was a prince neither to be respected nor to be loved, and during many years his reign had not been a prosperous one; but "he re-quickened justice, which had been a long while dead," says a chronicler devoted to the Duke of Burgundy; "he put an end to the tyrannies and exactions of the men-at-arms, and out of an infinity of murderers and robbers he formed men of resolution and honest life; he made regular paths in murderous woods and forests, all roads safe, all towns peaceful, all nationalities of his kingdom tranquil; he chastised the evil and honored the good, and he was sparing of human blood." Let it be added, in accordance with contemporary testimony, that at the same time that he established an all but arbitrary rule in military and financial matters, Charles VII.

took care that "practical justice, in the case of every individual, was promptly rendered to poor as well as rich, to small as well as great; he forbade all trafficking in the offices of the magistracy, and every time that a place became vacant in a parliament he made no nomination to it, save on the presentations of the court." Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were not the only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII.

He attacked also ecclesiastical questions, which were at that period a subject of passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the councils of the Church and in the closets of princes.

The celebrated ordinance, known by the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles VII.

issued at Bourges on the 7th of July, 1438, with the concurrence of a grand national council, laic and ecclesiastical, was directed towards the carrying out, in the internal regulations of the French Church, and in the relations either of the State with the Church in France, or of the Church of France with the papacy, of reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers and interests.