But despotism's good services are short-lived; it has no need to last long before it generates iniquity and tyranny; and that of Louis XI., in the latter part of his reign, bore its natural, unavoidable fruits.

"His mistrust," says M.de Barante, "became horrible, and almost insane; every year he had surrounded his castle of Plessis with more walls, ditches, and rails.

On the towers were iron sheds, a shelter from arrows, and even artillery.

More than eighteen hundred of those planks bristling with nails, called caltrops, were distributed over the yonder side of the ditch.

There were every day four hundred crossbow-men on duty, with orders to fire on whosoever approached.