Among those who were the first to ridicule and abandon the self
denying principles in which the young knight was instructed and to
which he was so carefully trained up, Louis XI of France was the
chief. That sovereign was of a character so purely selfish -- so
guiltless of entertaining any purpose unconnected with his ambition,
covetousness, and desire of selfish enjoyment -- that he almost
seems an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his
utmost to corrupt our ideas of honour in its very source. Nor is it
to be forgotten that Louis possessed to a great extent that caustic
wit which can turn into ridicule all that a man does for any other
person's advantage but his own, and was, therefore, peculiarly
qualified to play the part of a cold hearted and sneering fiend.

The cruelties, the perjuries, the suspicions of this prince, were
rendered more detestable, rather than amended, by the gross and
debasing superstition which he constantly practised. The devotion
to the heavenly saints, of which he made such a parade, was upon the
miserable principle of some petty deputy in office, who endeavours
to hide or atone for the malversations of which he is conscious
by liberal gifts to those whose duty it is to observe his conduct,
and endeavours to support a system of fraud by an attempt to corrupt
the incorruptible. In no other light can we regard his creating the
Virgin Mary a countess and colonel of his guards, or the cunning
that admitted to one or two peculiar forms of oath the force of a
binding obligation which he denied to all other, strictly preserving
the secret, which mode of swearing he really accounted obligatory,
as one of the most valuable of state mysteries.

To a total want of scruple, or, it would appear, of any sense
whatever of moral obligation, Louis XI added great natural firmness