What was the significance of these veiled allusions?  It could not have been the simple scheme to erect a kingdom, because that was certainly known to many.  Charles had, doubtless, an ostrich-like quality of mind which made him oblivious to the world’s vision but even he could hardly have ignored the prevalence of the rumours regarding the interview of Treves, rumours flying north, east, south, and west.  Might not this suggestion of secrets yet untold have had reference to the ripening intentions of Edward IV. and himself to divide France between them?

When his own induction into his heritage was accomplished, Charles was ready to pay the last earthly tribute to his parents.  A cortege had been coming slowly from Bruges bearing the bodies of Philip and Isabella to their final resting-place in the tomb at Dijon, to which they were at last consigned.[4]

A few weeks more Charles tarried in the city of his birth, and then went to Dole where he was invested with the sovereignty of the Franche-Comte and confirmed the privileges.  Thus after seven years of possession de facto, he first actually completed the formalities needful for the legal acquisition of his paternal heritage.  The expansion of that heritage had been steady for over half a century.  Every inch of territory that had come under the shadow of the family’s administration had remained there, quickly losing its ephemeral character, so that temporary holdings were regarded in the same light as the estates actually inherited.  At least, Charles, sovereign duke, count, overlord, mortgagee, made no distinction in the natures of his tenures.  But just as the last link was legally riveted in his own chain of lands, he was to learn that there were other points of view.

The statement is made and repeated, that the report of the duke’s after-dinner speech at Dijon was a fresh factor in alarming the people in Alsace and Switzerland about his intentions, and making them hasten to shake off every tie that connected them with Charles and his ambitious projects of territorial expansion.[5] As a matter of fact, there had been for months constant agitation in the councils of the Swiss Confederation and the Lower Union as to the next action.

Opposition to Sigismund had been long existent, antipathy to Austria was so deeply rooted that the idea of restoring that suzerainty in the Rhine valley was slow to gain adherents.  Probably the arguments that came from France were what carried conviction.  It was a time when Louis spared no expense to attain the end he desired, while he posed as a benevolent neutral.[6] His servants worked underground.  Their open work was very cautious.  It was French envoys, however, who announced to the Swiss Diet, convened at Lucerne, that Sigismund was quite ready to come to an understanding in regard to an alliance and the redemption of his mortgaged lands.