Duke Philip as an appanage, and not as a fief which would pass in the female line. Flanders and Artois went in the female line. Lewis tried to treat with the states, and likewise with Mary's advisers, the Lord of Humbercourt and the Chancellor Huguenon; and the Flemings, discovering that these two had a separate correspondence with him, declared them traitors, and beheaded them in the market-place of Ghent, in the very sight of their lady. The act was scarcely done before Lewis's barber, Oliver le Daim, came to offer his son's hand to Mary. She deemed herself insulted and refused; therefore Lewis laid waste her lands with all the horrors of war, routed the remnant of her father's army, and overthrew all attempts at defence. In despair, Mary sent a ring to her former suitor, Maximilian of Austria, who hurried to Ghent, and, with the full consent of the states of Flanders, was married to her eight months after her father's death. He so ably defended her cause that Lewis was forced to make a truce, which was renewed again and again, till, in 1482, Mary was killed by a fall from her horse, leaving two infants, Philip and Margaret. A peace was now concluded at Arras, by which Margaret was betrothed to the Dauphin and placed in the keeping of Lewis. She was to bring as her dower the counties of Artois and Burgundy with some smaller lordships. Lewis thus for a while was able to incorporate with France a considerable state of the empire, in the shape of the county of Burgundy. This however was only for a season, but he was presently able to incorporate a still more important state of the empire for ever.

46. Annexation of Provence.-Meantime Lewis grew more suspicious, as his cold sneering manner, greed of land and money, evident delight in tormenting, and systematic depression of the nobles made him more and more hated as well as feared. He shut himself up in his castle of Plessis les Tours, which was closely fortified and guarded by the Scottish archers, and kept all his nobles aloof. The Duke of Nemours, when tortured before he was put to death for his many treasons in 1477, had named so many accomplices that Lewis distrusted almost all his great nobles. Above all the King was jealous of Lewis, duke of Orleans, son of him who had been made prisoner at Agincourt, and next heir to the throne after the sickly dauphin. Lewis had forced him to marry his second daughter, Joan, a pale, deformed girl, whom father and

husband treated with equal scorn. His elder daughter Anne was married to Peter, Lord of Beaujeu, second son of the Duke of Bourbon and was more beloved by him than any one else. Old King René died in 1480, leaving Anjou, Provence, and his claim to Naples to his nephew Charles, Count of Maine, and only Bar to his grandson René of Lorraine, who claimed the whole inheritance of his grandfather. Lewis however at once took possession of Bar, and Charles, who died in 1481, left all his possessions to the king. Provence was at once occupied, but it was not formally annexed till 1486, and from that time till the French Revolution it remained a separate state, held by the King of France as Count of Provence, which title was always used in acts done within the county. Another great fief of the Empire was thus added to France, and the French sea-board on the Mediterranean was greatly increased, taking in the great haven of Marseilles. France also greatly increased her frontier towards Italy. Lewis had thus completed what his father had begun, and had the greater part of what we now call France at his feet, the nobles cowering under his iron grasp, and Britanny being the only great feudal power remaining. He had done much for trade and commerce. He had encouraged the opening of mines and breeding of silk-worms; he had permitted the nobles and clergy to trade, and made himself the head of all the guilds at Paris. He had also encouraged the University, and especially the newly-introduced study of Greek. He had created three parliaments or high courts of justice like the Parliament of Paris, at Grenoble, Bourdeaux, and Dijon; and he arranged a new municipal code, which lessened the power of individual cities and made them more dependent on the crown. His great admirer, Philip de Comines, who was fairly fascinated by his craft and subtlety, and left the service of Charles of Burgundy for his, says that he was the prince of his time of whom the most good and the least ill can be said. Philip measured only by the successes of Lewis, and made no account of broken oaths, cruel, treacherous executions, and arbitrary imprisonments in the dungeons and iron cages at Loches. As he grew older Lewis became more distrustful. Even his little son, a mere child, was kept aloof as dangerous, and allowed to see no one but by special permission, and he himself saw no man of rank save his son-in-law

Peter of Beaujeu. As his health failed, he clung desperately to life, surrounding himself with astrologers, and all who could seem concerned with fate. His religion had always been grossly superstitious, and almost fetishworship of different images of our Lady. He made vows, gifts, and pilgrimages for his recovery, even forcing the Pope to send him a poor, pious, peasant hermit, Francis of Paula, whom he received crawling on his knees; but the Hermit only told him that kings must die, and that nothing could do him good but repentance, of which he never seems to have seen the need. He died on the 30th of August, 1483, recommending himself to "his good mistress, our Lady of Embrun."

Thus, step by step, the dominions of the French kings had been increased by the annexation of the territories of their own vassals, and their kingdom itself had been increased by large accessions from the Empire. France now stood incontestably among the greatest powers of Europe, and was now ready to use its forces in expeditions to more distant lands.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ITALIAN WARS.

