Chapter 4
Section 4 of Europe and Renaissance and Reformation by Mary A. Hollings. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 2. France under Louis XI and Charles VIII. Part 1. By 1453, Calais was all that remained to the English of their dominions in France. The reign of Charles VII is famous for a thorough reform of his kingdom, yet the king's last years
were destined to pass in uneasy suspicion. He banished his eldest son Louis to his province of Dauphiné, which soon became a meeting place for the disloyal and discontented. The Dauphin married the Duke of Savoy's daughter and looked round for other supporters of his cause. Chief among these was his father's vassal and former foe, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. When, in 1456, the king sent an army to subdue Dauphiné, Louis took refuge at the Duke's court.
During his five-year stay he gained a knowledge of men and matters that was to prove of the greatest use in his later dealings with Burgundy. As Charles VII grimly put it, my cousin is sheltering the fox that will one day eat his chickens. This somewhat scattered flock, his territories, Philip was, in fact, busy trying to gather together. The northern group, consisting mainly of Flanders, Brabant, and Luxembourg, was separated by the independent
Duchy of Lorraine from the two Burgundies in the south. By the Treaty of Arras, 1425, certain strong towns on the Somme had been handed over to Philip on the understanding that they might be redeemed by France later. But Charles discovered before long that this was not to be in his lifetime. Meanwhile, the Croix party at the Burgundian court was friendly to France, and their influence upon Duke Philip was strong. There was a curious likeness between the two
courts at this time. In each case, there was a sovereign controlled by an unpopular favorite, with a hostile heir. Charles of Charolais, the future Charles the Bold, played the dauphin's part in Burgundy. While the arch-intriguer, the Count of St. Paul, hovered between them both, turning to his own account every possible advantage. Louis managed, however, to keep on good terms with both Burgundian parties until the news of his father's death in 1461 raised him to
the French throne, 1461 to 1483. The new reign began badly. The foundations of a strong kingship had been well and truly laid by Charles VII, but at first his son showed an almost reckless faculty for taking false steps. Fortunately, he was at the same time, as Comine said, the cleverest of kings at recovering his footing, yet a little tact would have saved him this trouble. His dismissal of his father's ministers and generals, especially Dunois, Duchâtel,
and Dommardin, though probably eventually necessary, was so hasty as to drive these important public servants to the side of the discontented nobles. The outcome of this alliance was the War of the Public Wheel in 1465. The great French nobles, the Princes of the Lilies, were of the Blood Royal, and their general aim was to make themselves as independent as possible. The most powerful leaders were the Dukes of Bourbon and Brittany and the Count of Charolais,
son of the Duke of Burgundy. Others were Charles of Berry, the king's brother, John of Calabria, brother of Margaret of Anjou, and the Count of St. Paul. Their grievances were of a personal or class nature, but these private aims were hidden under the patriotic title of the League of the Public Wheel. For instance, the king had on his accession restricted hunting rights. He had removed Bourbon and Charolais from their respective posts as governors of Guienne and
Normandy. By the help of the Croix party in Burgundy, he had persuaded Philip to let him redeem the Somme towns, with the result that the Croix were expelled from court, where Charles of Charolais became the real ruler. Louis quarreled with the Duke of Brittany about a question of homage, and the latter tried to bring into play that alliance between England and Burgundy, which had been such an important feature in the last part of the Hundred Years' War.
The kingmaker Warwick was in favor of Louis' suggestion of a French marriage alliance for Edward IV. But the English king, without consulting anyone, chose to marry Elizabeth Woodville, St. Paul's niece, and thus arose between him and Warwick, a coolness which soon became open hostility, and led England to play some part in the affairs of France and Burgundy in this reign. Meanwhile, Louis, determined to strike first at the rebels, found that most of the trained forces
responded to his call, thus giving him an advantage over the feudal levies of the enemy led by Charolais. The only engagement was an indecisive skirmish at Montlary. Louis exerted himself greatly to break up the League, whose members, recognizable by a red silk tag, numbered more than 500 lords, ladies, and knights. He won over the city of Paris by remitting taxes and inviting its representatives to his council. He set himself to defy the nobles by
redressing the special grievances of each. Their demands were set forth in the Treaty of Saint-Mar in 1465, but Louis' design was merely to satisfy each for the time being by giving largely and promising still more, commune. Nothing further was heard of the public wrongs. The public wheel became individual wheel, and the king lost no time in recovering most of what he had yielded to the princes. He stirred up an insurrection in Liège, a little state in the Netherlands, ruled by its
own bishop under the patronage of Burgundy. While Charolais was suppressing the rising, he recovered Normandy, which the treaty had obliged him to entrust to his brother. He decided to see what a personal interview would do for him with Charles the Bold, and, armed with a safe conduct, visited him at Peronne. This, the second of his false steps, nearly ended in tragedy. With the king arrived news of a renewed outbreak at Liège,
openly encouraged by the king's envoys. Charles, beside himself with rage, swore to have his sovereign's life, and it was only through a well-judged distribution of handsome sums of gold among Charles's ministers that their master was pacified. As it was, Louis had to agree to carry out the Treaty of Saint-Mar, give up Champagne to his brother instead of Normandy, and accompany Charles on a punitive expedition against Liège, so lately his ally. The town was
taken and sacked. This done, Louis, taking leave of the Duke, casually asked, Supposing my brother is discontented with Champagne, what would you like me to do? Charles replied absently, settle it between you, as long as he is satisfied. The king seized the chance to persuade his brother to accept Guillen, which, being unlike Champagne, remote from both Burgundy and Brittany, was comparatively safe in the hands of the
