“CHARLES."[11]

Some trifling assistance was offered to Rene by Strasburg and other foes to Burgundy, but it was wholly insufficient to rescue him from his difficulties, and he was finally obliged to order the capitulation of Nancy on November 19th.  The magistrates desired to hold out, but were forced by the populace to submit, and on November 30, 1475, Charles of Burgundy marched triumphantly through the gate of Craffe into the capital of Lorraine where he was received as the sovereign duke.[12]

This time Charles acted the role of a merciful and diplomatic conqueror.  There was no cruelty permitted, and every evidence of conciliation was shown.  The majority of the Lorrainers accepted the new order of things without further protest.  At the end of December, Charles convened the Estates of Lorraine in the ducal palace, addressed them as his subjects of Burgundy, promised to be a good prince, demanded their attachment, confided his plans of expansion, and announced his intention of making Nancy the capital of his states.  Again the duke’s star rose.  This acquisition seemed a sign of the reality of his dreams.  Even before the fall of Nancy, his approaching success bore fruit, inasmuch as the emperor changed the late convention into a firmer treaty signed on November 17th.  Indeed had Charles died at that moment, there would have been little doubt that his dreamed-of kingdom had been simply prevented by a mere accident.

The detailed story of all that had happened in the Swiss Confederation and the Lower Union, since their formal declaration of war against Charles, is too complicated to relate.  At the begining of 1476, the situation was, briefly, that Sigismund held the debated mortgaged lands, while the Swiss allies, with Berne as the most militant member of the league, had continued to carry on offensive operations against the duke and his allies, notably the Duchess of Savoy.  The conquest of Lorraine caused a panic, especially in the face of the fresh agreements between the duke and the emperor and the king.

There was a short period of hesitation, marked by a truce till January 1, 1476, between Charles and the confederates, a period when the timid among the allies urged their counsel of reconciliation at all hazards.  Charles, too, seems to have desired an accord rather than hostilities, even though he still bore the Swiss a bitter grudge for Hericourt.  It was probably appeals from Yolande of Savoy that decided him to open a campaign in midwinter.

“The prince has been so busy for a week past [wrote the Milanese ambassador] in the reorganisation of his army according to new ordinances, and in the regulation of his receipts and outlays that he has scarcely given himself time to eat once in twenty-four hours.  He is importuned by the Duchess of Savoy and the Count of Romont for aid against the Swiss who respect no treaty, and do not cease increasing their forces.  In consequence,