Directly after the expulsion of the English, troubles began between King Charles VII. and the Dauphin Louis; the latter could not brook a quiet life in Dauphiny, and the King refused him that larger sphere in the government of Normandy which he coveted.  Against his father’s will, Louis married Charlotte of Savoy, daughter of his strongest neighbour in Dauphiny; suspicion and bad feeling grew strong between father and son; Louis was specially afraid of his father’s counsellors; the King was specially afraid of his son’s craftiness and ambition.  It came to an open rupture, and Louis, in 1456, fled to the Court of Duke Philip of Burgundy.  There he lived at refuge at Geneppe, meddling a good deal in Burgundian politics, and already opposing himself to his great rival, Charles of Charolais, afterwards Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy.  Bickerings, under his bad influence, took place between King and Duke; they never burst out into flame.  So things went on uncomfortably enough, till Charles VII. died in 1461 and the reign of Louis XI. began.

Between father and son what contrast could be greater?  Charles VII., “the Well-served,” so easygoing, so open and free from guile; Louis XI., so shy of counsellors, so energetic and untiring, so close and guileful.  History does but apologise for Charles, and even when she fears and dislikes Louis, she cannot forbear to wonder and admire.  And yet Louis enslaved his country, while Charles had seen it rescued from foreign rule; Charles restored something of its prosperity, while Louis spent his life in crushing its institutions and in destroying its elements of independence.  A great and terrible prince, Louis XI. failed in having little or no constructive power; he was strong to throw down the older society, he built little in its room.  Most serious of all was his action with respect to the district of the River Somme, at that time the northern frontier of France.  The towns there had been handed over to Philip of Burgundy by the Treaty of Arras, with a stipulation that the Crown might ransom them at any time, and this Louis succeeded in doing in 1463.  The act was quite blameless and patriotic in itself, yet it was exceedingly unwise, for it thoroughly alienated Charles the Bold, and led to the wars of the earlier period of the reign.  Lastly, as if he had not done enough to offend the nobles, Louis in 1464 attacked their hunting rights, touching them in their tenderest part.  No wonder that this year saw the formation of a great league against him, and the outbreak of a dangerous civil war.  The “League of the Public Weal” was nominally headed by his own brother Charles, heir to the throne; it was joined by Charles of Charolais, who had completely taken the command of affairs in the Burgundian territories, his father the old duke being too feeble to withstand him; the Dukes of Brittany, Nemours, Bourbon, John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, the Comte d’Armagnac, the aged Dunois, and a host of other princes and nobles