the Duke of Burgundy was travelling in the Holy Land, and met him at Damascus in company with several Venetians, Genoese, Florentine, and Catalan traders with whom he was doing business.  “He was,” says his contemporary, Thomas Basin, “a man unlettered and of plebeian family, but of great and ingenious mind, well versed in the practical affairs of that age.  He was the first in all France to build and man ships which transported to Africa and the East woollen stuffs and other produce of the kingdom, penetrated as far as Egypt, and brought back with them silken stuffs and all manner of spices, which they distributed not only in France, but in Catalonia and the neighboring countries, whereas heretofore it was by means of the Venetians, the Genoese, or the Barcelonese that such supplies found their way into France.”

[Illustration:  Jacques Coeur——­165]

Jacques Coeur, temporarily established at Montpellier, became a great and a celebrated merchant.  In 1433 Charles VII. put into his hands the direction of the mint at Paris, and began to take his advice as to the administration of the crown’s finances.  In 1440 he was appointed moneyman to the king, ennobled together with his wife and children, commissioned soon afterwards to draw up new regulations for the manufacture of cloth at Bourges, and invested on his own private account with numerous commercial privileges.  He had already at this period, it was said, three hundred manufacturing hands in his employment, and he was working at the same time silver, lead, and copper mines situated in the environs of Tarare and Lyons.  Between 1442 and 1446 he had one of his nephews sent as ambassador to Egypt, and obtained for the French consuls in the Levant the same advantages as were enjoyed by those of the most favored nations.  Not only his favor in the eyes of the king, but his administrative and even his political appointments, went on constantly increasing.  Between 1444 and 1446 the king several times named him one of his commissioners to the estates of Languedoc and for the installation of the new parliament of Toulouse.  In 1446 he formed one of an embassy sent to Italy to try and acquire for France the possession of Genoa, which was harassed by civil dissensions.  In 1447 he received from Charles VII. a still more important commission, to bring about an arrangement between the two popes elected, one under the name of Felix V., and the other under that of Nicholas V.; and he was successful.  His immense wealth greatly contributed to his influence.  M. Pierre Clement [Jacques Coeur et Charles WE, ou la France au quinzieme siecle; t. ii., pp. 1-46] has given a list of thirty-two estates and lordships which Jacques Coeur had bought either in Berry or in the neighboring provinces.  He possessed, besides, four mansions and two hostels at Lyons; mansions at Beaucaire, at Beziers, at St. Pourcain, at Marseilles, and at Montpellier; and he had built, for his own residence, at Bourges, the celebrated hostel which still exists as an admirable model of Gothic and national art in the fifteenth century, attempting combination with the art of Italian renaissance.