A Troublesome Dauphin
Louis, son of Charles VII, was an unusual and troublesome dauphin. At thirteen (1436) he was forced against his will to marry Margaret, an eleven-year-old Scottish princess. He took his revenge by neglecting her and keeping many mistresses. Margaret devoted her life to poetry and found eternal rest in an early death in 1444. As she lay dying she is said to have cried: "Do not speak to me of life. Shame on this life!"
Louis rebelled against his father twice, and the second time fled to Flanders, where he waited angrily for the day he would hold power. Charles starved himself to death in 1461 and granted that wish, and for twenty-two years France bore the rule of one of its strangest and greatest kings.
The Man
Louis was now thirty-eight: thin, ugly, plain and melancholy, with distrustful eyes and a long nose. He looked like a peasant. He wore a coarse gray coat like a poor pilgrim and an old felt hat. He prayed like a saint and ruled as if he had read The Prince before Machiavelli was born. He scorned the pomp of feudalism, laughed at etiquette and tradition, questioned the legitimacy of his own kingship, and frightened the other monarchs of his day with his simplicity.
He lived in the gloomy castle of Tournelles in Paris or the palace of Plessis-lès-Tours near Tours. Although remarried, he lived like an unmarried man. He ruled all France yet was stingy and tight-fisted. He kept only the few servants and attendants who had shared his exile and ate such meals as any peasant could afford. Even so, he did not seem small. He had the full majesty of a king.
One Goal: A Unified France
He sacrificed every other quality to one resolve: to pull France out of the feudal fragmentation of its lords, give it unity of kingship and concentrated power, and lead it from the ashes and ruins of war toward new life and strength through a central government.
He pursued this goal day and night with a clear, shrewd, restless mind. Like Caesar, he counted nothing done until it was finished. Commynes says he could hardly bear peace, yet he was no more fortunate in war. He therefore preferred diplomacy, espionage and bribery to force. He won others over with encouragement and persuasion, flattery or fear, and kept a large network of spies at home and abroad. He secretly paid pensions to the ministers of Edward IV of England. He endured insults, submitted, tolerated humiliation, and waited for a chance at victory or revenge. He made great blunders but repaired them all with improvised cunning. He attended to every detail of government and forgot nothing.
Books, Stories and Cruelty
Still, he gave much time to literature and art. He loved reading, collected manuscripts, and understood the revolution that the printing press could bring to society. He enjoyed the company of learned men, especially if they were bohemians in the Parisian sense. During his time in Flanders he joined the Count of Charolais in forming a circle of scholars who seasoned their learning with entertaining tales in the manner of Boccaccio. Antoine de la Sale mentions some of these stories in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.
He was hard on the rich and indifferent to the poor. He hated the craft guilds and favored the middle class, who were his strongest support. He treated opponents of any class with total ruthlessness. After the rising at Perpignan he ordered that any exiled rebel who dared return be mutilated. In his struggle with the nobles he imprisoned some particular enemies and traitors in iron cages two and a half meters long, wide and high. These cages were the invention of the Bishop of Verdun, who was himself later held in one for fourteen years.
Piety and Superstition
At the same time Louis was deeply attached to the Church, since he needed its help against the nobles and magnates. He almost always carried a rosary and murmured the Ave Maria over and over with the fervor of a dying nun. In 1472 he introduced the Angelus, the noon recitation of the Ave Maria for the health and peace of the kingdom. He visited holy shrines, collected copies of sacred objects, bribed saints to serve him, and carried a statue of the Virgin to war for help. When he died, his own image was carved, like a saint's, on the gate of a monastery in Tours.
Building a New France
By his mistakes he created the new France. On taking the throne he found a disintegrated combination of feudal and ecclesiastical governments. From this broken structure he made a nation that was the strongest in Latin Christendom. He brought silk-weavers from Italy and miners from Germany. He repaired ports, boosted exports, protected the country's shipping, found new markets for its industries, and allied the French government with the rising bourgeoisie that controlled the country's commerce and finance.
He saw that trade, expanding within local and national borders, needed a strong centralized organization. Agriculture no longer needed feudalism to protect and run it. The peasants were slowly freeing themselves from the yoke of serfdom, which had kept farming stagnant. The days when feudal lords made their own laws, minted their own coins and ruled their estates as kings were over. By various means, fair and foul, he forced them one by one to submit. He limited their rights to trespass on peasants' property while hunting. He set up a state postal service that crossed all their domains (1464). He forbade private quarrels and demanded all the debts they had long owed past French kings.
The League of the Public Weal
They disliked him. In 1464 representatives of five hundred noble families met in Paris and formed the "League of the Public Weal," claiming to protect their privileges under the holy name of the people's welfare.
