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been kept a prisoner, some say from he battle of Agincourt till Henry's death. The importance of winning him over to Charles was as clear; and this great national object met with endless obstacles when Charles proposed to make him Buchan's successor. The Duke of Brittany, Richemont's brother, was flattered by the proposal, and one of the motives for it was the gaining that Prince. The President Louvet was sent to the court of Brittany, but the Duke personally hated him on account of a plot against his person of which he suspected him, and which Bedford had always adroitly urged as a reason for the Duke standing aloof from Charles, whose entire confidence Louvet enjoyed. Louvet was ordered to quit the Court of Brittany, and Charles then made another attempt through the Queen of Sicily, assisted by Tanneguy du Châtel. This gave offence to Philip, and then it was arranged that Richemont should not go to Charles without that Prince's approval. This he was pleased to give, flattered with the proposition. At length Richemont went, but only to raise another difficulty: he must have the consent of Philip and of the Duke of Savoy before he accepted the Constable's staff. The Burgundian made the retirement of Tanneguy du Châtel from Charles's councils a condition of his assent on account of the murder at Montereau, and the Duke of Brittany required Louvet to be also removed because of the supposed plot against his person. Charles yielded, but retained ever after so great a spite against Richemont on account of Louvet and Tanneguy's dismissal, that he refused to allow his presence at the coronation of Rheims, and thus greatly abridged the benefits he might have derived from the whole arrangement.

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NOTE LXI. p. 350.

There is a curious paper of M. Boivin (Ac. des Insc., tom. ii. 690) Sur la Bibliothèque du Louvre sous Charles V., VI., et VII.' Charles V., who was fond of reading, and not merely on judicial astrology as has been sometimes said, always regarded a

present of books as the most valuable he could receive, and partly from those left him by his father, partly by his own collection, possessed 900 volumes. They were in the tower called Tour de la Librairie. They were chiefly religious, but some also on astrology-many of history-some romances-few classics, and these only poets. He read these only in French translations. He had given away some volumes. After his death twenty were added. In 1423 there were 853 volumes, valued at 2323 livres. Bedford, 22nd of June, 1425, took an account of them, and he is said in one catalogue to have bought them for 1200 fr. There is no doubt that he carried the bulk of them over to England, though some remained in private hands, having been lent before 1441, when Count Angoulême bought one of them in London. Mr. Hallam refers to this memoir (Lit. of Mid. Ages, ch. 1) under the name of Bouvin, and corrects Warton, who had said that Cicero was among the MSS. in the library, which certainly is incorrect. But Christine de Pisan (Livre des fais et bonnes Mœurs du sage Roy Charles V., pt. iii. ch. 12) mentions Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, Valerius Maximus, and Livy, as having been translated by his direction, and L'Abbé Lebeuf (Acad. des Insc.) gives the names of the translators.

NOTE LXII. p. 185.

Now that the controversy between the parties Armagnacs and Bourguignons has so long ceased, there seems hardly in any quarter beyond the Duchy itself any disposition to defend the character of Jean-sans-Peur, or even to extenuate the enormities of which he was guilty on almost all the occasions that gave either his calculating selfishness or his cruel propensities scope to act. But the writers of the Duchy are very fond of dwelling upon his capacity and his courage, and seem to take a pride in holding him up to admiration for those qualities. Indeed it may be observed that even M. Barante, though labouring less under this prejudice, expresses himself with more forbearance than is

quite becoming upon the atrocities of which he was confessedly guilty, and dwells with complacency upon the cause of his favour with his nobles, his servants, and his troops. It is, indeed, undeniable that his blood-thirsty disposition had not made him unpopular. His courage dazzled, and his facility attracted, those about him especially who enjoyed his entire confidence when they had it at all. His popularity only affords another instance of the want of reflection and want of regard for either humanity or justice, which the people too often show in their estimate of men's merits and their feelings towards men's persons.' His whole history may be examined, and it will be found to exhibit no marks of good feeling, if it be not the great anxiety which he showed to vindicate himself from the charge of the Orleans murder, an anxiety which seems inconsistent with the rest of his conduct. It is described as so entirely possessing him, that during his last occupation of Paris he was much more engrossed with obtaining a decree of the Parliament to reverse the sentence against his defender, Maistre J. Petit, than with any of the other matters which pressed upon his attention. That Doctor had been dead some years; his defence had been condemned by the Council of Constance.

We have had occasion to mark the conduct of this wicked man at Paris. The assassination, and subsequently the league with the authors of the massacres, are no doubt the parts of his life most commonly referred to with abhorrence; but the butchery of the Liegeois at the battle of Hatsbaine exceeded greatly all he was ever guilty of in France. That people had revolted, not against him, but his brother-in-law, their lay bishop, of whose oppressive and unlawful conduct they had good right to complain. But had their resistance been ever so unjustifiable, and the conduct of their prince been ever so unexceptionable, the dreadful vengeance inflicted by his ally is almost

1 It is, perhaps, a mark of the liking which the people had for him that they gave him familiarly the appellation of Hanneton (Le Hanneton de Flandres), as we should say giddy-goose or mad-cap, probably from his high spirit and carelessness of danger.

without example even in that ferocious age. He attacked them with inferior numbers, no doubt, but his men (including a body of Scots under Mar) were completely armed, with abundance of cavalry, of which the insurgents were nearly destitute, and though their gallant defence made the battle a severe one, the loss he sustained in no wise justified the course he pursued. He strictly forbade giving any quarter. When, in spite of this order, several thousand prisoners had been made, probably from the extreme desire of ransom, the appearance of a body of men, as at Agincourt, supposed to meditate another attack, was alleged as the pretence for issuing an order that all prisoners should be instantly put to death, and the immediate massacre of them ensued. The field was covered with from twenty-four to twenty-six thousand bodies, by his own account, though he omits all mention of this number including the murdered captives. For several days after the battle the brothers were occupied in putting to death such of the citizens of Liege as had taken part in the revolt or were suspected of having done so. The Duke and the Bishop presided in person over this renewed massacre. In their presence the wretched victims were either beheaded or thrown into the river by the dozen and the score. "Il s'acharna,” says Fabert, a strong Burgundian partisan, speaking of the Bishop, "non seulement sur les coupables et sur les chefs, mais sur les femmes, sur les enfans, sur les prêtres, et sur les religieux. On ne voyait autour de Liege et des villes qui en dépendent que des forêts de roues et des gibets, et la Meuse regorgeoit de la multitude des corps de ces malheureux, qu'on y jetoit deux à deux liés ensemble" (Hist. des Ducs de Bourgogne, i. 41). These atrocities were ascribed chiefly to the Bishop, who from thence obtained the name of Jean-sans-Pitié; but the Duke, "Notre Intrépide," as Fabert calls him, had his full share in them, and the massacre at the battle was his special work. It was from the courage he showed on this occasion that he got his name of Jean-sans-Peur. Some have connected it with the fatal battle of Nicopolis, where the French knights, whose crusade he led against Bajazet, were defeated, and their leader, then Count de

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Nevers, taken prisoner; but this was not the occasion. Livre de Faits et Gestes de Bouçicault, cited in a former Note, gives a full account of the expedition (ch. xxiii. to ch. xxviii.), and of the cruelties committed at the siege, where, under the Burgundian's orders, the Turkish prisoners, who had surrendered on promise of being spared, were all massacred upon the approach of Bajazet to relieve the place. It seems a prophecy was reported to have been made that Bajazet would do well to spare the Burgundian, who was destined to kill more Christians than he had Turks. This is not mentioned by the chronicler of Bouçicault, who describes the pain suffered by the Burgundian on seeing his companions put to death-"Si grand douleur avoit au cœur luy qui est un très bon et benin seigneur ;" and he compares the killing of these Frenchmen, who had come to invade the Turk and had brought the utmost scandal on the name of their country by the shameless profligacy of their lives during their pious expedition, to the massacre of the Innocents by Herod (ch. xxvi.)

Another staunch Burgundian, in the service of Philip le Bon, Olivier de la Marche, extols Jean-sans-Peur for the affair of Liege, but states the number of killed at only "about 15,000.” In recounting his exploits he makes mention of the Orleans murder thus gently, "Ce que j'appelle plus grande chose que grand bien" (Mém. de Messire Olivier de la Marche, part i., ch. 2).

When we contemplate the life of this man, and reflect on the general abhorrence in which his memory is held, it is difficult to avoid the observation that men's judgments are ever determined rather by the circumstance of some single deed against an individual than by the greater atrocity of such crimes committed against great numbers. The murder of the Duke of Orleans certainly dwells far more upon all men's minds than either the wholesale butcheries of Paris or the massacre of the Liegeois and the Turks. We may further observe, that even in those abominable cruelties there was little more to be reprobated than in Henry V.'s at Agincourt, perhaps nothing so much to be abhorred

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