Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/167

 LOUIS XL OF FRANCE m for Christ, who wore yet heavier bonds. With his last breath he repelled - temptation to recant, and when the fire was kindled he began to sing with a loud voice, "Jesus, son of the living God, have mercy upon me." When he was re peatmg the words for the third time, his voice failed ; he was stifled by the flames soon reduced to ashes. These ashes were cast into the Rhine. Thus perished one of the noblest men who ever walked our world His death led to the Hussite war In his native Bohemia he was so loved that the peas- ants rose in great bodies, crying for vengeance. Many of the nobles joined them and for fifteen years battle and bloodshed avenged his execution. " LOUIS XL OF FRANCE BY E. SPENCER BEESLY, M.A. (1423-1483.) DURING the Middle Ages there was a constant struggle in the West between the two ele- ments of the temporal power the central, or na- tional, and the local, or that of the great vassals. Gradually the local governments all merged in large aggregates, in each of which a single national government gathered to itself all military, civil, and judicial functions. This movement was already in progress before the end of the thirteenth century. By the end of the fifteenth the struggle was substan- tially decided, though it did not come completely to an end till the latter part of the seventeenth century. In France, as in most countries, the agent in this organizing and nationaliz- ing movement was the crown. Almost every French monarch did something toward enforcing recognition of the royal authority in all parts of that country which by geographical conditions, as well as by its history, was fitted for political unity. But, either because they did rpt see their way to undertaking the direct government of so large an area, or because they were themselves under the do- minion of feudal ideas, they did not always avail themselves of their frequent op-