"Louis XI" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the renowned painter, Wilhelm von Kaulbach. A pupil of Piloty, he was born at Munich in 1846, and has produced some works of a historic character, such as "Lucrezia Borgia," "Voltaire at Paris," "Louis XI. and His Barber," and "The Last Days of Mozart," but is perhaps still more successful with his admirable pictures of childhood. We must not forget to mention his "Madonna," a work which should add much to ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... regard to the others, adapted to an urgent service according to the exigencies or requirements of time, place, and circumstance; afterward, when circumstances changed, it had to adapt itself to other services, and this constantly from century to century, under Philippe le Bel, under Louis XI., under Francis I., under Richelieu, under Louis XIV., through constant revision which never consists of entire destruction, through a series of partial demolitions and of partial reconstructions, in such a way as to maintain itself, during the transformation, in conciliating, well or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Louis XI. purchased the retreat of Edward IV. in 1475, when he seized on the domains of King Rene—Provence, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Lorraine, and Burgundy from the domains of Charles the Bold; when we abandoned our blood allies for bribes. Again, in 1681, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... canon law in the new university of Caen and vicar-general for the bishop of Bayeux. In 1447 he became bishop of Lisieux. He was much involved in the wars between the English and French and was employed by Charles VII. of France, and by his successor Louis XI., at whose request Basin drew up a memorandum setting forth the misery of the people and suggesting measures for alleviating their condition. In 1464 the bishop joined the league of the Public Weal, and fell into disfavour with the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... even by God Himself. In those days, everything was very artless and primitive. An instance of it may be found in Victor Hugo's drama, Notre Dame de Paris, where, at the Municipal Hall, a play called Le Bon Jugement de la Tres-sainte et Graceuse Vierge Marie, is enacted in honour of Louis XI, in which the Virgin appears personally to pronounce her 'good judgment.' In Moscow, during the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same character, chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great favour. Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with mystical writings, ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... LOUIS XI.—Brantome says that Louis XI., who seems not to have had a special secretary, being one day desirous of getting something written, perceived an ecclesiastic who had an inkstand hanging at his side; and the latter having opened it at the king's ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... details of a war such as that world has not witnessed since 1815, and in comparison with which even the Russian War was but a second-rate contest. The old quarrel between Austria and France, which has repeatedly caused the peace of Europe to be broken since the days of Frederick III. and Louis XI., has been renewed in our time with a fierceness and a vehemence and on a scale that would have astonished Francis I., Charles V., Richelieu, Turenne, Cond, Louis XIV., Eugne, and even Napoleon himself, the most mighty of whose contests with Austria alone cannot be compared with that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... municipalities, convents and universities. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries national power and national life made themselves felt, and with a change in the political system the system of communication and transportation changed also. Louis XI. of France took the first step toward making a nation of the French when he transferred the postal service from the cities and other feudal authorities to the state. Two or three centuries later, France obtained a national system of roads and canals. The idea was largely due to Colbert, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... such an institution had been conceived by people of the Old World, accustomed to moral slavery and to a thousand petty tyrannies, it would not be so remarkable, but that we, of all the races of the earth, should have created a form of torture unknown to Louis XI. or to the Spanish Inquisitors, is indeed inexplicable! Outside of this happy land the institution is unknown. The pension when it exists abroad, is only an exotic growth for an American market. Among European nations it is undreamed of; the poorest when they travel take furnished rooms, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... succeeded his father, Louis XI, on the 30th of August, 1483. Louis by dint of executions, had tranquillised his kingdom and smoothed the way for a child who ascended the throne under the regency of a woman. And the regency had been a glorious one, and had put down the pretensions of princes of the blood, put an end ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all, he founded a strong centralised monarchy, like those which marked the fifteenth century in France and England and Russia. The spirit, the aim of Louis XI., of the Tudors, of Ivan III., was the same as that of John I. of Portugal—to rule as well as govern in every department, "over all persons, in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil, within their dominions ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... times when Louis XI. supplied the places of the ministers and marshals, the generals and admirals of France, the Dunois, the La Tremoilles, the Brezes and the Chabannes with mere creatures—new and obscure men