I.
On the chancellor's representations he consented to have the business
sent before the parliament; but the peers of the realm were not invited
to it. The king summoned the parliament to Noyon, to be nearer his own
residence; and he ordered that the trial should be brought to a
conclusion in that town, and that the original commissioners who had
commenced proceedings, as well as thirteen other magistrates and officers
of the king denoted by their posts, should sit with the lords of the
parliament, and deliberate with them.

In spite of so many arbitrary precautions and violations of justice, the
will of Louis XI. met, even in a parliament thus distorted, with some
resistance. Three of the commissioners added to the court abstained from
taking any part in the proceedings; three of the councillors pronounced
against the penalty of death; and the king's own son-in-law, Sire de
Beaujeu, who presided, confined himself to collecting the votes without
delivering an opinion, and to announcing the decision. It was to the
effect that "James d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, was guilty of high
treason, and, as such, deprived of all honors, dignities, and
prerogatives, and sentenced to be beheaded and executed according to
justice." Furthermore the court declared all his possessions confiscated
and lapsed to the king. The sentence, determined upon at Noyon on the
10th of July, 1477, was made known to the Duke of Nemours on the 4th of
August, in the Bastille, and carried out, the same day, in front of the
market-place. A disgusting detail, reproduced by several modern writers,
has almost been received into history. Louis XI., it is said, ordered
the children of the Duke of Nemours to be placed under the scaffold, and
be sprinkled with their father's blood. None of his contemporaries, even
the most hostile to Louis XI., and even amongst those who, at the states-
general held in 1484, one of them after his death, raised their voices
against the trial of the Duke of Nemours, and in favor of his children,
has made any mention of this pretended atrocity. Amongst the men who
have reigned and governed ably, Louis XI. is one of those who could be
most justly taxed with cruel indifference when cruelty might be useful to
him; but the more ground there is for severe judgment upon the chieftains
of nations, the stronger is the interdict against overstepping the limit
justified and authorized by facts.

The same rule of historical equity m