was, in his individual and private life, the most desolate, the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom.

In 1442 and 1450 he had lost the two women who had been, respectively, the most devoted and most useful, and the most delightful and dearest to him, his mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and his favorite, Agnes Sorel.

His avowed intimacy with Agnes, and even, independently of her and after her death, the scandalous licentiousness of his morals, had justly offended his virtuous wife, Mary of Anjou, the only lady of the royal establishment who survived him.

She had brought him twelve children, and the eldest, the _dauphin_ Louis, after having from his very youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the king his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a venomous conspirator and a dangerous enemy.

At his birth in 1423, he had been named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor, St.Louis, and in hopes that he would resemble him.