Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
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The Duke of Burgundy, as soon as he found out that the King of France had, under the name of truce, made peace for seven years with the King of England, and that Edward IV. had recrossed the Channel with his army, saw that his attempts, so far, were a failure. Accordingly he too lost no time in signing [on the 13th of September, 1475] a truce with King Louis for nine years, and directing his ambition and aiming his blows against other quarters than Western France. Two little states, his neighbors on the east, Lorraine and Switzerland, became the object and the theatre of his passion for war. Lorraine had at that time for its duke Rene II., of the house of Anjou through his mother Yolande, a young prince who was wavering, as so many others were, between France and Burgundy. Charles suddenly entered Lorraine, took possession of several castles, had the inhabitants who resisted hanged, besieged Nancy, which made a valiant defence, and ended by conquering the capital as well as the country-places, leaving Duke Rene no asylum but the court of Louis XI., of whom the Lorraine prince had begged a support, which Louis, after his custom, had promised without rendering it effectual. Charles did not stop there. He had already been more than once engaged in hostilities with his neighbors the Swiss; and he now learned that they had just made a sanguinary raid upon the district of Vaud, the domain of a petty prince of the house of Savoy, and a devoted servant of the Duke of Burgundy. Scarcely two months after the capture of Nancy, Charles set out, on the 11th of June, 1476, to go and avenge his client, and wreak his haughty and turbulent humor upon these bold peasants of the Alps.
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