CHAPTER II

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Reign of John II.—Stephen Marcel, Provost of the Merchants—Reign of Charles V.—Hugh Aubriot—Reign of Charles VI.—Noviant—La Rivière—Peter des Essarts—John de Montaigu—Contests of the factions at Paris—The Count of Armagnac—The Burgundians obtain possession of Paris—Massacre of the Armagnacs—Assassination of the duke of Burgundy—Reign of Charles VII.—Paris in the hands of the English—Villiers de l’Isle Adam—The English expelled from Paris—Reign of Louis XI.—Anthony de Chabannes—The Count de Melun—Cardinal de Balue—William d’Haraucour—Charles d’Armagnac—Louis de Luxembourg—The Duke of Nemours and his children.

A mind tinctured with superstition, even though it were not of the darkest hue, might be tempted to believe that a fatality pursued the men by whom the Bastile was raised. It has been seen that the original founder was the famous Stephen Marcel, Provost of the Merchants. Marcel, though his character has uniformly been blackened by writers devoted to absolute monarchy, seems to have been influenced, at least in the greatest portion of his career, by truly patriotic motives. It is not the object which he laboured to obtain, but some of the means which he employed for its attainment, that merits censure. To confine the royal authority within reasonable bounds, and to give the national representatives their proper weight in the scale of government, were the purposes which he sought to accomplish. The dangerous circumstances in which the country was placed, and the heavy oppression under which the people groaned, pointed out such a reform as being no less wise than just. The time for attempting it was favourable; inasmuch as the captivity of the king, and the presence of a victorious foreign army, would, it was supposed, compel the dauphin, Charles, to look to the States-General for the means of saving France from still greater calamities. Yet, so strong was princely dislike to receiving aid from the legitimate guardians of the public purse, that Charles preferred raising supplies by the fraudulent and ruinous expedient of debasing the coin. In that scheme he was fortunately defeated by the stubborn opposition of the Provost.

The alliance formed by Marcel with Charles, surnamed the Bad, king of Navarre, was, perhaps, an impolitic act; not so much because the Navarrese monarch deserved the epithet given to him by French historians—for we may doubt whether he was, in reality, much more blame-worthy than his namesake, the dauphin, on whom the same historians have lavished their praise—but because a junction with a man who was exceedingly obnoxious to a large party in France was likely to give rise to suspicions with respect to his principles and motives. It is probable, however, that he was led to it, by a wish to have some stronger prop to lean on than the fluctuating favour of the populace. The “varium et mutabile semper,” by which Virgil, somewhat harshly, characterizes the female sex, may, with less appearance of satire, be applied to the multitude. This truth Marcel was doomed to learn by experience.

For nearly two years, the Provost, with more or less steadiness, kept his footing on the tottering eminence to which he had risen. During that time he was actively engaged in securing the French capital from external and internal foes. He fortified and enlarged its circuit, supplied it with arms and provisions, established a guard of citizens, which was night and day on the watch, and barricaded the entrances of the streets by ponderous chains, which were fastened to the houses: these chains were the first barricades which were formed in Paris.

The capital was undoubtedly saved from pillage and devastation by the provident care of Marcel. In spite, however, of his exertions, his popularity waned; the minds of his fellow citizens were poisoned by the arts and insinuations of the dauphin’s friends, and irritated by his connection with the king of Navarre, whose troops were mercilessly ravaging all the circumjacent country. While the Parisians were in this ferment, the dauphin promised a general amnesty to them, on condition of their giving up to him the Provost, and twelve other persons, whom he should select. Fearing, probably, that this temptation would be too great for them to resist, the Provost, in an evil hour, resolved to admit into the city the troops of the king of Navarre. It is also said, though there does not appear to be any proof of the fact, that he intended to make a general massacre of the opposite party, and transfer the crown of France to Charles the Bad. For this we have only the word of his enemies.

It was on the night of the 31st of July, 1358, that Marcel designed to open the gates of Paris to the Navarrese soldiery. He was too late. At noon, he went to the gate of the bastile of St. Denis, and ordered the guard to deliver up the keys to Joceran de Mascon, the king of Navarre’s treasurer. The guard refused to comply, and a loud altercation arose. The noise brought to the place John Maillard, the commandant of the quarter. Up to this moment, Maillard had been the zealous friend of Marcel, but he now resolutely opposed the scheme of the latter. A violent quarrel ensued between them, which ended by Maillard springing on horseback, unfurling the banner of France, and summoning the citizens to assist him in preventing the Provost from betraying the city to the English. The summons speedily brought a throng around him. The friends of the dauphin, likewise, did not let slip this opportunity of acting in his behalf. A considerable body of men was collected by them, at the head of which were placed two gentlemen, named Pepin des Essarts and John de Charny.

From the gate of St. Denis, meanwhile, Marcel proceeded on the same errand to the other gates. He was not more successful than on his first attempt; obedience was every where refused. As a last resource, he bent his course to the bastile of St. Anthony. Here, again he was foiled. His enemies were beforehand with him. The keys he did by some means obtain, but they were useless. Maillard had already reached the scene of

## action, with a numerous train of followers, and he was almost immediately

joined by the partisans of the dauphin. With the keys of the Bastile in his hand, Marcel began to ascend the entrance ladder, striving at the same time to keep off his assailants. A terrible cry now burst forth of “Kill them! kill them! death to the Provost of the Merchants and his accomplices!” Alarmed by the clamour, he attempted to save himself by flight, but he was struck on the head with an axe, by de Charny, and he fell at the foot of the Bastile, which he had himself built. His body was immediately pierced with innumerable wounds by the infuriated crowd. Giles Marcel, his nephew, and fifty-three others, the whole of the party which had attended him, were either slain on the spot or thrown into prison. Three days afterwards, the dauphin re-entered Paris, and began to feed his revenge with blood.

By Hugh Aubriot the Bastile was advanced another step towards its completion. Born at Dijon, of humble parents, Aubriot gained the favour of Charles the fifth, and of his brother, the duke of Anjou, and was appointed minister of finance. He was also raised to the dignified, though troublesome and dangerous office of Provost of Paris. Charles the fifth had a love of building, and he found in the Provost a man who had talents and activity to carry his wishes into effect. Paris was indebted to Aubriot for numerous works, which conduced to its safety, ornament, and salubrity. He strengthened and added to the ramparts, constructed sewers, which he was the first to introduce into the capital, formed quays, rebuilt the Pont au Change, and built the Pont St. Michel. In these labours he employed, at a fixed rate of payment, all the mendicants, destitute persons, and disorderly characters of the city; thus compelling them to earn that subsistence which they had been in the habit of extorting or plundering from the citizens. The police of the city was greatly improved by him in other respects. Among the ordinances which he issued, for that purpose, was one which revived that of Louis the ninth, relative to prostitutes. Paris was now overrun with loose women; the ordinance enjoined them, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, to reside only in certain places, which were specified, to the number of nine.

The strict performance of his duty proved to be the ruin of Aubriot. Among the worst nuisances of the capital were the scholars of the University of Paris; they were addicted, among other things, to drunkenness, libertinism, and robbery, and their insolence was still more insufferable than their vices. Perpetual quarrels and contests, in which they were almost always the aggressors, took place between these votaries of learning and the citizens. The main cause of their excesses being thus pushed beyond all bounds was the complete impunity which they enjoyed. Fonder of its privileges than of morality and justice, the University on all occasions strenuously resisted the efforts of the magistrates to bring scholars to punishment. In more than one instance it threw its protecting shield over plunderers and assassins, and pursued with a deadly hatred those individuals who had dared to enforce the laws against criminals. This crying abuse Aubriot determined to suppress. In the prison of the Little Châtelet, which was built by him, he ordered two strong and not over comfortable cells to be constructed, for the reception of delinquent scholars. These he called his _clos Bruneau_ and _rue de Fouaire_; the University schools being situated in places which were so named. By this stinging joke, and by the vigorous measures of Aubriot, the University was inexpiably offended. Regardless of its anger, he, however, resolutely persisted in arresting and committing to prison every student who ventured to transgress.

