From this period there was a marked and material change in the conduct of Charles.  He had been previously moved by sentiments of chivalry and notions of greatness.  But sullied by his act of public treachery and violence toward the monarch who had, at least in seeming, manifested unlimited confidence in his honor, a secret sense of shame embittered his feelings and soured his temper.  He became so insupportable to those around him that he was abandoned by several of his best officers, and even by his natural brother, Baldwin of Burgundy, who passed over to the side of Louis.  Charles was at this time embarrassed by the expense of entertaining and maintaining Edward IV. and numerous English exiles, who were forced to take refuge in the Netherlands by the successes of the earl of Warwick, who had replaced Henry VI. on the throne.  Charles at the same time held out to several princes in Europe hopes of bestowing on them in marriage his only daughter and heiress Mary, while he privately assured his friends, if his courtiers and ministers may be so called, “that he never meant to have a son-in-law until he was disposed to make himself a monk.”  In a word, he was no longer guided by any principle but that of fierce and brutal selfishness.

In this mood he soon became tired of the service of his nobles and of the national militia, who only maintained toward him a forced and modified obedience founded on the usages and rights of their several provinces; and he took into his pay all sorts of adventurers and vagabonds who were willing to submit to him as their absolute master.  When the taxes necessary for the support and pay of these bands of mercenaries caused the people to murmur, Charles laughed at their complaints, and severely punished some of the most refractory.  He then entered France at the head of his army, to assist the duke of Brittany; but at the moment when nothing seemed to oppose the most extensive views of his ambition he lost by his hot-brained caprice every advantage within his easy reach:  he chose to sit down before Beauvais; and thus made of this town, which lay in his road, a complete stumbling-block on his path of conquest.

The time he lost before its walls caused the defeat and ruin of his unsupported, or as might be said his abandoned, ally, who made the best terms he could with Louis; and thus Charles’s presumption and obstinacy paralyzed all the efforts of his courage and power.  But he soon afterward acquired the duchy of Guelders from the old Duke Arnoul, who had been temporarily despoiled of it by his son Adolphus.  It was almost a hereditary consequence in this family that the children should revolt and rebel against their parents.  Adolphus had the effrontery to found his justification on the argument that his father having reigned forty-four years, he was fully entitled to his share—­a fine practical authority for greedy and expectant heirs.  The old father replied to this reasoning by offering to meet his son in single combat.  Charles cut short the affair by making Adolphus prisoner and seizing on the disputed territory; for which he, however, paid Arnoul the sum of two hundred and twenty thousand florins.