply it. Whence came

he? We are sorry to know so little of his early career. All we know is

that in 1432 we find him engaged in commerce in Beirut in Syria; sometime

afterwards we see him at Bourges in the capacity of money-changer to

the king. This great trader had always one foot in the East, and one in

France. Here, he made his son archbishop of Bourges; yonder, he married

his nieces or other female relations to the masters of his galleys. On

the one hand he was continuing his Egyptian traffic; on the other he was

speculating on the maintenance of armies and the conquest of Normandy.

Such were the able and humbly-born councillors of Charles VII. If it be

asked who brought them about him, and what was the influence that made

him yield to their advice, it will be found, if we are not mistaken,

that it was a woman, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Anjou. We see her

in possession of power from the beginning of this reign; it was she

who caused the Maid to be received with favour; and it was with her on

one occasion that the duke of Alençon arranged the preparations for a

campaign. This influence, balanced by that of the favourite, seems to

have been without a rival from the moment the old queen had given her

son-in-law a mistress whom he loved for twenty years (1431-1450). This

was Agnes Sorel.

AGNES SOREL; THE _PRAGUERIE_ (1440 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1440 A.D.]]

Agnes la Sorelle or Surelle--she assumed for arms a gold _sureau_ (elder

tree)--was the daughter of a gownsman, Jean Soreau, but she was noble

by the mother’s side. She was born in honest Touraine. The _naïveté_ of

Agnes was early transplanted into a land of craft and policy, Lorraine.

She was brought up with Isabella of Lorraine, with whom René of Anjou

espoused that duchy. Isabella, the wife of a prisoner, waited on the king

to beseech his aid, bringing her children with her and also her good

friend from childhood, the demoiselle Agnes. The king’s mother-in-law,

Yolande of Anjou, who stood also in the same relation to Isabella, was,

like her, a woman of masculine mind; and they both agreed to attach

Charles VII forever to the interests of the house of Anjou-Lorraine. The

gentle creature was given him for his mistress, to the great satisfaction

of the queen, who wished at any cost to remove La Trémouille and the

other favourites.

Everyone knows the little story how Agnes said one day to the king

that, when very young, she had been informed by an astrologer that she

was to be loved by one of the most valiant kings in the world: she had

thought that this was Charles, but she now saw clearly it was the king of

England, who took so many fine towns from him in defiance of his beard;

therefore to the king of England she would go. Stung by these words, the

king burst into tears, “and quitting his hunting and his gardens, he took

the bit in his teeth,” and to such purpose, that he drove the English out

of the kingdom.

The pretty verses by Francis I[53] prove that this tradition was of

earlier date than Brantôme.[l] Be this as it may, we have an equivalent

testimony in favour of Agnes from a hostile pen, that of the nearly

contemporary Burgundian chronicler, Olivier de la Marche.[m] “Certest

Agnes was one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, and did in her

quality much good to the realm.” And again: “She took pleasure in

bringing under the king’s notice young soldiers and gentle companions, by

whom the king was afterwards well served.”

Charles VII thought wisdom charming when preached by such lips; old

Yolande in all probability spoke through Agnes, and no doubt she had the

principal part in all that was done. More politic than scrupulous, she

had welcomed with equal readiness the two girls that came to her so _à

propos_ from Lorraine, Joan of Arc and Agnes, the saint and the mistress,

who both in their several ways were of service to the king and the realm.

This council of women, _parvenus_, and _roturiers_, it must be confessed,

did not command much reverence, or greatly tend to set off to advantage

the unroyal figure of Charles VII. To sit as judge of the realm on the

throne of St. Louis, and be like him the guardian of God’s Peace, he

ought apparently to have surrounded himself with people of a different

sort. The league of the three ladies, the dowager queen, the queen, and

the mistress, was not edifying in anybody’s eyes. What was Richemont? An

executioner. Jacques Cœur? A trader in Saracen lands. A Jean Bureau, a

limb of the law, “an inkhorn,” had made himself a captain, was riding all

over the kingdom with his cannon, and not a fortress could stand before

him; was not that a shame for the men of the sword? The foxes had become

lions. Thenceforth the knights were to account to the knights at law--the

most noble lords and the high justiciars were to tremble before the

underlings of justice!

So much was this the tone of feeling prevalent among the nobles, not

excepting those who were most immediately in contact with Charles VII,

that even Dunois quitted the council after the famous ordinance. “The

cool and tempered lord,” as Chartier[h] calls him, repented of having

served his king too well. This bastard of Orleans had begun his fortunes

by defending the town of Orleans, his brother’s appanage, in which

service he had very adroitly employed the heroic simplicity of the Maid.

After having grown great through the king, he wished to grow great

against the king. The misfortune was that his brother the duke was still

in England; but the ancient enemy of the house of Orleans, the duke of

Burgundy (converted no doubt by Dunois), was labouring to get that future

chief of the malcontents out of the hands of the English.

The duke of Alençon threw himself headlong into the affair; the Bourbons

and the Vendômes lent their hands to it. The ex-favourite, La Trémouille,

whom Richemont had removed, readily engaged in it. The most eager of all

were the leaders of the _écorcheurs_, the bastard de Bourbon, Chabannes,

and Le Sanglier (“the wild boar”). In truth, the matter was one that most

nearly concerned them; the lords had their honours and jurisdictional

prerogatives to contend for; but as for them, they had their necks to

save; the gallows stared them in the face.

Nothing was now wanting but a leader. As the duke of Orleans could not be

had, the malcontents took the dauphin, a mere child in point of age, but

it was thought that a name would be sufficient. The supposed child, who

was already Louis XI, had made his first efforts in arms, as he made his

last, against the very party of the lords that chose him for their chief.

At fourteen years of age he had been commissioned to pacify the marches

of Brittany and Poitou. His first capture had been that of one of Marshal

de Retz’s lieutenants; such a commencement did not promise the grandees a

very trusty friend. Friend or not, he accepted their offers. This dauphin

of France resembled Charles VII in no respect, but took rather after his

grandmother, who was sprung from the houses of Bar and Aragon.

The king was keeping his Easter at Poitiers, and was at dinner, when word

was brought him that St. Maixent had been seized by the duke of Alençon

and the sire de la Roche; whereupon Richemont said to him in Breton

fashion, “Remember King Richard II, who shut himself up in a fortress

and got taken.” The king thought the hint a good one, mounted his horse,

and galloped with four hundred lances to St. Maixent. The burghers had

been fighting four-and-twenty hours for their king, when he came to their

relief. De la Roche’s men were decapitated or drowned, according to

Richemont’s custom, but Alençon’s were let go. The small fortresses of

Poitou did not hold out; Richemont carried them one by one. Dunois then

began to reflect, and he calculated too that the first who should leave

the rest would be allowed good terms. He came, was well received, and

congratulated himself on the course he had adopted, when he saw the king

stronger than he had supposed, with 4,800 cavaliers, and 2,000 archers

at his back, without having been obliged to weaken the garrisons in the

marches of Normandy.

