The admission of Charles, Duke of Burgundy into the series of Heroes of the Nations, is justified by his relation to events rather than by his national or his heroic qualities. "Il n'avait pas assez de sens ni de malice pour conduire ses entreprises," is one phrase of Philip de Commines in regard to the master he had once served. Render sens by genius and malice by diplomacy and the words are not far wrong. Yet in spite of the failure to obtain either a kingly or an imperial crown, the story of those same unaccomplished enterprises contains the germs of much that has happened later in the borderlands of France and Germany where the projected "middle kingdom" might have been erected. A sketch of the duke's character with its traits of ambition and shortcomings may therefore be placed, not unfitly, among the pen portraits of individuals who have attempted to change the map of Europe.

The materials for an exhaustive study of the times, and of the participants in the scenes thereof, are almost overwhelming in quantity. Into this narrative, I have woven the words of contemporaries when these related what they saw and thought, or at least what they said they saw or thought, about events passing within their sight or their ken. The veracity attained is only that of a mosaic of bits, each with its morsel of truth.[page iv] And the rim in which these bits are set is too slender to contain all the illumination necessary. The narrative is, of necessity, partial and fragmentary, for a complete story would require a series of biographies presented in parallel columns. My own preliminary chapter to this book—a mere explanation of the presence of the dukes of Burgundy in the Netherlands—grew into an account of a sovereign whom they deposed and was published under the title of A Mediæval Princess.

John Foster Kirk gave 1713 pages to his record of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Forty years have elapsed since that publication appeared and a mass of interesting material pertinent to the subject has been given out to the public, while separate phases of it have been minutely discussed by competent critics, so that at every point there is new temptation for the biographer to expand the theme where the scope of his work demands brevity.

In using the later fruit of historical investigation, it is delightful for an American to find that scholars of all nations do justice to Mr. Kirk's accuracy and industry even when they may differ from his conclusions. It has been my privilege to be permitted free access to this scholar's collection of books, and I would here express my deep gratitude to the Kirk family for their generosity and courtesy towards me.

After some preliminary reading at Brussels and[page v] Paris and in England, the work for this volume has been completed in America, where the opportunity of securing the latest results of research and criticism is constantly increasing, although these results are still lodged under many roofs. I have had many reasons to thank the librarians of New York, Boston, and Washington, and also those of Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell universities for courtesies and for serviceable aid; and just as many reasons to regret the meagreness of what can be put between two covers as the gleanings from so rich a harvest.

One word further in explanation of the use of Bold. The adjective has been retained simply because it has been so long identified with Charles in English usage. I should have preferred the word Rash as a better equivalent for the contemporary term, applied to the duke in his lifetime,—le téméraire.

R.P.        

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1908.

On St. Andrew's Eve, in the year 1433, the good people of Dijon were abroad, eager to catch what glimpses they might of certain stately functions to be formally celebrated by the Duke of Burgundy. The mere presence of the sovereign in the capital of his duchy was in itself a gala event from its rarity. Various cities of the dominions agglomerated under his sway claimed his attentions successively. His residence was now here and now there, without long tarrying anywhere. His coming was usually very welcome. In times of peaceful submission to his behest, the city of his sojourn reaped many advantages besides the amusement of seeing her streets alive beyond their wont. In the outlay for the necessities and the luxuries of the peripatetic ducal court, the expenditures were lavish, and in the temporary commercial activity enjoyed by the merchants, the fact that the burghers' own contributions to this luxury were heavy, passed into temporary[page 2] oblivion.¹

This autumn visit of Philip the Good to Dijon was more significant than usual. It had lasted several weeks, and among its notable occasions was an assembly of the Knights of the Golden Fleece for the third anniversary of their Order. On this November 30th, Burgundy was to witness for the first time the pompous ceremonials inaugurated at Bruges in January, 1430. Three years had sufficed to render the new institution almost as well known as its senior English rival, the Order of the Garter, which it was destined to outshine for a brief period at least. Its foundation had formed part of the elaborate festivities accompanying the celebration of the marriage of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, to Isabella of Portugal. As a signal honour to his bride, Philip published his intention of creating a new order of knighthood which would evince "his great and perfect love for the noble state of chivalry."

Rumour, indeed, told various tales about the duke's real motives. It was whispered that a certain lady of Bruges, whom he had distinguished by his attentions, was ridiculed for her red hair[page 3] by a few merry courtiers, whereupon Philip declared that her tresses should be immortally honoured in the golden emblem of a new society.² But that may be set down as gossip. Philip's own assertion, when he instituted the Order of the Golden Fleece, was that he intended to create a bulwark

"for the reverence of God and the sustenance of our Christian faith, and to honour and enhance the noble order of chivalry, and also for three reasons hereafter declared; first, to honour the ancient knights ...;
second, to the end that these present.... may exercise the deeds of chivalry and constantly improve;
third, that all gentlemen marking the honour paid to the knights will exert themselves to attain the dignity." ³

The special homage to the new duchess was expressed in the device

This pledge of absolute fidelity to Dame Isabella was, indeed, utterly disregarded by the bridegroom, but in outward and formal honour to her he never failed.

The new institution was, from the beginning, pre-eminently significant of the duke's magnificent state existence, wherein his Portuguese consort[page 4] proved herself an efficient and able helpmeet. Again and again during a period of thirty years, rich in diplomatic parleying, did Isabella act as confidential ambassador for her husband, and many were the negotiations conducted by her to his satisfaction.⁵

But it must be noted that whatever lay at the exact root of Philip's motives when he conceived the plan of his Order, the actual result of his foundation was not affected. He failed, indeed, to bring back into the world the ancient system of knighthood in its ideal purity and strength. Rather did he make a notable contribution to its decadence and speed its parting. What was brought into existence was a house of peers for the head of the Burgundian family, a body of faithful satellites who did not hamper their chief overmuch with the criticism permitted by the rules of their society, while their own glory added shining rays to the brilliant centre of the Burgundian court.

Twenty-five, inclusive of the duke, was the original number appointed to form the chosen circle of knights. This was speedily increased to thirty-one, and a duty to be performed in the[page 5] session of 1433, was the election of new members to fill vacancies and to round out the allotted tale.

In their manner of accomplishing the appointed task, the new chevaliers had, from the outset, evinced a readiness to cast their votes to the satisfaction of their chief, even if his pleasure directly conflicted with the regulations they had sworn to obey. No candidate was to be eligible whose birth was not legitimate,⁶ a regulation quite ignored when the duke proposed the names of his sons Cornelius and Anthony. For his obedient knights did not refuse to open their ranks to these great bastards of Burgundy, who carried a bar sinister proudly on their escutcheon. So, too, others of Philip's many illegitimate descendants were not rejected when their father proposed their names.

Again, it was plainly stipulated that the new member should have proven himself a knight of renown. Yet, in this session of 1433, one of the candidates proposed for election, though nominally a knight, had assuredly had no time to show his mettle. The dignity was his only because his spurs had been thrown right royally into his cradle before his tiny hands had sufficient baby strength to grasp a rattle, and before he was even old enough to use the pleasant gold to cut his teeth[page 6] upon.⁷

Among the eight elected at Dijon in 1433, was Charles of Burgundy, Count of Charolais, son of the sovereign duke, born at Dijon on the previous St. Martin's Eve, November 10th.⁸

"The new chevaliers, with the exception of the Count of Virnenbourg who was absent, took the accustomed oath at the hands of the sovereign in a room of his palace."

So runs the record. Jean le Févre, Seigneur de St. Remy, present on the occasion in his capacity of king-at-arms of the Order, is a trifle more communicative.⁹ According to him, all the gentlemen were very joyous at their election as they received their collars and made their vows as stated. He excepted no member in the phrase about the joy displayed, though, as a matter of inference, the pleasure experienced by the Count of Charolais may be reckoned as somewhat problematical.

The heir of Burgundy had attained the ripe age of just twenty days when thus officially listed among the chevaliers present at the festival.[page 7] Born on November 10th of this same year, 1433,¹⁰ he had been knighted on the very day of his baptism, when Charles, Count of Nevers, and the Seigneur of Croy were his sponsors. The former gave his name to the infant while the latter's name was destined to be identified with many unpleasant incidents in the career of the future man. This brief span of life is sufficient reason for the further item in the archives of the Golden Fleece:

"As to the Count of Charolais, he was carried into the same room. There the sovereign, his father, and the duchess, his mother, took the oath on his behalf. Afterwards the duke put the collars upon all." ¹¹

Thus was emphasised at birth the parental conviction that Charles of Burgundy was of different metal than the rest of the world. The great duke of the Occident made a distinct epoch in the history of chivalry when he conferred its dignities upon a speechless, unconscious infant. The theory that knighthood was a personal acquisition had been maintained up to this period, the Children of France ¹² alone being excepted from the rule, though in his Lay de Vaillance Eustache Deschamps complains that the degree of knighthood is actually[page 8] conferred on those who are only ten or twelve years old, and who do not know what to do with the honour.¹³ That plaint was written not later than the first years of the fifteenth century, and the poet's prediction that ruin of the institution was imminent when affected by such disorders seemed justified if, in 1433, even the years of the eligible age had shrunk to days. Philip himself had not received the accolade until he was twenty-five.

How his predecessor in Holland, Count William VI., had acquitted himself valiantly the moment that he was dubbed knight is told by Froissart, and the tales of other accolades of the period are too well known to need reference.

It is said that the baby cavalier was nourished by his own mother. Having lost her first two infants, Isabella was solicitous for the welfare of this third child, who also proved her last. He was, moreover, Philip's sole legal heir, as Michelle of France and Bonne of Artois, his first wives, had left no offspring. The care and devotion expended on the boy were repaid. Charles became a sturdy child who developed into youthful vigour. In person, he strangely resembled his mother and her Portuguese ancestors, rather than the English Lancastrians, from whom she was equally descended.

His dark hair and his features were very different from the fair type of his paternal ancestors, the vigorous branch of the Valois family. Possibly[page 9] other characteristics suggesting his Portuguese origin were intensified by close association with his mother, who supervised the education directed by the Seigneur d' Auxy. They often lived at The Hague, where Isabella acted as chief and official adviser to the duke's stadtholder in the administration.¹⁴

Charles was a diligent pupil, if we may believe his contemporaries, surprisingly so, considering his early taste for all martial pursuits and his intense interest in military operations.

At two years of age he received his first lesson in horsemanship, on a wooden steed constructed for his especial use by Jean Rampart, a saddler of Brussels.

His biographers repeat from each other statements of his proficiency in Latin. This must be balanced by noting that the only texts which he could have read were probably not classic. In the inventory of the various Burgundian libraries of the period, there are not six Greek and Latin classical texts all told, and excepting Sallust, not a single Roman historian in the original.¹⁵ There was a translation of Livy by the Prior of St. Eloi[page 10] and late abridgments of Sallust, Suetonius, Lucan, and Cæsar,¹⁶ with a French version of Valerius Maximus, but nothing of Tacitus. Doubtless these versions and a volume called Les faits des Romains were used as text-books to teach the young count about the world's conquerors. The last mentioned book shows what travesties of Roman history were gravely read in the fifteenth century.

There are stories¹⁷ that the bit of history most enjoyed by the pupil was the narrative of Alexander. Books about that hero were easy to come by long before the invention of printing, though Alexander would have had difficulty in recognising his identity under the strange mediæval motley in which his namesake wandered over the land. No single man, with the possible exception of Charlemagne, was so much written about or played so brilliantly the part of a hero to the Middle Ages and after.¹⁸ The simplicity and universality of his success were of a type to appeal to the boy Charles, himself built on simple lines. The fact, too, that Alexander was the son of a Philip stimulated his imagination and instilled in his breast hopes of conquering, not the whole world perhaps, but a good slice of territory which should enable him to hold his own between the emperor and the French king. Tales of definite schemes[page 11] of early ambition are often fabricated in the later life of a conqueror, but in this case they may be believed, as all threads of testimony lead to the same conclusion.

The air breathed by the boy when he first became conscious of his own individuality was certainly heavy with the aroma of satisfied ambition. The period of his childhood was a time when his father stood at the very zenith of his power. In 1435, was signed the Treaty of Arras, the death-blow to the long coalition existing between Burgundy and England to the continual detriment of France. Philip was reconciled with great solemnity to the king, responsible in his dauphin days for the murder of the late Duke of Burgundy. After ostentatiously parading his filial resentment sixteen long years, Philip forgave Charles VII. his share in the death of John the Fearless, on the bridge at Montereau, and swore to lend his support to keep the French monarch on the throne whither the efforts of Joan of Arc had carried him from Bourges, the forlorn court of his exile.

England's pretensions were repudiated. To be sure, the recent coronation of Henry VI. at Paris was not immediately forgotten, but while the Duke of Bedford had actually administered the government as regent, in behalf of his infant nephew, it was a mere shadow of his office that passed to his successor. Bedford's death, in 1435, was almost coincident with the compact at Arras when the English Henry's realms across the Channel[page 12] shrank to Normandy and the outlying fortresses of Picardy and Maine. Later events on English soil were to prove how little fitted was the son of Henry V. for sovereignty of any kind.

Out of the negotiations at Arras, Philip of Burgundy rose triumphant with a seal set upon his personal importance.¹⁹ His recognition of Charles VII. as lawful sovereign of France, and his reconciliation did not pass without signal gain to himself.

The king declared his own hands unstained by the blood of John of Burgundy, agreed to punish all those designated by Philip as actually responsible for that treacherous murder, and pledged himself to erect a cross on the bridge at Montereau, the scene of the crime. Further, he relinquished various revenues in Burgundy, hitherto retained by the crown from the moment when the junior branch of the Valois had been invested with the duchy (1364); and he ceded the counties of Boulogne, Artois, and all the seigniories belonging to the French sovereign on both banks of the Somme. To this last cession, however, was appended the condition that the towns included in this clause could be redeemed at the king's pleasure, for the sum of four hundred thousand gold crowns. Further, Charles exempted Philip from acts of homage to himself, promised to demand no aides from the duke's subjects in case of war, and to assist his cousin if he were attacked from England.[page 13] Lastly, he renounced an alliance lately contracted with the emperor to Philip's disadvantage.²⁰

One clause in the treaty crowned the royal submissiveness towards the powerful vassal. It provided that in case of Charles's failure to observe all the stipulated conditions, his own subjects would be justified in taking arms against him at the duke's orders. A similar clause occurs in certain treaties between an earlier French king and his Flemish vassals, but always to the advantage of the suzerain, not to that of the lesser lords.

The duke was left in a position infinitely superior to that of the king, whose realm was terribly exhausted by the long contest with England, a contest wherein one nation alone had felt the invader's foot. French prosperity had been nibbled off like green foliage before a swarm of locusts, and the whole north-eastern portion of France was in a sorry state of desolation by 1435. On the other hand, the territories covered by Burgundy as an overlord had greatly increased during the sixteen years that Philip had worn the title. An aggregation of duchies, counties, and lordships formed his domain, loosely hung together by reason of their several titles being vested in one person—titles which the bearer had inherited or assumed under various pretexts.

Flanders and Artois, together with the duchy[page 14] and county of Burgundy, came to him from his father, John the Fearless, in 1419. In 1421, he bought Namur. In 1430, he declared himself heir to his cousins in Brabant and Limbourg when Duke Anthony's second son followed his equally childless brother into a premature grave, and the claims were made good in spite of all opposition. Holland, Zealand, and Hainaut became his through the unwilling abdication of his other cousin, Jacqueline, in 1433. To save the life of her husband, Frank van Borselen, the last representative of the Bavarian House then formally resigned her titles, which she had already divested of all significance five years previously, when Philip of Burgundy had become her ruward, to relieve a "poor feminine person" of a weight of responsibility too heavy for her shoulders.²¹

Divers items in the accounts show what Philip expended in having the titles of Holland, Zealand, and Hainaut added to his other designations. Also there were various places where his predecessor's name had to be effaced to make room for his. (Laborde, i., 345).]

Antwerp and Mechlin were included in Brabant. Luxemburg was a later acquisition obtained through Elizabeth of Görlitz.

There were very shady bits in the chapters about Philip's entry into many of his possessions, but it is interesting to note how cleverly the best colour is given to his actions by Olivier de la Marche and other writers who enjoyed Burgundian patronage. Very gentle are the adjectives employed,[page 15] and a nice cloak of legality is thrown over the naked facts as they are ushered into history. Contemporary criticism did occasionally make itself heard, especially from the emperor, who declared that the Netherland provinces must come to him as a lapsed imperial fief. For a time Philip denied that any links existed between his domain and the empire, but in 1449 he finally found it convenient to discuss the question with Frederic III. at Besançon; still he never came to the point of paying homage.

All these territories made a goodly realm for a mere duke. But they were individual entities centred around one head with little interconnection.

Philip thought that the one thing needed to bring his possessions into a national life, as coherent as that of France, was a unity of legal existence among the dissimilar parts, and the effort to attain this unity was the one thought dominating the career of his successor, whose pompous introduction to life naturally inspired him with a high idea of his own rank, and led him to dream of greater dignities for himself and his successor than a bundle of titles,—a splendid, vain, fatal dream as it proved.

As a final cement to the new friendship between Burgundy and France, it was also agreed at Arras that the heir of the former should wed a daughter of Charles VII. When the Count of Charolais was five years old, the Seigneur of Crèvecœur,²² "a[page 16] wise and prudent gentleman" was despatched to the French court on divers missions, among which was the business of negotiating the projected alliance. A very joyous reception was accorded the envoy by the king and the queen, and his proposal was accepted in behalf of the second daughter, Catherine, easily substituted for an older sister, deceased between the first and second stages of negotiation.

A year later, a formal betrothal took place at St Omer, whither the young bride was conducted, most honourably accompanied by the archbishops of Rheims and of Narbonne, by the counts of Vendôme, Tonnerre, and Dunois, the young son of the Duke of Bourbon, named the Lord of Beaujeu, and various other distinguished nobles, besides a train of noble dames and demoiselles in special attendance on the princess, and an escort of three hundred horse.

At the various cities where the party made halt they were graciously received, and all honour was paid to the ten-year-old Daughter of France. At Cambray, she was met by the duke's envoys and as she travelled on towards her destination, all the towns of Philip's obedience contributed their quota of welcome.

At St. Omer, the duke was awaiting her coming. When her approach was announced he rode out in person to greet her, attended by a brilliant escort.

Within the city, "melodious festivals" were ready[page 17] to burst into tune; the betrothal was confirmed amid joyousness and the ceremony was followed by tourneys and jousts, all at the expense of the duke.

What a series of pompous betrothals between infant parties the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can show! Poor little puppets, in whose persons national interests were supposed to be centred, were made to lisp out their roles in international dramas whose final acts rarely were consistent with the promise of the prologue.

Catherine did not live to become Duchess of Burgundy nor to temper the duel between her husband and her brother Louis. The remainder of her short existence was passed under the care of Duchess Isabella, sometimes in one city of the Netherlands, sometimes in another.

La Marche²³ records one return of Philip to Brussels when his arrival was greeted by Charles of Burgundy, honourably accompanied by children of high birth about his age or less, some only eleven or twelve years old. There were with him Jehan de la Trémoille, Philip de Croy, Philip de Crèvecœur, Philip de Wavrin, and many others. All were mounted on little horses harnessed like that of their governor, a very honest and wise gentleman, named Messire Jehan, Seigneur et Ber d'Auxy. This gentleman was a fine man, well known, of good lineage, ready of speech and able to discuss matters of honour and of state.

He was both hunter and falconer, skilled in all[page 18] exercise and sport.

"Never [asserts La Marche] have I met a gentleman better adapted to supervise the education of a young prince than he.... Among his pupils were also Anthony, Bastard of Burgundy,²⁴ son of Philip, and the Marquis Hugues de Rottelin. These lads were older than the first mentioned."

La Marche dilates on the pleasure the duke felt in this youthful band of horse, and then tells how, within Brussels,

"he was received by the magistrates and conducted to his palace, where the Duchess of Burgundy awaited him holding by the hand Madame Catherine of France, Countess of Charolais. She was about twelve and seemed a lady grown, for she was good and wise, and well conditioned for her age."

At various state functions the Count and Countess of Charolais appeared together in public, and witnessed certain of the gorgeous and costly entertainments which were almost the daily food of the gay Burgundian court. One of these occasions was calculated to make a deep impression on the boy and to arouse his pride at the spectacle of a proud city wooing his father's favour, in deep humiliation.

In 1436, an insurrection had occurred in Bruges, when the animosity of the burghers had caused[page 19] the duchess to flee from their midst, holding her little son in her arms, alarmed for his personal safety. Philip suppressed the revolt, but, in his anger at its insolence, declared that never again would he set foot within the gates unless in company with his superior.

Among the many negotiations wherein Isabella played a prominent part as her husband's representative, were those concerning the liberation of the Duke of Orleans, who had remained in England, a prisoner, after the battle of Agincourt in 1415. The last advice given by Henry V. to his brothers was that they should make this captivity perpetual. Therefore, whenever overtures were made for his redemption, a strong party, headed by Humphrey of Gloucester, rejected them vehemently.

In 1440, however, there was a turn in the tide of sentiment. Possibly the low state of the English exchequer made the duke's ransom more attractive than his person. At any rate, 120,000 golden crowns were accepted as his equivalent, and the exile of twenty-five years returned to France, having pledged himself never to bear arms against England.

Isabella of Burgundy was at Calais to welcome him, and to escort him to St. Omer, where high revels were held in his honour and in that of his alliance with Marie of Cleves, Philip's niece.

The week intervening between the betrothal and the nuptials was passed in a succession of banquets and tourneys, gorgeous in their elaboration.[page 20] Moreover, St. Andrew's Day chancing to fall just then, the new Burgundian Order was convened and the Duke of Orleans was elected a Knight of the Golden Fleece, while in his turn he presented his cousin with the collar of his own Order of the Porcupine. Lord Cornwallis and other English gentlemen who had accompanied Orleans across the Channel participated in these gaieties, nor were they among the least favoured guests, adds Barante.

Amity was triumphant, and there was a general feeling abroad that the returned exile was henceforth to be the ruling power in France. People began to look to him to act as the go-between in their behalf, to be their mediator with Charles VII., still little known at his best. Many towns turned towards him in hopes of finding a friend, and among them was Bruges. But it was not royal favours that Bruges sought. Her burghers felt great inconvenience from the breach with their sovereign duke. Anxious to be reinstated in his grace, they seized the opportunity of reminding Philip of his assertion, and they besought him to enter their gates in company with the Duke of Orleans, a prince of the blood, closer to the French sovereign than the Duke of Burgundy.

After some demur, Philip consented to grant their petition. Possibly he was not loth to be persuaded. The deputies hastened back to Bruges to rejoice their fellow-citizens with the news, and to prepare a reception for their appeased sovereign,[page 21] calculated to make him content with the late rebels.

Before the grand cortège, composed of the two dukes, their consorts, and the dignitaries who had assisted in the feasts of marriage and of chivalry, reached the gates of Bruges, the citizens were ready with a touching spectacle of humility and repentance.²⁵

A league from the gates, the magistrates and burghers stood in the road awaiting the travellers from St. Omer. All were barefooted and bareheaded. Under the December sky they waited the approach of the stately procession. When the duke arrived, they all fell upon their knees and implored him to forgive the late troubles and to reinstate their city in his favour. Philip did not answer immediately—delay was always a feature of these episodes. Thereupon, the Duke of Orleans, both duchesses, and all the gentlemen joined their entreaties to the citizens' prayers. Again a pause, and then, as if generously yielding to pressure, Philip bade the burghers put on their shoes and their hats while he accepted at their hands the keys of all the gates. Then the long procession moved on towards Bruges. At the gate were the clergy, followed by the monks, nuns, and beguins of the various convents and foundations, bearing crosses, banners, reliquaries, and many precious ecclesiastical treasures. There, too, were the gilds and merchants, on horseback, with magnificent[page 22] accoutrements freshly burnished to do honour to the welcome they offered their forgiving overlord.

Throughout Bruges, at convenient places, platforms and stages were erected, whereon were enacted dramatic performances, given continuously, to provide amusement for the collected crowds. Sometimes the presentation carried significance beyond mere entertainment. Here a maid, garbed as a wood nymph, appeared leading a swan which wore the collar of the Golden Fleece and a porcupine. This last beast was to symbolise the Orleans device, Near and Far, as the creature was supposed to project his spines to a distance.

One enthusiastic citizen covered his whole house with gold and the roof with silver leaves to betoken his satisfaction. Indeed, if we may believe the chroniclers, never in the memory of man had any city incurred so much expense to honour its lord. The duke permitted his heart to be touched by these proofs of devotion, and on the very evening of his arrival he evinced that his confidence was restored by sending the civic keys and a gracious message to the magistrates. At the news of this condescension the cries of "Noël" re-echoed afresh through the illuminated streets.

Charles was not present at this entry, which took place on Saturday, December 11th, but Philip was so much entertained with the performance that he sent for his son, and on the following Saturday he and the Countess of Charolais came from[page 23] Ghent to join the party. The Duke of Orleans and many nobles rode out of the city to meet the young couple, who were formally escorted to the palace by magistrates and citizens in a body. On the Sunday there were repetitions of some of the plays and every attention was offered by the Bruges burghers to their young guests. When Orleans departed with his bride on Tuesday, December 14th, what wonder that the lady wept in sorrow at leaving these gay Burgundian doings!

While Charles did not actually witness the humiliation of the citizens, the seven-year-old boy would, undoubtedly, have heard and known sufficient of the cause of the festivals to be fully aware that the citizens who had dared defy his father were glad to buy back his smiles at any cost to their pride and purse. He would have known, too, that merchants from Venice, Genoa, Florence, and elsewhere joined the Bruges burghers in the welcome to the mollified overlord. It was a spectacle of the relations between a city and the ducal father not to be easily forgotten by the son.

[Footnote 1: The indefatigable Gachard has published an itinerary of Philip the Good, so far as he could make it. (Collection des voyages des souverains des Pays Bas, i., 71.) Unfortunately, owing to the destruction of papers, only a few years are complete. Between 1428-1441, there is nothing. But the itinerary for 1441 and for other years shows how often the duke changed his residences. Sometimes he is accompanied by Madame de Bourgogne, sometimes by M. and Madame de Charolais.]

[Footnote 2: It was also said that the woollen manufactures of Flanders were denoted by the emblem of the golden fleece.]

[Footnote 3: Reiffenberg, Histoire de l'Ordre de la Toison d'Or, p. xxi.]

[Footnote 4: Hist. de I'Ordre, etc., p. i.]

[Footnote 5: All the Burgundian embassies were not as patent to the public as were Isabella's. An item like the following from the accounts of 1448-49 whets the reader's curiosity:

"To Jehan Lanternier, barber and varlet of the chamber, for delivering to a certain person for certain causes and for secret matters of which Monseigneur does not wish further declaration to be made, 53 pounds 17 sous." (Laborde Les Ducs de Bourgogne, etc., "Preuves," i. xiii.)]

[Footnote 6: "Vingt-quatre chevaliers gentilshommes de nom et d'armes et sans reproches nés et procrées en léal mariage" (see description of the first list).—Hist. de l'Ordre, p. xxi.]

[Footnote 7: Jacquemin Dauxonne, a merchant of Lombardy living at Dijon, received twenty-two francs and a half for a rich cloth of black silk draped about the baptismal font. Why mourning was used on this joyful occasion does not appear. (Laborde, i., 321.)]

[Footnote 8: Summary of a register containing the acts of the Order of the Golden Fleece quoted in Histoire de l'Ordre, pp. 12, 13.]

[Footnote 9: St. Remy, Chronique, ii., 284. St. Remy is usually called Toison d'Or.]

[Footnote 10: His full name was Charles Martin. One tower alone remains of the palace where he was born.]

[Footnote 11: Hist, de l'Ordre, p. 13.]

[Footnote 12: Selden (Titles of Honor, p. 457), however, says he knows not by what authority this statement is made and that he knows nothing of it. Seven is the earliest age mentioned by Gautier for receiving knighthood.]

[Footnote 13: Deschamps, Œuvres Complètes, ii., 214.]

[Footnote 14: The ancient quarrel between the old Holland parties of Hooks and Cods continually blazed out anew. On one notable occasion, to show her impartiality, the duchess appeared in public accompanied by the stadtholder, Lelaing, a partisan of the Hooks, and by Frank van Borselen, himself a Cod, the widower of Jacqueline, the late Countess of Holland.]

[Footnote 15: Barante, Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne, vi., 2, note by Reiffenberg.]

[Footnote 16: See Catalogue des manuscrits des Ducs de Bourgogne, "Résumé historique," i., lxxix.]

[Footnote 17: Barante, vi., 2, note.]

[Footnote 18: Loomis, Medieval Hellenism.]

[Footnote 19: Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, ii., 231.]

[Footnote 20: It was in June, 1434, that this alliance had been made. Sigismund claimed that Philip had no right in Brabant, Holland, Zealand, and Hainaut, which in his opinion were lapsed fiefs, of the empire.]

[Footnote 21: Putnam, A Medieval Princess.]

[Footnote 22: Monstrelet, La Chronique, v., 344.]

[Footnote 23: La Marche, Mémoires, ii., 50.]

[Footnote 24: Reiffenberg, Essai sur les enfants naturels de Philippe de Bourgogne.]

[Footnote 25: Meyer, Commentarii sive Annales rerum Flandricarum, p. 296.]

The heir of Burgundy was still in very tender years when he began to take official part in public affairs, sometimes associated with one parent, sometimes with the other.

There was a practical advantage in bringing the boy to the fore by which the duke was glad to profit. With his own manifold interests, it was impossible for him to be present in his various capitals as often as was demanded by the usage of the diverse individual seigniories. It was politic, therefore, to magnify the representative capacity of his son and of his consort in order to obtain the grants and aides which certain of his subjects declared could be given only when requested orally by their sovereign lord. Thus, in 1444, it was Count Charles and the duchess who appeared in Holland to ask an aide.¹ In the following year, Charles accompanied his father when Philip made one of his rare visits—there were only three between 1428 and 1466—to Holland and Zealand.

Olivier de la Marche was among the attendants on this occasion, and he describes with great detail how rejoiced were the inhabitants to have their absentee count in their land.² Many matters could only be set aright by his authority. Among the complaints brought to him at Middelburg were accusations against a certain knight of high birth, Jehan de Dombourc. Philip ordered that the man be arrested at once and brought before him for trial. This was easier said than done. Warned of his danger, Dombourc, with four or five comrades, took refuge in the clock tower of the church of the Cordeliers, a sanctuary that could not be taken by storm.³ He was provided with a good store of food, this audacious criminal, and prepared to stand a siege. There he remained three days, because, for the honour of the Church, they could not fire upon him.

"And I remember [adds La Marche] seeing a nun come out and call to Jehan Dombourc, her brother, advising him to perish defending himself rather than to dishonour their lineage by falling into the hands of the executioner. Nevertheless, finally he was forced to surrender to his prince, and he was beheaded in the market-place at Middelburg, but, at the plea of his sister, the said nun, his body was delivered to her to be buried in consecrated ground."

In this same visit Philip presided over the Zealand estates and the young count sat by his side,[page 26] not as an idle spectator, but because usage required the presence of the heir as well as that of the Count of Zealand.

When Charles was twelve he was present at an assembly of the Order of the Golden Fleece held in Ghent. It was the first occasion of the kind witnessed by La Marche, and very minute is his description of the lavish magnificence of the affair, undoubtedly intended to awe the citizens into complying with the requests of their Count of Flanders.

Charles played a prominent part in all the functions, and assisted in the election of his tutor, Seigneur et Ber d'Auxy. Another candidate of that year was Frank van Borselen, Count of Ostrevant, widower of Jacqueline, late Countess of Holland.

In 1446, the little Countess of Charolais died at Brussels. "Honourably as befitted a king's daughter" was she buried at Ste. Gudule.⁴

"Tireless in their devotion were the duke and duchess in her last illness, and Charles VII. despatched two skilled doctors to her aid but all efforts were vain.

"Much bemourned was the princess for she was virtuous. God have pity on her soul"

piously ejaculates La Marche.