While Charles the fifth lived, Aubriot remained safe; but the death of his patron, and the weakness and confusion of a minority, laid him open to the malice of his enemies. The University had sworn to accomplish his ruin, and this oath it held sacred. In his public character he had so deported himself as to be intangible; and, therefore, his private life was ransacked to find matter for accusation. It was discovered, or feigned, that he was too warm a lover of women, and, to give a darker colour to this fault, it was added, that he had an especial predilection for Jewesses. From this, by a curious process of logic, it was deduced as an inference, that he was himself a Jew and a heretic; his accusers not perceiving, or not choosing to perceive, that the one of these conditions excluded the other. Their reasoning was akin to that which, in the fable, the wolf uses to the lamb. Unluckily, too, for the Provost, they resembled the wolf in other points; they had his savageness and his ability to injure. The University and the clergy joined in a clamour against him, and were supported by the duke of Berry, who was hostile to the Burgundian party, to which Aubriot belonged.

Charged with impiety and heresy, Aubriot was brought to trial before an ecclesiastical tribunal. With such prosecutors and such judges, conviction was certain. To such a pitch did the University and the clergy carry their animosity against him, that he would have been doomed to the flames, had not his friends at court powerfully exerted their influence to procure a milder sentence. But, though his life was spared, he was not suffered to escape without feeling how venomous are the fangs of fanatics and pedants. He was condemned to public exposure and penance, in presence of the heads and scholars of the University, to ask pardon upon his knees, and, with no other food than bread and water, to spend in strict confinement the remnant of his days.

Aubriot was conveyed to the Bastile, to undergo the last part of his sentence. In the course of a few months, probably because he was treated with too much lenity in a state prison, he was removed to the bishop’s prison, called Fort-l’Evêque, where he was thrown into one of those dungeons which bore the significant name of oubliettes. There he might have languished long, or perished quickly, but never have hoped for deliverance, had not, in 1381, the intolerable oppression exercised by the government given rise to the insurrection which, from the circumstance of the revolters being armed with leaden malls, was called the Maillotin. In want of a leader, the insurgents bethought them of Hugh Aubriot; and it is not unlikely that, as he had suffered heavy wrongs, they supposed he would espouse their cause with heart and soul. They accordingly liberated him. Aubriot, however, was either too old, or too prudent, to become the head of a revolt; he spoke his deliverers fair, but, on the very evening that he was set free, he crossed the Seine, and hastened to Burgundy, his native country, where he is believed to have died in the following year.

While Charles the sixth was labouring under his first attack of insanity, the political feuds and intrigues which distracted his court gave fresh inhabitants to the Bastile. When, in 1392, the dukes of Burgundy and Berry assumed the government, the overthrow of Clisson, the constable of France, and prime minister, necessarily ensued, and in his fall was involved the ministry he had formed. Three of the ministers, La Begue de Villaine, Noviant, and La Rivière, were arrested; Montaigu, the fourth, escaped to Avignon. La Begue, an aged man, who had served in the field with honour under several kings, was soon released; Noviant and La Rivière were reserved as scape goats, and were shut up in the Bastile. Of Noviant nothing important is recorded. La Rivière had enjoyed, in the highest degree, the confidence and friendship of Charles the fifth; so much, indeed, did the monarch value him, that, by his express commands, whenever his favourite died, the royal mausoleum of St. Denis was to be the place of interment. At the accession of Charles the sixth, La Rivière suffered a temporary eclipse; but he shone forth again when the young monarch assumed the reins of government.

Noviant and La Rivière were now in the hands of their enemies, and had little to hope; for they were rich enough to excite a hungering after their spoils, and had been too long in possession of power not to be loathed by their rivals. It is the curse and the shame of politics, that they render men insensible to, or, which is still worse, incapable of acknowledging, the merit really owned by those who differ from them in views and principles. Thorough-going politicians are but too apt to affirm what is false, or suppress what is true, provided it will injure their opponents. It follows, as a natural consequence of this unworthy feeling, that, though the two ministers fully vindicated themselves on every article of impeachment, they had but small chance of escaping. Their fate was deemed so inevitable that, more than once during the trial the brute populace rushed to the place of execution, lured by the report that the ministers were about to be brought to the scaffold. Luckily for them, they had a protector, stronger than their innocence. This was the young and lovely princess Jane, countess of Boulogne, the wife of the duke of Berry. Her marriage with the duke had been brought about by the influence of La Rivière, and this circumstance, together with the minister’s estimable qualities, had secured for him her affection and esteem. Her pleadings softened her husband, and thus prevented a deadly sentence from being passed on the fallen statesmen. It is not to be supposed, however, that they were allowed to go unscathed. To declare them guiltless would have been a tacit confession of error, an act which is not to be expected from weak and base minds; and, besides, hatred could not consent to let loose its objects without previously making them feel a touch of its fangs. The ministers, therefore, after having been captives for twelve months, and in hourly dread of death, were only condemned to confiscation of their property, and exile to a distance from the court. With respect to the latter part of the sentence, they might well have exclaimed, like Diogenes, “and we condemn you to remain at court!” Charles, on his temporary return to sanity, restored their estates, but they were not again employed. La Rivière died in 1400, and was buried at St. Denis.

There was a moment when the Bastile seemed about to be converted to its original purpose, that of a fortress for the defence of Paris. After the duke of Burgundy had, in 1405, obtained possession of the king, the dauphin, and the capital, preparations to recover Paris were made by the beautiful but worthless queen Isabella, and her paramour, the duke of Orleans. In consequence of this, the Burgundian prince placed garrisons in the Bastile and the Louvre; and a report having been spread, that there was a plot to carry off the dauphin, a chain was stretched across the river, from the Bastile to the opposite bank, to prevent the passage of vessels. It was on this occasion that, to win the good will of the Parisians, the duke induced the king to restore to them the barricading chains, of which they had been deprived in 1383, and which had ever since been kept in the castle of Vincennes. The precautions were prudent, but they were made useless, by a treaty between the hostile parties.

It has already been observed, that the office of Provost of Paris was no less perilous than honourable. During the disturbed and disastrous reign of Charles the sixth, there were as many as twenty-four provosts, and there were few of them who did not find their dignity a burthen. Among the most unfortunate of them was Peter des Essarts. He was one of the French nobles who were sent to aid the Scotch in their contest with the English; and, in 1402, he fell into the hands of the latter. After he was ransomed he returned to France, and became a zealous partisan of John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy. The duke amply rewarded him for his services. He successively obtained for him the posts of Provost of Paris, grand butler, grand falconer, first lay president of the chamber of accounts, supreme commissioner of woods and waters, and superintendant of finance, and also the governments of Cherbourg, Montargis, and Nemours.