More than one of Dunois’ party thought as he did. Many an _écorcheur_ of

the south took the king’s pay, and fought against the _écorcheurs_ of the

north. Charles VII drove back the duke de Bourbon upon the Bourbonnais,

securing the good will of the towns and châteaux by prohibiting all

pillage. He assembled the states of Auvergne, and got them to declare

loudly that the rebels were hostile to the king, only because he

protected the poorer classes against the plunderers. The princes,

abandoned by their followers, and obtaining no support from the duke of

Burgundy, came in and made their submission; first Alençon, then the duke

de Bourbon and the dauphin. As for La Trémouille and two others, the king

would not receive them. The dauphin hesitated about accepting a pardon

which was not extended to his friends, and said to the king, “I find

then, my liege, that I must go back to them, for I have promised so.” The

king replied coldly, “The gates are open for you, Louis, and if they are

not wide enough, I will have sixteen or twenty fathoms of the wall pulled

down for you.”

This war, so well conducted, was not less wisely terminated. The duke

de Bourbon was deprived of his possessions in central France (Corbeil,

Vincennes, etc.) and the dauphin was dismissed from court, and assigned

an establishment on the frontier, in Dauphiné. Thus he was isolated, and

allotted his separate portion; there was no getting rid of him, except by

giving him a little royalty, in advance of his hereditary expectations.

[Illustration: FRENCH NOBLEMAN, MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

This _praguerie_ of France (it was so called after the name of the great

Bohemian _praguerie_), although it was so quickly ended, nevertheless

produced some disastrous results. The military reform was postponed. The

English were emboldened to attack Harfleur, which they took and retained.

They released the duke of Orleans at the request of the duke of Burgundy

(1440). When the ancient enemy of his house thus exerted himself to take

him out of captivity, the king could not decently refuse likewise to

guarantee the ransom-money, and aid in the deliverance of the dangerous

prisoner. He proceeded straight on his return to the duke of Burgundy,

who threw the chain of the Golden Fleece[54] over his neck, and gave him

his niece in marriage. Against whom was formed this close union of two

enemies, if not against the king? He took the hint.

[Sidenote: [1440-1442 A.D.]]

First of all, he obtained from the states a tenth to be levied on all the

clergy of the realm. He recalled Tannegui du Châtel, the mortal enemy

of the house of Burgundy. Then concentrating all his forces towards

the north, he proceeded along the frontier, doing justice upon the

Burgundian, Lorrainian, and other captains, who were desolating the land.

Among those who made their submission, there was a man of turbulence, the

most audacious of plunderers; audacious both from the strength his birth

gave him, and because he was the common agent of the duke de Bourbon and

the duke of Burgundy; this was the bastard de Bourbon. He did not get off

so cheaply as he had expected. The king handed him over, Bourbon as he

was, to the provost, who put him on his trial just like any other robber;

and after being well and duly found guilty, he was put in a sack, and

thrown into the river.

Another lesson, not less instructive, was given. The young count of

Saint-Pol, relying on the protection of the duke of Burgundy, dared to

intercept some of the king’s cannon on the march, and carry them off; the

king deprived him of two of his best fortresses; Saint-Pol hastened to

the king and besought pardon, but he could obtain no favour, except by

submitting to the decision of the parliament on the litigated question of

the Ligny inheritance.

EFFECTIVE PROGRESS AGAINST ENGLAND (1441-1444 A.D.)

Meanwhile the English, all this time so near Paris, and so strongly

established on the lower Seine, had advanced up the river and seized

Pontoise. Lord Clifford, who had surprised that important and formidable

post, kept possession of it in person. The inveterate obstinacy of the

Cliffords acquired but too much notoriety in the wars of the Roses.

Besides the English, there were in Pontoise numerous deserters, who knew

they had no quarter to expect.

Invincible pertinacity of purpose was displayed on both sides. The duke

of York, regent of France, now came to the aid of Clifford, whom he was

afterwards to put to death in the civil wars. He brought with him an army

from Normandy, revictualled the place, and offered battle (June); Talbot

was with him. The king let the English pass, fell back, and returned.

Talbot also returned, and again threw provisions into the town (July).

The duke of York once more marched his army back, but could not yet bring

on an engagement. He was allowed to roam over the ruined Île-de-France

as much as he pleased, and waste his strength in those useless

evolutions. When they had exhausted and harassed themselves, in four

times revictualling Pontoise, Charles VII seriously resumed the siege;

Jean Bureau battered the walls with admirable activity; two murderous

assaults were made, that lasted five hours; first a church, that served

as a redoubt, was carried, and then the place itself (September 16th,

1441). Thus men, who dared not meet the English in the plain, attacked

and defeated them by storm.

The recapture of Pontoise was a deliverance for Paris, and for the whole

country around; cultivation could thenceforth recommence, the means of

subsistence were secured. Yet the Parisians evinced no gratitude to the

king; they felt but their present miseries and the burden of the taxes;

these were beginning to affect the brotherhoods even, and the churches,

which were loud in their complaints. There was no want of willingness

on the part of the princes to take advantage of these discontents. The

duke of Burgundy, without himself appearing, assembled them in his own

home at Nevers (March, 1442). The duke of Orleans, with whom he did

as he pleased, since he had delivered him, presided for him over the

meeting, which consisted of the dukes de Bourbon and d’Alençon, the

counts d’Angoulême, d’Étampes, and de Dunois. The king frankly sent his

chancellor to this conclave which was held against him, and notified to

them that he would readily hear what they had to say.

[Sidenote: [1442-1443 A.D.]]

Their demand and alleged grievances very plainly showed what were their

secret views. The princes, therefore, in their love for the public

welfare, and for the good people of France, set forth before the king the

necessity of making peace. They called for the repression of the brigands.

The king’s reply, which was sedulously made public, was overwhelming,

and the more so as its tone was calm and moderate. He answers specially,

respecting the taxes, that the aids had been consented to by the lords

on whose property they had been levied; that as to the tallages, the

king had “notified” them to the three estates, although in matters so

urgent, when the enemy was in occupation of one portion of the kingdom,

and was destroying the rest, he had a good right to levy tallages of his

royal authority. “It is not necessary to that end,” he says, “to assemble

the estates; it is but a burden for the poor people who have to pay the

charges of those who attend. Many notable persons have requested that

these convocations should cease.”

The king, leaving the malcontents to waste time in their meeting at

Nevers, was then performing a grand and useful journey all through

his kingdom, from Picardy to Gascony, everywhere establishing peace,

especially in the marches, in Poitou, Saintonge, and the Limousin.

Strengthened in the north by the recovery of Pontoise, he went to make

head against the English in the south. The count d’Albret, being hard

pressed by them, had promised to surrender if the king did not come on

the 23rd of June to “keep his day,” and await them on the _lande_ of

Tartas. They liked the condition, not believing that he could arrive

in time, much less that he would offer them battle. On the appointed

day they saw the king of France and his army on the _lande_ (June 21st,

1442). All these Gascons, who had imagined themselves far beyond the

king’s reach in a world of their own, were beginning to feel that he was

everywhere. They came and did homage, performed feudal service, and the

king rendered justice to them.

He did this conspicuously in an important case the following year (March,

1443). The estates of Comminges supplicated Charles VII on behalf of

the aged countess de Foix who had been imprisoned by her husband. He

frightened the count de Foix, liberated the old countess, divided the

usufruct of Comminges between the husband and wife, and adjudged the

property to himself. This startling act of justice struck great awe into

all those lords who had hitherto been so independent.

This was not all. In order to remain always among them as judge, the

king gave them a royal parliament, which was to reside in Toulouse. This

judicial royalty of the south was altogether free of the parliament of

Paris; it judged in accordance with the law of the country, the written

law, and was not dependent on anyone, but was self-elected. Until such

time as this great body could establish order and justice in Languedoc,

Charles VII authorised the poor to take justice into their own hands, and

hunt down the brigands and vagrant soldiers.

[Illustration: LOUIS XI AND CHARLES THE BOLD AT PÉRONNE]

He could not remain long absent from the north. Dieppe, which had been

recovered by a fortunate and bold stroke, was in danger of being lost

again. A great fleet and an army were every moment expected from England;

it was urgently necessary to anticipate their arrival. The dauphin got

permission to undertake this service along with Dunois; many Picard and

Norman gentlemen also volunteered. The Bastille was taken. The duke of

Somerset, the English commander, returned to Rouen to rest from his toils

and take up his winter quarters.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF A NOBLEWOMAN, MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1443-1444 A.D.]]

That winter, whilst Somerset was enjoying his victorious repose,

the dauphin Louis was rapidly traversing the whole kingdom, to ruin

and destroy the best friend of the English. The count d’Armagnac,

dissatisfied by the way in which Comminges had been disposed of without

giving him a share, had attempted to seize the whole country. He reckoned

on the English, and particularly on the duke of Gloucester, who in fact

wanted to marry Henry VI to a daughter of the count. The dauphin set out

in winter, made his way over snows and swollen rivers, and found the game

in its lair, everything that bore the name of Armagnac shut up in one

place. Gloucester and the war party, though they had encouraged Armagnac,

were unable to defend him. They had enough to do to defend themselves in

England against the bishops, and the partisans of peace, Winchester and

Suffolk, who had gained the upper hand.[b] Painful as it was to their

pride they were obliged at conferences held at Arras, in 1444, to beg for

a truce and the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, for their

young king Henry VI, placing also a new enemy at their gates through the

marriage of the dauphin Louis with Margaret of Scotland, daughter of

James I.

EXPEDITION TO SWITZERLAND AND LORRAINE

Charles VII only granted that truce in order the better to complete

the work of reform begun in 1439.[c] But there was a third people very

embarrassing during the truce, the war-folk namely. What could be done

was to induce them to go and rob elsewhere, to quit ruined France for

thriving Germany, and make a pilgrimage to the council of Bâle, to

the rich and saintly towns of the Rhine, and the fat ecclesiastical

principalities.

[Sidenote: [1444-1445 A.D.]]

Just then the king received two applications for aid, the one from the

emperor Frederick III against the Swiss, the other from René, duke

of Lorraine, against the cities of the empire. The king was equally

favourable to both proposals, and generously promised aid for and against

the Germans.[b]

Switzerland had founded and consolidated its independence of Austria and

the empire in three battles--Morgarten, Sempach, and Näfels--in which

a handful of peasants had heroically vanquished great feudal armies.

The French nobility was always ready for positive warfare, but that of

Germany showed itself more circumspect and the Austrian provinces were

reduced to setting, by means of wretched intrigue, the Swiss cantons one

against the other, and then if possible to intervene. This time Frederick

III reckoned to make the Armagnacs of Charles VII intervene for him.

_The Battle of Sankt Jakob (1444 A.D.)_

Charles hastened to set in motion, in as orderly a fashion as possible,

an army of 14,000 French and 8,000 English, Scotch, Brabanters,

Spaniards, and Italians. The commander-in-chief was the former leader of

the praguerie--the dauphin Louis. This terrible band turned the Jura in

fairly good order, and entered Switzerland by crossing the little river

Birse. The Swiss, who were then besieging Zurich, were able to send only

2,000 men to meet the enemy. These brave fellows had expected only to

skirmish and knew not with what force they had to deal. A messenger had

come from Bâle to warn them of the numbers of the French, but they had

killed him; and in the brutal pride their former successes had inspired,

they threw themselves head-foremost on the first corps they met (1444).

Their bravoura did not save them. After making a desperate resistance in

a hospital and behind the dilapidated walls of a garden, their position

was forced and they perished, every one. The dauphin had such respect

for the brave men that fought so well that he went no further and made a

treaty of alliance with the Swiss. As for the _écorcheurs_, they found

nothing to take away from these poor mountaineers and many turned towards

Alsace and Swabia.[c]

The dauphin’s return, and the report of the check the Swiss had suffered,

considerably advanced the affairs of Lorraine. The towns which sheltered

themselves under the name of the empire saw that, if the emperor and

the German nobility had called in the French to the heart of the German

countries, to save Zurich, they would not come and fight the French on

the marches of France. Toul and Verdun acknowledged the king as protector.

Metz alone resisted. That great and aspiring town had others dependent

on it, and was encompassed by from twenty-four to thirty forts. Épinal,

however, had from the beginning seized the opportunity to emancipate

itself, and had put itself into the king’s hands. The forts having

afterwards surrendered, the Metz men made up their mind to negotiate.

They represented to the king that “they were not of his realm or

lordship, but that, in his wars with the duke of Burgundy and others,

they had always received and comforted his men.” Thereupon, by order of

the king, Master Jean Rabateau, president of the parliament, propounded

many arguments to the contrary. The grand question of the limits of

France and the empire could not be settled thus incidentally, and during

a truce to the English war. The matter remained undecided. The king

contented himself with drawing on the finances of the wealthy town of

Metz.[b]

MILITARY AND FINANCIAL REFORMS (1443-1448 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1443-1448 A.D.]]

