France at last, after a bloody conflict of thirty years, enabled to expel the English; and one acceptable conclusion from the whole may at length be drawn, that a country is never to be despaired of, and that the disadvantages of invaders are so permanent and irremediable, that in any tolerable comparison of strength, all foreign invaders must, sooner or later, meet with their just overthrow, if a suffering nation can but endure its trial.

From such sufferings, however, in this instance of France, there was one result, and that of the most melancholy nature, the constitution of France was lost.

After the decease of the unhappy Charles VI. whom we have just mentioned, the English were expelled by his son Charles VII. Charles VII. is the monarch who was crowned by the Maid of Orleans, an heroine, in the recital of whose noble and matchless exploits history appears to be converted into romance, and whose merits were so great, as to be thought supernatural by her contemporaries. But the enemies of France were no sooner driven from her fields, than the prerogatives of the crown were necessarily strengthened, and a far more fatal, because a far more lasting enemy, than the English succeeded in the person of the sovereign himself, in the person of Charles VII. Here was again another instance of the still recurring ill fortune of the constitution of France. How was the nation to resist a prince whom they had themselves rescued from the English, and whom they, rather than any spirit of enterprise in his own nature, had enabled to win his crown? What blessing could now be made either desirable or intelligible to Frenchmen, but that of peace and repose? What could there be of alarm or terror in the prerogative of the crown to those, who had seen an invader on the throne? Before the ministers of the power of Charles, to the afflicted imagination of the French people, must have walked the spectres of their slaughtered countrymen, and the frowning warriors of England; and slavery itself, if it was not foreign slavery, must to them have appeared a state of happiness and triumph.

That fatal measure, fatal for the liberties of his country, was now taken by Charles VII., by which his reign must be for ever distinguished, the establishment of a military force,

and the allotment of a perpetual tax for the support of it, unchecked by any representative assembly.

This military force and tax might not be formidable in their first appearance; but, the principle once admitted, both the force and the tax were easily advanced step by step, to any extent that suited the views of each succeeding monarch. Excuses, and even reasonable considerations (reasonable to those who see not the importance of a precedent and a principle), can never be wanting on these occasions; they were not wanting on this.

It should be observed that this vital blow to the real greatness of France was introduced as a reform. If any of those who were living at the time had spoken of the probable consequences of such a precedent, and had insisted upon its danger to the best interest of their country, they would only have been disregarded or suspected of disloyalty. But no stronger instance can be given, if any were necessary, of the importance of a principle at all times; a precedent may not be often carried into all its consequences when favourable to the liberties of a country, but it always is, when it is otherwise.

Even in a French historian like Villaret, the detail of this great measure is very instructive. It is very instructive to see the manner in which a nation, from a sense of present uneasiness, forgets, as it is always disposed to do, all its more remote and essential interests; and the more this memorable transaction could be examined, the more complete and striking would, no doubt, be found the lesson which it affords.

When this military force and tax had been once established, and both removed (which is the important point) entirely from all check and control by any other legitimate authority in the state, the power of the crown had no more tempests to encounter; no further contest appears in the succeeding reigns; the person of the king might be insulted or endangered, but not the royal authority. We hear of no more struggles for the privileges of the people, and for the right of taxation; no more important meetings of the statesgeneral: all hope, at least all assertion of constitutional liberty was at an end: and the contentions of the great, who were alone left to contend, were directed solely to the questions of their own personal ambition.

If any hope for France yet remained, it expired under the reign of Louis XI. the son and successor of Charles. This prince was of all others the most fitted to destroy the liberties of his country; penetrating, sagacious, cautious, well considering the proportion between his means and his ends; a finished dissembler of his own interests and passions, and a skilful master of those of others; decisive, active, and entirely devoid of principle and feeling. The nobles made an ineffectual effort to retain some of that political power, which, if they lost it, was destined, all of it, to fall entirely into the possession of the crown, and this effort was made in the war, for the public good, as they affected to call it. But Louis contrived to cajole, overpower, or wield to the purposes of his ambition the king of England, the duke of Burgundy, and the Swiss. He increased the standing army, raised the taille to the most enormous amount, made this tax a step to the introduction of other imposts, reunited many important fiefs to the crown; and if men could acquire glory by the successful enterprises of ungenerous ambition; if happiness could be the consequence of cruelty and oppression, deceit and fraud; if any treasures or any possessions could be compared with the consciousness of being loved and respected, then, indeed, Louis XI. might have been thought the renowned, the powerful, and the happy; and this detestable tyrant might have been held up by courtiers and courtly writers, as the envy of all succeeding monarchs. A different conclusion is, however, to be drawn from the picture of his life and character, which fortunately has been exhibited to us by Philip de Commines, a faithful and confidential minister, who knew him thoroughly, and who appears even to have been attached to his person and memory, in defiance of his better judgment, by the influence of the kind treatment which he had personally received from him, as his master.

