exertions of the ever ready mercenary soldier, and persuaded his
subjects, among whom the mercantile class began to make a figure,
that it was better to leave to mercenaries the risks and labours
of war, and to supply the Crown with the means of paying them,
than to peril themselves in defence of their own substance. The
merchants were easily persuaded by this reasoning. The hour did not
arrive in the days of Louis XI when the landed gentry and nobles
could be in like manner excluded from the ranks of war; but the wily
monarch commenced that system, which, acted upon by his successors,
at length threw the whole military defence of the state into the
hands of the Crown.

He was equally forward in altering the principles which were wont
to regulate the intercourse of the sexes. The doctrines of chivalry
had established, in theory at least, a system in which Beauty was
the governing and remunerating divinity -- Valour, her slave, who
caught his courage from her eye and gave his life for her slightest
service. It is true, the system here, as in other branches, was stretched
to fantastic extravagance, and cases of scandal not unfrequently
arose. Still, they were generally such as those mentioned by Burke,
where frailty was deprived of half its guilt, by being purified from
all its grossness. In Louis XI's practice, it was far otherwise.
He was a low voluptuary, seeking pleasure without sentiment, and
despising the sex from whom he desired to obtain it. ... By selecting
his favourites and ministers from among the dregs of the people,
Louis showed the slight regard which he paid to eminent station
and high birth; and although this might be not only excusable but
meritorious, where the monarch's fiat promoted obscure talent, or
called forth modest worth, it was very different when the King made
his favourite associates of such men as the chief of his