The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
to be a sovereign Court, exempt from the controlling jurisdiction of the Parlement, but this claim was not always successfully maintained. All alienations of domain, and pensions for more than a brief period of years, had to be registered in the Chambre des Comptes,—a form which gave this Court the opportunity to protest against, and at any rate to delay, injudicious grants.
As will be seen, this financial system by no means lacked checks and safeguards; rather perhaps it erred on the side of over-elaboration. Although an immense improvement is perceptible since the time of Charles VI, there can be little doubt that the system suffered from considerable leakage. The men employed in the King’s finance were mostly of bourgeois rank; Jacques Cceur, Guillaume and Pierre Bricon-net, Jacques de Beaune, Etienne Chevalier, Jean Bourre, are among the most famous names; in many cases they were related to each other by blood or marriage, and they all, almost without exception, became very rich. In some cases this need be thought no shame; thus Jacques Coeur no doubt owed his wealth to the inexhaustible riches of oriental trade. But as a rule servants only grow rich at the expense of their master; and it is a sign of evil augury when the servant lends his master money, as for instance Jacques de Beaune did on a large scale. This great financier was in the ambiguous position of a banker who himself discounted the bills just signed by him for his King. The business was legitimate, and lucrative because of its very hazardousness; but it comported ill with a position of supreme financial trust and responsibility.
Not only was the system of control imperfect, and the tradition of honesty unsatisfactory, but the scheme lacked unity of direction. There was no single responsible financial officer. Jacques de Beaune (sieur de Semblencay, 1510-23) enjoyed a certain priority of dignity, but exercised no unifying authority. Once a year the treasurers and g&n&-raux, “Messieurs des finances” met in committee and drew up in concert the budget for the year. So much being expected as receipt from domaine, aides, and gahelle, and so much anticipated as expenditure,—then the faille must be so much to meet the balance. And to a certain extent the Council of State kept its hand on finance, assisted at need by the financial officers specially convened. But unity of management and administration was conspicuously wanting.
The expenditure of the four Kings cannot, on the whole, if tried by a royal standard, be called extravagant. The most questionable item is that of pensions. Pensions were not only used to reward services, and gratify courtiers, but were also given on a large scale to Princes of the Blood and considerable nobles. Historically such pensions may be regarded as some compensation for the loss of the right of raising aides and taille in their own domain, which had once belonged to personages holding such positions, but which since 1439 had remained categorically abolished. With the fall of Charles the Bold and the absorption of Britanny the last examples of princes enjoying such rights unquestioned disappeared. Politically such pensions were intended to conciliate possible opponents and enemies, for the great princes, though stripped by law of their chief powers, still possessed in spite of the law sufficient influence and authority to raise a war. How strong such influence might be we see in 1465, when not only Britanny and Burgundy, but Bourbon, Armagnac, and d’Albret, found their subjects ready to follow them against the King.
Such pensions were an old abuse. Louis XI found in them one of his most powerful political engines, and distributed them with a lavish hand. The pensions bill rose under him from about 300,0001.1. to 500,000. In addition there were the great English pensions, and the pensions to the Swiss. The totals were probably not much less under Charles VIII; but Louis XII reduced them at one time so low as 105,000 and seems to have effected a substantial average diminution. However, the practice of charging pensions on local sources of revenue, especially the greniers of salt, prevents the whole magnitude of this waste from coming into view.
The expenses of the Court, largely military, rose under Louis XI from about 300,000 to 400,000 U.; and seem to have been reduced by half or more by Louis XII. Military expenses are of course the chief item of the budget. The constantly increasing expenditure of Louis XI is chiefly due to the cost of the army. The establishment rose from 2000 lances to 3,884 in 1483, when there was also a standing army of 16,000 foot at Pont de l’Arche in Normandy, including 6,000 Swiss. The cost of the army on a peace footing is not less in this year than 2,700,000 l.t. The difficulties of Louis XI were very great, and the results of his military expenditure on the whole commensurate with the sacrifices, but he seems in his later years to have been driven by nervous fear to excessive precaution.
The military budget of the succeeding Kings was conspicuously less. The War of Naples was chiefly waged on credit, and at the death of Charles VIII a deficit of 1,400,000 remained unliquidated, but in no year can the totals of Louis XI have been passed; perhaps in 1496 they may have been reached. Louis XII carried on his wars very economically until the deserved disasters of the War of Cambray. The taille of these years speaks for itself. It rises steadily from 2,000,000 l.t. in 1510 to 3,700,000 in 1514, and the father of his people left an additional deficit of a million and a half.
The new conditions, political and social, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in France had long demanded a reorganisation of the army. Service by tenure had lost its meaning since, in the time of Philip the Fair, the practice of paying the contingents had been adopted. There is little that is feudal in the organisation of the French army during the Hundred Years’ War, much more that is anarchical, and a little that is royal. At most the feudal aristocracy supplies some of the cadres in which the troops are embodied. But the aristocracy is not a necessary but an accidental feature of the scheme. The organisation of the host and of its units does not follow the lines of the feudal hierarchy. The King is a rallying-point, giving rise to a delusive sense of unity of direction; chance and the love of fighting accomplish the rest. For a few years the centralising purpose of Charles V warranted better hopes, which perished with his death.
As the War continues, the professional soldier, the professional captain, becomes all in all. This soldier or captain may be a noble, born to the art of arms, but side by side with him are many adventurers sprung from the lower orders. They are glad to receive pay if pay is forthcoming; if not, they will be content with loot; in any case they are lawless, landless, homeless mercenaries, who live upon the people, and are the terror rather of friend than of foe. This lack of even feudal discipline in France is the cause of the success of the better-organised armies of England. It is also the principal cause of the horrors of the endless War. When a respite intervenes, the country knows no peace till the mercenaries are sent to die abroad,—in Castile, in Lorraine, or against the Swiss.
To have put an end to this misrule is the conspicuous service of Charles VII and his successors. In 1439, on the occasion of a great meeting of the Estates at Orleans, the King and his Council promulgated a notable edict. The number of captains was henceforth to be fixed, and no person was under the gravest penalties to entertain soldiers without the King’s permission. A pathetic list follows of customary outrages, which are now forbidden; and the captains are made responsible for the good conduct of their men. The seneschals and bailiffs are given authority, if authority suffices, to punish any military crimes whatsoever, and wheresoever committed. The financial side of the measure is indicated by a clause prohibiting all lords from levying tallies in their lands without the King’s leave, impeding the collectors of the King’s faille, or collecting any increment on their own account. The King intends to have an army, to have the only army, to have it disciplined and obedient, and to have the money for its pay.
Unfortunately the revolt known as the Praguerie, which broke out soon after, impeded the development of this plan. The Armagnacs were then sent to be let blood in Lorraine and Switzerland. The warlike operations of 1444 having been carried out, the scheme took effect in the following year. Fifteen companies of one hundred “lances” were instituted, each under a captain appointed by the King. It would seem that five more were to be supported by Languedoc. Each “lance” was to consist of one man-at-arms, two archers, a swordsman, a valet, and a page, all mounted and armed according to their quality. The page and the valet were the servants of the man-at-arms, but the valet at least was a fighting man. The method of organisation is strange, but has an historical explanation. It had long been customary for the man-at-arms to take the field accompanied by several armed followers; the ordinance adopted the existing practice. Its effect was to establish several different sorts of cavalry, light and heavy, capable of manoeuvring separately, and useful for different purposes; but tradition