A little item ⁵ in the accounts suggests that a pleasant friendship had existed between the two[page 27] young people:

"To Jehan de la Court, harper of Mme. the Countess of Charolais, for a harp which she had bought from him and given to Ms. the Count of Charolais for him to play and take his amusement, xii francs." ⁶

It is easy to surmise that music was not, however, the young count's favourite amusement. In Philip's court, tournaments were still held and afforded a fascinating entertainment for a lad whose bent was undoubtedly towards a military career.

One valiant actor in these tourneys where were revived the ancient traditions of knighthood, was Jacques de Lalaing, a chevalier with all the characteristics of times past, fighting for fame in the present. In his youth, this aspirant for reputation swore a vow to meet thirty knights in combat before he attained his thirtieth year. Dominated by a desire to fulfil his vow, Lalaing haunted the court of Burgundy, because the Netherlands were on the highroad between England and many points in Germany, Italy, and the East, and there he had the best chance of falling in with all the prowess that might be abroad. For stay-at-home prowess[page 28] he cared naught. A delightful personage is Messire Jacques and a brave rôle does he play in the series of jousts, sporting gaily on the pages of the various Burgundian chroniclers, who recorded in their old age what they had seen in their youth. One description, however, of these encounters reads much like another and they need not be repeated.

During his childhood Charles was a spectator only on the days of mimic battle. In his seventeenth year he was permitted to enter the lists as a regular combatant, a permission shared by his fellow pupils all eager to flesh their maiden spears. The duke arranged that his son should have a preliminary tilt a few days before the public affair in order to test his ability. All the courtiers—and apparently ladies were not excluded from the discussion on the matter—agreed that no better knight could be found for this purpose than Jacques de Lalaing, who, on his part, was highly honoured by being selected to gauge the untried capabilities of the prince.⁷

In the park at Brussels with the duke and duchess as onlookers, the preliminary encounter took place. At the very first attack, Charles struck Messire Jacques on the shield and shattered his lance into many pieces. The duke was displeased because he thought that the knight had not exerted his full strength and was favouring his son. He accordingly sent word to Jacques that he must[page 29] play in earnest and not hold his force in leash. Fresh lances were brought; again did the count withstand the attack so sturdily that both lances were shattered. This time the boy's mother was the dissatisfied one, thinking that the knight was too hard with his junior, but the duke only laughed.

"Thus differed the parents. The one desired him to prove his manhood, the other was preoccupied with his safety. With these two courses the trial ended amid rounds of applause for the prince."⁸

The actual tourney was held on the Marketplace in Brussels before a distinguished assembly. Count Charles was escorted into the arena by his cousin, the Count d'Estampes, and other nobles. Seigneur d'Auxy, his tutor, stood near to watch the maiden efforts of the prince and his mates. He had reason to be proud of Charles, both for his bearing and his skill. He gave and received excellent thrusts, broke more than ten lances, and did his duty so valiantly that in the evening he received the prize from two princesses, and "Montjoye" was cried by the heralds in his honour. From that time forth, the count was considered a puissant and rude jouster and gained great renown.

"And that is the reason why I commence my memoirs about him and his deeds⁹ [continues La Marche,[page 30] on concluding his description of the tournament], and I do not speak from hearsay and rumour. As one who has been brought up with him from his youth in his father's service and in his own, I will touch upon his education, his morals, his character, and his habits from the moment when I first saw him as appears above in my memoirs.

"As to his character, I will commence at the worst features. He was hot, active, and impetuous: as a child he was very eager to have his own way. Nevertheless, he had so much understanding and good sense that he resisted his inclinations and in his youth no one could be found sweeter or more courteous than he. He did not take the name of God or the saints in vain, and held God in great fear and reverence. He learned well and had a retentive memory. He was fond of reading and of hearing read the stories of Lancelot and Gawain, but to both he preferred the sea and boats. Falconry, too, he loved and he hunted whenever he had leave. In archery he early excelled his comrades and was good at other sports. Thus was the count educated, trained, and taught, and thus did he devote himself to good and excellent exercise."

That the report of the lavishness and extravagance of the Burgundian court was no idle rumour, exaggerated by frequent repetitions, is attested to by every bit of contemporary evidence. Enthusiastic and loyal chroniclers dwell on the magnificence, and the arid details of bills paid show what it cost to attain the vaunted perfection, while the protests from taxpayers prove that this splendour[page 31] did not grow like the lilies of the field.

Philip's treasury had many separate compartments. There were many quarters to which he could turn for his needed supplies, but there were times when his exchequer ran very threateningly low, and his financial stress led him to be very conciliatory towards the burghers with full purses.

In 1445, Ghent had been honoured by the celebration of the feast of the Order of the Golden Fleece within her gates. Two years later, Philip appeared in person at a meeting of the collace, or municipal assembly, and delivered a harangue to the Ghentish magistrates and burghers, flattering them, moreover, by using their vernacular. The tenor of this speech was as follows:¹⁰

"My good and faithful friends, you know how I have been brought up among you from my infancy. That is why I have always loved you more than the inhabitants of all my other cities, and I have proved this by acceding to all your requests. I believe then that I am justified in hoping that you will not abandon me to-day when I have need of your support. Doubtless you are not ignorant of the condition of my father's treasury at the period of his death. The majority of his possessions had been sold. His jewels were in pawn. Nevertheless, the demands of a legitimate vengeance compelled me to undertake a long and bloody war, during which the defence of my fortresses and of my cities, and the pay of my army have necessitated[page 32] outlays so large that it is impossible to estimate them. You know, too, that at the very moment when the war on France was at its height, I was obliged, in order to assure the protection of my country of Flanders, to take arms against the English in Hainaut, in Zealand, and in Friesland, a proceeding costing me more than 10,000 saluts d'or, which I raised with difficulty. Was I not equally obliged to proceed against Liege, in behalf of my countship of Namur, which sprang from the bosom of Flanders? It is not necessary to add to all these outlays those which I assume daily for the cause of the Christians in Jerusalem, and the maintenance of the Holy Sepulchre.

"It is true, however, that, yielding to the persuasions of the pope and the Council, I have now consented to put an end to the evils multiplied by war by forgetting my father's death, and by reconciling myself with the king. Since the conclusion of this treaty, I considered that while I had succeeded in preserving to my subjects during the war the advantages of industry and of peace, they had submitted to heavy burdens in taxes and in voluntary contributions, and that it was my duty to re-establish order and justice in the administration. But everything went on as though the war had not ceased. All my frontiers have been menaced, and I found myself obliged to make good my rights in Luxemburg, so useful to the defence of my other lands, especially of Brabant and Flanders.

"In this way, my expenses continued to increase; all my resources are now exhausted, and the saddest part of it all is that the good cities and communes of Flanders and especially the country folk are at the very end of their sacrifices. With grief I see many[page 33] of my subjects unable to pay their taxes, and obliged to emigrate. Nevertheless, my receipts are so scanty that I have little advantage from them. Nor do I reap more from my hereditary lands, for all are equally impoverished.

"A way must be found to ease the poor people, and at the same time to protect Flanders from insult, Flanders for whose sake I would risk my own person, although to arrive at this end, important measures have become imperative."

After this affectionate preamble, Philip finally states that, in order to raise the requisite revenues, no method seemed to him so good and so simple as a tax on salt, three sous on every measure for a term of twelve years. He promised to dispense with all other subsidies and to make his son swear to demand nothing further as long as the gabelle was imposed.

"Know [he added in conclusion] that even if you consent to it I will renounce it if others prove of a different opinion, for I do not desire that the communes of Flanders be more heavily weighted than any other portion of my territory."

The duke might have spared his trouble and his elaborate condescension. The answer to his conciliatory request was a flat refusal to consider the matter at all. Salt was a vital necessity to Flemish fisheries, and its cost could not be increased to the least degree without serious inconvenience. The Flemings were wroth at his imitating[page 34] the worst custom of his French kinsmen.

Philip departed from Ghent in great dudgeon. After a time he was persuaded that the indisposition of the town to meet his reasonable wishes was not due to the citizens at large, but to the machinations of a few unruly agitators among the magistrates. In 1449, therefore, he took a high-handed course of trying to direct the issue of the regular municipal elections, so as to ensure the choice of magistrates on whose obedience he could rely. The appearance of Burgundian troops in Ghent, before the election of mid-August, aroused the wrath of the community, who thought that their most cherished franchises were in jeopardy.

This was the beginning of a bitter struggle between Ghent and Philip. The duke found it no light matter to coerce the independent burghers into remembering that they were simply part of the Burgundian state. "Tantæ molis erat liberam gentem in servitutem adigere!" ejaculates Meyer in the midst of his chronicle of the details of fourteen months of active hostilities.¹¹ Matters were long in coming to an outbreak. Various points had been contended over, when Philip had endeavoured to change the seat of the great council, or to take divers measures tending to concentrate certain judicial or legislative functions for his own convenience, but in a manner prejudicial to the autonomy of Ghent. His centripetal policy was disliked, but when his policy went further, and he[page 35] attempted to control purely civic offices, dislike grew into resentment and the Ghenters rose in open revolt.

For a time, their opposition passed in Philip's estimation as mere insignificant unruliness. By 1452, however, the date of the tourney above described, it became evident that a vital issue was at stake. The Estates of Flanders endeavoured to mediate between overlord and town, but without success. Owing to Philip's interference in the elections, the results were declared void, and when a new election was appointed, the Burgundians accused the city of hastily augmenting its number of legal voters by over-facile naturalisation laws. The gilds, too, evinced a readiness to be very lenient in their scrutiny of candidates for admission to their cherished privileges, preferring, for the nonce, numbers to quality. Occupancy of furnished rooms was declared sufficient for enfranchisement, and there were cases where mere guests of a bourgeois were hastily recorded on the lists as full-fledged citizens.

By these means the popular party waxed very strong numerically. The sheriffs found themselves quite unequal to holding the rampant spirit of democracy in check. The regular government was overthrown, and the demagogues succeeded in electing three captains (hooftmans) invested with arbitrary power for the time being. The decrees of the ex-sheriffs were suspended, and a mass of very radical measures promulgated and joyfully[page 36] confirmed by the populace, assembled on the Friday market. It was to be the judgment of the town meeting that ruled, not deputed authority. One ordinance stipulated that at the sound of the bell every burgher must hasten to the marketplace, to lend his voice to the deliberations.

For a time various negotiations went on between Philip and envoys from Ghent. The latter took a high hand and insinuated in unmistakable terms that if the duke refused an accommodation with them, they would appeal to their suzerain, the King of France. No act of rebellion, overt or covert, exasperated Philip more than this suggestion. Charles VII. was only too ready to ignore those clauses in the treaty of Arras, releasing the duke from homage, and virtually acknowledging his complete independence in his French territories. The king accepted missives from his late vassal's city, without reprimanding the writers for their presumption in signing themselves "Seigneurs of Ghent."¹² His action, however, was confined to mild attempts at mediation.

It was plain to the duke that his other towns would follow Ghent's resistance to his authority if there were hopes of her success. Therefore he threw aside all other interests for the time being, and exerted himself to levy a body of troops to crush Flemish pretensions. His counsellors advised[page 37] him to sound the temper of other citizens and to ascertain whether their sympathies were with Ghent. Answers of feeble loyalty came back to him from the majority of the other towns. Undoubtedly they highly approved Ghent's efforts. They, too, could not afford to pay taxes fraught with danger to their commerce, nor to relinquish one jot of privileges dearly bought at successive crises throughout a long period of years. The only doubt in their minds was as to the ultimate success of the burghers to stem the course of Burgundian usurpation. Therefore, they first hedged, and then consented to aid the duke. This course was pursued by the Hollanders and the Zealanders, all alike short-sighted.

The Ghenters succeeded in possessing themselves of the castle of Poucque by force, and of the village of Gaveren by stratagem, taking advantage in the latter case of the castellan's absence at church.

When every part of his dominions had been canvassed for troops, and Philip was prepared for his first active campaign against Ghent, he was anxious to leave his heir under the protection of the duchess, conscious that the imminent contest would be bitter and deadly. A pretence was made that the young count's accoutrements were not ready, and that, therefore, he would have to remain in Brussels.

"But he whose ambitions waxed, hastened the completion of his accoutrements, and swore by St. George, the greatest oath he ever used, that he would rather[page 38] go in his shirt than not accompany his father to punish his impudent rebel subjects."¹³

The approaching hostilities were watched by foreign merchants in dread of commercial disaster.

"On May 18th, the nations ¹⁴ of the merchants of Bruges departed thence to go to Ghent to try to make peace between that city and the Duke of Burgundy, and there were nations of Spain, Aragon, Portugal, and Scotland, besides the Venetians, Milanese, Genoese, and Luccans."¹⁵

But the men of Ghent were beyond the point where commercial arguments could stem their course. The very day that this company arrived in the city, the burghers sallied forth six or seven thousand strong, fully equipped for offensive warfare.

Both the actual engagements and guerilla skirmishes that raged over a minute stretch of territory were characterised by an extraordinary ferocity. Around Oudenarde, which town Philip was determined to relieve, men were beheaded like sheep.

In the first regular engagement in which Charles took part, he showed a brave front and learned the duties of a prince by rewarding others with the honour of knighthood. Among those slain in the course of the war, were Cornelius, Bastard of Burgundy, and the gallant Jacques de Lalaing. Philip[page 39] grieved deeply over the death of the former, his favourite among his natural sons, and buried him with all honours in the Church of Ste-Gudule in Brussels. The title by which he was known, hardly a proud one it would seem, passed to his brother Anthony. Lalaing, too, was greatly mourned, thus prematurely cut down in his thirty-third year.

There was so much fear lest the duke's sole legitimate heir might also perish in these conflicts where there was no mercy, that Charles was persuaded to go to visit his mother in the hope that she would keep him by her side. She made a feast in his honour, but, to the surprise of all, the duchess, who had wished to protect her son from the mild perils of a tourney, now encouraged him with brave words to return to fight in all earnest for his inheritance.¹⁶ He himself was very indignant at the efforts to treat him as a child.

The first truce and negotiations for peace, initiated in the summer of 1452, were broken off because the conditions were unbearable to the Ghenters. Another year of warfare followed before the decisive battle of Gaveren, in July, 1453, forced them sadly to succumb. There was no other course open to them. Not only were they defeated but their numbers were decimated.¹⁷ With full allowance for exaggeration, it is certain that the[page 40] loss was very heavy. Terms scornfully rejected at an earlier date were, in 1453, accepted with every humiliating detail. More, the defeated rebels were bidden to be grateful that their kind sovereign had imposed nothing further to the conditions. As to abating the severity of the articles, he declared that he would not change an a for a b.¹⁸

The chief provisions were as follows: The deans of the gilds were deprived of participation in the election of sheriffs. The privileges of the naturalisation laws were considerably abridged. No sentence of banishment could be pronounced without the intervention of the duke's bailiff, whose authorisation, too, was required before the publication of edicts, ordinances, etc. The sheriffs were forbidden to place their names at the head of letters to the officers of the duke. The banners were to be delivered to the duke and placed under five locks, whose several keys should be deposited with as many different people, without whose consensus the banners could not be brought forth to lead the burghers to sedition. One gate was to be closed every Thursday in memory of the day when the citizens had marched through it to attack their liege lord, and another was to be barred up in perpetuity or at the pleasure of their sovereign. To reimburse the duke for his enforced outlay, a heavy indemnity was to be paid[page 41] by the city.

July 30th was the date appointed for the final act of submission, the amende honorable of the unfortunate city. The scene was very similar to that played at Bruges in 1440. Two thousand citizens headed by the sheriffs, councillors, and captains of the burgher guard met the duke and his suite a league without the walls of Ghent. Bareheaded, barefooted, and divested of all their robes of office and of dignity, clad only in shirts and small clothes, these magistrates confessed that they had wronged their loving lord by unruly rebellion, and begged his pardon most humbly.

The duke spent the night of July 29th at Gaveren, prepared to march out in the morning with his whole army in handsome array. Philip was magnificently apparelled, but he rode the same horse which he had used on the day of battle, with the various wounds received on that day ostentatiously plastered over to make a dramatic show of what the injured sovereign had suffered at the hands of his disloyal subjects.

The civic procession was headed by the Abbot of St. Bavon and the Prior of the Carthusians. The burghers who followed the half-clad officials were fully dressed but they, too, were barefoot and ungirdled. All prostrated themselves in the dust and cried, "Mercy on the town of Ghent." While they were thus prostrate, the town spokesman of the council made an elaborate speech in French, assuring the duke that if, out of his benign grace. he would take his loving and repentant subjects[page 42] again into his favour, they would never again give him cause for reproach.

"At the conclusion of this harangue, the duke and the Count of Charolais, there present, pardoned the petitioners for their evil deeds. The men of Ghent re-entered their town more happy and rejoiced than can be expressed, and the duke departed for Lille, having disbanded his army, that every one might return to their several homes." ¹⁹

The joy experienced by the conquered, here described by La Marche, as he looked back at the event from the calm retirement of his old age, was not visible to all eye-witnesses. The progress of this war was watched eagerly from other parts of Philip's dominion. His army was full of men from both the Burgundies, who sent frequent reports to their own homes. Some passages from one of these reports by an unknown war correspondent run as follows:

"As to news from here, Monday after St. Magdalen's Day, Monseigneur the duke got the better of the Ghenters near Gaveren between ten and eleven o'clock. They attacked him near his quarters.... The duke risked his own person in advance of his company in the very worst of the slaughter, which lasted from the said place up to Ghent, a distance of about two leagues. The slain number three or four thousand, more or less, and those drowned in the river of Quaux about two hundred.... This Tuesday, the date of writing, the army departs from their quarters[page 43] to advance on Ghent to demand the conditions lately offered them, and the bearer of this letter will tell you what is the result. M. the duke and his army marched up to Ghent and I have seen the bearing of the citizens. They are very bitter and despondent. M. the marshall has been parleying. I hear that matters have been settled. I hear that the Ghenters' loss is thirteen to fourteen thousand men. I cannot write more for I have no time owing to the haste of the messenger."

This was written July 23d. There is another despatch of July 31st, giving the last news, which was "very joyous." The public apology had just been enacted—

"and afterwards, in token of being conquered and as a confession that my said seigneur was victorious, those of Ghent have delivered up all their banners to the number of eighty. And on this day my said lord has created seven or eight knights and heralds in honour of his triumph, which is inestimable." ²⁰

The duke's victory was certainly "inestimable" in its value to him, yet, in spite of the rigour enforced on this defeated people, they were not as crushed as they might have been had they[page 44] submitted in 1445. Philip was clever enough to be more lenient than appeared at first. Ancient privileges were confirmed in a special compact, and the duke swore to maintain all former concessions in their entirety except in the points above specified. Liberty of person was guaranteed, and it was expressly stipulated that if the bailiff refused to sustain the sheriffs in their exercise of justice, or tried to arrogate to himself more than his due authority, he should forfeit his office. Lastly, and more important than all, the duke made no attempt to revive the demand for the gabelle—salt was left free and untaxed. As a matter of fact, too, the duke was not exigeant in the fulfilment of every item of the treaty and, two years later, he increased certain privileges. He had cut the lion's claws but he had no desire to pit his strength again with Flemish communes. He had taught the audacious rebels a lesson and that sufficed him.²¹

[Footnote 1: Blok, Eene Hollandsche stad onder de Bourg. Oostenrijksche Heerschappij, p. 84.]

[Footnote 2: La Marche, ii., 79, etc.]

[Footnote 3: See also Chronijcke van Nederlant, p. 76, and Vlaamsche Kronijk, p. 203. Ed. C. Piot.]

[Footnote 4: D'Escouchy, Chronique, i., 110.]

[Footnote 5: The items of the funeral expenses can be found in Laborde, i., 380. There were 600 masses at two sous apiece.]

[Footnote 6: In that same year, 1440, in which this gift is recorded, there is another item showing how Charles took his amusement not only on the harp but in planning some of the elaborate surprises regularly introduced between courses in the banquets. "To Barthelmy the painter, for making the cover of a pasty for the Count of Charolais to present to Monseigneur on the night of St. Martin in the previous year, v francs" (Laborde, i., 381).]

[Footnote 7: La Marche, ii., 214.]

[Footnote 8: Gachard puts this tournament in Lent, 1452. Charles's outfit cost 360 livres.]

[Footnote 9: La Marche, i., ch. 21.]

[Footnote 10: Kervyn, Histoire de Flandre, iv. Kervyn quotes from the Dagboek des gentsche collatie, M. Schayes.]

[Footnote 11: Meyer, xvi., 303.]

[Footnote 12: They were charged with using this phrase. Gachard says that they placed at the top of their letter their titles of sheriffs and deans, as princes and lords take the title of their seignories.—(La Marche, ii., 221. See also d'Escouchy, ii., 25.)]

[Footnote 13: La Marche, ii., 230.]

[Footnote 14: Associations of merchants in foreign cities.]

[Footnote 15: Chastellain, Œuvres, ii., 221.]

[Footnote 16: La Marche, ii., 312. Chastellain, ii., 278. See also Chronique d'Adrian de Budt, p. 242, etc.]

[Footnote 17: Meyer, p. 313. La Marche, ii., 313. Lavisse, Histoire de France, accepts 13,000 as the number slain. Chastellain (ii., 375) puts the number at 22-30,000, including those drowned by the duke's order. Du Clercq lets a certain sympathy for the rebellious people escape his pen. Chastellain and La Marche treat the antagonism to taxes as unreasonable.]

[Footnote 18: Chastellain, ii., 387.]

[Footnote 19: La Marche, ii., 331. The Chastellain MS. is lacking for this event.]

[Footnote 20: Revue des sociétés savantes des départements, 7me. série, 6, p. 209.

These two reports were enclosed with brief notes dated July 31 and August 8, 1453, from the ducal attorney at Amont to the magistrates of Baume. The former was one of the highest officials in the Franche-Comté. The reporter might have been one of his secretaries. The two notes with their unsigned enclosures were discovered (1881)in the archives of the town of Baume-les-Dames.]

[Footnote 21: Kervyn, Histoire de Flandre, iv., 494.]

After the fatigues of this contest with Ghent, followed a period of relaxation for the Burgundian nobles at Lille, where a notable round of gay festivities was enjoyed by the court. Adolph of Cleves inaugurated the series with an entertainment where, among other things, he delighted his friends by a representation of the tale of the miraculous swan,¹ famous in the annals of his house for bringing the opportune knight down the Rhine to wed the forlorn heiress.

When his satisfied guests took their leave, Adolph placed a chaplet on the head of one of the gentlemen, thus designating him to devise a new amusement for the company; and under the invitation lurked a tacit challenge to make the coming occasion more brilliant than the first. Again and again was this process repeated. Entertainment followed entertainment, all a mixture of repasts and vaudeville shows in whose preparation the successive hosts vied with each other to attain perfection.

The hard times, the stress of ready money, so eloquently painted when the merchants were implored to take pity on their poverty-stricken lord,[page 46] were cast into utter oblivion. It was harvest tide for skilled craftsmen and artisans. Any one blessed with a clever or fantastic idea easily found a market for the product of his brain. He could see his poetic or quaint conception presented to an applauding public with a wealth of paraphernalia that a modern stage manager would not scorn. How much the nobles spent can only be inferred from the ducal accounts, which are eloquent with information about the creators of all this mimic pomp. About six sous a day was the wage earned by a painter, while the plumbers received eight. These latter were called upon to coax pliable lead into all sorts of shapes, often more grotesque than graceful.

One fête followed another from the early autumn of 1453 to February, 1454, when "The Feast of the Pheasant," as the ducal entertainment was called, crowned the series with an elaborate magnificence that has never been surpassed.

Undoubtedly Philip possessed a genius for dramatic effect and it is more than possible that he instigated the progressive banquets for the express purpose of leading up to the occasion with which he intended to dazzle Europe.²

For the duke's thoughts were now turned from civic revolts to a great international movement which he hoped to see set in motion. Almost coincident with the capitulation of Ghent to Philip's will had been the capitulation of Constantinople to the Turks. The event long dreaded by[page 47] pope and Christendom had happened at last (May 29, 1453). Again and again was the necessity for a united opposition to the inroads of the dangerous infidels urged by Rome. On the eve of St. Martin, 1453, a legate arrived in Lille bringing an official letter from the pope, setting forth the dire stress of the Christian Church, and imploring the mightiest duke of the Occident to be her saviour, and to assume the leadership of a crusade in her behalf against the encroaching Turk.³

Philip was ready to give heed to the prayer. Whatever the exact sequence of his plans in relation to the court revels, the result was that his own banquet was utilised as a proper occasion for blazoning forth to the world with a flourish of trumpets his august intention of dislodging the invader from the ancient capital of the Eastern empire.

The superintendence of the arrangements for this all-eclipsing fête was entrusted, as La Marche relates,

"to Messire Jehan, Seigneur de Lannoy, Knight of the Golden Fleece, and a skilful ingenious gentleman, and to one Squire Jehan Boudault, a notable and discreet man. And the duke honoured me so far that he desired me to be consulted. Several councils were held for the matter to which the chancellor and the first chamberlain were invited. The latter had just returned from the war in Luxemburg already described.

"These council meetings were very important and very private, and after discussion it was decided what ceremonies and mysteries were to be presented. The[page 48] duke desired that I should personate the character of Holy Church of which he wished to make use at this assembly."

As in many half amateur affairs the preparations took more time than was expected. At the first date set, all was not in readiness and the performance was postponed until February 17th. This entailed serious loss upon the provision merchants and they received compensation for the spoiled birds and other perishable edibles.⁴

The Royal Library at the Hague possesses a manuscript copied from an older one which contains the order of proceedings together with the text of all vows. There is a minute description in Mathieu d'Escouchy, who claims to have been present, and in a manuscript coming from Baluze, whose anonymous author might also have been an eye-witness. Of the various versions, that of La Marche seems to be the most original. One record shows that "a clerk living at Dijon, called Dion du Cret, received, in 1455, a sum of five francs and a half for having, at the order of the accountants, copied and written in parchment the history of the banquet of my said seigneur, held at Lille, February 17, 1453, containing fifty-six leaves of parchment" (La Marche, ii., 340 note). It is possible that all the authors refreshed their memory with this account, which seems to have been merely a copy.]

The gala-day opened with a tournament at which Adolph of Cleves again sported as Knight of the Swan to the applause of the onlookers. After the jousting, the guests adjourned to the banqueting hall, where fancy had indeed, run riot, to make ready for their admiring eyes and their sagacious palates. Entremets is the term applied to the elaborate set pieces and side-shows[page 49] provided to entertain the feasters between courses, and these were on an unprecedented scale.

Three tables stood prepared respectively for the duke and his suite, for the Count of Charolais, his cousins, and their comrades, and for the knights and ladies. The first table was decorated with marvellous constructions, among which was a cruciform church whose mimic clock tower was capacious enough to hold a whole chorus of singers. The enormous pie in which twenty-eight musicians were discovered when the crust was cut may have been the original of that pasty whose opening revealed four-and-twenty blackbirds in a similar plight. Wild animals wandered gravely at a machinist's will through deep forests, but in the midst of the counterfeit brutes there was at least one live lion, for Gilles le Cat⁵ received twenty shillings from the duke for the chain and locks he made to hold the savage beast fast "on the day of the said banquet."

Again there was an anchored ship, manned with a full crew and rigged completely. "I hardly think," observes La Marche, "that the greatest ship in the world has a greater number of ropes and sails."

Before the guests seated themselves they wandered around the hall and inspected the decorations one by one. Nor was their admiration exhausted when they turned to the discussion of the toothsome dainties provided for their delectation.

During the progress of the banquet, the story of[page 50] Jason was enacted. Time there certainly was for the play. La Marche estimated forty-eight dishes to every course, though he qualifies his statement by the admission that his memory might be inexact. These dishes were wheeled over the tables in little chariots before each person in turn.

"Such were the mundane marvels that graced the fête," is the conclusion of La Marche's ⁶ exhaustive enumeration of the masterpieces from artists' workshops and ducal kitchen

"I will leave them now to record a pity moving entremets which seemed to be more special than the others. Through the portal whence the previous actors had made their entrance, came a giant larger without artifice than any I had ever seen, clad in a long green silk robe, a turban on his head like a Saracen in Granada. His left hand held a great, old-fashioned two-bladed axe, his right hand led an elephant covered with silk. On its back was a castle wherein sat a lady looking like a nun, wearing a mantle of black cloth and a white head-dress like a recluse. ⁷

"Once within the hall and in sight of the noble company, like one who had work before her, she said to the giant, her conductor:

"At these words her guide conducted his charge before the ducal table and there she made a piteous[page 51] appeal to all assembled to come to rescue her, Holy Church, fallen into the hands of unbelieving miscreants. As soon as she ceased speaking a body of officers entered the hall, Toison d'Or, king-at-arms, bringing up the rear. This last carried a live pheasant ornamented with a rich collar of gold studded with jewels. Toison d'Or was followed by two maidens, Mademoiselle Yolande, bastard daughter of the duke, and Isabelle of Neufchâtel, escorted by two gentlemen of the Order. They all proceeded to the host. After greetings, Toison d'Or then said:

"'High and puissant prince and my redoubtable lord, here are ladies who recommend themselves very humbly to you because it is, and has been, the custom at great feasts and noble assemblies to present to the lords and nobles a peacock or some other noble bird whereon useful and valid vows may be made. I am sent hither with these two demoiselles to present to you this noble pheasant, praying you to remember them.'

"When these words were said, Monseigneur the duke, who knew for what purpose he had given the banquet, looked at the personified Church, and then, as though in pity for her stress, drew from his bosom a document containing his vow to succour Christianity, as will appear later. The Church manifested her joy, and seeing that my said seigneur had given his vow to Toison d'Or, she again burst forth forth into rhyme:

"At this the giant led off the elephant and departed by the same way in which he had entered.

"When I had seen this entremets, that is, the Church and a castle on the back of such a strange beast, I pondered as to whether I could understand what it meant and could not make it out otherwise except that she had brought this beast, rare among us, in sign that she toiled and laboured in great adversity in the region of Constantinople, whose trials we know, and the castle in which she was signified Faith. Moreover, because this lady was conducted by this mighty giant, armed, I inferred that she wished to denote her dread of the Turkish arms which had chased her away and sought her destruction.

"As soon as this play was played out, the noble gentlemen, moved by pity and compassion, hastened to make vows, each in his own fashion."

The vow of the Count of Charolais was as follows:

"I swear to God my creator, and to His glorious mother, to the ladies and to the pheasant, that, if my[page 53] very redoubtable lord and father embark on this holy journey, and if it be his pleasure that I accompany him, I will go and will serve him as well as I can and know how to do."

Other vows were less simple: all kinds of fantastic conditions being appended according to individual fancy. One gentleman decided never to go to bed on a Saturday until his pledge were accomplished. Another that he would eat nothing on Fridays that had ever lived until he had had an opportunity of meeting the enemy hand to hand, and of attacking, at peril of his life, the banner of the Grand Turk.

Philip Pot vowed never to sit at table on a Tuesday and to wear no protection on his right arm. This last the duke refused to permit. Hugues de Longueval vowed that when he had once turned his face to the East he would abstain from wine until he had plunged his sword in an infidel's blood, and that he would devote two years to the crusade even if he had to remain all alone, provided Constantinople were not recovered. Louis de Chevelast swore that no covering should protect his head until he had come to within four leagues of the infidels, and that he would fight a Turk on foot with nothing on his arm but a glove. There was the same emulation in the vows as in the banquets and many of the self-imposed penalties were as bizarre as the side-shows.

There were so many chevaliers eager to bind themselves to the enterprise that the prolonged ceremony threatened to become tedious. The[page 54] duke, therefore, declared that the morrow would be equally valid as the day. ⁸

"To abridge my tale [continues La Marche], the banquet was finished and the cloth removed and every one began to walk around the room. To me it seemed like a dream, for, of all the decorations, soon nothing remained but the crystal fountain. When there was no further spectacle to distract me, then my understanding began to work and various considerations touching this business came into my mind. First, I pondered upon the outrageous excess and great expense incurred in a brief space by these banquets, for this fashion of progressive entertainments, with the hosts designated by chaplets, had lasted a long time. All had tried to outshine their predecessors, and all, especially my said lord, had spent so much that I considered the whole thing outrageous and without any justification for the expense, except as regarded the entremets of the Church and the vows. Even that seemed to me too lightly treated for an important enterprise.

"Meditating thus I found myself by chance near a gentleman, councillor and chamberlain, who was in my lord's confidence and with whom I had some acquaintance. To him I imparted my thoughts in the course of a friendly chat and his comment was as follows:

"'My friend, I know positively that these chaplet entertainments would never have occurred except by[page 55] the secret desire of the duke to lead up to this very banquet where he hoped to achieve a holy purpose and to resist the enemies of our faith. It is three years now since the distress of our Church was presented to the Knights of the Golden Fleece at Mons. My lord there dedicated his person and his wealth to her service. Since then occurred the rebellion of Ghent, which entailed upon him a loss of time and money. Thanks be to God, he has attained there a good and honourable peace, as every one knows. Now it has chanced that, during this very period, the Turks have encroached on Christianity still further in their capture of Constantinople. The need of succour is very pressing and all that you have witnessed to-day is proof that the good duke is intent on the weal of Christendom.'"

During the progress of this conversation, a new company was ushered into the hall, preceded by musicians. Here came Grâce Dieu, clad as a nun followed by twelve knights dressed in grey and black velvet ornamented with jewels. Not alone did they come. Each gentleman escorted a dame wearing a coat of satin cramoisy over a fur-edged round skirt à la Portuguaise. Grâce Dieu declared in rhyme that God had heard the pious resolution of Duke Philip of Burgundy. He had forthwith sent her with her twelve attendants to promise him a happy termination to his enterprise. Her ladies, Faith, Charity, Justice, Reason, Prudence, and their sisters, were then presented to him. Grâce Dieu departs alone and no sooner has she disappeared than Philip's new attributes begin to dance to add to the good cheer. Among the knights[page 56] was Charles and one of his half-brothers; among the ladies was Margaret, Bastard of Burgundy, and the others were all of high birth. Not until two o'clock did the revels finally cease.

It must be noted that La Marche's reflections upon the extravagance of the entertainment occur also in Escouchy's memoirs. Probably both drew their moralising from another author. It is stated by several reputable chroniclers that Olivier de la Marche himself represented the Church. That he merely wrote her lines is far more probable. Female performers certainly appeared freely in these as in other masques, and there was no reason for putting a handsome youth in this rôle of the captive Church. In mentioning the plans that La Marche claims to have heard discussed in the council meeting, he says plainly that he was to play the rôle of Holy Church, but as he makes no further allusion to the fact, it may be dismissed as one of his careless statements.

This pompous announcement of big plans was the prelude to nothing! Yet it was by no means a farce when enacted. Philip fully intended to make this crusade the crowning event of his life, and his proceedings immediately after the great fête were all to further that end. To obtain allies abroad, to raise money at home, and to ensure a peaceful succession for his son in case of his own death in the East—such were the cares demanding the duke's attention.

The twenty-year-old Count of Charolais was[page 57] entrusted with the regency for the term of his father's sojourn abroad in quest of allies, and he hastened to Holland to assume the reins of government, but he was speedily recalled to Lille to submit once more to paternal authority before being left to his own devices and to maternal bias.

For the ducal pair disagreed seriously on the subject of their son's second marriage. Isabella wished that a bride should be sought in England, and this wish was apparently echoed by Charles himself. The important topic was discussed with more or less freedom among the young courtiers, until the drift of the conversations, whose burden was wholly adverse to his own fixed purpose, came to Philip's ears, together with the information that one of his own children was among those who incited the count to independent desires about his future wife. Very stern was the duke in his reprimand to the two young men. He acknowledged that force of circumstances had once led him into friendly bonds with the foes of his own France, but never had he been "English at heart." Charles must accept his father's decision on pain of disinheritance. "As for this bastard," Philip added, turning to the other son, destitute of status in the eyes of the law, "if I find that he counsels you to oppose my will, I will have him tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea." ⁹

The bride selected for the heir was Isabella of[page 58] Bourbon, daughter of the duke's sister, and the betrothal was hastily made. Even the approval of the bride's parents was dispensed with. This passed the more easily as the young lady herself was conveniently present in the Burgundian court under the guardianship of her aunt, the duchess, who had superintended her education. A papal dispensation was more necessary than paternal consent, but that, too, was waived as far as the betrothal was concerned. To that extent was Philip obeyed. Then Charles returned to Holland and his father proceeded to Germany to obtain imperial co-operation in his Eastern enterprise.

The duke's departure from Lille was made very privately at five o'clock in the morning. He was off before his courtiers were aware of his last preparations. That was a surprise, but not the only one in store for those left behind. In order to save every penny for his journey, Philip ordered radical retrenchment in his household expenses. The luxurious repasts served to his retainers were abolished and all alike found themselves forced to restrict their appetites to the dainties they could purchase with the table allowance accorded them. "The court's leg is broken," said Michel, the rhetorician.¹⁰

In his own outlay there was no stinting; the duke's progress was pompous and stately as was his wont. As he traversed Switzerland,[page 59] Berne, Zurich, and Constance asked and obtained permission to show their friendship with ceremonious receptions. Loud were the cries of "Vive Bourgogne." Equally hospitable were the German cities. Game, wine, fodder, were offered for the traveller's use at every stage, as he and his suite rode to the imperial diet.

At Ratisbon, disappointment greeted him. The emperor whom he had come so far to see in person failed to appear. Unwilling to accede to the plan of co-operation, afraid to give an open refusal, Frederic simply avoided hearing the request. Essentially lazy, he shrank from committing himself to a difficult enterprise, nor was his ambition tempted by possible glory. It had cost no pang to refuse the crown of Bohemia and Hungary. But even had he been personally ambitious he might still have been slow to lend his adherence to the duke's project, in the not unnatural dread lest the flashing renown of the greatest duke of the Occident might throw a poor emperor as ally into the shade. The very warmth of Philip's reception in Germany had chilled Frederic. From a retreat in Austria, he sent his secretary, Æneas Sylvius, to represent him at Ratisbon, a substitution far from pleasing to the visitor.

There were other defections, too, from the diet. None of those present was in a position to aid Philip in furthering his schemes. The matter was brought forward and laid on the table to be discussed at the next diet, appointed to meet in November at Frankfort. But Philip would not[page 60] wait for that. Germany did not agree with him. He was not well. Rumours there were of various kinds about his reasons for returning home. They do not seem to require much explanation, however. He had not been met half way in Germany and was highly displeased at the failure. Declining all further entertainment proffered by the cities, he travelled back to Besançon by way of Stuttgart and Basel. In the early autumn he was at Dijon.

During this summer, negotiations about Charles's marriage had continued. The Duke of Bourbon was inclined to chaffer about the dowry demanded by Philip. One of the estates asked for was Chinon, and it was urged that it, a male fief, was not capable of alienation. Philip was not inclined to accept this reason as final and the negotiations hung fire, much to the distress of the Duchess of Bourbon, who feared a breach between her husband and brother. Naïve are the phrases in one of her letters as quoted by Chastellain:¹¹

"MY VERY DEAR SEIGNEUR AND BROTHER,

"I have heard all Boudault's message from you ... To be brief, Monseigneur is content and ready to accede the points that you demand. It seems to me that you ought to give him easy terms and that you ought to put aside any grudge you may cherish against him. Monseigneur, since I consider the thing as done, I beg you to celebrate the nuptials as soon as possible although not without me as you have[page 61] promised me." ¹²

The king, too, was interested in the matter, and wrote as follows to Duke Philip:

"DEAR AND MUCH LOVED BROTHER:

"Some time ago my cousin of Bourbon informed me of the negotiations for the marriage of my cousin of Charolais, your son, to my cousin Isabella of Bourbon, his daughter, which marriage has been deferred, as he writes me, because he does not wish to alienate to his daughter the seignory of Château-Chinon. It is not possible for him to do this on account of the marriage agreement of our daughter Jeanne and my cousin of Clermont, his son, wherein it was stipulated that Château-Chinon should go to them and their heirs. Moreover, it cannot descend in the female line, and in default of heirs male it must return to the crown as a true appanage of France.

"Lest, peradventure, you may doubt the truth of this, and imagine that the point is urged by our cousin of Bourbon simply as an excuse for not ceding the estate, we assure you that it is true, and was considered in arranging the alliance of our daughter so that it is beyond the power of our cousin of Bourbon to make any alienation or transfer of the territory at the marriage of his daughter. We never would have permitted the marriage of our daughter without this express settlement. With this consideration it seems to me that you ought not to block the marriage in question, especially as my cousin says he is offering you an equivalent. He cannot do more as we have charged our councillor, the bailiff of Berry, to explain to you in full. So pray do not postpone the marriage for the above cause or for any cause, if by the permission[page 62] of the Church and of our Holy Father it can be lawfully completed.

"Given at Romorantin, Oct. 17.

"CHARLES.¹³

CHALIGAUT."

As the marriage was an event of importance, and the circumstances are simple historic facts, it is strange that there should be any uncertainty regarding the details of its solemnisation. But there is a certain vagueness about the narratives. One version is so amusing that it deserves a slight consideration.¹⁴ The chronicler relates how Charles VII. felt some uneasiness at the delay in the negotiations. Conscious of the sentiments of the Duchess of Burgundy, he feared lest her well-known sympathies for England might prevail in the final decision.

When Philip had returned to Dijon, the bailiff of Berry came as the king's special envoy to discuss some aspects of the subject with him. The mission was gladly undertaken as the messenger had never seen Philip nor his court and he was pleased at the chance of meeting a personage whose fame rang through Europe. Very graciously was he received by the duke, who read the king's letters attentively and replied to the envoy's messages in general terms of courteous recognition, without making his own intention manifest. The bailiff waited for an answer, finding, in the meanwhile,[page 63] that his days passed very agreeably.

As a matter of fact, before his arrival at Dijon Philip Pot had set out for the Netherlands, bearing the duke's orders to his son to celebrate his nuptials without further delay. The duke did not intend to be influenced by any one. It was his will that his son should accept the bride selected and that was all sufficient. The reason why the duke detained the king's messenger was that he "awaited news from Messire Philip de Pot, whom he had sent in all speed to his son to hasten the wedding."¹⁵ The said gentleman found the count at Lille with the duchess, his mother, and he was so diligent in the discharge of his mission that he made all the arrangements himself and saw the wedding rites solemnised immediately. The bridegroom did not even know of the plan until the night preceding the important day. Then Philip Pot rode back to Dijon.

When the duke was assured that the alliance was irrevocably sealed he was quite ready to answer the king's messenger, whom he at once invited to an audience. In a casual fashion Philip remarked:

"Now bailiff, the king sent you hither about a matter which I am humbly grateful for his interest in. You know my opinion. I had no desire to dissemble. Here is a gentleman fresh from Flanders; ask him his news and note his reply."

"What tidings, Monsieur, do you bring us?

Prithee impart it" said the bailiff to the chevalier.[page 64] And the gentleman, laughing, replied: "By my faith, Monsieur bailiff, the greatest news that I know is that Monseigneur de Charolais is married!"

"Married! to whom?"

"To whom?" responded the chevalier, "why, to his first cousin, Monseigneur's niece."

Merry was the duke over the Frenchman's blank amazement. Again the latter had to be reassured of the truth of the statement. Philip Pot told him that it was so true that the wedded pair had spent the night together according to their lawful right.

The bailiff did not know which way to turn. "So he acted out his two rôles. Returning thanks to the duke in the king's name with all formality, he then joined in the general laugh over the unsuspected trick. He was a man of the world and knew how to take advantage of sense and of folly."

It was on the morrow of this hasty tying of the wedding knot that the Countess of Charolais sent a messenger to announce the fact to her parents. They seem to have been perfectly satisfied, made no further objection to any point, and the mooted territory of Chinon made part of the dower in spite of the reasons urged against it.

As to the bailiff, when he made his adieux at Dijon, Philip presented him with a round dozen stirrup cups, each worth three silver marks, and he went home a surprised and delighted man.

"About this time [says Alienor de Poictiers] Monsieur[page 65] de Charolais married Mademoiselle de Bourbon and he married her on the eve of All Saints¹⁶ at Lille, and there was no festival because Duke Philip was then in Germany. Eight days after the nuptials the duchess gave a splendid banquet where were all the ladies of Lille, but they were seated all together, as is usually done at an ordinary banquet, without mesdames holding state as would have been proper for such an occasion."

It is evident from all the stories that Charles protested against his father's orders as much as he dared and then obeyed simply because he could not help himself.

Yet, strange to say, the unwilling bridegroom proved a faithful husband in a court where marital fidelity was a rare trait.

Philip's plans for the international union against the Turk were less easily completed than those for the union of his son and his niece. In November, the diet met at Frankfort; the expedition was discussed and some resolutions were passed, but nothing further was achieved.

Charles VII. would not even promise co-operation on paper. He had gradually extended his own domain in French-speaking territory and had dislodged the English from every stronghold except Guisnes and Calais. Under him France was regaining her prestige. Charles had much to lose,[page 66] therefore, in joining the undertaking urged by Philip and he was wholly unwilling to risk it. From him Philip obtained only expressions of general interest in the repulse of the Turks, and more definite suggestions of the dangers that would menace Western Europe if all her natural defenders carried their arms and their fortunes to the East.

When the anniversary of the great fête came round not a vow was yet fulfilled!

[Footnote 1: A performance repeated in our modern Lohengrin.]

[Footnote 2: The chroniclers are not at one on this point.]

[Footnote 3: DuClercq, Mémoires, ii., 159.]

[Footnote 4: This banquet at Lille was the subject of several descriptions by spectators or at least contemporary authors.]

[Footnote 5: Laborde, i., 127.]

[Footnote 6: II., 361.]

[Footnote 7: The text says in the Burgundian or recluse fashion. Béguine is probably the right reading.]

[Footnote 8: Mathieu d'Escouchy (ii., 222) gives all the vows as though made then, and differs in many unessential points from La Marche's account.

The Count of St. Pol was the only knight present who made his going dependent on the consent of the King of France, a condition very displeasing to his liege lord of Burgundy.]

[Footnote 9: Du Clerq, ii., 203.]

[Footnote 10: '"Michel dit que le gigot de la cour était rompu."—La Marche, i., ch. xiv.]

[Footnote 11: Chastellain, iii., 20, note.]

[Footnote 12: "Toute fois que ce ne soit pas sans moy."]

[Footnote 13: The original, signed, is in the Archives de la Côte-d'Or, B. 200. See Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII., v. 470.]

[Footnote 14: Chastellain, iii., 23, etc.]

[Footnote 15: Chastellain, iii., 24]

[Footnote 16: The chroniclers differ as to this date. Chastellain (iii., 25) says the first Sunday in Lent. D'Escouchy (ii., 270, ch. cxxii) the night of St. Martin. Alienor de Poictiers, Hallowe'en (Les Honneurs de la Cour, p. 187). The last was one of Isabella's ladies in waiting.]

The duke's journey failed in accomplishing its object, but it proved an important factor in the development of the character of Charles of Burgundy. The opportunity to administer the government in his father's absence changed him from a youth to a man, and the manner of man he was, was plain to see.

His character was built on singularly simple lines. Vigorous of body, intense of purpose, inclined to melancholy, he was profoundly convinced of his own importance as heir to the greatest duke in Christendom, as future successor to an uncrowned potentate, who could afford to treat lightly the authority of both king and emperor whose nominal vassal he was.

The Ghent episode, too, undoubtedly had an immense effect in enhancing the count's belief in his father's power, in causing him to forget that the communes of Flanders did not owe their existence to their overlord. As yet, Charles of Burgundy had not met a single check to his self-esteem, to his family pride. As a governor, he probably exercised his brief authority with the rigour of one new to the helm.

"And the Count of Charolais bore himself so well and so virtuously in the task, that nothing deteriorated under his hand, and when the good duke returned from his journey, he found his lands as intact as before."

Such, is La Marche's testimony.¹ Intact undoubtedly, but possibly the satisfaction was not quite perfect. Du Clercq² declares that Count Charles acquitted himself honourably of his charge and made himself respected as a magistrate. Above all, he insisted that justice should be dealt out to all alike. The only danger in his methods was that he acted on impulse without sufficiently informing himself of the matter in hand, or hearing both sides of a controversy. As a result, his decisions were not always impartial and the father was preferred to the strenuous and impetuous son. "Not that Philip was often inclined to recognise other law than his own will, but he was more tranquil, more gentle than his son, and more guided by reason," adds a later author.³ There was an evident dread as to what might be the outcome of the count's untrained, youthful ardour.

The duke's chief measures after his return in February, 1455, seemed hardly calculated to arouse any great personal devotion to himself or a profound trust that his first consideration was for the advantage of his Netherland subjects. His thoughts were still turned to the East, and his main interest in the individual countships was as sources of supply for his Holy War. Considerable sums flowed into his exchequer that were never[page 69] used for their destined purpose, but the duke cannot be justly accused of actual bad faith in amassing them. His intention to make the Eastern campaign remained firm for some years.

In another matter, his despotic exercise of personal authority, far without the pale of his jurisdiction inherited or acquired, shows no shadow of excuse.

In the bishropic of Utrecht the ecclesiastical head was also lay lord. Here the counts of Holland possessed no voice. They were near neighbours, that was all. Philip ardently desired to be more in this tiny independent state in the midst of territories acknowledging his sway.

In 1455, the see of Utrecht became vacant and Philip was most anxious to have it filled by his son David, whom he had already made Bishop of Thérouanne by somewhat questionable methods. The Duke of Guelders also had a neighbourly interest in Utrecht and he, too, had a pet candidate, Stephen of Bavaria, whose election he urged. The chapter resolutely ignored the wishes of both dukes and the canons were almost unanimous in their choice of Gijsbrecht of Brederode.⁴

A very few votes were cast for Stephen of Bavaria, but not a single one for David of Burgundy.

Brederode was already archdeacon of the cathedral[page 70] and an eminently worthy choice, both for his attainments and for his character. He was proclaimed in the cathedral, installed in the palace, and confirmed, as regarded his temporal power, by the emperor.

Philip, however, refused to accept the returns, although not a single suffrage had been cast by the qualified electors for his son. He despatched the Bishop of Arras to Rome to petition the new pope, Calixtus III., to refuse to ratify the late election and to confer the see upon David, out of hand. Philip's tender conscience found Gijsbrecht ineligible to an episcopal office because he had participated in the war against Ghent, certainly a weak plea in an age of militant bishops!

The pope was afraid to offend the one man in Europe upon whose immediate aid he counted in the Turkish campaign. He accepted the gift of four thousand ducats offered by Gijsbrecht's envoys, the customary gift in asking papal confirmation for a bishop-elect, but secretly he delivered to Philip's ambassador letters patent creating David of Burgundy Bishop of Utrecht.⁵

The Burgundian La Marche states euphemistically that David was elected to the see, and the Deventer people would not obey him, therefore Philip had to levy an army and come in person to support the new bishop.⁶ Du Clercq puts a different colour on the story and d'Escouchy⁷ implies that the whole trouble arose from party[page 71] strife which had to be quelled in the interests of law and order.

Apart from any question of insult to the Utrechters by imposing upon them a spiritual director of acknowledged base birth, the right of choice lay with them and the emperor had confirmed their choice as far as the lay office was concerned. While the issue was undecided, the Estates of Utrecht appointed Gijsbrecht guardian and defender of the see to assure him a legal status pending the papal ratification. The people were prepared to support their candidate with arms, a game that Philip did not refuse, and the force of thirty thousand men with which he invaded the bishopric proved the stronger argument of the two and able to carry David of Burgundy to the episcopal throne, upon which he was seated in his father's presence, October 16, 1455.

Some of Philip's allies reaped certain advantages from the situation. Alkmaar and Kennemerland redeemed certain forfeited privileges by means of their contributions to the duke's army. The city of Utrecht preferred a compromise to the risk of war. The bishop-elect, Gijsbrecht, consented to withdraw his claim, being permitted to retain the humbler office of provost of Utrecht and an annuity of four thousand guilders out of the episcopal revenues.

Deventer was the only place which was obstinate enough to persist in her rebellion and Philip was engaged in bringing her citizens to terms by a siege when news was brought to him that a visitor[page 72] had arrived at Brussels under circumstances which imperatively demanded his personal attention.

In the twenty years that had elapsed since the Treaty of Arras, there had been great changes in France in the character both of the realm and of the ruler. Little by little the latter had proved himself to be a very different person from the inert king of Bourges.⁸ Old at twenty, Charles VII. seemed young and vigorous at forty. Bad advisers were replaced by others better chosen and his administration gradually became effective. Fortune favoured him in depriving England of the Duke of Bedford (1435), the one man who might have maintained English prestige abroad and peace at home during the youth of Henry VI. It was at a time of civil dissensions in England, that Charles VII. succeeded in assuming the offensive on the Continent and in wresting Normandy and Guienne from the late invader.

But this territorial advantage was not all. Distinct progress had been made towards a national existence in France. The establishment of the nucleus of a regular army was an immense aid in curbing the depredations of the "écorcheurs," the devastating, marauding bands which had harassed the provinces. There was new activity in agriculture and industry and commerce.⁹ The revival of letters and art, never completely stifled, proved the real vitality of France in spite of the depression of the Hundred Years' War. Royal[page 73] justice was reorganised, public finance was better administered. By 1456, misery had not, indeed, disappeared, but it was less dominant.

The years of growing union between king and his kingdom were, however, years of discord between Charles and his son. The dauphin Louis had not enjoyed the pampered, petted life of his Burgundian cousin. Very poor and forlorn was his father at the time of the birth of his heir (1423).¹⁰ There was nothing in the treasury to pay the chaplain who baptised the child or the woman who nourished him. The latter received no pension as was usual but a modest gratuity of fifteen pounds. The first allowance settled on the heir to his unconsecrated royal father's uncertain fortunes was ten crowns a month. Every feature of his infancy was a marked contrast to the early life of the Count of Charolais.

From his seventeenth year Louis was in active opposition to the king, heading organised rebellion against him in the war called the Praguerie. Finally, Charles VII. entrusted to his charge the administration of Dauphiné, thus practically banishing him honourably from the court where he was, evidently, a disturbing element. The only restrictions placed upon him in his provincial government were such as were necessary to preserve the ultimate authority of the crown. To these restrictions, however, Louis paid not the slightest heed. He assumed all the airs of an independent sovereign. He made wars and[page 74] treaties with his neighbours and at last proceeded to arrange his own marriage.

At this time Louis was already a widower, having been married at the age of thirteen to Margaret of Scotland, who led a mournful existence at the French court, where she felt herself a desolate alien. Her death at the age of twenty was possibly due to slander. "Fie upon life," she said on her deathbed, when urged to rouse herself to resist the languor into which she was sinking. "Talk to me no more of it."

Her husband cared less for her life than did Margaret herself. He took no interest in the inquiry set on foot to ascertain the truth of the charges against the princess, and was more than ready to turn to a new alliance. At the date of his widowerhood he was in Dauphiné and his own choice for a wife was Charlotte, daughter of the Duke of Savoy. After negotiations in his own behalf he informed his father of his matrimonial project. It did not meet the views of Charles VII., who ordered his son to abandon the idea immediately.

A messenger was despatched post haste to Chambéry to stop the dauphin's nuptials.¹¹ The duke evaded an interview and the envoy was forced to deliver his letter to the chancellor of Savoy. On the morrow of his arrival, he was taken to church, where the wedding ceremony was performed (March 10, 1451), but his seat was in such a remote place that he could barely catch a glimpse of the[page 75] bridal procession, though he saw that Louis was clad in crimson velvet trimmed with ermine. Two days later the envoy carried a pleasant letter to the king, expressing regrets on the part of the Duke of Savoy that the alliance was made before the paternal prohibition arrived.

Nine years were spent by Louis in Dauphiné. He introduced many administrative and judicial reforms, excellent in themselves but not popular. There were various protests and when he dared to impose taxes without the consent of the Estates, an appeal was made to the king begging him to check his son in his illegal assumptions. Charles summoned his son to his presence. Instead of obeying this order in person, Louis sent envoys who were dismissed by his father with a curt response: "Let my son return to his duty and he shall be treated as a son. As to his fears, security to his person is pledged by my word, which my foes have never refused to accept."¹²

Louis showed himself less compliant than his father's foes. As Charles approached Dauphiné, and made his preparations to enforce obedience, Louis appealed to the mediation of the pope, of the Duke of Burgundy, and of the King of Castile, beside sending offerings to all the chief shrines in Christendom, imploring aid against parental wrath. Then his thoughts took a less peaceful turn. He called the nobles of his principality to arms and bade the fortified towns prepare for siege, while he loftily declared that he would not trouble his[page 76] father to seek him. He would meet him at Lyons.

Meanwhile, the Count of Dammartin was directed by the king to take military possession of Dauphiné and to put the dauphin under arrest. As he was en route to fulfil these orders, the count heard that a day had been set by Louis for a great hunt. That an excellent opportunity might be afforded for securing his quarry in the course of the chase, was the immediate thought of the king's lieutenant. So there might have been had not the wily hunter received timely warning of the project for making him the game.

At the hour appointed for the meet, the dauphin's suite rode to the rendezvous, but the prince turned his horse in the opposite direction and galloped away at full speed, attended by a few trusty followers. He hardly stopped even to take breath until he was out of his father's domain, and made no pause until he reached St. Claude, a small town in the Franche-Comté, where he threw himself on the kindness of the Prince of Orange.

How gossip about this strange departure of the French heir fluttered here and there! Du Clercq¹³ tells the story with some variation from the above outline, laying more stress on the popular appeal to the king for relief from Louis's transgressions as governor of Dauphiné, and enlarging on the accusation that Louis was responsible for the death of La belle Agnès, "the first lady of the land possessing the king's perfect love." He adds that the dauphin was further displeased because[page 77] the niece of this same Agnes, the Demoiselle de Villeclerc, was kept at court after her aunt's death. Wherever the king went he was followed by this lady, accompanied by a train of beauties. It was this conduct of his father that had forced the son to absent himself from court life for twelve years and more, during which time he received no allowance as was his rightful due, and thus he had been obliged to make his own requisitions from his seigniory.

There were other reports that the king was quite ready to accord his son his full state; others, again, that Charles drove Louis into exile from mere dislike and intended to make his second son his heir and successor. At this point Du Clercq's manuscript is broken off abruptly and the remainder of his conjectures are lost to posterity. Where the text begins again, the author dismisses all this contradictory hearsay and says in his own character as veracious chronicler, "I concern myself only with what actually occurred. The dauphin gave a feast in the forest and then departed secretly to avoid being arrested by Dammartin."

This flight was the not unnatural termination of a long series of misunderstandings between a father whose private conduct was not above criticism, and a son, clever, unscrupulous, destitute of respect for any person or thing except for the superstitious side of his religion.

Charles VII. was a curious instance of a man whose mental development occurred during the later years of his life. When his son was under[page 78] his personal influence his character was not one to instil filial deference, and Louis certainly cherished neither respect nor affection for the father whose inert years he remembered vividly.

Whether, indeed, the dauphin had any part in Agnes Sorel's death which gave him especial reason to dread the king's anger, is uncertain, but of his action there is no doubt. To St. Claude he travelled as rapidly as his steed could go, and from that spot on Burgundian soil he despatched the following exemplary letter to his father:

"MY VERY REDOUBTABLE LORD:

"To your good grace I recommend myself as humbly as I can. Be pleased to know, my very redoubtable lord, that because, as you know, my uncle of Burgundy intends shortly to go on a crusade against the Turk in defence of the Catholic Faith and because my desire is to go, your good pleasure permitting, considering that our Holy Father the Pope bade me so to do, and that I am standard bearer of the Church, and that I took the oath by your command, I am now on my way to join my uncle to learn his plans so that I can take steps for the defence of the Catholic Faith.

"Also, I wish to implore him to find means of reinstating me in your good grace, which is something that I desire most in the world. My very redoubtable lord, I pray God to give you good life and long.

"Written at St. Claude the last day of August.     

"Your very humble and obedient son,     

"LOYS." ¹⁴    

This letter hardly succeeded in carrying conviction[page 79] to the king. He characterised the projected expedition to Turkey as a farce, a pretence, and a frivolous excuse.¹⁵ Probably, too, he did not contradict his courtiers when they declared that the project had been in the wind a long time, and that the Duke of Burgundy would be prouder than ever to have the heir to France dependent on his protection.

The epistle despatched, Louis continued his journey under the escort of the Seigneur de Blaumont, Marshal of Burgundy, at the head of thirty horse. Their pace was rapid to elude the pursuit of Tristan l'Hermite. The prince needed no spurs to make him flee. Even if his father did not intend to have him drowned in a sack his immediate liberty was certainly in jeopardy. "In truth this thing was a marvellous business. The Prince of Orange and the Marshal of Burgundy were the two men whom the dauphin hated more than any one else, but necessity, which knows no law, overcame the distaste of the dauphin."¹⁶

Louvain was the next place where Louis felt safe enough to rest. Here he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy to announce his arrival within his territory. The letter found Philip in camp before Deventer. It is evident that he was entirely taken by surprise, and was prepared to be very cautious in his correspondence with the French king. He assured him that he was willing to receive and honour Louis as his suzerain's heir, but[page 80] he implored that suzerain not to blame him, the duke, for that heir's flight to his protection.

His envoy, Perrenet, was charged with many reassuring messages in addition to the epistle. Before he reached the French court, his news was no novelty. Rumour had preceded him. The messenger was very eloquent in his assurances to the king that Philip was wholly innocent in the affair and a good peer and true. Perrenet

"stayed at the French court until Epiphany and I do not know what they discussed, but during that time news came that the king had garrisoned Compiègne, Lyons, and places where his lands touched the duke's territories. When the envoy returned to the duke, he published a manifesto ordering all who could bear arms to be in readiness." ¹⁷

Philip sent messages of welcome to Louis with apologies for his own inevitable absence, and the visitor was profuse in his return assurances to his uncle that he understood the delay and would not disturb his business for the world. "I have leisure enough to wait and it does not weary me. I am safe in a pleasant land and in a fine town which I have long wished to see." He showed his courtesy when the Count d'Étampes, Philip's nephew-in-law, presented his suite, by pronouncing each individual name and assuring its bearer that he had heard about him.¹⁸

The count was commissioned to conduct the[page 81] dauphin to Brussels and we have the story of an eye-witness of his reception by the ladies of the ducal family:

"I saw the King of France, father of the present King Charles, chased away by his father Charles for some difference of which they say that the fair Agnes was the cause, and on account of which he took refuge with Duke Philip, for he had no means of subsistence.¹⁹

"The said King Louis, being dauphin, came to Brussels accompanied by about ten cavaliers and by the Marshal of Burgundy. At this time Duke Philip was at Utrecht in war and there was no one to receive the visitor but Madame the Duchess Isabella and Madame de Charolais, her daughter-in-law, pregnant with Madame Mary of Burgundy, since then Duchess of Austria.

"Monsieur the dauphin arrived at Brussels, where were the ladies, at eight o'clock in the evening, about St. Martin's Day.²⁰ When the ladies heard that he was in the city they hastened down to the courtyard to await him. As soon as he saw them he dismounted and saluted Madame the Duchess and Mme. de Charolais and Mme. de Ravestein. All kneeled and then he kissed the other ladies of the court."

Alienor goes on to describe how a whole quarter of an hour was consumed by a friendly altercation between Isabella and her guest as to the exact way in which they should enter the door, the[page 82] dauphin resolute in his refusal to take precedence and Isabella equally resolute not even to walk by the side of the future king. "Monsieur, it seems to me you desire to make me a laughing stock, for you wish me to do what befits me not." To this the dauphin replied that it was incumbent upon him to pay honour for there was none in the realm of France so poor as he, and that he would not have known whither to flee if not to his uncle Philip and to her.

Louis prevailed in his argument, and hostess and guest finally proceeded hand in hand to the chamber prepared for the latter and Isabella then took leave on bended knee.