who aided him in his artful schemes and plans of government: he made his barber an ambassador, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... residence of the king, to whom the courtiers, if sent for, could go in a moment. The last house in this street was also the last in the town. It belonged to Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst, an old Brabantian merchant, to whom King Louis XI. gave his utmost confidence in those financial transactions which his crafty policy induced him to undertake outside of his ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... the persons in contemporary novels never meet? In so little a world their paths must often have crossed, their orbits must have intersected, though we hear nothing about the adventure from the accredited narrators. In historical fiction authors make their people meet real men and women of history—Louis XI., Lazarus, Mary Queen of Scots, General Webbe, Moses, the Man in the Iron Mask, Marie Antoinette; the list is endless. But novelists, in spite of Mr. Thackeray's advice to Alexandre Dumas, and of his own example ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... wore a bright flower shining star-like through the black cloud of her hair. The men had discarded the fur-trimmed Louis XI caps for the broad-brimmed, grey sombreros de Cordoba, and the horses or mules were harnessed with gay splashes of red and blue ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... written a journal of his travels, and in particular a set of "Notes on England," which would have been of much value had they been worked up to a mature form; but death interrupted him when he was only in the commencement of that great undertaking. He had begun a history of France under Louis XI., which is still extant, though very little progress was made in the work. The introduction, containing a sketch of the state of Europe at that period, is said to equal the most brilliant picture left by his immortal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... still more stupid than the romances. For there exists for the stage a conventional history which nothing can destroy. Louis XI. will not fail to kneel before the little images in his hat; Henry IV. will be constantly jovial, Mary Stuart tearful, Richelieu cruel; in short, all the characters seem taken from a single block, from love of simplicity ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... like the images in the hat of Louis XI., was a source of comfort and consolation in the doing of evil, but powerless to restrain her from the act itself, in the presence of a will stronger than her own. At the time of his death Aubert contemplated ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... powers of tyranny,—imagine some pestilent Piers Gaveston, or Hugh de le Spenser exercising over nobles and people a hideous despotism of the back stairs,—and you have some faint picture of the government of Rome under some of the twelve Caesars. What the barber Olivier le Diable was under Louis XI., what Mesdames du Barri and Pompadour were under Louis XV., what the infamous Earl of Somerset was under James I., what George Villiers became under Charles I., will furnish us with a faint analogy of the far more ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... could know. It was the duty of a man of genius, therefore, to set himself above law; it was his mission to reconstruct law; the man who is master of his age may take all that he needs, run any risks, for all is his. She quoted instances. Bernard Palissy, Louis XI., Fox, Napoleon, Christopher Columbus, and Julius Caesar,—all these world-famous gamblers had begun life hampered with debt, or as poor men; all of them had been misunderstood, taken for madmen, reviled for bad sons, bad brothers, bad fathers; and yet in after life ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Galeazzo, and was deputed by the new duke to receive his bride, Bona of Savoy, when the princess arrived at Genoa, from the French court, where her youth had been spent with her sister, the wife of King Louis XI. During the next ten years Lodovico lived in enforced idleness at the Milanese court, and, freed from the restraint of his parents' authority, abandoned himself to idle pleasures. All we have from his pen at this period are two short letters. In ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... somewhat startling to a youthful English student, it may be well to remark that France had, in fact, three aristocracies in the course of her annals from the Crusades to the reign of Louis XIV. After the time of Louis XI., the representatives of the first, or old feudal aristocracy, the descendants of the men who were in reality the King's peers, and not his actual subjects, were few and far between. These were the holders ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... she went on: "Well—no story must take more than three minutes, and we want Little Nell, Louis IX, Moses in the Bulrushes, the Princes in the Tower, Cinderella, Jack and the Bean Stalk, the Holy Night and Louis XI. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... waste the revenues of France. He had seen ladies dance on into broad daylight, and much burning of torches and waste of dainties and good wine.[20] And when all is said, it was no very helpful preparation for the battle of life. "I believe Louis XI.," writes Comines, "would not have saved himself, if he had not been very differently brought up from such other lords as I have seen educated in this country; for these were taught nothing but to play the jackanapes with finery and fine words."