THE VALOIS With the extinction of the direct line of the House of Capet, the crown passed to a cadet branch, the Valois. From 1328 to 1498, seven kings, the inferiors of the Capetians in commonsense and in political sagacity, with the exception of Charles V. and Louis XI., lost for France the pre-eminent position she had gained over all other states. During this period France passed through two grave crises, the Hundred Years' War which imperilled the very existence of the kingdom, and, under Louis XI., the contest with Burgundy which threatened the territorial unity of the mon archy that had been so laboriously builded amidst the ruins of feudalism. On the death of Charles the Fair, the late king's cousin, Philip of Valois became king as Philip VI. No one seri ously thought of pressing the claim of the English king, Edward III. grandson of Philip the Fair, least of all Edward himself. The Hundred Years' War which soon began was aggravated rather than caused by the existence of this English claim.
The war falls into two sections: the first from 1337 to 1378, the second from 1413 to 1453, periods separated by 35 years of mistakes and miseries. From a feudal dispute between a suzerain and his vassal it quickly developed into a great political and economic conflict. Since the time of Philip the Fair the real quarrel had turned upon the question of Flanders. Industrious, rich, jealous of their freedom, barely tolerating the yoke of their count and his suzerain, the king of France, the Flem ish communes suffered at Cassel (1325) the revenge for their vic tory at Courtrai. Moreover, Philip repaid the hospitality shown by Edward III. to his brother-in-law, Robert of Artois, with the seizure of Guienne. To attack the English in Guienne and Flan ders was to hurt their most vital interests—the cloth and wine trades. English merchants sold wool in Bruges and bought wine in Bordeaux; Edward III., therefore, forbade the exportation of wool and threatened to transfer the manufacture of cloth to England. The industrial towns of Flanders were reduced to idleness, and on the advice of Jacob van Artevelde (q.v.), a rich woollen merchant of Ghent, threw themselves into the arms of Edward III. Their final hesitations disappeared when, on the advice of Robert of Artois and Artevelde, Edward claimed the crown of France
The war opened with a French naval disaster when the French fleet, which had been neglected for years, was destroyed at the battle of Sluys (134o) . The sea was thus closed to France, but the war continued spasmodically on land. Flanders was overrun after the murder of Artevelde
. A war of succession broke out in Brittany between John de Montfort and Charles of Blois, the nephew of Philip VI. Edward naturally supported de Mont fort and war went on in Brittany. The capture of de Montfort did not end the struggle. Edward, setting out with a large army, exceptionally well provided with archers and including a small train of artillery, turned aside at the suggestion of a French exile, Harcourt, to land in the Cotentin and ravage the defenseless Nor mandy. He raided almost up to Paris itself and turned northwards to join his ships, and so avoid a pitched battle while securing his booty. Followed and overtaken at Crecy, Edward achieved a com plete victory over the French (April 26, 1346). The subsequent capture of Calais (134 7) afforded him a permanent gateway into France. These military disasters were followed by the Black Death, and Edward forebore to press his advantage, partly from prudence and partly because of the heavy cost. Before he died in 135o Philip VI. at least had the good fortune to add Montpellier and Dauphine to his domain—the future appanage of the eldest son of the French kings.
Philip's son, John the Good, has commonly been reproached for his extravagance, romantic rest lessness, brutality and recklessness. In truth, however, on ascend ing the throne, he found treason surrounding him on all sides— first Harcourt, next the constable d'Eu, and then, in his own im mediate family, Charles the Bad, of Navarre. He crushed the traitors, but in default of any sufficient revenue, was driven, like Philip IV., to abuse his right of coinage. He spent money reck lessly to win over Charles the Bad, who had betrayed him. As soon as Charles was imprisoned in Château Gaillard, his followers de serted openly to England and the war began again. Edward III. needed money as badly as John the Good. Wealthy by reason of her commerce and her industry, England could borrow from the Florentine bankers under the security of a monopoly upon wool. But in France, which was solely an agricultural country, recourse could only be made to the inadequate and dangerous expedients of confiscation, debasement of the currency, and arbitrary tax ation. Regularly levied taxes could alone fill the treasury. In Nov.
John summoned the States-General which voted him "aids" on condition that they should be levied upon all classes and that their collection and application should be regulated by definite guarantees. The principle was a good one and resulted in the setting up in France of representative institutions analogous to those which were already established in England ; the Estates, however, were no more fortunate than had been the monarchy in inducing the taxpayers to pay their impositions. Thus it was that John came to fight and be captured at Poitiers (13 56) with a well nigh empty treasury and with troops no better equipped nor dis ciplined than those which had been defeated at Crecy. Revolution followed. Confronted by a dauphin who was not yet of age, and amidst the ruins of a discredited council, the States-General re assembled and, at the instance of Robert Lecoq, bishop of Laon, and of Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, the leaders of the Parisian representatives, refused to co-operate with the dauphin's counsellors and determined to take him under their own tutelage. But politics at once took the place of considerations for the public weal, and they demanded the release of Charles the Bad. The dauphin hesitated; but, threatened with a rising, was forced to give way. In Feb. 1357, the States-General reassembled and transformed themselves, by means of the Grand Ordinance, into a deliberative, independent and permanent assembly. The government, at first seized by the middle classes, was soon under the revolutionaries led by Etienne Marcel; but the support of a name and a cause was imperative. This he obtained through the coup de main which liberated Charles the Bad. But the murder of the marshals of Champagne and Normandy under the eyes of the dauphin (Feb. 22, 1358), and the consequent flight of the latter, provoked in the noblesse and the States-General at Com piegne, a strong loyalist reaction. At the same time the burghers in the barricaded capital, shocked at these crimes, deserted the re formers with their foreign allies. Neither the peasant rising of the Jacquerie, which was crushed at Meaux, nor a last, but un heeded, appeal to the towns, nor the uncertain alliance of Charles the Bad, whom he offered to make king of France, availed to save Marcel from death at the hands of the royalist party in Paris' (July 31, 1358). As a consequence of the reaction that followed his death, the Crown inherited the financial administration which the States-General had erected as a protection against its extrava gance. Instead of being the representatives of the Estates the elus and superintendents became officials like the bailiffs and provosts. Taxes, such as the hearth tax and the tax on salt, voted pro visionally to meet the expense of war, were levied throughout the entire reign of Charles V. and were added to his personal revenues. The opportunity to found political liberty on the right to grant and control taxation was lost.
Besides the re-establishment of order in Paris, it was important to put an end to the wars with England and Navarre. This was done in the Treaty of Bretigny by which (1360) king John ceded a third of his kingdom to Edward III. ; but in the final draft, the French king retained the sovereignty of the lands. John further obtained his liberty at the price of the enormous sum of three million gold crowns, which he was never able to pay in full, and he returned to his pleasant captivity in England, where he died in 1364. But in her suffering and sorrow France was gradually realizing herself. Vanquished, she felt far more strongly than her king the shame of defeat. Local patriotism, like municipal patriotism, grew up in the peasants as in the burghers, and in a common hatred of the English was gradually founded a national feeling.
The Treaty of Bretigny, however, did not bring peace to the kingdom. For ten years the stragglers of the English, Navarrese and Breton armies, banded together in what were known as the Great Companies, ravaged France till Charles V., durement subtil et sage, succeeded in sweeping them away. He persuaded their chiefs to lead them off wherever there was any fighting to be done—to Alsace, Brittany, Spain. With the help of du Guesclin, a Breton adventurer of military genius, who became constable of France, some were trained to form an army to fight the English when war should be renewed. At the same time Charles fortified the towns and cities. A great diplomat, he made it his object to nullify the Treaty of Bretigny by alliances with Flanders, the heiress of which he married to his brother Philip, duke of Burgundy; with Ferdinand of Portugal and with the Emperor Charles IV. His alliance with Henry of Trastamara, the usurping king of Castile, was an inducement to the Black Prince to support the exiled Peter the Cruel. Debts incurred in Spain forced the Black Prince to try to raise money from his lands in France; the Gascon lords therefore appealed to Charles V. Summoned to appear before the courts in Paris, the Black Prince failed to obey, and war was renewed in Gascony, Poitiers and Normandy. But this time (1369) different tactics were used. As the English still held to the employment of great masses of cavalry, Charles gave orders that the towns were to be defended and that the enemy was to be harried without risking a general engagement. Thanks to the prudent Constable du Guesclin and the admiral Jean de Vienne, Charles was able, sitting quietly at home, to win back, bit by bit, all that his predecessors had rashly lost on the field of battle. When he died in 1380 the English possessions in France were reduced to Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.
The death of Charles V. and the dynastic quarrels in England brought the war with that country to a close, but inaugurated a civil strife that lasted 35 years. The late king's brothers at once fell to fighting for the regency of Charles VI., a child of 12, and in the place of a strong central power there arose a republic of princes divided among themselves and wholly concerned for their personal interests. The faithful and wise counsellors of Charles V., whom the princes derisively called the "Marmousets," were removed, and the bad government of the king's uncles aroused widespread and increasing discontent. When they claimed to levy the aides which Charles V. had re nounced on his death-bed, the populace of Paris, armed with mallets, sought to murder the tax-collectors. The great towns followed the example set by Paris and the Jacquerie was renewed in Auvergne and the Vivarais; but the battle of Roosebeke (1382) won by a French army over Flemish burgesses reacted on the situation in France, and the forces of feudalism and of monarchy triumphed.
When he came of age, Charles VI. recalled his father's coun sellors to power, and in two months they restored order. But they could not control the king's pleasures, nor his extravagance, and when he became insane their rule came to an abrupt end (Aug. 5, 1392). Once more the king's uncles assumed the govern ment, but instead of lessening the evil consequences of the king's insanity, they aggravated them.
