(J. T. S.*)
LOUIS X.(1289-1316), king of France and Navarre, calledle Hutinor “the Quarreller,” was the son of Philip IV. and of Jeanne of Navarre. He was born at Paris on the 4th of October 1289, took the title king of Navarre on the death of his mother, on the 2nd of April 1305, and succeeded Philip IV. in France on the 29th of November 1314, being crowned at Reims in August 1315. The origin of his surname is uncertain. Louis X. is a somewhat indistinct figure among the kings of France, the preponderating influence at court during his short reign being that of his uncle, Charles of Valois. The reign began with reaction against the policy of Philip IV. Private vengeance was wreaked on Enguerrand de Marigny, who was hanged, Pierre de Latilli, bishop of Châlons and chancellor, and Raoul de Presle, advocate of the parlement, who were imprisoned. The leagues of the lesser country gentry, formed in 1314 before the accession of Louis, continued to demand the ancient privileges of the nobility,—tourneys, private wars and judgment of nobles not by king’s officers but by their peers—and to protest against the direct call by the king of their vassals to the royal army. Louis X. granted them charters in which he made apparent concessions, but used evasive formulas which in reality ceded nothing. There was a charter to the Normans, one to the Burgundians, one to the Languedocians (1315). Robert de Béthune, count of Flanders, refused to do homage, and his French fiefs were declared confiscate by a court of his peers. In August 1315 Louis X. led an army toward Lille, but the flooded Lys barred his passage, the ground was so soaked with rains that the army could not advance, and it was thrown back, without a battle, on Tournai. Need of money inspired one famous ordinance of this reign; in 1315 the serfs of the royal domains were invited to buy their civil liberty,—an invitation which did not meet with great enthusiasm, as the freedman was merely freed for further exploitation, and Philip V. was obliged to renew it in 1318. Louis X. died suddenly on the 5th of June 1316. His first wife was Margaret, daughter of Robert II., duke of Burgundy; she was accused of adultery and died a prisoner in the château Gaillard. By her he had one daughter, Jeanne, wife of Philip, count of Evreux and king of Navarre. By his second wife Clémence, daughter of Charles Martel, titular king of Hungary, he left a posthumous son, King John I.
See Ch. Dufayard, “La réaction feodale sous les fils de Philippe le Bel,” inRevue historique(1894); Paul Lehugeur,Histoire de Philippe le Long, roi de France(Paris, 1897); and Joseph Petit,Charles de Valois(Paris, 1900).
See Ch. Dufayard, “La réaction feodale sous les fils de Philippe le Bel,” inRevue historique(1894); Paul Lehugeur,Histoire de Philippe le Long, roi de France(Paris, 1897); and Joseph Petit,Charles de Valois(Paris, 1900).
(J. T. S.*)
LOUIS XI.(1423-1483), king of France, the son of Charles VII. and his queen, Marie of Anjou, was born on the 3rd of July 1423, at Bourges, where his father, then nicknamed the “King of Bourges,” had taken refuge from the English. At the birth of Louis XI. part of France was in English hands; when he was five years old, Joan of Arc appeared; he was just six when his father was crowned at Reims. But his boyhood was spent apart from these stirring events, in the castle of Loches, where his father visited him rarely. John Gerson, the foremost theologian of France, wrote a manual of instructions (still extant) for the first of his tutors, Jean Majoris, a canon of Reims. His second tutor, Bernard of Armagnac, was noted for his piety and humility. If, as has been claimed, Louis owed to them any of his tendency to prefer the society of the poor, or rather of thebourgeois, to that of the nobility, their example was his best lesson in the craft of kingship. In June 1436, when scarcely thirteen, he was married to Margaret (c. 1425-1445), daughter of James I. of Scotland, a princess of about his own age, but sickly and romantic, and in every way his opposite. Three years after this unhappy marriage Louis entered upon his stormy political career. Sent by his father in 1439 to direct the defence of Languedoc against the English, and to put down the brigandage in Poitou, he was induced by the rebellious nobles to betray his trust and place himself at the head of the Praguerie (q.v.). Charles VII. pardoned him this rebellion, due to his ambition and the seductive proposal of the nobles to make him regent. The following year he was fighting the English, and in 1443 aided his father to suppress the revolt of the count of Armagnac. His first important command, however, was in the next year, when he led an army of from 15,000 to 20,000 mercenaries and brigands,—the product of the Hundred Years’ War,—against the Swiss of the canton of Basel. The heroism of some two hundred Swiss, who for a while held thousands of the French army at bay, made a great impression on the young prince. After an ineffective siege of Basel, he made peace with the Swiss confederation, and led his robber soldiers into Alsace to ravage the country of the Habsburgs, who refused him the promised winter quarters. Meanwhile his father, making a parallel campaign in Lorraine, had assembled his first brilliant court at Nancy, and when Louis returned it was to find the king completely under the spell of Agnes Sorel. He at first made overtures to members of her party, and upon their rejection through fear of his ambition, his deadly hatred of her and of them involved the king. The death in 1445 of his wife Margaret, who was a great favourite of Charles VII., made the rupture complete. From that year until the death of the king father and son were enemies. Louis began his rebellious career by a futile attempt to seduce the cities of Agenais into treason, and then he prepared a plot to seize the king and his minister Pierre de Brézé. Antoine de Chabannes, who was to be the instrument of the plot, revealed it to Charles, and Louis was mildly punished by being sent off to Dauphiné (1447). He never saw his father again.
