Charles was thus the last of those great, overgrown vassals so characteristic of feudal times.  Like Hugh Capet in France, like William the Conqueror in England, he hoped to establish himself as an independent king.  He opened negotiations for this purpose with the Emperor Frederick, Maximilian’s father.  He made himself practically independent of France.  He wielded a military power greater than that of any other prince of the moment, and he knew it and charged like a mad bull at whoever seemed to interpose in his designs.

Over such a man Louis XI’s cunning had full play.  He involved Charles in fights with every neighbor.  Finally he lured him into conflict with the Swiss, and those hardy mountaineers won the repute of being the best soldiers of Europe by defeating Charles again and again till they left him slain on the field of Nancy (1477).[9] Louis promptly seized most of his dead vassal’s domains.  Maximilian, having wedded Charles’ daughter, inherited the remainder; and the old Burgundian kingdom, so nearly revived to stretch as a permanent dividing land between France and Germany, disappeared forever.

What Louis had done with Burgundy he attempted with his other semi-independent duchies.  The Hundred Years’ War had almost destroyed central government in France.  Louis, by means as secret and varied as his cunning could suggest, gradually reestablished an undisputed leadership above his lords.  Fortunately for France, perhaps, England was prevented by a long series of civil wars from interfering in her neighbor’s affairs.  These wars, though they originated before Louis’ time, were constantly fomented and kept alive by him, and England thus paid dearly for having become a source of danger to France.

The Wars of the Roses,[10] as they are called, caused deep-seated changes in England’s life and society.  They mark for her the transition from the mediaeval to the modern era which was everywhere taking place.  Beginning as a contest between two rival branches of the Plantagenets for the kingship, these wars remained aristocratic throughout.  That is to say, the common people took little interest in them, while the nobles, espousing sides, fought savagely and murderously, giving one another no quarter, sparing the lesser folk, but executing as traitors their prisoners of rank.  When one side seemed hopelessly overcome, Louis would lend them arms and money wherewith to seek revenge once more.  Thus almost all the old nobility of England perished; and both lines of kings became extinct, Richard III, their last representative, being accused of murdering all his relatives or possible rivals.[11] At last, Richard too was slain, and a new family of rulers, only remotely connected with the old, was inaugurated by Henry Tudor, grandson of a private gentleman of Wales.  This new king, Henry VII (1485-1509), found no powerful lords to oppose his will.  One or two impostors were raised against him,[12] France making anxious efforts to prolong the troubles of her dangerous neighbor; but the attempts failed through the utter completeness of the aristocracy’s exhaustion.