"Louis XI" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Mother Beckett. I remember the Scottish monks who were established at Peronne in the reign of Clovis. I remember how Charles the Bold of Burgundy (who died outside Nancy's gates) imprisoned wicked Louis XI in a strong tower of the chateau, one of the four towers with conical roofs, like extinguishers of giant candles and kingly reputations! I remember best of all the heroine of Peronne, Catherine de Poix, "la belle Peronnaise," who broke with her ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at Bruges of an apoplexy in the early part of the year 1467, the occasion was represented to the stout folk of Flanders as a favourable one to break the Burgundian yoke under which they laboured. It was so represented by the agents of that astute king, Louis XI, who ever preferred guile to the direct and costly exertion ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Death, looking back upon the monument, gave him a single snow-flake as provision, a snow-flake that never melts, and this flake floated over his royal head, like a white butterfly, into the land of eternity. Thus too, there was a Louis XI.—I have remembered his name, for one remembers what is bad—a trait of him often comes into my thoughts, and I wish one could say the story is not true. He had his lord high constable executed, and he could execute him, right ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... among them, is 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 of vast principalities, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... seneschal of the province after the death of Agnes Sorel and the consequent decline of his influence at court. He made an ineffective descent on the English coast at Sandwich in 1457, and was preparing an expedition in favour of Margaret of Anjou when the accession of Louis XI. brought him disgrace and a short imprisonment. In 1462, however, his son Jacques married Louis's half-sister, Charlotte de Valois, daughter of Agnes Sorel. In 1462 he accompanied Margaret to Scotland with a force of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... lies! And what will they do with it? Will they cut it up into pieces, as it was before old Louis XI? Will Mercoeur—curse him! be the most Christian Duke of Brittany? And Mayenne, by the grace of God, Prince of Paris and the Upper Seine? Or will the little Prince of Bearn beat them, and be Henry IV., King of France and Navarre, Protector ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Tower of Caen; but, upon the 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 vested ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... before the picture, and set myself to a patient study of the details. He had chosen a difficult subject—the death of Louis XI. The scene represented a spacious chamber in the Castle of Plessisles-Tours. To the left, in a great oak chair beside the bed from which he had just risen, sat the dying king, with a rich, furred mantle loosely thrown ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... 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 ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... accidental desertions or accessions, and most largely on foreign help. After the English had failed, during the antagonism of Valois and Burgundy, in establishing their supremacy on the Continent, the quarrel—quieted for a moment—which broke out again between Louis XI and Charles the Bold in the most violent manner, reacted on them with all the more vehemence. King Louis would not endure that a good understanding should exist between Edward IV and Duke Charles, to whom Edward had married his sister: he drew the man who ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... The people could not see how packed they were with superb acting—perhaps because the new Hamlet was so simple, so quiet, so free from the exhibition of actors' artifices which used to bring down the house in "Louis XI" and in "Richelieu," but which were really the easy things in acting, and in "Richelieu" (in my opinion) not especially well done. In "Hamlet" Henry Irving did not go to the audience. He made them come to him. Slowly but surely attention gave place to admiration, admiration ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... 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 ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... 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 ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... heroes, that is, men gifted with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker than any of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... historic 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 ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... As he said it he pressed his lips together with that fearfully stern expression which, with his short stature, had earned him the nickname in the army of "Little Louis XI.," and an officer behind me who wad heard my question and the answer, added in an undertone, "And he had ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... charcoal, lithographic and other stone. Chatillon anciently consisted of two 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... Portlaw 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
... was born at Clermont-Ferrand on the 19th June 1623. He belonged to an old Auvergne family, Louis XI. having ennobled one of its members for administrative services as early as 1478, although no use was made of the title, at least in the seventeenth century. The family cherished with more pride its ancient connection with the legal or ‘Parliamentary’ institutions ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... 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 ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... a droll smile on his round merry face, which at its gravest was a thing to laugh at. "Let him whip who is scared," he said, with roguish impudence. "Or if there is to be whipping, my lord, whip Louis XI." ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... 