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1. Regency of Anne of Beaujeu, 1483. Lewis XI. left an only son, Charles VIII., only thirteen years of age, who was entrusted to the care of his eldest sister Anne, Lady of Beaujeu, a keen, clever woman of twenty-two, whom her father had instructed in all his plans. She could only act through her husband, and there was great jealousy on the part of her brother-inlaw, Lewis, Duke of Orleans, who claimed the chief influence as first prince of the blood, though he was too idle and dissipated to attend to business. Anne had the support of René, Duke of Lorraine, and showed much of her father's skill, though not his cruelty. She dismissed his hated advisers, and released his captives, and made her government generally acceptable.

2. The Inheritance of Britanny, 1483.-Francis II., Duke of Britanny, had no son, and his daughter Anne was the mark for all suitors, while he and his favourite Landais, a tailor, strove to make capital of this rivalry. The Bretons, whose chief desire was that she should so marry as to secure their independence, made a great rising under John of Chalons, Prince of Orange, a nephew of the Duke, in which Landais was killed, and the feeble duke became a prisoner in their hands. He received, however, the Duke of Orleans and his cousin, Francis de Dunois, Count of Longueville, the son of that Dunois who had fought against the English. They had been discovered to be plotting against the Lady of Beaujeu, and had been forced to fly into Britanny, where the Duke of Orleans, who longed to break his forced marriage with the king's sister, won the heart of the little heiress Anne, who was only twelve years old. He was favoured by her father, but the Prince of Orange had chosen for her Maximilian of Austria, the widower of Mary of Burgundy, who in 1486 was chosen King of the Romans in the lifetime of his father. The states of Britanny preferred Alan of Albret, a Gascon noble of sixty, with twelve children, who was descended from the ducal family, and who, without being too powerful, was able to hold his own. All these rivals were united by the Lady of Beaujeu's evident intention of claiming Britanny for her brother as a male fief, and her sending army into the duchy under Lewis de la Tremouille, totally routed the Bretons at St. Aubin de Cormieres

Albret escaped, but the Prince of Orange was taken prisoner, and the Duke of Orleans dragged out from the slain and shut up in an iron cage at Bourges. Much of the noblest blood in Britanny was shed on the scaffold, and the country would have been laid waste if the young king had not insisted that fair terms should be offered to the poor old duke, whose death, in 1488, left his daughter Duchess of Britanny. She was no puppet, but had a strong will, set above all against old Alan of Albret, to whom half her subjects wanted to give her, while the other half were plotting to deliver her to the French. As the Duke of Orleans was a prisoner, she sent to entreat the King of the Romans to come to her rescue, and he set out with a troop of Germans. As he passed through Flanders, where his son Philip had succeeded his mother, he was seized by the people of

Bruges, and kept prisoner for ten months, while the French army was taking place after place in Britanny. The duchess fled from fortress to fortress, till after four years, Dunois, seeing that only her marriage could obtain freedom for his cousin of Orleans, persuaded the Lady of Beaujeu that the wisest course would be to marry her brother the king to the heiress of Britanny. Charles, it should be remembered, was already betrothed, or rather married, to Maximilian's daughter Margaret, who was living at the Court of France. Nevertheless Charles, now two-and-twenty, rode to the gates of Rennes with a few attendants, was admitted to the presence of the duchess Anne, and gained her consent. They were married a fortnight later, in December, 1491, and Margaret of Austria was sent back to her father. The great Celtic duchy was united to the crown, subject to the birth of children of Charles and Anne. Charles himself was a small, sickly, almost deformed man, whom his father had never educated, saying, "that to know how to dissimulate was to know how to reign," and that this was all that was needed by a king. But he had read the romances of chivalry, and gathered their teachings of courtesy and honour, so that Comines says he never knowingly gave pain to any living thing, and he was greatly loved for his gentle courtesy.

3. The Peace of Senlis, 1493.-Maximilian was naturally wroth at Charles's treatment of his daughter, and Henry the Seventh of England, as the ally of Maximilian, took up arms and besieged Boulogne, but was bought off. By the peace of Senlis in 1493 Maximilian was appeased by the restoration of Artois as a French fief, and of the imperial county of Burgundy. Roussillon and Cerdagna were also restored to Maximilian's other ally, Ferdinand of Aragon. Thus the Breton marriage cost France four counties. Charles now ventured to release his cousin of Orleans.

4. The Expedition to Italy, 1494.-To the crown of France had been bequeathed those claims to the kingdom of Naples which René of Anjou had been unable to make good. The present king of Naples was Ferdinand, an illegitimate son of Alfonso, king of Aragon, Sicily, and Naples. His father had left him the kingdom of Naples, while Aragon and Sicily passed to his brother John, who had been succeeded by another Ferdinand, famous as the Catholic. Charles was persuaded to