CHAPTER XXI
The Terrible Duke and his Gentle Daughter
DURING the short reign of that sombre and fantastical hero Charles the Terrible, or, as he is generally called, Charles the Bold, things went on at Bruges in something of the same fashion as they had done in the days of his predecessor. There was much surface glory, a vast amount of rottenness within, and, added to this, a very general feeling of disquietude and a continuous undercurrent of grumbling, which, as time progressed, grew louder and louder, at the hazardous policy of the Duke, whose dream it was to restore the old Burgundian kingdom, or, at least, to free himself from the vassalage of France, and who used to ask with indignation whether it was a seemly thing for a lineal descendant of Charlemagne to acknowledge the suzerainty of Hugh Capet’s heirs.
There were gorgeous jousts and tournaments, when amid shouts of Noël, on Palm Sunday 1468, Charles made his solemn entry into Bruges, swore to maintain her rights and privileges, and held his first Chapter of the Golden Fleece in the Church of Notre Dame, where, by the way, the escutcheons of his knights are still hanging, and amongst them that of Edward IV. There was much feasting and merriment, too, when three months later he brought home his third bride, Edward’s sister, Margaret of York; but it was presently turned into tears and ashes by a sudden and virulent outbreak of plague, made more terrible by wild rumours that the nurses, impatient to grow rich on the spoils of their patients, had infected the wells and even the holy water stoops in the churches in order to spread the disease. There was much real distress when Warwick the King-maker, angered with Charles, because he had urged the citizens of London to oppose the restoration of Henry VI., surprised some Flemish vessels charged with wine from Saintonge, and blockaded the port of Sluys; great rejoicings when, two months later, the Lord of Ter-Vere encountered Warwick’s fleet and, after a terrible conflict, dispersed it, but which, in its turn, gave place to dismay at the fact, made manifest by the recent naval battles, that the Zwyn was shallower than ever.
Whereupon the estates of Flanders conferred as to remedial measures, and after much confabulation, and strenuous opposition on the ground of expense on the part of Ypres and Ghent, manufacturing towns, whose interests were not at stake, and the men of the Franc, pastoral folk, whom the matter in no way concerned, thanks to the support of Charles, a plan was at length adopted which its advocates averred would restore the harbour of Sluys to its former depth—to wit, the cutting of a dyke which closed an ancient channel by which the sea formerly ran into the port of Sluys, and towards the close of July 1470 it was put into execution.
Many there were who believed this scheme would be inefficacious, and after events justified them. Eighteen years later the Echevins of Bruges decided to re-make the dyke, seeing that the ‘Haven of Zwyn was closing up yet faster than of yore.’
Meanwhile Charles’s schemes of conquest were pressing harder and harder on his unfortunate subjects. In 1474 the Carthusian nuns of the Convent of St. Anne were forced to part with a portion of their property in order to pay their taxes, and the burghers grumbled louder than ever. The obstinate canons of St. Donatian went a step further; they absolutely refused payment, and were, in consequence, dragged to prison. In 1476 Charles made fresh demands, and the deputies of the estates of Flanders waited on him at Bruges to remonstrate, but after much haggling and many bitter words, granted a subsidy—a hundred thousand ridders and the pay of four thousand sergeants. Presently fresh defeat constrained him to ask for more, and this time the communes refused. The people, they said, were overwhelmed with taxes, no further succour of men or money would they afford him for any of his foreign wars, but if he should haply find himself in peril from either Swiss or Germans, they would risk their lives and goods to bring him back safely to Flanders. Traitors and rebels! thundered Charles, they should soon learn how terrible was his vengeance. Vain threat; on the 5th of January 1477 the defeat of Nancy put an end to all his dreams of conquest. In the first shock of battle the Burgundians were dashed to pieces, and in the dismay and confusion which followed the Duke had disappeared. No one knew what had become of him. Some said they had seen him streaming with blood, but still defending himself like a man. Others averred that at the moment of defeat he had turned tail and fled. Three days later they discovered in a frozen pond the remains of a naked human body, scarred with wounds and half-devoured by beasts of prey. On one finger was a ring which a humble member of the Duke’s household—the woman who washed his linen—fancied she recognized as having once been the property of her master. On this testimony the shattered fragments were said to be the body of Charles, and as such they were honourably buried in the Church of St. George at Nancy. They were not, however, suffered to rest there. More than fifty years later the Emperor Charles V. caused them to be brought to Bruges, and laid them up in the Church of St. Donatian. Five years afterwards his son, Philip II., translated them to a marvellous shrine in the Church of Notre Dame. Here they remained in peace till the close of the last century, when the iconoclasts of the Revolution scattered them, on the ground that they were the bones of a tyrant. May be they were, but it is equally likely that they were the relics of some humble toiler.
But to return to the epoch of Charles’s death, or, at all events, of his disappearance. ‘The people, the masses’—we are quoting from Kervyn—‘who had lately been astounded at the pomp and wealth of the great Burgundian Duke, and who had so long been accustomed to bend to his iron will, utterly failed to understand how so great a prince, the sovereign of so many realms, a man so redoubtable throughout all the West, could have been suddenly swallowed up with all his glory in a pit which his own foolhardiness had digged for him. At the siege, too, of a petty town in Lorraine, by a troop of Rhenish boors and a handful of Swiss shepherds. It altogether passed their comprehension, and they persuaded themselves that he had escaped, and would one day come back again, as his great ancestor Baldwin of Constantinople had done two centuries before.
Some of the vanquished had succeeded in crossing the Meurthe, and were known to have escaped by concealing themselves in woods and so forth; perhaps he was among this number. As late as January 15 Margaret of York still cherished this hope. ‘From news which we have received from divers quarters,’ she wrote at this date, ‘we expect and hope that by God’s mercy the Duke is still alive and well,’ and on the 23rd his daughter Mary wrote that she was not yet sure that her father was dead. Five years later a report was set abroad that he was leading the life of a hermit at Bruchsal in Suabia—genus vitæ super humanum morem horridum atque asperum. An old servant who had fought beside him at Nancy, and had there been made prisoner by the Swiss, went to see, but he failed to recognize his master. The figure, voice, beard, hands, scars of the recluse were not those of Charles the Terrible. But others there were who believed in the marvellous stories of the hermit of Bruchsal, and loaded him with presents, thinking to receive them back tenfold when he returned to his estates. Others swore they had seen Charles at Rome, at Jerusalem, at Lisbon, at London. Others again whispered that he had been spirited away by the machinations of Louis XI.[36]
Upon the mysterious disappearance of Charles the Terrible after the defeat of Nancy, his dominions devolved on his only daughter, a girl of nineteen years of age, without army, without treasure, without any rock of defence save those Flemish communes which her ancestors throughout seven generations had never ceased to persecute. They did not refuse to help her, but they demanded that their grievances should first be redressed. Flanders, they urged, was not a fertile land, its prosperity depended wholly on commerce. Commerce could only flourish where freedom was respected, and hence it was of paramount importance that the time-honoured rights and liberties and privileges of the Flemish people should be once more restored to them.