He was a God-fearing prince, was devoted to the Virgin Mary, rigid in his fasts, lavish in charity.  He was determined to avoid death and to hold on to his own, tooth and nail, and was his father’s peer in valour.  Like his father, he dressed richly; unlike him, he cared more for silver than for jewels.  He lived more chastely than is usual to princes and was always master of himself.  He drank little wine, though he liked it, because he found that it engendered fever in him.  His only beverage was water just coloured with wine.  He was inclined to no indulgence or wantonness.  “At the hour in which I write his taste for hard labour is excessive, but in other respects his good sense has dominated him, at least thus far.  It is to be hoped that as his reign grows older he will curb his over-strenuous industry.”

As to the duke’s sympathies, Chastellain regrets that circumstances have turned him towards England.  Naturally he belonged to the French, and it was a pity that the machinations of the king, “whose crooked ways are well known to God, have forced him into self-defence.  Yet on his forehead he wears the fleur-de-lys.”

Chastellain acknowledges that Charles is accused of avarice, but defends him on the ground that he has been driven into collecting a large army.  “A penny in the chest is worth three in the purse of another.”  “To take precautions in advance is a way to save honour and property,” prudently adds the historian, who evidently flourishes his maxims to strengthen his own appreciation of the duke’s economy, which, quite as evidently, is not pleasing to him.  “I have seen him the very opposite of miserly, open-handed and liberal, rejoicing in largesse.  When he came into his seigniory his nature did not change.”  It was simply the exigencies of his critical position that forced him to restrain his natural propensities and thus to gain the undeserved reputation for parsimony.

It was also said that he was a very hard taskmaster, but as a matter of fact he demanded nothing of his soldiers that he was not ready to undertake himself.  Like a true duke, he was his own commander, drew up his own troops himself in battle array, and then passed from one end of the line to the other, encouraging the men individually with cheery words, promising them glory and profit, and pledging himself to share their dangers.  In victory he was restrained and showed more mercy than cruelty.

After expatiating on the points where Charles was like his father—­conventional princely qualities —­Chastellain adds:  “In some respects they differed.  The one was cold and the other boiling with ardour; the one slow and prone to delay, the other strenuous in his promptness; the elder negligent of his own concerns, the younger diligent and alert.  They differed in the amount of time consumed at meals and in the number of guests whom they entertained.  They differed more or less in their voluptuousness and in their expenditures and in the way in which they took solace and amusement.”  But in all other respects, “in life they marched side by side as equals and if it please God He will be their conductor in glory everlasting” is the final assurance of their eulogist.