realm, for to keep her and her subjects in amity, and to recover without dispute that which he claimed as his; and still was the said lord on this subject a week before he knew of the said duke’s death. . . .  Howbeit it seems that the king our master took not hold of matters by the end by which he should have taken hold for to come out triumphant, and to add to his crown all those great lordships, either by sound title or by marriage, as easily he might have done.”

Commynes does not explain or specify clearly the mistake with which he reproaches his master.  Louis XI., in spite of his sound sense and correct appreciation, generally, of the political interests of France and of his crown, allowed himself on this great occasion to be swayed by secondary considerations and personal questions.  His son’s marriage with the heiress of Burgundy might cause some embarrassment in his relations with Edward IV., King of England, to whom he had promised the dauphin as a husband for his daughter Elizabeth, who was already sometimes called, in England, the Dauphiness.  In 1477, at the death of the duke her father, Mary of Burgundy was twenty years old, and Charles, the dauphin, was barely eight.  There was another question, a point of feudal law, as to whether Burgundy, properly so called, was a fief which women could inherit, or a fief which, in default of a male heir, must lapse to the suzerain.  Several of the Flemish towns which belonged to the Duke of Burgundy were weary of his wars and his violence, and showed an inclination to pass over to the sway of the King of France.  All these facts offered pretexts, opportunities, and chances of success for that course of egotistical pretension and cunning intrigue in which Louis delighted and felt confident of his ability; and into it he plunged after the death of Charles the Rash.  Though he still spoke of his desire of marrying his son, the dauphin, to Mary of Burgundy, it was no longer his dominant and ever-present idea.  Instead of taking pains to win the good will and the heart of Mary herself, he labored with his usual zeal and address to dispute her rights, to despoil her brusquely of one or another town in her dominions, to tamper with her servants, or excite against them the wrath of the populace.  Two of the most devoted and most able amongst them, Hugonet, chancellor of Burgundy, and Sire d’Humbercourt, were the victims of Louis XI.’s hostile manoeuvres and of blind hatred on the part of the Ghentese; and all the Princess Mary’s passionate entreaties were powerless both with the king and with the Flemings to save them from the scaffold.  And so Mary, alternately threatened or duped, attacked in her just rights or outraged in her affections, being driven to extremity, exhibited a resolution never to become the daughter of a prince unworthy of the confidence she, poor orphan, had placed in the spiritual tie which marked him out as her protector.  “I understand,”