LOUIS VIII. 



LOUIS XIII. 



9)0 



territory from Dieppe to Bayonne. Louis married Constance of 

 Castile for hit neond wife. A war now broke out between him and 

 Henry II. of England, which lasted several yean, and ended by peace 

 in 1178, after which Henry ns duke of Normandy and peer of France 

 attended the coronation of Louis's son. Philip 1 1., called ' Auguste,' 

 in 1179. Louis died in September, 1180, at Paris, being sixty years 

 of age. 



LOUIS VIII., styled 'Coour de Lion,' succeeded his father Philippe 

 Angutte in 1223. Like his father, he was engaged in wars with the 

 English, from whom he took the Limousin, Perigord, Aunis, and all 

 the rat of the country north of the Garonne. At the request of the 

 pope, he made wnr against the Albigeusee, and laid siege to Avignon, 

 where he died in 1226. 



LOUIS IX., called St. Louis, succeeded hi* father, Louis VIII., 

 when ha was twelve years of age, under the regency of his mother, 

 Blanche of Castile. During the minority of the king there was a 

 constant struggle between the crown and the great feudatories, at the 

 head of whom were Thibaut, count of Champagne, and the Count of 

 Brittany. During this troubled period, Queen Blanche displayed 

 much character and considerable abilities. Her son, as soon as he 

 was old enough, putting himself at the head of his faithful vassals, 

 reduced the moat refractory lords, and among others the Count of 

 Brittany, who came with a rope round his neck to ask pardon of the 

 king, which was granted. Henry III. of England, who supported the 

 rebels, was defeated by Louis near Saintes, upon which a truce of five 

 yean waa signed between the two kings. During an illness Louis 

 made a vow to vi-it the Holy Land, and in June 1243 ho set out for 

 the East He lauded in Egypt, and took Damiat, but being defeated 

 at the battle of Mansoura, he was taken prisoner, compelled to pay a 

 heavy ransom, and to restore Damiat to the Mussulmans. From 

 Egypt he sailed to Acre, and carried on the war in Palestine, but 

 with no success, till the year 1254, when he returned to France. 

 The best account of this expedition is by Joinville, who was present, 

 ' Histoire de St Louis,' edited by Ducange, with notes, folio, 1668. 

 Louis on his return found ample occupation in checking the violence 

 nnd oppressions of the nobles, whom he treated with wholesome rigour. 

 He published several useful statutes, known by the title of ' Etablisse- 

 mens de St. Louis ;' he established a police at Paris, at the head of 

 which he put a magistrate called 'pnivdt;' he classed the various 

 trades into companies called confrairies; ho established the college 

 of theology, called La Sorbonue from the name of his confessor; he 

 created a French navy, and made an advantageous treaty with the 

 king of Aragon, by which the respective limits and j urisdictions of the 

 two states were defined. The chief and almost the only fault of 

 Louis, which was that of his age, was his religious intolerance ; he 

 issued oppressive ordonnances against the Jews, had a horror of 

 heretics, and used to tell his friend Joinville " that a layman ought 

 not to dispute with the unbelievers, but strike them with a good 

 sword across the body." By an ordonuance he remitted to his Christian 

 subjects the third of the debts which they owed to Jews, and this 

 "for the good of his soul." (Martennes, 'Thesaurus Anecdotorum,' 

 vol. L, p. 980.) This same feeling of fanaticism led him to another 

 crusade, against the advice of his best friends, in which he met his 

 death. He sailed for Africa, laid siege to Tunis, and died in his camp 

 of the plague in August 1270. Pope Boniface VIII. canonised him as 

 a saint in 1297. Louis's brother Charles, count of Anjou and Provence, 

 took the kingdom of Naples from Manfred of Suabia, and established 

 there the dynasty of Anjou. 



LOUIS X., called 'Hutin,' on old French word meaning 'quarrel- 

 some,' son of Philippe le Bel, succeeded his father in 1314. His uncle 

 Charles de Valois had the principal share of the government during 

 hU reign, although the king was of age. Louis imprisoned and put 

 to death his wife Margaret in 1315, on the ground of adultery, and 

 then married Clemence of Hungary. He carried on an unsuccessful 

 war against the Count of Flanders, to maintain which he increased the 

 taxes, sold the judicial offices, and obliged the crown serfs to purchase 

 their freedom. Louis died after a short reign in 1316, not without 

 suspicions of poison. He was succeeded by his brother, Philip V. 



LOUIS XI., son of Charles VII., succeeded his father in 1461, being 

 then thirty-nine years of age. He had early exhibited a duplicity of 

 disposition, for which his father mistrusted him. He had revolted 

 against his father in 1456, and being defeated, had taken refuge at the 

 court of Philip, duke of Burgundy, who protected him and maintained 

 him for six years, until his father's death. Louis, when king, became 

 the bitterest enemy of Charles, the son of Philip. The cautious cun- 

 ning and consummate hypocrisy of Louis gave him the advantage 

 over the rash courage and headlong passion of Charles, which at last 

 caused his ruin and death at the siege of Nanci, in January 1477. 

 Louis was successful in depressing the power of the feudal nobles, 

 several of whom he put to death, aud in rendering the authority of 

 the crown independent of them. He took into his service a body of 

 Swiss, and kept also 10,000 French infantry, whom he paid out of his 

 own treasury. He carried on a war against Maximilian of Austria, 

 who had married Mary of Burgundy, dtughter and heiress of Duke 

 Charles, and took from him Artois and Frauche-Comtd ; but at last 

 peace was made between them by the treaty of Arras, in 1482. Louis 

 also made peace with Edward IV. of England. Charles of Anjou, 

 count of Provence, bequeathed that province to Louis XI., as will as 



hi* claims to the thrones of Naples and Sicily a bequest winch In. I to 

 the subsequent attempts of the French to conquer Naples. Loui-i XI. 

 died in 1483, being sixty yean of age. He was a strange compound 

 of daring and superstition, of abilities and weakness, of firmness and 

 perseverance in his political views, joined to an abject meanness of 

 sentiment and habit The taille, or direct taxation, was tripled under 

 his reign. He was the first who assumed the title of ' Most Christian 

 King,' which was given to him by the pope in 1469. The best account 

 of Louis XI. is given by his contemporary and confidant Cominea, in 

 his ' Memoires.' 



LOUIS XII., son of Charles, duke of Orleans, descended from a 

 younger son of Charles V., succeeded in 1493 Charles VIII., who had 

 left no children. He had been obliged by Louis XL to marry his 

 daughter Joan in 1476, but after his accession to the throne he dis- 

 solved the marriage, and married Anne of Brittany, the widow of 

 Charles VIII. Louis asserted his claims to the duchy of Milan, which 

 were derived from liia grandmother, Valeutina VUconti, daughter of 

 John Galeazzo, duke of Milan, and sister of the last duke, Filippo 

 Maria, who had died without leaving legitimate children. But Filippo 

 Maria left a natural daughter Bianco, who had married the famous 

 condottiers Francesco Sforza, who succeeded his father-in-law as duke 

 of Milan, and the Sfor/a family had been confirmed in the possession 

 of the duchy by the emperor, Milan being considered as a lief of the 

 empire. Francesco was succeeded by his son Galeazzo, who, being 

 murdered iu 1475, left an infant son Gian Galeazzo, whoso uncle 

 Ludovico assumed the government during his minority. After the 

 death of Gian Galeazzo iu 1494, Lu'.'.ovico, who was suspected of 

 having poisoned his nephew, was proclaimed duke, and continued by 

 a diploma of the Emperor Maximilian I. Louis however marched 

 with on army into Italy, and took possession of the duchy of Milan in 

 1499. In the following year he made Ludovico Sforza prisoner, and 

 carried him to France, where he died in confinement. Emboldened 

 by this success, Louis now put forward tho claims of the crown 

 of France to tho possession of Naples derived from the Aujous. 

 [Locis XI.] These claims had been already asserted by his prede- 

 cessor Charles VIII., who however, after invading Naples, was obliged 

 to give up his conquest. The Aragonese dynasty had resumed 

 possession of that kiugdom ; and Frederic of Aragon, who was king 

 of Naples, feeling that he was too weak to resist Louis XII., applied 

 for assistance to his relative Ferdinand the Catholic, kiug of Spain, 

 who sent him an army under the celebrated commander Qonnlo of 

 Cordova. Louis had recourse to secret negociations; he proposed to 

 Ferdinand of Spain to dethrone his relative and protegd, aiid to divide 

 the kingdom of Naples between them. Such a proposal was exactly 

 suited to the character of Ferdinand, and he assented to it. Whilst 

 Louis marched against Naples, Gonzalo, in consequence of secret 

 orders from his master, was occupying in his name the towns of 

 Calabria and Puglia; and a third worthy partner in such a transaction, 

 Pope Alexander VI., gave to Louis the solemn investiture of the crown 

 of Naples, which he had a few years before bestowed upon the unfor- 

 tunate Frederic. The latter, perceiving the perfidiousuess of his Spanish 

 relative, surrendered hiui.-clf to Louis, who gave him the duchy of 

 Anjou aud a pension for life. Louis and Ferdinand soon quarrelled 

 about their respective shares of the spoil, and Ferdinand gave orders 

 to Gonzalo to drive away the French from Naples. The two battles 

 of Seminara and Cerignolo, both fought in April 1503, in which the 

 French were defeated by the Spaniards, decided the fate of the 

 kingdom of Naples, which became entirely subject to Spain. A few 

 years after, Pope Julius IL formed a league with Ferdinand and the 

 Swiss to drive the French out of Italy altogether; and after three 

 campaigns, Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours, being killed at the 

 battle of liaveuua, the French abandoned Lombardy ; aud Maximilian 

 Sforza, son of Ludovico, supported by the Swiss, assumed the ducal 

 crown of Milan in 1512. Louis sent a fresh army into Italy under 

 La Trimouille, who was beaten at Novara by the Swiss in June 1513; 

 and thus, after fifteen years of fighting, intrigues, aud negociations, 

 the French lost all their conquests in Italy. Louis XII. has been 

 styled by courlly historians "the father of his people;" he was iu 

 fact kind-hearted towards his subjects, and he reduced the taxes by 

 one-half; but his foreign policy was unjust and imprudent In order 

 to forward his ambitious purposes he allied himself to the atrocious 

 Borgias and tho unprincipled Ferdinand; and the calamities which 

 his troops iullictcd upon Italy, the horrors of the storming of Brescia, 

 the cruel execution of Count Avogadro and his two sons because they 

 resisted the invaders, and other atrocities committed by the French 

 commanders, are great stains on the memory of this 'paternal' 

 monarch. Having lost his best troops, he reluctantly gave up his 

 Italian schemes, made peace with Ferdinand and the pope, and, at 

 the age of fifty-three, married Mary, sister of Henry VIII. of England. 

 His young wife made him forget his years and the weakness of his 

 constitution : " On her account," says the biographer of Bayard, " he 

 changed all his mode of life : instead of dining at eight o'clock in the 

 morning, or before, he fixed his dinner-hour at noon ; and instead of 

 going to bed at nix in tho evening, as heretofore, he often sat up till 

 midnight." He did not live quite three months after his marriage, 

 and died at Paris in January 1515, leaving no male issue. He was 

 succeeded by Francis I. 



LOUIS XIII., sou of Henri IV. and of Mary de' Medici, succeeded 