As provost of Paris, it fell to his lot to arrest a man whose rise had been no less rapid than his own. His task was performed with a thorough good will. Montaigu, whom we have seen flying to Avignon after the downfall of Clisson, returned to the French capital when the storm was blown over. There he became more than ever a favourite of the king, who loaded him with honours, promoted his relations, and procured for his son the hand of the constable d’Albret’s sister. Among the offices which were lavished on Montaigu were those of finance minister and grand master of the royal household. His riches were soon increased to an enormous degree, and his pride to a still greater. To the duke of Burgundy he had rendered himself peculiarly obnoxious, by thwarting his plans, and being a determined adherent of the queen and the house of Orleans. The Burgundian affected to be reconciled to him, but he did not the less resolve upon his destruction. To accomplish the ruin of Montaigu, the duke instituted an enquiry into the conduct of those who had managed the finances; a species of enquiry which was always applauded by the tax-burthened people. At the same time, he likewise procured for the Parisians the restoration of various privileges, which had been taken from them, as a punishment for the Maillotin insurrection. Having thus fortified his popularity, he took advantage of the king being visited by one of his fits of madness, to commence operations against Montaigu. The favourite had been cautioned against his danger, and advised to fly from it, but confiding in the support of the queen and the duke of Berry, he was deaf to advice. He was arrested in the street by des Essarts, and committed to the Little Châtelet. It strongly marks his insufferable pride and insolence, that, when he was seized by the provost, he exclaimed “Ribald! how hast thou the audacity to touch me.” This was the arrogance of an upstart, for he was of humble birth. He was brought to trial, with little attention to the forms or the spirit of justice, and, after having been tortured, was condemned to lose his head; his property was confiscated, but, instead of being appropriated to replenish the treasury, it was divided among his enemies. The sentence was executed in the autumn of 1409.

If ambition had not entirely banished prudence, the fate of Montaigu might have taught des Essarts to reflect on the frail tenure by which, in an age of faction, the most conspicuous partisans hold their fortunes and their lives. Nor was he without a still more impressive warning. In a moment of displeasure, the duke of Burgundy said to him, “Provost of Paris, John de Montaigu was three-and-twenty years in getting his head cut off, but verily you will not be three years about it:”—ominous words, where the prophet had the power of bringing his prophecy to pass!

In 1410 the contending factions once more resumed their arms. By a rapid march, the Burgundian prince made himself master of Paris, which he garrisoned with eight thousand men. For the support of the troops, a heavy tax was imposed upon the citizens. Des Essarts was charged with the levying of this tax, and he is accused of having swelled his own coffers with the largest share of the produce. By this onerous measure, the popularity of the duke and the provost was materially diminished. In the course of a few months, the duke deemed it prudent to conclude another simular of a treaty; it was called the treaty of the Bicêtre, from the place where it was negotiated, and by one of its articles he consented that des Essarts should be removed from the provostship of Paris.

It seems impossible for the signers of such treaties to have put their hands to them without being tempted to laugh in each other’s faces; the compacts were notoriously intended to be broken on the first favourable opportunity. Accordingly, but a few months elapsed, after the conclusion of the peace, before the Burgundian and Orleanist parties were again in arms, and vituperating each other in the most virulent language. Des Essarts was re-established as provost of Paris; and, during the temporary ascendancy of the Orleanists, his exertions to supply the city with provisions gained for him, from the citizens, the flattering appellation of the Father of the People. When, however, the Parisians ceased to be in dread of having hungry bellies, they ceased to applaud him; and, in the following year, he became an object of their hatred.

A sharp contest of a few months was terminated by another hollow truce, under the name of a peace. By this time the Burgundian prince appears to have been converted into a deadly enemy of des Essarts. Three causes are assigned for this change. The provost is said to have in private charged him with appropriating a large sum of the public money to his own use; to have entered into correspondence with the Orleanist leaders, and warned them that the duke designed to assassinate them; and likewise to have formed, with the concurrence of the dauphin, a plan for rescuing that prince and the king from the state of tutelage in which they were kept by the Burgundian ruler. It is highly probable that, disgusted by the duke having abandoned him in the treaty of the Bicêtre, he had really gone over to the Orleanist faction. Any one of these causes was sufficient to make his former patron resolve upon his ruin. There was also another circumstance which wore a threatening aspect for des Essarts. The States-General were now sitting at Paris, and in that assembly clamours began to be heard against financial depredators, amongst whom the multitude, so lately his adulators, did not hesitate to class him. To elude the storm, which he saw approaching from more than one quarter, he resigned his office of finance minister, in which he had succeeded Montaigu; but he did not forget to secure an adequate compensation for the sacrifice which he made. He then retired to his government of Cherbourg.

The Burgundian was at this period in apparent amity with the dauphin; nor had he, as yet, openly manifested his animosity against the provost. The dauphin, was, however, at heart hostile to him, and impatient of his yoke. It was, no doubt, with a view to having a firm hold of Paris, that he resolved to become master of the Bastile; but to the duke the reason which he assigned was, the mutinous disposition of the people, which it was necessary to have the means of repressing. Imagining that the provost was still trusted by the duke, he proposed to confide to him the task of seizing upon the Bastile. The clear-sighted Burgundian at once saw through the scheme, but he gave a willing consent to its execution; for it would enable him to accomplish two objects, the getting of des Essarts into his hands, and the gaining a complete triumph over the dauphin himself. Des Essarts was consequently summoned from Cherbourg; he accepted the commission; and he managed so well, that he secured the Bastile, without the least opposition.

The provost was scarcely in possession of the fortress before the scene changed. The Burgundian prince had skilfully laid a train, and a violent explosion suddenly took place. A rumour was spread throughout Paris, that the Orleanists, or Armagnacs, as they now began to be called, intended to carry off the dauphin with his own consent, and that the provost was at the head of the plot. A furious multitude, the leaders of which were two of the duke’s attendants, immediately hurried to invest the Bastile on all sides. It swelled every moment, till it consisted of not fewer than twenty thousand armed men, all clamorous for the blood of des Essarts, and determined to storm the castle, in order to satisfy their rage. Another body, led by John de Troie, a surgeon, proceeded, at the same time, to the dauphin’s palace, loaded him with insult, and arrested several of his officers and friends, some of whom were murdered on their way to prison.

The duke of Burgundy now came forward, apparently as a mediator. The besiegers he induced to suspend their attack, by promising that their object should be attained without force being used. He then tried his eloquence on des Essarts. In the first interview he failed, in the second he succeeded. By dint of representing to him that it was impossible to restrain the people, and that, if they effected their entrance, which they certainly would, the provost would be torn in pieces, he shook his resolution of defending himself; and, by pledging his honour that no harm should befall him, he finally prevailed on him to surrender.

Des Essarts would have done more wisely to brave death from the sanguinary crowd, than to rely on the honour of an acknowledged assassin. Ostensibly for the purpose of saving him from the violence of his enemies, he was led to the prison of the Châtelet, where he seems to have thought that all danger was at an end. He was speedily undeceived, by his being brought to trial. In addition to various crimes charged against him in his official capacity, he was accused of having caused the renewal of the war between the princes after the treaty of Chartres, and of having plotted to carry off from Paris the king, the queen, and the dauphin. He was, of course, found guilty, and was condemned to lose his head, and to have his remains suspended from the gibbet of Montfaucon. Four years had not elapsed since the convicted Montaigu was conveyed by him to the same spot. The sentence passed on des Essarts was executed on the first of July 1413. He went to the scaffold with great courage; a circumstance which his enemies attributed to his having flattered himself that the people would rise and rescue him. If he entertained any such visionary hopes, his long experience of the people must have been entirely lost upon him.

The changes in the fortune of the two factions which desolated France succeeded each other with an almost ludicrous rapidity; the party which was triumphant on one day was prostrate on the morrow. We have just seen the dauphin humbled by the duke of Burgundy; yet the same year did not pass away before the dauphin and the Armagnacs gained the upper hand, and the duke found it prudent to retire to his own dominions. That he might keep a firm hold of the capital, the dauphin gave the command of the Bastile to his uncle, prince Louis of Bavaria, appointed the duke of Berry governor of Paris, gave the provostship to Tannegui du Châtel, removed to the Bastile the chains used for barricading the streets, and issued orders for the citizens to deliver up all kinds of arms.

