Next to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richemont was the most effective and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France and of the king.  He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous and pitiless towards his enemies, especially towards such as he despised, severe in regard to himself, dignified in his manners, never guilty of swearing himself and punishing swearing as a breach of discipline amongst the troops placed under his orders.  Like a true patriot and royalist, he had more at heart his duty towards France and the king than he had his own personal interests.  He was fond of war, and conducted it bravely and skilfully, without rashness, but without timidity:  “Wherever the constable is,” said Charles VII., “there I am free from anxiety; he will do all that is possible!” He set his title and office of constable of France above his rank as a great lord; and when, after the death of his brother, Duke Peter II., he himself became Duke of Brittany, he always had the constable’s sword carried before him, saying, “I wish to honor in my old age a function which did me honor in my youth.”  His good services were not confined to the wars of his time; he was one of the principal reformers of the military system in France by the substitution of regular troops for feudal service.  He has not obtained, it is to be feared, in the history of the fifteenth century, the place which properly belongs to him.

Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and Marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette were, under Charles VII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of the king and of Fiance; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it is questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De Richemont, amongst the liberators of national independence.  There are degrees of glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute it too readily and as it were by handfuls.

Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence, both brought to a melancholy termination by a conviction and a consequent ruin from which at the approach of old age he was still striving to recover by means of fresh ventures.  Jacques Coeur was born at Bourges at the close of the fourteenth century.  His father was a furrier, already sufficiently well established and sufficiently rich to allow of his son’s marrying, in 1418, the provost’s daughter of his own city.  Some years afterwards Jacques Coeur underwent a troublesome trial for infraction of the rules touching the coinage of money; but thanks to a commutation of the penalty, graciously accorded by Charles VII., he got off with a fine, and from that time forward directed all his energies towards commerce.  In 1432 a squire in the service of