The king, it seems, successful in his intrigues, unresisted in his oppressions, and with nothing further to apprehend from his rivals or his enemies, was at last admonished of the frailty of all human grandeur by messengers far more ominous and dreadful, than the couriers and officers that announce the miscarriage of ambitious projects or the defeats of invading armies: he was seized by a first and then a second fit of epilepsy, so violent and long, that he lay without speech, and

apparently without life, till his attendants concluded that he was no more. To life, indeed, he returned, but all the comforts of existence were gone for ever. "He came back to Tours (says the historian Commines, I quote his own artless words), where he kept himself so close, that very few were admitted to see him; for he was grown jealous of all his courtiers, and afraid they would either depose or deprive him of some part of his royal authority: he did many odd things, which made some believe that his senses were impaired; but they knew not his humours. As to his jealousy, all princes are prone to it, especially those who are wise, have many enemies, and have oppressed many people, as our master had done. Besides, he found that he was not beloved by the nobility of the kingdom, nor by many of the commons, for he had taxed them more than any of his predecessors, though he now had some thoughts of easing them, as I said before; but he should have begun sooner. Nobody was admitted into the place in which he kept himself but his domestic servants and his archers, which were four hundred, some of which kept constant guard at the gate, while others walked continually about to prevent his being surprised. Round about the castle he caused a lattice, or iron gate, to be set up, spikes of iron planted in the wall, and a kind of crow's feet, with several points to be placed along the ditch, wherever there was a possibility for any person to enter. Besides which he caused watchhouses to be made, all of thick iron, and full of holes, out of which they might shoot at their pleasure, in which he placed forty of his cross-bows, who were to be on their guard night and day. He left no person of whom he had any suspicion either in town or country, but he sent his archers not only to warn but to conduct them away. To look upon him, one would have thought him to be rather a dead than a living man. No person durst ask a favour, or scarce speak to him about any thing. He inflicted very severe punishments, removed officers, disbanded soldiers."

Such is the picture of the historian-the tyrant of the poet is only described more concisely :

"He had lived long enough: his way of life
Was fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:

And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
He could not look to have; but in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."

By clothes more rich and magnificent than before; by passing his time in subjecting those around him to every variety of fortune, to the changes of his smile and of his frown; by filling distant countries with his agents, to purchase for him rarities, which, when brought to him, he heeded not; by every strange and ridiculous expedient that his uneasy fancy could devise; by all this idle bustle and parade of royalty and power, did this helpless, wretched man endeavour to conceal from the world and himself the horrid characters of death which were visible on his frame; the fearful handwriting which had told him, that his kingdom was departing from him. In vain did he send for the holy man of Calabria, and on his approach "fall down," says the historian, "on his knees before him, and beg him to prolong his life." In vain was the holy vial brought from Rheims; the vest of St. Peter sent him by the pope. "Whatever was thought conducible to his health," says Philip de Commines, "was sent to him from all corners of the world. His subjects trembled at his nod," he observes, "and whatever he commanded was executed; but it was in vain. He could indeed command the beggar's knee, but not the health of it;" and suspicious of every one, of his son-in-law, his daughter, and his own son, having turned his palace into a prison for himself; into a cage, not unlike those which in his hours of cruelty he had made for others; insulted by his physician, and considered by his faithful minister, as expiating by his torments in this world, the crimes, which, as he says, would otherwise have brought down upon him the punishments of the Almighty in the next, this poor king, for such we are reduced at last to call him, expired in his castle, a memorable example, that whatever be the station or the success, nothing can compensate for the want of innocence, and that amid the intrigues of cunning and the projects of ambition, the first policy which is to be learned, is the policy of virtue.