Louis set out to govern his principality as though it were an independent state. He dismissed the governor; he determined advantageously to himself the boundaries between his state and the territories of the duke of Savoy and of the papacy; and he enforced his authority over perhaps the most unruly nobility in western Europe, both lay and ecclesiastical. The right of private warfare was abolished; the bishops were obliged to give up most of their temporal jurisdiction, the scope of their courts was limited, and appeals to Rome were curtailed. Onthe other hand, Louis granted privileges to the towns and consistently used their alliance to overthrow the nobility. He watched the roads, built new ones, opened markets, protected the only bankers of the country, the Jews, and reorganized the administration so as to draw the utmost revenue possible from the prosperity thus secured. His ambition led him into foreign entanglements; he made a secret treaty with the duke of Savoy which was to give him right of way to Genoa, and made arrangements for a partition of the duchy of Milan. The alliance with Savoy was sealed by the marriage of Louis with Charlotte, daughter of Duke Lodovico, in 1452, in spite of the formal prohibition of Charles VII. The king marched south, but withdrew again leaving his son unsubdued. Four years later, as Charles came to the Bourbonnais, Louis, fearing for his life, fled to Flanders to the court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, leaving Dauphiné to be definitely annexed to the crown of France. The policy of the dauphin was reversed, his ten years’ work was undone. Meanwhile he was installed in the castle of Genappe, in Brabant, where he remained until the death of his father. For this he waited impatiently five years, keeping himself posted by spies of every stage of the king’s last illness, and thus laying himself open to the accusation, believed in by Charles himself, that he had hastened the end by poison, a charge which modern historians deny.
On the 15th of August 1461, Louis was anointed at Reims, and Philip of Burgundy, asdoyenof the peers of France, placed the crown on his head. For two months Philip acted as though the king were still his protégé. But in the midst of the festivities with which he was entertaining Paris, the duke found that Louis ventured to refuse his candidates for office, and on the 24th of September the new king left abruptly for Touraine. His first act was to strike at the faithful ministers of Charles VII. Pierre de Brézé and Antoine de Chabannes were captured and imprisoned, as well as men of sterling worth like Étienne Chevalier. But the king’s shrewdness triumphed before long over his vengeance, and the more serviceable of the officers of Charles VII. were for the most part soon reinstated, Louis’ advisers were mostly men of the middle class. He had a ready purse for men of talent, drawing them from England, Scotland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Such a motley throng of competent men had never before been seen at the court of France. Their origin, their previous crimes or virtues, their avarice or brutality, were indifferent to him so long as they served him loyally. Torture and imprisonment awaited them, whether of high or low degree, if he fancied that they were betraying him. Among the most prominent of these men in addition to Brézé, Chevalier and Chabannes, were Tristan Lermite, Jean de Daillon, Olivier le Dain (the barber), and after 1472, Philippe de Commines, drawn from the service of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, who became his most intimate adviser and biographer. Surrounded by men like these Louis fought the last great battle of French royalty with feudalism.
Louis XI. began his reign with the same high-handed treatment of the nobles which had marked his rule in Dauphiné, going so far as to forbid them to hunt without his permission. He forced the clergy to pay long-neglected feudal dues, and intrigued against the great houses of Anjou and Orleans in Italy. The malcontent nobles soon began to plan revolt. Discharged officers of Charles VII. like Jean Dunois and John II. duke of Bourbon, stirred up hostility to the new men of the king, and Francis II. duke of Brittany was soon embroiled with Louis over an attempt to assert royal control over that practically independent duchy. The dissatisfied nobility found their greatest ally in Charles the Bold, afterwards duke of Burgundy, and in 1465 formed a “league of public welfare” and declared war on their king. The nominal head was the king’s brother Charles, duke of Berry, then eighteen years old, a weak character, the tool of the rebels as he was later the dupe of the king. Every great noble in France was in the league, except Gaston de Foix—who kept the south of France for the king,—and the counts of Vendôme and Eu. The whole country seemed on the verge of anarchy. It was saved by the refusal of the lesser gentry to rise, and by the alliance of the king with the citizen class, which was not led astray by the pretences of regard for the public weal which cloaked the designs of the leaguers. After a successful campaign in the Bourbonnais, Louis fought an indecisive battle with the Burgundians who had marched on Paris at Montlhéry, on the 16th of July 1465, and then stood a short siege in Paris. On the 28th of September he made a truce with Charles the Bold, and in October the treaties of Conflans and Saint Maur-les-Fossés, ended the war. The king yielded at all points; gave up the “Somme towns” in Picardy, for which he had paid 200,000 gold crowns, to Philip the Good, thus bringing the Burgundians close to Paris and to Normandy. Charles, the king’s brother, was given Normandy as an apanage, thus joining the territories of the rebellious duke of Brittany with those of Charles the Bold. The public weal was no longer talked about, while the kingdom was plundered both by royal tax gatherers and by unsubdued feudal lords to pay the cost of the war.
