Rumours went abroad that his mental balance was shaken.  That does not seem to have been true to the extent of insanity.  He was only infinitely chagrined but he certainly put on a brave front and retained his self-confidence and declared

“They are wrong if they believe me defeated.  Providence has provided me with so many people and estates with such abundant resources, that many such defeats would be needed to ruin them.  At the moment when the world imagines that I am annihilated, I will reopen the campaign with an army of 150,000 men."[22]

[Footnote 1:  Lettres de Louis XI., v., 368.]

[Footnote 2:  Nos omnes relinquens, Ibid., 371.]

[Footnote 3:  Commynes-Dupont, i., 336.]

[Footnote 4:  Lettres, v., 363.  Louis to Dammartin.]

[Footnote 5:  Gachard, Doc. ined., i., 249.]

[Footnote 6:  Commines, iv., ch. vi.] [Footnote 7:  Commines, iv., ch. viii.:  Comines-Lenglet, ii., 217.]

[Footnote 8:  The terms of the treaty provided for a seven years’ truce, with international free trade and mutual assistance in civil or foreign wars of either monarch.  Louis’s complaisance went so far that he did not insist on Edward’s renouncing the title of King of England and France.]

[Footnote 9:  The Paston Letters.  Sir John Paston to his mother, Sept. 11, 1475.]

[Footnote 10:  The story must be omitted here.  The constable was finally apprehended, tried, and executed at Paris.]

[Footnote 11:  Depeches Milanaises, i., 253.  The copy only is at Milan and there is no seal.]

[Footnote 12:  Toutey, p. 380.]

[Footnote 13:  Dep.  Milan., i., 266.]

[Footnote 14:  Dep.  Milan., i., 300.]

[Footnote 15:  Jomini lays the defeat to a tactical error.  “Charles had committed the fault of encamping with one wing of his army resting on the lake, the other ill-secured at the foot of a wooded mountain.  Nothing is more dangerous for an army than to have one of its wings resting on an unbridged stream, on a lake, or on the sea.”  Charles explained to Europe that he had been surprised, and his defeat was a mere bagatelle.]

[Footnote 16:  III., 216.]

[Footnote 17:  Embossed ornaments.]

[Footnote l8:  Dep.  Milan., ii., 126.]

[Footnote 19:  Dep.  Milan., ii., 335.]

[Footnote 20:  Dep.  Milan., ii., 295.]

[Footnote 21:  III., 234.]

[Footnote 22:  Dep.  Milan, ii., 339.]

CHAPTER XXI

THE BATTLE OF NANCY

1477