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 ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... means used to an end which no one else 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 ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... profligate lords who helped his father to 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. (6) 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." (7) I am afraid Charles took such ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be found in these sermons," said the Capuchin, "notably the tale of the five ladies and the go-between..." You will readily understand that Brother Olivier, who lived in the reign of Louis XI and whose language smacks of the coarseness of that age, uses a different word. But our century demands a certain politeness and decency in speech; wherefore I employ the term I ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... French writer deplores 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 ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... the day that war was declared, certain of the crown jewels, kept temporarily at the palace of the Tuileries, were sent under heavy guards to the Bank of France. Every precaution was taken; yet the great diamond crucifix of Louis XI. was missing when the guard under Captain Siebert turned over the treasures to the governor of the Bank ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... 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 in "Rebecca and Rowena," have not introduced each other's characters. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Christ, and 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 ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... were swallowed up in the larger ones, and the way was prepared for the rise of the nations of Modern Europe. In France the policy of centralisation begun in the thirteenth century, was carried to a successful conclusion in the days of Louis XI. (1461-83). The English provinces, Aquitane, Burgundy, and Brittany, were all united to form one state, knowing only one supreme ruler. In Spain the old divisions disappeared almost completely with the union of Castile and Aragon under ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Irving is seen at its best in 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, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would play Dr. Primrose—Goldsmith's ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... 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
... Lorraine, Bouillon, Enghien, Burgundy, the Guises, Longueville, the Counts of Armagnac, and other powerful vassals of France, paid but a nominal allegiance to the crown, and were really independent princes. Louis XI had done much to break their power. Richelieu continued the work, and under him France for the first time became consolidated into a whole. Had he lived, the work would doubtless have been completed, but his death and that of ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... all without one trustworthy relation, with friends and fellow-warriors dying, disputing, betraying, or deserting, his was as self-devoted and as mournful a career as ever was run by any prince at any age of the world; and while he slept in his grave at Rouen, that grave which even Louis XI. respected, Esclairmonde, as, like a true bedeswoman of St. Katharine, she joined in the orisons for the repose of the souls of the royal kindred, never heard the name of the Lord John without a throb of prayer, and a throb too that warmed her heart ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... always been religiously kept up. Prom the earliest date of the University of Paris, he had been the patron there of all students of the German race. In France, nevertheless, his position as a saint was still obscure and doubtful, when Louis XI., towards the end of the fifteenth century, by some motive now difficult to unravel, but probably in order to take from his enemy, Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, who was in possession of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... two hundred of the books must have been saved in this way to form the beginning of a new library in the Louvre, which, after the expulsion of the English, began to attain some importance in the reign of Louis XI. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... the hero of the occasion. He felt that all future power was in his hands and that Louis XI. could never do enough to repay him for his wonderful hospitality. And for a time Louis was quite ready to foster this belief. When they entered Paris, the peer so far outshone the sovereign that there was general astonishment.[22] Moreover, whatever the latter did ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... of them appeared 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 and regard for ignorance, so that the playwright, far from elevating, lowers, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... saying in her most persuasive manner, "while you have Charles—once your keeper—in your power, here in the chateau, you will surely punish him for the past and avenge yourself? You will make him revoke the treaty of Madrid, or shut him up in one of Louis XI's oubliettes?" ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... part of the site of the ancient village of Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there, but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen, Chaillot and its palace became ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... years of the fourteenth; continuing the tradition, remained distinctly French until the mid-fifteenth century, for the Italian influence did not begin to make itself felt until after the Italian wars and travels of Charles VIII, Louis XI and Francis I. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... much; and Peveril will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy. I propose a good rally, however, and hope it will be a powerful effect. My idea is, entre nous, a Scotch archer in the French King's guard, tempore Louis XI, the most picturesque of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... into his garments, or 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' Stone. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... yet, until the voyage of Magellan, generally accepted. We find England—owing partly to the introduction of gunpowder and the consequent disuse of archery, partly to the results of the recent integration of France under Louis XI.—fallen back from the high relative position which it had occupied under the rule of the Plantagenets; and its policy still directed in accordance with reminiscences of Agincourt, and garnet, and Burgundian alliances. We find France just beginning ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Isabella, sister of Louis XI., spent their lives in preparing and overlooking fine works in their own apartments, and assembled around them noble damsels for this purpose. Anne of Brittany, who lived in an artistic atmosphere, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... of the history of that century will come upon the names of two relatives of his—Colon el Mozo (the Boy, or the Younger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, both celebrated sailors. The latter of the two was a captain in the fleets of Louis XI of France, and imaginative students may represent him as meeting Quentin Durward at court. Christopher Columbus seems to have made several voyages under the command of the younger of these relatives. He commanded the Genoese galleys near Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with the Venetians. ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... elevation flooded with light, where every stain appears a blemish, 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 his people's 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, then, I acquit my conscience, when I consider openly the merits and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the fifteenth century Europe had two notable sovereigns, Louis XI. of France and Charles the Bold, or Charles the Rash, of Burgundy; the one famous in history for his intricate policy, the other for his lack of anything that could fairly be called policy. The relations between these two men ranged from open ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... 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 Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... 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 sense. St. Gaudens was a child of Benvenuto Cellini, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of generals and courtiers, and even of monarchs, out of his collection of social nobodies; Julius Caesar appointing as governor of Egypt the son of a freedman—one who but a short time before would have been legally disqualified for the post even of a private soldier in the Roman army; Louis XI making his barber his privy councillor: all these had in their different ways a firm hold of the scientific fact of human equality, expressed by Barbara in the Christian formula that all men are children of one father. A man who believes that men are naturally divided into upper and lower ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... plain balls proclaim it Cosimo's. Each of the Medici sported these palle, although each had also his private crest. Under Giovanni, Cosimo's father, the balls were eight in number; under Cosimo, seven; under Piero, seven, with the fleur-de-lis of France on the uppermost, given him by Louis XI; under Lorenzo, six; and as one walks about Florence one can approximately fix the date of a building by remembering these changes. How many times they occur on the facades of Florence and its vicinity, probably no one could say; but they ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... 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 election by the cathedral and monastic chapters; nor was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 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 ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... imagination with scientific habits of thought. Such should be the equipment of the historian, who pursues the same method of hypothesis when he attempts to explain (say) the state of parties upon the Exclusion Bill, or the policy of Louis XI. Problems such as the former of these are the easier; because, amidst the compromises of a party, personal peculiarities obliterate one another, and expose a simpler scheme of human nature with fewer fig-leaves. Much more hazardous ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... 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 ...
— 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
... Charles VIII had 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 ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a manuscript, some would transfer an estate, or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of golden crowns; and when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. Absolute as was Louis XI. he could not obtain the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, to have a copy made, without pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... This is still rung in some English country churches, and has often been mistaken for and alleged to be a survival of the curfew bell. The institution of the Angelus is by some ascribed to Pope Urban II., by some to John XXII. The triple recitation is ascribed to Louis XI. of France, who in 1472 ordered it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... single line (though some snatches of song are assigned to him) reminding us of the "Dames des Temps Jadis" or the "Belle Heaulmiere." Perhaps even Victor never presumed more unfortunately on victory than in bringing in Louis XI., especially in one scene, which directly challenges comparison with Quentin Durward. While, though Scott's jeunes premiers are not, as he himself well knew and frankly confessed, his greatest triumphs, he has never ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Clochegourde," he replied; "a pretty house belonging to the Comte de Mortsauf, the head of an historic family in Touraine, whose fortune dates from the days of Louis XI., and whose name tells the story to which they owe their arms and their distinction. Monsieur de Mortsauf is descended from a man who survived the gallows. The family bear: Or, a cross potent and counter-potent sable, charged with a fleur-de-lis or; and 'Dieu saulve le Roi notre Sire,' ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... were others still less important—one the King's tailor—a band of persons of no condition, who surrounded him no doubt with flattery and adulation, since their promotion and maintenance were entirely dependent on his pleasure. King Louis XI was at that time upon the throne of France, a powerful prince whose little privy council was composed of equally mean men, and perhaps some reflection from the Court of the old ally of Scotland made young James believe that this ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his (Louis XI.'s) deceit, but I cannot forgive his supposing me capable of the gross folly of being duped by his ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... of life cost the 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 examples there are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... 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 ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... held in perpetual 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... sovereigns of Continental Europe have had great troubles with their children, and these children have often had very disobedient fathers. In France, the Dauphin, afterward Louis XI., could not always keep on good terms with his father, Charles VII., who has the reputation of having restored the French monarchy, after the English had all but subverted it, Charles at one time being derisively called King of Bourges. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton |
