horrible famine, where hungry dogs, and even wolves, put an end to the miseries of starving, homeless children of slaughtered parents; another, the people would be gazing at royal banquets, lasting a whole day, with allegorical “subtleties” of jelly on the table, and pageants coming between the courses, where all the Virtues harangued in turn, or where knights delivered maidens from giants and “salvage men.”  In the south there was less misery and more progress.  Jacques Coeur’s house at Bourges is still a marvel of household architecture; and Rene, Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence, was an excellent painter on glass, and also a poet.

CHAPTER III.

THE STRUGGLE WITH BURGUNDY.

1.  Power of Burgundy.—­All the troubles of France, for the last 80 years, had gone to increase the strength of the Dukes of Burgundy.  The county and duchy, of which Dijon was the capital, lay in the most fertile district of France, and had, as we have seen, been conferred on Philip the Bold.  His marriage had given to him Flanders, with a gallant nobility, and with the chief manufacturing cities of Northern Europe.  Philip’s son, John the Fearless, had married a lady who ultimately brought into the family the great imperial counties of Holland and Zealand; and her son, Duke Philip the Good, by purchase or inheritance, obtained possession of all the adjoining little fiefs forming the country called the Netherlands, some belonging to the Empire, some to France.  Philip had turned the scale in the struggle between England and France, and, as his reward, had won the cities on the Somme.  He had thus become the richest and most powerful prince in Europe, and seemed on the point of founding a middle state lying between France and Germany, his weak point being that the imperial fiefs in Lorraine and Elsass lay between his dukedom of Burgundy and his counties in the Netherlands.  No European court equalled in splendour that of Philip.  The great cities of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and the rest, though full of fierce and resolute men, paid him dues enough to make him the richest of princes, and the Flemish knights were among the boldest in Europe.  All the arts of life, above all painting and domestic architecture, nourished at Brussels; and nowhere were troops so well equipped, burghers more prosperous, learning more widespread, than in his domains.  Here, too, were the most ceremonious courtesy, the most splendid banquets, and the most wonderful display of jewels, plate, and cloth-of-gold.  Charles VII., a clever though a cold-hearted, indolent man, let Philip alone, already seeing how the game would go for the future; for when the dauphin had quarrelled with the reigning favourite, and was kindly received on his flight to Burgundy, the old king sneered, saying that the duke was fostering the fox who would steal his chickens.