This time the combat was fought between two branches of the royal house— Orleans and Burgundy. Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, uncle of the king, had over his rival, Louis of Orleans, the king's brother, the advantages of superior age, of alliances with England and Germany, of wealth and great territorial possessions. The two opponents did not represent two different political pro grammes : what each sought was to be the master of the inter mittently insane Charles VI., in order to exclude his rival from the pillage of the royal treasury. The contest became still more bitter when John the Fearless succeeded to the dukedom of Bur gundy in 1404. Up to this time the queen, Isabella of Bavaria, had been held in a sort of dependence by Philip of Burgundy, who had brought about her marriage to Charles VI. Less desirous of power than of money, she suddenly became favourable to the side of the duke of Orleans. Whether it was passion or policy, it cost the duke his life, for John the Fearless had him assassinated (1407) and thus set loose against each other the parties known as the Burgundians and Armagnacs, the latter so called because the son of the murdered duke, Charles of Orleans, was the son-in law of the count of Armagnac (q.v.). Despite all efforts to effect a reconciliation, the whole country divided itself into two camps, the south and west supporting the Armagnacs and the north and east the Burgundians. Paris, with her tradesmen—above all the butchers—and her university, played a prominent part in the quarrel, for to be master of Paris was to be master of the king. In 1413, owing to the rising of the Cabochiens (the butchers led by Simon Caboche), the duke of Burgundy gained the upper hand. Out of this new and daring combination of brute force and idealism sprang the famous Ordonnance Cabochienne, a practical programme of financial reform. Unhappily the time was lacking in which to give it effect, nor were the actions of its authors in accord with the spirit of the ordinance. The Government was at the mercy of the mob which was itself terrorized by turbulent and incapable leaders. The conflict ended in a war of factions between the carpenters under Cirasse and the butchers under Caboche. John the Fearless fled from Paris, and the Armagnacs entered the city in his rear; from Dec. 12, 1413, until July 28, 1414, the white terror took the place of the red. These disorders allowed Henry V. of England to resume the offensive.
A national disaster was the reward of these internecine feuds. At Agincourt (1415), as at Crecy and Poitiers, the chivalry of France was shown to be incapable of playing the soldier in real warfare. Charles of Orleans was taken prisoner and John the Fearless, who had held aloof from war set out to return to Paris. The Armagnacs were discredited by defeat, but the duke of Burgundy did not take advantage of the situation.
An unnatural alliance between Burgundy and the queen led to a renewal of civil war, and Henry V., seizing his chance, occupied Normandy and in two years destroyed the work of Philip Augustus. No serious resistance was anywhere offered and the common need urged the duke of Burgundy to seek alliance with the Armagnacs, in whose hands was the heir to the throne, the dauphin Charles. But the assassination of John the Fearless at the conference at Montereau in 1419 by members of the dauphin's household was a fatal mistake; the whole Burgundian party, with them the queen, made a close alliance with the English. This treacherous assassination gave renewed life to the feuds which were showing signs of dying a natural death in face of foreign invasion. By the Treaty of Troyes (1420) Henry V., who was to marry Catherine, daughter of Charles VI., was recognized as heir to the French throne instead of the dauphin Charles. When Henry V. and Charles VI. died in 1422, Henry VI., with the aid of the new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, was proclaimed in Paris as king of France and England. In 1428 the English held the whole of northern and eastern France as far as the Loire, and the two chief institutions in the land—the university and the parlement of Paris—acknowledged the English king.
But the greatest weakness of the French was again the king himself, Charles VII., the "king of Bourges," as he was commonly called. This youth of 19, born of a madman and a loose-living Bavarian princess, timorous and suspicious, was the symbol of France itself. After his victories of Cravant and Verneuil (1424) the duke of Bedford, regent for the young Henry VI., gave Charles a respite of four years. But Charles's successive favourites, Giac and de la Tremouille, solely occupied in lining their own pockets, surrounded the king with intrigues. The banishment of the constable Richemont, the one forceful man about Charles, was secured and the unhappy king faced the tragic hour, when Orleans, the last bulwark of the south, besieged by the earl of Salisbury, was about to fall (1428). He had neither the desire nor the means of Philip VI. or John the Good to undertake reckless military expeditions to defend his country. A policy of withholding his hand from a vain display of military strength which might easily be broken had served Charles V. well, but Charles VII. had not his grandfather's skill, nor was he acting on any well thought out plan.
Help came to him from an unexpected quarter. The cruel, prolonged war had year by year stimulated the growth of a national feeling against the English. La grande pitie qui etait au royaume de France was suddenly incarnated one day in the person of a young girl from Domremy, in Lorraine, inspired with a stubborn faith and an exalted spirituality. The timid coun sels of the army commanders, the not disinterested doubts of the courtiers, the criticism of experts and the questions of the doc tors, she countered and overcame by her "voices." They told her, she said, to raise the siege of Orleans and to lead the gentle dauphin to Rheims for his coronation. Her sublime folly was to prove itself wiser than all their wisdom. In two months (May– July 1429) she raised the siege of Orleans, destroyed the prestige of the English army at Patay, and brought the hesitating and spiritless king, in spite of himself, to his coronation at Rheims— an event that was to have an extraordinary political effect throughout France. Through her, Charles VII. was accepted without question as "the man to whom the kingdom of France ought to belong." After Rheims the Maid's first thought was of Paris and of completing the destruction of the English. A check outside Paris enabled the jealousy of la Tremouille to use the Maid for eight months in secondary operations until the day when, under the walls of Compiegne, she was captured by the Burgundians and sold by them to the English. She was placed on trial, condemned to death, and was burnt alive at Rouen on May 3o, 1431 (see JOAN OF ARC).
