They bound and used every cruelty towards the hapless maid of Orleans; raised accusations of sorcery against her whose only crime was man's first duty, to make a religion of patriotism. With all the meanness and cruelty of inquisitors, they laid snares for her weakness, and employed every effort to shake her own confidence in her own purity and virtue. She yielded a moment under their menaces and false promises, through exhaustion and hunger, but she always rallied back to courage, averred her holy mission, and defied her foes. She was burnt in the old marketplace at Rouen, " a blessed martyr" in her country's cause (1431).

Expulsion of the English.-The duke of Burgundy, who had been appointed regent under Henry VI. by Bedford, felt a terrible responsibility weighing upon him. He became reconciled to Charles, who epared no sacrifice to win the support of so powerful a subject. The amplest possible amends were made for the murder of the late duke. The towns beyond the Somme were ceded to Burgundy, and the reigning duke was exempted from all homage towards the king of France. Such was the famous treaty of Arras, which restored to Charles his throne, and deprived the English of all hopes of retaining their conquests in the kingdom. Paris shook off the English yoke, and Charles VII. entered his capital, after twenty years' exclusion from it, in November, 1437. Thenceforward the war lost its serious character. Charles was gradually established on his throne, and the struggle between the two nations was feebly carried on, broken merely by a few sieges and enterprises, mostly to the disadvantage of the English.

Whilst the king, who was resuming his power gradually, exerted it in ordonnances, the nobility, or rather the princes of the blood, began to plot against the monarch. The king took into his pay the remains of the free companies, and converted them from banditti into regular soldiers, so that the unruly barons had less chance than formerly of disturbing the public peace, and the people more chance of enjoying the fruits of their industry. The nobles threw themselves into several places, and commenced that odious disturbance called the Praguerie, which might have raised anew the hopes of the English, if division had not thrown itself in their ranks after victory had abandoned them. Charles VII. pursued the rebels into Champagne, seized upon their castles, and caused the bastard of Bourbon, one of the most active fomentors of the treason, to be sewn up in a sack and drowned. The dauphin, who had at first joined them, rendered France the service of leading against the Swiss cantons the turbulent bands of adventurers who pillaged the country and starved the towns; sixteen hundred gallant Swiss killed upwards of ten thousand of them at the battle of St. Jacques.

Meanwhile hostilities with England were suspended. The English party was disorganised. Suffolk wished to have the support of France against the duke of Gloucester, who desired a continuance of the war. The marriage of Henry VI. with the beautiful Margaret of Anjou, whom he took without dowry, led to hopes of an approaching peace; nevertheless, the war lasted five years longer. Dunois invaded Normandy, afterwards Guienne; most of the great towns surrendered, Bordeaux holding out the longest.

The entire kingdom was now delivered from the presence of foreign

armies. The town of Calais remained to the English, the only fruit of so much blood spilt and so many victories achieved. Charles VII. did not even attempt to take it from them. According to the treaty of Arras, he could not have retaken it except to give it to the duke of Burgundy. The latter, uniting under his sway French provinces and the entire of the low countries, was henceforth the real rival of the king of France.

The last years of Charles were embittered by the conduct of his eldest son and successor, Louis XI. The dauphin had married against his father's wishes and command, and was summoned to court to answer for his conduct; but after attempting a rebellion he fled to Philip the Good in Burgundy, where he recompensed the hospitality with which he was received by setting the duke at variance with his son. The mistress of Charles, Agnes Sorel, enjoys the reputation of having animated the indolent king to successful exertions against the English; she died (1450), as rumour went, of poison administered by the dauphin, and the king himself, full of dread, refused to touch food lest it should have been tainted by the same deadly arts: he died of starvation (1461). Possessed of excellent abilities and a good heart, Charles occasionally acted with vigour, but he commonly suffered indolence and love of pleasure to stifle all his better qualities.

VII. DECLINE OF THE GREAT FEUDAL HOUSES

SECTION I.-LOUIS XI.

State of France on the Accession of Louis XI., surnamed the Nero of France. The work of Philip the Fair was not yet completed. The feudal system, of which the legists had attacked the principles, still maintained itself through the wealth of the great feudatories. Since the war with the English it seemed to have resumed its former sway. The kingdom was composed of twenty-seven provinces, twelve of which remained in the possession of dukes and counts, mostly related in some degree to the king, and who had not suffered themselves to be deprived of any of the rights belonging to the crown, and scarcely of that of making war. The dukes of Orleans and Alençon, the counts of Foix, Armagnac, and Comminges, those of whom the king was at once the sovereign and the suzerain, had themselves profited by the anarchy to recover their independence. They were kings in their own territories, and recognised no law either human or divine. The count of Armagnac styled himself count by the grace of God. Above these proud barons, were the houses of Brittany, Burgundy, and Anjou, which vied with the royal house in splendour and power. The duke of Brittany almost regarded himself as a stranger to France. The duke of Anjou possessed Anjou, Provence, Maine, and Lorraine, thus surrounding on all sides the king's dominions. Aз for the duke of Burgundy, he was the real chief of feudalism. He possessed a vast kingdom covered with opulent towns and strong castles. The elements of which this great power was composed were, in truth, too jarring not to become disunited ere long.

In the general dismay the hopes of the people were turned towards the king. The king, in fact, repressed the disorders of the troops of banditti which infested the roads and levied contributions upon the peasants, he restrained the feudal courts of judicature, leaned for support upon the towns, and knew on occasion to show that no rank was placed above the law. Louis XI., moreover, did not seem disposed to harass the country by fresh wars, preferring negotiation to combat. He dressed himself meanly, and surrounded himself with persons of low extraction. He made the barber Olivier gentleman of his chamber, and Tristan l'Ermite he called his crony. He thus gained the love of the burgesses, as well as the hatred of the nobles, and was enabled, not without much difficulty, however, to raise to five millions the imposts which under his father's reign did not amount to two millions.

As soon as he found himself on the throne of Charles VII., whose days he had shortened by his intrigues, he no longer hid his impatience to humble the aristocracy. He dismissed his father's ministers; he renewed

the alliance which Charles VII. had contracted with the citizens of Liege, the implacable enemies of the dukes of Burgundy; he deprived the duke of Bourbon of the government of Guienne, the duke of Brittany of his high jurisdiction over the bishops, and endeavoured to deprive him of his regal rights. But it was, above all, against the duke of Burgundy that he directed his encroachments; he endeavoured to establish a salt tax in his states, took from him the towns on the Somme, and deprived of the lieutenancy of Normandy his son, the count de Charolais, afterwards so celebrated under the name of Charles the Bold. Francis Sforza had despoiled the house of Orleans of the duchy of Milan, and aided in driving that of Anjou from the kingdom of Naples. In return, Louis recognised Sforza as duke of Milan, gave him up Savona and Genoa, and entered into a treaty offensive and defensive with him. The inferior order of nobility was not spared; through the repeal of the pragmatic sanction, it had lost the influence and profits of its right of appointing to benefices; they were even deprived of the right of chase, and those who infringed upon this law, Louis XI. caused their ears to be cut off.

League of the Public Good.-Efforts of the King against the Nobles.— At the funeral of Charles VII., Dunois had said to the assembled nobles: Let every one think of looking after himself; and a general understanding to unite against the common enemy was come to. The count of Charolais, the duke of Brittany, the duke John of Calabria, the count of Armagnac, the dukes of Bourbon and Nemours, five hundred princes, knights, and esquires entered into a vast plot, which they called the " League of the Public Good." Proclamations were scattered, addressed to the people, complaining of the tyranny and faults of the government, and declaring that the nobles had taken up arms "solely for the public good." To this almost universal coalition of the nobility, the king endeavoured to oppose the towns. He abolished nearly all the taxes, organised a council of burgesses, and of members of the parliament and of the university, and to flatter the Parisians, confided the queen to their keeping.

The duke of Bourbon gave the first signal of rebellion (1465): the king crushed him, took from him the Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and signed with him and the duke of Nemours the treaty of Riom, which was not observed. There was no cohesion in the attack of the confederates. The duke of Brittany only joined the principal army after the battle of Monthléry, which remained undecided. On this the king entered upon insidious negotiations, concluded the treaty of Conflans with Charolais, and the treaty of Saint Maur with the princes. He ceded everything they asked for: to his brother Normandy, which of itself yielded a third of the king's revenue; to the count Charolais the towns on the Somme; to all the others strongholds, seigniories, pensions, and ready money. It was a pillage of royalty and the kingdom.

But the king evaded and violated the treaties. He took advantage of a rebellion in Liege and Dinant to take back Normandy, caused this province to be declared inseparable from the crown by the states-general; and, threatening the duke of Brittany in his capital with an army f forty thousand men, compelled him to abandon the alliance of Burgundy and England. The league had been formed anew. Louis XI. went himself to Péronne to see the duke of Burgundy, and to endeavour to win him But he had hardly arrived there when tidings arrived that another

over.

rebellion had broken out in Liege; the duke held his enemy in his power, and was averse to sparing him. He, nevertheless, contented himself with keeping him a prisoner, and made him restore to him the full possession of the territories which, by the treaty of Conflans, he had only held by precarious tenure, and finally required that Louis XI. should accompany him to the siege of Liege, to stifle in the blood of the inhabitants a rebellion which he himself had stirred up. Later, the king did not fail to cause the states to annul that to which he had sworn at Péronne (1468). Nevertheless, he had been defeated a second time. The power of his enemies seemed to have grown with all the efforts he had made to crush it. Such was the grandeur of the duke of Burgundy, that he received ambassadors from all Christendom, and that one of the electors offered him the imperial crown. All that the king had in his favour was, that the people, cruelly disabused about the results of the league, stood in need more than ever of peace. The nobles once more gave up France to the foreigner. They summoned the king of Arragon, Juan II., who demanded back Roussillon, and the king of England, Edward IV., brother-in-law of the duke of Burgundy, who, as usual, claimed back "his kingdom of France." Louis either extricated himself, or was extricated, from all difficulties respecting his brother, by the death of that prince, which took place suddenly and opportunely. A poisoned peach, which was presented to him, and of which he himself and his mistress partook, occasioned the death of both. After the death of the duke of Guienne, Louis harassed, combated, and won over the confederates one after the other, repulsed Juan from Roussilon, and profited by the truce of Senlis to carry on secretly, by means of the poniard and poison, a war of extermination against his enemies. When Edward IV., who had been induced to invade France by the duke of Burgundy, landed, the duke, instead of joining him, kept his troops employed in the conquest of Lorraine. Edward, who loved pleasure even more than glory, was bought off by Louis, who permitted him to keep his kingdom of France, on condition that he returned immediately to England (1475).

This treaty, concluded at Péquigny, decided the duke of Burgundy to sign a truce. The duke of Brittany, on his side, was likewise brought to treat, and the league, re-formed for the fourth time, was definitively dissolved.

War of the Duke of Burgundy against the Swiss.-Louis XI. and Charles the Bold had mutually given up their allies to each other; Charles promised to abandon the king of Arragon, and delivered the constable St. Pol to the king, who caused him to be tried before his parliament, and afterwards beheaded in the Place de Grève. On the other hand, Louis gave up to the ambition of the duke of Normandy, the Alsatians, the Swiss, and the young duke of Lorraine. This infamous treaty proved the ruin of Charles the Bold. He had conceived the design of re-establishing the ancient kingdom of Burgundy on a large scale. He had entered Lorraine, made himself master of Nancy, and put the young duke to flight. All the princes of the empire rose and collected an army of one hundred thousand men. The Swiss united in league with the Austrians, their old enemies occupied Vaud, which belonged to one of the allies of Charles, and defeated the duke of Burgundy's troops at Héricourt.