Thus at home as well as abroad the last Duke of Burgundy tried to stand alone.  Perhaps his chief happiness in life was that he never knew how insufficient for his desired task he was and how the new art of printing, the birth of Erasmus of Rotterdam, were the really great events of his brief decade of sovereignty.  It was his good fortune that he never knew that no splendid achievement gave significance to his device:  “I have undertaken it”—­Je lay emprins.

[Footnote 1:  Mem. de la soc. bourg. de geog. et d’ hist.  Article by A. Cornereau, vi., 229.]

[Footnote 2:  Les etats de Gand en 1476. (Gachard, Etudes et notices hist,. des Pays-Bas, i., I.)

This is a study of the report made by Gort Roelants, pensionary of Brussels, one of the deputies to the assembly of 1476.  This so-called “States-general” was by no means a legislative assembly.  When Philip the Good convened deputies from the various states at Bruges in 1463, it was to save himself the trouble of going to the separate capitals to ask for aides.  Assemblies of similar nature occurred several times before 1477, when Mary of Burgundy granted the privilege of self-convention and when a constitutional role was assured to the body; though not used for many years (See Pirenne, ii., 379.)]

[Footnote 3:  Pour y penser la nuit jusques aw lendemain.]

[Footnote 4:  S’ils n’avaient point charge limitee quantefois ils devaient boire en chemin.]

[Footnote 5:  Compte-rendu par Antoine Rolin, Sr. d’ Aymeries, Oct. 1, 1475-Sept. 30, 1476.  In the archives of Hainaut there are proofs that another assembly was confidently expected.]

[Footnote 6:  Gingins la Sarra, ii., 354.]

[Footnote 7:  Ibid., 359.  Scorende queste cose come avesse il libro avanti, parse ad ogniuno imprimesse bene questo suo intento.]

[Footnote 8:  Petrasanta to the Duke of Milan Aug. 12th.  Quoted in Kirk, iii., 487.]

[Footnote 9:  An Italian phrase signifying to run down his game slowly.]

[Footnote 10:  Commines, v., ch. iv.]

[Footnote 11:  Toutey calls the diet at Fribourg a veritable congress of central Europe, the first of international congresses.]

[Footnote 12:  Huguenin Jeune, Hist. de la guerre de Lorraine, p. 217.]

[Footnote 13:  This monarch, Alphonse V., called the African, asking Louis XI. for assistance against Ferdinand of Castile, was refused on the score that Charles the Bold was menacing the safety of the French frontier.  Alphonse’s prayer for peace might have been instigated by thoughts of his own needs as well as those of humanity. (Toutey, p. 386.)]

[Footnote 14:  Toutey, p. 387.]

[Footnote 15:  See Scott’s Anne of Geierstein.  This is the man whom the author makes the appointed instrument of the Vehmgericht to slay Charles.]

[Footnote 16:  Toutey, p. 388.]