Her martyrdom paved the way for the realization of one of the Maid's dearest wishes : the reconciliation of the warring parties in France. The English regent, Bedford, had with difficulty kept the Burgundian alliance. It was strained by the Duke of Gloucester's marriage with Jacqueline of Hainault and the con sequent quarrel between Burgundy and Gloucester. It was broken when on the death of his wife, Anne of Burgundy, Philip's sister, Bedford married a vassal of Burgundy, Jacquetta of Luxemburg. The overthrow of the favourite la Tremouille through the agency of the constable Richemont removed the last barrier to agreement. Hard though its terms were, the treaty of Arras enabled a united France to expel the English from the east and opened the way for the king's return to Paris (1436) . During the next three years, famine, plague, the atrocities of the ecorcheurs, or flayers, and finally the aristocratic rising of the Praguerie completed the misery of the country. But during the truce with England, Charles VII. succeeded, with the aid of the brothers Bureau, in establishing the first permanent royal army
and with that of Jacques Coeur (q.v.) in paying for it by means of a permanent tax
. But he repaid his servants with the same ingratitude he had shown towards Joan of Arc, whose fame he only rehabilitated in 1450. Meanwhile the English, weakened by the death of Bedford, continued to wage war un successfully and to lose their possessions. Normandy dropped from their hands at Formigny (145o) ; Guienne, which had been English since the 12th century, was lost at Castillon
Calais alone remained to them, and now it was they who were ruled over by a madman, Henry VI. France emerged from the Hundred Years' War victorious, but ruined and depopulated. Her patriotism, in the broadest sense, had been stimulated by the menace of dismemberment. But the victory was, above all, a victory for absolutism. The distracted nation, preferring estab lished order to insecure liberty, was content to abandon all attempt to control the government, and to give itself up to the enjoyment of living in peace. The king and the nation, now more at one and trusting each other better, pursued a utilitarian and steady policy along lines set for them by the natural resources and extent of the kingdom. Thus, when England was engulfed in the Wars of the Roses, and the menace of the Habsburg Empire rose up behind the indeterminate frontiers on the east, Charles VII. turned towards Lorraine and Alsace. Toul and Verdun claimed his protection ; but the opportunity had passed for annex ing them without grave difficulty. On the other hand the appa nages that under the Capets had guarded the unity of the king dom, had given rise under the Valois to a new and powerful feudal baronage.
A hard task awaited Louis XI. The greatest of the new feudal lords, imprudently called into being by his ancestors, were the dukes of Burgundy whose domains were being gradually built up into a compact middle state between France and Germany. The policy of successive dukes was to cement their somewhat inchoate territories ; to keep a hold over such independent centres as the ecclesiastical principality of Liege ; to encircle the monarchy with Burgundian dependants. The policy of Charles of Charolais, known as duke Charles the Bold, was definitely to encourage feudal anarchy: he said himself that instead of one king of France he would see six.
The new king was a man of very simple tastes, endowed with a restless and impatient imagination, with an easy good nature designed to inspire confidence, penurious for himself, but reckless of money when he hoped to win over men who were useful or dangerous, favouring diplomacy rather than the hazard of war. He had observed and comprehended the weaknesses of a Bur gundy not yet a sovereign state, and too quickly aggrandized to be strong. But in his early years he made many mistakes. He was forced to struggle against the new Pragueries called Leagues of the Public Weal (presumably from their disregard of it) . The adhesion of Burgundy gave solidity to this feudal combination. On three occasions (1465, 1467, 1472) his own brother, the duke of Berry, supported by the duke of Brittany, the count of Charo lais, son of Philip the Good of Burgundy, who was now too feeble longer to dictate Burgundian policy, and the duke of Bourbon, sought to impose their authority upon him. That he triumphed was due rather to diplomacy than force of arms. Af ter an in decisive battle at Montlhery, near Paris, knowing that he had to deal with a coalition of marauders out for plunder, he gave way in everything in the treaties of Conflans and of Saint Maur. His promises, however, cost him little since he had no intention of keeping them. In the course of the second league provoked by his recovery of Normandy, which he had promised to his brother in exchange for Berry, he found himself caught in his own trap. Venturing with an escort inadequate for protection to Peronne to try by his own persuasive powers to break the alliance between Charles of Burgundy and the dukes of Brittany and Berry he forgot that his agents were busy fomenting a rising against Burgundy in Liege. He had hardly reached Peronne when news arrived of the outbreak of the rebellion in Liege, at the in stigation of Louis' emissaries. Threatened by Charles with im prisonment, Louis had to promise to fulfil his engagements made at Conflans and Saint Maur, to give Champagne to the duke of Berry, Charles' ally, and to assist in person in the subjugation of the rebels of Liege (1468) . Once again at liberty he hastened to annul the treaty of Peronne and to force his brother, the duke of Berry, to give up Champagne in return for distant Guienne. The duke's death occurred opportunely at the moment when a third league was being formed with the object of placing him upon the throne. Charles the Bold, who wished to recapture the towns on the Somme, bought by Louis from his father, was repulsed before Beauvais ; the executioner made an end to the treasons of the smaller nobility.
