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Updated: June 23, 2025
In 1465, another man of war, Odet d'Aydie, Lord of Lescun in Warn, had commanded at Montlhery the troops of the Dukes of Berry and Brittany against Louis XI.; and, in 1469, the king, who had found means of making his acquaintance, and who "was wiser," says Commynes, "in the conduct of such treaties than any other prince of his time," resolved to employ him in his difficult relations with his brother Charles, then Duke of Guienne, "promising him that he and his servants, and he especially, should profit thereby."
The penetration and the subtlety of Commynes make his work interesting chiefly for its psychological studies and for the light that it throws on those principles of cunning statecraft which permeated the politics and diplomacy of the age and were to receive their final exposition in the Prince of Machiavelli.
As a king's adviser, Commynes would have been as much in place at the side of Louis XIV. as at that of Louis XI.; as a writer, he, in the fifteenth century, often made history and politics speak a language which the seventeenth century would not have disowned. Let us pass from the prose-writers of the middle ages to their poets.
Commynes had only just time to tell Louis in what frame of mind the duke was, and in what danger he would place himself, if he hesitated either to swear peace or to march against the Liegese. As soon as it was broad day, the duke entered the apartment of the castle where the king was a prisoner.
The greatest event of history enacted under the walls of Conflans was the battle and the treaty which followed after, between Louis XI and the Comte de Charolais, in 1405. Commynes recounts the battle as follows: "Four thousand archers were sent out from Paris by the king, who fired upon the castle from the river bank on both sides."
Commynes spoke according to his own experience. Louis, from the moment of making his acquaintance, had guessed his value; and as early as 1468, in the course of his disagreeable adventure at Peronne, he had found the good offices of Commynes of great service to him. It was probably from this very time that he applied himself assiduously to the task of gaining him over.
"Of all princes," says Commynes himself, "he was the one who was at most pains to gain over a man who was able to serve him, and able to injure him; and he was not put out at being refused once by one whom he was working to gain over, but continued thereat, making him large promises, and actually giving money and estate when he made acquaintances that were pleasing to him."
Some days before attacking Beauvais, he had taken, not without difficulty, Nesle in the Vermandois. "There it was," says Commynes, "that he first committed a horrible and wicked deed of war, which had never been his wont; this was burning everything everywhere; those who were taken alive were hanged; a pretty large number had their hands cut off.
We reproduce here the two judgments, the agreement of which is remarkable: "God," says Commynes, "had created our king more wise, liberal, and full of manly virtue than the princes who reigned with him and in his day, and who were his enemies and neighbors.
The Memoires of Commynes are the most striking proof of the rare and unfettered political intellect placed by the future historian at the king's service, and of the estimation in which the king had wit enough to hold it. Louis XI. rendered to France, four centuries ago, during a reign of twenty-two years, three great services, the traces and influence of which exist to this day.
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