The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Bourges, in France, 1423. Died at Duplessis les Tours, 1483. Aged 60.] The son of Charles VII. and Mary of Anjou. The mother was one of the most virtuous women of her age; the son proved a bad child, a bad father, a bad husband, a bad brother, a bad friend, a bad subject, and in all qualities of the heart, a bad king. He was a tyrant, a cheat, a bigot; cruel, implacable in his hatred, unscrupulous in revenge, a miser, until he had an end to accomplish, when he could prove a prodigal; crafty, sanguinary, suspicious, and despicably mean. He availed himself of the humbler orders to crush the power of the nobility, and loved to surround himself at all times with the lowest instruments for the accomplishment of his designs. Four thousand persons are said to have fallen victims to his cruelty, and history records that his father died of privations, self-imposed, through fear of being poisoned by his son. Yet this concentration of vice was personally brave, and a great promoter of letters. He introduced printing into France, and he wrote a book of counsels for his son, which he called “The Rose Tree of Wars.” He moreover left the royal authority established, and France powerful. His last few years were passed in seclusion, in suspicious alarm, and constant terror of death. [A characteristic bust; evidently a true portrait, pourtraying the well-known bigotry and cruelty of the man.]