Chapter 1 Comparison Please look at this portrait, and then look at this one, which is a vivid portrayal of two brothers. "Hamlet" During the second half of the fifteenth century a series of events of future influence was conceived which resulted in the elevation of France to a position of formidable power.That status has often been the chief object of envy among European nations ever since.But before that, France had to fight for her own survival against the British who had captured her best provinces.But notwithstanding the best efforts of the king and the valiant resistance of the people, it was difficult to save the rest of the country from the ravages of alien races.Besides, this is not its only danger!The various princes, who occupied large royal territories, and especially the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, treated their feudal vassalities so freely that they often unscrupulously raised their banners against the monarchy of France on the smallest pretext.In peacetime, they act independently and dominate one side.In addition to occupying the area named Burgundy (Note: In the area east of the Saone River and the Rhone River in southeastern France today, it was a powerful duchy in Western Europe at that time, known for its wine production.), the Burgundy family also owns Flanders (Note: Equivalent to an area adjacent to Belgium, the Netherlands and France today.) The most beautiful and richest part.It is so rich and powerful that it is not inferior to the King of France in terms of pomp and strength.

Some small vassals under the king also imitated the big feudal lords, striving for independence as much as possible according to their distance from the monarchy, the size of their territories, or the strength of their castles.No longer bound by the law, these petty tyrants are free to commit the most insane, unimaginable cruelties with impunity.It is said that there are more than 300 such independent nobles in Overni alone.For them, incest, murder, and robbery are very common and commonplace. Besides these sins, the protracted war which originated between France and England added a lot of misery to this troubled kingdom.Numerous bands of soldiers, choosing their leaders from among the bravest and most successful adventurers, banded together to form gangs in various parts of France, made up of the dregs of society from other countries.These mercenable warriors were able to sell their force to the highest bidder for a period of time.And when there was no market for such labor, they waged wars on their own, seizing castles as strongholds for cover.They took captives, demanded ransom, and exacted tribute from undefended villages and the surrounding countryside, and for all their plundering they earned the proper title of Shavers and Skinners.

In spite of all the horrors and misfortunes of the troubled state, the lesser aristocrats, like the superior princes, glorified their courts with extravagance.Their subordinates also followed suit, squandering the people's fat and anointing, doing their best to show off their abilities.Intercourse between men and women is full of a romantic chivalry, but often becomes unseemly due to excessive indulgence; the language of chivalry is still used, and its etiquette is still observed, but the noble and pure love and Acts of love can no longer make up and compensate for their excesses.Tournaments and merriment at every little court drew all wandering adventurers to France.And once in France, they seldom failed to put into action their rash courage and reckless adventure, for which their own more fortunate country did not afford an arena of freedom.

It was at this period, as if to save their fine kingdom from peril, that Louis XI., whose character, though evil in itself, was, as the ancient medical books say, of the opposite nature Toxin has the effect of fighting poison with fire, which is enough to deal with and overcome, and to a large extent offset the current disadvantages. While Louis XI had enough courage to achieve any useful political end, he had none of the romantic valor or the arrogance usually associated with it, which would make a man, even though he had already gained something, not in order to win something. A sense of honor still continues to fight.He is poised, cunning, and deeply concerned with his own interests.He will not hesitate to make any sacrifice when his pride and affection get in the way of his interests.He is careful to conceal his true feelings and intentions from all those who approach him.He often quotes a saying: A king who doesn't know how to pretend to be deaf and dumb doesn't know how to govern a country.For him, once he thought the hat he was wearing knew his secret, he would not hesitate to throw it into the fire.No one, then or in any other age, knew better how to take advantage of another's weakness, and when to avoid giving the other the upper hand by untimely indulgence of one's own.

