iculty is now made about
going to Rome, Naples London, and elsewhere over-sea than was made
formally about going to Lyons or to Geneva. So much so that there are
some who have gone by sea to seek, and have found, new homes. The renown
and authority of the king now reigning are so great that his subjects are
honored and upheld in every country, as well at sea as on land."

Foreigners were not less impressed than the French themselves with this
advance in order, activity, and prosperity amongst the French community.
Machiavelli admits it, and with the melancholy of an Italian politician
acting in the midst of rivalries amongst the Italian republics, he
attributes it above all to French unity, superior to that of any other
state in Europe.

As to the question, to whom reverts the honor of the good government at
home under Louis XII., and of so much progress in the social condition of
France, M. George Picot, in his _Histoire des Etats Generaux_ [t. i. pp.
532-536], attributes it especially to the influence of the states
assembled at Tours, in 1484, at the beginning of the reign of Charles
VIII.: "They employed," he says, "the greatest efforts to reduce the
figure of the impost; they claimed the voting of subsidies, and took care
not to allow them, save by way of gift and grant. They did not hesitate
to revise certain taxes, and when they were engaged upon the subject of
collecting of them, they energetically stood out for the establishment of
a unique, classified body of receivers-royal, and demanded the formation
of all the provinces into districts of estates, voting and apportioning
their imposts every year, as in the cases of Languedoc, Normandy, and
Dauphiny. The dangers of want of discipline in an ill-organized standing
army and the evils caused to agriculture by roving bands drove the states
back to reminiscences of Charles VII.'s armies; and they called for a
mixed organization, in which gratuitous service, commingled in just
proportion with that of paid troops, would prevent absorption of the
national element. To reform the abuses of the law, to suppress
extraordinary commissions, to reduce to a powerful unity, with
parliaments to crown all, that multitude of jurisdictions which were
degenerate and corrupt products of the feudal system in its decay, such
was the constant aim of the states-general of 1484. They saw that a
judicial hierarchy would be vain without fixity of laws; and they
demanded a summarizat