THE TRUTH ABOUT LOUIS XI.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20786, 3 August 1929, Page 25

THE TRUTH ABOUT LOUIS XI.

“ His very countenance was the in-scrutable-face of the peasant, the peasant with an insatiable hunger for land.” This sentence from M. Champion’s study of the monarch, which has been admirably translated and adapted by hive George Whale, contains more of the truth about Louis XI than all the picturesque inventions of novelists like Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. As long as " Quentin Durward ” finds readers, and that will be as long as romance 'flings its spell, the spindleshanked monarch in his battered slouch hat, trimmed with leaden images, set against the background of the castle of IMessis-les-Tonrs, with its traps and snares and corpses dangling from branches, will hold his own (remarks J. W. Good in the Daily News). He is a triumph of the art of the novelist, but he_ is not Louis XI. The real Louis, it is true, if not so cruel, was'equally unsci'upnlous, cynical, and unlovable. Ho had no more hesitation _ about deceiving a friend than betraying an enemy, but at bottom be had a profound belief in order, national unity, and the public weal. These were entirely new conceptions in a kingdom where the feudal system had become so chaotic that a single village in Dauphine owned allegiance to 24 suzerains, each independent of the other. Centralisation under such circumstances was a job that "oulcl not be done with rose-water, and, if Louis did not keep clean hands, Franco gained enormously in the long run by his ruthless campaign to break the feudal overlords who declined to bend to his will. Louia was a modern not only .in his political, ideas, but in his social policy. He had a bias in favour of sanitation and cleanliness strange in the fifteenth century; he made roads, established manufactures. abolished taxes that hampered the free circulation of merchandise, set up a printing press at Paris, and organised a postal service. A . mighty hunter before the Lord, the chance of sugaring a boar was the only thing that could induce hiin to drop his official labours. If he lived nowadays he would certainly be a patron of greyhound racing. In one marriage contract he stipulated he should be sent a greyhound annually, and when he lost his big greyhound one Christmas he ordered the Mayor of Tours to announce the fact at midnight mass.