the king ‘for the state of his household and family’, by the depredations
of men-at-arms, and by the number of officers and pensions. But the
country was too large for a political system centred on an estates
general to be workable and there was little agreement at Tours between
the groups of delegates (legati) from the various ‘parts’, ‘provinces’, and
nations of the kingdom: Normans, Burgundians, the men of Aquitaine,
and the rest, clashed bitterly over the constitution of the council of
regency and the distribution of taxation.^81
A divided estates general was neither a great asset nor a threat to
royal government and could be dispensed with. Philippe de Commynes,
who had deserted the service of the duke of Burgundy for that of
Louis XI and in his Mémoiresprovided a newly unmoralistic analysis of
the politics he observed as councillor and ambassador, thought that the
meeting of 1484 bore out the lesson of English politics (of which he
claimed first-hand knowledge) that the body politic was best tended
where princes explained the need of subsidies to assemblies of their
subjects, and were thus restrained from embarking on costly adventures.
But Commynes saw politics very much from the king’s side, understood
Louis XI’s loneliness and suspicion, and knew that royal power
depended in both France and England on the satisfaction of the demand
for ‘offices or estates’ and not putting the king’s estate ‘in peril of so
uncertain a thing as a battle’. Answering the complaints of the estates in
1484 about the cost of the multitude of men-at-arms and officials, the
chancellor complained that the king and the princes wanted the
commonwealth to be in a state [rempublicam... eo statu esse] that was
as perfect and peaceable as could be imagined: but soldiers were a vital
arm of the body politic, and no one would say that spending on ‘the
state of the royal house and family’ ought to be less than magnificent.
He explained that Charles VIII could not return to Charles VII’s level of
expenditure (as the estates asked), for a young king must rely on the
loyalty of others for the government of the commonwealth and so be
liberal with rewards.^82
In a more fundamental way the strength of the monarchy rested on
the careful distribution of ‘estates and offices’ to individuals rather than
on the management of corporate estates. By the appointment of office-
286 Monarchical State of the Later Middle Ages
(^81) Lewis, Later Medieval France, 8; for the chapter of complaints put forward for the third
estate, see Masselin, Journal, 446, 669–80; for the general complaints about taxes, the army,
officials and pension, ibid. 8, 330, 356, 390, 492, 584, 644–6; for Masselin’s orations, ibid.
328–30, 362–82, 430; for the sections and ‘nations’, their disagreements and ‘indignation’,
ibid.66–8, 160–2, 398, 400, 410, 460, 506, 652; for the debate within the Norman nation,
ibid.518, 552–4, 580, 592, 624; Major, Representative Institutions in Renaissance France, ch.
4, provides a narrative of the proceedings of the estates general of 1484.
(^82) Commynes, Mémoires, i. 2, 50 ff., 65 ff., 129, ii. 8, 76, 211, 217 ff., 230–2, 288 ff., 311;
Masselin, Journal, 334–6, 366–8, 384–8; Lewis, Later Medieval France, 108–9, 118;
J. Blanchard, Commynes L’Europeen: L’Invention du politique(Geneva, 1966), 286–97.