English disasters and loss of Paris—Prolongation of war—France exhausted and demoralised—Necessity of reform—Ordinance of 1439—The Praguerie —Creation of a standing army—Peace party in England—-Henry VI. marries Margaret of Anjou—Renewal of war—Conquest of Normandy and Guienne—Last years of Charles VII.—Accession of Louis XI.—His character and early actions—League of the Public Weal—Treaty of Conflans—Charles the Bold and Liége—Louis recovers Normandy—Interview at Péronne—Charles of France receives Guienne—Relations of France and Burgundy with England—Renewal of war between Louis and Charles—Death of the Duke of Guienne—Charles’s acquisitions in Germany—Fate of St. Pol—War with the Swiss and death of Charles the Bold—Mary of Burgundy marries Maximilian—Treaty of Arras—Successes of Louis XI.—Regency of Anne of Beaujeu—Charles VIII. marries Anne of Brittany—Question of Naples.
The death of Bedford and the treaty of Arras were events of decisive importance. The English power in northern |English disasters in 1435-6.| France had rested upon the Burgundian alliance, which was now irretrievably lost. Philip, it is true, had not promised active aid to Charles VII., and probably intended to observe a profitable neutrality. But the English were too indignant at his desertion to allow this. They insulted his envoys, maltreated his subjects who were resident in England, and set themselves to inflict all the damage they could upon Flemish trade. The result was that not only was Philip forced into hostilities with his late allies, but the Flemish citizens, hitherto the strongest link between him and England, urged on the war and offered to take the whole burden of it upon themselves. The rupture with Burgundy altered both the balance of military force and the sentiments of the population in the northern provinces. A rising took place in Normandy, and even Harfleur, the first conquest of Henry V., opened its gates to French troops. Many of the strong places in the Ile de France were held by Burgundian commanders, and they followed their duke’s example in going over to Charles VII. In 1436 the constable Richemont was strong enough to attack Paris. The citizens had been partisans of Burgundy rather than of England; they had been alienated by recent measures of repression; and the French now commanded the water-ways by which the normal supplies of food reached the capital. The fear of famine impelled the |Loss of Paris.| citizens to a course which they were eager to adopt upon other grounds. One of the gates was opened to the constable, and the populace rose with shouts of ‘Peace! The king and the duke of Burgundy!’ The English garrison, after taking refuge in the Bastille, was allowed to depart upon honourable terms. The parliament and the other sovereign courts returned to their old abodes, and Paris became once more the capital of France.
The fall of Paris seemed to herald the immediate collapse of the English dominion in France. Yet the general expectation was disappointed, and the war went on for another seventeen years. A number of causes combined to retard the progress of the French arms. The assistance rendered by the duke of Burgundy proved far less efficient than had been anticipated. In the first heat of resentment at the treatment he received from the English, Philip vowed a striking revenge, and in 1436 he advanced with a large force to the siege of Calais. But his troops were mostly Flemings, who had never been very skilful in aggressive warfare, and had lost most of their military aptitudes during the comparative peace which they had enjoyed under Burgundian rule. The siege was abandoned in disorder even before the arrival of Gloucester with a relieving force. Philip was deeply chagrined at this humiliating failure, and a quarrel with the commune of Bruges diverted his attention from the war and induced him in 1439 to conclude a truce for the Netherlands with the English. Even more serious than the loss of such a powerful ally was the exhaustion and demoralisation of France. For nearly thirty years the country had been the scene of a desolating war which combined the worst horrors of civil strife and foreign invasion, and added to them some evils which were peculiar to itself. The most efficient military force on the French side was furnished by the companies of adventurers which had been originally introduced by Armagnac. The employment of these men proved a curse to France. They recognised no authority except that of their own commanders, and their loyalty to them was only purchased by the plunder which they were allowed to extort with impartial greed from friend and foe. The horrible tortures which they inflicted in order to compel the hapless peasants to disclose their savings, are among the most revolting incidents of a period in which horrors are the rule rather than the exception. The significant name of écorcheurs or flayers, applied to them by their victims, has become almost a technical term. The country was depopulated as well as despoiled, and the provinces in English occupation were the worst sufferers. Financial difficulties on both sides were a prominent cause of the prolongation of the war. Military operations on a large scale were impossible. So-called battles were mere skirmishes. A force of 2000 men was an army. Isolated leaders struck a blow here, or captured a town there, merely to keep their soldiers employed and to obtain booty, but not with the object of gaining any decisive advantage. To many of these leaders the termination of the war meant ruin and effacement, a result which they were by no means eager to hasten.
In order to equip France for the final effort that was needed to expel the foreign conqueror from her soil, it was necessary to undertake those administrative reforms which constitute the real glory of the reign of Charles VII. |Ministers of Charles VII.| Charles is known in history by the name of ‘le bien servi,’ and it is probably to the ministers rather than to the king that the credit of the internal progress of France is due. Richemont and Dunois carried out the arduous task of transforming the free companies into a disciplined force under royal control. The two brothers, Gaspard and Jean Bureau, improved the French artillery till it became the best in Europe, a pre-eminence which it retained for the rest of the century. But the most famous adviser of Charles was the merchant of Bourges, Jacques Cœur. He owed his influence to the great wealth which he acquired by trade with the Levant. Hitherto the cities of Italy and the Catalans had been without serious rivals in the Mediterranean. Jacques Cœur brought Marseilles into competition with Venice, Genoa, and Barcelona. His loans to the monarchy enabled Charles VII. to carry on the war when the exhaustion of the country made it almost impossible to fill the exchequer by means of taxation. Charles rewarded him with the office of argentier, or treasurer of the royal household. In this capacity he took an active part in reforming the financial administration, and especially in restoring the currency which had been ruinously debased during the recent disorders.
By far the most important single measure of the reign was the Ordonnance sur la Gendarmerie, published by the States-general at Orleans in 1439. The preamble recites |Ordinance of 1439.| that it is made ‘to remedy and put an end to the great excesses and robberies committed by the gens de guerre, who have long lived and do now live upon the people without order or justice.’ In the future no one is to raise a company without royal licence, and all captains are to be nominated by the king, who is to fix the number and arms of their soldiers. Pillage is expressly forbidden, and jurisdiction over the troops is placed in the hands of royal judges. For the payment of the troops an important financial innovation is made. The nobles are forbidden to impose a taille or tallage on their domain, and the taille is to be a national tax paid to the king. Thus Charles VII. received a revenue of 1,800,000 livres. There was nothing in the ordinance to make this tax permanent, or to give to the king any power of arbitrarily fixing the amount of the taille; but the permanence of the taille was held to be involved in the permanence of the military force which it was granted to support. And the successors of Charles VII. held that the right to levy the taille without consent gave them also the right to increase it without asking for any fresh grant. The acquiescence of the French people was due to the sufferings they had gone through. Worn out by the prolonged war and by the terrible exactions of the free companies, they were eager to strengthen the hands of the monarchy to which alone they could look for a restoration of peace and order. The absolute control of the national force and the national revenue, which the action of the States-general of Orleans allowed the crown to assume, enabled the monarchy to erect a despotism in France. Englishmen may hold that orderly government and national independence were dearly purchased by the sacrifice of all securities for constitutional liberty, but it is at least probable that if they had ever found themselves in such an evil plight they would have concluded the same bargain on the same terms.