After this failure Louis set to work to repair his mistakes. The duke of Bourbon was won over by the gift of the government of the centre of France, and Dunois and Chabannes by restoring them their estates. Two months after he had granted Normandy to Charles, he took advantage of a quarrel between the duke of Brittany and his brother to take it again, sending the duke of Bourbon “to aid” Charles, while Dunois and Chabannes prepared for the struggle with Burgundy. The death of Duke Philip, on the 15th of June 1467, gave Charles the Bold a free hand. He gained over Edward IV. of England, whose sister Margaret he married; but while he was celebrating the wedding Louis invaded Brittany and detached Duke Francis from alliance with him. Normandy was completely reduced. The king had won a great triumph. It was followed by his greatest mistake. Eager as he always was to try diplomacy instead of war, Louis sent a gift of 60,000 golden crowns to Charles and secured a safe conduct from him for an interview. The interview took place on the 9th of October 1468 at Péronne. News came on the 11th that, instigated by the king of France, the people of Liége had massacred their bishop and the ducal governor. The news was false, but Charles, furious at such apparent duplicity, took Louis prisoner, only releasing him, three days later, on the king signing a treaty which granted Flanders freedom from interference from the parlement of Paris, and agreeing to accompany Charles to the siege of his own ally, Liége. Louis made light of the whole incident in his letters, but it marked the greatest humiliation of his life, and he was only too glad to find a scapegoat in Cardinal Jean Balue, who was accused of having plotted the treason of Péronne. Balue thereupon joined Guillaume de Harancourt, bishop of Verdun, in an intrigue to induce Charles of France to demand Champagne and Brie in accordance with the king’s promise to Charles the Bold, instead of distant Guienne where the king was determined to place him. The discovery of this conspiracy placed these two high dignitaries in prison (April 1469). Balue (q.v.) spent eleven years in prison quarters, comfortable enough, in spite of the legend to the contrary, while Harancourt was shut up in an iron cage until 1482. Then Louis, inducing his brother to accept Guienne,—where, surrounded by faithful royal officers, he was harmless for the time being,—undertook to play off the Lancastrians against Edward IV. who, as the ally of Charles the Bold, was menacing the coast of Normandy. Warwick, the king-maker, and Queen Margaret were aided in the expedition which in 1470 again placed Henry VI. upon the English throne. In the autumn Louis himself took the offensive, and royal troops overran Picardy and the Maconnais to Burgundy itself. But the tide turned against Louis in 1471. While Edward IV. won back England by the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, Charles the Bold besieged Amiens, and Louis was glad to make a truce, availing himself of the double dealing of the constable, the count of Saint Pol, who, trying to win an independent position for himself in Picardy, refused his aid to Charles unless he would definitely join the French nobility in another rising against the king. This rising was to be aided by the invasion of France by John II. of Aragon, Yolande, duchess of Savoy, and Edward IV.of England, who was to be given the old Plantagenet inheritance. The country was saved a desperate civil war by the death of the king’s brother, Charles, the nominal head of the coalition, on the 24th of May 1472. Louis’ joy on receiving news of this death knew no bounds. Charles the Bold, who had again invaded France, failed to take Beauvais, and was obliged to make a lasting truce. His projects were henceforth to be directed towards Germany. Louis then forced the duke of Brittany to make peace, and turned against John V. count of Armagnac, whose death at the opening of March 1473 ended the power of one of the most dangerous houses of the south. The first period of Louis’ reign was closed, and with it closed for ever the danger of dismemberment of France. John of Aragon continued the war in Roussillon and Cerdagne, which Louis had seized ten years before, and a most desperate rising of the inhabitants protracted the struggle for two years. After the capture of Perpignan on the 10th of March 1475, the wise and temperate government of Imbert de Batarnay and Boffile de Juge slowly pacified the new provinces. The death of Gaston IV. count of Foix in 1472 opened up the long diplomatic struggle for Navarre, which was destined to pass to the loyal family of Albret shortly after the death of Louis. His policy had won the line of the Pyrenees for France.
The overthrow of Charles the Bold was the second great task of Louis XI. This he accomplished by a policy much like that of Pitt against Napoleon. Louis was the soul of all hostile coalitions, especially urging on the Swiss and Sigismund of Austria, who ruled Tirol and Alsace. Charles’s ally, Edward IV., invaded France in June 1475, but Louis bought him off on the 29th of August at Picquigny—where the two sovereigns met on a bridge over the Somme, with a strong grille between them, Edward receiving 75,000 crowns, and a promise of a pension of 50,000 crowns annually. The dauphin Charles was to marry Edward’s daughter. Bribery of the English ministers was not spared, and in September the invaders recrossed to England. The count of Saint Pol, who had continued to play his double part, was surrendered by Charles to Louis, and executed, as was also Jacques d’Armagnac, duke of Nemours. With his vassals terrorized and subdued, Louis continued to subsidize the Swiss and René II. of Lorraine in their war upon Charles. The defeat and death of the duke of Burgundy at Nancy on the 5th of January 1477 was the crowning triumph of Louis’ diplomacy. But in his eagerness to seize the whole inheritance of his rival, Louis drove his daughter and heiress, Mary of Burgundy, into marriage with Maximilian of Austria (afterwards the emperor Maximilian I.), who successfully defended Flanders after a savage raid by Antoine de Chabannes. The battle of Guinegate on the 7th of August 1479 was indecisive, and definite peace was not established until after the death of Mary, when by the treaty of Arras (1482) Louis received Picardy, Artois and the Boulonnais, as well as the duchy of Burgundy and Franche Comté. The Austrians were left in Flanders, a menace and a danger. Louis failed here and in Spain; this failure being an indirect cause of that vast family compact which surrounded France later with the empire of Charles V. His interference in Spain had made both John II. of Aragon and Henry IV. of Castile his enemies, and so he was unable to prevent the marriage of their heirs, Ferdinand and Isabella. But the results of these marriages could not be foreseen, and the unification of France proved of more value than the possession of so widespread an empire. This unification was completed (except for Brittany) and the frontiers enlarged by the acquisition, upon the death of René of Anjou in 1480, of the duchies of Anjou and Bar, and in 1481 of Maine and Provence upon the death of Charles II., count of Maine. Of the inheritance of the house of Anjou only Lorraine escaped the king.
Failure in Spain was compensated for in Italy. Without waging war Louis made himself virtual arbiter of the fate of the principalities in the north, and his court was always besieged by ambassadors from them. After the death of Charles the Bold, Yolande, duchess of Savoy, was obliged to accept the control of Louis, who was her brother. In Milan he helped to place Lodovico il Moro in power in 1479, but he reaped less from this supple tyrant than he had expected. Pope Sixtus IV. the enemy of the Medici, was also the enemy of the king of France. Louis, who at the opening of his reign had denounced the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, had played fast and loose with the papacy. When Sixtus threatened Florence after the Pazzi conspiracy, 1478, Louis aided Lorenzo dei Medici to form an alliance with Naples, which forced the papacy to come to terms.