The Count of Charolais, heir to Burgundy, hoped to add northern France to his domains and joined the League. Louis's brother Charles, Duke of Berry, fled to Brittany and took command of the revolt. Enemies and armies rose against the king from all sides. If they had united, Louis would have been finished. His only hope was to break them while divided. He rode south, crossed the Allier, and forced one enemy army to surrender. Then he turned north and reached Paris just in time to block the Burgundian troops trying to enter the capital.
At the battle of Montlhéry both sides fought for victory. The Burgundians were beaten and withdrew. Louis entered Paris, and the Burgundian army and its allies came back and besieged the city. Not wanting to starve the people of Paris, Louis gave the enemies everything they demanded by the Treaty of Conflans (1465): land, money and office. Normandy went to his brother Charles. The welfare of the people was not mentioned, and heavy taxes were laid on them again to raise the money.
Revenge and Péronne
Louis waited for his chance. Soon Charles fell out with Francis, Duke of Brittany, and took him prisoner. Louis marched into Normandy and took it without bloodshed. But Francis had rightly guessed that Louis wanted Brittany too, and allied with the Duke of Charolais, now Duke Charles of Burgundy, called "the Bold," to attack the encroaching king together.
Louis used every trick of statecraft. He made a separate peace with Francis and agreed to settle his differences with Charles at a conference in Péronne. There Charles threw him in prison and forced him to give up Picardy and to share with him the treasury of Liège. At the low point of his power and reputation, Louis returned to Paris (1468). Two years later he repaid the betrayal. While Charles was busy in Guelders, Louis sent his army into Saint-Quentin, Amiens and Beauvais.
Charles tried to draw Edward IV into an alliance against Louis. But Louis, well aware of Edward's love of women, invited him to Paris to enjoy the women there. He also promised to assign Cardinal de Bourbon as the English king's royal confessor, to "willingly forgive any sin he might commit through love or womanizing." Louis then skillfully drew Charles into war with the Swiss. When Charles was killed in that war, Louis took not only Picardy but all of Burgundy (1477). He satisfied the Burgundian nobles with money and the Burgundian people by taking a Burgundian mistress.
The Barons Brought to Heel
Now he felt strong enough to go after the barons, who often took up arms against him and seldom answered his call to fight France's enemies. Many of the great men who had plotted against him in 1465 were dead or too old to act. Their successors had learned from experience to fear a king who beheaded treacherous nobles and confiscated their property, who had a great army of secret agents and ample money for buying and bribing. Louis, who preferred to waste his subjects' money rather than their lives, bought Sardinia and Roussillon from Spain.
He acquired other lands through inheritance and campaigns: Alençon and Blois by force, Provence when René was persuaded to bequeath it to the French crown, and Anjou and Maine, which were annexed shortly after. In 1483 Flanders, needing his help against the Holy Roman Empire, ceded Artois with the rich towns of Arras and Douai.
What He Left Behind
By subduing the barons, the provincial parlements and the king's legally subject districts, Louis gave France the national unity and centralized administrative power that ten years later Henry VII gave England, Ferdinand and Isabella gave Spain, and Alexander VI gave the Papal States. The result was only that one monarchy replaced many. Even so, it was great progress for the time. It strengthened internal order and external security, fixed the standards and value of the currency, shaped dialects into a language, and advanced the growth of French vernacular literature.
But the monarchy was not yet absolute. The nobles had great power, and new taxes needed the consent of the Estates-General. Nobles claimed exemption from taxes because they fought for the common good, officials because their pay was meager, and clergy because they prayed for the king's health and the country's safety. The king had to respect the opinions of the people and the customs of society. The local parlements still held that a royal edict became law in their provinces only when they accepted and registered it. Nevertheless, the road was open to Louis XIV and his claim "I am the state."
The Prisoner of Plessis
Despite these victories, Louis grew more worn in body and spirit each day. He shut himself up in Plessis-lès-Tours, afraid of being killed or poisoned. He looked at everyone with suspicion and received no visitors. He punished mistakes and incompetence cruelly, and sometimes wore clothes whose splendor was the opposite of the old coat of his early reign. He was so thin and pale that those who saw him could hardly believe he was alive. For years he suffered from hemorrhoids and occasional strokes. On August 25, 1483, another stroke left him speechless, and he died five days later.
The Verdict
His subjects were glad of his death, because his campaigns, defeats and victories had brought crushing taxes. Under his harsh rule, as France grew stronger, its people grew poorer. Still, later generations benefited greatly from what he did: the subjugation of the nobles, the reorganization of the country's finances, administration and defense, the progress of industry and trade, the spread of printing, and the formation of a new, united country.
Commynes wrote that if one counted all the days of Louis's life to find those in which his joy outweighed his pain, such happy days would be so few that they would hardly make one in twenty sad ones. He and his generation labored and sacrificed for France's future happiness and greatness.