In thus touching on the traits of his former master, Commines does not show malice or even a dislike for the duke. He is much more severe about Louis—only he found the latter easier to serve.
In his family life, too, Charles does not seem to have found any companionship that affected his life. He is lauded as a faithful husband to Isabella of Bourbon but her death seemed to make little difference. Neither she nor Margaret of York had the actual significance enjoyed by Isabella of Portugal as consort to Philip the Good with his notoriously roving fancy.
Thus at home as well as abroad the last Duke of Burgundy tried to stand alone. Perhaps his chief happiness in life was that he never knew how insufficient for his desired task he was and how the new art of printing, the birth of Erasmus of Rotterdam, were the really great events of his brief decade of sovereignty. It was his good fortune that he never knew that no splendid achievement gave significance to his device: "I have undertaken it"—Je lay emprins.
[Footnote 1:] [Mém]. de la soc. bourg. de géog. et d' hist. Article by A. Cornereau, vi., 229.]
[Footnote 2:] [Les] états de Gand en 1476. (Gachard, Études et notices hist,. des Pays-Bas, i., I.)
This is a study of the report made by Gort Roelants, pensionary of Brussels, one of the deputies to the assembly of 1476. This so-called "States-general" was by no means a legislative assembly. When Philip the Good convened deputies from the various states at Bruges in 1463, it was to save himself the trouble of going to the separate capitals to ask for aides. Assemblies of similar nature occurred several times before 1477, when Mary of Burgundy granted the privilege of self-convention and when a constitutional rôle was assured to the body; though not used for many years (See Pirenne, ii., 379.)]
[Footnote 3:] [Pour] y penser la nuit jusques aw lendemain.]