By nature, he was vindictive and ruthless, often even taking pleasure in ordering executions.There is no sympathy to forgive the dead when he casually passes the death sentence, but on the other hand, no vengeance would spur him to premature violence.He seldom sprang at his prey until they were quite within reach, and all hope of escape must have been lost.His actions are so deliberately concealed that his successes are usually goals he first announced to the world, but in fact he has been working hard in secret. Likewise, the avarice and miserliness of King Louis gave way to apparent generosity when it was necessary to bribe a favor or minister of a rival prince to avert any imminent invasion or to break any alliance formed against him.He liked to indulge in pleasures, but neither beauty nor hunting, though both were his first passions, never caused him to neglect daily duties and government.His insight into people is profound.He had sought this understanding through the private lives of the various classes of people in which he had personally mingled.At the same time, despite his inherent arrogance, he was able to promote useful talents from the bottom and entrust them with important tasks without hesitation, with a kind of ignorance of arbitrary social classes that was considered extremely abnormal at the time.He knows people well and is seldom disappointed in their quality.

However, this cunning and capable monarch is also a mixture of contradictions, because human nature is rarely uniform.Though he himself was the most false and insincere of men, yet some of the greatest mistakes in his life were precisely due to too credulous trust in the honor and honesty of others.These errors seem to have been due to an overly elaborate system of tactics, which induced King Louis to feign unsuspecting confidence in those whom he intended to conquer; suspicion. It is precisely by his formidable character that King Louis stands out from the reckless knight-like monarchs of the contemporary era to the status of a beast tamer.With great intelligence and strategy, the tamer managed to master the beasts by distributing food and punishing with clubs.They would have torn him apart by sheer physical strength, had it not been for the mastery of their tamers to subdue them.Before completing the description of this formidable character, there are two other features worth mentioning.

The first feature is the excessive superstition of King Louis, which can also be said to be a common problem used by God to punish those who refuse to follow religious guidance.King Louis never intended to slacken his maneuvers to assuage the remorse aroused by his wicked deeds, but to soothe them almost in vain by superstitious worship, severe self-punishment, and generosity to the clergy. .A second trait, sometimes curiously associated with the above, was a taste for low taste and humble pleasures, though he was the most intelligent, or at least the most cunning, prince of his time.Being a witty man himself, he naturally appreciated jokes and witticisms in social conversation more than one might guess from other traits of his character alone.He even gets involved in some comedic ones.The degree of free and easy in the ambiguous love affair is very inconsistent with the usual vigilance and jealousy in his character.He was so fond of low affairs of this sort that many of his licentious anecdotes were collected in a collection well known to book collectors, and in the eyes of collectors (this book is not for anyone else to read) , that complete version is very precious. Not witty, very appropriate.).

Through the merciless, yet forceful, and prudent character of this prince, Providence was at last willing to restore to the great French nation the benefits of a lawful government, by storm or mild rain, and that The French had almost lost this advantage by the time of his accession. Before he came to the throne, King Louis had revealed some of his vices, not his talents.His original wife, Margaret of Scotland, was slandered and slandered to death at her husband's court.Had it not been for the encouragement of King Louis, gossip would not have been circulated in private to hurt the kind and wronged princess.An ungrateful, rebellious and unfilial son, he once attempted to conspire against his father, and even publicly declared war on him.As a result of his first crime he was banished to the Dauphin's domain, which he later managed well; and as a result of his second crime, he was completely exiled and forced to join the duke of Burgundy and his son. , living on their pity, almost their benevolence.Until his father's death in 1461, he enjoyed the considerate courtesy of the duke and son of Burgundy, but this courtship was not rewarded well.

At the beginning of his reign, King Louis was nearly overwhelmed by an alliance of the great French vassals against him, headed by the Duke of Burgundy, or more properly, by his son, the Count of Chahollois. .They raised a mighty army, blockaded Paris, and fought an inconclusive battle before Paris that brought the French monarch to the brink of collapse.In such a situation where both sides would lose, it is usually the wiser commander who gains battlefield benefits, but not necessarily military glory.King Louis, who displayed superhuman daring at the battle of Montreux, judiciously exploited the uncertain nature of the battle to make the victory appear to be his.He is good at watching the wind and steering the rudder until the enemy's alliance is broken.He was so skillful at sowing dissension among powerful vassals that it was a frightening fact that the League of the Public Welfare, designed to overthrow the French monarchy, finally dissolved itself, never to return.From this period King Louis, having escaped the danger from England by means of the civil war between York and Lancaster, began to spend years, like a cold and able physician, healing the wounds of the political organism. , or rather, to stem the spread of the deadly gangrene, now by palliative remedies, now by fire and steel.The bandits of soldiers had their way, and the oppression of the nobles with impunity, although he could not effectively stop it, he managed to alleviate it as best he could.By unremitting efforts, he gradually gained more sovereignty; or weakened the power of those who could compete with it.