More than any other king of France, Louis XI. was a “bourgeois king.” The upper bourgeois, the aristocracy of his “good cities,” were his allies both against the nobles and against the artisan class, whenever they revolted, driven to desperation by the oppressive royal taxes which furnished the money for his wars or diplomacy. He ruled like a modern capitalist; placed his bribes like investments in the courts of his enemies; and, while draining the land of enormous sums, was pitiless toward the two productive portions of his realm, the country population and the artisans. His heartlessness toward the former provoked even an accomplice like Commines to protest. The latter were kept down by numerous edicts, tending to restrict to certain privileged families the rank of master workman in the gilds. There was the paternalism of a Frederick the Great in his encouragement of the silk industry,—“which all idle people ought to be made to work at,”—in his encouragement of commerce through the newly acquired port of Marseilles and the opening up of market placed. He even dreamed of a great trading company “of two hundred thousand livres or more,” to monopolize the trade of the Mediterranean, and planned to unify the various systems of weights and measures. In 1479 he called a meeting of two burgesses from each “good city” of his realm to consider means for preventing the influx of foreign coin. Impatient of all restraint upon his personal rule, he was continually in violent dispute with the parlement of Paris, and made “justice” another name for arbitrary government; yet he dreamed of a unification of the local customary laws (coûtumes) of France. He was the perfect model of a tyrant. The states-general met but once in his reign, in 1468, and then no talk of grievances was allowed; his object was only to get them to declare Normandy inalienable from the crown. They were informed that the king could raise his revenue without consulting them. Yet his budgets were enormously greater than ever before. In 1481 thetaillealone brought in 4,600,000 livres, and even at the peaceful close of his reign his whole budget was 4,655,000 livres—as against 1,800,000 livres at the close of his father’s reign.
The king who did most for French royalty would have made a sorry figure at the court of a Louis XIV. He was ungainly, with rickety legs. His eyes were keen and piercing, but a long hooked nose lent grotesqueness to a face marked with cunning rather than with dignity. Its ugliness was emphasized by the old felt hat which he wore,—its sole ornament the leaden figure of a saint. Until the close of his life, when he tried to mislead ambassadors as to the state of his health by gorgeous robes, he wore the meanest clothes. Dressed in grey like a pilgrim, and accompanied by five or six trustworthy servants, he would set out on his interminable travels, “ambling along on a good mule.” Thus he traversed France, avoiding all ceremony, entering towns by back streets, receiving ambassadors in wayside huts, dining in public houses, enjoying the loose manners and language of his associates, and incidentally learning at first hand the condition of his people and the possibilities of using or taxing them—his needs of them rather than theirs of him. He loved to win men, especially those of the middle class, by affability and familiarity, employing all his arts to cajole and seduce those whom he needed. Yet his honied words easily turned to gall. He talked rapidly and much, sometimes for hours at a time, and most indiscreetly. He was not an agreeable companion, violent in his passions, nervous, restless, and in old age extremely irascible. Utterly unscrupulous, and without a trace of pity, he treated men like pawns, and was content only with absolute obedience.
But this Machiavellian prince was the genuine son of St Louis.His religiosity was genuine if degenerate. He lavished presents on influential saints, built shrines, sent gifts to churches, went on frequent pilgrimages and spent much time in prayer—employing his consummate diplomacy to win celestial allies, and rewarding them richly when their aid secured him any advantage. St Martin of Tours received 1200 crowns after the capture of Perpignan. He tried to bribe the saints of his enemies, as he did their ministers. An unfaltering faith taught him the value of religion—as a branch of politics. Finally, more in the spirit of orthodoxy, he used the same arts to make sure of heaven. When the ring of St Zanobius and the blood of Cape Verde turtles gave him no relief from his last illness, he showered gifts upon his patron saints, secured for his own benefit the masses of his clergy, and the most potent prayers in Christendom, those of the two most effective saints of his day, Bernardin of Doulins and Francis of Paolo.
During the last two or three years of his life Louis lived in great isolation, “seeing no one, speaking with no one, except such as he commanded,” in the château of Plessis-les-Tours, that “spider’s nest” bristling with watch towers, and guarded only by the most trusty servitors. A swarm of astrologers and physicians preyed upon his fears—and his purse. But, however foolish in his credulity, he still made his strong hand felt both in France and in Italy, remaining to the last “the terrible king.” His fervent prayers were interrupted by instructions for the regency which was to follow. He died on the 30th of August 1483, and was buried, according to his own wish, without royal state, in the church at Cléry, instead of at St Denis. He left a son, his successor, Charles VIII., and two daughters.
See the admirable résumé by Charles Petit-Dutaillis in Lavisse’sHistoire de France, tome iv. pt. ii. (1902), and bibliographical indications given there. Michelet’s wonderful depiction in hisHistoire de France(livres 13 to 17) has never been surpassed for graphic word-painting, but it is inaccurate in details, and superseded in scholarship. Of the original sources for the reign theLettres de Louis XI. (edited by Charavay and Vaesen, 8 vols., 1883-1902), the celebratedMémoiresof Philippe de Commines and theJournalof Jean de Royl naturally come first. The great mass of literature on the period is analysed in masterly fashion by A. Molinier,Sources de l’histoire de France(tome v. pp. 1-146), and to this exhaustive bibliography the reader is referred for further research. See also C. Hare,The Life of Louis XI. (London, 1907).
See the admirable résumé by Charles Petit-Dutaillis in Lavisse’sHistoire de France, tome iv. pt. ii. (1902), and bibliographical indications given there. Michelet’s wonderful depiction in hisHistoire de France(livres 13 to 17) has never been surpassed for graphic word-painting, but it is inaccurate in details, and superseded in scholarship. Of the original sources for the reign theLettres de Louis XI. (edited by Charavay and Vaesen, 8 vols., 1883-1902), the celebratedMémoiresof Philippe de Commines and theJournalof Jean de Royl naturally come first. The great mass of literature on the period is analysed in masterly fashion by A. Molinier,Sources de l’histoire de France(tome v. pp. 1-146), and to this exhaustive bibliography the reader is referred for further research. See also C. Hare,The Life of Louis XI. (London, 1907).
