Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3

Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot


But Louis XI.'s deliverance after his quasi-captivity at Peronne, and the
new treaty he had concluded with Duke Charles, were and could be only a
temporary break in the struggle between these two princes, destined as
they were, both by character and position, to irremediable
incompatibility. They were too powerful and too different to live at
peace when they were such close neighbors, and when their relations were
so complicated. We find in the chronicle of George Chastelain, a Flemish
burgher, and a servant on familiar terms with Duke Charles, as he had
been with his father, Duke Philip, a judicious picture of this
incompatibility and the causes of it. "There had been," he says, "at all
times a rancor between these two princes, and, whatever pacification
might have been effected to-day, everything returned to-morrow to the old
condition, and no real love could be established. They suffered from
incompatibility of temperament and perpetual discordance of will; and the
more they advanced in years the deeper they plunged into a state of
serious difference and hopeless bitterness. The king was a man of
subtlety and full of fence; he knew how to recoil for a better spring,
how to affect humility and gentleness in his deep designs, how to yield
and to give up in order to receive double, and how to bear and tolerate
for a time his own grievances in hopes of being able at last to have his
revenge. He was, therefore, very much to be feared for his practical
knowledge, showing the greatest skill and penetration in the world. Duke
Charles was to be feared for his great courage, which he evinced and
displayed in his actions, making no account of king or emperor. Thus,
whilst the king had great sense and great ability, which he used with
dissimulation and suppleness in order to succeed in his views, the duke,
on his side, had a great sense of another sort and to another purpose,
which he displayed by a public ostentation of his pride, without any fear
of putting himself in a false position." Between 1468 and 1477, from the
incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at the siege of Nancy, the
history of the two princes was nothing but one constant alternation
between ruptures and re-adjustments, hostilities and truces, wherein both
were constantly changing their posture, their language, and their allies.
It was at one time the affairs of the Duke of Brittany or those of Prince
Charles of France, become Duke of Guienne; at another it was the
relations with the different claimants to the throne of England, or the
fate of the towns, in Picardy, handed over to the Duke of Burgundy by the
treaties of Conflans and Peronne, which served as a ground or pretext for
the frequent recurrences of war. In 1471 St. Quentin opened its gates to
Count Louis of St. Poi, constable of France; and Duke Charles complained
with threats about it to the Count of Dampmartin, who was in commend, on
that frontier, of Louis XI.'s army, and had a good understanding with the
constable. Dampmartin, "one of the bravest men of his time," says Duclos
[Histoire de Louis XI in the (Enures completes of Duclos, t. ii. p. 429),
"sincere and faithful, a warm friend and an implacable foe, at once
replied to the duke, 'Most high and puissant prince, I suppose your
letters to have been dictated by your council and highest clerics, who
are folks better at letter-making than I am, for I have not lived by
quill-driving. . . . If I write you matter that displeases you, and
you have a desire to revenge yourself upon me, you shall find me so near
to your army that you will know how little fear I have of you. . . .
Be assured that if it be your will to go on long making war upon the
king, it will at last be found out by all the world that as a soldier you
have mistaken your calling." The next year (1472) war broke out. Duke
Charles went and laid siege to Beauvais, and on the 27th of June
delivered the first assault. The inhabitants were at this moment left
almost alone to defend their town. A young girl of eighteen, Joan
Fourquet, whom a burgher's wife of Beauvais, Madame Laisne, her mother by
adoption, had bred up in the history, still so recent, of Joan of Arc,
threw herself into the midst of the throng, holding up her little axe
(hachette) before the image of St. Angadresme, patroness of the town, and
crying, "O glorious virgin, come to my aid; to arms! to arms!" The
assault was repulsed; re-enforcements came up from Noyon, Amiens, and
Paris, under the orders of the Marshal de Rouault; and the mayor of
Beauvais presented Joan to him. "Sir," said the young girl to him, "you
have everywhere been victor, and you will be so with us." On the 9th of
July the Duke of Burgundy delivered a second assault, which lasted four
hours. Some Burgundians had escaladed a part of the ramparts; Joan
Hachette arrived there just as one of them was planting his flag on the
spot; she pushed him over the side into the ditch, and went down in
pursuit of him; the man fell on one knee; Joan struck him down, took
possession of the flag, and mounted up to the ramparts again, crying,
"Victory!" The same cry resounded at all points of the wall; the assault
was everywhere repulsed. The vexation of Charles was great; the day
before he had been almost alone in advocating the assault; in the
evening, as he lay on his camp-bed, according to his custom, he had asked
several of his people whether they thought the townsmen were prepared for
it. "Yes, certainly," was the answer; "there are a great number of
them." "You will not find a soul there to-morrow," said Charles with a
sneer. He remained for twelve days longer before the place, looking for
a better chance; but on the 12th of July he decided upon raising the
siege, and took the road to Normandy. Some days before attacking
Beauvais, he had taken, not without difficulty, Nesle in the Vermandois.
"There it was," says Commynes, "that he first committed a horrible and
wicked deed of war, which had never been his wont; this was burning
everything everywhere; those who were taken alive were hanged; a pretty
large number had their hands cut off. It mislikes me to speak of such
cruelty; but I was on the spot, and must needs say something about it."
Commynes undoubtedly said something about it to Charles himself, who
answered, "It is the fruit borne by the tree of war; it would have been
the fate of Beauvais if I could have taken the town."

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