[21] I am afraid Charles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the last consequence to individuals, both here and hereafter; but private virtues never saved, private vices never ruined a nation. Edward the Confessor was a saint, and yet be prepared the way for the Norman conquest of England; and France owes infinitely less to St. Louis than to Louis XI., Richelieu, and Napoleon, who, though no saints, were statesmen. What is specially needed in statesmen is public spirit, intelligence, foresight, broad views, manly feelings, wisdom, energy, resolution; and when statesmen with these qualities are ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... interest as that of popular rights. But it was wounded at the idea that a peer should die by the hand of the executioner. The old leaven of independence, innate in all the aristocracies of Europe; the feudal aspirations which Louis XI. and Richelieu had so completely annihilated and subdued in France, yet germinated in the minds of the nobles of Naples. They loved the king because he maintained their privileges, and had re-established the rights of their birth. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... great Pompey; and, in our fathers' days, Ludovico Sforza, the tenth Duke of Milan, whom all Italy had so long truckled under, was seen to die a wretched prisoner at Loches, but not till he had lived ten years in captivity,—[He was imprisoned by Louis XI. in an iron cage]— which was the worst part of his fortune. The fairest of all queens, —[Mary, Queen of Scots.]—widow to the greatest king in Europe, did she not come to die by the hand of an executioner? Unworthy and barbarous cruelty! And a thousand more ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... great centralized state which we call France. The Hundred Years' War had finally freed the western duchies and counties from English control. Just before the opening of the sixteenth century the wily and tactful Louis XI (1461-1483) had rounded out French territories: on the east he had occupied the powerful duchy of Burgundy; on the west and on the southeast he had possessed himself of most of the great inheritance of the Angevin ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Upper Egypt under General Desaix, a Provencal [Footnote: Provencal. Provence was an ancient government of southeastern France. It became part of the crown lands in 1481 under Louis XI. The term Provencals is used loosely to include dwellers in the south of France.] soldier, who had fallen into the clutches of the Maugrabins, was marched by these marauders, these tireless Arabs, into the deserts lying beyond the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the fact that there is no monument here to show respect for Louis XI., who was born at Bourges and baptized in the cathedral; a pity, perhaps, and certainly a subject worthy of the consideration of "the powers ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... mind and person St. Gaudens was a survival of the 1500; he bore the stamp of the Renaissance, and should have carried an image of the Virgin round his neck, or stuck in his hat, like Louis XI. In mere time he was a lost soul that had strayed by chance to the twentieth century, and forgotten where it came from. He writhed and cursed at his ignorance, much as Adams did at his own, but in the opposite ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... remarkable in history for never having been taken, and for a tower where Louis XI. was confined for a short time, after being outwitted in a manner somewhat surprizing for a Monarch who piqued himself on his talents for intrigue, by Charles le Temeraire, Duke of Burgundy. It modern reputation, arises from its election ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... of king Louis XI. and Charlotte of Savoy, born to 1464. Her low stature and deformed body rendered her the object of her father's aversion, who, notwithstanding, married her to Louis duke of Orleans, his cousin-german, in 1476. She obtained his life of her brother, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... rulers of France, Germany, Burgundy and Savoy. By his delegated rule of the latter country, Francois de Gruyere, although playing his part only in the prologue, took his place beside the great figures of the Emperor Ferdinand of Germany, Louis XI of France, the Duchess Yolande and their magnificent cousin Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Sent by his father, Charles VII of France, at the head of the redoubtable Armagnacs, to help the German emperor to subdue the Confederated Cantons, ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... these tidings produced a great excitement all over France. King Louis XI. was specially interested in them, as they afforded a hope that Margaret might regain her throne, and so be able to redeem her mortgage, or else deliver up to him the security; so he called a council at Tours to consider what was best to be done, ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of St. Michael was instituted by Louis XI., King of France, in 1469. The number of Knights was limited to thirty-six. It received the name of the Cockle, from the escalop-shells of gold with which the collar of the Order was ornamented.