stayed in the city with Monseigneur two or three days.  Then he departed, it is said for Brussels to await my said lord.  It is a great thing to have seen the puissance of my master, which is great enough to defeat an emperor.  I believe the Burgundians will shortly return to Burgundy.

“I paid my respects to my said lord, who received me very well.  At present I am listed[16] among those whose term is almost expired and I am ready to follow him wherever he wishes until my service is out, which will be soon.  I would have written before had I had any one to send it by.  Pray write me about yourself by the first comer.  Praying our Lord, beloved sister, to keep you.  Written in Liege, November 8, 1468.

    “JEHAN DE MAZILLES.”

This sober letter and other accounts by reliable witnesses agree as to the terrible havoc wrought in the city by the assault on October 30th and by determined and systematic measures of destruction, both during Charles’s ten days’ sojourn for the express purpose of completing the punishment and after his departure.  Yet the result assuredly fell short of the intention.  The destruction was not complete as was that of Dinant.  Vitality remained, apart from the ecclesiastical nucleus intentionally preserved by the duke.

Having watched the tongues of flame lap the unfortunate city, Charles turned with his army towards Franchimont, that rugged hill country which had proved a nest of hardy and persistent antagonists to Burgundian pretensions.  Jehan de Mazilles is in close attendance and gives further details of the pitiless fashion in which Charles carried out his purpose of leaving no seed of resistance to germinate.  Four nights and three days they sojourned in a certain little village while there was a hard frost and where, without unarming, they “slept under the trees and drank water.”  Meantime a small party was despatched by the duke to attack the stronghold of Franchimont.  The despairing Liegeois who had taken refuge there abandoned it, and it was taken by assault.  A few more days and the duke was assured that Liege and her people were shorn of their strength.  When the remnant of survivors began to creep back to the city and tried to recover what was left of their property, many were the questions to be settled.  Lawsuits succeeded to turmoils and lingered on for years.

In the lordly manner of conquerors Charles, too, demanded reimbursement for his trouble in bending these free citizens to his illegal will.  The reinstated bishop wanted his rents and legal perquisites, all difficult to collect, and many were the ponderous documents that passed on the subject.  How justly pained sounds Charles’s remonstrance on the default of payment of taxes to his friend, the city’s lord!

“Therefore [he writes,] in consideration of these things, taking into account the terror of our departure to Brussels last January, we decide, my brother and I, that the payment of both gabelle and poll tax must be forced, and that we cannot permit the retarding of such taxes under any colour or pretence.  At the request of our brother and cousin we order the inhabitants of the said territories to pay both gabelle and poll tax, all that is due from the time it was imposed and for the time to come, under penalty of the confiscation of their goods and their persons.”