But though the mass of the people were ready to welcome any addition to the royal power, the French nobles were sufficiently keen-sighted to perceive the dangers |The Praguerie.| which it involved to their hereditary privileges. The ordinance of 1439 expressly deprived them of three valued rights: the power of taxing their own domain, the maintenance of troops under their own authority, and the carrying on of private war, which was enumerated among the causes of disorder which must be suppressed by the royal troops. It was necessary to strike at once before the monarchy became too strong. In 1440 a formidable conspiracy was formed under the leadership of the dukes of Bourbon and Alençon. Nearly all the great nobles of France were concerned in it, except the duke of Burgundy, who was occupied with his own affairs, and the two brothers-in-law of the king, Réné le Bon and Charles of Maine. Even Dunois allowed himself to be seduced from the royal cause by the desire to uphold the interests of his class. La Tremouille emerged from his obscurity to seize a last opportunity of injuring the country and overthrowing the hated constable. In the very forefront of the conspirators was the dauphin, Louis, who had quarrelled with his father on the ground that his mother was insulted by the ostentatious pomp of Agnes Sorel, and whose restless ambition demanded a share in the government. Like many another heir to a throne, Louis found himself as prince allied with a cause of which as king he became the strenuous opponent. The ‘Praguerie,’as the rising was called, in allusion to the recent disturbances in Bohemia, seemed at first sight to be irresistible, especially as the captains of the companies joined in the movement. But the king showed unexpected energy and decision; the people rallied to his side, and the selfish coalition against national interests broke to pieces. Many of the leaders escaped punishment by betraying their associates, and Louis was banished to his province of Dauphiné.
The suppression of the Praguerie enabled the government to take the necessary steps for carrying out the ordinance of 1439. By 1445 fifteen companies had been |Creation of a standing army.| created, each under a captain selected by the king. A company contained a hundred lances, and a lance implied six persons, viz., the man-at-arms, his page, three archers, and a coutillier, a soldier armed with a coutil or dagger worn at the side. Thus the total number of the gens d’ordonnance, as they were called, was nine thousand. Each captain on appointment had to take the following oath: ‘I promise and swear by God and Our Lady that I will maintain justice—that I will allow no pillage—that I will unsparingly punish all those under my charge who are guilty of such offence, and that I will make reparation for the injuries that come to my knowledge.’ The gens d’ordonnance were a cavalry force, and three years later an ordinance of 1448 instituted a body of infantry, the francs archiers. Each parish was to equip at the common expense a single archer. During peace the cost of his maintenance was borne by the parish, but when he was on service he was to receive pay from the crown. They were called ‘free’ archers because they were exempt from the taille and other obligations. Besides these troops, the king had his Scottish Guard, which had grown up during the intimate connection with Scotland in the early years of the reign and received its final organisation in 1445. There was also an efficient body of artillerymen and engineers, the creation of the brothers Bureau. That these military reforms were admirably suited to their purpose is proved both by the complete cessation of complaints about military outrages, and by the extraordinarily rapid successes of the French troops when active hostilities were resumed.
While France was occupied with these reforms and with the ecclesiastical disputes connected with the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (see p. 237), England in |Parties in England.| her turn was becoming more and more involved in those internal dissensions which developed into the Wars of the Roses. The personal quarrel between Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort proved the origin of a lasting party struggle. After the treaty of Arras, Beaufort and his supporters had seen clearly that the conquest of France was impossible and had urged the conclusion of peace as the only means of preserving a part of the provinces acquired by Henry V. and Bedford. On the other hand, Gloucester, backed by the unreasoning sentiment of the mob, had urged the disgrace of surrender and the necessity of a dogged prosecution of the war. The strife of parties had materially contributed to relax the efforts of England in the languid warfare that went on from 1436 to 1444. In 1441 the peace party had secured the release of Charles of Orleans, who had been a prisoner since the battle of Agincourt and had found solace during his captivity in the composition of poems which have given him an honourable place in literary history. Three years later the Duke of Suffolk, who was gradually superseding the aged cardinal in the leadership of the party, succeeded in arranging a truce for twenty-two months and in negotiating a marriage between Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, a daughter of Réné le Bon and a niece of Charles VII.’s wife. The marriage was solemnised in 1445, but it was extremely unpopular in England. Not only did Margaret bring no dowry, but it was part of the bargain that Anjou and Maine should be handed over to her uncle, Charles of Maine. Anjou had never been thoroughly conquered, but Maine had long been in English hands and they still had a garrison in its capital, Le Mans. Dreading the outbreak of popular fury, Suffolk did all in his power to keep the agreement secret and to postpone its execution. But in 1448, after several prolongations of the truce, the patience of the French was exhausted, and a small force marched to Le Mans and compelled the withdrawal |Renewal of the war, 1449.| of the garrison and the evacuation of the whole province. The truce was now extended for another two years, but no permanent treaty could be arranged, and a renewal of hostilities was sooner or later inevitable. France had by this time completed the work of internal reorganisation, while England was hopelessly unprepared and distracted by factious disputes. Under these circumstances it was madness for England to provoke a quarrel. But Suffolk and the Beauforts were conscious that the surrender of Maine had alienated public opinion, and hoped by a display of vigour to disarm opposition. The garrison of Le Mans had been quartered on the border of Normandy and Brittany. On March 24, 1449, while the truce was still in force, these troops attacked and took the Breton town of Fougères. The act was as ill-timed |Conquest of the English provinces.| as it was treacherous. Not only did it give Charles VII. a pretext for renewing the war, but it alienated the young Francis I. of Brittany, who had hitherto maintained an attitude of friendly neutrality. The duke appealed for aid to his suzerain, and Charles VII. despatched his army to invade Normandy. The campaign was little more than a triumphal progress for the French troops. Within two months more than twenty towns were taken. When Rouen was besieged, the citizens rose and shut up the garrison in the citadel, where Edmund Beaufort, who commanded, had to surrender (October 19, 1449). By the end of the year the English had lost the whole of Normandy except a few places on the coast, which were all taken in the course of 1450. In England these sudden and unexpected reverses excited a storm of indignation. Adam de Moleyns, bishop of Chichester, was assassinated at Portsmouth. Suffolk was impeached, exiled by the king, and murdered at sea. The rising of Jack Cade was only a prominent symptom of the prevalent discontent. The duke of York came over from Ireland, and civil war was on the verge of breaking out. But domestic disturbances, however justified by previous misgovernment, were ill calculated to assist the defence of the French provinces. From Normandy the French turned their attention to Guienne, and the campaign in the south was as rapid and successful as that in the north. On August 26, 1451, Bayonne surrendered, and the English held nothing in France except Calais and the adjacent forts of Guines and Ham. It is true that the long commercial intercourse with England and the recollection of the lenity of English rule as compared with that of Charles VII. led to a rising in Bordeaux in 1452, and an English force under the veteran Talbot was sent to take advantage of the opportunity. But Talbot was defeated and slain at the battle of Castillon (July 17, 1453), and Bordeaux was soon afterwards compelled to capitulate.
In spite of the glory reflected upon Charles VII. by the restoration of unity, independence, and comparative order to his kingdom, his later years were the reverse of happy. The gloomy suspicion which he had |Later years of Charles VII.| contracted in his troubled youth became a settled habit as he grew old. He shut himself up from the eyes of his subjects with the obscure mistresses who became his companions after the death of Agnes Sorel in 1450. To his loyal minister, Jacques Cœur, he showed the same cynical ingratitude as he had formerly displayed to Joan of Arc. There were plenty of courtiers who were jealous of the influence of the merchant whose wealth made the phrase ‘rich as Jacques Cœur’ almost a proverbial expression. All sorts of charges, ranging from malversation to the poisoning of Agnes Sorel, were trumped up to procure his ruin. His property was confiscated, and after a trial in which the evidence was ludicrously unconvincing, the sentence of death was commuted by royal clemency to perpetual imprisonment. From his prison he escaped to Italy, and was appointed by Nicolas V. commander of the papal galleys in the projected war against the Turks. But he died in 1456 before he had any opportunity of winning distinction in this novel capacity.
By far the greatest trouble of Charles VII. in the later part of his reign arose out of his quarrel with his elder son Louis. After the suppression of the Praguerie a temporary |Quarrel with the dauphin.| reconciliation took place, and the dauphin returned to court. But Charles was intensely suspicious of his son, and in 1446 the alleged discovery of a new conspiracy induced him to banish Louis once more to Dauphiné. From this time the quarrel became irreconcilable, and father and son never met again. For the next ten years Louis set himself to rule his appanage as if it were an independent principality. He erected a parliament of his own at Grenoble and a university at Valence. His court became the refuge of all malcontents against the royal government. To strengthen himself against his father he concluded a close alliance with the duke of Savoy, and married his daughter Charlotte. So notorious was the quarrel that the Pope and the kings of Aragon and Castile proffered their mediation, but in vain. At last, in 1456, Charles despatched Dammartin with an army to compel the submission of Dauphiné. Louis had no adequate military force of his own, his father-in-law declined to run the risk of assisting him, and he fled to Franche-Comté and threw himself upon the protection of the duke of Burgundy. Philip received him with great pomp in Brabant, and assigned to him a residence at Genappe, where he remained for the next five years.
Since the treaty of Arras and the futile siege of Calais, Philip the Good had taken little part in the affairs of France. He had allowed the Praguerie to be put down, |Relations with Burgundy.| and the English to be expelled from France, without stirring to the aid of either, although the aggrandisement of the French monarchy was obviously dangerous to himself. His absorbing interest during these years was the government and extension of the heterogeneous dominions which had come under his rule. The Flemish citizens found it difficult to defend their liberties against a ruler who could employ against them the resources of so many other provinces. A rising in Bruges in 1437 was suppressed with great severity. In 1448 a more serious rebellion broke out in Ghent, and the citizens appealed for aid to Charles VII. But the French king was prevented from interfering by the renewal of the English war, and the Gantois were left unaided to conduct a heroic resistance against overwhelming odds. It was not till 1453 that a crushing defeat at the battle of Gavre compelled them to submit, and even then the duke granted fairly moderate terms to such formidable opponents. This victory was followed by the acquisition of Luxemburg, which Philip finally acquired on the death of his aunt Elizabeth, in opposition to the strong legal claims of Ladislas Postumus, whose mother was a daughter of the emperor Sigismund. In spite of the extent and wealth of his dominions, Philip was conscious of two serious elements of weakness. There was no social or political unity between the various provinces, which were held together only by subjection to a common ruler. And, geographically, they were split into two distinct units. Between the Netherlands and the two Burgundies lay the provinces of Champagne and Lorraine, over which the duke had no legal authority. He could not travel from his northern capital at Brussels to his southern residence at Dijon without having to pass through foreign and possibly hostile territories.
Charles VII. was fully conscious of the danger involved to the French monarchy in the erection of a practically independent state on the eastern and north-eastern frontiers of France. His suzerainty over the French fiefs of Philip was suspended during the latter’s lifetime by the treaty of Arras, and even when it should be revived by his own death or that of the duke, it would be of little use against a vassal who was strong enough to defy his overlord. The most pressing danger was the occupation by Philip of the strongest places in Picardy, which brought him into dangerous proximity to Paris. Twice Charles endeavoured to exercise the power of redeeming the towns on the Somme which had been reserved in the treaty of Arras, but both times he had to put up with a rebuff. An open struggle between France and the Burgundian power was, sooner or later, inevitable, but Charles was too weary of warfare to allow it to break out during his reign. Even when the duke gave such an ostentatious welcome to the rebellious dauphin, the king refused to depart from his policy of peace. But he showed a grim sense of humour when he heard of the reception of his restless and ambitious son in Brussels. Philip, he said, ‘is nourishing the fox who will one day devour his chickens.’
The dauphin was still at Genappe when the news reached him that his father had died on July 22, 1461. It was said that Charles was so terrified of being poisoned in |Accession of Louis XI.| his food that he starved himself to death; and it is quite possible that his suspicious timidity was a trait of insanity inherited from the unfortunate Charles VI. Louis lost no time in setting out to take possession of his kingdom, and he was accompanied by his Burgundian host and champion. At the coronation ceremony at Rheims, and in the formal entry into Paris, Philip played the most prominent part. It is true that, in accordance with the treaty of Arras, he did homage to the new king for his French fiefs, but under the circumstances the homage seemed almost ironical. In the eyes of the people the duke was the powerful patron and protector, while his nominal suzerain appeared as his grateful dependant. Louis was still looked upon as the leader of the Praguerie, as the rebel lord of Dauphiné, as the fugitive guest in the dominions of the duke of Burgundy; and his first acts seemed to accord with the principles which had guided his conduct in the past. He gave the duchy of Berri as an appanage to his younger brother Charles. To Philip’s son and heir, Charles of Charolais, he granted the government of the all-important province of Normandy. The duke of Brittany received the government of the district between the Lower Seine and the Loire. The faithful servants of his father, such as Dunois and Dammartin, were dismissed, and the latter was imprisoned. The offices thus left vacant were conferred upon men who had supported the dauphin against the late king. It seemed as if the feudal nobles of France had at last found a king who would govern in their interests rather than in those of the crown. The history of the reign is the record of their bitter disappointment.
Louis XI. is perhaps the most familiar figure in the history of the fifteenth century. His character has been painted for all time by Philippe de Commines; and his portrait has been described for English readers by Sir Walter Scott. He is the model prince of the new type, the astute pupil of that |Character and policy of Louis XI.| Italian statecraft which Machiavelli drew up in a systematic treatise. He was, according to Chastellain, ‘the universal spider’; his intrigues formed a vast web with himself at the centre. No consideration of morality, pride, or mercy was allowed to interfere with the attainment of his ends. His industry was unceasing, and he had a wonderful insight into the weaker side of human nature. ‘No one ever took more trouble to gain over a man who might do him either service or injury.’ His one weakness was a caustic tongue, and he acknowledged that his indulgence of this unruly member frequently brought him into scrapes. He was naturally suspicious and mistrustful; he would listen to advice, but follow his own counsel; his ministers must be his tools; independence was treachery in his eyes. He forgot nothing, and forgave nothing, but he could dissimulate even his anger. His policy has been equally clearly portrayed for us. He was, in the words of Commines, ‘the enemy of all great men, whose power might surpass his own, and he was naturally the friend of men of low estate.’ But this phrase must not be misunderstood. Louis XI. did not depress the nobles in order to exalt the lower classes or to extend their liberty. Municipal independence was as hateful to him as aristocratic privilege. Everything was to be equally subject to the crown. The great achievement of his reign was the victory of centralisation over the tendencies to disintegration in France. Individual members of the bourgeois class were his favourite instruments; for the class itself he did nothing, except so far as the people were better off under a strong monarchy than under the rule of a selfish and divided noble caste.
Commines tells us that Louis XI. was ‘the wisest king at recovering from a false step,’ and at the beginning of his reign false steps were not infrequent. In the |Louis’ first measures.| first consciousness of the authority which he had long coveted, he made many powerful enemies by his restless activity, and did not stop to consider the danger to which their combined hostility might expose him. The vengeful spirit with which he began his reign soon gave way to the resolute purpose of increasing his power. Instead of conciliating the people by the expected remission of taxes, he imposed a new charge upon the sale of wines. To the great indignation of the clergy he annulled the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which, for the last twenty-three years, had given a large measure of independence to the Gallican Church. Yet his strong sense of his own authority prevented him from restoring to the papacy its former powers, and ecclesiastical anarchy prevailed during the rest of his reign. The Roman Curia treated the Pragmatic Sanction as null and void, whereas the Parliament of Paris acted as if it were still in force, and the king regulated his conduct according to his varying need to conciliate either the papacy or his own subjects.
But the chief dissatisfaction with the rule of Louis was felt by the nobles. An edict which declared hunting to be a domain right of the crown, and prohibited |Alienation of the nobles.| private preserves as illegal, excited intense ill-feeling among men to whom the chase was not only the chief occupation of their lives, but also a badge of their rank. And the greater princes had special grievances. The duke of Bourbon was deprived of the government of Guienne which he had mis-used. With the duke of Brittany the king quarrelled on the old grounds as to the homage due for the duchy and the extent of the ducal rights to the revenue of vacant benefices. Francis II. opened negotiations with Edward IV., and tried to renew the Anglo-Burgundian alliance. On discovering these plans, Louis was compelled, in self-defence, to withdraw the government of Normandy from Charles of Charolais. At the same time, in order to render Charles’s hostility impotent, and to strengthen the crown against the prince whose patronage he resented even while he had profited by it, Louis set himself to foment domestic disturbances at the court of Burgundy. During his five years of exile he had established intimate relations with Philip the Good’s favourite ministers, Antony of Croy and his brother John of Chimay. The growing ascendency of these men and the suspicion that they were allied with and possibly in the pay of the French king, roused the animosity of Charles of Charolais, who quarrelled so fiercely with his father on the subject that he quitted Brussels and took up his residence in Holland. His absence enabled |Quarrel with Charles the Bold.| Louis, with the help of the Croy brothers, to induce Philip to allow the redemption of the Somme towns for the stipulated 400,000 crowns. Charles was more furious than ever at the curtailment of his inheritance and the strengthening of the French frontier at his expense. In 1464 events enabled him to turn the tables on his opponents. A report was spread that an emissary of Louis had plotted to kidnap Charles in Holland, and though there was probably no foundation for the story, it served to bring about a partial reconciliation between Philip and his son. Louis XI. sent an embassy to Brabant to denounce the untruth, and to demand the surrender of its author, but the Chancellor of France used such peremptory language that Philip’s pride was roused, and not only was the demand refused, but the Croy favourites, who were identified with French interests, were disgraced and expelled from the court. Philip himself was now old and feeble, and allowed the reins of government to fall into the hands of his impetuous son, whom contemporaries and posterity have agreed to call Charles the Bold or the Rash. This was a serious defeat for the plans of Louis. Charles was more of an independent prince than a vassal of France, but in both capacities it was his interest to weaken the French monarchy by encouraging the feudal independence of the great nobles. The policy which he pursued for the next few years is clearly expressed in his own phrase: ‘Instead of one king of France I would like to see six!’
In 1465 the adhesion of Burgundy emboldened the princes of the lilies to take active measures against the monarchy. The most prominent organiser of the conspiracy was the duke of Bourbon, who acted as negotiator |The war of the Public Weal, 1465.| between the two most powerful associates, the duke of Brittany and Charles the Bold. The signal for concerted action was the flight to Brittany of Charles of Berri, a youth of nineteen, who was to take the part which Louis himself had played in the Praguerie. At the court of Francis were assembled Dunois and most of the other servants of Charles VII. whom Louis had too hastily dismissed. A sort of open letter or manifesto was drafted in the name of the duke of Berri and addressed to Philip of Burgundy. In it the confederates denounced the oppressive rule of Louis as injurious to the welfare of the people; and this profession of public spirit to cover private aims was sufficient to give them the name of the ‘League of the Public Weal.’ Louis had for some time been conscious of the approach of danger, and had sought to strengthen himself against it. The duke of Savoy was his brother-in-law, and the aid of Francesco Sforza was purchased by the cession of Genoa. This, however, ruined the Angevin cause in Naples, and John of Calabria, eager for vengeance, brought Italian and Swiss mercenaries to the aid of the league. In England, which could render more efficient aid than any other power, Louis’ scheme met with failure. He had gained over Warwick, the apparently all-powerful king-maker, and hoped, with his help, to induce Edward IV. to form a marriage alliance with France. But Edward preferred the charms of Elizabeth Woodville, a niece of the count of St. Pol, who was marshalling the forces of Burgundy for an invasion of Picardy, and this marriage was a blow to the influence of Warwick and the interests of Louis. The king found himself almost isolated in France. His old province of Dauphiné was loyal to him, and his uncle, Charles of Maine, undertook to oppose the rebels on the border of Brittany. In Paris, too, he had conciliated the citizens, but most of the towns were passively waiting to see which side would prove the stronger. In these circumstances Louis felt that it would be dangerous to stake everything on the devotion of his capital, and instead of waiting to be attacked he determined to take the offensive. Some of the royal troops preferred to support their local overlords, but the great mass of them were loyal to the crown, and the possession of a trained and well-equipped force was the one advantage which the king possessed over his enemies who had to collect hasty levies from among their vassals. His first march was against the duke of Bourbon, as the most resolute and the most central of his opponents, and he had already made considerable progress when he was recalled by the news that Charles the Bold, at the head of his father’s forces, was threatening Paris. Louis hoped to enter the capital without a contest, but chance or treachery brought the two armies so close together that a collision was inevitable. The battle of Montlhéri was a confused skirmish in which no military capacity was displayed on either side. The left wing of each army routed its immediate opponents, and thus neutralised each other’s success. The Count of Charolais claimed the victory on the ground that his troops were left in occupation of the field, but he had suffered the greater losses, and the only tangible result was obtained by the king, who entered Paris two days later. Soon afterwards the arrival of Berri and Brittany from the north-west and of John of Calabria from the south-east gave the princes an apparently overwhelming superiority of numbers. But they were divided by mutual jealousies and by the selfishness of their several aims, and thus concerted action was rendered impossible. The urgent necessity of increasing his forces and of securing the valleys of the Seine, Marne, and Yonne, by which Paris was provisioned, compelled Louis to make an expedition to Normandy. By so doing he ran a very serious risk of losing Paris, but the citizens refused to listen to the specious offers of the princes, and the king returned with 12,000 troops and a supply of provisions. Following the advice of Francesco Sforza, he sought to divide his opponents by separate negotiations. But there was one demand, that he should give the government of Normandy to Charles of Berri, which he persistently refused to grant. Not only was the province one of the largest and wealthiest of the kingdom, but in the hands of his brother it would serve to connect the two most powerful malcontents, Brittany and Burgundy, and the three together could reduce Paris to such straits that they would be able to dictate terms to the king. But while this difficulty proved a stumbling-block in the way of the negotiations, the news came that Rouen had been treacherously surrendered to his opponents. Louis at once decided that, the mischief being done, it was better to put an end to the present war and to trust to future opportunities for a chance of recovering his losses. In October the treaty was drawn up |Treaty of Conflans.| at Conflans and finally signed at St. Maur des Fossés. ‘The public weal was changed into individual weal,’ and no attempt was made to carry out the professions which the princes had put forward at the outset. The Pragmatic Sanction, with regard to which the king’s conduct was most obviously indefensible, was not even mentioned. The most important provisions were the restoration of the Somme towns to Burgundy, with the provision that they should not be again redeemed till after the death of Charles and his immediate heir, and the cession of Normandy to Charles of Berri. But nearly every member of the league received some concession. The duke of Brittany was to have Montfort and Étampes, and his claims to sovereign rights, with regard to ecclesiastical revenues, were allowed. St. Pol was to be constable, John of Calabria was to have certain cessions in Lorraine and money for the maintenance of troops to support the Angevin cause, and the dispossessed officials of Charles VII. were to recover their places. The princes of the lilies seemed to have won a complete victory over the monarchy.
