Explore "The House of Jacques Cœur in Bourges" by Esther Singleton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AD. BERTY.
Certainly Jacques Cœur, that citizen of humble birth, who, by his merit reached the highest dignity of state at an epoch when aristocracy reigned supreme, this man of genius, who, while creating a maritime commerce for France, amassed so great a fortune for himself that he was able to help towards the deliverance of his own country in supporting at his own expense four armies at the same time, was not one of the least important figures of the Fifteenth Century. Posterity has not always been just to this illustrious upstart: he should be ranked immediately after Jeanne d'Arc, for the sword of the Maid of Domrémy would, perhaps, have been powerless to chase the enemy from the soil (which a cowardly king did not think of repulsing), without the wise economy and the generous sacrifices of him, who, at a later period, was abandoned by the king to the rapacity of his courtiers with that same ignoble ingratitude which he had shown to the _sainte libertrice_ of the great nation over which he was so unworthy to rule.