Without direct foreign threats, Louis was able to eliminate his rebellious vassals, expand royal power, and strengthen the economic development of his country.

[1] At the time of the Hundred Years War, the English held northern France, including the city of Paris, and Charles VII was restricted to the centre and south of the country.

[2] Louis was the grandson of Yolande of Aragon, who was a force in the royal family for driving the English out of France, which was at a low point in its struggles.

Just a few weeks after Louis's christening at the Cathedral of St. Étienne on 4 July 1423, the French army suffered a crushing defeat by the English at Cravant.

[7] In 1429, young Louis found himself at Loches in the presence of Joan of Arc, fresh from her first victory over the English at the Siege of Orléans,[3] which initiated a turning point for the French in the Hundred Years War.

On 24 June 1436, Louis met Margaret, daughter of King James I of Scotland, the bride his father had chosen for diplomatic reasons.

[citation needed] Louis's marriage with Margaret resulted from the nature of medieval royal diplomacy and the precarious position of the French monarchy at the time.

The wedding ceremony—very plain by the standards of the time—took place in the chapel of the castle of Tours on the afternoon of 25 June 1436, and was presided over by Renaud of Chartres, the Archbishop of Reims.

[12] The beautiful and cultured Margaret was popular at the court of France, but her marriage to Louis was not a happy one, in part because of his strained relations with her father-in-law, who was very attached to her.

[15] In fact, before his final defeat, "[Louis's]...military strength, combined with antipathy of the masses for great lords, won him the support of the citizens of Paris.

[11]In 1444, Louis led an army of "écorcheurs" (bands of mercenary soldiers) against the Swiss at the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs where he sought to reconquer territories of his future brother-in-law, Sigismund of Austria-Tyrol.

His objectionable scheming, which included disrespectful behavior directed against his father's beloved mistress Agnès Sorel,[17] caused him to be ordered out of court on 27 September 1446 and sent to his own province of Dauphiné.

[21] King Charles was furious when Philip refused to hand over Louis and warned the duke that he was "giving shelter to a fox who will eat his chickens.

[25] Perhaps the most significant contribution of Louis XI to the organization of the modern state of France was his development of the system of royal postal roads in 1464.

In October 1461, Louis abolished the Pragmatic Sanction that his father had instituted in 1438 to establish a French Gallican Church free of the controls of the popes in Rome.

[29] However, Philip's son, the future Charles I, Duke of Burgundy (known as the Count of Charolais at the time of Louis's accession) was angry about this transaction, feeling that he was being deprived of his inheritance.

Louis XI fought an indecisive battle against the rebels at Montlhéry[31] and was forced to grant an unfavourable peace as a matter of political expediency.

However, Louis's progress toward a strong centralized government had advanced to the point where the dukes of Burgundy could no longer act as independently as they had in the past.

[citation needed] At the same time that France and Burgundy were fighting each other, England was experiencing a bitter civil conflict now known as the Wars of the Roses.

Louis had an interest in this war, for the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, was allied with the Yorkists who opposed King Henry VI.

Through Louis's diplomacy, Warwick then formed an alliance with his bitter enemy Margaret of Anjou in order to restore her husband Henry VI to the throne.

The lands belonging to the Duchy of Burgundy as constituted by Louis's great-great-grandfather John II for the benefit of his son Philip the Bold reverted to the crown of France.

[citation needed] The marriage on 14 February 1451 between 28-year-old Louis and the 8-year-old Charlotte of Savoy was the true beginning of French involvement in the affairs of Italy.

The Italian peninsula was a compact and politically competitive space dominated by five powers: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papacy, and the Kingdom of Naples.

[44] Both Louis XI and his father Charles VII had been too busy with their struggles with Burgundy to pay much attention to political affairs smoldering in Italy.

Additionally, Louis had his attention drawn away from Italy by disagreements with the rulers of England and his struggles with Maximilian of Austria, who married the heir of Charles the Bold, Mary of Burgundy, and wanted to keep her territorial inheritance intact.

Viewed from the Italian states, the death of the Duke of Burgundy in 1477 and the resultant downfall of his duchy as a threat to the French throne signalled vast changes in the states' relationships with the kingdom of France.Despite his connection by marriage to the royal house of Savoy, Louis XI continuously courted a strong relationship with Francesco I Sforza, the Duke of Milan, who was a traditional enemy of Savoy.

[44] Louis XI also opened new friendly relations with the Papal States, forgetting the past devotion of the popes for the Duke of Burgundy.

[48] Louis XI, having suffered from bouts of apoplexy and years of illness, died on 30 August, 1483,[49] and was interred in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Cléry[50] in Cléry-Saint-André in the Arrondissement of Orléans.

[citation needed] Despite Louis XI's political acumen and overall policy of Realpolitik, Niccolò Machiavelli criticized him harshly in Chapter 13 of The Prince, calling him shortsighted and imprudent for abolishing his own infantry in favor of Swiss mercenaries.