When the duke returned to Brussels this contention as to the proper etiquette was renewed. Isabella tried to retain the dauphin in his own apartment so that the duke should greet him there as befitted their relative rank. She was greatly chagrined, therefore, when Louis rushed down to the courtyard on hearing the signs of arrival. This punctilious hostess actually held the prince back by his coat to prevent his advancing towards the duke.

Throughout the visit the minor points of etiquette were observed with the utmost care. Both duchess and countess refrained from employing their train-bearers when they entered the dauphin's presence. When he insisted that his hostess should walk by his side, she managed her own train if possible. If she accepted any aid from her gentlemen she was very careful to keep her hand[page 83] upon the dress, so that technically she was still her own train-bearer. Then, too, when the duchess ate in the dauphin's presence, there was no cover to her dish and nothing was tasted in her behalf.

The Duke of Burgundy had to supply Louis with every requisite, but he, too, never forgot for a moment that this dependent visitor was future monarch of France. Without doors as within, every minor detail of etiquette was observed. The duke never so far forgot himself in the ardour of the chase as to permit his horse's head to advance beyond the tail of the prince's steed.

In February, 1457, on St. Valentine's Eve, Mary of Burgundy was born. Our observant court lady describes in detail the ceremonial observed in the chamber of the Countess of Charolais and at the baptism. Brussels rang with joyful bells and blazed with torches, four hundred supplied by the city ahd two hundred by the young father. Each torch weighed four or five pounds.

The Count of Charolais was his own messenger to announce the birth of his daughter to the dauphin and to ask him to stand god-father. Joyful was Louis to accept the invitation and to bestow his mother's name on the baby-girl. Ste. Gudule was so far from the palace that the Church of the Caudenberg was selected for the ceremony and richly adorned with Holland linen, velvet, and cloth of gold. The duchess carried her grandchild to the font,—a font draped with cramoisy velvet.

"Monsieur the dauphin stood on the right and I[page 84] heard it said that there was no one on the left because there was none his equal. On that day, the duchess wore a round skirt à la Portuguaise, edged with fur. There was no train of cloth nor of silk, so I cannot state who carried it,"

sagely remarks Alienor with incontrovertible logic.

Later events made later chroniclers less enthusiastic about the honour paid to Mademoiselle²¹ Mary by the dauphin. In a manuscript of La Marche's Mémoires at The Hague, the words "Lord! what a god-father!" appear in the margin of the page describing the baptism.²² But in these early days of his five years' sojourn, Louis seems to have been a pleasant person and to have posed as the ruined poor relation, entirely free from pride at his high birth and delighted to repay hospitality by his general complaisance.

Charles VII. received all the reports with somewhat cynical amusement. He had no great trust in his son. "Louis is fickle and changeable and I do not doubt that he will return here before long. I am not at all pleased with those who influence him," are his words as quoted by d'Escouchy.²³

Undoubtedly, though, the king was much surprised at his son's action. He had rather expected him to take refuge somewhere but he never thought that the Duke of Burgundy would be his protector—a strange choice to his mind. "My[page 85] cousin of Burgundy nourishes a fox who will eat his chickens" is reported as another comment of this impartial father.²⁴ Like many a phrase, possibly the fruit of later harvests, this is an excellent epitome of the situation.

[Footnote 1: I.,ch. xxxi.]

[Footnote 2: II.,204.]

[Footnote 3: Barante, vi.,50.]

[Footnote 4: Some of the canons wrote their reasons after their recorded vote: "Because Duke Philip had made the candidate member of his council of Holland, Zealand, and Friesland, in which office Gijsbrecht had acquitted himself well." "Because all the Sticht nobles were his relations," etc.—(Wagenaar, Vaderlandsche Historie, iv., 50.)]

[Footnote 5: Du Clercq, ii., 210.]

[Footnote 6: Mémoires, i., ch. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 7: II., 315.]

[Footnote 8: See Lavisse, ivii., 317.]

[Footnote 9: For the effects of operations on a large scale see Jacques Cœur and Charles VII., by Pierre Clémart.]

[Footnote 10: Duclos, "Hist. de Louis XI.," Œuvres Complètes v., 8.]

[Footnote 11: Duclos, iii., 78.]

[Footnote 12: See Lavisse, ivii., 292.]

[Footnote 13: II.,223.]

[Footnote 14: Lettres de Louis XI., i., 77.

According to the editor, Vaesen, the original of this letter shows that September 2nd was written first and erased.]

[Footnote 15: , iii., 185.]

[Footnote 16: Du Clercq, ii., 228.]

[Footnote 17: Chastellain iii., 197.]

[Footnote 18: See Séjour de Louis XI. aux Pays-Bas; Reiffenberg: Nouveaux mem. de l'Acad. Royale, 1829.]

[Footnote 19: Alienor de Poictiers, Les Honneurs de la Cour, ii., 208. It was early in October.]

[Footnote 20: This date, November 11th, does not agree with the others.]

[Footnote 21: "At that time they did not say Madame, for Monsieur was not the son of a sovereign."—La Marche, ii., 410, note.]

[Footnote 22: La Marche, ii., 410: "Dieu quel parrain!"]

[Footnote 23: II., 343.]

[Footnote 24: Chastellain, iii., 185; Lavisse ivii., 299.]

The picture of the Burgundian court rejoicing in happy unison over the advent of an heiress to carry on the Burgundian traditions, with the dauphin participating in the family joy, shows the tranquil side of the first months of the long visit. Before Mary's birth, however, an incident had occurred, betraying the fact that the dauphin and Charles VII. were not the only father and son between whom relations were strained, and that a moment had arrived when the attitude of the Count of Charolais to the duke was no longer characterised by unquestioning filial obedience.

Charles was on his way to Nuremberg¹ to fulfil a mission with certain German princes when the dauphin alighted in Brabant, like "a bird of ill omen," as he designated himself on one occasion. The count did not return to Brussels until January 12, 1457. Thus he took no part in the hearty welcome accorded to the visitor. It is more than possible that the heir of Burgundy was not wholly pleased with the state of affairs placidly existing by mid-winter.

Instead of resuming the first position which he[page 87] had enjoyed during his brief regency, or the honoured second that had been his after Philip came back, Charles was now relegated to a third place. Further, without having been consulted as to the policy, he found that he was forced into following his father's lead in treating a penniless refugee like an invited guest, whose visit was an honour and a joy. It is more than probable that Charles was already feeling somewhat hurt at the duke's warmth towards Louis when a serious breach occurred between father and son about another matter.

It chanced that a chamberlain's post fell vacant in his own household, and the count assumed that the appointment of a successor was something that lay wholly within his jurisdiction. When the duke interfered in a peremptory fashion and insisted that the appointment should be made at his instance, the son refused to accept his authority, especially as his father's nominee was Philip de Croy, one of a family already over-dominant in the Burgundian court. At least, that was Charles's opinion. Therefore, when he obeyed his father's commands to bring his ordonnance, or household list, to the duke's oratory, he unhesitatingly carried the document which contained the name of Antoine Raulin, Sire d'Émeries, in place of Philip de Croy.

The duke was very angry at this apparent contempt for his expressed wishes. Indignantly he threw the lists into the fire with the words, "Now look to your ordonnances for you will need new[page 88] ones²."

There was evidently a succession of violent scenes in which the duchess tried to stand between her husband and son. But Philip was beside himself with wrath and refused to listen to a word from her or from the dauphin, who also endeavoured to mediate³.

Finally, the irate duke lost all control of himself, ordered a horse, and rode out alone into the forest of Soignies. When he became calmer it was dark and he found himself far from the beaten tracks, in the midst of underbrush through which he could not ride. He dismounted and wandered on foot for hours in the January night until smoke guided him to a charcoal burner, who conducted him to the more friendly shelter of a forester's hut. In the morning he made his way to Genappe.

Meantime, in the palace, consternation reigned. Search parties seeking their sovereign were out all night. No one, however, was in such a state of dismay as the dauphin, who declared that he would be counted at fault when family dissensions followed so soon on his arrival. Delighted he was, therefore, to act as mediator between father and son after the duke was in a sufficiently pacified[page 89] state to listen to reason. Charles betook himself to Dendermonde for a time until the duke was ready to see him⁴. His young wife made the most of her expectations to soften her father-in-law's resentment, and between her entreaties and those of the guest, proud to show his tact and his gratitude, the quarrel was at last smoothed over.

There was one marked difference between this family dispute and the breach between the French king and the dauphin. In the latter case no feeling was involved. In the former, the son was really deeply wounded by what he deemed lack of parental affection for his interests. At the same time he was shocked by the bitter words and was, for the moment, so filled with contrition that he was eager to make any concession agreeable to the duke. He dismissed two of his servants⁵, suspected by his father of fomenting trouble between them, and he showed himself in general very willing to placate paternal displeasure.

Reconciliation between duke and duchess was more difficult. Isabella resented Philip's reproaches[page 90] for her sympathy with Charles. She said she had stepped between the two men because she had feared lest the duke might injure his son in his wrath⁶. This was in answer to the Marshal of Burgundy when he was telling her of Philip's displeasure. She concluded her dignified defence with an expression of her utter loneliness. Stranger in a strange land she had no one belonging to her but her son.

She was certainly present at the baptism of her grandchild, but shortly afterwards she retired to a convent of the Grey Sisters, founded by herself, and rarely returned to the world or took part in its ceremonies during the remainder of her life.

The quarrel, too, left its scar upon Charles. It is not probable that he had much personal liking for the guest upon whom his father heaped courtesies and solicitous care. On one occasion, when the two young men were hunting they were separated by chance. When Charles returned alone to the palace, the duke was full of reproaches at his son's careless desertion of the guest in his charge. Again the court was organised into search parties and there was no rest until the dauphin was discovered some leagues from Brussels⁷. Here, also, it is an easy presumption that the Count of Charolais was a trifle sulky over his father's preoccupation in regard to the prince.

The transient character of the dauphin's sojourn in his cousin's domains soon changed. In the summer of 1457, when news came that Dauphiné[page 91] had submitted to Charles VII., when the successive embassies despatched by Philip to the king had all proved fruitless in their conciliatory efforts, Philip proceeded to make more permanent arrangements for the fugitive's comfort.

"Now, Monseigneur, since the king has been pleased to deprive you of Dauphiné ... you are to-day lord and prince without land. But, nevertheless, you shall not be without a country, for all that I have is yours and I place it within your hand without reserving aught except my life and that of my wife. Pray take heart. If God does not abandon me I will never abandon you ⁸."

The duke made good his words by giving his guest the estate of Genappe, of which Louis took possession at the end of July. Then as a further step to make things pleasant for the exile, Philip sent for Charlotte of Savoy who had remained under her father's care ever since the formal marriage in 1451. She was now eighteen.

It was an agreeable spot, this estate at Genappe. Louis's favourite amusement of the chase was easy of access. "The court is at present at Louvain," wrote a courtier⁹ on July 1st, "and Monseigneur the Dauphin likes it very much, for there is good hunting and falconry and a great number of rabbits within and without the city." With killing of every kind at his service, what greater solace[page 92] could a homeless prince expect?

From Louvain to Genappe is no great distance, and the sum of 1200 livres, furnished by Philip for the dauphin's journey to his new abode, seemed a large provision. The pension then settled on him was 36,000 livres, and when the dauphiness arrived 1000 livres a month were provided for her private purse¹⁰.

Pleasant was existence in this château. There was no dearth of company to throng around the prince in exile, and the dauphin allowed no prejudice of mere likes and dislikes, no consideration of duty towards his host to hamper him in making useful friends. A word here and a word there, aptly thrown in at a time when Philip's anger had exasperated, when Charles had failed to conciliate, were very potent in intimating to many a Burgundian servant that there might come a time when a new king across the border might better appreciate their real value than their present or future sovereign.

Hunting was a favourite amusement, but the dauphin did not confine his invitations to sportsmen. The easy accessibility of the little court attracted men of science and of letters as well as others capable of making the time pass agreeably. When there was nothing else on foot, it is said that the company amused themselves by telling stories, each in turn, and out of their tales grew the collection of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles¹¹, named in[page 93] imitation of Boccaccio's Cento Novelle.

The first printed edition of this collection was issued in Paris, in 1486, by Antoine Verard, who thus admonishes the gentle reader: "Note that whenever Monseigneur is referred to, Monseigneur the Dauphin must be understood, who has since succeeded to the crown and is King Louis. Then he was in the land of the Duke of Burgundy." Another editor asserts that Monseigneur is evidently the Duke of Burgundy and not Louis, and later authorities decide that Anthony de la Sale wrote the whole collection in imitation of Boccaccio, and that the names of the narrators were as imaginative or rather as editorial as the rest of the volume.

If this be true, it maybe inferred that the author would have given an appearance of verisimilitude to his fiction by mentioning the actual habitués of the dauphin's court. The name of the Count of Charolais does not appear at all. The duke tells three or more stories according to the interpretation given to Monseigneur. With three exceptions the tales are very coarse, nor does their wit atone for their licentiousness. Possibly Charles held himself aloof from the kind of talk they suggest. All reports make him rigid in standards of morality not observed by his fellows. That he had little to do with the court is certain, whatever his reason.

Louis did not confine himself to the estate[page 94] assigned him. There were various court visits to the Flemish towns where he was afforded excellent opportunities for seeing the wealth of the burghers and their status in the world of commerce.

Ghent was very anxious to have the duke bring his guest within her gates and give her an opportunity of displaying her regret for the past unpleasantness. "In his goodness," Philip at last yielded to their entreaties to make them a visit himself, but he decided not to take the prince or the count with him.¹² He was either afraid for their safety or else he did not care to bring a future French king into relation with citizens who might find it convenient to remember his suzerainty in order to ignore the wishes of their sovereign duke.¹³

Eastertide, 1458, was finally appointed for this state visit of reconciliation. The duke took the precaution to send scouts ahead to ascertain that the late rebels were sincere in their contrition, and that there was no danger of anarchist agitations. The report was brought back that all was calm and that joyful preparations were making to show appreciation of Philip's kindness.

On April 22d, the duke slept at l'Écluse, and[page 95] on the 23d he was gaily escorted into the city by knights and gentlemen summoned from Holland, Hainaut, and Flanders, "but neither clerks nor priests were in his train." As a further assurance to him of their peaceful intention, the citizens actually lifted the city gates off their hinges so as to leave open exits.

Once within the walls, the duke found the whole community, who had shown intelligent and sturdy determination not to endure arbitrary tyranny, ready to weave themselves into a frenzy of biblical and classical parable whose one purpose was to prove how evil had been their ways. A pompous procession sang Te Deum as the duke rode in, and the first "mystery" that met his eyes within the gates was a wonderful representation of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, while the legend "All that the Lord commanded we will do," was meant not to refer to the Hebrew's fidelity to Jehovah, but to the Ghenters' perfect submission to Philip. A young girl stood ready to greet him with the words of Solomon, "I have found one my soul loves."¹⁴

Farther on there were various emblems all designed to compare Philip now to Cæsar, now to Pompey, now to Nebuchadnezzar. The most humiliating spectacle was that of a man dressed in a lion's skin, thus personifying the Lion of Flanders, leading Philip's horse by the bridle. [page 96] "Vive Bourgogne is now our cry," was symbolised in every vehicle which the rhetoricians could invent.

Not altogether explicable is this extreme self-abnegation. Civic prosperity must have returned in four years or there would have been no money for the outlay. Apparently, Philip's countenance was worth more to them than their pride.

The birth and death of two children at Genappe gave the duke new reasons for showering ostentatious favours on his guest, and furnished the dauphin with suitable occasion for addressing his own father, who answered him in kind.

The following is one of the fair-phrased epistles:^l5

     The King to the Dauphin, 1459.

"VERY DEAR AND MUCH LOVED SON:

"We have received the letters that you wrote us making mention that on July 27 our dear and much loved daughter, the dauphiness, was delivered of a fine boy, for which we have been and are very joyous, and it seems to me that the more God our Creator grants you favour, by so much the more you ought to praise and thank Him and refrain from angering Him, and in all things fulfil His commandments.

"Given at Compiègne, Aug.7th.    

"CHARLES."    

During these five years, Charles was more or less aloof from the courts of his father and of their guest. He spent part of the time in Holland and part at Le Quesnoy with his young wife. The Count of St. Pol was one of his intimate friends,[page 97] and a friend who managed to make many insinuations about the duke's treatment of his son and infatuation about the Croys whom Charles hated with increasing fervency.

There is a story that Charles went from Le Quesnoy to his father's court to demand a formal audience from the duke in order to lodge his protest against the Croys. Evidently relations were strained when such a degree of ceremony was needed between father and son.

Gerard Ourré was commissioned to set forth the count's grievances, and he was in the midst of his carefully prepared statement when the duke interrupted him with the curt observation: "Have a care to say nothing but the truth and understand, it will be necessary to prove every assertion." The orator was discomfited, stammered on for a few moments, and then excused himself from completing his harangue. There were only a few nobles present and all were surprised at this embarrassment, as Gerard passed for a clever man. Then, seeing that his deputy was too much frightened to proceed, Charles took up the thread of his discourse. In a firm voice he continued the list of accusations against the Croys, only to be cut short in his turn. Peremptory was the duke in his command to his son to be silent and never again to refer to the subject. Then, turning to Croy, Philip added "see to it that my son is satisfied with you," and withdrew from the audience chamber.

Croy addressed Charles and endeavoured to be[page 98] conciliatory. "When you have repaired the ill you have wrought I will remember the good you have done," was the count's only reply. He took leave of his father with an outward show of love and respect and returned to his wife at Le Quesnoy, escorted, indeed, by Croy out of the gates of Brussels, but with no better understanding between them.

St. Pol found good ground to work on. He inflamed the count's discontent and his distrust of the duke's favourite until Charles despatched him to Bourges on a confidential mission to ascertain what Charles VII. would do for the heir of Burgundy should he decide to take refuge in the French court.¹⁶

At the first interview "I was not present," states the unknown reporter, but on succeeding occasions this man heard for himself that the king was ready to show hospitality to the Count of Charolais who "has no ill intentions against his father. All he wants to do is to separate him from the people who govern him badly."

The conferences were held in the lodgings of Odet d'Aydie. Among those present was Dammartin and the matter was discussed in its various aspects. Jehan Bureau and the anonymous witness were charged with drawing up a report of the discussion. When this was presented to the king it did not seem to him good. He doubted the good faith of the count's message. He had been assured[page 99] that it was all a fiction especially designed by the Sieur de Burgundy.

Certain general promises were made in spite of this royal distrust, quite natural under the circumstances. If he decided to espouse the cause of Henry VI., the Count of Charolais should be given a command. It was evident that the count was by no means ready to go to all lengths, for St. Pol states in one of his conferences with the "late king" that Charles of Burgundy had assured him that for two realms such as his he would not do a deed of villainy.

Nothing came of this talk. It would have been a singular state of affairs had the heirs of France and Burgundy thus changed places in their fathers' courts. Spying and counterspying there were between the courts to a great extent and rumours in number. A certain Italian writes to the Duke of Milan as follows, on March 23, 1461, after he had been at Genappe and at Brussels:¹⁷

"M. de Croy has given me clearly to understand that the reconciliation of the dauphin with the King of France would not be with the approval of the Duke of Burgundy. Nevertheless the prince laments that since he received the dauphin into his states, and treated him as his future sovereign, he has incurred the implacable hatred of the king added to his ancient grievances. On the other hand, the affairs of England, on whose issue depends war or peace for the duke, being still in suspense, it did not seem to him[page 100] honest to make advances to the king at this moment.

"M. de Croy thinks that the dauphin does not seem to have carried into this affair the circumspection and reflection befitting a prince of his quality. He has maintained towards the duke the most complete silence on the affair of Genoa, and the proposition concerning Italy. Croy does not think there is anything in it, but if the thing were so it ought not to be secret. He does not believe that peace will be made between the dauphin and his father, and mentioned that his brother was on the embassy from duke to king, in order, I suppose, to probe the matter to the bottom.

"The dauphin it seems has been out of humour with the Duke of Burgundy on account of the luke-warmness shown for his interests by the ambassador sent by this prince to the Duke of Savoy.

"The silent agreement which reigns between the dauphin and Monsg. de Charolais is one of the causes which has chilled this great love between the dauphin and the duke which existed at the beginning.

"Moreover, the dauphin having spent largely, especially in almsgiving without considering his purse finds himself very hard pressed. He has only two thousand ducats a month from the Duke of Burgundy and that seems to force him into peace with the king. The duke expects nothing during the king's lifetime.

"Everything makes me want to wait here for the arrival of news from England. It is expected daily, good or bad the last play must be made. The duke fears a descent on Calais, and for this reason is going to a town called St. Omer. Under pretext of celebrating there the fête of the Toison d'Or he has ordered[page 101] all his escort to be armed."

For a long time before his final illness the death of Charles VII. was anticipated. When it came it was a dolorous end.¹⁸ At Genappe, the dauphin had been making his preparations for the wished-for event in many ways, all in exact opposition to his father's policy. In Italy and in Spain he sided with the opponents of Charles VII. In England, his sympathies were all for the House of York because his father was favourable to Henry of Lancaster and Margaret of Anjou. He learned with satisfaction of the success of Edward IV., and was more than willing to see him invade France. With certain princes of Germany he entertained relations shrouded in mystery, while his father's own agents disclosed secrets to him from time to time.

In his exile he kept reminding official bodies at Paris that he was heir to the throne. As dauphin he claimed the right to give orders to the parlement at Grenoble. There is no actual proof that he had a hand in the conspiracies which troubled the last year of his father's reign, but it is certain that he managed to win to himself a party within the royal circle.

Certain councillors, fearful of their own fate, did not hesitate to suggest that Louis should be disinherited and his brother Charles put in his stead, but this Charles VII. would not accept. He kept hoping for Louis's submission. The latter,[page 102] however, had no idea of this. He was sure that his father would not live to grow old. A trouble in his leg threatened to be cancerous. In July, there was a growth in his mouth. He died July 22nd, convinced that his son had poisoned him.

After July 17th constant bulletins from the king's bedside came to Louis. Genappe was too far and the anxious son moved to Avesnes in order to receive his messages more speedily. Our chronicler Chastellain¹⁹ begins his story of Louis's accession as follows:

"Since I am not English but French, I who am neither Spanish nor Italian but French, I have written of two Frenchmen, the one king, the other duke. I have written of their works and their quarrels and of the favour and glories which God has given them in their time.

"Kings die, reigns vanish but virtue alone and meritorious works serve man on his bier and gain him eternal glory. O you Frenchmen, see the cause and the end in my labours!"

The guest who had displayed so much humility and thankfulness when he arrived, who had deprecated honours to his high birth and desired to offer all the courtesies, departed from the residence so generously given him for five years in a very cavalier manner.

"Now the king left the duke's territories without having taken leave nor said adieu to the Countess of[page 103] Charolais, ²⁰ although he was in her neighbourhood, and he left behind him the queen, his wife. The said queen had neither hackneys nor vehicles with which to follow her husband. Therefore, the king ordered her to borrow the hackneys of the countess and chariots, too. Heartily did the countess accede to this request in spite of the fact that the thing seemed to her rather strange that a noble king, and one who had received so much honour and service from the House of Burgundy and had promised to recognise it when the hour came, should thus depart thence without saying a word. However, in spite of all, the countess would gladly have given the queen the hackneys as a gift if they had been asked, and she sent them to her by one of her equerries named Corneille de la Barre, together with chariots and waggons. And thus the queen left the country just as her husband had done without saying a word either to the duke or the countess, and Corneille went with her on foot to bring back the hackneys when the queen had arrived at the place of her desire."

Philip had difficulty in persuading his quondam guest to show outward respect to his father's memory. The duke clad himself and his suite in deep mourning before setting out to join Louis at Avesnes, whither representatives from the University of Paris and from all parts of the realm had flocked to greet their new sovereign.

It was a great concourse that marched from Avesnes as escort to the uncrowned king. Philip was magnificent in his appointments as he entered[page 104] Rheims, and behind him came his son,

"the Count of Charolais who, equally with his noble company of knights and squires, attracted hearts and eyes in admiration of his rich array wherein cloth of gold and jewelry, velvet and embroidery were lavishly displayed. And the count had ten pages and twenty-six archers, and this whole company numbered three hundred horse." ²¹

This was a Thursday after dinner. Louis had waited at St. Thierry. On the actual day of the coronation, preliminaries absorbed so much time that the long cavalcade did not enter Rheims until seven o'clock. The king passed his night in a very pious and prayerful manner, taking no repose until 5 A.M. While his suite were occupied at their toilets he slipped off alone to church.

Finally all was ready for the grand ceremony. Very magnificent were the duke's robes and ermine when, as chief among the peers, he escorted his late guest to be consecrated king, and very devout and simple was Louis. After the consecration, the king and his friends listened to an address from the Bishop of Tournay, in which he described in Latin the dauphin's sojourn in the Netherlands.

The Duke of Burgundy was the hero of the occasion. He felt that all future power was in his hands and that Louis XI. could never do enough to repay him for his wonderful hospitality. And[page 105] for a time Louis was quite ready to foster this belief. When they entered Paris, the peer so far outshone the sovereign that there was general astonishment.²² Moreover, whatever the latter did have was a gift. The very plate used on the royal table was a ducal present.²³

Louis took great pains to preserve an attitude of grateful humility. When he met the parlement of Paris, he asked the duke's advice about its reformation. It was to Philip that all the petitioners flocked. But Louis was conscious, too, that there would be a morrow in Burgundy, and he took care to be friendly with the count even while he was flattering the duke. For this purpose he found Guillaume de Biche a very useful go-between.²⁴ This was one of the retainers dismissed in 1457 by Charles at his father's request. He had then passed into Louis's service. This man quickly insinuated himself into the king's graces, was admitted to his chamber at all hours, and walked arm in arm with the returned exile through Paris.

The Burgundian exile had learned the mysteries of the city well in his four years' residence. Louis found him an amusing companion and skilfully managed to flatter the count by his favour towards the man whom he had liked.

For six weeks Philip remained in the capital[page 106] and astonished the Parisians with the fêtes he offered. Equally astonished were they with their new monarch. Louis was thirty-eight and not attractive in person. His eyes were piercing but his visage was made plain by a disproportionate nose. His legs were thin and misshapen, his gait uncertain. He dressed very simply, wearing an old pilgrim's hat, ornamented by a leaden saint. As he rode into Abbeville in company with Philip, the simple folk who had never seen the king were greatly amazed at his appearance and said quite loud, "Benedicite! Is that a king of France, the greatest king in the world? All together his horse and dress are not worth twenty francs."²⁵

From the beginning of his reign, Louis XI. never lived very long in any one place. He did not like the Louvre as a dwelling and had the palace of the Tournelles arranged for him. Touraine became by preference his residence, where he lived alternately at Amboise and in his new château at Plessis-lès-Tours. But his sojourns were always brief. He wanted to know everything, and he wandered everywhere to see France and to seek knowledge. His letters, his accounts, the chroniclers, the despatches of the Italian ambassador, show him on a perpetual journey.

He would set out at break of day with five or six intimates dressed in grey cloth like pilgrims; archers and baggage followed at a distance. He[page 107] would forbid any one to follow him, and often ordered the gates of the city he had left to be closed, or a bridge to be broken behind him. Ambassadors ordered to see him without fail, sometimes had to cross France to obtain an interview, at least if their object was something in which he was not much interested. Then he would often grant them an audience in some miserable little peasant hut.

In the cities where he stopped he would lodge with a burgomaster or some functionary. To avoid harangues and receptions he would often arrive unannounced through a little alley. If forced to accept an entrée he stipulated that it should not be marked with magnificence. There never was a prince who so disliked ceremonies, balls, banquets, and tourneys. At his court young people were bored to death. He never ordered festivals except for some visitor; his pleasures were those of a simple private gentleman. He liked to dine out of his palace. Cagnola relates with surprise that he had seen the king dine after mass in a tavern on the market-place at Tours. He invited small nobles and bourgeois to dine with him. He was intimate, too, with bourgeois women, and indulged in gross pleasantries, speaking to and of women without reserve, sparing neither sister, mother, nor queen.

Yet it was a sombre court. "Farewell dames, citizens, demoiselles, feasts, dances, jousts, and[page 108] tournaments; farewell fair and gracious maids, mundane pleasures, joys, and games," says Martial d'Auvergne. Pompous magnificence may have reminded Louis unpleasantly of his visit to Burgundy.

[Footnote 1: He had departed with Adolph de la Marck on November 19th.—Archives du Nord. See Du Fresne de Beaucourt, vi., 113. No mention of this seems to appear elsewhere.]

[Footnote 2: Chastellain (iii., 233) says that he heard the story from the clerk of the chapel, sole witness of this family quarrel. The duke was so angry that it was hideous to see him.]

[Footnote 3: La Marche, ii., 418; Du Clercq, ii., 237; Chastellain, iii., 230, etc. In the last the narrative is more elaborate. The author dwells much on the danger to the young countess in her delicate state of health.]

[Footnote 4: "Thus there was much coming and going: and it was ordered by Monseigneur le Dauphin that Monseigneur de Ravestein and the king-at-arms of the Toison d'Or should go to Dendermonde to learn the wishes of the Count of Charolais and his intentions, of which I am entitled to speak for I was despatched several times to Brussels in behalf of my said Seigneur of Charolais, to ask the advice of the Chancellor Raulin as to the best method of conducting the present affair"—(La Marche, ii., 419.)]

[Footnote 5: La Marche, ii., 420. One of these, Guillaume Biche, went to France and La Marche says that he himself often went to him to obtain valuable information.]

[Footnote 6: La Marche, ii., 418.]

[Footnote 7: Du Clercq, ii., 239.]

[Footnote 8: Chastellain, iii., 308.]

[Footnote 9: Du Fresne de Beaucourt, vi., 123. Thierry de Vébry to the Count de Vaudemart.]

[Footnote 10: Du Fresne de Beaucourt, vi., 123.]

[Footnote 11: Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, ed. A.J.V. Le Roux. The stories are, as a rule, only retold tales.]

[Footnote 12: "The spectacle was not witnessed by Count Charolais nor by Louis the Dauphin, nor by the Lord of Croy, whom for certain reasons he was unwilling to take with him." (Meyer, P.322.)]

[Footnote 13: Kervyn, Hist. de Flandre, v., 23. At this time Philip was ignoring a peremptory summons to appear before the Parliament of Paris.]

[Footnote 14: Meyer, p. 321.

All the legends were in Latin. Inveni quem diligit anima mea.]

[Footnote 15: Du Fresne de Beaucourt, vi., 267.]

[Footnote 16: Report of an eye-witness. (Duclos, v., 195.)]

[Footnote 17: Du Fresne de Beaucourt. vi., 326.]

[Footnote 18: Lavisse, ivii., 321.]

[Footnote 19: IV., 21.]

[Footnote 20: Chastellain, iv., 45.]

[Footnote 21: Chastellain was not present, but he says of Philip's suite (iv., 47): "From what I have been told and what I have seen in writing, it was a wonderful thing and its like had never been seen in this kingdom."]

[Footnote 22: "And I, myself, assert this for I was there and saw all the nobles" (Chastellain, iv., 52).]

[Footnote 23: When return presents were distributed to the nobles Philip received a lion, Charles a pelican.]

[Footnote 24: Chastellain, iv., 115.]

[Footnote 25: Lavisse, ivii., 325.]

The era of good feeling between Louis XI. and his Burgundian kinsmen was of short duration, and no wonder. The rich rewards confidently expected as fitting recompense for five years' kindness more than cousinly, towards a penniless refugee were not forthcoming.

The king was lavish in fine words, and not chary in certain ostentatious recognition towards his late host, but the fairly munificent pension, together with the charge of Normandy settled upon the Count of Charolais, proved only a periodical reminder of promises as regularly unfulfilled on each recurring quarter day, while the post of confidential adviser to the inexperienced monarch, which Philip had intended to occupy, remained empty.

Louis put perfect trust in no one but turned now to one counsellor, now to another, and used such fragments of advice as pleased his whim and paid no further heed to the giver.

Not long after Louis's coronation there occurred that change in Philip's bodily constitution that comes to all active men sooner or later. His health began to give way, his energies relaxed, and matters that had been of paramount importance[page 110] throughout his career were allowed to slip into the background of his desires. In the famous treaty of 1435, no article was rated at greater importance than that which placed the towns on the Somme in Philip's hands, subject to a redemption of two hundred thousand gold crowns. Whether Charles VII. had actually pledged himself that the mortgage should hold at least during Philip's life does not seem assured, but that any sum would be insufficient to induce the duke to release them unless his intellect were somewhat deadened, is clear.

In 1462, when he recovered from a sharp attack, possibly the result of his indulgence in the pleasures of the table during the prolonged festivities at Paris, he did not regain his previous vigour. This was the time, by the way, when opportunity was afforded his courtiers to prove that devotion to their seigneur outweighed personal vanity. When his head was shaved by order of the court physician, more than five hundred nobles sacrificed their own locks so that their becoming curls might not remind their chief of his own bald head. The sacrifice was not always voluntary, adds an informant.¹ Philip forced compliance with this new fashion upon all who seemed reluctant to be unnecessarily shorn of what beauty was theirs by nature's gift. This servility may have consoled Philip for the deprivation of his hair. In his[page 111] depressed condition any solace was acceptable.

It was just when the duke was in this enfeebled state that Louis, through the mediation of the Croys, pushed forward his proposition to redeem the towns and Philip agreed, possibly relying upon the chance that it would be no easy matter for the French king to wring the required sum from his impoverished land. Philip's assent was, however, promptly clinched by a cash payment of half the amount²; the remainder followed.

Amiens, Abbeville, and the other towns, valuable bulwarks for the Netherland provinces, fine nurseries for the human material requisite for Burgundian armies, rich tax payers as they were, all tumbled into the outstretched hands of the duke's wily rival.

The transaction was hurried through and completed before a rumour of its progress came to the ear of the interested heir. Charles was in Holland sulking and indignant. He had expected good results from his tender devotion during his father's acute illness, a devotion shared by Isabella of Portugal who hastened to her husband's bedside from her convent seclusion when Philip was in need of her ministrations. But, in his convalescence, Philip renewed his friendship for the Croys whom Charles continued to distrust with bitterness[page 112] that varied in its intensity, but which never vanished from his consciousness. The young man felt misjudged, misused, and ever suspicious that personal danger to himself lurked in the air of his father's court.

The various rumours of plots against his life may not all have been baseless. At last, one of own cousins, the Count of Nevers, was accused of having recourse to diabolic means of doing away with the duke's legitimate heir.³ Three little waxen images were found in his house, and it was alleged that he practised various magic arts withal in order to win the favour of the duke and of the French king, and still worse to cause Charles to waste away with a mysterious sickness. The accusations were sufficient to make Nevers resign all his offices in his kinsman's court and retire, post-haste, to France. Had he been wholly innocent he would have demanded trial at the hands of his peers of the Golden Fleece as behooved one of the order. But he withdrew undefended, and left his tattered reputation fluttering raggedly in the breeze of gossip.

Charles stayed in Holland aloof from the ducal court until a fresh incident drove him thither to give vent to his indignation. Only three days had Philip de Commines been page to Duke Philip, then resident at Lille, when an embassy headed by Morvilliers, Chancellor of France, was given audience in the presence of the Burgundian[page 113] court, including the Count of Charolais. The future historian,⁴ then nineteen years old, was keenly alive to all that passed on that November fifth, 1464. Morvilliers used very bitter terms in his assertion that Charles had illegally stopped a little French ship of war and arrested a certain bastard of Rubempré on the false charge that his errand in Holland, where the incident occurred, was to seize and carry off Charles himself. Moreover, one knight of Burgundy, Sir Olivier de La Marche had caused this tale to be bruited everywhere,

"especially at Bruges whither strangers of all nations resort. This had hurt Louis deeply, and he now demanded through his chancellor that Duke Philip should send this same Sir Olivier de La Marche prisoner to Paris, there to be punished as the case required. Whereupon, Duke Philip answered that the said Sir Olivier was steward of his house, born in the County of Burgundy and in no respect subject to the Crown of France."

Philip added that if his servant had wrought ill to the king's honour he, the duke, would see to his punishment. As to the bastard of Rubempré, true it was that he had been apprehended in Holland,⁵ but there was adequate ground for his arrest as his behaviour had been strange, at least so thought the Count of Charolais. Philip added[page 114] that if his son were suspicious

"he took it not of him for he was never so, but of his mother who had been the most jealous lady that ever lived. But notwithstanding" [quoth he] "that myself never were supicious, yet if I had been in my son's place at the same time that this bastard of Rubempré haunted those coasts I would surely have caused him to be apprehended as my son did."

In conclusion, Philip promised to deliver up Rubempré to the king were his innocence satisfactorily proven.

Morvilliers then resumed his discourse, enlarging upon the treacherous designs of Francis, Duke of Brittany, with whom Charles had lately sworn brotherhood at the very moment when he was the honoured guest of King Louis at Tours. During this discussion the Count of Charolais became very restive. Finally he could no longer endure Morvilliers's indirect slurs, and

"made offer eftsoon to answer, being marvellously out of patience to hear such reproachful speeches used of his friend and confederate. But Morvilliers cut him off, saying: 'My Lord of Charolais, I am not come of ambassage to you, but to my Lord your father.' The said earl besought his father divers times to give him leave to answer, who in the end said unto him: 'I have answered for thee as methinketh the father should answer for the son, notwithstanding if thou have so great desire to speak bethink thyself to-day and to-morrow speak and spare not.'"

Then Morvilliers to his former speech added that[page 115] he could not imagine what had moved the earl to enter into the league with the Duke of Brittany unless it were because of a pension the king had once given him together with the government of Normandy and afterwards taken from him.

In regard to Rubempré, Commines adds to his story Charles's own statement given on the morrow:

"Notwithstanding, I think nothing was ever proved against him, though I confess the presumption to have been great. Five years after I myself saw him delivered out of prison." This from Commines. La Marche is less detailed in his record⁶ of the Rubempré incident:

"The bastard was put in prison and the Count of Charolais sent me to Hesdin to the duke to inform him of the arrest and its cause. The good duke heard my report kindly like a wise prince. In truth he at once suspected that the craft of the King of France lurked at the bottom of the affair. Shortly afterwards the duke left Hesdin and returned to his own land, which did not please the King of France who despatched thither a great embassy with the Count d'Eu at the head. Demands were made that I should be delivered to him to be punished as he would, because he claimed that I had been the cause of the arrest of the bastard of Rubempré and also of the duke's departure from Hesdin without saying adieu to the King of France, but the good duke, moderate in all his actions, replied that I was his subject and his servitor, and that if the king or[page 116] any one else had a grievance against me he would investigate it. The matter was finally smoothed over [adds La Marche], and Louis evinced a readiness to conciliate his offended cousin."

In spite of La Marche, the matter proved to be one not easily disposed of by soft phrases flung into the breach. Charles obeyed his father and prepared in advance his defence to the chancellor. When he had finished his own statement about Rubempré, he proceeded to the point of his friendship with the Duke of Brittany, declaring that it was right and proper and that if King Louis knew what was to the advantage of the French sovereign, he would be glad to see his nobles welded together as a bulwark to his throne. As to his pension, he had never received but one quarter, nine thousand francs. He had made no suit for the remainder nor for the government of Normandy. So long as he enjoyed the favour and good will of his father he had no need to crave favour of any man.

"I think verily had it not been for the reverence he bore to his said father who was there present" continues the observant page, "and to whom he addressed his speech that he would have used much bitterer terms. In the end, Duke Philip very wisely and humbly besought the king not lightly to conceive an evil opinion of him or his son but to continue his favour towards them. Then the banquet was brought in and the ambassadors took their leave. As they passed out Charles[page 117] stood apart from his father and said to the archbishop of Narbonne, who brought up the rear of the little company:

"'Recommend me very humbly to the good grace of the king. Tell him he has had me scolded here by the chancellor but that he shall repent it before a year is past.'" His message was duly delivered and to this incident Commines attributes momentous results.

Exasperated at the nonchalant manner in which Louis's ambassadors treated him, indignant at the injury to his heritage by the redemption of the towns on the Somme, and further, already alienated from his royal cousin through the long series of petty occasions where the different natures of the two young men clashed, in this year 1464, Charles was certainly more than ready to enter into an open contest with the French monarch. It was not long before the opportunity came for him to do so with a certain éclat.

In the early years of his own freedom, before he learned wisdom, Louis XI. had planted many seeds of enmity which brought forth a plentiful crop, and the fruit was an open conspiracy among the nobles of the land.

One of the causes of loosening feudal ties was the gradual growth of the body of standing troops instituted in 1439 by Charles VII. These, in the regular pay of the crown, gave the king a guarantee of support without the aid of his nobles. By the date of Louis's accession, certain ducal houses[page 118] besides that of Burgundy had grown very independent within their own boundaries: Orleans, Anjou, Bourbon, not to speak of Brittany.⁷ Now the efforts to curtail the prerogatives of these petty sovereigns, begun by Charles VII., were steady and persistent in the new reign. They had no longer the power of coining money, of levying troops, or of imposing taxes, while the judicial authority of the crown had been extended little by little over France. Then their privileges were further attacked by Louis's restrictions of the chase.

It was the accumulation of these invasions of local authority, added to a real disbelief in the king's ability, that led to a formation of a league among the nobles, designed to check the centralisation policy of the monarch, a League of Public Weal to form a bulwark against the tyrannical encroachments of their liege lord.

Not to follow the steps of the growth of this coalition, it is sufficient for the thread of this narrative to say that it comprised all the great French nobles, the princes of the blood as well as others. Men whom Louis had flattered as well as those whom he had slighted alike fell from his standards, distrustful of his ability to withstand organised opposition, and they threw in their lot with the protestors so as not to miss their share of the spoil.

The Count of Charolais, as already mentioned,[page 119] was in a mood when his ears were eagerly open to overtures from Louis's critics. The redemption of the towns on the Somme he was unable to prevent, but the affair left him very sore. Shortly after its completion, the count did, indeed, succeed in depriving the Croys of their ascendency over the Duke of Burgundy, but when that long desired victory was attained, the towns had one and all accepted their transfer and were under French sovereignty. When the count joined the league, the hope of ultimate restoration was undoubtedly prominent among the motives for his own course of action, though his intimacy with the chief leader of the revolt, the Duke of Brittany, might easily have led to the same result.

Towards Francis of Brittany, Louis XI. had been especially wanting in tact during the first months of his reign. The king treated him as a vassal of France, while the duke held that he and his forbears owed simple homage to the crown, not dependence. Therefore, in order to resist being subordinated, the Duke of Brittany resolved not to leave his estates except in a suitable manner. His messages to the king were sent in all ceremony, he rendered proper homage, declared his readiness to serve him as a kinsman and as a vassal for certain territories, but demanded freedom to exercise his hereditary rights and to enjoy his hereditary dignities.⁸

"Rude and strange" were the terms employed[page 120] by the king in response to these statements, and then he proceeded to encroach still farther on the duke's seigniorial rights by attempts to dispose of the hands of Breton heiresses in unequal marriages, and to arrogate to himself other rights—all sufficient provocation to justify Francis of Brittany in becoming one of the chiefs in the league. Very delightful is Chastellain's colloquy with himself ⁹ as to the difficulty of maintaining perfect impartiality in discussing the cause of this Franco-Burgundian war, but unfortunately the result of his patient efforts is lost.

Olivier de La Marche and Philip de Commines, however, were both present in the Burgundian army and their stories are preserved. La Marche had reason to remember the first actual engagement between the royal and invading forces at Montl'héry, "because on that day I was made knight." He does not say, as does Commines, that this battle was against the king's desire. Louis had hoped to avoid any use of arms and to coerce his rebellious nobles into quiescence by other methods. Not that they characterised themselves as rebellious, far from it. Clear and definite was their statement that in their obligation

"to give order to the estate, the police and the government of the kingdom, the princes of the blood as chief supports of the crown, by whose advice and not by that of others, the business of the king and[page 121] of the state ought to be directed, are ready to risk their persons and their property, and in this laudable endeavour all virtuous citizens ought to aid." ¹⁰

Thus wrote Charles to the citizens of Amiens, and the words were typical of similar appeals made in every quarter of the realm by the various feudal chiefs to their respective subjects. In truth this war, ostentatiously called that of the Public Weal, was but a struggle on the part of the great nobles for local sovereignty. The weal demanded was home rule for the feudal chiefs. The War of Public Weal was a fierce protest against monarchical authority, against concentration. A king indeed, but a king in leading strings was the ideal of the peers.

Thus matters stood in June, 1465. Louis almost alone, deserted by his brother the Duke of Berry, and his nobles banded together in apparent unity, hedged in by their pompous and self-righteous assertions that all their thoughts were for the poor oppressed people whose burdens needed lightening. Of all the great vassals, Gaston de Foix was the single one loyal to the king.

The part of the great duke fell entirely to the[page 122] share of the Count of Charolais. A small force was levied for him within the Netherlands, and he started for Paris where he hoped to meet contingents from the two Burgundies and his brother peers of France with their own troops. His men were good individually but they had not been trained to act as one, and there was no coherence between the different companies.

July, 1465, found Charles at St. Denis, the appointed rendezvous. He was first in the field. While he awaited his allies, his little army became restive at the situation in which they found themselves, fifty leagues from Burgundian territory with no stronghold as their base. It was urged again and again upon the count that his first consideration ought to be his men's safety. His allies had failed him. He should retreat. "I have crossed the Oise and the Marne and I will cross the Seine if I have but a single page to follow me," was the leader's firm reply to these demands.

The leaguers were slow to keep their pledges, and Charles decided that it was his mission to prevent Louis from entering his capital, to which he was advancing with great rapidity from the south. To carry out this purpose Charles disregarded all protests, crossed the Seine at St. Cloud, and made his way to the little village of Longjumeau, whither he was preceded by the Count of St. Pol, commanding one division of the Burgundian army. Montl'héry was a village still farther to the south, and here it was that La[page 123] Marche and other gentlemen were knighted. This ceremony was evidently part of the count's endeavour to encourage his followers—all unwilling to risk an engagement before the arrival of the allies.

To the king it was of infinite advantage that no delay should occur. Nevertheless, it was Charles who opened active hostilities on July 15th, with soldiers who had not broken their fast that day. Armed since early dawn, wearied by a forced march with a July sun beating down upon their heads, their movements hampered by standing wheat and rye, the men were at a tremendous disadvantage when they were led to the attack. It was a hot assault. No quarter was given, many fled. At length, Louis found himself abandoned by all save his body-guard. Pressed against the hill that bounded the grain fields, the king at last retreated up its slope into a castle on its summit.

Charles rode impetuously after the retreating royalists. Separated from his men, he fell among the royal guard at the gate of the castle. There was a vehement assault resisted as vehemently by his meagre escort. Several fell and Charles himself received a sword wound on his neck where his armour had slipped. Recognised by the French, he might have been taken or slain in his resistance, when the Bastard of Burgundy rode in and rescued him. Very desperate seemed the count's condition. When night fell, no one[page 124] knew where lay the advantage. The fugitives spread rumours that the king was dead and that Charles was in possession, others carried the reverse statements as they rode headlong to the nearest safety. It was a rout on both sides with no credit to either leader. But in the darkness of the night, the king managed to slip out of his retreat and march quietly towards the greater security of Paris.

It was a very shadowy victory that Charles proudly claimed. All through the night of July 15th, the Burgundians were discussing whether to flee or to risk further fighting against the odds all recognised. Daybreak found the council in session when a peasant brought tidings that the foe had departed. The fires in sight only covered their retreat. To be sure that same foe had taken Burgundian baggage with them to Paris. But what of that? The Burgundians held the battlefield and they made the best of it.

On July 16th, Louis supped with the military governor of Paris and "moved the company, nobles and ladies, to sympathetic tears by his touching description of the perils he had met and escaped." Charles, meanwhile, effected a junction with his belated allies, Francis of Brittany and Charles of France, the Duke of Berry, at Étampes. Thither too, came the dukes of Bourbon and of Lorraine, but none of these leaguers could claim any share in the battle of Montl'héry.

While these peers perfected their plans to force their chief into redressing the wrongs of the poor people, the king was showing a very pleasant side of his character to the Parisian citizens. In response to a petition that he should take advice on the conduct of his administration, he declared his perfect willingness to add to his council six burgesses, six members of parlement, and the same number from the university. Besides this concession, he relieved the weight of the imposts and hastened to restore certain financial franchises to the Church, to the university, and to various individuals. Three weeks were consumed in establishing friendly relations in this all important city, and then the king departed for Normandy to levy troops and to collect provisions for a siege.¹¹ There was need for this last for the allies had moved up to the immediate vicinity of Paris.

Before the king's return to his capital on August 28th, a formidable array was encamped at Charenton and its neighbourhood. More formidable, however, they were in numbers than in strength. Like all confederated bodies there was inherent weakness, for there was no leader whom all would be willing to obey. The Duke of Berry, heir presumptive to the throne, was the only one among the peers whose birth might have commanded the needful authority, but he had not sufficient personal character to assert his[page 126] position. So the confederates remained a loose aggregation of small armies. The longer they remained in camp the weaker they grew, the more disintegrated. A pitched battle might have been a great advantage to these gallant defenders of the Public Weal of France and that was the last desire of their antagonist.

Many skirmishes took place between the Parisians and the leaguers, but no engagement. Once, indeed, there were hurried preparations on the part of the Burgundians to repulse an attack, of whose imminence they were warned by a page before break of day, one misty morning. Yes, there was no doubt. The pickets could see the erect spears and furled banners of the enemy all ready to advance upon the unwary camp. Quick were the preparations. There were no laggards. The Duke of Calabria was more quickly armed than even the Count of Charolais. He came to a spot where a number of Burgundians, the count's own household stood, by the standard. Among them was Commines^l2 and he heard the duke say: "We now have our desire, for the king is issued forth with his whole force and marches towards us as our scouts report. Wherefore let us determine to play the men. So soon as they be out of the town we will enter and measure with the long ell." By these words he meant that the soldiers would speedily have a[page 127] chance to use their pikes as yard sticks to measure out their share of the booty. False prophet was the duke that time! When the daylight grew stronger, the upright spears and furled banners of the advancing foe proved to be a mass of thistles looming large in the magnifying morning mist! The princes took their disappointment philosophically, enjoyed early mass, and then had their breakfast.

The young Commines is surprised that Paris and her environs were rich enough to feed so many men. Gradually the aspect of affairs changed. Negotiating back and forth became more frequent. The disintegration of the allies became more and more evident. Louis XI. bided his time and then took the extraordinary resolution to go in person to the camp at Charenton to visit his cousin of Burgundy. With a very few attendants, practically unguarded, he went down the Seine. His coming had been heralded and the Count of Charolais stood ready to receive him, with the Count of St. Pol at his side. "Brother, do you pledge me safety?" (for the count's first wife was sister of Louis) to which the count responded: "Yes, as one brother to another."¹³

Nothing could have been more genial than was the king. He assured Charles that he loved a man who kept his word beyond anything.

Veracity was his passion. Charles had kept the[page 128] promise he had sent by the archbishop of Narbonne, and now he knew in very truth that he was a gentleman and true to the blood of France. Further, he disavowed the insolence of his chancellor towards Charles, and repeated that his cousin had been justified in resenting it. "You have kept your promise and that long before the day."¹⁴

Then in a friendly promenade, Louis gave an opportunity to Charles and St. Pol to state, informally, the terms on which they would withdraw from their hostile footing, and count the weal restored to the oppressed public whose sorrows had moved them to a confederation.

Distasteful as was every item to Louis, he accepted the requisition of those who felt that they were in a position to dictate, and after a little more parleying at later dates, the treaty of Conflans was duly arranged. It was none too soon for the allies. They could hardly have held together many days longer in the midst of the jealousies rife in their camps.

The king paused at nothing. To his brother he gave Normandy, to Charles of Burgundy the towns on the Somme with guarantee of possession for his lifetime, while the Count of St. Pol was made Constable of France.

Boulogne and Guienne, too, were ceded to Charles, lesser places and pensions to the other confederates. The contest ended with complete[page 129] victory for the allies who were left with the proud consciousness that they had set a definite limit to royal pretensions, at least, on paper.

After the treaty was signed, the king showed no resentment at his defeat but urged his cousin to amuse himself a while in Paris before returning home. Charles was rash, but he had not the temerity to trust himself so far. Pleading a promise to his father to enter no city gate until on paternal soil, he declined the invitation and soon returned to the Netherlands, where his own household had suffered change. During his absence, the Countess of Charolais had died and been buried at Antwerp. Charles is repeatedly lauded for his perfect faithfulness to his wife, but her death seems to have made singularly little ripple on the surface of his life. The chroniclers touch on the event very casually, laying more stress on the opportunity it gave Louis XI. to offer his daughter Anne as her successor, than on the event itself.¹⁵

[Footnote 1: La Marche, ii., 227. Peter von Hagenbach was the chamberlain to enforce this.]

[Footnote 2: The receipt for this half payment was signed October 8, 1462. (Comines, Mémoires, Lenglet du Fresnoy edition, ii., 392-403.)]

[Footnote 3: Du Clercq, iii., 236; Comines-Lenglet, ii., 393.]

[Footnote 4: Commines, Mêmoires I., ch. i. In the above passages Dannett's translation is followed for the racy English.]

[Footnote 5: Commines says at The Hague; Meyer makes it Gorcum.]

[Footnote 6: III., 3.]

[Footnote 7: Lavisse ivii., 336.]

[Footnote 8: Chastellain, v., i, etc.]

[Footnote 9: V., II.]

[Footnote 10: Letter of the Count of Charolais to the citizens of Amiens. (Collection de Documents inédits sur l'histoire de France.) "Mélanges," ii., 317. In this collection taken from MS. in the Bibl. Nat. there are many letters private and public about these events.]

[Footnote 11: Since its recovery from the English, there had been no duke in Normandy. It was thus the one province open to the king.]

[Footnote 12: I., ch. xi. His vivacious story of the siege should be read in detail.]

[Footnote 13: I., ch. xii.]

[Footnote 14: Commines, I., ch. xii.]

[Footnote 15: La Marche, iii., p. 27.]

"When we have finished here we shall make a fine beginning against those villains the Liegeois." Thus wrote the count's secretary on October 18th.¹ Charles had no desire to rest on the laurels won before Paris. To another city he now turned his attention, to Liege which owed nothing whatsoever to Burgundy.

Before the days when the buried treasures of the soil filled the air with smoke, the valley where Liege lies was a lovely spot.² Tradition tells how, in the sixth century, Monulphe, Bishop of Tongres, as he made a progress through his diocese was attracted by the beauties of the site where a few hovels then clustered near the Meuse. After looking down from the heights to the river's banks for a brief space, the bishop turned to his followers and said, as if uttering a prophecy:

"Here is a place created by God for the salvation of[page 131] many faithful souls. One day a prosperous city shall flourish here. Here I will build a chapel." Dedicated to Cosmo and Damian, the promised chapel became a shrine which attracted many pilgrims who returned to their various homes with glowing tales of the beautiful and fertile valley. Little by little others came who did not leave, and by the seventh century when Bishop Lambert sat in the see of Tongres, Liege was a small town.

An active and loving shepherd was this Lambert. He gave himself no rest but travelled continually from one church to another in his diocese to look after the needs of his flock. He was a fearless prelate, too, and his words of well-deserved rebuke to the Frankish Pepin for a lawless deed excited the wrath of a certain noble, accessory to the act. Trouble ensued and Lambert was slain as he knelt before the altar in Monulphe's chapel at Liege. Absorbed in prayer the pious man did not hear the servants' calls, "Holy Lambert, Holy Lambert come to our aid," words that later became a war-cry when the bishop was exalted into the patron saint of the town.

Not until the thirteenth century, however, when the episcopal see was finally established at Liege, was Lambert's successor virtual lay overlord of the region as well as Bishop of Liege. Monulphe's little chapel had given way to a mighty church dedicated to the canonised Bishop Lambert. The ecclesiastical state became almost autonomous, the episcopal authority being restricted[page 132] without the walls only by the distant emperor and still more distant pope. Within the walls, the same authority had by no means a perfectly free hand. There were certain features in the constitution of Liege which differentiated it from its sister towns in the Netherlands.

Municipal affairs were conducted in a singularly democratic manner. There was no distinction between the greater and lesser gilds, and, within these organisations, the franchise was given to the most ignorant apprentice had he only fulfilled the simple condition of attaining his fifteenth year. Moreover, the naturalisation laws were very easy. Newcomers were speedily transformed into citizens and enjoyed eligibility to office as well as the franchise. The tenure of office being for one year only, there was opportunity for frequent participation in public affairs, an opportunity not neglected by the community.³

The bishop was, of course, not one of the civic officers chosen by this liberal franchise. He was elected by the chapter of St. Lambert, subject to papal and imperial ratification for the two spheres of his jurisdiction. But in the exercise of his function there were many restrictions to his free administration, which papal and imperial sanction together were unable to remove.

A bishop-prince of Liege could make no change in the laws without the consent of the estates,[page 133] and he could administer justice only by means of the regular tribunals. Every edict had to be countersigned. When there was an issue between overlord and people, the question was submitted to the schepens or superior judges who, before they gave their opinion, consulted the various charters which had been granted from time to time, and which were not allowed to become dead letters. A permanent committee of the three orders supervised the executive and the administration of the laws. These "twenty-two" received an appeal from the meanest citizen, and the Liege proverb "In his own home the poor man is king," was very near the possible truth.

Yet the wheels of government were by no means perfect in their running. Many were the conflicts between the different members of the state, and broils, with the character of civil war in miniature, were of frequent occurrence. The submergence of the aristocratic element, the nobles, destroyed a natural balance of power between the bishop-prince and the people. The commons exerted power beyond their intelligence. Annual elections, party contests headed by rival demagogues kept the capital, and, to a lesser extent, the smaller towns of the little state in continuous commotion.⁴

The ecclesiastical origin of the community[page 134] was evident at all points of daily life. The cathedral of St. Lambert was the pride of the city. Its chapter, consisting of sixty canons, took the place held by the aristocratic element in the other towns.

In the cathedral, the holy standard of St. Lambert was suspended. At the outbreak of war this was taken down and carried to the door by the clergy in solemn procession. There it was unfurled and delivered to the commander of the civic militia mounted on a snow-white steed. When he received the precious charge he swore to defend it with his life.

One object of popular veneration was this standard, another was the perron, an emblem of the civic organisation. This was a pillar of gilded bronze, its top representing a pineapple surmounted by a cross. This stood on a pedestal in the centre of the square where was the violet or city hall. In front of the perron were proclaimed all the ordinances issued by the magistrates, or the decrees adopted by the people in general assembly. On these occasions the tocsin was rung, the deans of the gilds would hasten out with their banners and plant them near the perron as rallying points for the various gild members who poured out from forge, work-shop,[page 135] and factory until the square was filled.

There were two powerful weapons whereby the bishop-prince might enforce his will in opposition to that of his subjects did the latter become too obstreperous. He could suspend the court of the schepens, and he could pronounce an interdict of the Church which caused the cessation of all priestly functions. When this interdict was in action, civil suits between burghers could be adjudged by the municipal magistrates, but no criminals could be arrested or tried. The elementary principles of an organised society were thrown into confusion. Still worse confusion resulted from the bishop's last resort as prince of the Church. An interdict caused the church bells to be silent, the church doors to be closed. The celebration of the rites of baptism, of marriage, of burial ceased.⁵ The fear of such cessation was potent in its restraint, unless the populace were too far enraged to be moved by any consideration.

While the Burgundian dukes extended their sway over one portion of Netherland territory after another, this little dominion maintained its complete independence of them. The fact that its princes were elective protected it from lapsing through heritage to the duke who had been so neatly proven heir to his divers childless kinsfolk. It was a rich little vineyard without his pale.

They were clever people those Liegeois. Their[page 136] Walloon language is a species of French with many peculiarities showing Frankish admixture.⁶ The race was probably a mixed one too, but its acquired characteristics made a very different person from a Hollander, a Frisian, or a Fleming, though there was a certain resemblance to the latter.

In 1465, not yet exploited were the wonderful resources of coal and minerals which now glow above and below the furnace fires until, from a distance, Liege looks like a very Inferno. But the people were industrious and energetic in their crafts. It was a country of skilled workmen. The city of Liege is accredited with one hundred thousand inhabitants at this epoch, and the numbers reported slain in the various battles in which the town was involved run into the thousands.⁷

In 1456, Philip of Burgundy, encouraged by his success in the diocese of Utrecht, obtained a certain[page 137] ascendency over the affairs of Liege by interfering in the election of a bishop. There was no natural vacancy at the moment. John of Heinsberg was the incumbent, a very pleasant prelate with conciliatory ways. He loved amusement and gay society, pleasures more easily obtainable in Philip's court than in his own, and his agreeable host found means of persuading him to resign all the cares of his see. Then the enterprising duke proceeded to place his own nephew, Louis of Bourbon, upon the vacant episcopal throne.

This nephew was an eighteen-year-old student at the University of Louvain, destitute of a single qualification for the office proposed. Nevertheless, all difficulties, technical and general were ignored, and a papal dispensation enabled the candidate even to dispense with the formality of taking orders. Attired in scarlet with a feathered Burgundian cap on his head, Louis made his entry into his future capital and was duly enthroned as bishop-prince in spite of his manifest unfitness for the place.

Nor did he prove a pleasant surprise to his people, better than the promise of his youth, as some reckless princes have done. On the contrary, ignorant, sensuous, extortionate, he was soon at drawn swords with his subjects. After a time he withdrew to Huy where he indulged in gross pleasures while he attempted to check the rebellious citizens of his capital by trying some of the measures of coercion used by his predecessors as a[page 138] last resort.

Liege was lashed into a state of fury. Matters dragged on for a long time. The people appealed to Cologne, to the papal legate, to the pope, and to the "pope better informed," but no redress was given. Philip continued to protect the bishop, and none dared put themselves in opposition to him. Finally, the people turned to Louis XI. for aid. Their appeal was heard and the king's agent arrived in the city just as one of the bishop's interdicts was about to be enforced, an interdict, too, endorsed by a papal bull, threatening the usual anathema if the provisions were not obeyed.

It was the moment for a demagogue and one appeared in the person of Raes de la Rivière, lord of Heers. On July 5, 1465, there was to be unbroken silence in all sacred edifices. Heers and his followers proclaimed that every priest who refused to chant should be thrown into the river. Mass was said under those unpeaceful and unspiritual conditions, and the presence of the French envoys gave new heart to the bishop's opponents. A treaty was signed between the Liegeois and Louis; wherein mutual pledges were made that no peace should be concluded with Burgundy in which both parties were not included. It was a solemn pledge but it did not hamper Louis when he signed the treaty of Conflans whose articles contained not a single reference to the Liegeois.

Meanwhile, it chanced that the first report of[page 139] the battle of Montl'héry reaching Liege gave the victory to Louis, a report that spurred on the Liegeois to carry their acts of open hostility to their neighbour, still farther afield. The other towns of the Church state were infected by an anti-Burgundian sentiment. In Dinant this feeling was high, and there was, moreover, a manifestation of special animosity against the Count of Charolais. A rabble marched out of the city to the walls of Bouvignes, a town of Namur, loyal to Burgundy, carrying a stuffed figure with a cow-bell round its neck. Certain well-known emblems of Burgundy on a tattered mantle showed that this represented Charles of Burgundy. With rude words the crowd declared that they were going to hang the effigy as his master, the King of France, had already hanged Count Charles in reality. Further, they said that he was no count at all, but the son of their old bishop, Heinsberg. They went so far as to suspend the effigy on a gallows and then riddled it with arrows and left it dangling like a scarecrow in sight of the citizens of Bouvignes.⁸

The actual contents of the treaty made at Conflans did not reach Liege until messages from Louis had assured them that he had been mindful of their interests in making his own terms, assurances, however, coupled with advice to make peace with their good friend the duke. But there speedily came later information that the only mention of Liege in the new treaty was an apology[page 140] that Louis had ever made friends in that city!

