1472.

DUKE OF BERRI POISONED.

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his daughter and heir: she was eagerly sought by the king's brother, late duke of Berri and Normandy, now duke of Guyenne. Burgundy, who was chagrined by the prospect that his rich inheritance might pass into the hands of another race, would by no means promote this marriage, though he did not object to the suitor. The duke of Guyenne urged the king to war, hoping that Burgundy's distress would compel him to grant his daughter's hand in order to obtain friends and aid. The constable St. Pol excited the king against duke Charles for the same reason, also for the sake of the emolument and importance of which peace deprived him. War was declared. The count de St. Pol won St. Quentin for the king by treachery; and Amiens was lost to the duke by the same means. A truce followed, in which Charles and Louis communicated with each other, and found they were both tricked by the constable. A complicated intrigue ensued; the duke of Burgundy consenting to give his daughter to the duke of Guyenne, provided that he, with the duke of Britany, the constable, and Edward of England, would unite against the king. Louis was here well nigh over-reached for the second time. To appease Charles, who advanced with a powerful army, he agreed to give up Amiens and St. Quentin, as also the constable, to the duke of Burgundy; the latter abandoning his allies, the dukes of Britany and Guyenne. Both determined not to execute the part of the treaty which was disadvantageous to them. Charles wrote to the dukes of Britany and Guyenne, declaring that he would not abandon them. Louis either extricated himself, or was extricated, from all difficulties respecting his brother, by the death of that prince, which took place suddenly and opportunely. A poisoned peach, which was presented to him, and of which he himself and his mistress partook, occasioned the death of both. Louis, who always compensated a crime by a signal act of piety, invented on this occasion the angelus, or midday prayer to the Virgin. After such a passage of history as the foregoing, one may be permitted to doubt

that Italy was the original birthplace of political treachery and intrigue. Machiavel, by whose writings France is supposed to have become infected with duplicity and the habitual dereliction of all public morals, was only born about this period; and truly Louis XI., the constable St. Pol, and even the headlong Charles of Burgundy himself, seem personages most qualified to afford a lesson to the Florentine secretary himself.

The death of the duke of Guyenne broke off the treaty. Charles was enraged, and entered Picardy, ravaging and massacring the population by way of revenge. His cruelty here acquired him the name of Charles the Terrible. He was repulsed, however, in an attack on Beauvais. A woman named Jeanne Hachette was the first to give the alarm, and to repel the Burgundians. An annual procession, in which females take precedence, still subsists in memory of her valour. A truce concluded the campaign.

It was manifest, that either from want of military hardihood and skill, or from the lukewarmness of soldiers and commanders, a decisive blow could not be struck between France and Burgundy. Both parties grew weary of bringing armies into the field to no purpose; and although nominal war and real enmity subsisted, the rival princes had leisure to turn their views in another direction. Louis was at variance with the king of Aragon respecting the province of Roussillon, which he held by a species of mortgage, and which the Aragonese had attacked. A compromise was effected, the province being divided between the competitors. But the object to which the French king chiefly applied himself was the humbling and punishing of his refractory nobles. The duke of Alençon was thrown into prison, and his duchy confiscated: the count of Armagnac, grandson of the famous constable, was next aimed at; but, shut up in Lectour, he defied the power and vengeance of the king. The royal troops besieged the place, and its reduction was found impracticable: crms were therefore offered to the count. During the

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ARMAGNAC ASSASSINATED.

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negotiation the besieged relaxed in their vigilance, and the king's general treacherously attacking, Lectour was carried, and the inhabitants were massacred. Two officers suddenly entered the apartment where the count and his countess were sitting. The former saluted them. They replied by striking the count, and putting an end to his life. His unfortunate wife, saved for the moment, was found to be enceinte. To her a potion was administered to destroy in embryo the heir of the house of Armagnac; and it also proved fatal to the

countess.