(J. T. S.*)
LOUIS XII.(1462-1515), king of France, was grandson of Louis of Orleans, the brother of Charles VI., and son of the poet prince, Charles of Orleans, who, after the battle of Agincourt, spent twenty-five years of captivity in England. Louis was duke of Orleans until his accession to the throne, and he was fourteen years old when Louis XI. gave him the hand of his second daughter, Joan the Lame. In the first years of the reign of Charles VIII., Louis made a determined stand against the government of the Beaujeus, stirred up coalitions of the feudal nobles against them, and was finally defeated and taken prisoner at St Aubin du Cormier in 1488. Charles VIII. set him at liberty in 1491. These successive checks tamed him a little. In the Italian expedition of 1494 he commanded the vanguard of the royal army, occupied Genoa, and remained in the north of Italy, menacing Milan, on which he was already dreaming of asserting his rights. The children of Charles VIII. having died in infancy, he became heir-presumptive to the throne, and succeeded Charles in 1499. Louis was then thirty-six years old, but he seems to have grown old prematurely. He was fragile, narrow-shouldered and of a sickly constitution. His intelligence was mediocre, his character weak, and he allowed himself to be dominated by his wife, Anne of Brittany, and his favourite the Cardinal d’Amboise. He was a good king, full of moderation and humanity, and bent upon maintaining order and improving the administration of justice. He enjoyed a genuine popularity, and in 1506 the estates of Tours conferred on him the surname ofPère du Peuple. His foreign policy, which was directed wholly towards Italy, was for the most part unskilful; to his claims on Naples he added those on Milan, which he based on the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of Orleans, with Valentina Visconti. He led in person several armies into Italy, and proved as severe and pitiless towards his enemies as he was gentle and clement towards his subjects. Louis had two daughters. After his accession he had divorced his virtuous and ill-favoured queen, Joan, and had married, in 1499, Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII. On her death in January 1514, in order to detach England from the alliance against him, he married on the 9th of October 1514, Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. of England (seeMary, queen of France). He died on the 1st of January 1515.
For a bibliography of the printed sources see Henri Hauser,Les Sources de l’histoire de France, XVIesiècle, vol. 1. (Paris, 1906). The principal secondary authorities are De Maulde,Histoire de Louis XII. (Paris, 1889-1893); Le Roux de Lincy,Vie de la reine Anne de Bretagne(Paris, 1860); H. Lemonnier,Les Guerres d’Italie(Paris, 1903) in theHistoire de Franceby E. Lavisse.
For a bibliography of the printed sources see Henri Hauser,Les Sources de l’histoire de France, XVIesiècle, vol. 1. (Paris, 1906). The principal secondary authorities are De Maulde,Histoire de Louis XII. (Paris, 1889-1893); Le Roux de Lincy,Vie de la reine Anne de Bretagne(Paris, 1860); H. Lemonnier,Les Guerres d’Italie(Paris, 1903) in theHistoire de Franceby E. Lavisse.
(J. I.)
LOUIS XIII. (1601-1643), king of France, was the son of Henry IV. and of Marie de’ Medici. He became king on his father’s assassination in 1610; but his mother at once seized the full powers of regent. She determined to reverse the policy of her husband and to bring France into alliance with Spain and the Austrian house, upon which power Henry had been meditating an attack at the time of his death. Two marriages were designed to cement this alliance. Louis was to marry Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish king, Philip III., and the Spanish prince, afterwards Philip IV., himself was to marry the Princess Elizabeth, the king’s sister. Notwithstanding the opposition of the Protestants and nobles of France, the queen carried through her purpose and the marriages were concluded in 1615. The next years were full of civil war and political intrigue, during which the queen relied upon the Marshal d’Ancre. Louis XIII. was a backward boy, and his education had been much neglected. We have the fullest details of his private life, and yet his character remains something of a mystery. He was fond of field sports and seemed to acquiesce in his mother’s occupation of power and in the rule of her favourites. But throughout his life he concealed his purposes even from his closest friends; sometimes it seems as if he were hardly conscious of them himself. In 1617 he was much attached to Charles d’Albert, sieur de Luynes; and with his help he arrested Marshal d’Ancre, and on his resistance had him assassinated. From this time to her death the relation between the king and his mother was one of concealed or open hostility. The article onFrancemust be consulted for the intricate events of the following years.
The decisive incident for his private life as well as for his reign was the entrance of Cardinal Richelieu, hitherto the queen’s chief adviser, into the king’s council in 1624. Henceforth the policy of France was directed by Richelieu, who took up in its main features the system of Protestant alliances and opposition to the power of Austria and Spain, which had been begun by Henry IV. and had been interrupted by the queen-mother during the regency; while he asserted the power of the crown against all rivals at home. This policy had remarkable results for the king’s private life. It not only brought him into unremitting conflict with the Protestants and the nobles of France, but also made him the enemy of his mother, of his brother Gaston of Orleans, who made himself the champion of the cause of the nobles, and sometimes even of his wife. It is not easy to define his relations to Richelieu. He was convinced of his loyalty and of his genius, and in the end always supported his policy. But he disliked the friction with his family circle which this policy produced. In the difficulty with which he expressed himself and in a certain indecision of character the king was curiously unlike his father, the frank and impetuous Henry of Navarre, and his absolute son Louis XIV. He took a great interest in all the externals of war. He was present, and is said to have played an important part at the passage of Susa in 1629, and also eagerly participated in the siege of Rochelle, which surrendered in the same year. But for the most part his share in the great events of the reign was a passive one. The one all-important fact was that he supported his great minister. There were certain occasions when it seemed as if that support would be denied. The chief of these was what is known as the “Day of Dupes” (1630). Then the queen-mother and the king’sbrother passionately attacked the minister, and for a moment it was believed that Richelieu was dismissed and that the queen-mother and a Spanish policy had triumphed. But the sequel only strengthened the power of the minister. He regained his ascendancy over the king, punished his enemies and forced Marie de’ Medici and Gaston of Orleans to sue for pardon. In 1631 Gaston fled to Lorraine and the queen-mother to Brussels. Gaston soon returned, to plot, to fail and to sue for pardon again and again; but Marie de’Medici ended her life in exile.
