Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3

Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot


In spite of so many arbitrary precautions and violations of justice, the
will of Louis XI. met, even in a parliament thus distorted, with some
resistance. Three of the commissioners added to the court abstained from
taking any part in the proceedings; three of the councillors pronounced
against the penalty of death; and the king's own son-in-law, Sire de
Beaujeu, who presided, confined himself to collecting the votes without
delivering an opinion, and to announcing the decision. It was to the
effect that "James d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, was guilty of high
treason, and, as such, deprived of all honors, dignities, and
prerogatives, and sentenced to be beheaded and executed according to
justice." Furthermore the court declared all his possessions confiscated
and lapsed to the king. The sentence, determined upon at Noyon on the
10th of July, 1477, was made known to the Duke of Nemours on the 4th of
August, in the Bastille, and carried out, the same day, in front of the
market-place. A disgusting detail, reproduced by several modern writers,
has almost been received into history. Louis XI., it is said, ordered
the children of the Duke of Nemours to be placed under the scaffold, and
be sprinkled with their father's blood. None of his contemporaries, even
the most hostile to Louis XI., and even amongst those who, at the states-
general held in 1484, one of them after his death, raised their voices
against the trial of the Duke of Nemours, and in favor of his children,
has made any mention of this pretended atrocity. Amongst the men who
have reigned and governed ably, Louis XI. is one of those who could be
most justly taxed with cruel indifference when cruelty might be useful to
him; but the more ground there is for severe judgment upon the chieftains
of nations, the stronger is the interdict against overstepping the limit
justified and authorized by facts.

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