He was, whilst he lived, a good prince, wise and
virtuous, who maintained his people in peace, without pressing hard upon
them in any way, save by constraint. He had in his time much of good and
of evil, whereby he got ample knowledge of the world. He obtained many
victories over his enemies; but towards the end of his days Fortune gave
him a little turn of her frowning face. He was borne to his grave at St.
Denis amongst his good predecessors, with great weeping and wailing, and
to the great regret of his subjects."

"He was a gentle prince," says Robert de la Marck, lord of Fleuranges,
"both in war and otherwise, and in all matters wherein he was required to
take part. It was pity when this malady of gout attacked him, for he was
not an old man."

To the last of his days Louis XII. was animated by earnest sympathy and
active solicitude for his people. It cost him a great deal to make with
the King of England the treaties of August 7, 1514, to cede Tournai to the
English, and to agree to the payment to them of a hundred thousand crowns a
year for ten years. He did it to restore peace to France, attacked on
her own soil, and feeling her prosperity threatened. For the same reason
he negotiated with Pope Leo X., Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand the
Catholic, and he had very nearly attained the same end by entering once
more upon pacific relations with them, when death came and struck him
down at the age of fifty-three. He died sorrowing over the concessions
he had made from a patriotic sense of duty as much as from necessity, and
full of disquietude about the future. He felt a sincere affection for
Francis de Valois, Count of Angouleme, his son-law and successor; the
marriage between his daughter Claude and that prince had been the chief
and most difficult affair connected with his domestic life; and it was
only after the death of the queen, Anne of Brittany, that he had it
proclaimed and celebrated. The bravery, the brilliant parts, the amiable
character, and the easy grace of Francis I. delighted him, but he dreaded
his presumptuous inexperience, his reckless levity, and his ruinous
extravagance; and in his anxiety as a king and father he said, "We are
laboring in vain; this big boy will spoil everything for us."

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Popular History of France From The
Earliest Times, by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENB