Louis XI of France was forced to struggle against odds that would have broken an ordinary man. Feared and hated by his father, opposed by the decadent nobility, driven by his own consuming ambition and cursed with a misshapen body that lodged a terrifying malady, Louis had good reason to despair, but this he never did. Instead he exhibited great and constant personal courage, sagacity and a fervent idealism which, in this violent era, the end of the Middle Ages, made him the herald of a new and better era, a glorious dawn that would be called the Renaissance.