—In September 1548, is this payment by the Treasurer, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... in one of his typical parts, in "Louis XI." His Louis XI. is a masterpiece of grotesque art. It is a study in senility, and it is the grotesque art of the thing which saves it from becoming painful. This shrivelled carcase, from which age, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... elevation so flooded with light, where every stain appears a miserable blemish, and every glory a stain. The king has suffered; it rankles in his mind: and he will avenge himself. He will be a bad king. I say not that he will pour out blood, like Louis XI., or Charles IX.; for he has no mortal injuries to avenge; but he will devour the means and substance of his people; for he has himself undergone wrongs in his own interest and money. In the first place, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Here, at least, we succeed in meeting a guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular coincidence another lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long detention in an iron-barred cage—one of those famous cages, so much favored by Louis XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from the records of the time, had the patent-right for invention, or at least improvement. Once firmly engaged in his own torture—while his friend Haraucourt, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... ingredient in a character intellectually and morally great and a personality far from unimpressive, was the touch of the dramatic discoverable in most of the leaders of men; even in such leaders as William of Orange and Louis XI; as Cromwell and Washington. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... with great difficulty he was recognized, by the well-known deficiency of some of his teeth, and by remarkably long finger-nails. But that, notwithstanding the marks, there were still incredulous people who doubted his death, and looked for his reappearance, is proved by the missive in which Louis XI. called upon the Burgundian States to return to their allegiance to the Crown of France. "If," the passage runs, "Duke Charles should still be living, you shall be released from your oath to me." Comines, t. iii., ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... reduction of the province by Philip-Augustus, Caen itself, together with the castle and its dungeon, was all committed to the charge of a single officer, denominated the Captain. Such also appears to have continued the case, except during the reign of Louis XI. when one Raymond d'Argeau is recorded to have been the Garde particulier du Donjon. The timid policy of a suspicious prince might naturally suggest the idea of greater safety, in not allowing the power over so important a fortress to be ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... exhausted, and the chancellor's talents at reply worn tolerably threadbare, the king would rise, and mounting on horseback, would proceed to the cathedral church of Notre Dame, down the Rue St Denis. One of the best recorded of these royal entries is that of Louis XI. On this occasion, the king, setting out from a suburban residence in the Faubourg St Honore, got along the northern side of Paris to the Convent of St Lazare; and thence, after the delay and the harangues of the three days—the real ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... question settled in this satisfactory way, the matter of Isabella's marriage again became an affair of national importance. There were suitors in plenty, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV. of England, and the Duke of Guienne, brother of Louis XI. and heir to the French throne, being among the number; but the young Isabella, influenced as much by policy as by any personal feeling in the matter, had decided that she would wed Fernando, son of John II. of Aragon and ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and I went to the Princess's Theatre in the evening. Charles Kean performed in Louis XI. very well indeed,—a thoughtful and highly skilled actor,—much improved since I saw him, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more truth in this observation than some may be inclined to allow; and that it affects mankind strongly, all ages and all climates may be called on to testify. Even in the barbarous age of Louis XI., they felt a delicacy respecting names, which produced an ordinance from his majesty. The king's barber was named Olivier le Diable. At first the king allowed him to got rid of the offensive part by changing it to Le Malin; but the improvement was not happy, and for a third time he was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... been here for two hundred years; they have been French Catholics since the time of"—he was not quite sure—"since the time of Louis XI.," he added at a venture, and then paused, overcome by his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Italian policy began to exercise over the councils of the great,—a policy of refined stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think and to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which appeared in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute will in Richard III.; and, softened down into more ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... died and been succeeded by his son Joao II. in 1487. Joao tried, not without success, to play the part of Louis XI. of France and by a judicious choice of victims (he had the duke of Braganza, the richest noble in the country, arrested by a Cortes at Evora and executed, and he murdered his cousin the duke of Vizeu with his own hand) he destroyed ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... wealth that makes them, but tyranny; for, were they poor, revolts would be far more frequent: "If thay be not poer, thay will never aryse, but if their prince so leve Justice, that he gyve hymself al to tyrannye." It is true that the Commons of France do not rebel (Louis XI. then reigned at Plessis-lez-Tours); Fortescue is shocked at that, and remonstrates against their ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... de la Trinit, built by FrancisI. in 1529, and largely decorated by Henri IV. in consequence of the Spanish ambassador having remarked that "the palace would be more beautiful if the Almighty were as well housed as his majesty." Louis XI. was married in this chapel. The divorce between Napoleon and Josephine was pronounced in it; and here, in 1810, NapoleonIII. was baptized. The paintings are by Frminet, made during the reigns of Henri IV. and Marie de Mdicis ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... make these histories beloved by all children whether they read the text or not.) "Voyages et Glorieuses Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explorateurs Francais, illustre par Edy Segrand." "Collection d'Albums Historiques." Louis XI, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job. Francois I, texte de G. Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Job. Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de H. Yogel. Richelieu, texte de Th. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... discovered America; Vasco de Gama soon after opened a new way to the Indies, and thus the commerce of the world passed from Italy to other nations. In this year the conquest of Granada gave unity to the Spanish nation. In this year France, through the lifelong craft of Louis XI., was for the first time united under a young hot-headed sovereign. On every side of the political horizon storms threatened. It was clear that a new chapter of European history had been opened. Then Savonarola raised his voice, and cried that the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the Entente. Germany worked on the one hand by means of open propaganda, which is the method of modern commercial advertisement translated into the political field, and on the other by secret intrigue reminiscent of the days of Louis XI. Her propaganda took the form of organized campaigns to influence opinion through speeches, pamphlets, and books, which were designed to convince the country of the justice of Germany's cause and the dangers of becoming the catspaw of the Entente. Her plans of intrigue were directed towards ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... all his (Louis XI.'s) deceit, but I cannot forgive his supposing me capable of the gross folly of being duped by his professions."—Sir Walter ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the unfortunate man in toto, for he has still enough mirth to know the extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis XI. leading a man to ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... says that Louis XI., who seems not to have had a special secretary, being one day desirous of getting something written, perceived an ecclesiastic who had an inkstand hanging at his side; and the latter having opened it at the king's request, a set of dice fell out. 'What kind of SUGAR-PLUMS are these?' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... d'Arnaye. It was said of them that Noel was the handsomest man of his times, and Raymond the most shrewd; concerning that you will judge hereafter. Both of these d'Arnayes, on reaching manhood, were identified with the Dauphin's party in the unending squabbles between Charles VII and the future Louis XI. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... head of a Touraine family, which owed to an ancestor of Louis XI.'s reign—a man who had escaped the gibbet—its fortune, coat-of-arms and position. The count was the incarnation of the "refugee." Exiled, either willingly or unwillingly, his banishment made him weak of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... confided with a subdued animation to Wayward, "we're going to have a most excellent dinner for them when they arrive. My Frenchman is doing the capons in Louis XI style—" ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... of an indescribable fear of death. Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; and hence Ptolemy took every imaginable pains to find the elixir of life; but it was all in vain, for his strength was rapidly decreasing. Once, like Louis XI., he was looking from a window of his palace upon the seacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; it must have been in winter-time, when the sand, exposed to the rays of the sun, becomes very warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... study,—that he paints a picture which follows us about, as if with living eyes, instead of creating for us a mere series of lines and colours. Indeed, whether Scott draws truly or falsely, he draws with such genius that his pictures of Richard and Saladin, of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, of Margaret of Anjou and Rene of Provence, of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor, of Sussex and of Leicester, of James and Charles and Buckingham, of the two Dukes of Argyle—the Argyle of the time of the revolution, and the Argyle of George II., of Queen Caroline, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... France for any political or other authority which was not subordinate to any higher authority; for instance, the highest Courts were called cours souveraines. Now Bodin gave quite a new meaning to the old term. Being under the influence and in favour of the policy of centralisation initiated by Louis XI of France (1461-1483), the founder of French absolutism, Bodin defines sovereignty as the 'absolute and perpetual power within a State.' However, even Bodin was far from considering sovereignty to give absolutely unfettered ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... sight of for many centuries. It was eventually heard of during the reign of Canute (or Knut, as his admirers called him); and John is known to have lost it in the Wash, whence it was recovered a century afterwards. It must have travelled thence to France, for it was seen once in the possession of Louis XI; and from there to Spain, for Philip the Handsome presented it to Joanna on her wedding day. Columbus took it to America, but fortunately brought it back again; Peter the Great threw it at an indifferent musician; on one of its later visits to England ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... over as too devoid of foundation, in especial that of young Henri, Duke of