It only remained to destroy the duke of Burgundy. "The uni versal spider," as he called Louis, sat spinning his web in the darkness, and was eventually able to entangle him in it. Louis secured Edward IV. of England at Picquigny by means of a sub sidy, and united the duke of Lorraine and the Swiss against his rival. After the terrible defeats of Granson and Morat (1476) the Lorrainers destroyed the duke of Burgundy near Nancy (Jan. 5, 1477). A scramble for the spoils ensued. French provinces or imperial territories—Louis claimed them all. But in his violent haste he caused the heiress of Burgundy to throw herself, in despair, into the arms of Maximilian of Austria, when he might have annexed the whole inheritance by marrying her to the dauphin. The treaty of Arras (1482) gave him only Picardy, the Bourbonnais and Burgundy; while, through his error, the estab lishment of the Habsburgs in the Low Countries started the three centuries' rivalry between the Houses of France and Austria.
The political tendency which governed all Louis XI.'s foreign policy formed also the inspiration of his home Government. Against his authority, right alone was of no avail. Military and fiscal power, the two chief agents of domination at home and abroad, proved the basis of his policy. As to the nobility, his only thought was to humble them as his predecessors had done by multiplying the number of new creations. Rebels were subdued ; the Church was held in a strict tutelage that was rendered more galling through the way in which Louis abrogated or affirmed the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 to suit his fiscal needs or his Italian policy. He was dubbed the king of the common people ; and he was certainly one of them in his simple manners, no less than in his simple pleasures and religion, which was limited to superstitious practices. But in the States-General of 1467 he revealed the same opposition to a democratic control of the revenues as he had shown to the privi leges of the nobles. He inaugurated that rule of autocracy which was to increase in strength until the days of Louis XV. Louis XI. was the king of the bourgeoisie; true, he demanded much of them, but he repaid them by measures which made for the suppression of those above them, as the restraint of those beneath them. But the most faithful ally of Louis XI. was death. Saint-Pol, Nemours, Charles the Bold, the duke of Berry, his brother, old Rene of Anjou, and his nephew the duke of Maine, heir to great riches ; death mowed them all down as though it were in his pay. One day, however, death came to his retreat at Plessis-les-Tours to demand his wages, and carried him off despite all his relics (Aug. 3o, 1483).
The death of Louis was swiftly followed by the reaction that had threatened his work while he still lived. That this reaction was only partly successful was due to his eldest daughter, Anne, wife of Peter de Beaujeu, brother and heir of the duke of Bourbon. She had inherited her father's ability. Anne and her husband, guardians of Charles VIII., began by making concessions. Certain agents of Louis's were sacrificed to the anger of the parlement and lands were restored to hostile nobles, of whom the chief was the duke of Orleans, a son-in-law of Louis XI. They even authorized the States-General to meet at Tours (1484) and for the first time the country districts as well as the towns were represented in it. The royal party, however, succeeded in making the States-General reject the duke of Orleans' demand that he should be regent, and in packing the Conseil du roi with their supporters. Once sup plies had been voted, they could ignore such demands of the Estates as the control of taxation and the summons of a meeting of the States-General every two years. The malcontent party next attempted to obtain by revolt what the Estates had failed to secure. Thus began the "Mad War" (1485) in which the duke Francis II. of Brittany played the role of a Charles the Bold and in which the Lorrainers, the kings of Navarre and England and Maximilian of Austria, took part. This last sally of feudalism ended in what it sought to prevent—the marriage of Anne. the heiress of Brittany, to Charles VIII. (1491).
It only remained to consolidate the final victory of the Valois: the acquisition of Burgundy and of a Brittany that had ever been jealous of its independence. Suddenly, however, this policy seemed to be in danger of being abandoned and forgotten in the crazy ambition to assert the rights of the House of Anjou to Naples—an enterprise into which Charles VII. and Louis XI. had refused to be drawn. Obstinate, of mediocre ability, and with his head filled with the romances of chivalry, Charles VIII. re sponded to the appeal of the Italians. By this war he interrupted for a century and a half the national tradition which was not re turned to until the accession of Henry II. The truth is that this policy of magnificence appealed to the people of France who sought an outlet after the dull years of Louis XI.'s reign. Charles began operations by returning Roussillon and the Cer dagne to Ferdinand of Aragon, and Artois and Franche-Comte to Maximilian of Austria; the first, acquisitions of Louis XI., the second, part of the Burgundian heritage. He also paid a large sum of money to Henry VII. of England to secure his neutrality. After these foolish transactions, the paladin marched throughout the length and breadth of Italy. If his journey was triumphal, his retreat was precipitate. Charles only just escaped utter dis aster at Fornovo (July 6, 1495), owing to the first of those Italian Holy Leagues which, at the least sign of friction, were ready to turn against France. After these fruitless adventures he died, in 1498, without male issue.
