the Flemish provinces, in 1478 and
1479, had no great result; he lost, on the 7th of August, 1479, the
battle of Guinegate, between St. Omer and Therouanne; and before long,
tired of war, which was not his favorite theatre for the display of his
abilities, he ended by concluding with Maximilian a truce at first, and
then a peace, which in spite of some conditionals favorable to France,
left the principal and the fatal consequences of the Austro-Burgundian
marriage to take full effect. This event marked the stoppage of that
great, national policy which had prevailed during the first part of Louis
XI.'s reign. Joan of Arc and Charles VII. had driven the English from
France; and for sixteen years Louis XI. had, by fighting and gradually
destroying the great vassals who made alliance with them, prevented them
from regaining a footing there. That was work as salutary as it was
glorious for the nation and the French kingship. At the death of Charles
the Rash, the work was accomplished; Louis XI. was the only power left in
France, without any great peril from without, and without any great rival
within; but he then fell under the sway of mistaken ideas and a vicious
spirit. The infinite resources of his mind, the agreeableness of his
conversation, his perseverance combined with the pliancy of his will, the
services he was rendering France, the successes he in the long ruin
frequently obtained, and his ready apparent resignation under his
reverses, for a while made up for or palliated his faults, his
falsehoods, his perfidies, his iniquities; but when evil is predominant
at the bottom of a man's soul, he cannot do without youth and success;
he cannot make head against age and decay, reverse of fortune and the
approach of death; and so Louis XI. when old in years, master-power still
though beaten in his last game of policy, appeared to all as he really
was and as he had been prediscerned to be by only such eminent observers
as Commynes, that is, a crooked, swindling, utterly selfish, vindictive,
cruel man. Not only did he hunt down implacably the men who, after
having served him, had betrayed or deserted him; he revelled in the
vengeance he took and the sufferings he inflicted on them. He had raised
to the highest rank both in state and church the son of a cobbler, or,
according to others, of a tailor, one John de Balue, born in 1421, at the
market-town of Angles, in Poitou. After having chosen him, as an
intelligent and a