King de France (1498-1515).
Louis XII, great-grandson of the king Charles V the Wise one, came from the branch of Valois-Orleans; he was indeed the grandson of Louis of Orleans and Valentine Visconti, on whom he in addition based his claims on the duchy of Milan.
He was finally the son of the Charles poet of Orleans and Marie de Clèves.
In 1476, Louis XI had imposed on the branch junior by Valois-Orleans the marriage of the Louis young person with his daughter junior, Jeanne de France, who was crippled.
Louis XII will make cancel his marriage by the pope in December 1498, as of his advent on the throne.
With the death of Louis XI, Louis of Orleans disputed the legitimacy of the government of Anne de Beaujeu, and carried out the rebellion of the large lords which led to the insane War. Defeated with Saint-Aubin-of-Cormier (July 27th, 1488), Louis was made prisoner, and spent three years in fortress under difficult conditions. His/her cousin Charles VIII made it release in 1491, thus sealing the reconciliation between elder branch and connects junior by Valois. In 1494, Louis took share with French forwardings in Italy, illustrating himself in particular against the Neapolitan ones.
The continuation of the Italian adventure In April 1498, Louis of Orleans succeeded his nephew Charles VIII, died without heir; after having repudiated Jeanne de France, he married, in January 1499, the widow of Charles VIII, Anne of Brittany. The question of the marriage regulated, Louis XII, advised by Georges d' Amboise, launched out in the conquest of the Milanese, stronghold of Ludovic Sforza says More; Louis then had a powerful army, equipped with best artillery of Europe - guns, culverins, arquebuses. The close powers had been neutralized by the diplomatic channel, and Venice entered the league directed against Milan. Louis XII managed to conquer the Milanese in 1499 easily, with the participation of condottiere Trivulce, who was named by it governor. The French made themselves unpopular, and Ludovic Sforza took again possession of its duchy as of March 1500. One month later, Ludovic Sforza, betrayed, was made prisoner; he was imprisoned in Loches, where he will die. The French pushed their conquest to Naples, with the agreement of Ferdinand d' Aragon. They seized the city in 1501, but they were driven out soon by it by their Aragonese allies in 1504. The French subdued the revolt of Genoese in 1507, then turned themselves against Venice, with the support of Maximilien de Habsbourg, Ferdinand d' Aragon and the pope, Jules II, joined together in the Cambric league (1508). The French were the only ones to go against the Venetian ones, that they beat in Agnadel (May 14th, 1509).
The anxious pope of the French expansion in Lombardy, then constituted against them the Holy League (1510), which gathered Venice - at the end of a typical reversal of alliance of Jules II -, the Swiss ones, English and Aragoneses. At the time of the battle of Ravenne, in April 1512, the French were victorious but lost their chief, Gaston de Foix. Unpopular, they had to be withdrawn definitively, after the failure of a new attempt to take again the Milanese carried out by Trémoille and Trivulce, beaten with Novare in June 1513.
Louis XII consequently had to face his various enemies: the Aragoneses seized Navarre Southerner in 1512; the English overcame the French with Guinegatte in 1513; finally, in 1513, the Swiss ones penetrated in the kingdom to the doors of Dijon. In 1514, Louis XII made peace with Henri VIII and, Anne of Brittany having died in January, Louis remarried with Marie of England, sister of Henri VIII.
The question of Brittany
The interior matters of the kingdom were marked, during the reign of Louis XII, by the adventures of the marriage of Claude of France. Girl of the king and Anne of Brittany, her mother wished that she was married with the grandson of Maximilien I er of Habsbourg, the future Charles Quint, which would have maintained the independence of the duchy of Brittany. At the end of the treaty of Blois, concluded in 1504 between the representatives from Habsbourg and Valois, this union, once sealed, would have torn off with the kingdom of France Burgundy, Brittany, the county of Blois as well as Italian possessions.
No doubt Louis XII then sought to neutralize Maximilien in order to keep the free hands in Italy. But another solution, defended by the marshal of Gié and Louise of Savoy and to which ends up joining Georges d' Amboise, carried it, who allowed to keep intact the royal territory, while continuing the integration of Brittany: against the opinion of the queen, one Maria Claude of France with François of Angouleme, the future François I.
The Father of the people
Under Louis XII, the royal power was reinforced: the king made take part his some advisers in the decisions (the marshal of Gié, the cardinal of Amboise, as well as commoners like Florimond Robertet or Guillaume Briçonnet); he worried about the popularity of his policy and went as far as making write by Pierre Gringore of the lampoons against Jules II. The religious policy of Louis XII was marked by an initially intransigent gallicanism: the council of Pisa (1511-1512), which brought together especially French bishops, suspended the pope, but, at the time of the council of Lateran (1513), the pope made condemn particular freedoms of the Churches, which aimed the French directly. Louis XII was, in spite of the increase in the size which mitigated the losses of resources of the Milanese, a popular sovereign: it was called the Father of the people, titrates which were decreed to him by the assembly of notable joined together in 1506.
He died on on January 1st, 1515 and was buried in Saint-Denis at the sides of Anne of Brittany. Their mausoleum is a remarkable work of an unknown artist, who evokes, on two levels, the bodies mortals of the sovereigns on the one hand, and the perpetuity of the royal function, on the other hand.