Commines calls this a strong and rich town, superior even to Liege.[13] A comparison of the two sites shows, however, that this statement could hardly have been true at any time.  Dinant lies in a narrow space between the Meuse and high land.  A lofty rock at one end of the town dominating the river is crowned by a fortress most picturesque in appearance.  It is difficult to estimate how many inhabitants there actually were in the place in 1466, but there is no doubt as to their energy and character.  As mentioned before, the artisans had acquired a high degree of skill in their specialty, and their brass work was renowned far and wide.  Pots and pans and other utensils were known as Dinanderies.

The traffic in them was so important that Dinant had had her own commercial relations with England for a long period.  Her merchants enjoyed the same privileges in London as the members of the Hanseatic League, and an English company was held in high respect at Dinant.[14] The brass-founders’ gild ranked at Dinant as the drapers at Louvain, and the weavers at Ghent.  As a “great gild they formed a middle class between the lower gilds and the bourgeois,” the merchants and richer folk.[15] In municipal matters each of these three classes had a separate vote.

As it happened, Dinant had not been very ready to open hostilities against the House of Burgundy though she was equally critical of Louis of Bourbon in his episcopal misrule.  It was undoubtedly her rivalry with Bouvignes of Namur that brought her into the strife.  That neighbour had taunted her rival to exasperation, and the fact that it was safe under the Duke of Burgundy and backed by him as Count of Namur, had brought a Burgundian element into the local contest.

The incidents of the insult to Charles and the aspersion on his mother’s reputation undoubtedly were due to an irresponsible rabble rather than to any action that could properly be attributed to the leading men.  Further, it really seems probable that the weight attached to the insulting act never occurred to the respectable burghers until they heard of it from others, so insignificant were the participants in it.

As soon as it was realised that serious consequences might result from reckless folly, the authorities were quite ready to separate themselves from the event, and to arrest the culprits as common malefactors.  Once, indeed, the prisoners were temporarily rescued by their friends, and it seemed to Burgundian sympathisers a suspicious circumstance that this happened just at a moment when there was renewed hope for help from Louis XI.  When convinced that such hopes were vain, the magistrates became seriously alarmed and ready to go to any lengths to avert Burgundian vengeance.  Finally the following letter was despatched to the Duke of Burgundy:[16]