The rebels lost heart at once. Without the king, they had no confidence in their own efforts. Envoys were despatched to Philip who refused to answer their humble requests for pardon until his son could decide what punishment the principality deserved. Nor was much delay to be anticipated before an answer would be forthcoming. Charles hastened to Liege direct from Paris, not pausing even to greet his father. By the third week of January, he was encamped between St. Trond and Tongres, where a fresh deputation from Liege found him. These envoys, between eighty and a hundred, were well armed chiefly because they feared attacks from their anti-peace fellow-citizens.⁹

They found Charles flushed by his recent achievement of bringing King Louis to his way of thinking. His army, too, was a stronger body than when it left the Netherlands. The troops were more skilled from their experience and elated at what they counted their success; more capable, too, of acting as one body under the guidance of a resolute leader, now inclined to despise councils with free discussion. The count's quick temper had gained him weight but it had made him feared. The slightest breach of discipline brought a thunder-cloud on his face. If we may believe one authority,¹⁰ he himself was often so lacking in[page 141] discipline that he would strike an officer with a baton, and once at least, he killed a soldier with his own hand.

His audience with the envoys resulted in a treaty, of which certain articles were so harsh that the messengers were insulted when the report was made in Liege. Only eleven out of thirty-two gilds voted to accept all the articles. A certain noble on pleasant terms with the count offered to carry the unpopular document back to him to ask for a modification of the harsh terms.

By this time the weather was severe. Charles's troops were in need of repose, and it seemed prudent to avoid hostility if possible. Charles revoked the objectionable clauses in consideration of an increase of the war indemnity. With this change the treaty was accepted, and a Piteous Peace it was indeed for the proud folk of Liege. Instead of owing allegiance to emperor and to pope alone as free imperial citizens, they agreed to recognise the Burgundian dukes as hereditary protectors of Liege.

When it was desired, Burgundian troops could march freely across the territory. Burgundian coins were declared valid at Burgundian values. No Liege fortresses were to menace Burgundian marches, and unqualified obedience was pledged to the new overlords. The same terms were conceded to all the rebel towns alike except[page 142] to Dinant. The story of the personal insult to himself and his mother had reached the count's ears and he was not inclined to ignore the circumstance. His further action was, however, deferred.

January 24, 1466, is the final date of the treaty¹¹ and, after its conclusion, Charles ordered a review of his forces, a review that almost culminated in a pitched battle between army and citizens of St. Trond, and then on January 31st, the count returned to Brussels where there was a great display of Burgundian etiquette before the duke embraced his victorious son.

Piteous as was the peace for Liege and the province at large, still more piteous was the lot of Dinant which alone was excluded from the participation in the treaty. Her fate remained uncertain for months. Other affairs occupied the Count of Charolais until late in the summer of 1466. Time had quickly proven that Louis, well freed from the allies pressing up to the gates of Paris, was in very different temper from Louis ill at ease under their strenuous demands. Not only had he withdrawn his promises in regard to the duchy conferred on his brother, but he had begun taking other measures, ostensibly to prepare against a possible English invasion, which alarmed his cousin of Burgundy for the undisturbed possession of his recently recovered[page 143] towns on the Somme.

Excited by the rumours of Louis's purposes, Charles despatched the following letter from Namur:¹²

"MONSEIGNEUR:

"I recommend myself very humbly to your good grace and beg to inform you, Monseigneur, that recently I have been advised of something very surprising to me, Moreover, I am now put beyond doubt considering the source of my information. It is with much regret that I communicate it to you when I remember all the good words you have given to me this year, orally and in writing. Monseigneur, it is evident that there has been some agreement between your people and the English, and that the matter has been so well worked that you have consented, as I have heard, to yield them the land of Caux, Rouen, and the connecting villages, and to aid them in withholding Abbeville and the county of Ponthieu, and further, to cement with them certain alliances against me and my country in making them large offers greatly to my prejudice and, in order to complete the whole, they are to come to Dieppe.

"Monseigneur, you may dispose of your own as you wish: but, Monseigneur, in regard to what concerns me, it seems to me that you would do better to leave my property in my hand than to be the instrument of putting it into the hands of the English or of any foreign nation. For this reason I entreat you, Monseigneur, that if such overtures or greater ones have been opened by your people that you will not commit[page 144] yourself to them in any manner but will insist on their cessation, and that you will do this in a way that I may always have cause to remain your very humble servant as I desire to do with all my heart. Above all, write to me your good pleasure, and I implore you, Monseigneur, if there be any service that I can render you, I am the one who would wish to employ all that God has given me [to do it]. Written at Namur, August 16th.

"Your very humble and obedient subject,    

"CHARLES."    

Then the count proceeded to Dinant to inflict the punishment that the culprits had, to his mind, too long escaped.

Commines calls this a strong and rich town, superior even to Liege.¹³ A comparison of the two sites shows, however, that this statement could hardly have been true at any time. Dinant lies in a narrow space between the Meuse and high land. A lofty rock at one end of the town dominating the river is crowned by a fortress most picturesque in appearance. It is difficult to estimate how many inhabitants there actually were in the place in 1466, but there is no doubt as to their energy and character. As mentioned before, the artisans had acquired a high degree of skill in their specialty, and their brass work was renowned far and wide. Pots and pans and other utensils were known as Dinanderies.

The traffic in them was so important that[page 145] Dinant had had her own commercial relations with England for a long period. Her merchants enjoyed the same privileges in London as the members of the Hanseatic League, and an English company was held in high respect at Dinant.¹⁴ The brass-founders' gild ranked at Dinant as the drapers at Louvain, and the weavers at Ghent. As a "great gild they formed a middle class between the lower gilds and the bourgeois," the merchants and richer folk.¹⁵ In municipal matters each of these three classes had a separate vote.

As it happened, Dinant had not been very ready to open hostilities against the House of Burgundy though she was equally critical of Louis of Bourbon in his episcopal misrule. It was undoubtedly her rivalry with Bouvignes of Namur that brought her into the strife. That neighbour had taunted her rival to exasperation, and the fact that it was safe under the Duke of Burgundy and backed by him as Count of Namur, had brought a Burgundian element into the local contest.

The incidents of the insult to Charles and the aspersion on his mother's reputation undoubtedly were due to an irresponsible rabble rather than to any action that could properly be attributed to the leading men. Further, it really seems probable that the weight attached to the insulting act never occurred to the respectable burghers[page 146] until they heard of it from others, so insignificant were the participants in it.

As soon as it was realised that serious consequences might result from reckless folly, the authorities were quite ready to separate themselves from the event, and to arrest the culprits as common malefactors. Once, indeed, the prisoners were temporarily rescued by their friends, and it seemed to Burgundian sympathisers a suspicious circumstance that this happened just at a moment when there was renewed hope for help from Louis XI. When convinced that such hopes were vain, the magistrates became seriously alarmed and ready to go to any lengths to avert Burgundian vengeance. Finally the following letter was despatched to the Duke of Burgundy:¹⁶

"The poor, humble and obedient servants and subjects of the most reverend father in God, Louis of Bourbon, Bishop of Liege; and your petty neighbours and borderers, the burgomaster's council and folk of Dinant, humbly declare that it has come to their knowledge that the wrath of your grace has been aroused against the town on account of certain ill words spoken by some of the inhabitants thereof, in contempt of your honourable person. The city is as displeased about these words as it is possible to be, and far from wishing to excuse the culprits has arrested as many as could be found and now holds them in durance awaiting any punishment your grace may decree. As heartily and as lovingly as possible do your petitioners beseech your grace to permit your[page 147] anger to be appeased, holding the people of Dinant exonerated, and resting satisfied with the punishment of the guilty, inasmuch as the people are bitterly grieved on account of the insults and have, as before stated, arrested the culprits."

With further apologies for any failure of duty towards the Duke of Burgundy, the petitioners humbly begged to be granted the same terms that Liege and the other towns had received. March 31st is the date of this humble document. Months of doubt followed before the terrible experience of August proved the futility of their pleas, to which the ducal family refused to listen, so deep was their sense of personal aggrievement. Long as it was since the duchess had taken part in public affairs, she, too, had a word to say here. And she, too, was implacable against the town where any citizen had dared accuse her of infidelity to her husband and to the Church whose interests were more to her than anything in the world except her son.¹⁷

The petition was as unheeded as were all the representations of the would-be mediators. Again Dinant turned in desperation to Louis XI. and with assurances that after God his royal majesty was their only hope, besought him from mere[page 148] charity and pity to persuade his cousin of Burgundy to forgive them. Apparently Louis took no notice of this appeal. Dinant's last hope was that her fellow-communes of Liege would refuse to ratify the treaty unless she, too, were included. The sole concession, obtained by their envoys to Charles in the winter, had been a short truce afterwards extended to May, 1466.

During that summer the critical position of the little town was well known. Some sympathisers offered aid but it was aid that there was possible danger in accepting. Many of the outlaws from Liege, who had been expressly excluded from the terms of the peace, had joined the ranks of a certain free lance company called "The Companions of the Green Tent," as their only shelter was the interlaced branches of the forest. To Dinant came this band to aid in her defence.¹⁸ At one time it seemed as though a peaceful accommodation might be reached but it fell through. Not yet were the citizens ready to surrender their charters—"Franchises,—to the rescue," was a frequent cry and no treaty was made.

Philip, long inactive, resolved to assist at the reduction of this place in person. Too feeble to ride, he was carried to the Meuse in a litter, and arrived at Namur on August 14th. Then attended by a small escort only, he proceeded to Bouvignes, a splendid vantage point whence he could command a view of the scene of his son's[page 149] intended operations. As the crisis became imminent there were a few further efforts to effect a reconciliation. When these failed, the town prepared to meet the worst.¹⁹ Stories gravely related by Du Clercq²⁰ represent the people of Dinant goaded to actual fury of resistance.

By August 7th, the Burgundian troops made their appearance, winding down to the river. Conspicuous among the standards—and nobles from all Philip's dominions were in evidence—was the banner of the Count of Charolais, displaying St. George slaying the dragon.

On Tuesday, August 19th, Dinant was invested and the siege began. Within the walls the most turbulent element had gained complete control of affairs. All thought of prudence was thrown to the winds. From the walls they hurled words at the foe:

"Is your old doll of a duke tired of life that you have brought him here to perish?²¹ Your Count Charlotel is a green sprout. Bid him go fight the King of France at Montl'héry. If he waits for the noble Louis or the Liegeois he will have to take to his heels," etc.

It was a heavy siege and the town was riddled with cannon-balls but there was no assault. By[page 150] the sixth day the magistrates determined to send their keys to the Count of Charolais and beg for mercy. The captain of the great gild of coppersmiths, Jean de Guérin, tried to encourage the faint-hearted to protest openly against this procedure. Seizing the city colours he declared: "I will trust to no humane sentiment. I am ready to carry this flag to the breach and to live or die with you. If you surrender, I will quit the town before the foe enter it." It was too late, the capitulation was made.

When the keys were brought to Charles he remembered that he was not yet duke and ordered them presented to his father in his stead, and to his half-brother Anthony was entrusted the task of formally accepting the surrender.

It was late in the evening when the Bastard of Burgundy marched in. At first he held the incoming troops well under control, but the stores of wine were easy to reach, and by the morning there were wild scenes of disorder. When Charles arrived, however, on the morrow, Tuesday, just a week after the beginning of the siege, lawlessness was checked with a strong hand. Any ill treatment of women was peculiarly repugnant to him, and he did not hesitate to execute the sternest justice upon offenders.²²

His entry into the fallen town was made with all the wonted Burgundian pomp. Nothing in the proceedings occurred in a headlong or passionate[page 151] manner. A council of war was held and the proceedings decided upon. The cruelty that was exercised was used in deliberate punishment, not in savage lawlessness. The personal insults to his mother and to himself rankled in the count's mind. As one author remarks²³ with undoubted reason, it is not likely that any of those responsible for the insult were among those punished. After the siege, "pitiable it was to see, for the innocent suffered and the guilty escaped."

Certain rich citizens bought their lives with large sums, others were sold as slaves,²⁴ or were hanged or beheaded, or were thrown into the Meuse.²⁵ In the monasteries, life was conceded to the inmates but that was all. All their property was confiscated. The Count of St. Pol, now Constable of France, tried to intercede for the citizens with Philip who remained at Bouvignes, but to no result. It might have been chance or it might have been intentional that at last flames completed the work of destruction. The abode of Adolph of Cleves, at the corner of Nôtre Dame, was found to be on fire at about one o'clock in the morning of Thursday, August 28th.

That Charles was responsible for this conflagration Du Clercq thinks is incredible.²⁶ He would[page 152] certainly have saved all ecclesiastical property which was almost completely consumed. Indeed, Charles gave orders to extinguish the flames as soon as they were discovered, but every one was so occupied with saving his own portion of booty that nothing was accomplished and the town-hall caught fire and the church of Nôtre Dame. From the latter some ornaments and treasures were saved and the bones of Ste. Perpète, with other holy relics, were rescued by Charles himself at risk to his own life.

"It was never known how the fire originated. Some say it was due to a defective flue. To my mind," [concludes the pious historian], ²⁷ "it was the Divine Will that Dinant should be destroyed on account of the pride and ill deeds of the people. I trust to God who knows all. The duke's people alone lost more than a hundred thousand crowns' value."

Cy fust Dinant, "Dinant was," is the sum of his description, four days after the conflagration. ²⁸

On September 1st, Philip, who had remained at Bouvignes while all this passed under the direction of Charles, took boat and sailed down to Namur. It was almost a triumph,—that trip that proved one of the last ever made by the proud duke—and the procession on the river and the entry into Namur were closed by a humble embassy[page 153] from Liege in regard to certain points of their peace.

Du Clercq gravely relates, by the way, that the Count of St. Pol's men had had no part in the plunder of Dinant. This was hard on the poor fellows. Therefore, Philip turned over to their mercies, as a compensation for this deprivation, the little town of Tuin, which had been rebellious and then submitted. Tuin accepted its fate, submitted to St. Pol, and then compounded the right of pillage for a round sum of money. Moreover, they promised to lay low their gates and their walls and those of St. Trond. In this way, it is said that the constable made ten thousand Rhenish florins. Still both he and his men felt ill-compensated for the loss of the booty of Dinant.

Charles continued a kind of harassing warfare on the various towns of Liege territory. The people of Liege themselves seem to have varied in their humour towards Charles, sometimes being very humble in their petitions for peace and again very insolent. As a rule, this conduct seems to be traceable to their hope of Louis's support. On September 7th, there was one pitched battle where victory decided the final terms of the general peace, and after various skirmishes and submissions, Charles disbanded his troops for the winter and joined his father at Brussels.

[Footnote 1: Doc. inédits sur l'hist. de France. "Mélanges," ii., 398.]

[Footnote 2: Polain, Récits historiques sur l'ancien pays de Liège, I, etc.]

[Footnote 3: See Kirk, Charles the Bold, i., 329.]

[Footnote 4: Jacques de Hemricourt suggested four chief points of difficulty in Liege government:

(See Kirk, i., 325.)]

[Footnote 5: In many cases when the interdict was imposed, it is probable that it was only partially operative.]

[Footnote 6: See Victor Hugo, Le Rhin, i. The Walloon dialect varies greatly between the towns. Here are a few words of the "Prodigal Son" as they are written in Liege, Huy, and Lille:

See also Doc. inédits concernant l'hist. de la Belgique, ii., 238, for comment on Scott's treatment of the language.]

[Footnote 7: The numbers are probably exaggerated. To-day it contains about two hundred thousand.]

[Footnote 8: Du Clercq, iv., 203.]

[Footnote 9: Du Clercq, iv., 249.]

[Footnote 10: Du Clercq, iv., 239-262.]

[Footnote 11: Gachard, Doc. inéd., ii., 285, 322. For letters and negotiations anterior to this peace see p. 197 et seq.]

[Footnote 12: Duclos, v., 236.]

[Footnote 13: Book ii., ch. i. To-day there are only about eight thousand inhabitants.]

[Footnote 14: In addition to Commines and Du Clercq see also Kirk, i., 385, for quotations from Borgnet and others.]

[Footnote 15: Gachard, Doc. inéd., i., 213, et passim.]

[Footnote 16: Gachard, Doc. inéd., ii., 350.]

[Footnote 17: Est falme commune que tres haute princesse la ducesse de Bourgogne, à cause desdictes injures at conclut telle hayne sur cestedite ville de Dinant qu'elle a juré comme on dist que s'il li devoit couster tout son vaellant, fera ruynner cestedite ville en mettant toutes personnes à l'espée. (Gachard, Doc. inéd., ii., 222.)]

[Footnote 18: Gachard, Doc. inéd., ii., 337, et passim.]

[Footnote 19: Du Clercq, iv., 273.]

[Footnote 20: He says messengers were put to death without regard to their sacred office, even a little child being torn limb from limb. Priests were thrown into the river for refusing to say mass, and the situation was strained to the last degree.]

[Footnote 21: Qui a mandé ce vieil monnart vostre duc, etc.]

[Footnote 22: Du Clercq, iv., 278.]

[Footnote 23: De Ram, Documents relatifs aux troubles du pays de Liége, "Henricus de Merica," p. 159.]

[Footnote 24: Vel vendebantur in servos. See De Ram et passim for documents.]

[Footnote 25: It seems to be well attested that the prisoners were tied together and drowned.]

[Footnote 26: Du Clercq, iv., 280.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid., 281.]

[Footnote 28: In 1472, a new church was erected "on the spot formerly called Dinant" and after that, little by little, the town came to life. (Gachard, Analectes Belgiques, 318, etc.).]

The Good Duke's journey to Bouvignes where he witnessed the manner in which his authority was vindicated was his last effort. In the early summer following, on Friday, June 10th, Philip, then at Bruges, was taken ill and died on the following Monday, June 13th, between nine and ten in the evening.¹ Charles was summoned on the Sunday, and it seemed as though his horse's hoofs hardly struck the pavement as he rode, so swift was his course on the way to Bruges.

When he reached the house where his father lay dying, he was told that speech had already ceased, but that there was still life. The count threw himself on his knees by the bedside, weeping in all tenderness, and implored a paternal benediction and pardon for all wherein he had offended his father. Near the duke stood his confessor who begged the dying man to make a sign if he could still understand what was said to him. On this[page 155] admonition and in reply to his son's prayers, Philip turned his eyes to Charles, looked at him and pressed the hand which was laid upon his own, but further token was beyond his strength. The count stayed by his side until he breathed his last.

Thus ended the life of a man who had been a striking figure in Europe for forty years. His most fervent dream, indeed, had never been fulfilled. All his pompous vows to wrest the Holy Land from the invading Turks had proved vain. Many years had passed since he had had military success of any kind, and even in his earlier life his successes had been owing to diplomacy and to a happy conjunction of circumstances rather than to skilful generalship. He possessed pre-eminently the power of personality.

When Duke John of Burgundy fell on the bridge at Montereau and Philip came into his heritage, Henry V. of England was in the full flush of his prosperity, standing triumphant over England and France, and in a position to make good his claim with three stalwart brothers to back him. All these young men had died prematurely. Their only descendant was Henry VI., and that meagre and wretched representative of the ambitious Henry V. had had no spark of the character of his father and uncles. The one vigorous element in his life was his wife, Margaret of Anjou, who diligently exerted herself to keep her husband on his throne. In vain were her efforts. By 1467,[page 156] Edward of York was on that throne. Gone, too, was Charles VII., whose father's acts had clouded his early, whose son darkened his latter years.

Out of his group of contemporaries, Duke Philip alone had marched steadily to every desired goal. His epitaph gave a fairly accurate list of his achievements in doggerel verses:

The territories thus named, that passed to the new duke, covered a goodly space of earth. Had Philip not slacked his ambition at a critical time, undoubtedly he could have left a royal rather than a ducal crown to his son. He did not so will it, and, moreover, in a way he had receded from his independence as he had accepted feudal obligations towards Louis XI. which he never had towards Charles VII.

Lured by the hope of becoming prime adviser of the French king, he had emphasised his position as first peer of France. Thus it was as Duke of[page 158] Burgundy par excellence that Philip died, as the typical peer whose luxury and magnificence far surpassed the state possible to his acknowledged liege. To his son was bequeathed the task of attempting to turn that ducal state into state royal, and of establishing a realm which should hold the balance of power between France and Germany.

There was no doubt in Charles's mind as to which was the greater, the cleverer, the more powerful of the two, Louis the king and Charles the duke. Had not the former been a beggarly suppliant at his father's gates, as dauphin? As king, had he not been forced to yield at the gates of his own capital to every demand made by Charles, standing as the conscientious representative of the public welfare of France?

Had not Louis befriended the contumelious neighbour of Charles, only to learn that his Burgundian cousin could and would deal summarily with all protests against his authority among the lesser folk on Netherland territory?

The Croys made an attempt to gain the new duke's friendship, as appears from this letter to Duke Charles:

"Our very excellent lord, we have heard that it has pleased Our Lord to take to Himself and to withdraw from the world the good Duke Philip, our beloved lord and father, prince of glorious memory, august duke, most Christian champion of the faith, patron and pattern of the virtues and honours of Christianity,[page 159] and the dread of infidel lands. By his valorous deeds, he has won an immortal name among living men, and deserves to our mind to find grace before the merciful bounty of God whom we implore to pardon his faults.

"Alas! our most doughty seigneur, thus dolorous death shows what is to be expected by all mortals. How many lands, how many nobles, how many peoples, how many treasures, and how many powers would have been ready to prevent what has come to pass, and how many prayers would have risen to God could He have prevented this death!...

"Death is inevitable, and the death of the good is the end of all evils and the beginning of all benefits, but still your loss and ours cannot pass without affliction. Nevertheless, our most puissant lord, when we consider that we are not left orphans, and that you, his only son, remain to fill his place, this is a cause for comfort.

"We implore you to be pleased to count us your loyal subjects and very humble servitors and to permit us to go to you, to thus declare ourselves, etc.

"A. DE CROY,    

"J. DE CROY."    

At the time of the duke's death, Olivier de La Marche was in England, whither he had accompanied the Bastard of Burgundy on a mission to King Edward.² Right royally had the latter received the embassy.

"Clad in purple, the garter on his leg and a great baton in his hand, he seemed, indeed, a personage worthy of being king, for he was a fine prince with a[page 160] grand manner. A count held the sword in front of him, and around his throne were from twenty to twenty-five old councillors, white-haired and looking like senators gathered together to advise their master."

Thus appeared Edward on the occasion of a tourney given in honour of the embassy which La Marche proceeds to describe in detail. The Bastard of Burgundy, wearing the Burgundian coat-of-arms with a bar sinister, made a fine record for himself.

After the tournament he invited the ladies to a Sunday dinner,

"especially the Queen and her sisters and made great preparations therefor and then we departed, Thomas de Loreille, Bailiff of Caux, and I to go to Brittany to accomplish our embassy. We arrived at Pleume and were obliged to await wind and boats to go into Brittany. While there, came the news that the Duke of Burgundy was dead. You may believe how great was the bastard's mourning when he heard of his father's death, and how the nobility who were with him mourned too. Their pleasures were melted into tears and lamentations for he died like a prince in all valour.

"In his life he accomplished two things to the full. One was he died as the richest prince of his time, for he left four hundred thousand crowns of gold cash, seventy-two thousand marks of silver plate, without counting rich tapestries, rings, gold dishes garnished with precious stones, a large and well equipped library, and rich furniture. For the second, he died as the most liberal duke of his time. He married his[page 161] nieces at his own expense; he bore the whole cost of great wars several times. At his own expense, he refitted the church and chapel at Jerusalem. He gave ten thousand crowns to build the tower of Burgundy at Rhodes; ... No one went from him who was not well recompensed. The state he maintained was almost royal. For five years he supported Monseigneur the Dauphin, and was a prince so renowned that all the world spoke well of him."

The Bastard of Burgundy took leave of the English court and hastened to Bruges to join his brother, the Count of Charolais, who received him warmly. "Henceforth," explains Olivier, "when I mention the said count I will call him the Duke of Burgundy as is reasonable."

Solemnly was the prince's body carried into the church of St. Donat in Bruges, there to repose until it could be taken to Burgundy to be buried at Dijon with his ancestors. La Marche dismisses the funeral with a brief phrase as he was not himself present at Bruges, being busied in Brittany. There was a memorial service there, the finest he ever saw. The arms of Burgundy were inserted in the chapel decorations, not merely pinned on,³ a fact that impressed the chronicler. No nobles, not even those from Flanders, were permitted to put on mourning. The Duke of Brittany declared that none but him was worthy of the honour for so high a prince.

"So he alone wore mourning. At the end of the[page 162] service I went to thank him for the reverence he had shown the House of Burgundy, and he responded that he had only done his duty. Then I finished my business as quickly as I could and crossed the sea again and returned to my new master."

In his treatise on the eminent deeds of the Duke of Burgundy,⁴ Chastellain recounts, more at length than La Marche, all that his great master had accomplished. Then he proceeds to describe the duke as he knew him.

He was medium in height, rather slight but straight as a rush, strong in hip and in arm, his figure well-knit. His neck was admirably proportioned to his body, his hand and foot were slender, he had more bone than flesh, but his veins were full-blooded. Like all his ancestors, his face was long, as was his nose, his forehead high. His complexion was brunette, his hair brownish, soft, and straight, his beard and eye-brows the same colour, but the former curly, the latter were bushy and inclined to stand up like horns when he was angry. His mouth was well-proportioned, his lips full and high-coloured; his eyes were grey, sometimes arrogant but usually amiable in expression. His personality corresponded perfectly to his appearance. His countenance showed his character, and his character was a witness to the truth of his physiognomy. Nothing was contradictory, perfect was the harmony between the inner and the outer man,[page 163] between the nobility of thought and the simple dignity, well-poised and graceful. Among the great ones of this earth, he was like a star in heaven. Every line proclaimed "I am a prince and a man unique."

It was for his bearing rather than his beauty that he commanded universal admiration. In a stable he would have looked like an image in a temple. In a hall he was the decoration. Whereever his body was, there, too, was his spirit, ready for the demands of the hour. He was singularly joyous and nicely tempered in speech with so much personal magnetism that he could mollify any enemy if he could only meet him face to face. His dress was always rich and appropriate. He was skilful in horsemanship, in archery, and in tennis, but his chief amusement was the chase. He liked to linger at the table and demanded good serving but was really moderate in his tastes, as often he neglected pheasant for a bit of Mayence ham or salted beef. Oaths and abuse were never heard from him. To all alike his speech was courteous even when there was nothing to be gained.

"Never, I assert, did falsehood pass his lips, his mouth was equal to his seal and his spoken word to his written. Loyal as fine gold and whole as an egg." Chastellain repeats himself somewhat in the profusion of his eulogy, but such are the main points of his characterisation. Then he proceeds to some qualifications:

"In order to avoid the charge of flattery, I acknowledge[page 164] that he had faults. None is perfect except God. Often he was very careless in administration, and he neglected questions of justice, of finance, and of commerce in a way that may redound to the injury of his house. The excuse urged is that it was his deputies who were at fault. The answer to that is that he trusted too much to deputies and should not be excused for his confidence. A ruler ought to understand his business himself.

"Also he had the vices of the flesh. He pleased his heart at the desire of his eyes. At the desire of his heart he multiplied his pleasures. His wishes were easy to attain. What he wanted was offered freely. He neglected the virtuous and holy lady his wife, a Christian saint, chaste and charitable. For this I offer no excuse. To God I leave the cause.

"Another fault was that he was not wise in his treatment of his nobles. Especially in his old age he often preferred the less worthy, the less capable advisers. The answer to this charge is that, as his health failed, whoever was by his side obtained ascendency over him and succeeded in keeping the others at a distance. Ergo, theirs is the malice and the excuse is to the princely invalid. In his solitude even valets used their power, as is not wonderful.

"He went late to mass and often out of hours. Sometimes he had it celebrated at two o'clock or even three, and in so doing he exceeded all Christian observance. For this there is no excuse that I dare allege. I leave it to the judgment of God. He had, indeed, obtained dispensation from the pope for causes which he explained, and he only is responsible. God alone can judge about him.

"It would be a dreadful shame if his soul suffered[page 165] for this neglect in lifetime. Earth would not suffice to deplore, nor the nature of man to lament the perdition of such a soul and of such a prince. Hell is not worthy of him nor good enough to lodge him. O God, who rescued Trajan from Hades for a single virtuous act, do not suffer this man to descend therein!"

Having thus tried his best to give a vivid description of the father's personality, while acknowledging that he is not sure of the fate of his soul, the chronicler decides that it would be an excellent moment to paint the son, too, for all time, in view of his mortality. "I will use the past tense so that my words may be good for always."

Duke Charles was shorter and stouter than Duke Philip, but well formed, strong in arm and thigh. His shoulders were rather thick-set and a trifle stooping, but his body was well adapted to activity. The contour of his face was rounder than that of his father, his complexion brunette. His eyes were black and laughing, angelically clear. When he was sunk in thought it seemed as though his father looked out of them. Like his father's mouth was his, full and red. His nose was pronounced, his beard brown, and his hair black. His forehead was fine, his neck white and well set, though always bent as he walked. He certainly was not as straight as Philip, but nevertheless he was a fine prince with a fair outer man.

When he began to speak he often found difficulty[page 166] in expressing himself, but once started his speech became fluent, even eloquent. His voice was fine and clear, but he could not sing, although he had studied the technique and was fond of music. In conversation he was more logical than his father, but very tenacious of his own opinion and vehement in its expression, although, at the bottom, he was just to all men.

In council he was keen, subtle, and ready. He listened to others' arguments judicially and gave them due weight before his own concluded the discussion. He was attentive to his own business to a fault, for he was rather more industrious than became a prince. Economical of his own time, he demanded conscience of his subordinates and worked them very hard. He was fond of his servants and fairly affable, though occasionally sharp in his words. His memory was long and his anger dangerous. As a rule, good sense swayed him, but being naturally impetuous there was often a struggle between impulse and reason.

He was a God-fearing prince, was devoted to the Virgin Mary, rigid in his fasts, lavish in charity. He was determined to avoid death and to hold on to his own, tooth and nail, and was his father's peer in valour. Like his father, he dressed richly; unlike him, he cared more for silver than for jewels. He lived more chastely than is usual to princes and was always master of himself. He drank little wine, though he liked it, because he found that it engendered fever in him. His[page 167] only beverage was water just coloured with wine. He was inclined to no indulgence or wantonness. "At the hour in which I write his taste for hard labour is excessive, but in other respects his good sense has dominated him, at least thus far. It is to be hoped that as his reign grows older he will curb his over-strenuous industry."

As to the duke's sympathies, Chastellain regrets that circumstances have turned him towards England. Naturally he belonged to the French, and it was a pity that the machinations of the king, "whose crooked ways are well known to God, have forced him into self-defence. Yet on his forehead he wears the fleur-de-lys."

Chastellain acknowledges that Charles is accused of avarice, but defends him on the ground that he has been driven into collecting a large army. "A penny in the chest is worth three in the purse of another." "To take precautions in advance is a way to save honour and property," prudently adds the historian, who evidently flourishes his maxims to strengthen his own appreciation of the duke's economy, which, quite as evidently, is not pleasing to him. "I have seen him the very opposite of miserly, open-handed and liberal, rejoicing in largesse. When he came into his seigniory his nature did not change." It was simply the exigencies of his critical position that forced him to restrain his natural propensities and thus to gain the undeserved reputation for parsimony.

It was also said that he was a very hard taskmaster,[page 168] but as a matter of fact he demanded nothing of his soldiers that he was not ready to undertake himself. Like a true duke, he was his own commander, drew up his own troops himself in battle array, and then passed from one end of the line to the other, encouraging the men individually with cheery words, promising them glory and profit, and pledging himself to share their dangers. In victory he was restrained and showed more mercy than cruelty.

After expatiating on the points where Charles was like his father—conventional princely qualities —Chastellain adds: "In some respects they differed. The one was cold and the other boiling with ardour; the one slow and prone to delay, the other strenuous in his promptness; the elder negligent of his own concerns, the younger diligent and alert. They differed in the amount of time consumed at meals and in the number of guests whom they entertained. They differed more or less in their voluptuousness and in their expenditures and in the way in which they took solace and amusement." But in all other respects, "in life they marched side by side as equals and if it please God He will be their conductor in glory everlasting" is the final assurance of their eulogist.

