Editing Philippe de Commines (section)

===Service of Louis XI===
[[File:Philippe de Commynes Louvre LP 47.jpg|thumb|Commines at prayer]]
D'Israeli says Commines so resented his nickname that it was the reason he suddenly left Burgundy and went into the service of the French king, but the financial incentives offered by Louis provide a more than adequate explanation: Commines was still heavily burdened with his father's debts. He fled by night from [[Normandy]] on 7 August 1472, and joined Louis near [[Angers]]. On the following morning, when Duke Charles discovered his servant and god-brother missing, he confiscated all of Commines' property. These were later given to [[Philip I of Croÿ-Chimay]].

[[File:Philippe-de-Commynes-sieur-d'Argenton-et-al-Mémoires-de-messire-Philippe-de-Comines MG 1110.tif|thumb|Engraving of Philippe de Commines]]Louis was generous in making up for those losses. On 27 January 1473 the king wed him to a [[Poitou|Poitevin]] heiress, Hélène de Chambes (d.1532), ''[[lord of the manor|dame]]'' of the ''seigneuries'' of Argenton, Varennes, and Maison-Rouge.<ref name = advent/> When Hélène's sister, Colette de Chambes, was believed to have been poisoned by her aged husband [[Louis d'Amboise]], [[Viscount of Thouars]], in a fit of jealousy over her affair with [[Charles de Valois, Duke of Berry|Charles de Valois]], Louis XI's brother, the king had [[confiscation|confiscated]] most of his properties. Some of these he later gave to Commines for life, including the Princedom of Talmond in [[Poitou]], and the ''seigneuries'' of Berrie, Sables, and Olonne.<ref>{{cite web| title = Seigneurs d'Amboise| work = Racines et histoire| publisher = Etienne Pattou| date = 26 February 2008| url = http://racineshistoire.free.fr/LGN/PDF/Amboise.pdf| access-date = 8 July 2008}}</ref> Despite later reverses in the family's fortunes, on 13 August 1504 their only child, Jeanne de Commines (d.1513), made a splendid marriage to the heir of [[Brittany]]'s most powerful family, [[René de Brosse]] [[Count of Penthièvre|comte de Penthièvre]] (d.1524).

As a long-time enemy of [[Duchy of Burgundy|Burgundy]], Louis no doubt valued the inside information Commines was able to provide, and Commines quickly became one of the king's most trusted advisers. [[Jean Dufournet]]'s 1966 study of Commines has shown that the next five years, up to 1477, were the most prosperous from Commines's point of view, and the only ones when he truly had Louis's confidence. After Charles the Bold's death in 1477, the two men openly disagreed about how best to take political advantage of the situation. Commines himself admitted associating with some of the king's most prominent opponents and referred to another incident, in May 1478, when Louis reprimanded him for allegedly being open to bribery. Thereafter, much of his diplomatic work was done in the Italian arena, and he came into contact with [[Lorenzo de Medici]] on several occasions.

When Louis began to suffer ill-health, Commines was apparently welcomed back into the fold and performed personal services for the king. Many of his activities during the period seem to have involved a degree of secrecy; he was effectively acting as a kind of undercover agent. However, he never regained the level of intimacy with the king that he had previously enjoyed, and Louis's death in 1483, when Commines was still only in his thirties, left him without many friends at court. Nevertheless, he retained a place on the royal council until 1485. Then, having been implicated in the [[mad War|Orleanist rebellion]], he was taken prisoner and kept in confinement for over two years, from January 1487 until March 1489. For some of that period, he was kept in an iron cage.