Richelieu’s position was much strengthened by these incidents, but to the end of life he had to struggle against conspiracies which were designed to deprive him of the king’s support, and usually Gaston of Orleans had some share in these movements. In 1632 the duke of Montmorency’s conspiracy brought its leader to the scaffold. But the last great effort to overthrow Richelieu was closely connected with the king. Louis XIII. had from the beginning of his reign had favourites—young men for the most part with whom he lived freely and intimately and spoke of public affairs lightly and unreservedly; and who in consequence often exaggerated their influence over him. Henri d’Effiat, marquis de Cinq-Mars, was the last of these favourites. The king is said to have allowed him to speak hostilely of Richelieu and even to recall the assassination of Marshal d’Ancre. Cinq-Mars believed himself secure of the king’s favour. He entered into negotiations with Spain and was secretly supported by Gaston of Orleans. But Richelieu discovered his treasonous relations with Spain and by this means defeated his plot. Louis was reconciled to his minister. “We have lived too long together to be separated” he is reported to have said (September 1642). Yet when Richelieu died in December of the same year he allowed himself to speak of him in a jealous and satirical tone. He died himself a few months later (May 1643).
His nature was timid, lethargic and melancholy, and his court was not marked by the scandals which had been seen under Henry IV. Yet Mademoiselle de la Fayette and Madame d’Hautefort and others are said to have been his mistresses. His brother Gaston survived him, but gave unexpectedly little trouble during the wars of the Fronde which ensued on the death of Louis XIII.
The chief source of information on Louis XIII.’s life is to be found in the contemporary memoirs, of which the chief are: Bassompierre, Fontenay-Mareuil, Gaston d’Orléans, Montrésor, Omer Talon. Richelieu’s own Memoirs are chiefly concerned with politics and diplomacy. Of modern works those most directly bearing on the king’s personal life are R. de Beauchamp,Louis XIII. d’après sa correspondance avec le cardinal de Richelieu; G. Hanotaux,Histoire du cardinal de Richelieu(1893-1896); Rossignol,Louis XIII. avant Richelieu; M. Topin,Louis XIII. et Richelieu(1876). See too Professor R. Lodge,Richelieu; J. B. H. R. Capefigue,Richelieu, Mazarin et la Fronde(1835-1836); and Dr J. H. Bridges,Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert(1866).For full bibliography see G. Monod,Bibliographie de l’histoire de France;Cambridge Modern History, vol. iv. (“The Thirty Years’ War”); Lavisse et Rambaud,Histoire générale, vol. v. (“Guerres de religion”).
The chief source of information on Louis XIII.’s life is to be found in the contemporary memoirs, of which the chief are: Bassompierre, Fontenay-Mareuil, Gaston d’Orléans, Montrésor, Omer Talon. Richelieu’s own Memoirs are chiefly concerned with politics and diplomacy. Of modern works those most directly bearing on the king’s personal life are R. de Beauchamp,Louis XIII. d’après sa correspondance avec le cardinal de Richelieu; G. Hanotaux,Histoire du cardinal de Richelieu(1893-1896); Rossignol,Louis XIII. avant Richelieu; M. Topin,Louis XIII. et Richelieu(1876). See too Professor R. Lodge,Richelieu; J. B. H. R. Capefigue,Richelieu, Mazarin et la Fronde(1835-1836); and Dr J. H. Bridges,Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert(1866).
For full bibliography see G. Monod,Bibliographie de l’histoire de France;Cambridge Modern History, vol. iv. (“The Thirty Years’ War”); Lavisse et Rambaud,Histoire générale, vol. v. (“Guerres de religion”).
(A. J. G.*)
LOUIS XIV. (1638-1715), king of France, was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the 5th of September 1638. His father, Louis XIII., had married Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III., king of Spain, in 1615, but for twenty years the marriage had remained without issue. The childlessness of the king was a constant threat to the policy of his great minister Richelieu; for the king’s brother and heir, Gaston of Orleans, was a determined opponent of that policy. The birth of the prince who was destined to reign as Louis XIV. was therefore hailed as a triumph, not less important than any of those won by diplomacy or arms. The death of his father made Louis XIV. king on the 14th of May 1643, but he had to wait sixteen years before he began to rule. Power lay for some time in the hands of the queen-mother and in those of her minister, Cardinal Mazarin, who found it difficult to maintain the power of the throne and the integrity of French territory during the domestic troubles of the Fronde and the last stages of the Thirty Year’s War. The minister was hated as a foreigner, and the childhood of the king weakened the royal authority. Twice the court had to flee from Paris; once when there was a rumour of intended flight the populace was admitted to see the king in his bed. The memory of these humiliations played their part in developing later the autocratic ideas of Louis. Mazarin, in spite of all disadvantages, triumphed alike over his domestic and his foreign opponents. The Fronde was at an end by 1653; the peace of Westphalia (1648) and the peace of the Pyrenees (1659) marked the success of the arms and of the diplomacy of France. Louis XIV. was now twenty-one years of age and was anxious to rule as well as to reign. The peace of the Pyrenees was a decisive event in his personal history as well as in that of France, for one of its most important stipulations referred to his marriage. He had already been strongly attracted to one of the nieces of Mazarin, but reasons of state triumphed over personal impulse; and it was agreed that the new friendship with Spain should be cemented by the marriage of Louis to his cousin, the Infanta Maria Theresa. A large dowry was stipulated for; and in consideration of this the king promised to forgo all claims that his wife might otherwise possess to the Spanish crown or any part of its territories. The dowry was never paid, and the king held himself free of his promise.
The marriage took place at once, and the king entered Paris in triumph in 1660. Mazarin died in the next year; but so strong was the feeling that the kings of France could only rule through a first minister that it was generally expected that Mazarin would soon have a successor. The king, however, at once announced his intention of being his own first minister; and from this resolution he never swerved. Whatever great qualities he may have lacked he certainly possessed industry and patience in the highest degree. He built up a thoroughly personal system of government, and presided constantly over the council and many of its committees. He was fond of gaiety and of sport; but neither ever turned him away from the punctual and laborious discharge of his royal duties. Even the greatest of his ministers found themselves controlled by the king. Fouquet, the finance minister, had accumulated enormous wealth during the late disturbances, and seemed to possess power and ambition too great for a subject. Louis XIV. found it necessary almost to conspire against him; he was overthrown and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Those who had most of the king’s confidence afterwards were Colbert for home affairs; Lionne for diplomacy; Louvois for war; but as his reign proceeded he became more self-confident and more intolerant of independence of judgment in his ministers.
