By means of the provinces which he successively won, wholly or partly, Burgundy, Franche-Comte, Artois, Provence, Anjou, Roussillon, and Barrois, he caused France to make a great stride towards territorial unity within her natural boundaries.

By the defeat he inflicted on the great vassals, the favor he showed the middle classes, and the use he had the sense to make of this new social force, he contributed powerfully to the formation of the French nation, and to its unity under a national government.

Feudal society had not an idea of how to form itself into a nation, or discipline its forces under one head; Louis XI.

proved its political weakness, determined its fall, and labored to place in its stead France and monarchy.

Herein are the great facts of his reign, and the proofs of his superior mind.
But side by side with these powerful symptoms of a new regimen appeared also the vices of which that regimen contained the germ, and those of the man himself who was laboring to found it.