The king declared his own hands unstained by the blood of John of Burgundy, agreed to punish all those designated by Philip as actually responsible for that treacherous murder, and pledged himself to erect a cross on the bridge at Montereau, the scene of the crime.  Further, he relinquished various revenues in Burgundy, hitherto retained by the crown from the moment when the junior branch of the Valois had been invested with the duchy (1364); and he ceded the counties of Boulogne, Artois, and all the seigniories belonging to the French sovereign on both banks of the Somme.  To this last cession, however, was appended the condition that the towns included in this clause could be redeemed at the king’s pleasure, for the sum of four hundred thousand gold crowns.  Further, Charles exempted Philip from acts of homage to himself, promised to demand no aides from the duke’s subjects in case of war, and to assist his cousin if he were attacked from England.  Lastly, he renounced an alliance lately contracted with the emperor to Philip’s disadvantage.[20]

One clause in the treaty crowned the royal submissiveness towards the powerful vassal.  It provided that in case of Charles’s failure to observe all the stipulated conditions, his own subjects would be justified in taking arms against him at the duke’s orders.  A similar clause occurs in certain treaties between an earlier French king and his Flemish vassals, but always to the advantage of the suzerain, not to that of the lesser lords.

The duke was left in a position infinitely superior to that of the king, whose realm was terribly exhausted by the long contest with England, a contest wherein one nation alone had felt the invader’s foot.  French prosperity had been nibbled off like green foliage before a swarm of locusts, and the whole north-eastern portion of France was in a sorry state of desolation by 1435.  On the other hand, the territories covered by Burgundy as an overlord had greatly increased during the sixteen years that Philip had worn the title.  An aggregation of duchies, counties, and lordships formed his domain, loosely hung together by reason of their several titles being vested in one person—­titles which the bearer had inherited or assumed under various pretexts.

Flanders and Artois, together with the duchy and county of Burgundy, came to him from his father, John the Fearless, in 1419.  In 1421, he bought Namur.  In 1430, he declared himself heir to his cousins in Brabant and Limbourg when Duke Anthony’s second son followed his equally childless brother into a premature grave, and the claims were made good in spite of all opposition.  Holland, Zealand, and Hainaut became his through the unwilling abdication of his other cousin, Jacqueline, in 1433.  To save the life of her husband, Frank van Borselen, the last representative of the Bavarian House then formally resigned her titles, which she had already divested of all significance five years previously, when Philip of Burgundy had become her ruward, to relieve a “poor feminine person” of a weight of responsibility too heavy for her shoulders.[21]