These two expeditions had disembarrassed the king of the most riotous

among his adventurers, and broken in the rest to an elementary

discipline; it was at last possible to put into execution the ordinance

of Orleans. In 1445, the army was consolidated into fifteen companies

of one hundred lances; to each lance six paid men were reckoned--a

man-at-arms and his esquire, three archers and a _coutillier_, all

mounted. By these were the cities garrisoned, the largest having only

from twenty to thirty lances; in this way the inhabitants remained

stronger than the soldiers, and in a position to check any disorder. The

demand for positions in the army was so great that numerous old stagers

followed the companies about that they might be ready to snap up the

first vacancy. All the others were obliged to retire immediately to their

homes without disturbing the peace, under penalty of being given up to

justice as vagabonds. Such was the progress of order that they obeyed and

at the end of the fifteen days nothing more was heard of them; as for

those who had enlisted, they submitted to a rigorous discipline. Charles

VII had thus at his disposition a picked troop of nine thousand horse.

By another ordinance, that of April 28th, 1448, the king secured to

France an advantage which she had hitherto furnished to foreigners--to

the Genoese, at need--but had never herself possessed: a regular and

permanent infantry. Each of the sixteen thousand parishes of the kingdom

was obliged to furnish the king “a good comrade,” said the ordinance,

“who has seen service.” He had to furnish at his own expense his

_brigandine_, a light coat of armour of iron plates joined together; a

short coat, light helmet, dagger, sword, crossbow, and quiver of arrows.

He was obliged to drill on all feast days, and be ready to serve the king

at any time he should be called upon to do so; he received in payment

four francs a month when in service and exemption from all taxes and

subsidies, excepting the _aide_ and the _gabelle_.

The free archer did not become at once a model soldier; military genius

was not developed in a day in a nation so long without arms. But while

Villon depicts for us one of those archers dropping on his knees before

a scarecrow, taking it for a gendarme, entreating pardon, and beginning

to feel extremely ill, satiric poetry is not history; a century later, in

1554, the same archers, incorporated in the provincial legions of Francis

I, gained against the first army in the world--the Castilian veterans--a

battle that had been once lost by the men-at-arms; still another century,

and in 1643, changing their quivers for guns, they had developed into the

foot-soldiers that fought at Rocroi.

All these reforms were subordinate to that of the finances, set in

motion in 1443 by Jacques Cœur. To establish a reciprocal control by

the regulators of finances over one another; to oblige individual

receivers to account to the receiver-general and the latter in his

turn to the chamber of accounts; to force the king’s officers--the

ministers of finance, the master of the horse, the treasurer of wars,

and the commander of artillery--to render monthly accounts to the

king in person--these were excellent and admirable reforms, thanks to

which Charles VII found himself in a position to create in France an

institution that the most powerful of his predecessors had been unable to

establish--a military force dependent only on the king, and protecting

him, instead of leaving him at the mercy of the barons’ evil humours,

as had heretofore been the case. Since Charles V, the ordinary indirect

taxes, such as that on salt, on merchandise, and on liquors, had been

permanent. Since Charles VI, the land tax (the _taille_), for payment of

the soldiers, had become permanent--that is, it continued to be levied

without the vote of the estates. But the king gave guarantee for the

proper administration of financial justice by declaring sovereign the

_cour des aides_, which alone had the right to interpret ordinances

pertaining to the taxes and was the last resort of all civil and criminal

processes growing out of the administration of the finances.

Though it was not yet possible, in the fifteenth century, to reduce all

France to one uniform law, she was at least beginning to emerge from

the arbitrary customs of a justice exercised, above all in the north

of France, according to unwritten laws. Charles VII thought--and the

thought is an honour to him--that it was essential that all the laws

of a kingdom should be written and “agreed upon by the lawyers of each

country,” and examined and authorised by the supreme court and by the

parliament, so that it would not be possible to deviate from the text

thus officially inscribed. To him was due this innovation.

THE CLOSE OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

[Sidenote: [1448-1450 A.D.]]

Having accomplished these reforms, Charles found himself sufficiently

strong to finish with the English. A certain Francis de Surienne, an

Aragonese adventurer in the service of the English, wishing to garrison

one of the Norman villages possessed by the English, found himself

repulsed on all sides. The soldiers, having received from Henry VI

neither pay, provisions, nor munitions, were unwilling to share with

this foreigner their already insufficient resources. The Aragonese,

finding the doors of the allies closed to him, provided for the needs

of his company after the fashion of the greater number of the military

leaders: during the season of peace he fell upon Fougères, a rich city of

Brittany, and gave it over to his men to plunder in lieu of their arrears

of pay.

Immediately the king of France and the duke of Brittany demanded

of the English governor of Normandy reparation and an indemnity of

1,600,000 crowns damages. They demanded an impossibility. The indemnity

not arriving, the French set out to collect it for themselves at

Pont-de-l’Arche, Gerberoy, Verneuil. Dunois entered the province with

an efficient army which the Burgundians and Bretons joined voluntarily.

Pont-Audemer, Lisieux, Mantes, Vernon, Évreux, Louviers, St. Lô,

Coutances, and Valognes were taken or surrendered by the inhabitants

without striking a blow.

England was then beginning her Wars of the Roses, which during thirty

years were to cover her with blood and ruins. The parliament, not as yet

daring to take action against the king, fastened upon his minister, the

duke of Suffolk, and troubled itself little about Normandy, since the

reverses there were new and potent arguments against the accused. The

governor, Somerset, instead of concentrating his forces, divided them

into twenty garrisons, and sent ambassadors to open negotiations; but,

knowing no better how to make treaties than how to make war, he forgot

to invest them with authority. Order, proficiency--all that had hitherto

contributed to their success was now on the side of the French: to the

French Victory went over. On October 18th, 1449, they appeared beneath

the walls of Rouen.

In a moment all the inhabitants of Rouen were armed, but armed against

the English, who took refuge in the citadel. Somerset was there, and

the veteran Talbot, and numerous lords, officers, and soldiers; but it

must be remembered that it would have been impossible to resist at once

both the population and the French army. There was talk of a treaty, but

on what conditions!--that, in addition to Rouen, Caudebec, Villequier,

Lillebonne, Tancarville, Harfleur,--that is to say all the lower course

of the Seine,--should be delivered up to the king of France; and that

a hostage should be furnished in the person of the famous Talbot

himself--the English Achilles.

The governor of Honfleur refused to recognise this capitulation. The city

was taken in the middle of winter (December, 1449); Harfleur met the

same fate. The English, pushed to extremities, sent a knight of great

renown, Thomas Kyriell, with 6,000 men. It was a last effort. Landing

at Cherbourg, Kyriell sought to join the duke of Somerset at Bayeux, by

way of the shore; the French followed, and on April 15th, 1450, near

the village of Formigny, the constables of Richemont from one side, the

count of Clermont from the other, vigorously attacked him. Kyriell’s

soldiers fought bravely, but were defeated and left 4,000 on the field.

