nights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of
_Ville gagnee!_ the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of
Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves
in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and
baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and
embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did
an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo
in 1815.

[Footnote 96: The fifteenth-century goldsmiths of Paris: Loris, the
Hersants, and Jehan Gallant, were famed throughout Europe.]

CHAPTER X

_Louis XI. at Paris--The Introduction of Printing_

Paris saw little of Charles VII. who, after the temporary activity
excited by the expulsion of the English, had sunk into his habitual
torpor and bondage to women. In 1461 the wretched monarch, morbid and
half-demented, died of a malignant disease, all the time haunted by
fears of poison and filial treachery. The people named him Charles _le
bien servi_ (the well-served), for small indeed was the praise due to
him for the great deliverance.

When the new king, Louis XI., quitted his asylum at the Burgundian
court to be crowned at Rheims and to repair to St. Denis, he was
shocked by the contrast between the rich cities and plains of Flanders
and the miserable aspect of the country he traversed--ruined villages,
fields that were so many deserts, starving creatures clothed in rags,
and looking as if they had just escaped from dungeons.

It is beyond the scope of the present work to describe the successful
achievement of Louis' policy of concentrating the whole government in
himself as absolute sovereign of France, by the overthrow of feudalism
and the subjection of the great nobles with their almost royal power
and state. His indomitable will, his consummate patience, his profound
knowledge of human motives and passions, his cynical indifference to
means, make him one of the most remarkable of the kings of France. In
1465, menaced by a coalition of nobles, the so-called League of the
Public Good, Louis hastened to the capital. Letters expressing his
tender affection for his dear city of Paris preceded him--he was
coming to confide to them his queen and hoped-for heir; rather than
lose his Paris, which he loved beyond all cities of the world, he
would sacrifice half his kingdom. But the Parisians were far from
being impressed by the majesty of