Louis, in his latter words, was a little too boastful.  He had very much augmented the imposts without assembling the estates, and without caring for the old public liberties.  If he frequently repressed local tyranny on the part of the lords, he did not deny himself the practice of it.  Amongst other tastes, he was passionately fond of the chase; and, wherever he lived, he put it down amongst his neighbors, noble or other, without any regard for rights of lordship.  Hounds, hawking birds, nets, snares, all the implements of hunting were forbidden.  He even went so far, it is said, on one occasion, as to have two gentlemen’s ears cut off for killing a hare on their own property.  Nevertheless, the publication of his manifesto did him good service.  Auvergne, Dauphiny, Languedoc, Lyon and Bordeaux turned a deaf ear to all temptations from the league of princes.  Paris, above all, remained faithful to the king.  Orders were given at the Hotel de Ville that the principal gates of the city should be walled up, and that there should be a night watch on the ramparts; and the burgesses were warned to lay in provision of arms and victual.  Marshal Joachim Rouault, lord of Gamaches, arrived at Paris on the 30th of June, 1465, at the head of a body of men-at-arms, to protect the city against the Count of Charolais, who was coming up; and the king himself, not content with despatching four of his chief officers to thank the Parisians for their loyal zeal, wrote to them that he would send the queen to lie in at Paris, “the city he loved most in the world.”

Louis would have been glad to have nothing to do but to negotiate and talk.  Though he was personally brave, he did not like war and its unforeseen issues.  He belonged to the class of ambitious despots who prefer stratagem to force.  But the very ablest speeches and artifices, even if they do not remain entirely fruitless, are not sufficient to reduce matters promptly to order when great interests are threatened, passions violently excited, and factions let loose in the arena.  Between the League of the Common Neal and Louis XI. there was a question too great to be, at the very outset, settled peacefully.  It was feudalism in decline at grips with the kingship, which had been growing greater and greater for two centuries.  The lords did not trust the king’s promises; and one amongst those lords was too powerful to yield without a fight.  At the beginning Louis had, in Auvergne and in Berry, some successes, which decided a few of the rebels, the most insignificant, to accept truces and enter upon parleys; but the great princes, the Dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, and Berry, waxed more and more angry.  The aged Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good himself, sobered and wearied as he was, threw himself passionately into the struggle.  “Go,” said he to his son, Count Charles of Charolais, “maintain thine honor well, and, if thou have need of a hundred thousand more men to deliver thee from difficulty, I myself will lead them