This insignificant number sufficed to blot out from the minds of the

French the 30,000 dead at Crécy, the 12,000 captive at Poitiers and at

Agincourt. Vire, Bayeux, Avranches, Caen, Domfront, and Falaise fell into

the hands of Charles.

[Sidenote: [1450-1453 A.D.]]

The numerous garrison of Cherbourg counted upon having nothing to fear,

thanks to its own strength and above all to the neighbourhood of the sea.

From this side it was taken. The French cannoneers established seven

batteries in the sea itself; when the tide rose they left their cannon

well anchored on the beach and protected by oiled skins; when the tide

fell they returned to them. It was the English who, first of all, had

turned against the French, at Crécy and Agincourt, this terrible arm of

the artillery; the latter now manipulated it better than themselves.

Cherbourg capitulated, and in a year the whole of Normandy was taken.

Also the French army presented a novel spectacle: disciplined and

obedient, it now lived on its pay and not by plunder.

A month later, Dunois, Saintrailles, Chabannes, and the brothers Jean

and Gaspard Bureau, who directed so advantageously the French artillery,

marched with 20,000 men against Guienne. Bourg-sur-Gironde, Blaye,

Castillon, Libourne, St. Émilion, offshoots from Bordeaux, which the

English had loaded with privileges as they had that city, were easily

taken. The inhabitants of Bordeaux, so well disposed to the England who

bought their wines, attempted a sortie, fled upon catching sight of the

enemy, and entered like the others into negotiations. The French granted

nearly all that was asked of them. This was the 5th of June, 1451; the

surrender was delayed until the 23rd. On that day, the herald of the

city having cried with a loud voice for succour from the English for the

people of Bordeaux, and no one replying, the gates were opened to the

French.

However mild the conquerors were, the great town soon regretted that

English domination so far removed as to be scarcely felt. Now it had to

pay taxes and furnish soldiers, the harbour was deserted, the shops were

encumbered with unsold tuns. If an English army had appeared, no matter

how weak, Bordeaux would have thrown herself into its arms. Such an army

now appeared.

The government of Henry VI, or, to speak more correctly, of Margaret of

Anjou, had need of a great success abroad in order to establish itself at

home. Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, now eighty years of age, was charged

with bringing Guienne again under the English rule. The first steps were

easy. The inhabitants of Bordeaux themselves introduced the English into

their town, September 22nd, 1452; almost the whole province followed

their example, and the king of France had to recommence his conquest.

With the spring of 1453 his troops were marching into Guienne; on the

14th of July they laid siege to Castillon.[c]

_The Battle of Castillon (July 17th, 1453)_

The royal army, the greater part of which, including the artillery under

the Bureau brothers, was concentrated in the camp, nearly two thousand

feet long by one thousand wide, occupied also an abbey, which was later

on the priory of St. Florent, and which overlooked Castillon; on the

plain of Mount Horable, near to the village of Capitourlans, were the

Bretons of Count d’Étampes, to the number of 240 lances under the

command of the knights of Hunaudaye and Montauban. The night of the 16th

of July was passed in fortifying the camp, which was surrounded by deep

trenches and defended by powerful artillery. Talbot on the morning of

the 17th attacked the abbeys, defended by eight hundred free archers

under the command of Jacques Rouhault and Pierre de Beauvau. The archers,

terrified by the impetuosity of the English, who shouted the war-cry of

their old leader, abandoned the abbey and retreated in the direction of

the entrenched camp, followed by the enemy. On hearing of the approach

of Talbot, Jacques de Chabannes left the camp and advanced at the head

of two hundred lances. Aided by Rouhault and Beauvau, he protected the

retreat of the archers. A very brief engagement took place; one hundred

men were killed on either side. Rouhault, thrown from his horse, owed his

safety only to the devotion of his archers, to whom he had sworn that he

would live and die with them. Chabannes, surrounded at one moment, was

delivered by his men.

[Illustration: FRENCH NOBLEWOMAN, EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

Finally it was possible to effect the retreat. Talbot rallied his men

and regained the abbey. There, seizing the provisions abandoned by the

French, he broke open the casks and distributed wine to his soldiers;

it was still early in the day; the earl of Shrewsbury (Talbot) had mass

performed by his chaplain. The holy sacrament was about to be celebrated,

when news was brought that the French were abandoning their enclosure and

fleeing. “Never,” he exclaimed, “will I hear mass till I shall, to-day,

have overthrown the band of Frenchmen which is before me”; and he gave

orders to advance. The English advanced uttering their war-cry, “Talbot,

Talbot, St. George!” Mounted on a little nag, the old captain was dressed

in a simple red velvet cassock. Vain attempts were made to stop him,

he was told that it was a false rumour, and that it would be better to

await quietly the onset of the enemy; he answered his standard-bearer,

who gave him this advice, by insults, and drove him away, it was said,

by a sword-cut across the face. On arriving at the palisade Talbot began

to shout, “On foot, on foot, all!” His men-at-arms, supported by the

archers, who arrived gradually and fell into rank, were received by a

formidable discharge; three hundred catapults, howitzers, culverins,

and ribaudequins, the firing of which was directed by the famous gunner

Giribault, threw their projectiles, which slew a large number of victims.

The English hesitated. Talbot brought them back, and formed them in

testudo; sheltered behind their bucklers they attacked the entrenchments.

Talbot succeeded in planting the banner of St. George on the summit of

the trench. A terrible conflict took place; for more than an hour they

fought hand to hand.

Suddenly, from the neighbouring heights, the sires de Montauban and de la

Hunaudaye descended with their Bretons, and took the enemy in the rear;

this movement decided the issue of the combat. The English stopped to

face this fresh body of troops. The terrible tempest of the artillery

did not cease to rain down on them. Seizing the opportunity, the French

dashed from the camp, some on foot, some on horse, and charged with fury.

