His religiosity was genuine if degenerate. He lavished presents on influential saints, built shrines, sent gifts to churches, went on frequent pilgrimages and spent much time in prayer—employing his consummate diplomacy to win celestial allies, and rewarding them richly when their aid secured him any advantage. St Martin of Tours received 1200 crowns after the capture of Perpignan. He tried to bribe the saints of his enemies, as he did their ministers. An unfaltering faith taught him the value of religion—as a branch of politics. Finally, more in the spirit of orthodoxy, he used the same arts to make sure of heaven. When the ring of St Zanobius and the blood of Cape Verde turtles gave him no relief from his last illness, he showered gifts upon his patron saints, secured for his own benefit the masses of his clergy, and the most potent prayers in Christendom, those of the two most effective saints of his day, Bernardin of Doulins and Francis of Paolo.
During the last two or three years of his life Louis lived in great isolation, “seeing no one, speaking with no one, except such as he commanded,” in the château of Plessis-les-Tours, that “spider’s nest” bristling with watch towers, and guarded only by the most trusty servitors. A swarm of astrologers and physicians preyed upon his fears—and his purse. But, however foolish in his credulity, he still made his strong hand felt both in France and in Italy, remaining to the last “the terrible king.” His fervent prayers were interrupted by instructions for the regency which was to follow. He died on the 30th of August 1483, and was buried, according to his own wish, without royal state, in the church at Cléry, instead of at St Denis. He left a son, his successor, Charles VIII., and two daughters.
See the admirable résumé by Charles Petit-Dutaillis in Lavisse’s Histoire de France, tome iv. pt. ii. (1902), and bibliographical indications given there. Michelet’s wonderful depiction in his Histoire de France (livres 13 to 17) has never been surpassed for graphic word-painting, but it is inaccurate in details, and superseded in scholarship. Of the original sources for the reign the Lettres de Louis XI. (edited by Charavay and Vaesen, 8 vols., 1883–1902), the celebrated Mémoires of Philippe de Commines and the Journal of Jean de Royl naturally come first. The great mass of literature on the period is analysed in masterly fashion by A. Molinier, Sources de l’histoire de France (tome v. pp. 1-146), and to this exhaustive bibliography the reader is referred for further research. See also C. Hare, The Life of Louis XI. (London, 1907). (J. T. S.*)
LOUIS XII. (1462–1515), king of France, was grandson of
Louis of Orleans, the brother of Charles VI., and son of the
poet prince, Charles of Orleans, who, after the battle of Agincourt,
spent twenty-five years of captivity in England. Louis
was duke of Orleans until his accession to the throne, and he
was fourteen years old when Louis XI. gave him the hand of
his second daughter, Joan the Lame. In the first years of the
reign of Charles VIII., Louis made a determined stand against
the government of the Beaujeus, stirred up coalitions of the
feudal nobles against them, and was finally defeated and taken
prisoner at St Aubin du Cormier in 1488. Charles VIII. set
him at liberty in 1491. These successive checks tamed him a
little. In the Italian expedition of 1494 he commanded the
vanguard of the royal army, occupied Genoa, and remained in
the north of Italy, menacing Milan, on which he was already
dreaming of asserting his rights. The children of Charles VIII.
having died in infancy, he became heir-presumptive to the throne,
and succeeded Charles in 1499. Louis was then thirty-six years
old, but he seems to have grown old prematurely. He was
fragile, narrow-shouldered and of a sickly constitution. His
intelligence was mediocre, his character weak, and he allowed
himself to be dominated by his wife, Anne of Brittany, and
his favourite the Cardinal d’Amboise. He was a good king,
full of moderation and humanity, and bent upon maintaining
order and improving the administration of justice. He enjoyed
a genuine popularity, and in 1506 the estates of Tours conferred
on him the surname of Père du Peuple. His foreign policy,
which was directed wholly towards Italy, was for the most part
unskilful; to his claims on Naples he added those on Milan,
which he based on the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of
Orleans, with Valentina Visconti. He led in person several
armies into Italy, and proved as severe and pitiless towards
his enemies as he was gentle and clement towards his subjects.
Louis had two daughters. After his accession he had divorced
his virtuous and ill-favoured queen, Joan, and had married,
in 1499, Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII. On her
death in January 1514, in order to detach England from the
alliance against him, he married on the 9th of October 1514,
Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. of England (see Mary, queen
of France). He died on the 1st of January 1515.
For a bibliography of the printed sources see Henri Hauser, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, XVI e siècle, vol. 1. (Paris, 1906). The principal secondary authorities are De Maulde, Histoire de Louis XII. (Paris, 1889–1893); Le Roux de Lincy, Vie de la reine Anne de Bretagne (Paris, 1860); H. Lemonnier, Les Guerres d’Italie (Paris, 1903) in the Histoire de France by E. Lavisse. (J. I.)
LOUIS XIII. (1601–1643), king of France, was the son of Henry IV. and of Marie de’ Medici. He became king on his father’s assassination in 1610; but his mother at once seized
the full powers of regent. She determined to reverse the policy
of her husband and to bring France into alliance with Spain
and the Austrian house, upon which power Henry had been
meditating an attack at the time of his death. Two marriages
were designed to cement this alliance. Louis was to marry
Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish king, Philip III.,
and the Spanish prince, afterwards Philip IV., himself was to
marry the Princess Elizabeth, the king’s sister. Notwithstanding
the opposition of the Protestants and nobles of France,
the queen carried through her purpose and the marriages were
concluded in 1615. The next years were full of civil war and
political intrigue, during which the queen relied upon the
Marshal d’Ancre. Louis XIII. was a backward boy, and his
education had been much neglected. We have the fullest
details of his private life, and yet his character remains something
of a mystery. He was fond of field sports and seemed
to acquiesce in his mother’s occupation of power and in the rule
of her favourites. But throughout his life he concealed his
purposes even from his closest friends; sometimes it seems as
if he were hardly conscious of them himself. In 1617 he was
much attached to Charles d’Albert, sieur de Luynes; and with
his help he arrested Marshal d’Ancre, and on his resistance had
him assassinated. From this time to her death the relation
between the king and his mother was one of concealed or open
hostility. The article on France must be consulted for the
intricate events of the following years.
The decisive incident for his private life as well as for his reign was the entrance of Cardinal Richelieu, hitherto the queen’s chief adviser, into the king’s council in 1624. Henceforth the policy of France was directed by Richelieu, who took up in its main features the system of Protestant alliances and opposition to the power of Austria and Spain, which had been begun by Henry IV. and had been interrupted by the queen-mother during the regency; while he asserted the power of the crown against all rivals at home. This policy had remarkable results for the king’s private life. It not only brought him into unremitting conflict with the Protestants and the nobles of France, but also made him the enemy of his mother, of his brother Gaston of Orleans, who made himself the champion of the cause of the nobles, and sometimes even of his wife. It is not easy to define his relations to Richelieu. He was convinced of his loyalty and of his genius, and in the end always supported his policy. But he disliked the friction with his family circle which this policy produced. In the difficulty with which he expressed himself and in a certain indecision of character the king was curiously unlike his father, the frank and impetuous Henry of Navarre, and his absolute son Louis XIV. He took a great interest in all the externals of war. He was present, and is said to have played an important part at the passage of Susa in 1629, and also eagerly participated in the siege of Rochelle, which surrendered in the same year. But for the most part his share in the great events of the reign was a passive one. The one all-important fact was that he supported his great minister. There were certain occasions when it seemed as if that support would be denied. The chief of these was what is known as the “Day of Dupes” (1630). Then the queen-mother and the king’s