The duke of Burgundy appealed to the sword, but without success, and the treaty of Arras, which was the result of his failure, relieved France for awhile from his incursions and his intrigues. It was not till nearly two years afterwards, when the battle of Agincourt had given a rude shock to the French throne, that he re-appeared upon the scene. Under his auspices, the Burgundian faction at Paris formed a conspiracy, for a general massacre of the Armagnacs, in which the king himself was not to be spared, should he venture to resist. It was detected at the critical moment, and the Armagnacs avenged themselves by murders, proscriptions, and excessive taxes, which alienated many of their friends, without crushing their enemies.

The death of the dauphin Louis, speedily followed by that of his brother and successor John, gave the dignity of dauphin to Charles, the youngest son of the king. The duke of Burgundy had hoped to exercise an influence over John, but he had only hostility to expect from Charles, who, as far as a boy of fifteen could be any thing, was a partisan of the Armagnacs. By war alone could any thing be gained, and he therefore prepared to wage it. The gross impolicy of the opposite party gave him manifold advantages. While the count of Armagnac, the constable, who was the head of the reigning faction, goaded the people by forced loans, enormous imposts, and severities against all whom he suspected, he and the dauphin contrived also to exasperate the queen, by seizing her treasures, casting, perhaps not undeservedly, a stain upon her character, and banishing her to Tours. Driven to desperation by these injuries and insults, she abjured her long-cherished hatred of the duke, and wrote to him for succour. He gladly listened to the call, released her from captivity, and escorted her to Chartres, where, in virtue of an obsolete ordinance of the king, she assumed the title of regent, and created a parliament, to counterbalance that of the capital. A preponderating weight was thus thrown into the scale of the Burgundian prince. Nor did he neglect to strengthen himself by conciliating the people; for, while the count of Armagnac was daily irritating them by his extortions, the duke held out to them a tempting lure, by proclaiming that all the towns which opened their gates to him should be freed from taxes. Encouraged by these circumstances, his partisans in the capital formed a plan for admitting him into the city; but it was discovered and frustrated.

The return of our Henry the fifth to France, in 1417, and the progress which he was making in Normandy, recalled to their senses most of the leaders of the factions. The necessity of union being felt, negotiations were opened. The queen, the dauphin, and the duke of Burgundy were willing to come to terms; the principal article agreed on was, that the queen and the duke should form a part of the royal council. But the count of Armagnac would hear of no treaty that did not really leave in his hands the whole power of the state; and he accordingly strained every nerve, and was even guilty of the most revolting cruelty, to render impossible an accommodation with the Burgundian leaders. He little dreamt how soon he was to be precipitated from the pinnacle of greatness, and trampled in the mire by the basest of the base.

Harassed and impoverished by tyranny and exaction within the walls, and beset by foes beyond them, the Parisians were hungering for peace. They were the more inveterate against Armagnac, because they were tantalized by the object for which they longed being almost within their reach. Peace had, in fact, been concluded at Montereau, and publicly announced in Paris, and the count, seconded by de Marle, the chancellor, was the sole obstacle to its being enjoyed. He was inflexible in his resistance. To bring about a rupture of the treaty, he sent troops to attack two of the Burgundian posts; seemingly struck with a judicial blindness, the forerunner of his fall, he pushed to an unbearable length his arrogance, extortion, and gloomy precautions; and he is said to have even meditated a sweeping massacre of such of the citizens as were hostile to him, and to have ordered leaden medals to be struck for distribution to his

## partisans, that the murderers might distinguish them in the hour of

carnage. If the character of the man, and the spirit of those barbarous times, were not in accordance with this sanguinary project, we might, perhaps, imagine him to be unjustly charged with it; for, in all ages, it has been the custom to blacken an overthrown tyrant, by loading him with imaginary crimes. That, however, it was possible for persons of the highest rank to tolerate, and probably to command, the cold-blooded slaughter of their foes, was but too speedily proved.

Terrible as the multitude is when once moved, it is slow to be moved. Mutual distrust, and the dread of failure, keep its component parts from uniting, till some one, more daring than the rest, or provoked into action by flagrant wrongs, assumes the lead, and gives to it the principle of cohesion. It was a denial of justice which brought into play the man who was wanting, to convert into open revolt the passive disaffection of the citizens. The servant of an Armagnac noble having grossly maltreated Perinet le Clerc, whose father, an ironmonger, was the quartinier, or magistrate of his ward, Perinet applied to the provost for redress. His application was contemptuously rejected, and he swore to be revenged. In concert with some of his friends, he matured a plan for admitting the Burgundian troops, and he opened a correspondence on the subject with Villiers de l’Isle Adam, who commanded at Pontoise, for the duke. The chance of success seemed so fair, that l’Isle Adam readily agreed to risk a portion of his garrison in the attempt. The negotiation was conducted with so much secrecy that not a breath of it transpired.

The plan was carried into effect on the night of the 28th of May, 1418. Perinet was a man of ready resources, equally discreet and resolute, and he omitted nothing that could tend to secure a triumph. By virtue of his office, the father of Perinet held the keys of St. Germain’s gate, and had the relieving of the guard there. On the appointed night, having first contrived to place on guard many of his associates, Perinet stole to his father’s bed-side, and, undiscovered, drew the keys from beneath his pillow. L’Isle Adam was waiting near the gate with eight hundred men. At two in the morning, it was opened by Perinet, who, as soon as the troops had entered, locked the gate, and threw the keys over the walls, that, retreat being impossible, the soldiers might be compelled to combat with desperate valour. The adventurers proceeded in dead silence along the streets till they reached the Little Châtelet, where they were joined by several hundred armed citizens, who had been assembled to receive them. The confederates now loudly raised the rallying cry of “Peace! peace! Burgundy for ever!” and it was soon as loudly echoed from every side. From all the streets crowds of citizens sallied forth, wearing on their dress the St. Andrew’s cross, which was the distinguishing mark of the Burgundian party. In a very short time, tens of thousands were in arms.

Scattered over a large city, and taken by surprise, the Armagnacs could make no resistance. Tannegui du Châtel, the governor of the Bastile, had barely time to hurry to the dauphin’s abode, snatch him half awaked from the couch, wrap him in the bedclothes, and convey him for safety to the Bastile, whence, without delay, he removed him to Melun. While he was thus occupied, a party of Burgundians marched to the king’s palace, and compelled him to take horse, and put himself at their head. Other

## parties spread themselves over the city, and slaughtered, or dragged to

prison, all the Armagnacs on whom they could lay their hands. Nobles, warriors, ministers of state, bishops, abbots, magistrates, and the humble followers who had moved at their beck, were indiscriminately thrust into durance. The jails were speedily crowded till they could hold no more, and it then became necessary to confine the captives in public buildings and private houses. The constable, in the rags of a beggar, at first eluded his pursuers, and found shelter in the dwelling of a poor mason; but a threatening proclamation, against whoever should harbour an Armagnac, terrified his host into betraying him.

The Bastile, and consequently the power of entering Paris, was yet held by Tannegui du Châtel. In the hope of recovering the capital, before preparations could be made for its defence, he hurried back from Melun, along with other officers, among whom was Barbazan, who is honourably distinguished in the French annals, as the irreproachable knight, and the restorer of the kingdom and crown of France. At the head of a large body of gendarmes, he, on the first of June, made a sally from the Bastile, and advanced up St. Anthony’s-street, towards the palace, with the intention of making himself master of the king’s person. The king, however, had been removed, and Tannegui was soon encountered by l’Isle Adam, who had gathered together some troops, and was every moment reinforced by the citizens. A desperate contest took place, but the Armagnac general was finally compelled to retreat, with the loss of four hundred men. The corpses of the slain were ignominiously thrown into the common sewer by the victors. Leaving a small garrison in the Bastile, he retired with the remainder of his force, and distributed it among the neighbouring fortresses of Corbeil, Meaux, and Melun. Two days after the departure of Tannegui, the governor of the Bastile deemed it prudent to capitulate.

Already irritated by Tannegui’s attempt, the partisans of the Burgundians were excited almost to madness by a letter from the queen, in which she declared that neither she nor the duke would return to Paris, till it was purged of the Armagnacs. It has been truly remarked, that “such a letter was, in reality, a decree of death.” That was the construction put upon it by the Burgundian faction; and, unrestrained by any religious or humane feeling, they promptly carried the sentence into effect. On the morning of the 12th of June, a report being spread that the enemy were attacking two of the gates, the citizens hastily assembled from every quarter. “All issued from their houses,” says an old writer, “like swarms of bees from various hives. Malls, hatchets, axes, clubs, poles shod with iron points, swords, pikes, javelins, and halberts, were called into use by the insurgent people.”

The signal of carnage was given by one Lambert, who harangued them, and proposed to massacre the captives. His sanguinary suggestion was instantly adopted by the brutal crowd, and they hurried to the numerous prisons, uttering loud cries of “Kill those dogs! Kill those Armagnac traitors!” A scene of horror ensued at which nature shudders. Some of the victims were flung from the towers of the buildings upon the pikes of the assassins, some were chopped down with hatchets, some were drowned, and others were burned alive in their dungeons; their mangled remains were exposed to every kind of indignity; and torrents of blood flowed through the streets. From the jails the slaughter was extended to the suspected inhabitants of houses, and was followed by pillage. The work of murder and robbery was untiringly continued throughout the whole of the night, and was recommenced in the morning, after the labourers in it had refreshed themselves by a short repast.

Nineteen hundred of the Armagnacs are said to have fallen on this terrible day. Nor did they alone suffer, for numbers of the Burgundian party fell beneath the weapons of their private foes, who availed themselves of this opportunity to gratify their revenge. After having for three days been dragged through the streets by the mob, the naked and disfigured corpse of the constable was conveyed out of Paris in the scavengers’ cart, and thrown among the filth and ordure of the city laystall. That no proof of their ferocity might be wanting, his murderers cut a portion of his skin into the form of a scarf, and hung it round him in ridicule of the white scarf which was the badge of his party.

A supplementary massacre, of equal extent, and attended by circumstances equally atrocious, occurred shortly after, in which perished the prisoners from the Bastile and Vincennes, and those who had been arrested since the first slaughter. On this occasion, the captives in the Great and Little Châtelet strove to defend themselves, by hurling down stones and tiles on their enemies, but their resistance was soon overpowered, and not one of them escaped.

These enormities—prefigurations of those which, nearly four centuries later, were to be committed in the same city—were succeeded by riotous rejoicings for the arrival of the queen and the duke, and by “one of the finest religious processions that ever was seen.” But the wrath of Heaven did not slumber long. “The joy of Paris,” says an old annalist, “was speedily changed into mourning, for three months had not passed away after this carnage, when so cruel a pestilence fell upon the city, that it destroyed more than eighty thousand persons in three months. History records, that this Perinet and his companions, after having squandered all that they had gained by plunder, died miserably, not long enjoying the fruits of their robberies; and that the greater part of the nobles and gentlemen, who had acted with the murderers, were carried off by the pestilence, except l’Isle Adam, who was reserved to be chastised by king Henry of England, though it was on another account, as we shall relate in the proper place. And was it not God who took vengeance for these cruelties?”

In a little more than a year from this time, John the Fearless, himself an assassin, fell by an assassin’s hand, at the conference of Montereau. His life had been productive of great evils to France; his death brought on it still greater. The murder of John gave birth to that coalition between his successor Philip the Good, Henry the fifth of England, and queen Isabella, which, for more than a quarter of a century, deluged the kingdom with blood, and nearly wrested the sceptre from the ancient line of monarchs. In 1420, Paris was delivered into the hands of the English, and for sixteen years they retained possession of it; the Louvre, the Bastile, and Vincennes, were their principal posts in the capital and its immediate vicinity.

The only prisoner whom, during their domination, the English are recorded to have confined in the Bastile, was the very man but for whose activity and daring the capital would, perhaps, never have been in their power. It was l’Isle Adam. This warrior, who was born about 1384, of an ancient and noble family, was taken by the English, at Honfleur, in 1415. After he recovered his liberty, he joined the party of John the Fearless, and was made governor of Pontoise. We have seen by what means he gained Paris for the Burgundian prince. That he was deeply implicated in the massacres appears to be a melancholy truth; and all his talents and valour are insufficient to cleanse his reputation from that damnable spot. For his services he was rewarded, by the duke of Burgundy, with the rank of marshal.

It is not clear in what manner l’Isle Adam incurred the displeasure of our Henry the fifth, the regent of France. French writers ascribe the circumstance to the pride and arrogance of the English sovereign, who required the most abject homage from all his French courtiers. L’Isle Adam, they tell us, having one day come into the royal presence in a plain grey dress, the monarch sternly asked him whether that was a fit dress for a marshal. “Dearest lord,” said the offender, “I had it made to travel in from Sens to Paris;” and, while he spoke, he looked at the king. “What!” exclaimed Henry, “do you dare to look a prince in the face?” “Most dread lord,” answered the marshal, “it is the custom in France; and if any one avoids looking at the person to whom he talks, he is considered as a bad man and a traitor; therefore, in God’s name, do not be offended.”—“Such is not our custom,” Henry sourly replied, and here the dialogue ended. If this story be true, it speaks ill for the policy, and worse for the disposition, of the victor of Agincourt.

A few days after this conversation is supposed to have occurred, L’Isle Adam was committed to the Bastile, on the false and absurd charge of meaning to betray Paris to the dauphin. About a thousand of the citizens took up arms to rescue him, on his way to the fortress, but they were put to flight by the small band of English archers, which was escorting him to prison. L’Isle Adam, it is affirmed, would have passed from the Bastile to the scaffold, had he not been saved by the remonstrances of Philip the Good, and the death of Henry.

After the decease of Henry, L’Isle Adam rejoined the Burgundian standard, and took so active and effective a part in the war, that, when the order of the Golden Fleece was established, he was one of the first on whom it was conferred. In 1437, he followed the duke of Burgundy into Brabant, and on the 22nd of May, of that year, he was killed in a popular insurrection, which took place at Bruges.

It was not till the 22nd of September, 1429, that any attempt was made to disturb the English in their occupation of Paris. Flushed with its recent successes, and hoping that the citizens would rise upon the garrison, the army of Charles assaulted on that day the ramparts of the capital, between the gates of St. Honoré and St. Denis. The assault, led by Joan of Arc, continued for four hours; but the glorious heroine was severely wounded through the thigh, and the assailants were compelled to retire.