Talbot, though wounded, held out. A blow from a culverin struck him on

the leg and threw him under his horse. The French archers surrounded him

and pierced him with their arrows. His son, who had vainly endeavoured

to persuade him to flee, died at his side, trying to protect him. The

English, seeing the fall of their chief, fled in disorder. Some wished

to regain their vessels or to cross the Dordogne at the ford of Rozan;

the others took the road to St. Émilion. A body of about two thousand

men under the leadership of the Gascon nobles fell back in good order

on Castillon and succeeded in penetrating into the town. The French,

tired, worn out, breathless, renounced the pursuit of the enemy; only

the count de Penthièvre, with his troops, gave chase to the fugitives in

the direction of St. Émilion. The English army was overwhelmed; thirty

knights and four thousand soldiers perished; in the heat of the action

they were killed without mercy. It is said that even in our day bones are

found in the plain which was the scene of this sanguinary struggle. On

the French side the loss was considerable; some of their leaders, Admiral

de Bueil, Jacques de Chabannes, Pierre de Beauvau, were wounded, but not

seriously. In spite of the reinforcements brought by the Gascon nobles,

Castillon could not oppose a long resistance; the town capitulated July

20th. From there the army marched immediately against St. Émilion and

Libourne, which opened their gates.[n]

Cadillac and Blanquefort followed suit. The royal army closed in around

Bordeaux. The free archers overran the country; the ships loaned by

La Rochelle and Brittany blocked the mouth of the Gironde. Bordeaux,

threatened with famine, sent deputies to Charles VII. In their presence

Jean Bureau made it a point to say to the king: “Sire, I have been

reconnoitring for proper positions for our batteries; if such is your

pleasure, I promise you on my life that in a few days I shall have

demolished the town.” The envoys understood that this time they must

accept what conditions the king would make. He stripped Bordeaux of her

privileges, exacted a contribution of 100,000 crowns and ordered the

banishment of twenty guilty citizens with the confiscation of their

wealth; finally the construction of two citadels to guarantee the

fidelity of the town in the future. The sire de l’Esparre, who had called

in the English, promising a rising of all the nobility of the province,

lost his head. On the 19th of October, 1453, Charles VII entered Bordeaux

in triumph--the Hundred Years’ War was over. The English held nothing in

France except Calais and two small neighbouring towns.[c]

Thus after a century’s struggle was decided the impossibility of English

monarchs holding France, under whatever pretensions or rights. The

French had outgrown those times when the sovereignty over them could

be transmitted to foreigners, or divided with them by the mere laws of

feudal heritage or proprietorial descent. All that the ablest kings and

bravest warriors of England could do was to hold their ground upon the

continent. Any lack of talent, suspension of vigilance, or remissness of

energy on their part restored military superiority to the French upon

their own soil, and insured with this their independence.

It was fortunate for both countries that such a decision had taken place,

and that it should be final. The circumstances as well as the result of

the war now rendered it so. The re-conquest of all the French provinces

by Charles was not, like that of Philip Augustus or Philip the Fair, the

work of trickery or deceit. It had been achieved in fair and stand-up

fight, and, what was more remarkable, with forces on either side almost

balanced in number. The French were not more numerous than the English at

Formigny; and Talbot, when he fell at Castillon, led a greater army than

that which defeated him. It was the French free archers, too, and peasant

soldiers, who fought more than the knights on that field. Experience had

taught the mistake of attempting to ride down the hardy sons of the soil

by mounted gentry. English and French met on these last fields equal

in courage and in strength. But as the French soldiers were now more

carefully selected, disciplined, and organised, they were victorious over

those of England, distracted as it was by civil war, sending forth armies

as distracted as its government.[g]

THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES VII

[Sidenote: [1451-1456 A.D.]]

About this time the services of the wise counsellor we have already

mentioned--the great merchant and shipper, Jacques Cœur--were lost to

the state. After the conviction of Jean de Xaincoings, receiver-general

of the realm, for embezzlement in 1451, Jacques Cœur was accused of

malversation in his office of treasurer of the crown. He was said to have

heaped up incredible riches; and on some occasions he made a display of

his wealth which in a great measure compensated for the evil proceedings,

if such they were, by which he gained it. He furnished funds for fleets

and armies out of his private stores, when they could not otherwise be

had; and continued his sage advices to the king, inculcating economy

and repose. Charles was still indolent and self-indulgent when no great

national effort was to be made. He allowed the prosecution of his

faithful servitor, accepted the sentence of death which was passed upon

him, and only started up to the kindness and generosity of his character

when he remembered his services, and granted him his life (1453). The

rest of the treasurer’s story is very strange. Jacques Cœur escaped from

prison and found refuge at Rome, was appointed admiral of the Italian

fleets against the Saracens, trafficked in goods and money while sweeping

the infidels from the sea, and died in the island of Chios, 1456, richer

and more honoured than he had ever been in Paris. The king must have

seen, when it was too late, that he had banished a financier whose advice

on public affairs was cheaply paid for by the acquisition of private

riches.[j]

_Quarrels with Burgundy and with the Dauphin_

[Sidenote: [1451-1453 A.D.]]

The expulsion of the English from the continent, where they no longer

held any town save Calais, left the king of France in the presence of his

powerful rival, the duke of Burgundy, who reigned over dominions no less

vast, and after a manner quite as independent.

After the English had been driven from Normandy, Philip of Burgundy began

to feel the hostility of Charles and of his court. Whenever his subjects,

especially of towns, had cause of complaint against him, they appealed

to the king of France and his parliament as suzerain. Ghent would

not submit to the _gabelle_ (or salt tax) imposed by Philip, and the

people appealed to the king of France, who pretended that the _gabelle_

peculiarly belonged to the suzerain, and a French embassy soon arrived

to arbitrate between the duke and the Ghenters. The duke altogether set

aside the demand of _gabelle_, but insisted merely on the fact of the

chiefs of trades and the demagogues having usurped the entire power in

Ghent, even the administration and the election of magistrates. The

French envoys took completely the duke’s view of the difference, and gave

an award, obliging the people of Ghent to admit the ducal bailiffs to a

share of authority, to pay a large fine, give up the rallying emblem of

the white _chaperon_, and desist from holding the meetings of the united

trades.

In the following year, 1452, the French court returned to the charge

and sent fresh ambassadors, not approving of the facility with which

their predecessors had abandoned and condemned the democracy of Ghent.

But at that time occurred the descent of Talbot on the Garonne, and

the attention and efforts of Charles were necessarily turned in that

direction. Duke Philip saw his opportunity. He must crush the rebellious

towns ere Charles succeeded in expelling the English from Guienne. He

raised a large army, brought it to Ghent, and captured several small

places round it, cruelly hanging every prisoner. Treachery is reported to

have been employed to induce the citizens to come forth to battle on the

open plain. But 40,000 armed inhabitants of the Flemish capital, so often

victorious in the field, scarcely needed any incentives to march to the

relief of their towns and garrisons. Duke Philip was engaged in the siege

of Gavre, from which the commander escaped to Ghent, craving succour, if

the fortress was to be saved. The citizens accordingly mustered to the

number of 30,000 and marched to attack the Burgundians. The encounter

took place on the 23rd of July, 1453; it began by the cannon on both

sides. The Ghenters were most of them slain, 20,000 being left on the

field; and the duke, on beholding the heaps of slaughtered men, felt, for

the first time, that these were his subjects, the sources of his wealth

and the sinews of his strength.

In the same year Muhammed II carried Constantinople by assault, and

extinguished the Greek empire in the East. The catastrophe, alarming

to Italy and Germany, might well have aroused the king of France.

