[Editor's Notes].
([a]) p. 114. "The good King René." There is a biography of this prince, by the Comte de Villeneuve Bargemont. René of Anjou, descended from the second son of John of Valois, King of France, inherited the duchy of Lorraine in right of his wife, daughter of Charles II., Duke of Lorraine. His claim was contested by Antoine, Comte de Vaudémont, representing a collateral male branch of the earlier line. This claimant was backed by Philip the Good, of Burgundy. René was defeated, in 1431, at Bulgueville, and passed some years as a captive in Dijon. Here, like Charles d'Orleans in England, and James I. in the same country, he amused himself with poetry and art. He succeeded to the crown of Provence, a remnant of the Neapolitan domains of Anjou, and his daughter, Yolande, married the son of his rival of Vaudémont. Lorraine was entailed on them and their issue, failing male issue of René. After an expedition to Naples he ceded Lorraine to his son, and passed his time in a pleasing pastoral manner, in Provence. In his old age Lorraine fell to his grandson René, and the unlucky region was drawn into disputes of France and Burgundy, between which it lay. Burgundy conquered Lorraine. Old René negotiated for Burgundian protection, and for Charles's succession to Provence, which on René's death would make Burgundy "a Middle Kingdom conterminous with Germany and France." But the conquest of Lorraine was the last of Charles's successes: the end of the novel before us tells the story of his fall.
([b]) p. 116. "Edward of York has crossed the Sea." The date is 1475. Louis and Edward met on the bridge over the Somme, at Pequigny, and made terms. The scheme of Oxford, in the novel, for an invasion of England during Edward's absence, was thus rendered impossible.
([c]) p. 125. "Henry Colvin." Comines calls this soldier "Cohin," in the oldest texts "Colpin." He commanded three hundred English, and was killed by a cannon shot: "great loss to the Duke, for a single man may save his master, though he be of no great lineage, so he have but sense and virtue."
([d]) p. 262. "Granson." The Burgundian defeat is described in Comines, book v. ch. i. Of Charles, Comines says, "il perdit honneur et chevance ce jour." Morat he describes in book v. ch. iii. The narrative of Charles's despair, and the detail of his drinking tisane in place of wine, is borrowed from Comines, book v. ch. v., in the sixteenth chapter of the novel. The treachery of Campobasso is recorded in Comines's sixth-ninth chapter. Mr. Kirk's version of Charles's last fight is written with much spirit.
Andrew Lang.
May 1894.
GLOSSARY.
Abettance, support, encouragement.