Yet, lavish as the Burgundian poet is in his adjectives about his patron, there is considerable discrimination between his summaries of the two dukes. It is very evident that from his accession Charles was less of a favourite than his father.[page 169] While endeavouring to be as complimentary as possible, distrust of his capacities creeps out between the lines. Chastellain died in 1475, and thus never saw Charles's final disaster. But the violence of his character had inspired lack of confidence in his power of achievement, a violence that made people dislike him as Philip with all his faults was never disliked.

[Footnote 1: Du Clercq, iv., 302 et seq. Erasmus was born in this year, 1467.]

[Footnote 2: II., 49.]

[Footnote 3: "Non par armes attachées à espingles."]

[Footnote 4: Œuvres, vii., 213.]

After the dauphin was crowned at Rheims, he was monarch over all his domains. Charles of Burgundy, on the other hand, had a series of ceremonies to perform before he was properly invested with the various titles worn by his father. Each duchy, countship, seigniory had to be taken in turn. Ghent was the first capital visited. Then he had to exchange pledges of fidelity with his Flemish subjects before receiving recognition as Count of Flanders.

According to the custom of his predecessors, Charles stayed at the little village of Swynaerde, near Ghent, the night before he made his "joyous entry" into that city. It had chanced that the day selected by Charles for the event was St. Lievin's Day and a favourite holiday of the workers of Ghent. The saint's bones, enclosed conveniently in a portable shrine, rested in the cathedral church, whence they were carried once a year by the fifty-two gilds in solemn procession to the little village of Houthem, where the blessed saint had suffered martyrdom in the seventh century.[page 171] All day and all night the saint's devotees, the Fools of St. Lievin, as they were called, remained at this spot. Merry did the festival become as the hours wore on, for good cheer was carried thither as well as the sacred shrine.

Now the magistrates were a little apprehensive about the rival claims of the new count of Flanders and the old saint of Ghent. They knew that they could not cut short the time-honoured celebration for the sake of the sovereign's inauguration, so they decided to prolong the former, and directed that the saint should leave town on Saturday and not return until Monday. This left Sunday free for the young count's entry. It probably seemed a very convenient conjunction of events to the city fathers, because the more turbulent portion of the citizens was sure to follow the saint.

Accordingly, Charles made a very quiet and dignified entrance,¹ having paused at the gates to listen to the fair words of Master Mathys de Groothuse as he extolled the virtues of the late Count of Flanders, and requested God to receive the present one, when he, too, was forced to leave earth, as graciously as Ghent was receiving him that day. All passed well; oaths of fealty were duly taken and given at the church of St. John the Baptist. Charles himself pulled the bell rope according to the ancient Flemish custom, and the Count of Flanders was in possession. This all took place in[page 172] the morning of June 28th. At the close of the ceremonies Charles withdrew to his hotel and the magistrates to their dwellings.

The devotees of St. Lievin prolonged their holiday until Monday afternoon. It was five o'clock² when the revellers returned to Ghent. Many of the saint's followers were, by that time, more or less under the influence of the contents of the casks which had formed part of the outward-bound burden. The protracted holiday-making had its natural sequence. There was, however, too much method in the next proceedings for it to be attributed wholly to emotional inebriety.

The procession passed through the city gate and entered a narrow street near the corn market, where stood a little house used as headquarters for the collection of the cueillotte, a tax on every article brought into the city for sale, and one particularly obnoxious to the people. Suddenly a cry was raised and echoed from rank to rank of St. Lievin's escort, "Down with the cueillotte."

Then with the ingenious humour of a Celtic crowd, quick to take a fantastic advantage of a situation, a second cry was heard: "St. Lievin must go through the house. Lievin is a saint who never turns aside from his route."

Delightful thought, followed by speedy action. Axes were produced and wielded to good effect.

Down came the miniature customs-house in a[page 173] flash. Little pieces of the ruin were elevated on sticks and carried by some of the rabble as standards with the cry "I have it—I have it." As they marched the procession was constantly augmented and the cries become more decidedly revolutionary: "Kill, kill these craven spoilers of God and of the world.³ Where are they? Let us seek them out and slay them in their houses, those who have flourished at our pitiable expense."

This was rank rebellion. Even under cover of St. Lievin's mantle, resistance to regularly instituted customs could hardly be described by any other name. Excited by their own temerity, the crowd now surged on to the great market-place in front of the Hôtel de Ville, where the Friday market is held, instead of returning the saint promptly to his safe abiding-place as was meet.

There the lawless deeds—lawless to the duke's mind certainly—became more audacious. Counterparts of the very banners whose prohibition had been part of the sentence in 1453 were unfurled,⁴ and their possession alone proved insurrectionary premeditation on the part of the gild leaders. Ghent was in open revolt, and the young duke in their midst felt it was an open insult to him as sovereign count.

His messenger failed to return from the market-place. His master became impatient and followed[page 174] him to the scene of action with a small escort. As they drew near, the crowd thickened and hedged them in. The nobles became alarmed and urged the duke to return, but cries from the crowd promised safety to his person. To the steps of the Hôtel de Ville rode the duke, his face dark, menacing with suppressed wrath.⁵

As he dismounted, he turned towards a man whom he thought he saw egging on a disturbance and struck him with his riding whip, saying, "I know you." The man was quick enough to realise the value of the duke's violence at that moment and cried, "Strike again," but the Seigneur Groothuse, who had already tried to check Charles's anger and to curb the popular turbulence, exclaimed, "For the love of God do not strike again!" The wiser burgher at once understood the unstable temper of the mob, which had been fairly civil to the duke up to this moment. There were ugly murmurs to be heard that the blow would cost him dear.

"Indeed," says the courtly Chastellain, "the mischief was so imminent that God alone averted it, and there was not an archer or noble or man so full of assurance that he did not tremble with fear, nor one who would not have preferred to be in India for his own safety. Especially were they in terror for their young prince, who, they thought, was exposed to a dolorous death."

It was Groothuse alone who averted disaster:[page 175]

"Do you not see that your life and ours hang on a silken thread? Do you think you can coerce a rabble like this by threats and hard words—a rabble who at this moment do not value you more than the least of us? They are beside themselves, they have neither reason nor understanding.⁶... If you are ready to die, I am not, except in spite of myself. You must try quite a different method—appease them by sweetness and save your house and your life.

"What could you do alone? How the gods would laugh! Your courage is out of place here unless it enables you to calm yourself and give an example to those poor sheep, wretched misled people whom you must soothe. Go down in God's name. [They were within the town hall.] Show yourself and you will make an impression by your good sense and all will go well."

To this eminently sound advice the young duke yielded. He appeared on a balcony or on the upper steps of the town hall and stood ready to harangue his unruly and turbulent subjects. A moment sufficed to still the turmoil and the silence showed a readiness to hear him speak.

Charles was not perfectly at ease in Flemish, but he was wise enough to use that tongue. One trait of the Ghenters was respect for the person of their overlord. When that overlord showed any disposition to meet them half-way the response was usually immediate. So it was now. The[page 176] crowd which had been attending to St. Lievin, and not to the duke's joyous entry, suddenly remembered that his welcome had been strangely ignored. Their grumblings changed to greetings. "Take heart, Monseigneur. Have no fear. For you we will live and die and none shall be so audacious as to harm you. If there be evil fellows with no bump of reverence, endure it for the moment. Later you shall be avenged. No time now for fear."

This sounded better. Charles was sufficiently appeased to address the crowd as "My children," and to assure them that if they would but meet him in peaceful conference, their grievances should be redressed. "Welcome, welcome! we are indeed your children and recognise your goodness."

Then Groothuse followed with a longer speech than was possible either to Charles's Flemish or to his mood. This address was equally well received, and matters were in train for the appointment of a conference between popular representatives and the new Count of Flanders, when suddenly a tall, rude fellow climbed up to the balcony from the square. Using an iron gauntlet as a gavel to strike on the wall, he commanded attention and turned gravely to address the audience as though he were on the accredited list of speakers:

"My brothers, down there assembled to set your complaints before your prince, your first wish—is it not?—is to punish the ill governors of this town[page 177] and those who have defrauded you and him alike."

"Yes, yes," was the quick answer of the fickle crowd.—"You desire the suppression of the cueillotte, do you not?"—"Yes, yes."—"You want all your gates opened again, your banners restored, and your privileges reinforced as of yore?"—"Yes, yes." The self-appointed envoy turned calmly to Charles and said:

"Monseigneur, this is what the citizens have come together to ask you. This is your task. I have said it in their behalf, and, as you hear, they make my words their own."

Noteworthy is Chastellain's pious and horrified ejaculation over the extraordinary insolence of this big villain, who thus audaciously associated himself with his betters: "O glorious Majesty of God, think of such an outrageous and intolerable piece of villainy being committed before the eyes of a prince! For a low man to venture to come and stand side by side with such a gentleman as our seigneur, and to proffer words inimical to his authority—words the poorest noble in the world would hardly have endured! And yet it was necessary for this noble prince to endure and to tolerate it for the moment, and needful that he should let pass as a pleasantry what was enough to kill him with grief."

Groothuse's answer to the man was mild. Evidently he did not think it was a safe moment to exasperate the mob: "'My friend, there was no necessity of your intruding up here, a[page 178] place reserved for the prince and his nobles. From below, you could have been heard and Monseigneur could have answered you as well there as here. He requires no advocate to make him content his people. You are a strange master. Get down. Go down below and keep to your mates. Monseigneur will do right by every one.'

"Off went the rascal and I do not know what became of him. The duke and his nobles were simply struck dumb by the scamp's outrage and his impudent daring."

The sober report⁷ is less detailed and elaborate, but the thread is the same. Monseigneur, having returned to his hotel, sent Monseigneur de la Groothuse, Jean Petitpas, and Richard Utenhove back to the market to invite the people to put their grievances in writing. A draft was made and carried to the duke. After he had examined it and discussed it with his council, he sent Monseigneur de la Groothuse back to the market-place to tell the people that he wanted to sleep on the proposition and would give his answer at an early hour on the morrow. All through the night the people remained in arms on the market-place. At about eight o'clock on June 30th Groothuse returned, thanked the people in the count's name for having kept such good watch, and was answered by cries of "À bas la cueillotte."

Then he assured them that all was pardoned and that they should obtain what they had asked in[page 179] the draft. Only he requested them to appoint a committee of six to present their demands to Monseigneur and then to go home. This they did. St. Lievin was restored to the church and his followers betook themselves to the gates specified in the treaty of Gaveren. These they broke down, and also destroyed another house where was a tax collector's office.

"The report of these events carried to Monseigneur did not have a good effect upon his spirit. On the morrow Monseigneur quitted the city." The members of the corporation with the two deans and the popular committee of six having obtained audience before his departure, Groothuse acted as spokesman: "We implore you in all humility to pardon us for the insult you have suffered, and to sign the paper presented. The bad have had more authority than the good, which could not be prevented, but we know truly that if the draft is not signed they will kill us."

It is evident in all this story that the municipal authorities were frightened to death and that Charles allowed himself to be restrained to an extraordinary extent considering the undoubted provocation. His reasons for conciliatory measures were two, and literally were his ducats and his daughter. He had with him all the portable treasure and ready money that his father had had at Bruges, a large treasure and one on which he counted for his immediate military operations—operations very important to the position as a[page 180] European power which he ardently desired to attain.

Still more important was the fact that his young daughter, Mary, now eleven years old, was living in Ghent, to a certain degree the ward of the city. If the unruly majority should realise their strength what easier for them than to seize the treasure and hold the daughter as hostage, until her father had acceded to every demand, and until democracy was triumphant not only in Ghent but in the neighbouring cities?

Charles simply did not dare attempt further coercion of the democratic spirit until he was beyond the walls. It is evident that he was completely taken by surprise at Ghent's attitude towards him, as the city had always professed great personal attachment to him. But there was a difference between being heir and sovereign. The agreement was signed, with a mental reservation on the part of the Duke of Burgundy. He only intended to keep his pledge until he could see his way clear to make terms better to his liking.

On Tuesday, June 30th, Charles left Ghent, taking his daughter and his treasure away, but a safe shelter for both was not easy to find. The duke's anticipations of the effect of Ghent's actions upon her neighbours were quickly proved to be no idle fears. There were revolts of more or less importance at Mechlin, at Antwerp, at Brussels, and other places. Moreover, there was serious discussion in the estates assembled at Louvain as to[page 181] whether Charles should be acknowledged as Duke of Brabant, or whether the claims of his cousin, the Count of Nevers, should be considered as heir to Philip's predecessor, for the late duke's title had never been considered perfect.

Louis XI. seized the opportunity to urge the pretensions of the latter, and there were many reasons to recommend him, in the estimation of the Brabanters, who saw advantage in having a sovereign exclusively their own, instead of one with the widespread geographical interests of the Burgundian family. The final decision was, however, for Charles; a notice of the resolution of the deputies was sent to him at Mechlin, and he made his formal "entry" into Louvain, where he received homage from the nobles, the good cities, and the university.

The various insurgent manifestations were promptly quelled one after another, but, with a nature that neither forgot nor forgave, the duke was strongly impressed by them as personal insults. He blamed Ghent for their occurrence and deeply resented every one. Throughout Philip's whole career he remembered the localised tenure of his titles and the fact that they were not perfectly incontestable. For his own advantage he often found a conciliatory attitude the best policy. Charles considered all his rights heaven-born. Questioning his authority was rank rebellion. That he had accepted advice in regard to Ghent, and had been ruled by expediency for the[page 182] nonce, did not mitigate his intense bitterness.

In another town that gave him serious trouble at this time, nothing led him to curb the severity of his measures. Though only a "protector," not an overlord, when he suppressed a rebellion in Liege he rigorously exacted the most complete and humiliating penalties. The city charters were abrogated, all privileges were forfeited. As an unprotected village must Liege stand henceforth, walls and fortifications rased to the ground.

"The perron on the market-place of the said town shall be taken down, and then Monseigneur the duke shall treat it according to his pleasure. The city may not remake the said perron, nor replace another like it in the market-place or elsewhere in the city. Nor shall the said perron appear in the coat-of-arms of Liege." ⁸

This was a terrible indignity for the city and a clear proof of their fear of their bishop's friend.

The episode impressed the citizens of Ghent with the duke's power, and made the more timorous anxious to erase the event of 1467 from his mind. The peace party finally prevailed in their arguments, but the scene of abnegation and self-humiliation crowning their apology was not enacted until eighteen months after the events apologised for, when the new duke had still further proven his metal.

[Footnote 1: Gachard, Doc. inéd., i., 210, etc.]

[Footnote 2: Some authorities make this five A.M., but the Rapport is probably correct.]

[Footnote 3: Chastellain, v., 260 et passim.]

[Footnote 4: So say some historians. But it seems probable that the drapery of St. Lievin's shrine was hastily used as a flag.]

[Footnote 5: Chastellain, v., ch. 7, etc.]

[Footnote 6: These are Chastellain's words to be sure, but the sober Rapport is similar in purport.]

[Footnote 7: Gachard, Doc. inéd., i., 212. ]

[Footnote 8: Gachard. Doc. inéd., ii., 462, "Instrument notarié."]

For many months before Philip's death there had been negotiations concerning Charles's marriage with Margaret of York. Always feeling a closer bond with his mother than with his father, Charles's sympathy had ever been towards the Lancastrian party in England, the family to whom Isabella of Portugal was closely related. Only the necessity for making a strong alliance against Louis XI. turned him to seek a bride from the House of York. It was on this business that La Marche and the great Bastard were engaged when Philip's death interrupted the discussion, which Charles did not immediately resume on his own behalf.

Pending the final decision in regard to this important indication of his international policy, the duke busied himself with the adjustment of his court, there being many points in which he did not intend to follow his father's usage.¹ Philip's lavishness, without too close a query as to the disposition of every penny, was naturally very agreeable to his courtiers. There was a liberal air about his households. It was easy to come and go, and it was pleasant to have the handling[page 184] of money and the giving of orders—orders which were fulfilled and richly paid without haggling. Charles had other notions. He was willing to pay, but he wanted to be sure of an adequate return. How he started in on his administration with reform ideas is delightfully told by Chastellain.²

One of his first measures when he was finally established at Brussels was to secure more speedy execution of justice. He appointed a new provost, "a dangerous varlet of low estate, but excellently fitted to carry out perilous work." Then he determined to settle petty civil suits himself, as there were many which had dragged on for a long time. In order to do this and to receive complaints from poor people, he arranged to give audience three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, after dinner. On these occasions he required the attendance of all his nobles, seated before him on benches, each according to his rank. Excuses were not pleasantly accepted, so that few places were empty. Charles himself was elevated on a high throne covered with cloth of gold, whence he pompously pronounced judgments and heard and answered petitions, a process that sometimes lasted two or three hours and was exceedingly tiresome to the onlookers.

"In outer appearance it seemed a magnificent course of action and very praiseworthy. But in my time I have never heard of nor seen like action[page 185] taken by prince or king, nor any proceedings in the least similar.

"When the duke went through the city from place to place and from church to church, it was wonderful how much state and order was maintained and what a grand escort he had. Never a knight so old or so young who dared absent himself and never a squire was bold enough to squeeze himself into the knights' places."

At the levee, the same rigid ceremony was observed. Every one had to wait his turn in his proper room—the squires in the first, the knights in the second, and so on. All left the palace together to go to mass. As soon as the offering was made all the nobles were free to dine, but they were obliged to report themselves to the duke immediately after his repast. Any failure caused the forfeiture of the fee for the day. It was all very orderly and very dull.

Thus Charles of Burgundy felt that he was law-giver, paternal guide, philosopher, and friend to his people. From time to time he delivered harangues to his court, veritable sermons. He obtained hearing, but certainly did not win popularity. The adulatory phrases used as mere conventionalities seemed to have actually turned his head. And those stock phrases were very grandiloquent. There is no doubt that such comparisons were used as Chastellain puts into the mouths of the first deputation from Ghent to ask pardon for the sins committed at the dolorous unjoyous entry[page 186] into the Flemish capital.³

"My very excellent seigneur, when you who hold double place, place of God and place of man, and have in yourself the double nature by office and commission in divine estate, and as your noble discretion knows and is cognisant, like God the Father, Creator, of all offences committed against you, and who may be appeased by tears and by weeping as He permits Himself to be softened by contrition, entreaties, etc., and resumes His natural benignity by forgetting things past [etc.].... Alas, what kindness did He use toward Adam, His first offender, upon whom through his son Seth He poured the oil of pity in five thousand future years, and then to Cain the first born of mother He postponed vengeance for his crime for ten generations etc. What did he do in Abraham's time, when He sent word to Lot that if there were ten righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah He would remit the judgment on the two cities? In Ghent," etc. ⁴

In the chancellor's answer to this plea, the[page 187] duke's consent to grant forgiveness to Ghent is again compared to God's own mercy. The divine attributes were referred to again and again, not only on the pages of contemporaneous chroniclers who may be accused of desiring ducal patronage, but also in sober state papers.

There was one antidote to this homage universally offered to Charles wherever there was no rebellion against him. One of the rules of the Order of the Golden Fleece was that all alike should be subject to criticism by their fellows. In May, 1468, at Bruges, Charles held an assembly of the Order, the first over which he had presided. It was a fitting opportunity for the knights to express their sentiments. When it came to his turn to be reviewed, Charles listened quietly to the representations that his conduct fell short of the ideals of chivalry because he was too economical, too industrious, too strenuous, and not sufficiently cognisant of the merits of his faithful subjects of high degrees.⁵

In these plaints, respectful as they are, there is perhaps a note of regret for the lavish and amusing good cheer of the late duke's times. Charles was undoubtedly husbanding his resources at this period. The vision of wide dominions was already in his dreams, and he was prudent enough to begin his preparations. And prudence is not a popular quality. Still his courtiers were not quite bereft of the gorgeous and spectacular entertainments[page 188] to which the "good duke" had accustomed them. Soon after the assembly of the Order, the alliance between Duke Charles and Margaret of York was celebrated at Bruges. Our Burgundian Chastellain is not pleased with this marriage. That Charles inclined towards England at all was due to the French king, whom both he and his father had found untrustworthy. Again, had there been any other eligible partie in England Charles would never have allied himself with King Edward when all his sympathies were with the blood of Lancaster. But when King Louis forsook his cousin Margaret of Anjou, whose woes should have commanded pity, simply for the purpose of undermining the Duke of Burgundy, the latter felt it wise to make Edward his friend.

"That it was sore against his inclination he confessed to one who later revealed it to me, but he decided that it was better to injure another rather than be down-trodden and injured himself. ⁶

"For a long time there had been little love lost between him and the king. The monarch feared the pride and haughtiness of his subject, and the subject feared the strength and profound subtilty of the king who wanted, he thought, to get him under the whip. And all this, alas, was the result of that cursed War of Public Weal cooked up by the French against their own king. When Charles was deeply involved in it he was deserted by the others and the whole weight of the burden fell on his shoulders, so that he alone was blamed by the king, and he alone[page 189] was forced to look to his own safety and comfort. It is a pity when such things occur in a realm and among kinsfolk."

Louis was busied with his own affairs in Touraine when news came to him that the marriage was to take place immediately. "If he mourned, it is not marvellous when I myself mourn it for the future result. But the king used all kinds of machinations to break off the alliance.... God suffered two young proud princes to try their strength each at his will, often in ways that would have been incompatible in common affairs."

The fullest account of the wedding is given by La Marche, an eyewitness of the event:⁷

"Gilles du Mas, maître d'hôtel du Duc de Bretagne—to you I recommend myself. I have collected here roughly according to my stupid understanding what I saw of the said festival, to send it to you, beseeching you as earnestly as I can to advise me of the noble states and high deeds in your quarter ... as becomes two friends of one rank and calling in two fraternal, allied and friendly houses.

"My lady and her company arrived at l'Écluse on a Saturday, June 25th, and on the morrow Madame the Duchess of Burgundy, mother of the duke, Mlle. of Burgundy and various other ladies and demoiselles visited Madame Margaret ⁸ and only stayed till dinner. The duchess was greatly pleased[page 190] with her prospective daughter-in-law and could not say enough of her character and her virtues. There remained with Dame Margaret, on the part of the duchess, the Charnys, Messire Jehan de Rubempré and various other ladies and gentlemen to act the hosts to the strange ladies and gentlemen who had crossed from England with the bride. The Count and Countess de Charny met Madame as she disembarked and never budged from her side until she had arrived at Bruges.

"The day after the duchess's visit, Monseigneur of Burgundy made his way to l'Écluse with a small escort and entered the chateau at the rear. After supper, accompanied only by six or seven knights of the Order, he went very secretly to the hôtel of Dame Margaret, who had been warned of his intention, and was attended by the most important members of her suite, such as the Seigneur d'Escalles, the king's brother.

"At his arrival when they saw each other the greetings were very ceremonious and then the two sat down on one bench and chatted comfortably together for some time. After some conversation, the Bishop of Salisbury, according to a prearranged plan of his own, kneeled before the two and made complimentary speeches. He was followed by M. de Charny, who spoke as follows:

"'Monseigneur, you have found what you desired and since God has brought this noble lady to port in safety and to your desire, it seems to me that you should not depart without proving the affection you bear her, and that you ought to be betrothed now at this moment and give her your troth.'

"Monseigneur answered that it did not depend[page 191] upon him. Then the bishop spoke to Margaret and asked her what she thought. She answered that it was just for this and nothing else that the king of England had sent her over and she was quite ready to fulfil the king's command. Whereupon the bishop took their hands and betrothed them. Then Monseigneur departed and returned on the morrow to Bruges.

"Dame Margaret remained at l'Écluse until the following Saturday and was again visited by Monseigneur. On Saturday the boats were richly decorated to conduct my lady to Damme, where she was received very honourably according to the capacity of that little town. On the morrow, the 3rd of July, Monseigneur the duke set out with a small escort between four and five o'clock in the morning, and went to Damme, where he found Madame quite ready to receive him as all had been prearranged, and Monseigneur wedded her as was suitable, and the nuptial benediction was duly pronounced by the Bishop of Salisbury. After the mass, Charles returned to his hotel at Bruges, and you may believe that during the progress of the other ceremonies he slept as if he were to be on watch on the following night.

"Immediately after, Adolph of Cleves, John of Luxemburg, John of Nassau, and others returned to Damme and paid their homage to the new duchess, and then my lady entered a horse litter, beautifully draped with cloth of gold. She was clad in white cloth of gold made like a wedding garment as was proper. On her hair rested a crown and her other jewels were appropriate and sumptuous. Her English ladies followed her on thirteen hackneys, two close by[page 192] her litter and the others behind. Five chariots followed the thirteen hackneys, the Duchess of Norfolk, the most beautiful woman in England, being in the first. In this array Madame proceeded to Bruges and entered at the gate called Ste. Croix."

There were too many names to be enumerated, but La Marche cannot forbear mentioning a noble Zealander, Adrian of Borselen, Seigneur of Breda, who had six horses covered with cloth of gold, jewelry, and silk.

"I mention him for two reasons [he explains⁹]: first, that he was the most brilliant in the procession, and the second is that by the will of God he died on the Wednesday from a trouble in his leg, which was a pity and much regretted by the nobility.

"The procession from Ste. Croix to the palace was magnificent, with all the dignitaries in their order. So costly were the dresses of the ducal household that Charles expended more than forty thousand francs for cloth of silk and of wool alone.

"Prominent in this stately procession were the nations or foreign merchants in this order: Venetians, Florentines—at the head of the latter marched Thomas Portinari, banker and councillor of the duke at the same time that he was chief of their nation and therefore dressed in their garb; Spaniards; Genoese—these latter showed a mystery, a beautiful girl on horseback guarded by St. George from the dragon.—Then came the Osterlings, 108 on horseback, followed by six pages, all clad in violet.

"Gay, too, was Bruges and the streets were all[page 193] decorated with cloth of gold and silk and tapestries. As to the theatrical representations I can remember at least ten. There were Adam and Eve, Cleopatra married to King Alexander, and various others.

"The reception at the palace was very formal. The dowager duchess herself received her daughter-in-law from the litter and escorted her by the hand to her chamber, and for the present we will leave the ladies and the knighthood and turn to the arrangement of the hôtel.

"In regard to the service, Mme. the new duchess was served d'eschançon et d'escuyer tranchant et de pannetier. All English, all knights and gentlemen of great houses, and the chief steward cried 'Knights to table,' and then they went to the buffet to get the food, and around the buffet marched all the relations of Monseigneur, all the knights of the Order and of great houses. And for that day Mme. the duchess the mother declined to be served à couvert but left the honour to her daughter-in-law as was right.

"After dinner the ladies retired to their rooms for a little rest and there were some changes of dress. Then they all mounted their chariots and hackneys and issued forth on the streets in great triumph and wonderful were the jousts of the Tree of Gold. Several days of festivity followed when the usual pantomimes and shows were in evidence.

"Tuesday, the tenth and last day of the fête, the grand salle was arranged in the same state as on the wedding day itself, except the grand buffet which stood in the middle of the hall. This banquet, too, was a grand affair and concluded the festivities.

On the morrow, Wednesday, July 15th, Monseigneur[page 194] departed for Holland on a pressing piece of business, and he took leave of the Duchess of Norfolk and the other lords and ladies of quality and gave them gifts each according to his rank. Thus ends the story of this noble festival, and for the present I know nothing worth writing you except that I am yours."

To this may be added the letter of one of the Paston family who was in Margaret's train.¹⁰

"John Paston the younger to Margaret Paston:

"To my ryght reverend and worchepfull Modyr Margaret Paston dwelling at Caster, be thys delyveryed in hast.

"Ryth reverend & worchepfull Modyr, I recommend me on to you as humbylly as I can thynk, desyryng most hertly to her of your welfare & hertsese whyche I pray God send you as hastyly as my hert can thynk. Ples yt you to wete that at the makyng of thys byll my brodyr & I & all our felawshep wer in good helle, blyssyd be God.

"As for the gydyn her in thys countre it is as worchepfull as all the world can devyse it, & ther wer never Englyshe men had so good cher owt of Inglong that ever I herd of.

"As for tydyngs her but if it be of the fest I can non send yow; savyng my Lady Margaret was maryed on Sonday last past at a town that is called Dame IIj myle owt of Brugge at v of the clok in the morning; & sche was browt the same day to Bruggys to hyr dener; & ther sche was receyvyd as worchepfully as all the world cowd devyse as with presession with ladys and lordys best beseyn of eny pepell that ever I sye or herd of. Many pagentys were pleyed in[page 195] hyr way to Brugys to hyr welcoming, the best that ever I sye. And the same Sonday my Lord the Bastard took upon hym to answere xxiiij knyts & gentylmen within viij dayis at jostys of pese & when that they wer answered, they xxiiij & hymselve shold torney with other xxv the next day after, whyche is on Monday next comyng; & they that have jostyd with hym into thys day have been as rychly beseyn, & hymselfe also, as clothe of gold & sylk & sylvyr & goldsmith's werk might mak hem; for of syche ger & gold & perle & stonys they of the dukys coort neyther gentylmen nor gentylwomen they want non; for with owt that they have it by wyshys, by my trowthe, I herd nevyr of so gret plente as ther is.

And as for the Dwkys coort, as of lords & ladys & gentylwomen knyts, sqwyers & gentylmen I hert never of non lyek to it save King Artourys cort. And by my trowthe I have no wyt nor remembrance to wryte to you half the worchep that is her; but that lakyth as it comyth to mynd I shall tell you when I come home whyche I trust to God shal not be long to; for we depart owt of Brygge homward on Twysday next comyng & all folk that cam with my lady of Burgoyn out of Ingland, except syche as shall abyd her styll with hyr whyche I wot well shall be but fewe.

"We depart the sooner for the Dwk hathe word that the Frenshe king is purposyd to mak wer upon hym hastyly & that he is with in IIIj or v dayis jorney of Brugys & the Dwk rydeth on Twysday next comyng forward to met with hym. God geve hym good sped & all hys; for by my trowthe they are the goodlyest[page 196] felawshep that ever I cam among & best can behave themselves & most like gentlemen.

"Other tydyngs have we non her; but that the Duke of Somerset & all hys band departyd well beseyn out of Brugys a day befor that my Lady the Duchess cam thedyr & they sey her that he is to Queen Margaret that was & shal no more come her agen nor be holpyn by the Duke. No more; but I beseche you of your blessyng as lowly as I can, wyche I beseche you forget not to geve me everday onys. And, Modyr, I beseche you that ye wol be good mastras to my lytyll man & to se that he go to scole.

Wreten at Bruggys the Friday next after Seynt Thomas.

    "Your sone & humbyll servaunt,

"J. PASTON THE YOUNGER."

[Footnote 1: Chastellain, v., 570.]

[Footnote 2: V., 576.]

[Footnote 3: This deputation was composed of representatives from "all the city in its entirety in three chief members—the bourgeois and nobles, the fifty-two métiers, and the weavers who possess twelve different places in the city entirely for themselves and in their control." The formal apology was made later. (Chastellain, v., 291.)]

[Footnote 4: Ibid 306. By letters patent given on July 28, 1467, Duke Charles pardoned the Ghenters and confirmed the privileges which he had conceded to them, but he exacted that a deputation from the three members [Trois membres] of the city should come to Brussels to beg pardon on their knees, bareheaded, ungirded, for all the disorder of St. Lievin. This act of submission took place probably not until January, 1469, though August 8, 1468, is also mentioned as the date.]

[Footnote 5: Hist, de l'Ordre, etc., p. 511.]

[Footnote 6: Chastellain, V., 342.]

[Footnote 7: III., 101. Evidently this was composed for a separate work and then incorporated into the memoirs.]

[Footnote 8: There is a beautiful portrait of her in MS. 9275 in the Bibliothèque de Burgogne. See also Wavrin, Anchiennes Croniques d'Engleterre, ii., 368.]

[Footnote 9: III., 108.]

[Footnote 10: The Paston Letters, ii., 317.]

"My brother, I beseech you in the name of our affection and of our alliance, come to my aid, come as speedily as you can, come without delay. Written by the own hand of your brother.

