Charles the Bold Part 21

[Footnote 1: _See_ Lavisse iv^{ii}.,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 iv^[ii]., 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.]

[Footnote 5: Treaty of Ancenis, September 10, 1468. _See_ Lavisse, iv^[ii].] One of the results of the War of Public Weal was that St.

Pol was appointed constable of France.]

[Footnote 6: The original is in the Mss. de Baluze, Paris, Bibl. Nat.; Lenglet, iii., 19.]

[Footnote 7: Commines and a letter to the magistrates of Ypres are the basis of this narrative. (Gachard, _Doc. ined._, i., 196.) There is, however, a ma.s.s of additional material both contemporaneous and commentating. _See also_ Michelet, Lavisse, Kirk, etc. Chastellain's MS. is lost.]

[Footnote 8: _See_ Lavisse, iv^[ii]., 397.]

[Footnote 9: Ludwig v. Diesbach, (_See_ Kirk, i., 559.) The author was a page in Louis's train, who afterwards played a part in Swiss affairs.]

[Footnote 10: It was never captured until Wellington took it in 1814.]

[Footnote 11: Commines, ii., ch. vii.]

[Footnote 12: The bishop did indeed meet his death at the hands of the mob, but it was many years later.]

[Footnote 13: _Le roi ... se voyait loge, rasibus d'une grosse tour ou un Comte de Vermandois fit mourir un sien predecesseur Roy de France_.

(Commines, ii., ch. vii.)]

[Footnote 14: _Memoires_, ii., ch. ix.]

[Footnote 15: Undoubtedly Commines wishes it to be inferred that this was he. The main narrative followed here is Commines, whose memoirs remain, as Ste.-Beuve says, the definitive history of the times. There are the errors inevitable to any contemporary statement. Meyer, to be sure, says, apropos of an incident incorrectly reported, _Falsus in hoc ut in pluribus historicus_. Kervyn de Lettenhove three centuries later is also severe. _See_, too, "L'autorite historique de Ph. de Commynes," Mandrot, _Rev. Hist_., 73.]

[Footnote 16: Gachard, _Doc. ined._, i., 199.]

[Footnote 17: _Ibid._, 200.]

[Footnote 18: _Waer ic certiffiere dat het dezen nacht niet wel claer ghestaen heeft._]

[Footnote 19: _Lettres de Louis XI_, iii., 289. The king apparently never resented the part played by Dammartin when he was dauphin. His letters to him are very intimate.]

[Footnote 20: _Lettres_, iii., 295. (Toussaint is probably Toustain.)]

[Footnote 21: Kervyn ed., _Oeuvres de Chastellain_, vii., xviii. _See_ poem, _ibid._, 423. The MS. in the Laurentian Library at Florence bears this line: "Here follows a mystery made because of the said peace of good intention in the thought that it would be observed by the parties." Hesdin is, however, a long way out of the route between Peronne and Namur, where the party was on October 14th. It would hardly seem possible for journey and visit in so brief a time.]

CHAPTER XII

AN EASY VICTORY

1468

It was in the midst of heavy rains that the journey was made to Namur and then on to the environs of Liege. Grim was the weather, befitting, in all probability, Charles's own mood. The king's escort was confined to very few besides the Scottish guard, but a body of three hundred troopers was permitted to follow him at a distance, while the faithful Dammartin across the border kept himself closely informed of every incident connected with the march that his scouts could gather, and in readiness to fall upon Burgundian possessions at a word of alarm, while he restrained his ardour for the moment in obedience to Louis's anxious command.

By the fourth week of October the Franco-Burgundian party were settled close to Liege in straggling camps, separated from each other by hills and uneven ground. Long was the discussion in council meeting as to the best mode of procedure. Liege was absolutely helpless in the face of this coalition. Wide breaches made her walls useless. Moats she had never possessed, for digging was well-nigh impossible on her rocky site covered by mud and slime from the overflow of the Meuse. On account of this evident weakness, the king advised dismissing half the army as needless, advice that was not only rejected immediately but which excited Charles's doubts of the king's good faith. Over a week pa.s.sed and feeble Liege continued obstinate, while each division of the army manoeuvred to be first in the a.s.sault for the sake of the plunder. But advance was very difficult, for the soldiers were impeded in their movements by the slime. Wild were some of the night skirmishes over the uneven, slippery ground and amidst the little sheltering hills.

On one occasion, "a great many were hurt and among the rest the Prince of Orange (whom I had forgotten to name before), who behaved that day like a courageous gentleman, for he never moved foot off the place he first possessed.

The duke, too, did not lack in courage but he failed sometimes in order giving, and to say the truth, he behaved himself not so advisedly as many wished because of the king's presence."[1]

There is no doubt that Charles entertained increasingly sinister suspicions of his guest. He thought the king might either try to enter the city ahead of him and manage to placate his ancient allies by a specious explanation, or else he might succeed in effecting his escape without fulfilling his compact. At last Charles appointed Sunday, October 30th, for an a.s.sault. On the 29th, his own quarters were in a little suburb of mean, low houses, with rough ground and vineyards separating his camp from the city. Between his house and that of the king, both humble dwellings, was an old granary, occupied by a picked Burgundian force of three hundred men under special injunctions to keep close watch over the royal guest and see that he played no sudden trick. To further this purpose of espionage, they had made a breach in the walls with heavy blows of their picks.

