League of the Public Weal
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The League of the Public Weal was an alliance of feudal nobles organized in defiance of the centralized authority of the French King, Louis XI, by his brother, the Charles, Duke of Berry, and Charles the Bold of Burgundy.
In keeping with the policies of previous Capetian and Valois monarchs, Louis had continued to assert the supremacy of the king within the territory of France. Over the course of the preceding centuries, and during the Hundred Years' War, the French kings had affected an administrative unification of the country. Unlike Germany, which languished as a miscellany of feudal factions, France emerged from the Middle Ages as a centralized state. But this centralization was opposed by the League of Public Weal, whose nobles sought to restore their feudal prerogatives.
Charles the Bold, as duke of Burgundy, whose fiefs in France included Flanders, and who held the imperial lands of Holland and Brabant, aspired to forge a kingdom of his own in between France and Germany, approximating the former domains of the Frankish Emperor Lothair I.
Louis's response to the League was characteristic of his underhanded diplomacy. He seemed to yield to its demands by granting Normandy to his brother, returning contested cities on the Somme to Burgundy, and even granting privileges to lesser nobles involved in the rebellion. But all these measures were merely calculated to break up the League. Within months of giving it up, he had reclaimed Normandy.
Both Charles and Louis were prone to overreaching themselves, and Louis's machinations nearly resulted in military defeat at Charles's hands. However, insurrections in his newly acquired territories of Lorraine and Switzerland weakened Charles's efforts. Charles himself was killed in battle against the Swiss, and Louis was saved from his greatest adversary. He had already taken his revenge on Charles's allies within France. The great duchy of Burgundy was then absorbed into the kingdom of France. The League of the Public Weal was routed in its every objective.
References
Adams, George, The Growth of the French Nation, Chatauqua Century Press, 1896.Hoyt, Robert, Europe in the Middle Ages, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 2nd ed., 1966
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