Nemours, who, at ten years old, was said to have been hung up with his little brother of eight in one of Louis XI's cages at Loches, with orders that two of the children's teeth should daily be pulled out and brought to the king. The elder child was said to have insisted on giving the whole supply of teeth, so as to save his brother; but though they were certainly imprisoned after ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Burgundy, whom Louis XI. had taken some notice of, while Dauphin, appeared before him when he ascended the throne, and presented him with an extraordinary large radish; Louis received it with much goodwill, and handsomely repaid the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... regne de Louis XI, ayant predit quelque chose de desagreable a ce roi, sa majeste, pour se venger, resolut de le faire mourir. Il envoie le jour suivant chercher l'astrologue, et ordonne a ses gens, a un signal ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... especially in that of France, that each race has its point of departure, its culmination, and its decadence. Look at the direct line of the Capets; starting from Hugues Capet, they attained their highest grandeur in Philippe Auguste and Louis XI., and fell with Philippe V. and Charles IV. Take the Valois; starting with Philippe VI., they culminated in Francois I. and fell with Charles IX. and Henry III. See the Bourbons; starting with Henry IV., they have their culminating point in Louis XIV. and fall with Louis XV. and Louis XVI.—only ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Oliver le Diable, court barber, and favorite minister of Louis XI. Introduced by Sir W. Scott in Quentin Durward and Anne of Geierstein ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... gracious vision from Jacques’s eyes. The vast monarchical incubus rises between the people and their ideal. Our historian turns in disgust from the later French kings. He has neither time nor heart to write their history, so passes quickly from Louis XI. to the great climax of his drama—the Revolution. There we find his hero, emerging at last from tyranny and oppression. Freedom and happiness are before him. Alas! his eyes, accustomed to the dim light of dungeons, are dazzled by the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... was bridged at last. Some take the invention of printing as a starting-point, feeling that the chief element of our progress has been the gathering of information by the poorer classes. Some, looking to political changes, turn to the reign of Louis XI of France, noting him as the first modern king, or to the downfall of Charles the Bold, the last great feudal noble. Others name later starting-points such as the establishment of modern art by Michelangelo and Raphael at Rome, the discovery of America, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... man rose in Clovis, who, in 508, made Lutetia his capital, his successors enriching and adorning it. From these beginnings, has been evolved, in twelve hundred years, the great modern state—through Charlemagne and his empire-building, Louis XI. and his work of consolidating feudal principalities into one strong state, through a Hundred Years' War, fierce wars of religion, a long line of Bourbon kings, with their chateaux-building in Touraine and Versailles, the Revolution of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the sixteenth century did Austria become a power of first rank in Europe. Hapsburgs had long ruled it, as they still do, and as they have done for more than six centuries, but the greatest of all their additions to power and dominion came through Mary of Burgundy, who, seeking refuge from Louis XI. of France, after her father's death, married Maximilian of Austria. Out of that marriage came, in two generations, possession by Austria of the Netherlands, through Mary's grandson, Charles V., Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain. For years afterward, the Hapsburgs remained ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... culprit, with a sigh of relief. The Regent's servants (for this was the house of the Regent, the daughter of King Louis XI. of virtuous memory) brought Jacques de Beaune into a room, and laid him stiff and stark upon a table, not thinking for a moment that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... altar there is a side chapel, to which access is had from below. Here Louis XI. used to come, amid the choicest relics, and say his prayers. Some of the relics are still preserved, and consist of a crown of thorns, a piece of the cross upon which Christ was crucified, and many antique ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... horse, the frankest of all animals, to a being, the flashes of whose thought, and the movements of whose impulses render her at moments more prudent than the Servite Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had; more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the whole wide ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... will most promptly direct his steps, and the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called Maison de Tristan l'Hermite—a gentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten—the hangman-in-ordinary to that great and prompt chastener Louis XI. Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled. There are no illusions left at all, in the good city of Tours, with regard to Louis XI. His terrible castle of Plessis, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... politiques"—concerning which Vogt is gloriously diffuse; and Peignot (who has copied from him, without acknowledgement—Bibliogr. Curieuse, pp. 49, 50,) may as well be consulted. But the bibliographer will prefer the "Additions a l'Histoire de Louis XI.," 1630, 8vo., and agree with Mailchelius that a work so uncommon and so curious "ought to be reprinted." See the latter's amusing little book "De Praecipuis Bibliothecis Parisiensibus," pp. 66, 67, &c. Naudaeus was librarian to the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of importance in Breton history is the enforced marriage of Anne of Brittany, Duchess of that country in her own right, to Charles VIII of France, son of Louis XI, which event took place in 1491. Anne, whose father, Duke Francis II, had but recently died, had no option but to espouse Charles, and on his death she married Louis XII, his successor. Francis I, who succeeded ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... parts, Chaumont, belonging to the duchy of Burgundy, and Bourg, ruled by the bishop of Langres; it did not coalesce into one town till the end of the 16th century. It was taken by the English in 1360 and by Louis XI. in 1475, during his struggle with Charles the Bold. Chatillon was one of the first cities to adhere to the League, but suffered severely from the oppression of its garrisons and governors, and in 1595 made voluntary submission to Henry ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... and a larger share in breaking the chains and lighting the dark places of the Middle Ages. It is a truism to say that Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli. The politics of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, of Louis XI. of France, of Ferdinand of Spain, of the Papacy, of Venice, might have been dictated by the author of The Prince. But Machiavelli was the first to observe, to compare, to diagnose, to analyse, and to formulate their principles of government. The first to ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... even then there are exceptions. But French history counts two kings who have voluntarily given the direction of affairs during many years, the one to his mother, the other to his sister: one of them, Charles VIII., was a mere boy, but in doing so he followed the intentions of his father Louis XI., the ablest monarch of his age. The other, Saint Louis, was the best, and one of the most vigorous rulers, since the time of Charlemagne. Both these princesses ruled in a manner hardly equalled by any prince among their contemporaries. The emperor Charles the Fifth, the most politic ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... Louis XI of France practised the same sophistry, for he also had a peculiar species of oath, the only one which he was ever known to respect, and which, therefore, he was very unwilling to pledge. The only engagement ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Louis XI, urged by alternate menaces, entreaties, and flattery from Rome, revoked the Pragmatic Sanction shortly after his accession. This step accorded well with his own arbitrary temper; for he could not endure the privilege of free ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Burgundian parties, journals and memoirs. The Burgundian Enguerrand de Monstrelet was a lesser Froissart, faithful, laborious, a transcriber of documents, but without his predecessor's genius. On the French side the so-called Chronique Scandaleuse, by Jean de Roye, a Parisian of the time of Louis XI., to some extent redeems the mediocrity of the writers of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias, Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and spiritual, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Swiss, who fought by that brookside, ten only returned. The battle checked the attack of the French, led by Louis XI. (then Dauphin) in 1444; and was the first of the great series of efforts and victories which were closed at Nancy by the death of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Porte du Pont is the least imposing and ornamental, but it possesses a horrifying interest. In an upper storey is preserved one of those man-cages said to have been invented for the gratification of Louis XI, that strange tyrant to whose ears were equally acceptable the shrieks of his tortured victims and the apt repartee ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... hatred by those who own none. Since 1792 the land-owners of Paris have become of necessity a combined body. If, alas, the feudal families, less numerous than the middle-class families, did not perceive the necessity of combining in 1400 under Louis XI., nor in 1600 under Richelieu, can we expect that in this nineteenth century of progress the middle classes will prove to be more permanently and solidly combined that the old nobility? An oligarchy of a hundred thousand rich men presents all the dangers of a democracy with none of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... ended his pompous discourse," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, after relating the incidents of the internment to Madame de Listomere when whist was over, the doors shut, and they were alone with the baron, "this Louis XI. in a cassock—imagine him if you can!—gave a last flourish to the sprinkler and aspersed the coffin with holy water." Monsieur de Bourbonne picked up the tongs and imitated the priest's gesture so satirically that the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the writer of romance can dig plenty of stones out of that quarry for the use of his own little building. Of course Quentin Durward has come bodily out of the pages of De Comines. The whole history of Louis XI. and his relations with Charles the Bold, the strange life at Plessis-le-Tours, the plebeian courtiers, the barber and the hangman, the astrologers, the alternations of savage cruelty and of slavish superstition—it is all set forth here. One would imagine that such a monarch was ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were temperate or weak, they allowed the people to rise above themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices. Louis