The men were wearied with all their marching and skirmishing, and in order to have them in fighting trim on the morrow, Charles had ordered all alike to turn in and refresh themselves. The exhausted troops gladly obeyed this injunction. Charles was disarmed and sleeping, so, too, were Philip de Commines and the few attendants that lay within the narrow ducal chamber. Only a dozen pickets mounted guard in the room over Charles's little apartment, and kept their tired eyes open by playing at dice.

On that Sat.u.r.day night when Charles was thus prudently gathering strength for the final tussle, the people of Liege also indulged in repose, counting on Sunday being a day of rest, that is, the major part of the burgher folk did within city limits. But another plan was on foot among some of the inhabitants of an outlying region. An attack on the Burgundian camp was planned by a band from Franchimont, a wild and wooded district, south of the episcopal see. The natives there had all the characteristics of mountaineers, although the heights of their rugged country reached only modest alt.i.tudes.[2]

These invaders were fortunate in obtaining as guides the owners of the very houses requisitioned for the lodgings of the two princes.

Straight to their goal they progressed through paths quite unknown to the foe, and therefore unwatched. The highlanders made a mistake in not rushing headlong to the royal lodgings, where in the first confusion they might have accomplished their design upon the lives of Louis and of Charles or at least have taken the two prisoners. But a pause at a French n.o.bleman's tent created a disturbance which roused the archers in the granary. The latter sallied out, to meet with a fierce counter-attack. In order to confuse them the mountaineers echoed the Burgundian cries, _Vive Bourgogne, vive le roy et tuez, tuez_, and they were not always immediately identified by their harsh Liege accent.

The highlanders were far outnumbered by the Burgundians, and it was only by dint of their desperate courage and by reason of the pitchy darkness and of the locality with its unknown roughness that the former inflicted the damage that they did.

Commines and his fellows helped the duke into his cuira.s.s, and stood by his person, while the king's bodyguard of Scottish archers "proved themselves good fellows, who never budged from their master's feet and shot arrow upon arrow out into the darkness, wounding more Burgundians than Liegeois." The first to fall was Charles's own host, the guide of the marauders to his own cottage door. There were many more victims and no mercy. It was, indeed, an encounter characterised by the pa.s.sions of war and the conditions of a mere burglarious attack on private houses.

Quaking with fear was the king. He thought that if the duke should now fail to make a complete conquest of Liege, his own fate would hang in the balance. At a hasty council meeting held that night, Charles was very doubtful as to the expediency of carrying out his proposed a.s.sault upon the city. Very distrustful of each other were the allies, a fact that caused Philip de Commines to comment,[3] "scarcely fifteen days had elapsed since these two had sworn a definitive peace and solemnly promised to support each other loyally. But confidence could not enter in any way."

Charles gave Louis permission to retire to Namur and wait until the duke had reduced the recalcitrant burghers once for all. Louis thought it wiser to keep close to Charles's own person until they parted company for ever, and the morrow found him in the duke's company as he marched on to Liege.

"My opinion is, [says Commines], that he would have been wise to depart that night. He could have done it for he had a hundred archers of his guard, various gentlemen of his household, and, near at hand, three hundred men-at-arms. Doubtless he was stayed by considerations of honour. He did not wish to be accused of cowardice."

Olivier de la Marche, also present as the princely pair entered Liege, heard the king say: "March on, my brother, for you are the luckiest prince alive." As they entered the gates, Louis shouted l.u.s.tily, "_Vive Bourgogne_," to the infinite dismay of his former friends, the burghers of Liege.

The remainder of the history of that dire Sunday morning differs from that of other a.s.saults only in harrowing details, and the extremity of the pitilessness and ferocity manifested by the conquerors. Charles had previously spared churches, and protected the helpless. Above all he had severely punished all ill treatment of respectable women.

Little trace of this former restraint was to be seen on this occasion.

The inhabitants were destroyed and banished by dozens. Those who fled from their homes leaving their untasted breakfasts to be eaten by the intruding soldiers, those who were scattered through the numerous churches, those who attempted to defend the breaches in the walls--all alike were treated without mercy.

The Cathedral of St. Lambert, Charles did endeavour to protect. "The duke himself went thither, and one man I saw him kill with his own hand, whereupon all the company departed and that particular church was not pillaged, but at the end the men who had taken refuge there were captured as well as the wealth of the church."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVIER DE LA MARCHE

(FROM MS. REPRODUCED IN MeM. COURONNeS, ETC., PAR L'ACAD,

ROYALE DE BELGIQUE VOL. XLIX.)]

At about midday Charles joined Louis at the episcopal palace, where the latter had found apartments better suited to his rank than the rude huts that had sheltered him for the past few days. The king was in good spirits and enjoyed his dinner in spite of the unsavoury scenes that were still in progress about him. He manifested great joy in the successful a.s.sault, and was lavish in his praises of the duke's courage, taking care that his admiring phrases should be promptly reported to his cousin.[4] His one great preoccupation, however, was to return to his own realm.