“one of the bravest men of his time,” says Duclos [Histoire de Louis XI in the (Enures completes of Duclos, t. ii. p. 429), “sincere and faithful, a warm friend and an implacable foe, at once replied to the duke, ’Most high and puissant prince, I suppose your letters to have been dictated by your council and highest clerics, who are folks better at letter-making than I am, for I have not lived by quill-driving. . . .  If I write you matter that displeases you, and you have a desire to revenge yourself upon me, you shall find me so near to your army that you will know how little fear I have of you. . . .  Be assured that if it be your will to go on long making war upon the king, it will at last be found out by all the world that as a soldier you have mistaken your calling.”  The next year (1472) war broke out.  Duke Charles went and laid siege to Beauvais, and on the 27th of June delivered the first assault.  The inhabitants were at this moment left almost alone to defend their town.  A young girl of eighteen, Joan Fourquet, whom a burgher’s wife of Beauvais, Madame Laisne, her mother by adoption, had bred up in the history, still so recent, of Joan of Arc, threw herself into the midst of the throng, holding up her little axe (hachette) before the image of St. Angadresme, patroness of the town, and crying, “O glorious virgin, come to my aid; to arms! to arms!” The assault was repulsed; re-enforcements came up from Noyon, Amiens, and Paris, under the orders of the Marshal de Rouault; and the mayor of Beauvais presented Joan to him.  “Sir,” said the young girl to him, “you have everywhere been victor, and you will be so with us.”  On the 9th of July the Duke of Burgundy delivered a second assault, which lasted four hours.  Some Burgundians had escaladed a part of the ramparts; Joan Hachette arrived there just as one of them was planting his flag on the spot; she pushed him over the side into the ditch, and went down in pursuit of him; the man fell on one knee; Joan struck him down, took possession of the flag, and mounted up to the ramparts again, crying, “Victory!” The same cry resounded at all points of the wall; the assault was everywhere repulsed.  The vexation of Charles was great; the day before he had been almost alone in advocating the assault; in the evening, as he lay on his camp-bed, according to his custom, he had asked several of his people whether they thought the townsmen were prepared for it.  “Yes, certainly,” was the answer; “there are a great number of them.”  “You will not find a soul there to-morrow,” said Charles with a sneer.  He remained for twelve days longer before the place, looking for a better chance; but on the 12th of July he decided upon raising the siege, and took the road to Normandy.  Some days before attacking Beauvais, he had taken, not without difficulty, Nesle in the Vermandois.  “There it was,” says Commynes, “that he first committed a horrible and wicked deed of war, which had never been his wont; this was burning everything everywhere; those who were taken alive were hanged; a pretty large number had their hands cut off.  It mislikes me to speak of such cruelty; but I was on the spot, and must needs say something about it.”  Commynes undoubtedly said something about it to Charles himself, who answered, “It is the fruit borne by the tree of war; it would have been the fate of Beauvais if I could have taken the town.”