rs, Nov. 27, 1461.]

[Footnote 56: Louis XI.'s letter to the Pope, annulling the Pragmatic
Sanction, is in the Ordonnances des roys de Fr. de la troisieme race,
xv., 193-194. Its tone could not have been more submissive had it been
penned for him by the Pope himself. The Pragmatic Sanction is referred
to contemptuously as "constitutio quaedam in regno nostro quam
_Pragmaticam_ vocant." Louis professes to be moved by the consideration
that obedience is better than all sacrifice, and that the Pragmatic
Sanction is hateful to the Papal See, "utpote quae _in seditione_ et
schismatis tempore ... nata est; et quae, dum _tibi, a quo sacrae leges
oriuntur et manant_, quantamlibet eripit auctoritatem, _omne jus et
omnem legem dissolvit_." It was "as if the rod should shake itself
against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself,
as if it were no wood." Nothing could surpass Louis's obsequiousness:
"_Sicut mandasti_ ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus," etc.
He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: "Quod si forte
obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos _in verbo regio_ pollicemur tuae
Beatitudini atque promittimus exsequi facere tua mandata, omni
appellationis aut oppositionis obstaculo prorsus excluso," etc. Louis
was never more to be distrusted than when he bound himself by the most
stringent promises.]

[Footnote 57: See the Remonstrances of Parliament, Ordonnances, etc.,
xv. 195-207.]

[Footnote 58: The calculations on which these figures are based can be
seen in sections 73-76 of the Remonstrances above referred to. Ibid.,
xv. 195-207.]

[Footnote 59: "Les autres ambitieux de benefices, si espuisoient les
bourses de leurs parens et amis, tellement qu'ils demeuroient en grand'
mendicite et misere, ou'aucunesfois estoient cause de l'abreviation de
leurs jours; et tout le fruit qu'ils emportoient, _c'estoit pour or du
plomb_." Ibid., section 64.]

[Footnote 60: Ibid., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 61: Historians have represented Cardinal Balue as enclosed in
the very cage he had used for the victims of his own cruelty. This
appears to be incorrect. There is an entry in the accounts of Louis XI.,
under date of February 11, 1469, of the payment of sixty livres Tournois
to Squire Guion de Broc, to be used by him "in having constructed, at
the castle Douzain, an iron cage, which the said lord (_i. e._, Louis)
has ordered to be made for the security and guard of the person of the
Cardinal o