For seven years after this attack, the English kept their ground in Paris. But the English power in France was now daily crumbling into dust. The Burgundian, their ally for several years, was become their

## active enemy; the duke of Bedford, whose valour and skill so long upheld

a tottering cause, had sunk into the grave; town after town, willingly or on compulsion, opened its gates to Charles; succours arrived seldom and in scanty numbers; and frequent insurrections, in Normandy and other quarters, compelled them to disseminate their troops, so that it became impossible for them to take the field with a formidable army. At this critical moment, Paris had only a feeble garrison of fifteen hundred men; a force wholly inadequate to defend the place, even had the citizens been far less disaffected than they really were. They were weary of war, and, besides, prudence dissuaded them from persisting to oppose a sovereign whose throne was evidently established on a solid basis. Such being the state of things, Charles thought the time was come to recover his capital. A negotiation was secretly opened with the citizens; and, on condition of a general amnesty, they agreed to return to their allegiance. On the night of the 13th of April, 1436, the king’s troops were admitted into the city. Though he was taken by surprise, Willoughby, the governor, a brave and intelligent officer, took such measures as would have baffled his assailants, had he received any aid from the Parisians. But not a hand was raised in his behalf, and he had no other resource than a retreat to the Bastile, which he effected in good order. An honourable capitulation, allowing him to retire with bag and baggage, to Rouen, was offered to Willoughby, and, as he knew that resistance must be unavailing, he wisely accepted an offer which he could not hope would be repeated. Thus ended the sway of the English in Paris.

During the remainder of the reign of Charles VII., nothing more occurred which belongs to this narrative. Abundant materials, are, however, supplied by the iron sway of his son and successor, Louis XI. Historians, in speaking of Louis XI., have charactered him, and with justice, as a violator of all social duties, as being a “bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad brother, a bad kinsman, a bad friend, a bad neighbour, a bad master, and a most dangerous enemy.” That, on attaining supreme power, such a man should take heavy vengeance for injuries, real or supposed, is in the natural order of things. Immediately on his accession to the throne, Louis displaced from their offices all persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to him; and, in some instances, his revenge was more signally manifested.

Among the most conspicuous of those who felt his anger was Anthony de Chabannes, count of Dammartin. Chabannes had played an active part in the long war between Charles VII. and the English, and, on various occasions had done signal service. Like many other nobles of that period, he was, however, possessed of far more courage than honourable principles. To swell his coffers with plunder, he did not hesitate to put himself at the head of the ferocious banditti known by the descriptive name of _écorcheurs_, or flayers, with whom he ravaged the north-eastern provinces of France, as far as the Swiss frontier. He quitted them in 1439, to marry a rich wife, after which he again entered into the king’s service.

Chabannes, as is often the case with criminals, could more easily commit crimes than bear to be told of them. The monarch having one day laughingly greeted him by the title of king of the flayers, he angrily replied, “I never flayed any but your enemies; and it appears to me that you have derived more benefit from their skins than I have.” Not satisfied with this retort, he further gratified his offended feelings by prompting the dauphin to become the leader of the malecontents, in the ephemeral civil war which is known as the war of the _Praguerie_.

After the Praguerie was over, Chabannes was again received into favour by Charles, and he seems ever after to have remained faithful to him. He even disclosed a conspiracy which the dauphin had formed, to deprive the monarch of his crown and liberty. The dauphin, on being brought face to face with him, hardily denied the fact, and gave him the lie. The conduct of Chabannes, in this instance, was not undignified. “I know,” said he, “the respect which is due to the son of my master; but the truth of my deposition I am ready to maintain, by arms, against all those of the dauphin’s household who will come forward to contradict it.” No one was hardy enough to accept this challenge.

It is less creditable to Chabannes, that he presided over the commission which was appointed to try, or rather to find guilty, the persecuted Jacques Cœur, and that he contrived to obtain, at a shamefully inadequate price, several of Cœur’s estates.

In 1455, Chabannes, by performing his duty to his sovereign, gave fresh offence to the dauphin. Irritated at last by the political intrigues of his son, and by his having persisted for ten years to absent himself from the court, Charles determined to deprive him of the petty sovereignty of Dauphiné, and to secure his person. Chabannes was chosen to carry this determination into effect: and he acted with such vigour that, after having prevailed on the duke of Savoy to refuse the prince an asylum, he compelled him to seek shelter in the dominions of the duke of Burgundy.

Chabannes was, consequently, one of the earliest victims on the accession of Louis to the throne. Deprived of his office of grand master of France, he took flight, but he soon returned, and claimed a fair trial. The king refused to admit the claim, and ordered him to quit the kingdom; an order which he obeyed. While he was absent, his property was confiscated, and he was summoned to appear, and answer the charges against him. Confiding in his innocence, he complied with the summons; but he was found guilty of high treason, and condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to banishment by Louis; who, however, changed his mind as to the punishment, and shut him up in the Bastile.

In the Bastile Chabannes remained for four years. On the breaking out of the war, the parties in which called their confederacy the League of the Public Good, he contrived to escape; and, on his way to join the malecontents, he made himself master of the towns of St. Fargeau and St. Maurice. He was one of those who benefited by the treaty of Conflans, which terminated this war. His sentence was annulled, and his estates were restored to him.

It is a singular circumstance that, with respect to Chabannes, Louis passed at once from the extreme of hatred and suspicion, to that of kindness and confidence. He not only restored his estates, but he added to their number. At a later date, when he instituted the order of St. Michael, Chabannes was one of the first whom he nominated. Favours conferred by a gloomy and unprincipled tyrant cast a doubt on the character of the receiver, even when it has been hitherto unstained, which was not the case with the new knight. The nomination gave occasion to a severe sarcasm from the duke of Britanny. Louis having sent to him the collar of the order, the duke declined it, assigning as a reason, that “he did not choose to draw in the same collar with Chabannes.”

Chabannes was not ungrateful for the benefits bestowed on him. When, strangely deviating from his accustomed wariness, Louis involved himself in the dilemma which Sir Walter Scott has so admirably described in Quentin Durward, Chabannes did him the most essential and opportune service, and received his warmest thanks for it. He was afterwards employed in various important expeditions, all of which he brought to a successful issue. In his old age, he withdrew from the court, but, in 1485, Charles VIII. conferred on him the government of the Isle of France and Paris. Chabannes did not long enjoy this new honour; he died in 1488.

The war, caused by the League of the Public Good, which restored liberty and fortune to Chabannes, deprived his enemy, the count de Melun, not only of both, but of life also. When we are told that Melun was so addicted to pleasure, luxury and sloth, as to have acquired the name of the Sardanapalus of his times, we can form no very flattering estimate of his character. Yet he stood high in the good graces of Louis XI., and participated largely in the spoils of Chabannes. In his capacity of governor of Paris and the Bastile, he was also entrusted with the custody of that nobleman. It was not till after the battle of Montlhéri that Louis began to suspect him. The monarch had, indeed, some excuse for suspicion. Melun had at least been criminally negligent, in a post which demanded the utmost vigilance. He had prevented a sally from the city during the battle, which might have turned the scale in the king’s favour, and he had been ignorant of, or winked at, a correspondence carried on with the chiefs of the League by some of the disaffected citizens. These indications of treachery were strengthened by two circumstances; some of the cannon of the Bastile had been spiked, and the gates of the fortress, on the side next the country, had been left open while the besiegers were making an attack. The escape of Chabannes might also afford a reason for doubting his keeper’s fidelity. Louis, however, was, at this moment, too closely pressed by his numerous enemies to enter into an investigation of the subject; and he, therefore, only dismissed the governor.

Melun retired to his estates, and imagined that the storm was blown over. He was mistaken. As soon as Louis had disembarrassed himself, he instituted a rigid enquiry into the conduct of his disgraced favourite. One of the most active in pushing it on was a man who was indebted to the count for his rise in life; the cardinal Balue, of whom further mention is about to be made. The result of the enquiry was, a charge of having maintained a secret correspondence with the heads of the League, especially with the duke of Britanny. Melun was in consequence arrested, and conveyed to Chateau Galliard, in Normandy, by the provost Tristan l’Hermite, of infamous memory.

