The cost of this army led to its disbandment in the next reign, and Charles VIII tried to revive the institution of free archers. Free archers fought on both sides in the Wars of Britanny. But they were not taken to Naples, and although they are still mentioned occasionally, they saw no further service in the period now under review.
Louis XII relied largely on Swiss, and afterwards on Germans. But he also organised bands of French aventuriers under the command of gentlemen. Those who guarded the frontier of Picardy were known as the bandes de Picardie. Levies were also made in Gascony, Britanny, Dauphine, and Piedmont. But they were usually disbanded on the conclusion of a war. For garrison duty a force of veterans was kept on foot known as morte-paies. But the infantry arm of the service continued to be unsatisfactory. The general levy of all those bound to bear arms, known as ban et arriere-ban, was not infrequently called out by Louis XI, but proved disorderly and unserviceable.
The artillery was first organised under Charles VII by the brothers Bureau. The French artillery was distinguished by its comparative mobility, and discharged iron shot. It was under the command of the grand maitre de rartttlerie, and served as a model to the rest of Europe. We find under Louis XI, and afterwards, an organised force of sappers.
The navy depended still in large measure on the impressment of merchant vessels and seamen. Normandy, Provence, and afterwards Britanny, were the chief recruiting grounds. In the Italian Wars we find the French Kings chiefly dependent on Genoa for galleys. But under Louis XII a few war vessels were built and owned by the King. The French mounted heavy guns on large ships with excellent results.
Everywhere we find invention at work, directed for the most part to practical construction and consolidation. Commerce was stirring. The French were directing their attention to the oriental trade, in which Jacques Cceur and the Beaune family founded their fortunes. Breton sailors went far afield, traded with the Canaries and Madeira, and were fishing cod off Iceland, perhaps on the Banks of Newfoundland, long before the recognised discovery of the New World. But internal trade was more prosperous than foreign. In spite of paralysing tariffs on the frontiers of provinces and the myriad peages which the Kings in vain attempted to keep down, steady progress was made. The misfortunes of Bruges and Ghent, Liege and Dinant, left a gap in home markets which French traders partly succeeded in filling. The silk trade took root at Tours and Lyons, and was encouraged by Louis XI. Reviving agriculture stimulated commercial and industrial life in many a country town, and small fortunes were frequently made. The marvellous recuperative power of France was never more clearly seen than in the half century after the English wars.
The middle of the fifteenth century saw a national revival of art in France. French miniaturists had long explored the resources and perhaps reached the limits of their charming art. The Hours of the Duke of Berry, dating from the early fifteenth century, are hardly to be surpassed. But Jean Foucquet (1415-80) was not only a master among masters of miniature, but a painter prized even in Italy. His work is interesting as showing the taste for classical architecture in works of fancy long before it had begun to influence the constructions of French builders. It is probable that the competition of Italian painters for the patronage of the great, which begins immediately after the Italian wars, checked the growth of an indigenous French school of painting, which might have fulfilled the promise of French miniaturists. In sculpture a school arose at Dijon under Charles VI, which is original and fruitful. In this school was trained Michel Colombe (who died in 1512); his masterpiece is perhaps the tomb of Francis II at Nantes.
Gothic ecclesiastical architecture had lost itself in the meaningless elaborations of the decadent “Flamboyant.” But in domestic architecture the corps de metier were still capable of producing such masterly work as the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, and, in.the reign of Louis XI, the castles of Langeais and Le Plessis Bourre, still standing solid and reminiscent of the necessities of defence. Amboise, of a still later date, shows the same characteristics. Gradually classical influence begins to modify, first detail, then construction. The results may be seen in Louis XII’s part of the castle of Blois. But the golden age of , French Renaissance architecture is the reign of Francis I, when first the castle put off its heavy armour, and assumed the lightness, grace, and gaiety, so well known to travellers on the Loire.
In literature, the excellence of the best is so great that it makes us the less willing to remain content with the dull mediocrity of the mass. Charles of Orleans’ melancholy, musical verse fixes in perpetuity the fragrance of the passing ideals of chivalry. Villon, closely conversant with the pathos and humours of the real, veils it gracefully and slightly in transparent artificialities. Commines, naif, for all his dignified reserve, cold wisdom, and experienced cynicism, ranks alike with those who have rediscovered the art of history, and with those who have assisted to perfect French prose. Chastelain, burdened with cumbrous rhetoric and prone to useless sermonising, can on occasion tell a stirring tale, and proves his faults to be not of himself, but of his school. For the rest, in poetry and prose, whether the tedious allegories learnt from the Roman de la Rose prevail, or the not less tedious affectations of classical imitation, or the laboured tricks of a most unhappy school of verse, there are few names that deserve to be remembered.
In the world of thought the French clung longer than other nations to the traditions of Scholasticism. But the school of Nicolas of Cusa, which represents a transitional movement from medieval to Renaissance philosophy, had its followers in France, of whom the first was Jacques le Fevre d’F^taples, and the most distinguished Carolus Bovillus.
To deal adequately with the men whose accumulated endeavours restored order, unity, and prosperity to France after the English wars would need a volume, not a chapter. Many of them, humble, obscure, energetic, faithful, escape the notice of the historian. Valuable monographs have been written upon some, but no adequate memorial exists of the most powerful French minister of the time, Georges d’Amboise, without whom nothing of moment whether good or bad was done during the best years of Louis XII. One figure stands out above all others,—Louis XI, of the four Kings the only one who both reigned and governed. Whether we condemn or whether we condone the remorseless rigour with which that King pursued his public ends, whether we regret the absolute monarchy which he established, or accept it as having been the only possible salvation of France, we cannot deny to him the name of great. Great he was in intellect and in tenacity of purpose, great in prosperity and even greater in misfortune. Whatsoever he did had its determined end, and that end was the greatness of France,—or, if the expression be preferred, of the French monarchy. The universal condemnation which he has incurred may be ascribed chiefly to two causes: the unrelenting sternness with which he visited treachery in the great, and the severity of the taxation which he found it necessary to impose. The world was shocked by the fate of Jean d’Armagnac, Jacques de Nemours, Louis de St Pol, Cardinal Balue, and by the cynical methods which achieved their ruin. Looking back without passion, we pronounce their sentence just. The burden of taxes was cruel, and the stories we read in Brantome and elsewhere of lawless and inhuman executions are probably not without foundation. These methods may be supposed to have been required to bring the enormous taxes in. The gabelle. We need not accept the number; the Estates believed many strange tales; but the suggestion is instructive, and helps to explain the legends of apparently meaningless slaughter wrought upon the humble. In the struggle for life and death in which France was engaged those taxes and perhaps those executions saved her; the King’s crimes were national crimes, and national crimes are not to be judged by the standards of domestic morality. The France of Louis XII is the justification of Louis XI.
CHAPTER XIII. THE NETHERLANDS, by Adolphus Ward
WHEN after the catastrophe of Nancy the cautious doubts of Louis XI as to the personal fate of his adversary had at last been set at rest, many of Charles the Hold’s former subjects refused to believe him dead; and from Burgundy to the Flemish communes the rumour ran that he but lay concealed in some sure retreat whence sooner or later he would issue forth in the full blaze of his accustomed grandeur. Some had seen him in Lorraine, others in Germany; others in Portugal, to whose nationality he had laid claim as descending to him