"FRANCIS."

Such were the concluding sentences of a fervent appeal from the Duke of Brittany that followed Charles into Holland, whither he had hastened after the completion of the nuptial festivities.

The titular Duke of Normandy found that his royal brother was in no wise inclined to fulfil the solemn pledges made at Conflans. His ally, Francis, Duke of Brittany, was plunged into terror lest the king should invade his duchy and punish him for his share in the proceedings that had led up to that compact.

It is in this year that Louis XI. begins to show his real astuteness. Very clever are his methods of freeing himself from the distasteful obligations assumed towards his brother. They had been easy to make when a hostile army was encamped at the gates of Paris. Then Normandy weighed lightly when balanced by the desire to separate the allies. That separation accomplished, the[page 198] point of view changed. Relinquish Normandy, restored by the hand of heaven to its natural liege lord after its long retention by the English kings? Louis's intention gradually became plain and he proved that he was no longer in the isolated position in which the War for Public Weal had found him. He had won to himself many adherents, while the general tone towards Charles of Burgundy had changed.¹

In April, 1468, the States-General of France assembled at Tours in response to royal writs issued in the preceding February.² The chancellor, Jouvençal, opened the session with a tedious, long-winded harangue calculated to weary rather than to illuminate the assembly. Then the king took the floor and delivered a telling speech. With trenchant and well chosen phrases he set forth the reasons why Normandy ought to be an intrinsic part of the French realm. The advantages of centralisation, the weakness of decentralisation, were skilfully drawn. The matter was one affecting the kingdom as a whole, in perpetuity; it was not for the temporal interests of the present incumbent of regal authority, who had only part therein for [page 199] the brief space of his mortal journey. Louis's words are pathetic indeed, as he calls himself a sojourner in France, en voyage through life, as though the fact itself of his likeness to the rest of ephemeral mankind was novel to his audience. He reiterated the statement that the interests involved were theirs, not his.

It was a goodly body which listened to Louis. The greatest feudal lords, indeed, were not present, but many of the lesser nobility were, while sixty-four towns sent, all told, about 128 deputies. These hearers gave willing attention to the thesis that it was a burning shame for the French people to pay heavy taxes simply to restrain the insolent peers from rebelling against their sovereign—those noble scions of the royal stock whose bounden duty it was to protect the state and the head of the royal house.

What was the reason for their selfish insubordination? The root of the evil lay in the past, when extensive territories had been carelessly alienated, and their petty over-lords permitted to acquire too much independence of the crown, so that the monarchy was threatened with disruption. There was more to the same purpose and then the deputies deliberated on the answer to make to this speech from the throne. It was an answer to Louis's mind, an answer that showed the value of suggestion. Charles the Wise had thought that an estate yielding an income of twelve thousand livres was all-sufficient for a[page 200] prince of the blood. Louis XI. was more generous. He was ready to allow his brother Charles a pension of sixty thousand livres. But as to the government of Normandy—why! no king, either from fraternal affection or from fear of war, was justified in committing that province to other hands than his own.

The States-General dissolved in perfect accord with the monarch, and a definite order was left in the king's hands, declaring that it was the judgment of the towns represented that concentration of power was necessary for the common welfare of France. Public opinion declared that national weakness would be inevitable if the feudatories were unbridled in their centrifugal tendencies. Above all, Normandy must be retained by the king. On no consideration should Louis leave it to his brother.³

Before the dissolution of the assembly there was some discussion as to the probable attitude of the great nobles in regard to this platform of centralisation. Very timid were the comments on Charles of Burgundy. Would he not perhaps be an excellent mediator between the lesser dukes and the king? Would it not be better to suspend action until his opinion was known, etc? But at large there was less reserve. The statements were emphatic. Naught but mischief had ever come to France from Burgundy. The present duke's father and grandfather had wrought all[page 201] the ill that lay in their power. As for Charles, his illimitable greed was notorious. Let him rest content with his paternal heritage. Ghent and Bruges were his. Did he want Paris too? Let the king recover the towns on the Somme. Rightfully they were French. Louis made no scruple in pleading the invalidity of the treaty of Conflans, because it had been wrested from him by undue influence. And this royal sentiment was repeated here and there with growing conviction of its justice.

While Charles was occupied with the preparation for his wedding, Louis was engaged in levying troops and mobilising his forces, and these preparations continued throughout the summer of 1468. Naturally, news of this zeal directed against the dukes of Normandy and of Brittany followed the traveller in Holland.

Charles was in high dudgeon and wrote at once to the king, reminding him that these seigneurs were his allies, and demanding that nothing should be wrought to their detriment. Conscious that his remonstrance might be futile, and urged on by appeals from the dukes, Charles hastened to cut short his stay in Holland so that he might move nearer to the scene of Louis's activities. His purpose in going to the north had been twofold—to receive homage as Count of Holland and Zealand, and to use his new dignity to obtain large sums of money for which he saw immediate need if he were to hold Louis to the terms wrested from[page 202] him.

In early July, Charles had crossed from Sluis in Flanders to Middelburg, and thence made his progress through the cities of Zealand, receiving homage as he went. Next he passed to The Hague, where the nobles and civic deputies of Holland met him and gave him their oaths of fealty on July 21st. Fifty-six towns⁴ were represented and there were also deputies from eight bailiwicks and the islands of Texel and Wieringen. "It is noteworthy," comments a Dutch historian, "that the people's oath was given first. The older custom was that the count should give the first pledge while the people followed suit."

As soon as he was thus legally invested with sovereign power, Charles demanded a large aide from Holland and Zealand—480,000 crowns of fifteen stivers for himself; 32,000 crowns as pin money for his new consort; 16,000 crowns as donations for various servants, and 4800 crowns towards his travelling expenses. The total sum was 532,800 crowns. The share of Holland and West Friesland was 372,800 crowns, and of Zealand 16,000 crowns, to be paid within seven and a half years. In Holland, Haarlem paid the heaviest quota, 3549 crowns, and Schiedam the smallest, 350 crowns, while Dordrecht and the South Holland villages were assessed at 39,200 crowns, and[page 203] the remainder was divided among the other cities and villages.

There was considerable opposition to the assessments. In many cases the new imposts upon provisions pressed very heavily on the poor villagers. Having obtained promise of the grant, however, Charles left all further details in its regard to the local officials and returned to Brussels at the beginning of August to make his own preparation. For, by that time, Louis's intentions of evading the treaty of Conflans were plain, though there still fluttered a thin veil of friendship between the cousins. Gathering what forces he could mobilise, ordering them to meet him later, Charles moved westward and took up his quarters at Peronne on the river Somme.

Louis had been bold in his utterance to the States-General as to his perfect right to ignore the treaty of Conflans, to dispossess his brother, and to bring the great feudatories to terms. In the summer of 1468 he made advances towards accomplishing the last-named desideratum. Brittany was invaded by royal troops, but his victory was diplomatic rather than military, as Duke Francis peaceably consented to renounce his close alliances with Burgundy and England, nominally at least. Further, he agreed to urge Charles of France to submit his claims to Normandy to the arbitration of Nicholas of Calabria and the Constable St. Pol.⁵

Charles of Burgundy remained to be settled with[page 204] on some different basis. And in regard to him Louis XI. took a resolve which terrified his friends and caused the world to wonder as to his sanity. All previous attempts at mediation having failed—St. Pol was among the many who tried—the king determined to be his own messenger to parley with his Burgundian cousin. It is curious how small was his measure of personal pride. He had been negligent of his personal safety at Conflans, but even then Charles had better reason to respect and protect him than in 1468, after Louis had manoeuvred for three years in every direction to harass and undermine the young duke's power, and when, too, the latter was aware of half of the machinations and suspicious of more.

Yet Louis's famous visit to Peronne was no sudden hare-brained enterprise. There is much evidence that he nursed the project for many weeks without giving any intimation of his intentions. Nor was the situation as strange as it appears, looking backward.

Charles had doubtless made all preparations to combat Louis if need were, and had chosen Peronne for his headquarters with the express purpose of being able to watch France, and, at the same time, he had published abroad that his military preparations were solely for the purpose of keeping his obligations to his allies. Now these[page 205] obligations were momentarily removed by the action of those same allies. Francis of Brittany had entered into amicable relations with his sovereign, young Charles of France had accepted arbitration to settle the fraternal relations of the royal brothers, while the correspondence between Louis and Liege, was still unknown to the Duke of Burgundy. For the moment, the latter, therefore, had no definite quarrel with the French king. But he was not in the least anxious for an interview with him. Charles was as far as ever from understanding his cousin. Even without definite knowledge of Louis's efforts to make friends in the Netherlands, Charles suspected enough to turn his youthful distrust of the man's character into mature conviction that friendship between them was impossible. But he could not refuse the royal overtures. His letter of safe-conduct to his self-invited visitor bears the date of October 8th, and runs as follows:⁶

"MONSEIGNEUR:

"I commend myself to your good graces. Sire, if it be your desire to come to this city of Peronne in order that we may talk together, I swear and I promise you by my faith and on my honour that you may come, remain and return in safety to Chauny or Noyon, according to your pleasure and as often as it shall please you, freely and openly without any hindrance offered either to you or to any of your people by me or by any other for any cause that now exists or that[page 206] may hereafter arise."

Guillaume de Biche acted as confidential messenger between duke and king. He it was whom Charles had dismissed from his own service in 1456 at his father's instance. From that time on the man had been in Louis's household, deep in his secrets it was said, and certainly admitted to his privacy to an extraordinary degree. This letter was written by Charles in the presence of Biche, through whose hand it passed directly to the king.

By October, Louis was at Ham, prepared to move as soon as the safe-conduct arrived. No time was lost after its receipt. On Sunday, October 9th, the king started out, accompanied by the Bishop of Avranches, his confessor, by the Duke of Bourbon, Cardinal Balue, St. Pol, a few more nobles, and about eighty archers of the Scottish guard. As he rode towards Peronne, Philip of Crèvecœur, with two hundred lances, met him on the way to act as his escort to the presence of the duke, who awaited his guest on the banks of a stream a short distance out of Peronne.

St. Pol was the first of the royal party to meet the duke as herald of Louis's approach. Then Charles rode forward to greet the traveller. As he came within sight of his cousin, he bowed low to his saddle and was about to dismount when Louis, his head bared, prevented his action. Fervent were the kisses pressed by the kingly lips upon the duke's cheeks, while Louis's arm rested lovingly[page 207] about the latter's neck. Then he turned graciously to the by-standing nobles and greeted them by name. But his cousinly affection was not yet satisfied. Again he embraced Charles and held him half as long as before in his arms. How pleasant he was and how full of confidence towards this trusted cousin of his!

The cavalcade fell into line again, with the two princes in the middle, and made a stately entry into Peronne at a little after mid-day.⁷ The chief building then and the natural place to lodge a royal visitor was the castle. But it was in sorry repair, ill furnished, and affording less comfort than a neighbouring house belonging to a city official. Here rooms had been prepared for the king and a few of his suite, the others being quartered through the town. At the door Charles took his leave and Louis entered alone with Cardinal Balue and the attendants he had chosen to keep near him. These latter were nearly all of inferior birth, and were treated by their master with a familiarity very astonishing to the stately Burgundians.

Louis entered the room assigned for his use, walked to the window, and looked out into the street. The sight that met his view was most disquieting. A party of cavaliers were on the point of entering the castle. They were gentlemen[page 208] just arrived from Burgundy with their lances, in response to a summons issued long before the present visit was anticipated. As he looked down on the troops, Louis recognised several men who had no cause to love him or to cherish his memory. There was, for instance, the queen's brother Philip de Bresse⁸ who had led a party against Louis's own sister Yolande of Savoy. At a time of parley this Philip had trusted the sincerity of his brother-in-law's profession and had visited him to obtain his mediation. The king had violated both the specified safe-conduct and ambassadorial equity alike, and had thrown De Bresse into the citadel of Loches, where he suffered a long confinement before he succeeded in making his escape. He was a Burgundian in sympathy as well as in race. But with him on that October day Louis noticed various Frenchmen who had fallen under royal displeasure from one cause or another and had saved their liberty by flight, renouncing their allegiance to him for ever. Four there were in all who wore the cross of St. Andrew. Approaching Peronne as they had from the south, these new-comers had ridden in at the southern gates without intimation of this royal visitation extraordinary until they were almost face to face with guest and host. Their arrival was "a half of a quarter of an hour later than that of the king."

When Philip de Bresse and his friends learned[page 209] what was going on, they hastened to the duke's chambers "to give him reverence." Monseigneur de Bresse was the spokesman in begging the duke that the three above named should be assured of their security notwithstanding the king's presence at Peronne,—of security such as he had pledged them in Burgundy and promised for the hour when they should arrive at his court. On their part they were ready to serve him towards all and against all. Which petition the duke granted orally. "The force conducted by the Marshal of Burgundy was encamped without the gates, and the said marshal spoke no ill of the king, nor did the others I have mentioned."⁹

It was, however, a situation in which apprehension was not confined to the men of lower station. To Louis, looking down from his window, there seemed dire menace in the mere presence of these persons who had heavy grievances against him, and the unfortified private house seemed slight protection against their possible vengeance. Here, Charles might disavow injury to him as something happening quite without his knowledge. On ducal soil the safest place was assuredly under shelter patently ducal. There, there would be no doubt of responsibility did misfortune happen.

Straightway the king sent a messenger to Charles asking for quarters within the castle. The request was granted and the uneasy guest passed[page 210] through the massive portals between a double line of Burgundian men-at-arms. It was no cheerful, pleasant, palatial dwelling-place this little old castle of Peronne. So thick were the walls that vain had been all assaults against it.¹⁰ Designed for a fortress rather than a residence, it had been repeatedly used as a prison, and the air of the whole was tainted by the dungeons under its walls, dungeons which had seen many unwilling lodgers. Five centuries earlier than this date, Charles the Simple had languished to death in one of the towers.

This change of arrangement, or rather the disquieting reason for the change, undoubtedly clouded the peacefulness of the occasion. Yet outward calm was preserved. Commines asserts that the two princes directed their people to behave amicably to each other and that the commands were scrupulously obeyed. For two or three days the desired conferences took place between Charles and Louis. The king's wishes were perfectly plain. He wanted Charles to forsake all other alliances and to pledge himself to support his feudal chief, first and foremost, from all attacks of his enemies. The Duke of Brittany had submitted to his liege. If the Duke of Burgundy would only accept terms equally satisfactory in their way, the pernicious alliance between the two would vanish, to the weal of French unity.

Apparently the first discussion was heard by none[page 211] except the Cardinal Balue and Guillaume de Biche. Charles was willing to pledge allegiance and to promise aid to his feudal chief, but under limitations that weakened the value of his words. Nothing could induce him to renounce alliance with other princes for mutual aid, did they need it. There was a second interview on the following day. Charles held tenaciously to his position. Then there came a sudden alteration in the situation, a strange dramatic shifting of the duke's point of view.

The city of Liege had submitted perforce to the behests of her imperious neighbour, but the citizens had never ceased to hope that his unwelcome "protection" might be dispensed with; that, by the aid of French troops, they might eventually wrest themselves free from the Burgundian incubus. In spite of all promises to Charles, secret negotiations between the anti-Burgundian party and Louis XI. had never ceased. The latter never refused to admit the importunate embassies to his presence. He was glad to keep in touch with the city even in its ruined condition. He sent envoys as well as received them, and Commines states definitely that, in making his plan to visit Peronne, the fact of a confidential commission recently despatched to Liege had wholly slipped the king's mind.

In that town the duke's lieutenant, Humbercourt, had been left to supervise the humiliating changes ordered. And the work of demolition was the only[page 212] industry. Other ordinary business was at a standstill. For a period there was a sullen silence in the streets and the church bells were at rest. In April, a special legate from the pope arrived to see whether ecclesiastical affairs could not be put on a better footing.

It was about the same time that the States-General were meeting at Tours that, under the direction of this legate, Onofrio de Santa-Croce, the cathedral was purified with holy water, and Louis of Bourbon celebrated his very first mass, though he had been seated on the episcopal throne for twelve years. Then Onofrio tried to mediate between the city and the Duke of Burgundy. To Bruges he went to see Charles, and obtained permission to draft a project for the re-establishment of the civic government, to be submitted to the duke for approval.

If Onofrio thought he had reformed the bishop by forcing him into performing his priestly rites he soon learned his mistake. That ecclesiastic speedily disgusted his flock by his ill-timed festivities, and then forsook the city and sailed away to Maestricht in a gaily painted barge, with gay companions to pass the summer in frivolous amusements suited to his dissolute tastes. Such was the state of affairs when the report of Louis's extensive military preparations encouraged the Liegeois to hope that he was to take the field openly against the duke.

About the beginning of September, troops of[page 213] forlorn and desperate exiles began to return to the city. They came, to be sure, with shouts of Vive le Roi! but, as a matter of fact, they seemed willing to make any accommodation for the sake of being permitted to remain. "Better any fate at home than to live like wild beasts with the recollection that we had once been men."

To make a long story short, Onofrio again endeavoured to rouse the bishop to a sense of his duty. Again he tried to make terms for the exiles and to re-establish a tenable condition. It was useless. Louis of Bourbon refused to approach nearer to Liege than Tongres, and declined to meet the advances of his despairing subjects. It was just at this moment that fresh emissaries arrived from Louis, despatched, as already stated, before Charles had consented to prolong the truce.

Excited by their presence the Liegeois once more roused themselves to action. A force of two thousand was gathered at Liege, and advanced by night upon Tongres—also without walls—surrounded the house where lay their bishop, and forced him to return to Liege. Violence there was and loss of life, but, as a matter of fact, the mob respected the person of their bishop and of Humbercourt the chief Burgundian official. This event happened on October 9th, the very day that Louis rode recklessly into Peronne.

On Wednesday, October 11th, the news of the fray reached Peronne, but news greatly exaggerated by rumour. Bishop, papal legate, and[page 214] Burgundian lieutenant all had been ruthlessly murdered in the very presence of Louis's own envoys, who had aided and abetted the hideous crime! To follow the story of an eyewitness:¹¹

"Some said that everyone was dead, others asserted the contrary, for such advertisments are never reported after one sort. At length others came who had seen certain canons slain and supposed the bishop¹² to be of the number, as well as the said seigneur de Humbercourt and all the rest. Further, they said that they had seen the king's ambassadors in the attacking company and mentioned them by name. All this was repeated to the duke, who forthwith believed it and fell into an extreme fury, saying that the king had come thither to abuse him, and gave commands to shut the gates of the castle and of the town, alleging a poor enough excuse, namely, that he did this on account of the disappearance of a little casket containing some good rings and money.

"The king finding himself confined in the castle, a small one at that, and having seen a force of archers standing before the gate, was terrified for his person—the more so that he was lodged in the neighbourhood of a tower where a certain Count de Vermandois had caused the death of one of his predecessors as king of France.¹³ At that time, I was still with the duke and served him as chamberlain, and had free access[page 215] to his chamber when I would, for such was the usage in this household.

"The said duke, as soon as he saw the gates closed, ordered all to leave his presence and said to a few of us that stayed with him that the king had come on purpose to betray him, and that he himself had tried to avoid his coming with all his strength, and that the meeting had been against his taste. Then he proceeded to recount the news from Liege, how the king had pulled all the wires through his ambassadors, and how his people had been slain. He was fearfully excited against the king. I veritably believe that if at that hour he had found those to whom he could appeal ready to sympathise with him and to advise him to work the king some mischief, he would have done so, at the least he would have imprisoned him in the great tower.

"None were present when the words fell from the duke but myself and two grooms of the chamber, one of whom was named Charles de Visen, a native of Dijon, an honest fellow, in good credit with his master. We aggravated nothing, but sought to appease the duke as much as in us lay. Soon he tried the same phrases on others, and a report of them ran through the city and penetrated to the very apartment of the king, who was greatly terrified, as was everyone, because of the danger that they saw imminent, and because of the great difficulty in soothing a quarrel when it has commenced between such great princes. Assuredly they were blameworthy in failing to notify their absent servants of this projected meeting. Great inconveniences were bound to arise from this negligence."

Such is Commines's narrative. Eyewitness[page 216] though he was, it must be remembered that when he wrote the account of this famous interview it was long after the event, and when his point of view was necessarily coloured by his service with Louis. Delightful, however, are the historian's own reflections that he intersperses with his plain narrative. To his mind the only period when it is safe for princes to meet is

"in their youth when their minds are bent on pleasure. Then they may amuse themselves together. But after they are come to man's estate and are desirous each of over-reaching the other, such interviews do but increase their mutual hatred, even if they incur no personal peril (which is well-nigh impossible). Far wiser is it for them to adjust their differences through sage and good servants as I have said at length elsewhere in these memoirs."

Then our chronicler proceeds to give numerous instances of disastrous royal interviews before returning to his subject and to Peronne:

"I was moved [he adds again at the beginning of his new chapter] to tell the princes my opinion of such meetings.¹⁴ Thus the gates were closed and guarded and two or three days passed by. However, the Duke of Burgundy would not see the king, nor had Louis's servants entry to the castle except a few, and those only through the wicket. Nor did the duke see any of his people who had influence over him.

"The first day there was consternation throughout[page 217] the city. By the second day the duke was a little calmed down. He held a council meeting all day and the greater part of the night. The king appealed to every one who could possibly aid him. He was lavish in his promises and ordered fifteen thousand crowns to be given where it might count, but the officer in charge of the disbursement of this sum acquitted himself ill and retained a part, as the king learned later.

"The king was especially afraid of his former servants who had come with the army from Burgundy, as I mentioned above, men who were now in the service of the Duke of Normandy.

"Diverse were the opinions in the above-mentioned council-meeting. Some held that the safe-conduct accorded to the king protected him, seeing that he fairly observed the peace as it had been stated in writing. Others rudely urged his capture without further ceremony, while others again advised sending for his brother, the Duke of Normandy, and concluding with him a peace to the advantage of all the princes of France. They who gave this advice thought that in case it was adopted, the king should be restrained of his liberty. Further, it was against all precedent to free so great a seigneur when he had committed so grave an offence.

"This last argument so nearly prevailed that I saw a man booted and spurred ready to depart with a packet of letters addressed to Monseigneur of Normandy, being in Brittany, and stayed only for the Duke of Burgundy's letter. However, this came to naught. The king made overtures to leave as hostages the Duke of Bourbon, the cardinal, his brother, and the constable with a dozen others while he should be[page 218] permitted to return to Compiegne after peace was concluded. He promised that the Liegeois should repair their mischief or he would declare himself their foe. The appointed hostages were profuse in their offers to immolate themselves, at least they were in public. I do not know whether they would have said the same things in private. I rather suspect not. And in truth, I believe that those who were left would never have returned.

"On the third night after the arrival of the news, the duke never undressed, but lay down two or three times on his bed, and then rose and walked up and down. Such was his way when he was troubled. I lay that night in his chamber and talked with him from time to time. In the morning his fury was greater than ever, his tone very menacing, and he seemed ready to go to any extreme.

"However, he finally brought himself to say that if the king would swear the peace and would accompany him to Liege to help avenge Monsgn. of Liege, his own kinsman, he would be satisfied. Then he suddenly betook himself to the king's chamber and expressed himself to that effect. The king had a friend¹⁵ who warned him, assuring him that he should suffer no ill if he would concede these two points. Did he do otherwise he ran grave risk, graver than he would[page 219] ever incur again."

When the duke entered the royal presence his voice trembled, so agitated was he and on the verge of breaking into a passion. He assumed a reverential attitude, but rough were mien and word as he demanded whether the king would keep the treaty of peace as it had been drafted, and whether he was ready to swear to it. "Yes" was the king's response. In truth, nothing had been added to the agreement made before Paris, or at least little as far as the Duke of Burgundy was concerned. As regarded the Duke of Normandy, it was stipulated that if he would renounce that province he should have Champagne and Brie besides other neighbouring territories for his share.

Then the duke asked if the king would accompany him to avenge the outrage committed upon his cousin the bishop.

"To which demand the king gave assent as soon as the peace was sworn. He was quite satisfied to go to Liege and with a small or large escort, just as the duke preferred. This answer pleased the duke immensely. In was brought the treaty, out of the king's coffer was taken the piece of the true cross, the very one carried by Saint Charlemagne, called the Cross of Victory, and thereupon the two swore the peace.

"This was now October 14th. In a minute the bells pealed out their joy throughout Peronne and all men were glad. It hath pleased the king since to attribute the credit of this pacification to me."

There was undoubtedly an immense sense of relief[page 220] in Peronne when this degree of accommodation was reached. The duke was unwilling, however, to have too much rejoicing in his domains until he had ascertained for himself the state of Liege. Among the letters despatched from Peronne this October 14th, was the following to the magistrates of Ypres:¹⁶

"Dear and well beloved friends, considering that we have to-day made peace and convention with Monseigneur the king, and that for this reason you might be inclined to let off fire-works and make other manifestations of joy, we hasten to advise you that ... our pleasure is you shall not permit fireworks or assemblies in our town of Ypres on account of the said peace until we have subdued the people of Liege, and avenged the said outrage [described above]. This with God's aid we intend to do. We are on the point of departure with all our forces for Liege. Beloved, may our Lord protect you.

"Written in our castle of Peronne, October 14, 1468."

A certain G. Ruple conveyed his own impressions to the magistrates of Ypres, possibly managing to slip them under the same cover.¹⁷

"To-day, at about 10 o'clock, peace was concluded between the king and Monseigneur, and also between the king and the Duke of Berry. Here, bells are ringing and the Te Deum is sung. It is generally believed that Monseigneur will depart to-morrow. God deserves thanks for the result, for I assure you that last[page 221] night the outlook was not clear." ¹⁸

The king wrote as follows to his confidential lieutenant:

"PERONNE, October 14th.

"Monseigneur the grand master, you are already informed how there has been discussion in my council and that of my brother-in-law of Burgundy, as to the best manner of adjusting certain differences between him and me. It went so far that in order to arrive at a conclusion I came to this town of Peronne. Here we have busied ourselves with the requisitions passing between us, so that to-day we have, thanks to our Lord, in the presence of all the nobles of the blood, prelates and other great and notable personages in great numbers, both from my suite and from his, sworn peace solemnly on the true cross, and promised to aid, defend and succour each other for ever. Also on the same cross we have ratified the treaty of Arras with its corrections and other points which seemed productive of peace and amity.

"Immediately after this the Duke of Burgundy ordered thanksgivings in the churches of his lands, and in this town he has already had great solemnity. And because my brother of Burgundy has heard that the Liegeois have taken prisoner my cousin the bishop of Liege, whom he is determined to deliver as quickly as possible, he has besought me as a favour to him, and also because the bishop is my kinsman whom I ought to aid, to accompany him to Liege, not far from here. This I have agreed to, and have chosen as my escort a portion of the troops under[page 222] monseigneur the constable, in the hopes of a speedy return by the aid of God.

"And because it is for my weal and that of my subjects I write to you at once, because I am sure you will be pleased, and that you will order like solemnities. Moreover, monseigneur the grand master, as I lately wrote to you, pray as quickly as possible disband my arriere ban together with the free lances, and do every possible thing for the mass of poor folks; appoint well-to-do men as leaders in every bailiwick and district. Above all, see to it that they do not indulge in any new and startling conduct. That done, if you wish to come to Bohan, to be nearer me, I would be glad, so as to be able to provide for any further action that may arise. Written at Peronne October 14th.

"Loys

MEURIN.

"To our dear and beloved cousin the Count of Dammartin, grand master of France." ¹⁹

Dammartin thought that this letter was phrased for the purpose of passing Charles's censorship. He took the liberty of disregarding his master's orders; the troops were not disbanded, and he held himself in readiness to go to fetch the errant monarch if he did not return speedily from the enemy's country. His letter to the king and the unwritten additions delivered by his confidential messengers terrified his liege lest too much zeal on his behalf in France might work him ill in[page 223] Liege. A week later Louis writes again:

NAMUR, Oct. 22nd.

"MONSEIGNEUR THE GRAND MASTER:

"I have received your letter by Sire du Bouchage. Be assured that I make this journey to Liege under no constraint, and that I never took any journey with such good heart as I do this. Since God and Our Lady have given me grace to be friends with Monseigneur of Burgundy, be sure that never shall our rabble over there take arms against me. Monseigneur the grand master, my friend, you have proved that you love me, and you have done me the greatest service that you can, and there is another service that you can do. The people of Monseigneur of Burgundy think that I mean to deceive them, and people there [in France] think that I am a prisoner. Distrust between the two would be my ruin.

"Monseigneur, as to the quarters of your men, you know what we planned, you and I, touching the action of Armagnac. It seems to me that you ought to send your people straight ahead in that direction and I will furnish you four or five captains as soon as I am out of this, and you can make what choice you will. M. the grand master, my friend, come, I beg you, to Laon and await me there. Send me a messenger the minute you arrive and I will let you have frequent news. Be assured that as soon as the Liegeois are subdued, on the morrow I will depart, for Monsg. of Burgundy is resolved to urge me to go as soon as he has finished his work at Liege, and he desires my return more than I do. Francois Dunois will tell you what good cheer we are making. Adieu, monseigneur,[page 224] etc.

"Writ at Namur, Oct. 22nd.

"LOUIS

"TOUSSAINT.

"To our dear and beloved cousin the Count of Dammartin, grand master of France." ²⁰

Letters of the same date to Rochefoucauld and others also declare that Louis goes most gladly with his dear brother of Burgundy and that the affair will not require much time. To Cardinal Balue he writes only a few words, telling him that the messenger will be more communicative.

Between Peronne and Namur did the party turn aside to visit the young Duchess of Burgundy, either at Hesdin or at Aire? Such is the conjecture of a learned Belgian editor, and he carries his surmise further in suggesting that in this brief sojourn was performed Chastellain's mystery of "The Peace of Peronne."²¹ Perhaps these verses, if put in the mouths of Louis and Charles, may have pleased the princely spectators of the dramatic poem. Mutual admiration was the key-note of these flowery speeches while the other dramatis personæ expressed unstinted admiration[page 225] for the wonderful deed accomplished by these two pure souls who have sworn peace when they might have brought dire war on their innocent subjects.

"Never did David, nor Ogier, nor Roland, that proud knight, nor the great Charlemagne, nor the proud Duke of Mayence, nor Mongleive, the heir, from whom issued noble fruit, nor King Arthur, nor Oliver, nor Rossillon, nor Charbonnier in their dozens of victories approach or touch with hand or foot the work I treat of."

"Charles, be assured that Louis will be the re-establisher and provider of all that touches your honour and peace between you and him. That he will ever be appreciator of you and avenger, a nourisher of joy and love in repairing all that my predecessor did.

"And Charles, who loves his honour as much as his soul, wishes nothing better than to serve you and this realm and to extol your house. For I know that is the reason why I have glory and reputation. Then if it please God and Our Lady, my body will keep from blame."

One stanza, indeed, uttered by Louis strikes a note of doubt: "Charles, so many debates may occur, so many incidents and accidents in our various actions, that a rupture may be dreaded."

Vehemently did the duke repudiate the bare[page 226] possibility of a new breach between him and his liege. The whole is a pæan at a love feast. If the two together heard their counterfeits express such perfect fidelity, how Louis XI. must have laughed to himself behind his mask of forced courtesy! Charles, on the other hand, was quite capable of taking it all seriously, wholly unconscious that he had not cut the lion's claws for once and all.

[Footnote 1: See Lavisse ivii., 356.]

[Footnote 2: The letters of convocation bear the date February 26, 1467, o.s. Tournay elected four deputies. By April 30th, they had returned home, and on May 2d they made a report. The items of expenditure are very exact. So hard had they ridden that a fine horse costing eleven crowns was used up and was sold for four crowns. M. Van der Broeck, archivist of Tournay, extracted various items from the register of the Council. See Kervyn's note. Chastellain, v., 387.]

[Footnote 3: See Lavisse ivii., 356.]

[Footnote 4: Dordrecht was not among them. Her deputies held that it was illegal for them to go to The Hague. Some time later Charles received the oaths at Dordrecht. (Wagenaar, Vaderlandsche Hist., iv., 101.]