the rest of the world.  The great duke of the Occident made a distinct epoch in the history of chivalry when he conferred its dignities upon a speechless, unconscious infant.  The theory that knighthood was a personal acquisition had been maintained up to this period, the Children of France[12] alone being excepted from the rule, though in his Lay de Vaillance Eustache Deschamps complains that the degree of knighthood is actually conferred on those who are only ten or twelve years old, and who do not know what to do with the honour.[13] That plaint was written not later than the first years of the fifteenth century, and the poet’s prediction that ruin of the institution was imminent when affected by such disorders seemed justified if, in 1433, even the years of the eligible age had shrunk to days.  Philip himself had not received the accolade until he was twenty-five.

How his predecessor in Holland, Count William VI., had acquitted himself valiantly the moment that he was dubbed knight is told by Froissart, and the tales of other accolades of the period are too well known to need reference.

It is said that the baby cavalier was nourished by his own mother.  Having lost her first two infants, Isabella was solicitous for the welfare of this third child, who also proved her last.  He was, moreover, Philip’s sole legal heir, as Michelle of France and Bonne of Artois, his first wives, had left no offspring.  The care and devotion expended on the boy were repaid.  Charles became a sturdy child who developed into youthful vigour.  In person, he strangely resembled his mother and her Portuguese ancestors, rather than the English Lancastrians, from whom she was equally descended.

His dark hair and his features were very different from the fair type of his paternal ancestors, the vigorous branch of the Valois family.  Possibly other characteristics suggesting his Portuguese origin were intensified by close association with his mother, who supervised the education directed by the Seigneur d’ Auxy.  They often lived at The Hague, where Isabella acted as chief and official adviser to the duke’s stadtholder in the administration. [14]

Charles was a diligent pupil, if we may believe his contemporaries, surprisingly so, considering his early taste for all martial pursuits and his intense interest in military operations.

At two years of age he received his first lesson in horsemanship, on a wooden steed constructed for his especial use by Jean Rampart, a saddler of Brussels.

His biographers repeat from each other statements of his proficiency in Latin.  This must be balanced by noting that the only texts which he could have read were probably not classic.  In the inventory of the various Burgundian libraries of the period, there are not six Greek and Latin classical texts all told, and excepting Sallust, not a single Roman historian in the original.[15] There was a translation of Livy by the Prior of St. Eloi and late abridgments of Sallust, Suetonius, Lucan, and Caesar,[16] with a French version of Valerius Maximus, but nothing of Tacitus.  Doubtless these versions and a volume called Les faits des Romains were used as text-books to teach the young count about the world’s conquerors.  The last mentioned book shows what travesties of Roman history were gravely read in the fifteenth century.