Yet the king of France was still full of doubts and worries.The members of the League for the Advancement of the Public Welfare, in spite of their discord, as long as they exist, are like a wounded snake in danger of reuniting and becoming dangerous again.The greater threat, however, lay in the growing power of the Duke of Burgundy, one of the largest princes in Europe at the time.Since his duchy had only the slightest vassalage to the French throne, it was equal in status to it. The Duke of Charles was nicknamed Charles the Bold, or Charles the Brave, because his bravery was always associated with recklessness and fanaticism.He inherited the diadem of the Duke of Burgundy, but had it melted down and replaced with a royal tiara.The duke's personality was in every respect in stark contrast to Louis XI's.

The latter is calm, intelligent, and cunning, never overreaching, and never giving up on a single possibility of success, however remote it might be.The duke's talents were quite different.He takes risks because he loves them; he takes risks because he despises difficulties.King Louis never sacrificed his own interests to his affections, and Charles, on the contrary, never sacrificed his affections, not even his whims, to other considerations.Notwithstanding their close relations, and despite the support the duke and his father had given King Louis when he came to them in exile as dauphin, the duke and his father were wary and hostile to each other.The duke of Burgundy despised the prudent strategy of the king, attributing to cowardice his attempts to gain by alliances, bribes, and other indirect means; had he been king, he would have seized by force.He also hated the king, not only because the king was ungrateful to him for the favor he had received before, but also because when his father was alive, the king's ambassadors had also hurt and blamed him emotionally, and the most important point was that King Louis had done so to him. Ghent (Note: A municipality in Belgium, also refers to the city of Ghent in this municipality. In the Middle Ages, Ghent became one of the largest cities in Europe because of the flourishing wool and linen industry.), Liege (Note : Located at the confluence of the Meuse and Ult rivers in eastern Belgium, near the Belgian-Netherlands border.) and other large cities in Flanders with tacit support from disgruntled residents.Fearful of losing their rights and at the same time proud of their wealth, these restless cities frequently revolted against the monarch, the Duke of Burgundy, and were never without secret encouragement at the court of King Louis, who always By taking every opportunity to stir up trouble and create chaos in the domain of his over-powerful vassal. King Louis responded with equal force to the duke's contempt and hatred.But he uses a thicker veil to hide his true feelings.It was impossible for a man of so much forethought to fail to despise the dogged obstinacy that never gives up on a goal, no matter how dangerous it may be, and the rashness and impatience that embarks on something without regard for the obstacles it will encounter.But King Louis hated Charles even more than he despised him, and his contempt and hostility were all the stronger because they were mixed with fear.He compared the Duke of Burgundy to a mad bull.He knew that the mad cow's attack was terrifying even with his eyes closed.King Louis feared not only the riches of the provinces of Burgundy, nor their warlike, well-trained inhabitants, and large populations.There are also many dangers in the personal temperament of its Führer.He was the embodiment of bravery himself, and he developed it to the verge of recklessness.In addition, he spends money like water.His court, himself and his retinue were all in splendor.All of these show the traditional luxury of the Burgundy family.Charles the Bold has thus attracted almost all the congenial and fiery men of his day to his service.King Louis saw very well what such a company of resolute adventurers would try to do when they followed a leader who was as reckless as they were. There was another circumstance which also increased King Louis's hostility towards this over-powerful vassal.He is indebted to him for his kindness, but he doesn't want to repay or repay, but he often needs to deal with him, and even endure the occasional bad temper that damages his emperor's dignity.There was nothing to do but to treat him as a dear Burgundian cousin. Our story begins in 1468, at the height of their feud, though, as usual, there was a temporary, apparently peaceful truce between them.We shall find that the figure first entered on the stage is of such a rank and social position that it would not have required a long treatise on the relative situation of the two great princes in order to clarify its nature.But the affections of the great men and their disputes and reconciliations involve all those close to them.As we proceed with the story, we shall find this prologue necessary to understand the history of the character whose adventures we are about to tell.