The duke of Burgundy was weary of playing the subordinate part of a feudatory of France. He surpassed the king himself in wealth and power, and yet was curbed and humbled in dignity by a suzerain, and especially by Louis, who took every opportunity to thwart and encroach upon his overgrown vassal. Το conclude a treaty which should define the duties and at the same time guard the independence of the latter was impossible. Charles, seeing no other way to extricate himself from this awkward and mortifying state, aspired to sovereignty. He hoped that by extending his dominions on the side of Germany he might be able to renounce his subjection to France, and induce the emperor to acknowledge him as an independent sovereign. The bribe by which he hoped to influence that potentate was certainly a great one: it was the hand of his daughter and heiress Mary, who, if united to Maximilian, the emperor's son, would convey to the house of Austria the extensive territories of Burgundy. By purchase Charles obtained the duchy of Gueldres, as also the county of La Ferrette and a part of Alsace, from the duke of Austria. He meditated to seize upon Lorraine, of which the last duke of the house of Anjou Ihad died without heirs. Réné count of Vaudemont pretended to the succession of that duchy in right of his mother, daughter of Réné d'Anjou. The people of the province preferred him to the duke of Burgundy, and opposed the latter, who failed in getting possession of

the town of Metz. Still Charles pursued his ambitious schemes. An interview took place between him and the emperor Frederic, in which the duke was to have been declared king of Belgic Gaul, and lieutenant-general of the empire: Charles, however, here defeated his own views by his ostentation and finesse. The emperor and his ministers were disgusted with both. Charles wished to have his title acknowledged ere he allowed his daughter to be betrothed; and, whilst he held out stubbornly on this point, the emperor departed abruptly without leave-taking. Thus did Charles over-reach himself. All the rich regalia that he had prepared to honour his new dignity became useless.

The duke of Burgundy resolved not to be wanting in the pride and arrogance of a monarch, though the title was denied him. His new empire was to include the whole course of the Rhine from its source. Sigismund duke of Austria abandoned to him willingly those claims of sovereignty over Switzerland which he himself could not make good. Hagenbach, Charles's governor in his new province, used every species of extortion and violence towards the Swiss; and the duke, when appeal was made to him, offered insult in lieu of redress. "We must skin this bear of Berne," said he, "and clothe ourselves in his fur." While causes of irritation between the duke and the Swiss formed a prelude to war, and while the enmity of the latter towards Louis still continued so inveterate that an alliance was formed between him and Edward of England for conveying the crown of France to the latter, Charles and Louis came to a momentary understanding for the sake of avenging themselves on the constable St. Pol, who had betrayed each in turn, and was equally odious to both. The constable, who had possessed himself of St. Quentin, made overtures to both parties, and offered the town to make peace with either. He had an interview with the king on the bridge of Noyon, with a wooden barrier raised between them, which was adduced as a criminal piece of arrogance on the part of St. Pol. He afterwards fled to

1475. WAR OF CHARLES AGAINST THE SWISS. 155

the protection of Burgundy; but the duke delivered him to the king, who caused him to be tried before his parliament, and afterwards beheaded in the Place de Grève.

Edward IV. was induced to invade France by the duke of Burgundy, who, instead of joining with the English, kept his troops employed in the conquest of Lorraine. Edward, who loved pleasure even more than glory, was bought off by Louis, who observed on the occasion, that no sum could be ill expended in bribing the English to keep within their isle.* "As to money, that can be regained," said Louis; "but never will I yield up towns or lands to such enemies." He at the same time treated with the Swiss, paid them subsidies, and even succeeded so far in exciting enemies to Burgundy, that he reconciled those free mountaineers with the house of Austria, and united both in league against the duke. The inhabitants of La Ferrette were excited to rebel against Charles's lieutenant, Hagenbach, whom they took and beheaded. The Swiss aided the insurgents, declared war against the duke, and defeated his troops at Hericourt.

Charles of Burgundy had never yet encountered an enemy superior to him. The gallant knights of France and the stubborn burgesses of Flanders had alike been quelled by him in the field. His rage was proportionate to his surprise on finding himself braved by the Swiss mountaineers. He marched against them from Lorraine, the conquest of which he had completed, at the head of 40,000 men. Charles's natural pride of character was inflated by the study of the Roman classics, the taste for which was just then reviving and superseding that for feudal romance. The reader must be aware that the fall of the Greek empire and the invention of printing were events anterior to this period by some years, and had contributed to render even more

* Six hundred pipes of excellent wine formed part of the bribe which tempted Edward upon this occasion; this caused many railleries against the English.