Charles VII was not the hero of a crusade; the sphere of his activity

and ambition did not extend so far. Yet, when the duke of Burgundy,

in a solemn festivity at Lille, made a public vow to lead his armies

against the Turks, when all his noblesse became associated in the same

vow, and when the pope and emperor joined in the enterprise, Charles

was mortified; nor was his jealousy diminished when Philip, after this

vow, set forth in person to visit the Swiss and the Germans, in order to

negotiate alliances and aid in his great design.

However wisely the councillors of King Charles had conducted his military

operations, and his negotiations with England and with Burgundy, the

spirit of their domestic administration was narrow in the extreme. The

princes of the blood, however cautious and apparently submissive, looked

with jealousy and anger upon those upstarts of the king’s court who so

completely eclipsed and set them aside.

The king and his council, therefore, looked upon the duke of Burgundy’s

proposed crusade as merely a scheme for enhancing his importance, and

placing himself at the head of the princes of Europe and of a formidable

army, and they resolved to attack and crush those of his subjects whom

he supposed to be associates and fellow-conspirators with Duke Philip.

The principal of these was his son Louis, who lived independently, but

not tranquilly, in Dauphiné, now warring, now intriguing with the duke

of Savoy, and omitting no opportunity of gaining followers and procuring

money.

[Sidenote: [1453-1457 A.D.]]

The first of the dauphin’s friends whom the court attacked was the count

d’Armagnac, who afforded every pretext for Charles’ interference. He was

living in incest, excommunicated by the pope, and guilty of many crimes.

Unable to resist Charles’ lieutenants, Armagnac was soon reduced, his

seventeen castles were taken, and he was driven across the Pyrenees. The

court then resolved to make an example of the duke of Alençon. The prince

was noted for his gallantry and independent spirit, which had won the

admiration of Joan of Arc. He had been foremost as a partisan against

the English, yet was an object of suspicion to Charles. Dunois was sent

to arrest and bring him to the king’s presence, who accused him of

conspiring to receive the English into his fortresses. According to some

he made an indignant answer to the king; according to others he confessed

his treason, and gave information of the designs of his confederates.

By what was elicited from the duke of Alençon, the king’s suspicion and

anger were increased against his son Louis, whom he resolved to leave

no longer in possession of the revenues and government of Dauphiné,

at least unless he submitted. In April, 1456, the king signified his

intention of resuming the government of that province. The dauphin would

not put himself in the power of the council, the members of which he

believed capable of any crime. Nor would Charles receive his son into

favour, except upon his complete submission. The march of an army, led

by his declared enemy, Dammartin, alarmed Louis. He at first thought of

resistance, but none of the nobles of Dauphiné or of his court would

support him in resistance to his father. With a few followers Louis

abruptly quitted Dauphiné, as Dammartin advanced into it, and hastened

to St. Claude, in Franche-Comté. From thence he informed the king that

he was determined to take part in his uncle the duke of Burgundy’s

crusade against the Turks. He at the same time informed that potentate

of his arrival. An answer of welcome speedily came, and Louis proceeded

to Brussels. Here the duke embraced him so cordially and so long, as

scarcely, so Chastelain[k] relates, to let his feet touch the earth. The

dauphin was all in all for a few days; but a quarrel arising between the

duke and his son, the latter was brought by his mother to Louis, who

undertook to intercede for him, and remonstrate with his sire. This at

once interrupted friendship and harmony. The duke saw in the dauphin one

who might take his son’s part against him. Louis thus found it necessary

to retire to the château of Gennape, near Brussels, where he lived on a

monthly pension of 2,500 livres allowed him by the duke (1456-1457).

_Death of Charles VII; the Influence of His Reign_

[Sidenote: [1457-1461 A.D.]]

This was the very result which Charles most dreaded, and which he most

carefully should have avoided. But his council feared the reconciliation

between father and son: and some of them meditated setting Louis

aside altogether, and prolonging their own power by proclaiming his

brother Charles, then but a boy. The king would not entertain a project

necessarily so fatal to his family and his kingdom. As to Charles, his

inward distrust became at last a malady, and almost an insanity. Yet

his suspicions were not without grounds; for as his health and strength

visibly declined, especially after the breaking of a boil in the mouth,

the members of his court--even those who had been the bitterest enemies

of the dauphin--addressed letters to that prince containing information

as to the state of things, and assurances of their own attachment. Even

the king’s new mistress, the dame de Villequier,[55] was amongst those

who hastened to seek security in the worship of the rising sun.

The desertion of his own ministers did not escape Charles, who reasoned

that those who were so eager to abandon him in his decline might, without

scruple, hasten his death. The dauphin is said to have caused some of the

letters addressed to him to be placed within reach and view of the king.

Charles’ terror was equal to his disgust. A captain told him that his

physicians had been suborned to administer poison; one was instantly sent

to prison, whilst the others fled. In his alarm, Charles refrained from

taking sustenance altogether; and when the cause of his consequently weak

state was discovered, and it was sought to administer food, his stomach

refused to retain it. Thus did one of the most successful and triumphant

among monarchs expire of mistrust--of hunger and inanition. Death levels

all distinctions: Charles, the restorer of the French monarchy, died the

death of a beggar (July 22nd, 1461).

The character of Charles VII is perplexing to the historian; it affords

subject of surprise that such great aims, which must have been wisely

conceived and steadily pursued, should have been attained by a personage

in many respects so weak. We are thus obliged to separate the private

habits of the prince from the public life of the monarch. In the one

Charles was indolent, self-indulgent, inconstant, and immoral; in

the other, active, adventurous, persevering, and patriotic. He first

introduced the important novelty of a royal council. Such, indeed, had

existed under his predecessor, but it was an assemblage of magnates,

not of ministers, the orators and inferior members being the followers

or exponents of their chiefs’ opinions. Charles VII did nothing

without consulting his council. This, perhaps, is the most remarkable

characteristic of his rule. And it stands in strong contrast with the

habits of his son and successor, who ruled altogether from his own

judgment, and who with far greater talents and capacity committed the

greatest blunders, and fell far short in all his aims, which his sire

contrived to avoid or to accomplish, by merely mistrusting his own

omniscience and not disdaining the counsels of others.