XI. and Louis XIV. reduced every rank beneath the throne to the same subjection; Louis XV. descended, himself and all his court, into ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... were brought on the stage. In those days it was done in all simplicity. In Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI. in honor of the birth of the dauphin. It was called Le bon jugement de la tres sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie, and she appears herself on the stage and pronounces her bon jugement. Similar plays, chiefly ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... suspended in the most secret parts of his palace, in order to avert evil influences. A Koran was hung about his neck as a defence against the evil eye, and frequently he removed it and knelt before it, as did Louis XI before the leaden figures of saints which adorned his hat. He ordered a complete chemical laboratory from Venice, and engaged alchemists to distill the water of immortality, by the help of which he hoped to ascend to the planets and discover the Philosophers' ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... count of Charolois, born in 1433. To him his father had practically abandoned his authority during his last years. Charles had taken an active part in the so-called wars "for the public weal," and in the coalitions of nobles against the king which were so frequent during the first years of Louis XI.'s reign. His struggle against the king is especially marked by the interview at Peronne in 1468, when the king had to confirm the duke in his possession of the towns of the Somme, and by a fruitless attempt which Charles the Bold made on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... accurately. Early in the spring of 1471, Edward IV., assisted in his schemes by the Duke of Burgundy, quitted Flanders, whither he had fled when the Earl of Warwick landed in the S. of England with reinforcements from Louis XI.; touched, after a difficult passage, at Cromer, where he heard of the resistance organised by Warwick, and finally landed at Ravenspurgh on the Humber. Having been joined by further followers at Nottingham he entered London on Holy Thursday, the ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... years, the line of Huberts, embroiderers from father to son, had lived in this house. A noted maker of chasubles had built it under Louis XI, another had repaired it under Louis XIV, and the Hubert who now occupied it still embroidered church vestments, as his ancestors had always done. At twenty years of age he had fallen in love with a young girl of sixteen, Hubertine, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... France, it had been stipulated that she should marry either her first husband's successor (Louis XII.) or the heir-presumptive to the throne. Either course seemed impracticable, as the heir, Francis of Angouleme, was but a child, while the new King was already married to Jane, a daughter of Louis XI. Brittany seemed lost to France, when Louis XII., by promising the duchy of Valentinois to Caesar Borgia, prevailed upon Pope Alexander VI. to divorce him from his wife. He then married Anne of Brittany, while Charles of Alencon proceeded ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... through the soft sandstone in its course to join the Rhone. Within the walls may be seen the remains of a small town that clustered there, much like Les Baux, but now completely deserted. The family of Crussol was not of much note till Louis de Crussol gained the favour of Louis XI., and was created his chamberlain, and governor of Dauphine. The son married the heiress of Uzes, and with her the title of viscount passed to their son Charles, whose son Anthony obtained the title of Duke d'Uzes. There is nothing very remarkable in the story of the Crussols, but the origin of the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Poland had won the day, the Poles would now be fighting among themselves, as they formerly fought in their Diets to hinder each other from being chosen King. When that nation, composed entirely of hot-headed dare-devils, has good sense enough to seek a Louis XI. among her own offspring, to accept his despotism and a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed, and round the gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of silver statues, like the little leaden images that stood round the hat of Louis XI. Round the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below. When they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward; and then he saw one ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Louis XI. had given the Abbey of Turpenay (mentioned in 'Imperia') to a gentleman who, enjoying the revenue, had called himself Monsieur de Turpenay. It happened that the king being at Plessis-les-Tours, the real abbot, who was a monk, came and presented himself ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... look back as far as the Memoirs of the fifteenth century, it may be noted that the first edition of the Memoirs of Philippe de Comines, who had lived in the confidential intimacy of King Louis XI. and King Charles VIII. of France, was published in Paris in 1524, under a special privilege obtained for that purpose. Louis XI. died in 1483, and his son Charles VIII. in 1498. Comines himself died ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... was incomparably the worst I had ever witnessed, from Covent Garden down to a Country Barn. I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to 'Something too much of this,' I called out from the Pit door where I stood, 'A good deal too much,' and not long after returned to my solitary inn. Here is a very long—and, I believe (as owls go) a rather pleasant Letter. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald |
