The duke, too, did not lack in courage but he failed sometimes in order giving, and to say the truth, he behaved himself not so advisedly as many wished because of the king’s presence."[1]

There is no doubt that Charles entertained increasingly sinister suspicions of his guest.  He thought the king might either try to enter the city ahead of him and manage to placate his ancient allies by a specious explanation, or else he might succeed in effecting his escape without fulfilling his compact.  At last Charles appointed Sunday, October 30th, for an assault.  On the 29th, his own quarters were in a little suburb of mean, low houses, with rough ground and vineyards separating his camp from the city.  Between his house and that of the king, both humble dwellings, was an old granary, occupied by a picked Burgundian force of three hundred men under special injunctions to keep close watch over the royal guest and see that he played no sudden trick.  To further this purpose of espionage, they had made a breach in the walls with heavy blows of their picks.

The men were wearied with all their marching and skirmishing, and in order to have them in fighting trim on the morrow, Charles had ordered all alike to turn in and refresh themselves.  The exhausted troops gladly obeyed this injunction.  Charles was disarmed and sleeping, so, too, were Philip de Commines and the few attendants that lay within the narrow ducal chamber.  Only a dozen pickets mounted guard in the room over Charles’s little apartment, and kept their tired eyes open by playing at dice.

On that Saturday night when Charles was thus prudently gathering strength for the final tussle, the people of Liege also indulged in repose, counting on Sunday being a day of rest, that is, the major part of the burgher folk did within city limits.  But another plan was on foot among some of the inhabitants of an outlying region.  An attack on the Burgundian camp was planned by a band from Franchimont, a wild and wooded district, south of the episcopal see.  The natives there had all the characteristics of mountaineers, although the heights of their rugged country reached only modest altitudes.[2]

These invaders were fortunate in obtaining as guides the owners of the very houses requisitioned for the lodgings of the two princes.  Straight to their goal they progressed through paths quite unknown to the foe, and therefore unwatched.  The highlanders made a mistake in not rushing headlong to the royal lodgings, where in the first confusion they might have accomplished their design upon the lives of Louis and of Charles or at least have taken the two prisoners.  But a pause at a French nobleman’s tent created a disturbance which roused the archers in the granary.  The latter sallied out, to meet with a fierce counter-attack.  In order to confuse them the mountaineers echoed the Burgundian cries, Vive Bourgogne, vive le roy et tuez, tuez, and they were not always immediately identified by their harsh Liege accent.