respect of the church and the other of the state, aimed at causing France
to make a great stride towards a national, free and legalized regimen, to
which French feudal society had never known how or been willing to adjust
itself. These two attempts failed. It would be unjust to lay the blame
on the contemporary governments. Charles VII. was in earnest about the
Pragmatic Sanction which he submitted to the deliberations and votes of a
national council; and Louis XI., after having for a while given it up to
the pope, retraced his steps and left it in force. As to the States
General of 1484, neither the regent, Anne de Beaujeu, nor Charles VIII.,
offered the slightest hinderance to their deliberations and their votes;
and if Louis XII. did not convoke the States afresh, he constantly strove
in the government of his kingdom to render them homage and give them
satisfaction. We may feel convinced that, considering the social and
intellectual condition of France at this time, these two patriotic
attempts were premature; but a good policy, being premature, is not on
that account alone condemned to failure; what it wants is time to get
itself comprehended, appreciated, and practised gradually and
consistently. If the successors of Louis XII. had acted in the same
spirit and with the same view as their predecessor, France would probably
have made progress in this salutary path. But exactly the contrary took
place. Instead of continuing a more and more free and legal regimen,
Francis I. and his chancellor, Duprat, loudly proclaimed and practised
the maxims of absolute power; in the church, the Pragmatic Sanction was
abolished; and in the state, Francis I., during a reign of thirty-two
years, did not once convoke the States General, and labored only to set
up the sovereign right of his own sole will. The church was despoiled
of her electoral autonomy; and the magistracy, treated with haughty and
silly impertinence, was vanquished and humiliated in the exercise of its
right of remonstrance. The Concordat of 1516 was not the only, but it
was the gravest pact of alliance concluded between the papacy and the