The trial was commenced without delay, and, as he refused to confess to any crime, he was put to the torture. With respect to his correspondence with the chiefs of the League, he avowed it, but pleaded that it had the king’s sanction. It is probable that this was really the case. Many motives might have induced the king to allow of his officer corresponding with the enemy. But Louis had now resolved upon the destruction of Melun; and, as he never scrupled at falsehood when he had any point to gain by it, he denied that he had given the permission. By adding that he had long had cause to be dissatisfied with the prisoner, he gave a broad hint as to what kind of verdict he desired. The judges, as in duty bound, pronounced Melun guilty, and he was consigned to the scaffold. His execution took place in 1468. Of his confiscated property, a considerable portion was bestowed on Chabannes.

It is said, that the executioner having only wounded him at the first stroke, Melun raised his head from the block, and declared, that he had not deserved death, but that, since the king willed it, he was satisfied. If this be true, we must own that tame submission to the injustice of a despot was never more strikingly displayed.

Had Melun lived but a little longer, he might have triumphed in the downfall and punishment of his ungrateful enemy, the cardinal, which took place in 1469. John Balue, the person in question, born in Poitou in 1421, was the son of either a miller or a tailor. He had, perhaps, as many vices, and as few virtues, as any person upon record. Ingratitude, in particular, seems to have been deeply rooted into the nature of this unworthy prelate. Towards the bishops of Poictiers and Angers, who had early patronized and confided in him, and the count de Melun, by whom he was introduced to the monarch, he acted with unparalleled baseness. His sovereign fared no better than his other benefactors. Louis XI. had rapidly raised him to the highest offices in the state, and had loaded him with ecclesiastical preferment, yet the traitor betrayed him.

While his power lasted, there was no department of the government with which Balue did not interfere. This trait in the character of the cardinal called forth a pleasant sarcasm from Chabannes, who could not see with patience his own province invaded. Balue having one day reviewed some regiments, Chabannes gravely requested the king’s permission to visit the cardinal’s bishopric of Evreux, for the purpose of examining clerical candidates, and conferring ordination on them. “What do you mean?” said Louis. “Why, surely, sire,” replied Chabannes, “I am as fit to ordain priests, as the bishop of Evreux is to review an army.”

It required, however, something more than a joke to shake the confidence which the monarch placed in the cardinal. That something more was not slow in coming. Since the treaties of Conflans and Peronne, it had been a main object of Louis to dissociate his brother, the duke of Berry, from his dangerous adviser the duke of Burgundy; and, as one means towards effecting this, he strove hard to induce him to accept, as an appanage, the duchy of Guienne and the government of Rochelle, instead of the provinces of Champagne and Brie, which, by the treaty of Peronne, he had been compelled to confirm to his brother. Louis was undoubtedly justified in wishing to accomplish this object, as there was little chance that peace would be preserved if the duke of Berry became an immediate neighbour of the duke of Burgundy. Nor was the equivalent which the king offered for Champagne and Brie an inadequate one, but much the contrary. On this occasion, the king suffered the penalty to which all deceivers are subjected, that of not being trusted. Could the duke of Berry have put faith in his brother, he no doubt would have accepted Guienne.

It was with no less surprise than indignation that the king discovered, by intercepted letters, that all his efforts, not only in this case but in others, had been counteracted by the man on whom he most relied. The cardinal, and his friend and agent William d’Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, were in close correspondence with his enemies. It was to revenge himself for the king having failed in his promise, to procure him a cardinal’s hat, that d’Haraucourt entered into the plot against him. It would seem that nothing short of madness could have prompted the cardinal to peril his liberty and fortune, perhaps his life, by his treasonable proceeding. But here again the king was whipped by his own vices. Balue perceived or imagined that his influence was declining, he was convinced that it would wholly expire whenever his services were no longer necessary to the monarch—Louis being, in his opinion, incapable of personal attachment—and he therefore resolved to place him in such a situation, by making the king’s foes formidable, that those services should be always indispensable. On his being interrogated, he avowed, with a shameless candour, that, for this purpose, he had betrayed the secrets of the state to the Burgundian duke, encouraged the duke of Berry to refuse the proposed exchange, advised the calamitous interview and disgraceful treaty of Peronne, and recommended to Charles of Burgundy to compel the king to accompany him on the expedition against the revolted citizens of Liege.

There was treason enough here to forfeit a hundred heads, had they grown on laic shoulders. But, as far as regarded the final penalty of the law, their ecclesiastical character proved a shield to the cardinal and his associate. The king desired the pope to nominate apostolical commissioners to try the criminals; the pope, on the other hand, contended that they must be judged by the consistory, and that the decision of their fate must be left to him. A long negotiation ensued between the spiritual and temporal sovereigns, and, as neither would concede, the offenders were never brought to trial at all.

It cannot, however, be said that the cardinal and the bishop escaped unscarred. If Louis could not take their lives, he could at least render their lives a burthen, and this was a power which he was not backward in exercising. In the province of Touraine, between twenty and thirty miles to the southward of Tours, stood the castle of Loches, one of the sepulchres in which Louis buried his living victims. It was there that, at a later period, Ludovico Sforza lingered out the last years of his existence. Loches was well provided with oubliettes, dungeons, chains of enormous weight, facetiously called the king’s little daughters, iron cages, and all other means of torturing the body and mind. Thither Balue was sent, and there he passed eleven lonely years, in an iron cage, which was only eight feet square. His fate resembled that of Perillus—for to the cardinal himself is attributed the invention of these cages. Perhaps the only praise which he ever deserved was gained at the castle of Loches; the praise of having preserved his courage unshaken throughout the whole of his tedious captivity. Balue was released in 1480, went to Rome, where he was received with open arms, was sent as legate to France, and died, in 1491, bishop of Albano, and legate of the March of Ancona.

His confederate, d’Haraucourt, was still more severely punished. The Bastile was his place of confinement, and there a cage, of unusual strength, was constructed in one of the towers, expressly for his abode. The cage was formed of massy beams, bolted together with iron, occupied nineteen carpenters for twenty days in framing it, and was so heavy, that the vault, which was to support it, was obliged to be rebuilt in a more substantial manner. Within its narrow and gloomy limits, d’Haraucourt was immured for no less than fifteen years. It was not till after the death of Louis the eleventh, that the prisoner was set at liberty. He died, at a very advanced age, in the year 1500.

While d’Haraucourt was wasting away life in his cage, there was another prisoner in the Bastile, who was enduring far worse misery, and was far more worthy of compassion, because, though he was himself guiltless, he suffered the penalty of another’s crimes. When, in 1473, the restless and unprincipled John, count of Armagnac, was slain at Lectoure, by the royal troops, his brother Charles, who had taken no part in the contest, was arrested by order of Louis the eleventh, sent to the Concièrgerie, and put to the torture. He was on the point of proving his innocence, when he was removed to the Bastile, and secluded from all access of friends. L’Huillier, the governor, treated him with a cold-blooded barbarity which was worthy of a man who held office under Louis. There was nothing that cruelty could suggest that was not practised on the unfortunate Charles. The agonies of the captive were protracted for a period of fourteen years, during all which time he inhabited a dreary and noisome dungeon, in which water almost continually dropped upon him, and he could not move without wading though slimy mud. He was liberated, and his property was restored, by Charles the eighth. The boon, however, came too late to be of any avail. His reason was shaken by what he had undergone; he languished for a few years, and died in 1497.

Less compassion is due to the next inhabitant of the Bastile who appears upon the scene. Faithful to no party, he fell regretted by none. Louis de Luxembourg, count of St. Pol, who was born in 1418, succeeded to the possessions of his father, when he was only fifteen. He did not receive his moral education in schools where humanity and honour were to be learned. His uncle and guardian, count de Ligni, was well qualified to brutalise his youthful mind. It was de Ligni that basely sold the heroine Joan of Arc to the English, for ten thousand livres. In one of his campaigns he took his nephew with him, that the boy might kill some of the prisoners, in order to accustom him to scenes of blood. Louis is said to have proved an apt scholar, and to have taken delight in the performance of his murderous task.

At his outset in life, St. Pol, like most of his family, was a warm

## partisan of the English party. Circumstances, however, having compelled

him to visit the court of Charles the seventh, he met with so flattering a reception that he deserted his party, and devoted himself to that monarch. With the dauphin (who was afterwards Louis the eleventh) he contracted as close a friendship as can subsist between two such characters. St. Pol distinguished himself, in the service of his new master, on various occasions, particularly at the sieges of the Norman fortresses.

Though St. Pol had given up the English party, he did not break off his old connection with the Burgundian prince. He fought for him against the insurgent citizens of Ghent, and he even joined in the League of the Public Good, as it was ludicrously styled, and led the vanguard of the count de Charolais, at the battle of Montlhéri. At the peace of Conflans, Louis, in the hope of winning him over from the Burgundian interest, promoted him to be constable of France; and soon after, with the same view, he gave him the hand of Mary of Savoy, the queen’s sister, and granted him a wide extent of territory.

These favours did not produce the desired effect. St. Pol seems to have had little gratitude in his nature; and, in this case, he perhaps thought that there was none due for what was rather a bribe than a free gift. As he imagined that his safety consisted in preventing a good understanding between the king and the duke of Burgundy, he was constantly intriguing to keep them at variance, and he alternately betrayed them. His intrigues being discovered, the two princes, during one of their short periods of amity, entered into a compact, by which they declared him their common enemy. The duke of Burgundy promised, that if the constable fell into his hands, he would surrender him to the king within eight days. For this he was to be rewarded by the restoration of St. Quentin, Amiens, and other towns on the Somme. This agreement was of course kept a profound secret.

What St. Pol had already done was sufficient to seal his fate; but he roused the anger of Louis still farther, by an act of personal disrespect, and by leaguing with Edward the fourth of England for the invasion of France. It was not, however, till he had got rid of Edward by a treaty, and had artfully contrived to irritate the duke of Burgundy still more against St. Pol, that Louis seriously prepared for taking vengeance on the offender. The negotiation between Edward and Louis had already alarmed the constable, and, to conciliate the latter, he had offered to attack the English. This offer Louis communicated to Edward, who, indignant at the treachery of his recent confederate, sent the letters which he had received from him to the French monarch. Louis was thus furnished with decisive proofs. To the overtures of St. Pol he replied in ambiguous words, the real meaning of which was soon made evident: “I am overwhelmed by so many affairs,” said the Machiavelian monarch, “that I have great need of a good head like yours to get through them.”

The preparations of the king at length made St. Pol fully aware of his danger. Hesitating as to the measure which in this emergency he ought to adopt, he for a moment half resolved to stand on his defence; but reflection on the superior resources of his enemy persuaded him that he had no chance of success from arms. Yet, had he boldly appealed to the sword, he might, perhaps, have saved his life, or at least have met with an honourable death. He preferred throwing himself on the duke of Burgundy, whom he tempted by offering him his strong towns, as the price of protection. Louis demanded that he should be given up to him; and after some qualms of conscience as to sacrificing a suppliant, who was also his cousin, Charles of Burgundy complied with the demand. St. Pol was conveyed to the Bastile. The French monarch gave him his choice, either to make a full confession, or to be tried in the customary manner. The latter alternative was chosen by the prisoner, who knew not that his letters, to Edward and the duke of Burgundy, were in the king’s hands, and therefore believed that there was not legal evidence to warrant his conviction. His judges sentenced him to lose his head, and he was executed on the 19th of December, 1475.

The last captive in the Bastile, during the reign of Louis the Eleventh, or rather the last of whom any record remains—for there were doubtless numbers of the nameless throng—was an Armagnac; a name which seems to have been fatal to its owners. We have seen one Armagnac torn in pieces by the populace, another treacherously slain after the surrender of his stronghold, a third losing his reason in a dungeon, and we are now to witness the leading of a fourth to the scaffold, under circumstances the most horrible.

James of Armagnac, duke of Nemours, was the son of the Count de la Marche, who was the governor of the youthful dauphin. When the pupil of the count ascended the throne, he gave his cousin Louisa in marriage to James of Armagnac, and conferred on him the dukedom of Nemours, with all the rights and privileges of the peerage; an honour which had never before been enjoyed by any other than princes of the royal family. Nemours, nevertheless, joined the League of the Public Good. Louis, as we have seen, was obliged to succumb to the League; and, by the consequent peace of Conflans, James of Armagnac obtained the government of Paris and the Isle of France.

Little more than three years elapsed before Nemours was again engaged in intrigues against the monarch. But the time was gone by when revolt could lead to promotion. Louis had strengthened his authority, and he was not disposed to see it set at nought. He, however, pardoned him; but it was on condition that any future offence should render him liable to punishment for the past, and that he should then be deprived of his privilege of peerage, and be tried as a private individual.

In the course of a few years Nemours once more, and finally, brought down the wrath of the monarch on his head. He was accused of treason, and Beaujeu was despatched to besiege him in the town of Carlat, to which the duke had retired. Carlat was supposed to be impregnable, and it was provisioned for two or three years. Nemours, nevertheless, surrendered without resistance, on condition that his life should be spared; Beaujeu guaranteed this condition, as did likewise Louis le Graville, lord of Montaigu, and Bonfile le Juge, who enjoyed the royal confidence. The wife of the duke, who was confined in child-bed, died of grief and terror, on seeing her husband become a prisoner.

Nemours was conveyed, first, to Pierre-Encise, whence he was removed to the Bastile; where he was subjected to the harshest usage. All his supplications to the king, during two years’ abode in the Bastile, were unavailing; or rather, indeed, seem to have tended to irritate him. The duke had, undoubtedly, been a turbulent subject; but nothing can palliate the infamy of the king’s conduct, after he had Nemours in his power. It is difficult to account for the inveteracy of his hatred. There was no conceivable violation of justice of which he was not guilty. To have broken the pledge solemnly given by his general was little compared with what followed. Such of the judges as seemed inclined to show mercy were threatened and displaced; others were tempted by being promised to share in the spoils of the prisoner; the place where the court held its sittings was more than once arbitrarily changed; and the decent formalities of the law, as well as its essential principles, were contemptuously discarded. No wonder that Nemours was condemned to death.

But now a scene opens which casts all the rest into shade, and at which nature shudders. Nothing was omitted that could render death terrible to the duke. The chamber where he confessed to the priest was hung with black; the horse which took him to execution was covered with a housing of the same hue. He was already agonised by the thought that his children, who were little more than infants, were reduced to beggary—but this was not enough. A scaffold was expressly constructed for him to suffer on, with wide openings between the planks, and underneath, clad in white, their heads naked, and their hands bound, were placed his children, that they might be drenched with their parent’s blood. It was on the 4th of August, 1477, that this horrible tragedy was acted.

Did the brutal vindictiveness of the monarch end here? It did not. The guiltless children, of whom the youngest was only five years old, were taken back to the Bastile, and plunged into a loathsome dungeon, where they had scarcely the power of moving. There they remained, for five years, till the accession of Charles the eighth opened their prison door. A part of the confiscated property of their father was subsequently restored to them by Charles. The health of two of them was so broken that they did not long survive. The youngest inherited the title of Nemours, rose to be viceroy of Naples, and fell at the battle of Cerignoles, in 1503.

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