Chapter X · THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI: THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROWN (continued 2)

The opinions expressed by contemporaries on this king, whose character was so remarkable and strange, were various, but of uniform severity. Comines, whose opinion might be subject to question, as he was his minister, his confidant, and almost his accomplice, has praised but little his prodigious activity, his genius for intriguing, and his singular aptitude for the carrying on of dark schemes in all directions. John de Troyes, although recognising that the power of the country had been strengthened, the kingdom brought more into unity, and new provinces acquired, blames most strongly the means employed, the dilapidation of the finances, the ruin of the people, the excess of arbitrariness, and the injury to the morals of the public. If public opinion was mute during this reign, it does not follow that it was favourable to the king. Of course the evidence that has been preserved is too slight to be able to make a positive assertion, but the theatre and popular verse of the period show the fault-finding spirit that existed.

In truth, Louis XI left the kingdom overwhelmed with burdens, the people unhappy, the prisons full, and discontent everywhere. He is reproached with always having had a large army and never having carried on a brilliant war; with not having respected the liberty of the church; with having ceaselessly violated justice; with having preferably employed corrupt agents who were justly detested; with having acted without definite plans; with being humble in misfortune and insolent in success, commencing enterprises which were never finished. He, however, knew so well how to be master; to bring the will of others into subjection to his own; to inspire in the world, and especially in those who approached him, the sentiments of obedience, fear, and almost admiration for his political genius; in fact, he had so well filled the position of king and of prince that, even after his death and when a strong reaction had set in against his reign, a certain terror continued to be attached to his name. It would seem that no one dared oppose him; Comines himself, who has drawn his portrait with such a master hand, has in this respect a singular discretion.e

Guizot, after quoting Cominesc and Duclos,m adds: “I am more exacting than Comines and Duclos; I cannot consent to apply to Louis XI the words “liberal,” “virtuous,” “good”; he had neither greatness of soul, uprightness of character, nor kindness of heart; he was neither a great king nor a good king; but I hold to the last word of Duclos, ‘He was a king.’”i

“He was a king.” That verdict, at least, no one will dispute; and for a concluding estimate of the character of his kingship, we perhaps cannot do better than to quote the judicious words of Martin:

MARTIN’S ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XI

[1461-1483 A.D.]

Utility was Louis’ sole rule; he never comprehended what power there is in justice. In everything he preferred, sometimes to his own disadvantage, the crooked line to the straight line, stratagem to force, suavity to courage, although when necessary he had the stubborn courage of an indomitable will. He was the incarnate reaction against the Middle Ages, against its morals and its ideality as well as its errors, against its liberties as well as its anarchy. The very devoutness of Louis, the only inconsistency in a character which would otherwise have been incredible, had no more of the grand, austere fanaticism of earlier days; it was a materialistic fetichism that went back beyond the Middle Ages to the time when the barbarian kings gave the saints of heaven half the credit for their enterprises and their aims. Except for this weakness Louis XI was the most illustrious disciple of that policy of which the contemporary Italian despots gave the example and the theory of which Macchiavelli was later to set forth and give his name to. The usurper of the duchy of Milan, the famous Francesco Sforza, had been Louis XI’s master and model. Italian education invaded France earlier in politics than in fine arts.

There was one essential distinction between Louis and his masters. He was like them in his means, but different in his end. These tyrants on the other side of the Alps had only a personal, or at best a family end, while Louis pursued a common end. He was the head of a real political society, the head of a nation. On this point, and on this alone, he had a conscience. He had a strong instinct for the future and wished to leave behind a work that would endure after him. This bad man was not a bad Frenchman.

His reign, so troublous, so oppressive, so unhappy for the people, had accomplished wonderful things for the unity of the French nation. It gave to France, Picardy from the sources of the Oise to Burgundy, Provence, Anjou, Maine, Barrois, and Roussillon; and at least a provisional title to Artois and Franche-Comté. It upheld the power of France to the Pyrenees on the west, to the Jura on the east, and to the maritime Alps, and it powerfully advanced the important work of establishing natural frontiers. It had subordinated the power of great and petty lords alike and had placed under the control of the crown a great military force. It had favoured the development of the middle classes and of the industrial and commercial forces of the country. But if the growth of national power under him was immense, if social progress was in certain respects incontestable, it is equally certain that despotism made a like progress. The instruments of autocracy were fortified and perfected by him, and under him the religion of force and of strategy, “the religion of success” as Michelet terms it, everywhere dethroned the religion of duty and of right; nor is it possible to stifle morality everywhere in the political world without profoundly altering the ethics of private life. The aurora of a brilliant intellectual dawn was now appearing above the horizon; active minds turn eagerly towards the new light; but France was not in a healthy moral condition to receive the new lessons of the Renaissance.j

LOUIS’ INFLUENCE ON CIVILISATION

It must not be overlooked, however, that Louis had a powerful influence upon his time in other directions than that of mere statecraft. His mind was ever receptive to any novelty that did not contradict his authority. He favoured literature and science; in particular the healing art made progress under the valetudinarian king. In surgery there was at least one great conquest; the operation of lithotomy was performed for the first time under the authorisation of the king, upon a condemned criminal, who recovered and was granted his life. Louis also came to some extent under the influence of the learned Greeks, who after the overthrow of Constantinople, in 1453, scattered over western Europe. Several of these were received at the French court. The king took a certain interest also in the famous discussion between the nominalists and the realists which so long distracted the philosophical world. Acting, it is supposed, under the advice of his confessor, Louis in 1474 took the part of the nominalists and prohibited the works of Ockam, Buridan, and other realists; though three years later the prohibition was removed. Louis showed himself equally receptive in regard to the new art of printing. As early as 1469 three exponents of the wonderful new method of book-making appeared in Paris in answer to the summons of William Fichet, rector of the university, and began their work with the royal sanction. Before the close of Louis’ reign many books had been printed in Paris as well as in several of the other large cities of France. The chronicles of St. Denis were published in 1476, together with numerous other religious and classical works. A translation of the Bible appeared in 1477. From this time books multiplied so rapidly that the contemporary poets assure us with hyperbolic enthusiasm that more books are produced from day to day than formerly could be written in an entire year.aj

The catholicity of interest which enabled Louis thus in the midst of his political activities to become to so considerable an extent a patron of the sciences and arts, furnishes conclusive evidence of the fulness of his mental equipment. It remains to call attention to an even more important contribution made by Louis to the amenities of civilisation. This was in the matter of the establishment of government posts. Here he was an innovator not merely for France but for the modern world; and there have been those enthusiasts who would claim for this feat a place among the three greatest achievements of the fifteenth century—the other two being the invention of printing and the discovery of America. Whatever may be thought of this estimate, there is no question that the creation of the postal service was a most important innovation, and it seems equally little in question that Louis XI was the innovator.an

Establishment of Posts in France

Certain ancient writers have attributed Louis’ motives in creating the posts to his paternal solicitude. They say “Louis XI, being anxious about the illness of the dauphin, from whom he was separated, established the posts in order to be informed at almost every moment of the hope or fear which his condition inspired.” This is most improbable, given Louis XI’s character, but it can readily be admitted that his spirit of dissimulation might easily have prompted him to invent and circulate a fable of this kind, in order to distract attention from the end which he really had in view. His restless life, his disputes with his greater vassals, particularly with the duke of Burgundy, his continual intrigues with the principal courts of Europe, at which he had secret agents, suffice to explain the interest he had in establishing posts, by means of which he could satisfy at once his suspicious mind and his ambitious schemes. In character Louis XI’s institution resembles the ancient posts, especially the Roman (cursus publicus). Louis’ only object was to facilitate the exercise of his royal power and to strengthen his authority at the time when the league of the Public Weal was about to be founded with the object of dismembering his kingdom. Therefore it was greatly to his interest to be rapidly informed of all the unforeseen events which might arise. Is it necessary to add that it never entered into the thoughts of Louis XI to institute a public service in his kingdom by which private individuals might profit in any way?

The exact date when the posts began to be placed along the high-roads is not known. According to Nicholas de la Mare even the name of the first postmaster-general is not given; but, says he, as Louis XI’s intention was to confide this office to a person of credit, intelligent and capable, it was probably given to the grand equerry of France, whose functions had much more in common with the new charge; the grand equerry had, it is true, the king’s messengers already under his orders. The same author says, in another passage, that the king’s messengers became so numerous that it was found necessary to create a controller of king’s messengers (edict of October, 1479). In the absence of proofs to the contrary, we believe that it was Robert Paon who, in October, 1479, received the double charge of postmaster-general of foot runners and of controller of king’s messengers, and was thus invested with supreme authority over the growing institution.

The runners or king’s messengers were, properly speaking, cabinet messengers, by which denomination they were afterwards known. They followed the court and had to be always in readiness to carry the king’s despatches. They already existed previous to the decree of 1464, and it is to be supposed that the towns or villages that they passed on their route were bound to provide them with relays of horses. This we understand from the statute of St. Louis, of December 13th, 1254, which we have already quoted, and from a statute of Philip V, surnamed the Tall, of February 11th, 1318, which gives the royal couriers the qualification of king’s messengers (chevaucheurs). The edict of 1464 officially sanctioned the existence of the couriers or messengers and made them into a regular and definite body. Their number, fixed at first at 230, had at the death of Louis XI risen to 234. But it is very probable that this number comprised the officers who kept horses for the service of the king, or maîtres coureurs, that is to say king’s messengers who went by the name of chevaucheurs.

The maîtres coureurs were established at distances of four leagues along the high-roads, keeping four or five horses of light build and suited to go at a gallop; they received, besides their wages, a fee for each horse which they supplied to people holding a passport from the king with the seal of the postmaster-general. They were also, as we have said, qualified as king’s messengers, because they were not only charged with keeping horses, but also with carrying letters and parcels of the king, the governors, the lord-lieutenants of the provinces, and other superior officers. It is not probable, however, that the maîtres coureurs actually carried the king’s despatches from post to post, as it is certain that the court despatches were conveyed by special messengers or coureurs de cabinet.

Later on the king’s messengers lost the title of chevaucheurs, which placed them in a relatively inferior position to the coureurs de cabinet, but what they lost in dignity they gained in profits. At first the new institution profited only the king, his commissioners in the provinces, or personages accredited to foreign courts. Even the terms of the edict, which defined the attributes of the postmaster-general, have from the outset given a political character to this high post.

The postal organisation created by Louis XI comprised two distinct postal systems—a system of relays, embracing the most important towns and served by the king’s messengers on horseback; a secondary postal system, branching off at certain points from the former and including secondary localities. The latter system was covered by messengers “sworn and received in the court of parliament.”

This organisation is justly considered as having been the starting point of the modern post, but the state did not as yet look upon itself as being the servant of the public. Private letters continued to be transported almost exclusively by university messengers. But these, even in the time of Louis XI, were in competition with the royal messengers already in existence at that time, as is testified by the numerous inquiries and proceedings relating to disputes of this nature mentioned in the voluminous collection of manuscripts known as the de Toisy, which is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. These disputes were prolonged in the sequel with a vivacity which increased as the interests engaged became more considerable by reason of the incessant progress of circulation and correspondence.n

FOOTNOTES