His court was from the first one of great brilliance. In art and in literature, the great period, which is usually called by the king’s name, had in some respects passed its zenith when he began to reign. But France was unquestionably the first state in Europe both in arms and arts, and within France the authority of the king was practically undisputed. The nation, proud of its pre-eminence and weary of civil war, saw in the king its true representative and the guarantee of its unity and success. Louis was singularly well fitted by his physical and intellectual gifts for the rôle ofGrand Monarqueand he played it to perfection. His wife Maria Theresa bore him children but there was no community of tastes between them, and the chief influence at court is to be found not in the queen but in the succession of avowed mistresses. Mademoiselle de la Vallière held the position from 1662 to 1670; she was then ousted by Madame de Montespan, who had fiercely intrigued for it, and whose proud and ambitious temper offered a great contrast to her rival. She held her position from 1670 to 1679 and then gave place to the still more famous Madame de Maintenon, who ruled, however, not as mistress but as wife. The events that brought about this incident form the strangest episode in the king’s private life. Madame de Maintenon was the widow of the dramatist Scarron, and first came into relationship with the king as governess to his illegitimate children. She was a woman of unstained life and strongly religious temperament; and it was by this that she gained so great an influence over the king. Through her influence the king was reconciled to his wife, and, when Maria Theresadied in 1683, Madame de Maintenon shortly afterwards (in 1684) became the king’s wife, though this was never officially declared. Under her influence the court lost most of its gaiety, and religion came to exercise much control over the life and the policy of the king.
The first years of the king’s rule were marked by the great schemes of Colbert for the financial, commercial, industrial and naval reorganization of France, and in these schemes Louis took a deep interest. But in 1667 began the long series of wars, which lasted with little real intermission to the end of the reign (seeFrance). In the steps that led to these wars and in their conduct the egotistic ambition and the vanity of the king played an important part; though he never showed real military skill and took no share in any military operations except in certain sieges. The War of Devolution (or the Queen’s War) in 1667-68 to enforce the queen’s claim to certain districts in the Spanish Netherlands, led to the Dutch War (1672-78), and in both these wars the supremacy of the French armies was clearly apparent. The next decade (1678-1688) was the real turning-point in the history of the reign, and the strength of France was seriously diminished. The chief cause of this is to be found in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The church had always opposed this settlement and had succeeded in altering it in many points. Now the new religious zeal and the autocratic temper of Louis XIV. came to the support of the church. The French Huguenots found their privileges decreased, and then, in 1685, the edict was altogether withdrawn. The results were ruinous to France. It was not only that she lost many thousands of her best citizens, but this blow against Protestantism deprived her of those Protestant alliances in Europe which had been in the past her great diplomatic support. Then the English Revolution came in 1688 and changed England from a wavering ally into the most determined of the enemies of France.
The war with the Grand Alliance, of which King William III. was the heart and soul, lasted from 1688 to 1697; and the treaty of Ryswick, which brought it to an end, deprived France of certain territories on her frontier. But Louis saw in the Spanish question a chance of more than making up for this loss. The Spanish king Charles II. was dying, and the future of the possessions of Spain was doubtful. The astute diplomacy of Louis succeeded in winning the inheritance for his grandson Philip. But this involved France and Europe in an immense war (1700) and by the peace of Utrecht (1713), though the French prince retained the Spanish crown, France had again to make concessions of territory.
Louis XIV. had shown wonderful tenacity of purpose during this disastrous war, and sometimes a nobler and more national spirit than during the years of his triumphs. But the condition of France was terrible. She was burdened with debt; the reforms of Colbert were ruined; and opposition to the king’s régime began to make itself felt. Peace brought some relief to France, but the last years of the king’s life were gloomy in the extreme. His numerous descendants seemed at one time to place the successionbeyondall difficulty. But his eldest son, the dauphin, died in April 1711; his eldest grandson the duke of Burgundy in February 1712; and his great-grandson the duke of Brittany in March 1712. The heir to the throne was now the duke of Burgundy’s son, the duke of Anjou, afterwards Louis XV. The king died on the 1st of September 1715, after the longest recorded reign in European history. The judgment of posterity has not repeated the flattering verdict of his contemporaries; but he remains the model of a great king in all that concerns the externals of kingship.
The reign of Louis XIV. is particularly rich in memoirs describing the life of the court. The chief are Madame de Motteville’s memoirs for the period of the Fronde, and the letters cf Madame de Sévigné and the memoirs of Saint-Simon for the later period. The king’s ideas are best seen in theMémoires de Louis XIV. pour l’instruction du dauphin(edited by Dreyss, 2 vols.). His private life is revealed in the letters of Madame de Maintenon and in those of Madame, Duchesse d’Orléans. Of the ordinary historians of France Michelet is fullest on the private life of the king. Mention may also be made of Voltaire,Siècle de Louis XIV.; P. Clément,Histoire de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert; Sainte-Beuve,Causeries de lundi. Full bibliographies of the reign will be found in G. Monod’sBibliographie de l’histoire de France; vol. v. (“The Age of Louis XIV.”) of theCambridge Modern History; and vol. vi. (“Louis XIV.”) of theHistoire généraleof Lavisse and Rambaud.
