of their retreat, making prisoners, and ransoming them, exacting
tribute from the open villages and the country around them -- and
acquiring, by every species of rapine, the appropriate epithets of
Tondeurs and Ecorcheurs, that is, Clippers and Flayers.

In the midst of the horrors and miseries arising from so
distracted a state of public affairs, reckless and profuse expense
distinguished the courts of the lesser nobles, as well as of the
superior princes; and their dependents, in imitation, expended in
rude but magnificent display the wealth which they extorted from
the people. A tone of romantic and chivalrous gallantry (which,
however, was often disgraced by unbounded license) characterized the
intercourse between the sexes; and the language of knight errantry
was yet used, and its observances followed, though the pure spirit
of honourable love and benevolent enterprise which it inculcates
had ceased to qualify and atone for its extravagances. The jousts
and tournaments, the entertainments and revels, which each petty
court displayed, invited to France every wandering adventurer; and
it was seldom that, when arrived there, he failed to employ his
rash courage, and headlong spirit of enterprise, in actions for
which his happier native country afforded no free stage.

At this period, and as if to save this fair realm from the various
woes with which it was menaced, the tottering throne was ascended
by Louis XI, whose character, evil as it was in itself, met, combated,
and in a great degree neutralized the mischiefs of the time -- as
poisons of opposing qualities are said, in ancient books of medicine,
to have the power of counteracting each other.

Brave enough for every useful and political purpose, Louis had not