He was succeeded by Louis, duke of Orleans, who married his widow, Anne of Brittany, and thereby retained Brittany for France. Along with his widow, he espoused his cousin's Italian policy. He did not hesitate to plunge further into this imbroglio that was so popular in France, since with glory it brought a rich booty. To the claims of Charles VIII. upon Naples Louis added his own upon the duchy of Milan derived from his grandmother, Valentina Visconti. Appealed to by Venice and supported by Cardinal d'Amboise, who wished to become pope, Louis wrested the Milanese from Ludovico Sforza in seven months (1500). His conquest endured for 14 years. Naples remained to be won. At first Louis agreed to a division of the kingdom between himself and Ferdinand of Aragon; but that crafty individual presently betrayed him and, notwithstanding the gallantry of Bayard, Naples was lost to the French for ever 0504). Pope Julius II. was responsible for a renewal of the Italian wars. Jealous of Venice, he stirred up France, the German empire and Spain against her in the League of Cambrai (1508) . Once he had attained his object, he sought to drive out of Italy the "barbarians" he had himself brought in, and summoned Spain, Germany, the Swiss, Venice and even Henry VIII. of England to aid him against Louis XII. Gaston de Foix put an end to this Holy League by the crushing victory of Ravenna (151 2) in which he himself lost his life; but, disheartened by the death, not only of de Foix, but also of his adviser, Cardinal d'Amboise, and beholding France threatened with an Anglo German invasion, Louis XII. abandoned Milan, for which he had sacrificed everything, and died in 1515. His subjects, remember ing only his careful government and the prosperity he had given to his kingdom, and forgetting the 17 years of war about which they had never been consulted, dignified his memory with the appellation of "Father of his People." Francis I. (1515-47) .—As Louis XII. had no sons the throne passed to his cousin and son-in-law, Francis, count of Angouleme, who along with the crown, inherited his predecessor's Italian am bitions. The epic victory of Marignano (Sept. 13, 1515) made him master of Milan. In return for the renunciation of Naples, he received from Spain in 1517 the restitution of French Navarre. The peace of Fribourg (1516) with the defeated Swiss, and the concordat of Bologna with Leo X. inaugurated a two-fold alliance that was to last as long as the monarchy itself. The deaths of Ferdinand the Catholic in 1516, and of the emperor Maximilian in 1519, and the election to the imperial throne of Charles of Austria against Francis I., opened up a field for adventure far greater than Italy. The rivalry of Charles V. and the king of France was to let loose imperialism throughout Europe for forty years (1519-59).
Everything conspired to make their enmity inevitable. Lord of the Austrian lands of the Habsburgs, of the territories of Charles the Bold and of Spain, Charles V. could not go from Spain into the Low Countries or Germany without encountering France. Italy was of special interest to him, for she was the key to the Mediterranean, and without her it was impossible to pre serve communications with Trieste, Naples, Palermo, Barcelona or Valencia. But France was to Charles V. a geographical as well as a political obstacle. If his imperialism were victorious, France, threatened simultaneously on her northern, eastern and southern frontiers, would be stifled. From 1519 the Italian war ceased to be an expensive amusement for France, and became a matter of life and death. To the rivalry of policies was added that of per sons. Francis was handsome, chivalrous and brave; the admired ruler of an aristocracy devoted to pleasure and to feats of arms, his court brilliantly united the ideals of chivalry with those of the Renaissance. Charles, on the other hand, was a less attractive figure ; with his grave and hard temperament, his hesitating and calculating disposition, he was little affected by the intoxicating influence of the Latin genius. Each sought allies. Two presented themselves : the king of England who, not having abandoned the conquests of the Plantagenets, was able at any moment to check mate Francis I., should the latter descend upon Italy; and the Pope who, seated between Milan and Naples, was invaluable to both but always feared the union of north and south. Assured of the support of Henry VIII., whom Francis had failed to win over at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (q.v.), Charles sought for allies within France itself ; and the sole survivor of the great feudal lords conquered by Louis XI., the constable duke of Bourbon, agreed to play the traitor in return for a promise of the restoration in his favour of the ancient kingdom of Arles. Charles hesitated no longer. From 1521 he attacked Francis both in France itself and in Milan ; he reached the summit of his fortune at Pavia (1525), where Francis I. was defeated, taken prisoner, and, after a year of galling captivity, compelled to agree to the crushing stipulations of the treaty of Madrid (1526). Happily France remained quiet and united; Burgundy expressed its desire to remain French, and the States-General, in their meet ing at Cognac, denied the king the right to alienate a province of his kingdom. At this juncture, however, in return for two mil lion gold crowns, Henry VIII., alarmed at the success of Charles V., changed sides ; and all Italy, with the pope at its head, rallied to Francis. In a rage, Charles V. loosed upon Rome the mer cenaries of the constable de Bourbon, who renewed the saturnalia of Alaric, but there met his death. Nevertheless, Charles was forced to sign the "Ladies' Peace" (15 29) by which Francis kept Burgundy, but lost Italy ; though in placing on his own head the iron crown of Lombardy, Charles proved that he had not aban doned his imperialistic designs.
In the following six years of recuperation 0529-35), Francis spared no effort in his own defence, and embarked on a new policy of balance of power. He did not scruple to bring within the same alliance the German Lutherans, Suleiman and his Turks, the heretic Henry VIII., and Clement VII. Diplomacy was more active than belligerency. The history of the years 1536-44 is that of truces made and broken, alliances formed and dissolved, reconciliations and imbroglios—the contradictions inseparable from a policy that crushed the Calvinists in France but supported the Lutherans in Germany, that sought the alliance of Clement VII. without any intention of breaking with Henry VIII., and asked the aid of Charles V. without renouncing the claims of France to Italy. Court intrigues between Madame d'Etampes, the imperious mistress of the aged Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, who exerted great influence upon the dauphin, when combined with the constant changes in the personnel of the gov ernment and the lack of money that rendered all combinations ephemeral, further complicated the whole situation. Defeated at Cerisoles in Piedmont, Charles V. carried the war with no better success into Provence and Champagne. At the outset his power was curbed by the Schmalkaldic League between the German Protestants, by the threat from the Turks to Vienna and Italy, and by the disastrous failure of his expedition to Algiers. Unable to fight on three fronts at the same time, he concluded with France the peace of Crepy-en-Valois
, which confirmed the loss of Artois and Flanders and left Charles free to devote his attention to the Protestants and the Turks. The treaty of Ardres (1546) between Henry VIII. and Francis was little more than a new and heavy letter of credit drawn by Henry upon the French treasury.
In 1547, Francis I. died. While in foreign affairs he had brought the doctrine of the balance of power within the sphere of practical politics, in home affairs he had strongly in clined the kingdom towards absolutism. He was the first king to rule du bon plaisir. To a temperament so brave and fiery, love and war were schools little calculated to teach moderation in gov ernment. Italy not only inspired him with the love of letters and art, she also provided him with an arsenal of despotic maxims; his true teachers, however, were the lawyers of the universities in the south. The great legal traditions of the days of Philip the Fair were revived in the hands of men like Duprat or Poyet, who worked successfully to distinguish the "greatness and super excellence of the king" from the rest of the nation; to isolate the nobility amid the seductions of a court life full of pleasures and possibilities of favours and high places; and to win over the bourgeoisie, at first by bribery and afterwards by the hereditary transmission of office. Thanks to them, feudalism, in its landed interest, was smitten in the person of the constable de Bourbon, in its financial aspect by the execution of the superintendent Semblancay, while the special privileges of the provinces were countered by administrative centralization.
The master-stroke was the Concordat of 1516, which was a great step towards absolutism. While Germany and England sought remedies against the fiscal exploitation of the papacy in reforms of dogma or in schism, France thought she had found it in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges of 1438. The lawyers went still further. In giving to the king, by the Concordat, ecclesiasti cal patronage, they not only rendered the clergy a docile instru ment, but they placed in the king's hands an inexhaustible reserve of wealth far greater than that which he obtained from the sale of offices. They transformed a necessitous and easily-controlled monarchy into an uncontrolled despotism. As a peace-offering, they restored to the pope the canon law and first-fruits; and thus succeeded in isolating the monarchy within the presumptuous pride of its omnipotence.
Master of the kingdom, Henry II. was never for an instant master of himself : he never succeeded in being other than a reflection, in his private life of the ambitious and greedy Diane de Poitiers, and in his political activities of Montmorency or the Guises. Under him the policy of the bal ance of power was pursued as heretofore. Charles V., who was seeking to convert an elective empire into a hereditary monarchy, everywhere encountered his opposition. Henry's ally, Suleiman, by his conquest of Hungary and mastery of the Mediterranean, menaced the Empire on the east. In Germany the protestant princes who had been defeated at Miihlberg (April
obtained the assistance of Henry by means of the cession of Metz, Toul and Verdun (1551). To recover the princes, Charles was forced to sign the treaty of Passau (1552) and thereby to register the failure of his political ambitions by leaving to the empire its electoral character. At the same time he suffered a severe defeat before Metz (15 53) at the hands of Francis of Guise. From that time, Fortune, who does not love old men, betrayed him. Despite the marriage of his son Philip with Mary Tudor, by which he gained the support of England
, despite the peace of Augs burg (1555), which pacified Germany by allowing the Lutheran princes to practice their religion undisturbed, Charles V. was de feated by Henry II. in the Low Countries, Montluc held him in check in central Italy, and—exhausted by illness and overwork— he abandoned Piedmont and the three bishoprics to Henry by the truce of Vaucelles (1556). After dividing up his territories be tween his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand, Charles abdicated the throne of Spain in Jan. and the imperial throne in Sept. 1556. For France this was a twofold victory. The renewal of the war by Henry, however, was a grave mistake. It was probably sug gested by the Guises who, since the victory at Metz, had been all-powerful at court and dreamt of obtaining Naples for them selves. Profiting by the absence in Naples of Francois de Guise Philibert of Savoy hurled himself into France by way of the Low Countries, the classic route of invasion, and overthrew the con stable de Montmorency at St. Quentin (Aug. 1557), but Philip II. failed to take advantage of the victory. Recalled to France from Italy, the duke of Guise avenged the national honour by capturing Calais (Jan. i558), which had been in English hands for two centuries.
The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559) finally put an end to the Italian follies. Naples, Milan, Piedmont and Savoy were lost to France. The loss of Savoy in particular was to leave a gap in the frontier for a century ; but the possession of the three bishoprics of Toul, Verdun and Metz, and the re-capture of Calais, were symptomatic of a renewed effort towards making good the weak spots in the French armour. The treaty was not concluded before it was due, for the Reformation, during 38 years of fresh civil wars, was about to subordinate national interests to re ligious quarrels, and to bring France to the very edge of the abyss.
Since the failure of the great councils of the I5th century, the cry "Reform ! Reform!" had filled Christendom without awakening an echo. That Reformation (q.v.) which the popes would not carry through was carried through without their assistance. In France it did not possess at first a revolutionary character; it was not more than a belief aris ing out of traditional Gallican theories and the new humanism, and began as a protest at the decadence of the papacy and against mediaeval scholasticism among a small group of moderate and sagacious reformers centred at Meaux, around Lef evre d'Etaples, and supported in opposition to the theological faculty of Paris by Marguerite de Navarre, the sister of Francis I. But neither the doctrine itself, nor persecutions, were sufficient to create a church and so a party. That was to be the work of the economic revival brought about by the great discoveries overseas. This revival had concentrated wealth in the hands of the middle classes, and, along with capitalism, all the other elements of power. The monarchy and the peasants had also benefited by it; after a cen tury and a half of foreign wars and civil disturbances the former appeared the one and only power capable of maintaining order and unity, while the latter had taken advantage of the disappear ance of the landed aristocracy—who would not work—and of the depreciation of the currency to regain possession of the land and to sell their produce more profitably. But there were two victims of this new order of things : the city proletariat, who were ever more oppressed by their employers, and the aristocracy bereft of its economic power and deprived day by day of its sovereign rights.
Thus the Reformation, the product of the educated classes, found its earliest supporters among the working classes of the 16th century. It was essentially an urban movement, although in the days of Francis I. and Henry II. it had already reached the country districts. From these artisans, labourers and small shop keepers there were enough to create a martyrology, but not enough to found a party. For a long time the reformers respected the monarchy and its institutions, and, in accordance with the doctrine proclaimed by Calvin, suffered persecution for 4o years before they finally took up arms. It was not until the second half of the reign of Henry II. that Protestantism, having attained its religious evolution, became the watchword of a political party.
Gradually the party brought forward measures that grew ever more and more radical in character, and the peaceable citizens who composed its ranks were transformed into a military aris tocracy which saw in the secularization of the ecclesiastical es tates a remedy for the existing high cost of living. Coligny and Conde took the place of the timid Lefevre d'Etaples and the harsh Calvin. Men succeeded to saints. Contrary to their tenets, the reformers became a political and religious party of an increasingly international character. The lance of Montgomery, by acci dentally killing Henry II. (1559), gave the reformers a favourable opportunity. Henry left behind him four youthful and degenerate sons. There followed a series of minorities and regencies—all causes of trouble in a kingdom that depended on centralization; all giving excuse, also, for the revival of the old feudalism, whose chief upholder, Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, had reason to hope for the crown.
Francis II. was never other than a sickly and nervous child governed by two women : his mother, Catherine de' Medici, and his wife, Mary, queen of Scots, niece of the Guises. Through her, Francis, duke of Guise, victor of Metz and Calais, gained control of the army and his brother, the cardinal of Lorraine, power over the king and the kingdom. To be excluded from power by the Guises, sprung from Lorraine and thus half foreigners, was infinitely exasperating to the princes of the blood—Antoine de Bourbon and his brother Conde. They sought a following among the discontented Calvinists and the disbanded officers of the armies that had fought in the Italian wars. Strengthened by the failure of the conspiracy of Amboise, which had been organized (156o) by Conde to overthrow them, the Guises took advantage of their victory to issue the edict of Romorantin. The chiefs of the reforming party, arrested at the States-General of Orleans, were in danger of their lives when the early death of Francis II. (Dec. 156o) ruined the Guises and saved Protestantism.
Charles IX. was also an invalid and a minor. Catherine de' Medici easily ousted the legal regent, Antoine de Bourbon, and for ten years kept her son in her own charge. Up to that time she had appeared to be no more than the retiring and self-sacrific ing widow of Henry II. Subtle and full of maternal ambition, she had attained to power at the age of 41, in the midst of the hopes and fears aroused by the fall of the Guises and the return to power of the Bourbons. But she needed the support of a party. Indifferent in religious matters, she had a love of power, a char acteristically Italian adroitness in intrigue, and a fine political sense. She was the first to understand in the interests of the royal authority that between the violence of Catholics and Calvin ists lay the middle path of toleration. Her spokesman in the States-General at Orleans was the chancellor, Michel de l'Hopital, an honest man whose scepticism rendered him moderate, who was pliable because he was a courtier, and who was, nevertheless, so unpractical as to believe that a reform of the laws could be undertaken in the midst of disturbances, and to disarm the gov ernment when the factions were arming themselves against it. By the Colloquy of Poissy (Sept. 1561), Catherine and de l'Hopital attempted, after the manner of Charles V. at Augsburg, to achieve a religious peace. They were soon overwhelmed by the different factions. The Catholic triumvirate of Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal Saint-Andre so far abused the spirit of the Colloquy as to embroil the French Calvinists with the German Lutherans, and to make the Catholics believe that the Government was ready to sacrifice the faith. The Huguenots (q.v.) under Coligny and Conde, having obtained liberty of con science in Jan. (1561), now demanded liberty of worship. When Michel de l'Hopital, in the edict of Saint-Germain (Jan. 1562) granted the Huguenots a restricted right of worship the triumvi rate, thinking themselves menaced, hesitated no longer. The mas sacre of Vassy (March 1, 1562) gave the signal for the outbreak of the wars of religion, and the abduction of the Queen-Mother and the young king from Fontainebleau gave the reins of gov ernment into the hands of the duke of Guise.
