4 - The Commonwealth under Siege

Summary

Charles VII revived his grandfather’s system, but the monarchical commonwealth inherited by Louis XI in 1461 came under immediate attack. Louis violated all the norms of the commonwealth in seeking enhanced personal power. His assault led to a coalition of princes against him, in defense of the “bien public.” The selfish goals of these princes notwithstanding, Louis’ contemporaries were appalled at his attack on accepted norms, as they would make clear in the debates of the Estates General of 1484. Louis XI rescinded some of his most unpopular actions after the War of the Public Good. He even called an Estates General in 1468, the last such body to which specific individuals received letters of invitation. This chapter presents both the system elaborated by Charles VII – based on the principle of election – and the one Louis XI tried to put in its place. One key innovation of Charles VII was the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), which restored to cathedral chapters the right to elect their bishop. Louis XI would often insist on his own right to name prelates and episodically suspended the Pragmatic, foreshadowing Francis I’s abandonment of it in 1516.