knew well the nature of the King of England, who was very fond of his ease and his pleasures:  when he had concluded these treaties with him, he ordered that the money should be found with the greatest expedition, and every one had to lend somewhat to help to supply it on the spot.  The king said that there was nothing in the world he would not do to thrust the King of England out of the realm, save only that he would never consent that the English should have a bit of territory there; and, rather than suffer that, he would put everything to jeopardy and risk.”

Commynes had good reason to say that the kingdom was in great peril.  The intentions of Charles the Rash tended to nothing short of bringing back the English into France, in order to share it with them.  He made no concealment of it.  “I am so fond of the kingdom,” said he, “that I would make six of it in France.”  He was passionately eager for the title of king.  He had put out feelers for it in the direction of Germany, and the emperor, Frederic III., had promised it to him together with that of vicar-general of the empire, on condition that his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, married Duke Maximilian, Frederic’s son.  Having been unsuccessful on the Rhine, Charles turned once more towards the Thames, and made alliance with Edward IV., King of England, with a view of renewing the English invasion of France, flattering himself, of course, that he would profit by it.  To destroy the work of Joan of Arc and Charles VII.—­such was the design, a criminal and a shameful one for a French prince, which was checkmated by the peace of Peequigny.  Charles himself acknowledged as much when, in his wrath at this treaty, he said, “He had not sought to bring over the English into France for any need he had of them, but to enable them to recover what belonged to them;” and Louis XI. was a patriotic king when he declared that “there was nothing in the world he would not do to thrust the King of England out of the realm, and, rather than suffer the English to have a bit of territory in France, he would put everything to jeopardy and risk.”

The Duke of Burgundy, as soon as he found out that the King of France had, under the name of truce, made peace for seven years with the King of England, and that Edward IV. had recrossed the Channel with his army, saw that his attempts, so far, were a failure.  Accordingly he too lost no time in signing [on the 13th of September, 1475] a truce with King Louis for nine years, and directing his ambition and aiming his blows against other quarters than Western France.  Two little states, his neighbors on the east, Lorraine and Switzerland, became the object and the theatre of his passion for war.  Lorraine had at that time for its duke Rene II., of the house of Anjou through his mother Yolande, a young prince who was wavering, as so many others were, between France and Burgundy.  Charles suddenly entered Lorraine, took possession of several castles, had the inhabitants