In “all the pomp and pageantry of power,” however, Charles was every inch a king—magnificent in his hospitality, exceedingly ceremonious and punctilious in court etiquette, and fond of showing his vast power on every occasion. On the other hand, he was profoundly ignorant of the fact that the real source of his wealth and strength was in the great industrial communes of Flanders, Brabant and Liége, and the cruelty with which he destroyed the cities of Liége and Dinant cost him the affection and good will of all his people. His great antagonist was Louis XI of France—also one of the most picturesque figures in history—but the exact antithesis of Charles in almost every respect. While Charles never received a delegation unless seated on a throne, the loftiness and grandeur of which filled every eye, Louis dressed plainly—often wearing the grey cloak of a pilgrim, and almost invariably a pilgrim’s hat, with a leaden image of some saint in the hat-band. On one occasion, when he paid a visit to his subjects in Normandy, riding in company with the gorgeous Duke of Burgundy, the peasants exclaimed, “Is that a King of France? Why, the whole outfit, man and horse, is not worth twenty francs!”
Charles, like his father, held his ducal court wherever he might happen to be—both princes often carrying a lengthy train of baggage, including even furniture and tapestries, from one castle to another. Bruges, however, is identified with some of the most important events of his career, and he held his court there much oftener than at the ancestral capital of Burgundy, Dijon. During the last years of the reign of his father, Philip the Good, Charles acted as Regent, and it was during this period of his rule that he astonished and terrified Europe by the ferocity with which he avenged an insult to his parents’ honour by utterly destroying the prosperous city of Dinant and slaughtering most of its male inhabitants. On his accession to the ducal throne, however, the great communes of Ghent, Bruges, Malines and Brussels were able to extort from their new Duke all of the privileges that his father had taken away during his long reign. Charles granted these with fury in his heart, vowing openly that before long he would humble these presumptuous burghers. Fortunately for the liberties of the Flemish towns, their Duke’s attentions were speedily called elsewhere and he found no opportunity to carry out his threats.
Fomented by the emissaries of Louis XI, the turbulent citizens of Liége—already a large and prosperous manufacturing town, as advanced in the metallurgical arts as the Flemish cities were in the textile industries—rose in insurrection against their Bishop-Prince, an ally of Charles. With an army of one hundred thousand feudal levies Charles quickly suppressed this revolt. The following year Louis ventured to place himself in Charles’ power by paying him a visit at his powerful castle of Péronne. This famous historical incident is brilliantly described by Sir Walter Scott in Quentin Durward. To the king’s alarm and very extreme personal danger, the people of Liége took the moment of this visit to rise again. Charles was furious, and, not unjustly considering Louis to be the author of this attack on his authority, had that monarch locked up in a room in the castle. Nor was he placated until Louis signed a treaty still further extending the power of the Dukes of Burgundy in France, and agreed to join Charles in the expedition to punish his unruly subjects. This time the city after being captured was given over to the half-savage Burgundian soldiery to be sacked, some forty thousand of its inhabitants perishing.
Returning to Flanders, Charles bitterly denounced the cautious policy of the burghers in refusing to pay tax levies for his armies unless they knew how the money was to be spent. “Heavy and hard Flemish heads that you are,” he cried to a delegation from Ghent, “you always remain fixed in your bad opinions, but know that others are as wise as you. You Flemings, with your hard heads, have always either despised or hated your princes. I prefer being hated to being despised. Take care to attempt nothing against my highness and lordship, for I am powerful enough to resist you. It would be the story of the iron and the earthen pots.”
Presently Louis, repudiating the recent treaty as being extorted by force, invaded Charles’ dominions and captured several cities on the Somme. Charles sought to retake them and was repulsed both at Amiens and Beauvais, the defenders at the latter place being urged to stronger resistance by Jeanne Hachette, one of the heroic figures of French history. Charles now turned his attention to the German side of his dominions, and here also the implacable enmity of Louis stirred up enemies for him in every direction. In Alsace the people rose in revolt and slew the cruel governor Charles had set over them, while the Swiss defeated the Marshal of Burgundy. Charles set forth to re-establish his authority with an army of thirty thousand men, the flower of his feudal levies. The Swiss, alarmed, sued for peace, assuring the powerful Duke that there was more gold in the spurs and bridles of his horsemen than could be found in all of Switzerland.
Charles, however, was bent on punishing these impudent mountaineers and ordered the invasion of their country. The defenders of the little fortress of Granson surrendered on the approach of his army, but in flagrant violation of the terms he had just granted the Duke of Burgundy ordered the entire garrison to be hanged. This act was speedily avenged, for the Swiss a few days later utterly routed the Burgundian forces just outside of Granson. The mountaineers in this battle advanced in a solid phalanx against which Charles’ horsemen and archers could make no impression. The blow to the pride and prestige of the Duke was far more serious than the loss of the engagement and the scattering of his army. With great difficulty he raised fresh levies, the Flemish communes granting aid only on condition that no further subsidies should be demanded for six years to come. The battle of Granson took place March 2, 1476. By June he had raised another and a larger army, and on the 22nd met the Swiss again at Morat. On reviewing his host before the battle, Charles is said to have exclaimed, “By St. George, we shall now have vengeance!” but the vengeance was not to be always on one side, for the Swiss, making their battle-cry “Granson! Granson!” in remembrance of their countrymen, whom Charles had treacherously slain, almost annihilated his army. The Swiss showed no mercy and took no prisoners, while the number of killed on the Burgundian side amounted to eighteen thousand. Charles escaped with his life, accompanied by a small body of his knights.
For a time it seemed as if his rage and despair at these two defeats would cause the proud Duke to lose his reason, nor could his threats or entreaties secure more assistance from Flanders. He managed, however, to keep the field, and with a small force sat down to besiege Nancy—which had been lost to him again after Morat. The town held out stubbornly, as all towns did, now that Charles’ cruelty and treachery to those who surrendered were known, and the Burgundian forces suffered much hardship from the cold, for it was now mid-winter. On January 5th Charles gave battle to an advancing force of Swiss, was again crushed and the greater part of his little army killed. After the battle the Duke could not be found, and no man knew what had become of him. The following day a page reported that he had seen his master fall, and could find the place. He led the searchers to a little pond called the Etang de St. Jean. Here, by the border of a little stream, they found a dozen despoiled bodies, naked and frozen in the mud and ice. One by one they turned these over. “Alas,” said the little page presently, “here is my good master!” Disfigured, with two fearful death wounds, and with part of his face eaten by wolves, it was indeed the body of the great Duke.
Even his enemies did honour to the dead prince. Clothed in a robe of white satin, with a crimson satin mantle, his body was borne in state into the town he had vainly sought to conquer, and placed in a velvet bed under a canopy of black satin. His remains were interred in the church of St. George at Nancy, where they remained for more than fifty years. The Emperor, Charles V, then had them brought to Bruges and placed in the church of St. Donatian. His son, Philip II, removed them, five years later, to the wonderful shrine in the Church of Notre Dame where they remained until the French Revolution, when they were scattered to the winds as the bones of a tyrant. The sarcophagus, however, of the Duke and his gentle daughter, Marie, still remain, as we have seen, and are among the finest in existence.
The death of the powerful Duke of Burgundy made a profound impression throughout Europe, and still remains, as Mr. Boulger in his admirable History of Belgium says, “one of the tragedies of all history.” His downfall was mainly due to the implacable hostility of Louis XI, whom he had once publicly humiliated at Péronne and affected at all times to despise. Many of the Swiss and Germans who fought against him in his last fatal campaign were hired mercenaries in the pay of the King of France, while some of his most trusted followers and advisers were traitors in constant correspondence with his wily and unscrupulous antagonist. Had Charles sought to conciliate his great Flemish communes instead of intimidate them his reign might have been prolonged by their powerful aid, and his dream of establishing a kingdom of Burgundy have been realised. As it was, he failed signally in most of his undertakings, and with all his fury and vainglory and cruelty lost in ten years the huge power that his father had taken fifty years to accumulate.