The reign of Louis XIV. is particularly rich in memoirs describing the life of the court. The chief are Madame de Motteville’s memoirs for the period of the Fronde, and the letters cf Madame de Sévigné and the memoirs of Saint-Simon for the later period. The king’s ideas are best seen in theMémoires de Louis XIV. pour l’instruction du dauphin(edited by Dreyss, 2 vols.). His private life is revealed in the letters of Madame de Maintenon and in those of Madame, Duchesse d’Orléans. Of the ordinary historians of France Michelet is fullest on the private life of the king. Mention may also be made of Voltaire,Siècle de Louis XIV.; P. Clément,Histoire de la vie et de l’administration de Colbert; Sainte-Beuve,Causeries de lundi. Full bibliographies of the reign will be found in G. Monod’sBibliographie de l’histoire de France; vol. v. (“The Age of Louis XIV.”) of theCambridge Modern History; and vol. vi. (“Louis XIV.”) of theHistoire généraleof Lavisse and Rambaud.
(A. J. G.*)
LOUIS XV.(1710-1774), king of France, was the great-grandson of Louis XIV. and the third son of Louis, duke of Burgundy, and Marie Adelaide, princess of Savoy. The first son had died in 1705, and in 1712 the second son, the duke of Brittany, as well as his father and mother, was carried off by a mysterious disease. Louis was thus unexpectedly brought into the line of the succession, and was only five years old when Louis XIV. died. The dead king had endeavoured by his will to control the administration even after his death by a carefully selected council of regency, in which the duke of Orleans should have only the nominal presidency; but with the help of the parlement of Paris the arrangement was at once set aside, and the duke was declared regent with full traditional powers. The duke had capacity, but his life was so licentious that what influence he had upon the king was for evil. Fleury, bishop of Fréjus, was appointed his tutor, and the little king was sincerely attached to him. The king attained his legal majority at the age of thirteen, shortly before the death of the duke of Orleans. His first minister was the incapable duke of Bourbon, who in 1725 procured the repudiation of the Spanish princess, to whom the king had been betrothed, and his marriage to Maria Leszczynska, daughter of the exiled king of Poland, then resident in Alsace. In 1726 the duke of Bourbon was displaced by the king’s tutor, Bishop (afterwards Cardinal) Fleury, who exercised almost absolute power, for the king took little interest in affairs of state. His administration was successful and peaceful until the year 1734, when a disputed succession in Poland brought about the interference of France on behalf of the queen’s father. France was unsuccessful in her immediate object, but at the peace of Vienna (1735) secured the possession of Lorraine. Up to this point the reign had been prosperous; but from this time on it is a record of declining national strength, which was not compensated by some days of military glory. Fleury’s great age (he died still in office at the age of ninety) prevented him from really controlling the policy of France and of Europe. In 1740 the war of the Austrian Succession broke out and France drifted into it as an ally of Frederick of Prussia and the enemy of England, and of Maria Theresa of Austria.
On Fleury’s death in 1743 no one took his place, and the king professed to adopt the example of Louis XIV. and to establish a personal autocracy. But he was not strong enough in will or intellect to give unity to the administration. The marquis d’Argenson writes that at the council table Louis “opened his mouth, said little and thought not at all,” and again that “under the appearance of personal monarchy it was really anarchy that reigned.” He had followed too in his domestic life the example of his predecessors. The queen for some time seems to have secured his affections, and she bore him seven children. But soon we hear of the royal mistresses. The first to acquire notoriety was the duchess of Châteauroux, the third sister of one family who held this position. She was at least in part the cause of the only moment of popularity which the king enjoyed. She urged him to take part personally in the war. France had just received a humiliating check at Dettingen, and the invasion of the north-eastern frontier was feared. The king went to Metz in 1744, and his presence there did something to ward off the danger. While the nation felt genuine gratitude for his energy and its success, he was reported to have fallen dangerously ill. The king, of whom it was said that the fear of hell was the only part of religion which had any reality for him, now dismissed the duchess of Châteauroux and promised amendment. Prayers were offered everywhere for his recovery, and the country was swept by a delirium of loyal enthusiasm, which conferred on him the title ofLouis le bien aimé. But his future life disappointed all these hopes. The duchess of Châteauroux died in the same year, but her place was taken in 1745 by Madame de Pompadour. This woman had philanthropic impulses and some real interest in art andletters; but her influence on public affairs was a fatal one. She had many rivals during her lifetime and on her death in 1764 she was succeeded by Madame du Barry (q.v.). But the mention of these three women gives no idea of the degradation of the king’s life. There has doubtless been exaggeration as to certain details, and the story of his seraglio at theParc aux cerfsis largely apocryphal. But it would be difficult to mention the name of any European king whose private life shows such a record of vulgar vice unredeemed by higher aims of any kind. He was not without ambition, but without sufficient tenacity of purpose to come near to realizing it. To the last he maintained the pretence of personal rule, but the machinery of government fell out of gear, and the disorder of the finances was never remedied before the revolution of 1789.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the war of the Austrian Succession, brought no gains to France in spite of her victories at Fontenoy and Raucoux; and the king was blamed for the diplomatic failure. The interval between this war and the Seven Years’ War (1756) saw that great reversal of alliances which is sometimes called the “Diplomatic Revolution”; whereby France repudiated the alliance of Frederick the Great and joined hands with her old enemy Austria. The intrigues of Madame de Pompadour played in this change an important though not a decisive part. It was the cause of immense disasters to France; for after a promising beginning, both by land and sea, France suffered reverses which lost her both India and Canada and deprived her of the leading position which she had so long held in Europe. Her humiliation was declared by the peace of Paris (1763).
The article on the history of France (q.v.) shows how there arose during the last years of Louis XV.’s reign a strong reaction against the monarchy and its methods. Military success had given it its strength; and its prestige was ruined by military failure. In the parlements, provincial and Parisian; in religion and in literature, a note of opposition is struck which was never to die until the monarchy was overthrown. France annexed Corsica in 1768, but this was felt to be the work of the minister Chauvelin, and reflected no credit on the king. He died in 1774 of smallpox. If the reign of his predecessor shows us almost the ideal of personal monarchy we may see in that of Louis XV. all the vices and errors exemplified which lie in wait for absolute hereditary rule which has survived the period of its usefulness.