easily led duke. Thus Louis contrived, not only to escape from the worst scrape of his life, but in his crafty way to turn it to account. He even delayed to give up the Sum towns till his brother's death in 1471 made it safe, flatly, to refuse to fulfill his promise. For several years before that event, however, Louis's relations with Brittany, Burgundy, and England continued to be full of difficulties. Since 1466, he had been allied with Warwick, who had quarreled with
Edward IV, while the Yorkist party in England had definitely ranged itself on the side of Burgundy by the marriage of Edward's sister Margaret with Charles the Bold. Preparations were made for a war between France on the one hand, and Burgundy, Brittany, and England on the other. But at the critical moment, Edward was distracted by a Lancastrian rising in Wales, and Francis of Brittany withdrew from the alliance. Warwick played his hand so as to become indispensable
whichever party should succeed. He married his elder daughter Isabella to Clarence, Edward's brother, and with his son-in-law, defeated and took prisoner the king. But the intervention of Charles the Bold and Edward's own popularity made it necessary to release him, and Warwick and Clarence fled to France. Louis brought about a reconciliation between his cousin Queen Margaret of Anjou and the Kingmaker, which resulted in the marriage of the Prince of Wales with Anne Neville,
Warwick's younger daughter. In 1470, a rapid revolution followed in England. Henry VI found himself once more upon the throne, while Edward took refuge in Burgundy, to the great annoyance of Charles the Bold. In spite of the fact that the fugitive was his brother-in-law, Charles was fond of dwelling upon his own Lancastrian descent through his Portuguese mother, being alive to the possibility of succeeding in this way to the English throne. His solution of
the difficulty was characteristic of the time. While publicly recognizing Henry VI as king and threatening death to any of his subjects who should join Edward, he secretly gave him help to return to England. The utter overthrow of the Lancastrian cause at Barnet and Tewksbury was a blow to the hopes of Louis XI, for whom fresh trouble with Burgundy, Brittany, and Guienne had already arisen through the agency of St. Paul. This noble was at once a vassal of Burgundy
and constable or commander-in-chief of the French army. His wife was the queen's sister, and his niece married to Edward IV. Through these connections and by carefully balancing his relations with France and Burgundy, he hoped to fill a semi-royal position in Europe and was fairly safe in his intrigues, as long as France and Burgundy did not combine against him. He now persuaded Louis to seize Saint-Quentin and Amiens, hoping that the Duke would hasten to
buy the alliance of Charles of Guienne by giving him his daughter Mary in marriage. Thus he hoped to secure the Duke of Guienne's lasting support, which might enable him in future to dispense with that of France and Burgundy. To this scheme, however, Edward IV was unfriendly. Mary was the heiress of Charles the Bold, and as in the event of the death of the Dauphin, a delicate baby, the Duke of Guienne would succeed his brother as king, the result of this marriage might be the
union of Burgundy and France, which would prove a danger to English interests. He was even now ready to throw over the Burgundian alliance for one with France. But Louis preferred a truce with Burgundy to new entanglements with England, and the opportune death of the Duke of Guienne in 1472 released him from his difficulties. Guienne itself became crown property once more. Louis threw over the negotiations with Burgundy and promptly invaded Brittany. Charles made a
furious attack on the French border country, took and sacked Nell with great cruelty, lay siege to Beauvais, and tried to gain Edward IV's help. Beauvais resisted so gallantly that the Duke, realizing that it would be a long affair, and wearying of a struggle which no longer accorded with the policy shaping itself in his mind, made a truce with France, which was destined to be a lasting peace. Thus ended, in 1472, Charles's career as leader of the French
princes. His ambition now turned to building up a kingdom of Burgundy, midway between France and Germany, which would stretch from Holland to Italy and cover most of the territory once ruled by Lothar, grandson of Charles the Great. By rapid stages, Charles followed out this new path. As early as 1468, he had lent money to Sigismund of Tyrol in his difficulties with the Swiss, and had received as security of repayment Alsace and Breisgau, which he was now trying to reduce
to order under his harsh and unpopular bailiff, Hagenbach. In 1473 he bought Gelderland from its unwilling duke, between whom and his son Charles had undertaken to arbitrate in a dispute. In the same year, the death of Nicholas, son of John of Calabria, the last descendant in the male line of King René of Anjou, gave him an excuse for interfering in Lorraine, though the young René, Nicholas's sister's son, was ready and willing to defend his own claim. After Frederick
III decamped from Treve, Charles took up the cudgels on behalf of the Archbishop of Cologne against his subjects, wasting a year in besieging Neuss and arousing the displeasure of the emperor, who considered it none of his business. Meanwhile, Louis, who had been regarding these events with watchful eye, judged that the moment had come for him to set on foot an alliance between the duke's increasing foes. He reconciled Sigismund with the Swiss, the Alsatian towns found the money to repay
Charles, and Hagenbach was put to death. French gold fostered the war party among the cantons, led by Bern. Even Frederick III was brought into Louis' net, though he replied with his usual caution to a proposal of the king to share Charles's inheritance, saying that it was better to wait to divide the bear's skin till the beast was dead. Lastly, René of Lorraine invaded Luxembourg. On his side, Charles made an agreement with the regent of Savoy, Louis's own sister,
and an Italian friend of hers, who brought mercenaries to his aid, and at once Granson and Morat in her territories was overrun. But a more striking event was an alliance between the Duke and Edward IV in 1475. After some delay, Edward reached Calais, only to find Charles and a small following to receive him, for the bulk of the Duke's army, though exhausted by the siege of Noyce, had been sent off to attack Lorraine. In this quest it was successful, and Charles had
the great joy of seeing his northern and southern dominions at last united. End of Section 4
