was a right wise and valiant lord, and he left his kingdom united, and in good case as to justice and tranquillity.” CHAPTER XXV.----LOUIS XI. (1461-1483.) Louis XI. was thirty-eight years old, and had been living for five years in voluntary exile at the castle of Genappe, in Hainault, beyond the dominions of the king his father, and within those of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, when, on the 23d of July, 1461, the day after Charles VII.’s death, he learned that he was King of France. He started at once to return to his own country, and take possession of his kingdom. He arrived at Rheims on the 14th of August, was solemnly crowned there on the 18th, in presence of the two courts of France and Burgundy, and on the 30th made his entry into Paris, within which he had not set foot for six and twenty years. In 1482, twenty-one years afterwards, he, sick and almost dying in his turn at his castle of Plessis-les-Tours, went, nevertheless, to Amboise, where his son the _dauphin_, who was about to become Charles VIII., and whom he had not seen for several years, was living. “I do expressly enjoin upon you,” said the father to the son, “as my last counsel and my last instructions, not to change a single one of the chief officers of the crown. When my father. King Charles VII., went to God, and I myself came to the throne, I disappointed [i.e., deprived of their appointments] all the good and notable knights of the kingdom who had aided and served my said father in conquering Normandy and Guienne, in driving the English out of the kingdom, and in restoring it to peace and good order, for so I found it, and right rich also. Therefrom much mischief came to me, for thence I had the war called the Common Weal, which all but cost me my crown.”