The Story of France by Mary MacGregor

Author:Mary MacGregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ozymandias Press

THE DEATH OF CHARLES THE BOLD

~

AS LONG AS CHARLES THE Bold lived he was the enemy of the French king. He soon broke the new truce he had made with Louis, and persuaded Edward IV. to come over from England to invade France.

Edward landed at Calais, expecting to be met by the duke with a large army. But no one was there to greet him, and when at length Charles arrived, it was with only a handful of men, for he had been too busy with new schemes to give much thought to his ally. Directing the English king to advance on the northern towns, which the constable St. Pol had treacherously promised to surrender, Charles set off in another direction, hoping to meet Edward beneath the walls of Paris.

But when Edward IV. reached the fortresses held by St. Pol, the constable had changed his mind, and refused to deliver them to the English king. Indeed, he received the enemy with the roar of cannon.

Edward, feeling that the Duke of Burgundy had deceived him, was ready to make terms with Louis. The French king at once offered to pay a large sum of money to Edward every year, if he would take his army back to England. Before the Duke of Burgundy had time to interfere, peace was signed between France and England for nine years.

Once again there was nothing for Charles to do but himself to make a truce with Louis. One of the conditions of the truce was that St. Pol, who had fled to the duke for safety, should be given up to Louis. This Charles was willing enough to do, for the constable had proved a traitor to Burgundy as well as to France.

Although St. Pol was one of the richest and most powerful nobles in France, he was condemned to death as a traitor, and beheaded in Paris in 1475.

‘That is a mighty hard sentence,’ said St. Pol when he heard his doom. ‘I pray God I may see Him to-day.’

Having made a truce with Louis, Charles, still bent on conquest, marched into Switzerland with an army, and early in 1476 laid siege to a little town called Granson.

The town held out bravely, but at length, trusting to Charles’s promise that he would spare the lives of the citizens, it surrendered. The duke, however, broke his word, and the brave inhabitants were all either drowned or hanged.

But the people of Switzerland were so angry at the treachery of Charles, that they rose against him, and drove him out of the country. The Burgundians, indeed, fled before the sturdy mountaineers in a panic, leaving the duke’s treasures in the hands of the Swiss, who had no idea of their value.

Silver dishes the mountaineers sold for a few pence, as though they were tin; precious stones they flung carelessly aside. ‘There was nothing saved for the Burgundians but the bare life.’

Charles the Bold determined to punish the Swiss, so he gathered together a new army, and marched against his enemies.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.