But Louis knew that he had only to bide his time. The very completeness of their success dissolved the bonds that held the confederates together. United they were irresistible, but if they could be severed from each other the king could hope to regain what he had lost. Even during the siege of Paris his shrewd eye had been keen to detect the nascent jealousies which were to give him the desired opportunity for revenge. Already his intrigues had provided an occupation for the forces of Burgundy. In the heart |Risings in Liége.| of the Netherlands lay the ecclesiastical principality of Liége, ruled by its bishop as a vassal of the empire. Annexation was impossible, and geography made complete independence equally out of the question. Liége was famous then as it is now for its iron manufactures, and the prosperous artisans, the most democratic community in mediæval Europe, were in constant revolt against episcopal rule. It was the policy of the Burgundian dukes to maintain a hold over the bishop by supporting him against his rebellious subjects, and the present bishop, Louis of Bourbon, was a dissolute youth wholly subservient to his uncle, Philip the Good, to whom he owed his mitre. On the other hand, the citizens looked for aid to France, which was the chief market for their produce. As soon as the war began, Louis had taken measures to organise a revolt in Liége, which broke out on the arrival of a false report that the Burgundian troops had been completely routed at Montlhéri. Dinant, the second town of the principality, incurred the special displeasure of Philip by hanging over the walls an effigy of Charles of Charolais with an inscription declaring him to be a bastard. Directly after the treaty of Conflans, Charles led his troops into Liége to put down disorder and to punish this insult. But the season was too far advanced for active operations, and after forcing upon Liége the ‘piteous peace,’ by which the cause of Dinant was abandoned and the liberties of the city curtailed, Charles dispersed his forces for the winter. In 1466 the invasion was renewed, and the aged duke, Philip, accompanied the army in person to enjoy the luxury of revenge. Dinant was taken and razed to the ground, and the men of Liége, roused by the sufferings of their neighbours to a tardy breach of the recent treaty, were compelled to renew their submission, to pay a heavy fine, and to hand over fifty leading citizens as hostages for their good faith. In spite of these reverses they retained their obstinate antipathy to external control and their confident expectation of assistance from France. In 1467 Charles the Bold, who had become duke of Burgundy by his father’s death on June 15, led what had now become an annual expedition for the attack on Liége. Under the walls of St. Tron an obstinate battle ended in a victory for the Burgundians. Liége might still have stood a siege, but the citizens, divided and cowed, agreed to capitulate. The walls were levelled to the ground, and the free constitution of the city was annulled. So impressive was Charles’s success, that Ghent, which had won increased privileges by a rising on the occasion of his ‘joyous entry,’ hastened to appease him by a timely submission. It seemed for a moment that the champion of feudal independence in France might succeed in establishing despotic government within his own territories.
While Charles was engaged in his first campaign against Liége, Louis had seized the opportunity to recover the most serious of his losses. As soon as the treaty of |Louis recovers Normandy.| Conflans had been concluded, the dukes of Berri and Brittany had set out together to take possession of Normandy. But the triumphant confederates quarrelled over the division of the spoil. The feeble Charles of Berri resented the patronage and pretensions of his ally, who claimed for his own subjects the most valuable places in the duchy. Louis took prompt advantage of the dispute. He concluded a treaty with the indignant Francis of Brittany at Caen, and despatched the royal troops to Rouen. The province was recovered as rapidly as it had been lost, and the two duke—‘wise after the event’—made up their differences and set themselves in Brittany to devise means for regaining what they had forfeited by their own folly. They made urgent appeals for aid to Edward IV. of England and to Burgundy, and Louis was fully alive to the danger of such a coalition. He had two trump cards to play in the intricate negotiations which followed. In England he had gained over the earl of Warwick, and Warwick, though his influence was waning, and he was unable to prevent the marriage of Charles the Bold with Margaret of York, was yet strong enough to avert for a time any active intervention of England in opposition to France. And Louis, as we have seen, was able to hamper the action of Burgundy by stirring up disaffection in Liége. His supreme object was to keep Burgundy and Brittany apart, and he constantly offered to abandon the cause of the Liégeois if Charles would give him a free hand in dealing with the dukes of Brittany and Berri. But Charles the Bold was too astute to approve of so one-sided a bargain, and Louis was forced to adopt another ruse. In 1468 he bribed his brother and duke Francis to conclude a separate treaty, without consulting Burgundy, and then he promptly communicated the fact of their desertion to Charles. He was confident that Charles’s indignation would impel him to punish them by a similar abandonment, and when his envoys failed to conduct the negotiations to a successful issue he determined to try his own powers of diplomacy. The experienced politicians of Europe were astounded to hear that the French king had obtained an unconditional safe-conduct from his vassal, and had ventured with a wholly inadequate escort to run the risk of a personal |Interview at Péronne.| interview at Péronne. But in his own self-confidence and his contempt for the ability of his rival, Louis had made another ‘false step.’ He had completely forgotten that his emissaries were at the moment engaged in rekindling the smouldering embers of rebellion in Liége. While he was still the duke’s guest at Péronne, the news arrived that the citizens had seized the bishop, and had barbarously murdered several members of the chapter. Charles was so furious that his more prudent advisers had great difficulty in dissuading him from laying violent hands upon his suzerain. Louis’s father had been held responsible for the murder of a duke of Burgundy; and it might well have been that the duke’s grandson would not shrink from the death of a king of France. Louis could only escape from his perilous position by agreeing to all the terms dictated by the host who was now his gaoler. He had to incur the ignominy of accompanying the Burgundian army in a fourth expedition against Liége, and to take part in the destruction of a city whose chief fault was a too implicit confidence in his own promises of support. If Charles had demanded the restoration of Normandy to the duke of Berri, Louis could hardly have refused. But the duke of Burgundy had not yet forgotten the action of Brittany earlier in the year, and he was more anxious to strengthen himself than to weaken the French king by renewing the old league against him. Instead of Normandy, he demanded the cession to the king’s brother of Champagne and Brie. Isolated from Brittany, Charles of Berri could hardly fail to become the tool of Burgundy; and, in the hands of a submissive ally, these provinces would serve to connect the Netherlands with the original Burgundian possessions. Louis perforce consented; but before he escaped from the toils, his quick mind had already discovered a means of evading the danger. At his parting interview with Charles he put forward as a casual suggestion that his brother might decline the proffered appanage, and asked what he should do. Charles replied, without thought, that in that case he must leave the king to satisfy the duke. Louis took these hasty words as authority to make an independent bargain. No sooner was he safe within his own realm than he offered his brother the duchy of Guienne. Guienne was a far more wealthy and important province than Champagne, and in itself was a greater loss to the crown; but, on the other hand, it was far removed from the two dangerous opponents of the crown—the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany—and Louis knew that his brother, by himself, was not likely to be formidable. The bribe was accepted, and thus the most important provision of the treaty of Péronne was never carried into effect.
The substitution of Guienne for Champagne freed Louis from the worst consequences of his ill-timed visit to Péronne, but it did little or nothing to remove the great standing difficulties in his way. Burgundy and Brittany were as powerful and as independent as ever. They could reckon on the support of all the feudal nobles in France who wished to limit the authority of the crown. Worst of all, they could call in the aid of the Yorkist king of England, who had recently proved his complete estrangement from France by giving his sister in marriage to Charles the Bold. It was obviously of immense importance to Louis |Relations of France and Burgundy with England.| to secure himself from danger on the side of England, and for the moment events seemed to favour his schemes. Warwick was now completely estranged from Edward IV., and Clarence, the latter’s brother, had joined the king-maker and had married his elder daughter, Isabel Neville. But Edward was still too strong for his opponents, and in 1470 Warwick and Clarence had to seek refuge in France. Louis seized the opportunity to effect a reconciliation between his cousin, Margaret of Anjou, and the man who had done more than any other to ruin the Lancastrian cause. Warwick’s second daughter, Anne, was married to the ill-fated Edward, titular prince of Wales, and the former champion of the Yorkists undertook to restore the house of Lancaster. Such an extraordinary and unexpected coalition effected an easy revolution in England. Henry VI. emerged from his prison to play, for a few more months, the part of king; and Edward IV. sought safety and assistance in the dominions of his brother-in-law. Charles the Bold found himself placed by these events in an awkward dilemma. Descended through his mother from John of Gaunt, he had long posed as a supporter of the Lancastrian cause, and had sheltered at his court many of the leading nobles of that party. Recent events had forced him into an alliance with Edward IV., but it had been dictated by policy rather than by good-will. If the restoration of Henry VI. were permanent, Charles could hope to gain such support among the Lancastrian nobles as would secure him against the French proclivities of Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. On the other hand, Edward was his wife’s brother; he was a refugee in the Burgundian province of Holland; to disown him would put an end to all hope of English assistance in the event of Edward recovering his crown. Charles escaped from the dilemma in a manner characteristic of the age. Publicly he protested his devotion to the house of Lancaster, but secretly he gave Edward sufficient assistance to enable him to return to England. The desertion of Clarence, who had no interest in restoring the Lancastrian dynasty, and the ill-concealed enmity with which the Lancastrian partisans continued to regard Warwick, gave Edward successive victories over the two sections of the hostile coalition. At Barnet, the Nevilles were crushed and Warwick slain (April 14, 1471), and three weeks later Margaret and her immediate followers met with a fatal reverse at Tewkesbury. The deaths of the prince of Wales and his father left the house of Lancaster almost extinct, except for a solitary scion of the illegitimate line of Beaufort, and the permanence of the Yorkist dynasty, with its numerous male representatives, seemed to be assured.
The decisive victory of Edward IV. was a blow to Louis XI., and it was the more serious because in 1470 he had become involved in new hostilities with Charles the Bold. |The Constable St. Pol.| This was in great measure due to the Count of St. Pol, who had been an influential personage at the French court ever since the war of the Public Weal. His position was in many ways an extraordinary one. For his hereditary estates he was a vassal of Charles the Bold, and the bulk of these estates lay in or near the province of Picardy, the very frontier where the rivalry between French and Burgundian interests was most acute. As Constable he was a servant of the French king and the chief commander of the standing forces of the crown. The incongruity of such a double relation had been clearly shown in recent events. In 1466 St. Pol had taken part as a Burgundian vassal in the campaign against Dinant and Liége. In the next year he had headed the French embassy which had suggested the abandonment of Liége by Louis as the price of Charles’s severance from Brittany. The importance and the anomaly of the constable’s position were both increased by his own marriage with Mary of Savoy, Louis XI.’s sister-in-law, and by the marriage of his niece, Elizabeth Woodville, to Edward IV. of England. It was the ambition of St. Pol to play the part of an independent potentate in the politics of Europe, and he conceived that the best way to do this was to prolong the strife between France and Burgundy. Not only did the war increase his power and importance as constable of France, but it also enabled him, through the position of his own estates, to hold a sort of balancing position between the two opponents. Both might hate and fear him, but it was in the highest degree unlikely that they would combine against him; and as both must bid for his support, it was in his power to make his own terms with either side as interest and policy should dictate. Accordingly, in 1470, he persuaded Louis to strike a blow for the recovery of the Somme towns, and in the king’s name he took possession of Amiens and St. Quentin. Charles the Bold was |Renewed war between France and Burgundy.| taken by surprise, and the want of a standing army always made it difficult for him to meet any sudden move on the part of the French king. He was naturally indignant that the blow should be dealt by one of his own vassals, and his anger was by no means diminished when he received a message from St. Pol and his associates that they would desert to his side if he would marry his daughter Mary to Charles of Guienne. Charles had no desire to give up his daughter, whose hand was a valuable asset in his diplomacy, and he had no intention of submitting to coercion in the choice of a son-in-law. His obstinacy compelled the constable and the confederate nobles to remain outwardly loyal to the king, though their real aim was to reduce the duke to such straits that he must accept their terms. An attempt on the part of Charles to recover Amiens ended in failure, and the critical struggle in England led to a truce in April 1471, by which the captured towns were left in the king’s hands. The Yorkist victory seemed likely to turn the balance in favour of Burgundy, but, fortunately for Louis, Edward IV. was resolutely hostile to the marriage project put forward by the French princes. It is true that a dauphin had been born in 1470, but he was a sickly child, and if he died the duke of Guienne would once more become heir to the throne, and the possible absorption of the vast Burgundian inheritance by the French monarchy would be ruinous to English interests and ambition. Sooner than allow such a union to be effected Edward would abandon Burgundy and join Louis. But Louis was discouraged by the failure of his English policy. He knew that he could not trust the loyalty of his instruments, and he preferred diplomacy to the renewal of a war in which there was little prospect of assured gain. So for six months he negotiated with Charles, offering to restore Amiens and St. Quentin and to abandon St. Pol to the vengeance of his injured suzerain, on condition that Charles would give up all connection with the dukes of Guienne and Brittany. At last, in the spring of 1472, Charles announced that he would accept the proffered terms. At the same time he privately assured the dukes that he only agreed to the treaty in order to recover his own possessions, and that he had no intention of deserting them. But Louis was not so easily duped. He had received intelligence that his brother was hopelessly unwell, and he adroitly postponed any final agreement until the news came that the duke of Guienne had died on May 24. Of |Death of Charles of Guienne.| course it was rumoured that so opportune an event must be due to contrivance rather than to chance, but Louis’s gains were so substantial that he could afford to disregard a suspicion which had no real foundation. Guienne reverted to the crown, troops were despatched to invade Brittany, and the treaty on which so much time had been spent was repudiated. Charles was carried away by rage and disappointment. Although the truce was not yet expired he crossed the Somme to harry the territories of the French king. Nesle was taken and sacked with a brutality unusual even in fifteenth century France, and Charles advanced to the siege of Beauvais. But his military skill was not equal to his indignation, and after a prolonged attack he was compelled to retreat and to close the campaign by a truce in November, 1472. Curiously enough this proved more durable than many formal treaties of peace. The truce was renewed from time to time, and Charles and Louis never again met in open hostility.
The death of the duke of Guienne proved far more important than his life had been. A coalition of the princes of the lilies had nearly ruined the monarchy in 1465, |Altered policy of Charles the Bold, 1472.| and the energies of Louis had been taxed ever since to prevent its revived activity. That coalition was now wholly broken up. Charles the Bold was as hostile as ever to the French king, but he was compelled to adopt different means to overthrow his rival. Hitherto his primary concern had been with the affairs of France. He had appeared to the world as the powerful vassal who headed the forces of feudalism to depress the authority of his suzerain. Henceforth he turned his chief attention from his French to his German provinces, and sought to build up a rival kingdom along the valley of the Rhine, which might surpass France in wealth and power, and might even bring to its ruler the imperial crown. The danger to Louis was perhaps as great, but it was wholly different in character, and it required wholly different expedients to cope with it. That within France the monarchy had gained a decisive victory over the forces arrayed against it was recognised by two of the most subtle intellects of the time. Philippe de Commines, the born vassal and the intimate adviser of Charles the Bold, had already made the acquaintance of Louis XI. during the troubled days at Péronne. In the autumn of 1472 he deserted his suzerain to enter the service of the king, whose character and career he has described in the most important historical work of the century. His example was followed by Odet d’Aydie, lord of Lescun, who had hitherto been the trusted guide of Charles of Guienne and Francis of Brittany. The shrewd Gascon found no difficulty in gaining the favour of his new employer, and he was rewarded with the title of count of Comminges.
Already, before 1472, Charles the Bold had taken an important step in the direction of territorial aggrandisement in Germany. Alsace and the Breisgau, representing the original Swabian possessions of the house |Acquisitions of Charles the Bold in Germany.| of Hapsburg, had been ruled since 1439 by Sigismund, son of that Frederick of Tyrol who had played a prominent part in the early stages of the Council of Constance (see p. 213). Like his ancestors, Sigismund had become involved in a quarrel with the members of the Swiss confederation, and by a treaty in 1468 he had pledged himself to pay to the League a considerable sum of money. Unable to raise the sum from his own resources, he had applied to Charles the Bold, who agreed to furnish the money if Alsace and the Breisgau were handed over to him as security. It was more than improbable that the penniless count of Tyrol would ever redeem the pledge, and Charles, treating the provinces as his own possession, intrusted the administration to Peter of Hagenbach. When, in 1472, the direct opposition to Louis XI. came to an end, Charles turned with avidity to that acquisition of lands in Germany which was to prove the cause of his ruin. Interfering as arbiter in a dispute between father and son in Gelderland, he seized the disputed duchy for himself (1473). In the same year occurred the death of Nicolas of Calabria, the grandson and last male descendant of the old Réné le Bon. The duchy of Lorraine now passed to another grandson, Réné of Vaudemont, who inherited both the Angevin and the Vaudemont claim. Lorraine was of peculiar importance to Charles the Bold, as it lay between his northern and his southern dominions. Although he had no legal claim to interfere, he seized the young duke and only released him on condition that he should cede four fortresses as a guarantee for the free passage of Burgundian forces through Lorraine. Meanwhile Charles was negotiating with the emperor Frederick III. to have his duchy of Burgundy erected into a kingdom, and he intended to claim all those territories which at one time or another had borne the name of Burgundy. Such a claim would have included Savoy, Provence, and several adjacent districts. The emperor was to be bribed by the proposal of a marriage between his son Maximilian and the heiress of these vast dominions present and prospective. An interview was arranged at Trier, and Charles brought with him the crown that was to be placed on his head. But Frederick III., always cautious and rather timid, was alarmed by the extravagant pretensions of the aspirant to royalty, and he was cognisant of a scheme to recover Alsace for his cousin Sigismund. So one night the emperor slipped away in a boat down the Moselle, leaving the duke the laughing-stock of Europe. But this humiliation failed to check Charles’s ambition, and in 1474 he embarked on a new enterprise. The archbishop of Cologne, Robert of Bavaria, deposed by his chapter and his subjects, appealed for assistance to the duke of Burgundy, who seized the opportunity to gain on the middle Rhine a preponderance similar to that which he had acquired in the bishopric of Liége. With a large army Charles entered the territories of Cologne, as the champion of the archbishop against his rebellious subjects, and laid siege to Neuss, a fortress on the Rhine held by the Landgrave of Hesse, whose brother had been appointed administrator of the diocese.
The siege of Neuss was one of the great blunders of Charles the Bold. He had never shown any skill in siege operations, and for a whole year his obstinacy |Louis XI. stirs up enemies against Charles the Bold.| kept him before a town which he was ultimately unable to reduce. During these months his enemies were able to attack with impunity the extremities of his dominions, and he lost a favourable opportunity of weakening his chief opponent Louis XI. Louis was frequently urged by his advisers to check the aggrandisement of the Burgundian duke by a renewal of direct hostilities. But he preferred the more subtle policy of allowing his rival to exhaust his strength in distant enterprises, while he secretly encouraged the resistance of the German princes and people whose interests were threatened by Charles’s progress. Among the latter were the leading members of the Swiss Confederation. They had always quarrelled with the Hapsburgs in Alsace, and they were not likely to find a less formidable neighbour in the duke of Burgundy, whose expansion southwards could hardly be effected without destroying their independence. The oppressive rule of Peter of Hagenbach, Charles’s bailiff in Alsace, was bitterly resented by all the cities and towns of Swabia, and Bern, now the leading canton of the Confederation, was prominent in demanding redress. Louis seized the opportunity to score a notable diplomatic victory. He induced Sigismund to demand the restoration of Alsace, and he set himself to reconcile the Swiss with their old opponent. On March 30, 1474, it was agreed by the Everlasting Compact that Sigismund should renounce all Hapsburg claims within the territory of the League, and that the confederates should support him in recovering the provinces which had been pledged to Charles. The chief Swabian towns furnished the necessary money to redeem the pledge, and when Charles took no notice of the demand for restitution, Alsace was invaded and Hagenbach was put to death (May 9, 1474). After this there was good reason to dread the duke’s enmity, and a strong party was formed within the League which contended that the safest method of defence was to anticipate attack. French gold was employed to aid and extend this party, which was headed by Nicolas von Diesbach of Bern, and the emperor Frederick III. was induced to use his authority to urge on a war with Burgundy. In October a treaty was concluded with France, and this was followed by a formal defiance of Charles and an invasion of Franche-Comté. Charles received the news of these events before Neuss, but he refused to abandon the siege, and the only step which he took to protect his interests in the south was to conclude a close alliance with Yolande of France, the dowager-duchess and regent of Savoy. Yolande was the sister of Louis XI., but her policy was as independent and self-seeking as that of her brother, and she did not scruple to break off the intimate alliance between Savoy and France which had resulted in her own marriage and that of Louis. She even used her influence to detach her brother-in-law, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, from France, and to arrange an alliance between Milan and Burgundy. But the first result of her action was to extend the area of Swiss aggression, and in the spring of 1475 Granson, Morat, and other Savoyard territories fell into the hands of the confederates. About the same time Réné of Lorraine was induced by the French king to repudiate his recent treaty with Charles the Bold and to invade the duchy of Luxemburg. So formidable was the coalition now formed that Louis sent to Frederick III. to propose a partition of the Burgundian territories, the French provinces to be escheated to the crown, and the German fiefs to be claimed by the emperor. But the cautious Hapsburg would not commit himself to so far-reaching a scheme, and replied that he preferred not to bargain about the bear’s skin until the beast was dead.
The position of Charles was one of great danger. He was practically at war with the Swiss, with Sigismund of Tyrol, with the duke of Lorraine, and with the forces of the empire, which he had alienated by his unjustifiable intervention in the affairs of Cologne. But Charles knew that these enemies were all set in motion by Louis XI., and that if he could ruin his arch-opponent the hostile coalition would almost certainly fall to pieces. And in 1475 he had an unequalled chance of dealing a fatal blow to the power of France. For years the duke |Edward IV. invades France, 1475.| of Brittany and other opponents of the French monarchy had been striving to bring about a renewal of the English invasion, and at last their efforts were rewarded with success. Edward IV., securely established on the English throne by the double defeat of the Nevilles and the Lancastrian nobles, determined to resume the ambitious schemes of Henry V. and to make himself king of France with the aid of Burgundy. In 1474 the terms of the treaty had been arranged with Charles, who was to receive as his reward Champagne and some smaller districts, together with complete emancipation from the suzerainty of France. In the summer of 1475 a considerable English army was transported to Calais, and Charles at last set himself free to aid his ally by retiring from Neuss, and concluding an agreement with the emperor by which the Pope was to arbitrate in the dispute about Cologne. The truce between Burgundy and France had expired on May 1, and Charles had refused all the entreaties of Louis for its prolongation. But all the hopes which Charles had based upon the intervention of England were doomed to disappointment. Edward IV. was immensely chagrined when Charles arrived alone at Calais, having sent his army from Neuss to chastise the duke of Lorraine. St. Pol, who had offered to admit the English into St. Quentin, fired upon the approaching forces from behind the closed gates. The French monarchy was infinitely stronger in 1475 than it had been in 1415, and Edward IV. was shrewd enough to see that with such support as he received from professed allies the conquest of France was impossible. Louis on his side was not slow to profit by the obvious discouragement of the invaders, and promptly opened negotiations which resulted in a personal interview at Pecquigni on the Somme. In return for a large sum of money and a promise that the dauphin should marry his daughter Elizabeth, Edward agreed to withdraw from France. Charles was furious at what he denounced as treacherous desertion, but his own conduct had been so obviously selfish that his complaints were treated as unreasonable, and he was compelled to renew his former truce with Louis XI.
The failure of the English invasion and the renewal of peaceful relations between France and Burgundy proved |Fate of St. Pol.| fatal to St. Pol, who had succeeded for five years in maintaining a practically independent position in Picardy. He had been profoundly disappointed by the termination of active hostilities in 1472, but he still trusted in his ability to play off one rival against the other, and he was confident that their mutual jealousy would never allow them to act together against him. For a time his forecast had been justified. In 1472 it had been proposed that Louis and Charles should unite to punish the constable, but the scheme had broken down, because neither would trust the other. In 1475 the proposal was renewed. St. Pol’s recent conduct, and especially his relations with Edward IV. who handed over to Louis the constable’s correspondence, had created a strong desire to punish the man who betrayed and deceived everybody in turn. Charles was to have St. Quentin, Ham, and Bohain, with all the fiefs which St. Pol held of him, on condition that he would undertake to capture the constable and either punish him within eight days or hand him over to the king. On the news of this treaty St. Pol determined to trust Charles rather than Louis, partly because he believed him to be less vindictive, and partly because after his territories were in Charles’s hands the latter had little to gain by inflicting any further penalty. Charles was besieging Nanci when his ministers sent word that the constable was in their hands. Charles was anxious to avoid any French opposition in Lorraine and he sent instructions that if Nanci held out beyond November 24, St. Pol was to be handed over to the French, but if it were taken before that date they were to keep him in their hands. Nanci did not surrender till after the time had elapsed, but Charles began to think that his order had been hasty and that St. Pol might still be useful to him in his quarrel with France. His instructions to delay the transfer, however, came too late, as the Burgundian ministers, many of whom had a personal grudge against St. Pol, had punctually obeyed the original order. Louis was not unwilling to show that neither rank, nor royal relationship, nor eminent office could save a rebel against the crown, and St. Pol, of whose treason there was ample proof, was executed in Paris on December 19, 1475.
At the end of 1475 Charles the Bold seemed to be at the height of his power. He was at peace both with the emperor and the king of France. Since the submission of Ghent he had met with no opposition from his subjects in the Netherlands. The fall of St. Pol had restored his complete ascendency in Picardy. Savoy and Milan were apparently loyal and almost submissive allies. The aged Réné of Provence, who had never loved the house of Vaudemont, expressed his willingness to disinherit his only surviving grandson in favour of the duke of Burgundy. Above all, Charles had at last succeeded in uniting the two main divisions of his realm by the conquest of Lorraine, and he determined to make Nanci the capital of the Burgundian kingdom that seemed now to be within his grasp. His one immediate task was to recover the province of Alsace, and to punish the Swiss, not only for aiding to restore Sigismund, but also for their raids upon his own territories and those of his allies. His troops were exhausted |Charles’s war with the Swiss, 1476.| by their exertions in the long siege of Neuss and the subsequent conquest of Lorraine; but his resources, both in men and money, were so infinitely superior to those of his opponents that it was hardly possible to doubt his ultimate victory. The Swiss had begun the war as the allies of the emperor and the French king, but they were now deserted by both. In February 1476 Charles crossed the Jura to drive the Swiss from the districts they had seized in Savoy. Granson, a town near the lake of Neuchâtel, which was held by the house of Orange as a fief of Savoy, was taken by the Burgundians, and the garrison was put to death. Two days later the confederates arrived, and at once began the attack. Charles ordered a portion of his army to retire to the plain where he could use his superior cavalry. But the retirement became a panic-stricken retreat, and the Swiss, pressing their advance, gained a complete and easy victory (March 2, 1476). Granson was recovered, and the Burgundian camp and artillery were the prize of the conquerors. So humiliating a disaster was the more galling to Charles that it shook the fidelity of his allies. The succession in Provence upon which he had confidently reckoned, was now transferred by Réné to the French king. Galeazzo Maria Sforza opened negotiations with Louis, and even Yolande of Savoy began to contemplate the possibility of a reconciliation with her brother. But Savoy could hardly desert Charles as long as there was a prospect of recovering the lost lands with his help; and the Burgundian power was not destroyed by a single disaster. Within a few weeks a new army had been collected at Lausanne, and Charles advanced to the siege of Morat, which the Bernese had taken from the Count of Romont, a brother of the late duke of Savoy. The Swiss hastily reassembled the troops, which had been disbanded after their recent success in spite of the warnings of Bern. On June 22, an obstinate, and for a long time, a very equal contest was fought out under the walls of Morat. At last the Swiss gained a decisive advantage by turning the flank of the Burgundian army; and the very obstinacy with which the latter fought only served to make their losses heavier. Nearly two-thirds of Charles’s forces were practically annihilated, and the final desertion of his allies, combined with the disaffection of his own subjects, rendered it hopeless to renew the struggle. Savoy made peace with the Swiss, through the mediation of France; and Granson, Morat, and other towns of Vaud became subject to the Confederation. Charles retired into gloomy solitude near Pontarlier, and it was feared that his reason would give way as he cursed the ill-fortune which had humbled so powerful a prince before a despicable foe. He was roused from his retreat by the news that Lorraine was lost to him. The young Réné had joined the Swiss in the battle of Morat, and had proceeded after the victory to raise a force with which he had recovered Nanci. Charles hurriedly collected a third army, and, in spite of the winter cold, commenced a second siege of the town which he had destined to be his capital. The scanty garrison could not long have resisted the attack, but Réné appealed for the assistance of the Swiss, and they |Death of Charles the Bold.| sent 20,000 men to raise the siege. The Italian mercenaries, in whom Charles placed great confidence, were headed by the count of Campobasso, a Neapolitan who had been driven into exile for his adhesion to the house of Anjou. Of that house Réné of Lorraine might now claim to be the lawful heir; and Campobasso was induced to desert his master in favour of the family to which his first allegiance was due. This treachery placed Charles at a fatal disadvantage, and he had to fight between the besieged and the relieving forces. But his dogged character would not allow him to retreat, and in a third contest with the despised German Confederation the great Valois duke of Burgundy found an obscure and unhonoured death (January 5, 1477).