LOUIS XI. OF FRANCE. 7 



property, that of occupancy, whicli indeed the law of 

 nature would allow him, but of which the laws of society 

 have, in most instances, very justly and reasonably 

 deprived him." 



Louis XI. of France, who indulged in no pleasure but 

 that of the chase, and who turned pale when the word 

 death was mentioned, had the firmness to give orders 

 himself for the mausoleum to be erected to him. He 

 ordered that his statue should represent him placed on 

 his knees in a hunting dress, and a hound by his side ; 

 that he should not be represented in the attenuated 

 state to which his illness had reduced him, but as in his 

 most robust health. If Sir Walter Scott's " Quentin 

 Durward," give a true picture of Louis XI. we may cer- 

 tainly infer that he punished with immediate death any 

 person found in his parks or forests destroying his deer 

 or game. Louis XL in the disguise of a merchant 

 thus addresses Quentin Durward : — " Every j^ard of the 

 ground, excepting the path which we now occupy, is 

 rendered dangerous, and well nigh impracticable, by 

 snares and traps, armed with scythe blades, which 

 shred off the unwary passengers' limbs as sheerly as a 

 hedge-bill tops a hawthorn sprig, and calthrops that 

 would pierce your foot through, and pitfalls deep enough 

 to bury you in for ever, for you are now within the pre- 

 cincts of the royal demesne." It is well known that at 

 this period, and until the French Ee volution broke out 

 in 1789, the game laws in France, according to the 

 feudal system, were as rigorous and severe as in any 

 part of Europe. 



" The abolition of the exclusive right of shooting and 

 hunting," says Sir Archibald Alison, " was made the 

 pretext for the most destructive disorders throughout all 



