‘If we take from Monstrelet what has been improperly attributed to him, it is but just to restore that which legally belongs to him. According to the register of the Cordeliers of Cambray, and the Memoriaux of Jean le Robert, he had written the history of the war of the Ghent-men against the duke of Burgundy. Now the events of this war, which began in the month of April 1452, and was not terminated before the end of July in the following year, are related with much minuteness in the third volume.[[9]] After the authorities above quoted, we cannot doubt that Monstrelet was the author, if not of the whole account, at least of the greater part of it: I say ‘part of it,’ for he could not have narrated the end of this war, since peace between the Ghent-men and their prince was not concluded until the 31st July, and Monstrelet was buried on the 20th. It is not even probable that he would have had time to collect the events that happened at the beginning of the month, unless we suppose that he died suddenly; whence I think it may be conjectured, that Monstrelet ceased to write towards the end of June, when the castle of Helsebecque was taken by the duke of Burgundy, and that the history of the war was written by another hand, who may have arranged the materials which Monstrelet had collected, but had not reduced to order.

‘There seems here to arise a sort of contradiction between Matthieu de Coucy, who fixes, as I have said, the conclusion of Monstrelet’s writing at the year 1444, and the register of the Cordeliers, which agrees with the Memoriaux of Jean le Robert; but this contradiction will vanish, if we reflect that the history of the revolt of Ghent, in 1453, is an insulated matter, having no connexion with the history of the reign of Charles VII. and that it cannot be considered as forming part of the two first volumes, from which it is detached by a space of eight years. Matthieu de Coucy, therefore, who may not, perhaps, have known of this historical fragment, was entitled to say, that the chronicles written by Monstrelet ended at the year 1444.

‘The continuator of these chronicles having reported the conclusion of the war between the Ghent-men and their prince, then copies indiscriminately from the Grandes Chroniques, or from Jean Chartier, with more or less exactness, as may readily be discovered on collating them, as I have done. He only adds some facts relative to the history of Burgundy, and carries the history to the death of Charles VII. This part, which is more interesting than the former, because the writer has added to the chronicles facts in which they were deficient, is more defective in the arrangement. Several events that relate to the general history of the realm are told twice over, and in succession,—first in an abridged state, and then more minutely,—and sometimes with differences so great that it seems impossible that both should have been written by the same person.[[10]]

‘This defect, however, we cannot without injustice attribute to the continuator of Monstrelet,—for it is clearly perceptible that he only treats of the general history of France in as far as it is connected with that of Burgundy, and we cannot suppose that he would repeat twice events foreign to the principal object of his work. It is much more natural to believe that the abridged accounts are his, and that the first copiers, thinking they were too short, have added the whole detail of these articles from the Grandes Chroniques or from Jean Chartier, whence he had been satisfied with merely making extracts.

‘From the death of Charles VII. in 1461, to that of Philip duke of Burgundy, we meet with no more of these repetitions. The historian (for he then deserves the name) leaves off copying the Chronicles, and advances without a guide: consequently, he is very frequently bewildered. I shall not attempt to notice his faults, which are the same with those of Monstrelet, and I could but repeat what I have said before. There is, however, one which is peculiar to him, and which pervades the whole work: it is an outrageous partiality for the house of Burgundy.

‘We may excuse him for having written, under the title of a General History of France, the particular history of Burgundy, and for having only treated of that of France incidentally, in as far as it interested the burgundian princes. We may, indeed, more readily pardon him for having painted Charles VII. as a voluptuous monarch, and Louis XI. sometimes as a tyrant, at others as a deep and ferocious politician, holding in contempt the most sacred engagements. But the fidelity of history required that he should not have been silent as to the vices of the duke of Burgundy and his son, who plunged France into an abyss of calamities, and that his predilection for these two princes should not burst forth in every page.

‘The person who continued this first part of the chronicles of Monstrelet has been hitherto unknown, but I believe a lucky accident has enabled me to discover him. Dom Berthod, a learned benedictine monk of the congregation of St Vanne, having employed himself for these many years in searching the libraries and ancient rolls in Flanders for facts relative to our history, has made a report with extracts from numerous manuscripts, of which we had only vague ideas. He has had the goodness to communicate some of them to me, and among others the chronicle of Jacques du Clercq,[[11]] which begins at 1448, and ends, like the continuator of Monstrelet, at the death of the duke of Burgundy in 1467. In order to give a general idea of the contents of the work, D. Berthod has copied, with the utmost exactness, the table of chapters composed by Jacques du Clercq himself, as he tells us in his prologue. I have compared this table and the extracts with the continuation of Monstrelet, and have observed such a similarity, particularly from the year 1453 to 1467, that I think it impossible for any two writers to be so exactly the same unless one had copied after the other.

‘As we do not possess the whole of this chronicle, I can but offer this as a very probable conjecture, which will be corroborated, when it is considered that Jacques du Clercq and the continuator of Monstrelet lived in the same country. The first resided in Arras; and by the minute details the second enters into concerning Flanders, we may judge that he was an inhabitant of that country. Some villages burnt, or events still less interesting, and unknown beyond the places where they happened, are introduced into his history. In like manner, we should discover without difficulty (if it were otherwise unknown), that the editor of the Grandes Chroniques was a monk of the abbey of St Denis, when he gravely relates, as an important event, that on such a day the scullion of the abbey was found dead in his bed,—and that a peasant of Clignancourt beat his wife until she died.

‘To these divers relations between the two writers, we must add the period when they wrote. We see by the preface of Jacques du Clercq, that he composed his history shortly after the death of Philip duke of Burgundy in 1467; and the continuator of Monstrelet, when speaking of the arrest of the bastard de Rubempré in Holland, whither he had been sent by Louis XI. says, that the bastard was a prisoner at the time he was writing, ‘at the end of February 1468, before Easter;’ that is to say, that he was at work on his history in the month of February 1469, according to our mode of beginning the year.

‘Whether this continuation be an abridgment of the chronicle of Jacques du Clercq or an original chronicle, it seems very clear that Monstrelet has been tried by the merits of this third volume, and that his reputation of being a party-writer has been grounded on the false opinion that he was the author of it.