FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  
nd to the princes and cities that entertained him, a cause of enormous expense. "When the king stopped anywhere, there were wanted for his own table, and for the maintenance of his following, six oxen, eighty sheep, thirty calves, seven hundred chickens, two hundred pigeons, and many other things besides. The expenses for the king were set down at two hundred and thirty livres a day, without counting the presents which the large towns felt bound to make him." But Charles was himself magnificent even to prodigality, and he delighted in the magnificence of which he was the object, without troubling himself about their cost to himself. Between 1389 and 1390, for about six months, he travelled through Burgundy, the banks of the Rhone, Languedoc, and the small principalities bordering on the Pyrenees. Everywhere his progress was stopped for the purpose of presenting to him petitions or expressing wishes before him. At Nimes and Montpellier, and throughout Languedoc, passionate representations were made to him touching the bad government of his two uncles, the Dukes of Anjou and Berry. "They had plundered and ruined," he was told, "that beautiful and rich province; there were five or six talliages a year; one was no sooner over than another began; they had levied quite three millions of gold from Villeneuve-d'Avignon to Toulouse." Charles listened with feeling, and promised to have justice done, and his father's old councillors, who were in his train, were far from dissuading him. The Duke of Burgundy, seeing him start with them in his train, had testified his spite and disquietude to the Duke of Berry, saying, "Aha! there goes the king on a visit to Languedoc, to hold an inquiry about those who have governed it. For all his council be takes with him only La Riviere, Le Mercier, Montaigu, and Le Begue de Vilaine. What say you to that, my brother?" "The king, our nephew, is young," answered the Duke of Berry: "if he trusts the new councillors he is taking, he will be deceived, and it will end ill, as you will see. As for the present, we must support him. The time will come when we will make those councillors, and the king himself, rue it. Let them do as they please, by God: we will return to our own dominions. We are none the less the two greatest in the kingdom, and so long as we are united, none can do aught against us." The future is a blank, as well to the anxieties as to the hopes of men. The king's uncles we
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
hundred
 

councillors

 

Languedoc

 

uncles

 
Burgundy
 
Charles
 

stopped

 
thirty
 

council

 

justice


listened

 

Toulouse

 
Mercier
 

Riviere

 
promised
 
feeling
 

Montaigu

 

disquietude

 
testified
 

dissuading


inquiry

 

father

 

governed

 
taking
 

greatest

 
kingdom
 

dominions

 

return

 

united

 

anxieties


future

 

nephew

 
answered
 

trusts

 

brother

 

Vilaine

 
Avignon
 
support
 

present

 

deceived


province

 

presents

 

counting

 

livres

 
magnificent
 

Between

 
months
 

troubling

 
prodigality
 

delighted