The upper classes, their ideas, their spirit, and privileges, were no

doubt undergoing in this century a great and remarkable change. This

was the gradual metamorphosis from the feudal baron and knight into the

courtly _seigneur_ and the modern gentleman. As their numbers greatly

increased it became impossible for all to preserve the superiority in

power and wealth which the ancient holders of fiefs had possessed. The

younger brothers of the gentry were obliged to seek for public service

and live upon pensions or pay, in military or other capacity. But they

carefully preserved themselves from losing caste, by insisting that

they alone should fill these numerous offices. Thus the originally

restricted class of the nobility in France was spread into the wider

caste of the _gentilhomme_, the power and pretensions of the whole being

undiminished.[g]

Most important of all, however, was the steady growth in power of the

crown. We have seen that Charles VII practically dispensed with the aid

of the states-general after 1439, and that in so doing he virtually

established a standing army and a permanent tax.[a] In reality the taxes

were already permanent, or nearly so, but they had been considered as

extra revenue; now they became usual. Charles VII in suppressing the

vote of the assembly followed the example of Charles V under identical

circumstances, and thus rid himself of an obligation which was often only

a useless formality, and often a hindrance and restraint.[e]

A more fatal consequence of this usurpation on the part of the crown

was that the nobility and clergy, remaining exempt from the tax on land

which was only levied on the property of the _roturiers_, ended by

taking no interest in the question. They abandoned the great principles

supported at the estates of 1355 and 1356, to wit, that no tax could be

levied save with the assent of the estates, and that the three orders

should be subjected to the same taxes. Liberty established itself in

England because the prelates, nobles, and towns remained closely united

in their resistance to the encroachments of royalty, all accepting the

same burdens and vindicating the same guarantees. In France the nobility

and clergy deserted the common cause, handed over the third estate to

the arbitrary authority of the crown, and sold the public liberties for

a pecuniary advantage. From that moment it was an admitted formula that

the clergy paid with their prayers, the nobility with their swords, the

people with their money. The third estate, betrayed by the privileged

orders, approached the king, applauded all the attacks made by the crown

on the rights of the nobles and clergy, and energetically aided it to

consummate the ruin of their power, until the moment that it found itself

alone, face to face with the crown, and overthrew it. The defection of

the clergy and the nobility was the first cause of the establishment of

absolute power and of the Revolution which was accomplished 350 years

later.[p]

But little enough did Charles VII or his contemporaries concern

themselves with such remote consequences of their deeds as are here

ominously suggested; and, not to be ourselves blinded to the true

historical relations of the times we are treating, let us seek again the

atmosphere of the fifteenth century, and in leaving Charles VII take a

parting glance at him through the eyes of a contemporary writer, whose

quaint phrasing and peculiar smack of piety will remind us that our stage

setting is still of the Middle Ages. That the phrases of the courtier

are somewhat more flattering than strict justice demands need neither

surprise nor concern us. “Charles VII,” says Henry Baude,[o] “was loved

as much by his subjects as by foreign nations, who came often to him for

advice in settling their disputes, and this because of the great justice

that he observed. He was feared by the good and by the wicked: by the

good, who were afraid to do evil lest it should come to his knowledge; by

the wicked who were afraid of his justice. He was obeyed by his vassals

and subjects, and well served by old, wise, and well-tutored servants,

who knew his disposition to be such that he wished each to have his own.

He died in old age [in reality he was but fifty-nine]; and after his

death was in great solemnity, weeping, and lamentation honourably buried,

and with great regret by men of all estates, in the church of St. Denis

in France, with his ancestors. May God in his holy grace receive his soul

into Paradise. Amen.”

FOOTNOTES

[48] [The fall of La Trémouille was due to a conspiracy aroused by his

lethargy, through which the English in 1432 were able to regain Montargis

and take several important towns. “M. de la Trémouille,” says De

Brantôme;[l] “was so happy as to prove a faithful and worthy servant to

three kings. He was an excellent and worthy captain, and for this reason

he had the honour and happiness to be known as ‘the knight without fear

and without reproach.’ Splendid title indeed for him who can keep it, and

wear it to the end of his life!”]

[49] [Vaudemont was the nephew and René the son-in-law of Duke Charles

I who had just died. René was appointed heir by Charles’ will, but

Vaudemont persisted in his pretensions, alleging Lorraine to be a

masculine fief.]

[50] [Just how much of truth there is in this tale of Gilles de Retz, it

would be difficult to determine. The motive alleged for the crimes smacks

of the familiar witchcraft stories. A perversion of a type well known to

psychiatrists might offer a more plausible explanation, supposing the

facts to be assured.]

[51] [Henri Baude[o] has a different conception of the personality of

the king. He says: “Charles was a man of handsome figure, tall, and of

good temperament; of sanguine complexion; humble, gentle, gracious, and

of pleasant temper, liberal and not prodigal. He was solitary, living

soberly, loving joyously, frank, decorous, and humane. He loved ladies in

all honesty, and held all women in honour. His amusements were chess and

shooting with the crossbow, and he rose early. The day after he entered a

town and the day before he left it he went to the principal church. His

oath was ‘St. George! St. George!’ He took only two meals a day. He spoke

and drank little. He had a courteous gravity, tempered familiarity, and

effective diligence. His word was the word of a prince and kept as law.

He thought continually of the affairs of his kingdom and the relief of

his people. He heard three masses a day, that is to say, the high mass

with music and two low masses, and said his prayers every day without

fail. At meals he was alone at table, and few persons in his room; and

his doctor was always there, and honest people and valets who spoke of

gay subjects or told old stories in which he took delight.

“Naught cared he for false wisdom. At the yearly feasts, a bishop or

abbot was seated at the head of his table, he in the centre, and at the

end of the table one of the nobles of royal blood. When the table was

spread there was none so great that did not leave the room, and all was

so well arranged that none presumed to remain. He loved all virtuous

people; was true and certain in promise and in all his acts. When he knew

a man of virtue he took him. He had in his house and in his service the

children of the princes, great nobles, and barons of his kingdom. He had

around him, his chamberlains and others, the most handsome persons of the

kingdom.”]

[52] Many of these captains of _écorcheurs_ have left lasting traces in

the memory of the people. The Gascon La Hire has given his name to the

knave of hearts. The Englishman, Matthew Gough, whom the chroniclers call

Mathago, has remained, we believe, as a puppet and bugbear for children

in certain provinces. The history of Gilles de Retz, greatly softened

down, has furnished matter for a tale: he is the original of Blue Beard.

[53]

More honour, gentle Agnes, thou hast won,

For that thy voice our France recoverèd,

Than could be achieved by cloister-prisoned nun,

Or holiest beadsman to the desert fled.

[54] [The order of the Golden Fleece was instituted at Bruges in 1429,

by the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, in honour of one of his

mistresses, Marie de Cumbrugge, whose red tresses had been the object

of many pleasantries. On the extinction of the Burgundian house the

grand-mastership passed to the Habsburgs.]

[55] [Agnes Sorel had died of dysentery on the 9th of February, 1450. The

_dame de Beauté_, as she was called, had her enemies, the dauphin among

them, and rumours that she had been poisoned were not long in spreading

through the court. These were made use of later in many infamous

machinations, even against Jacques Cœur.]

[Illustration]