The imperious will of the princess had come to the
rescue of Yolanda, the burgher girl.
Max paused before speaking, then grasped her hands
fiercely and answered:—
“Before God, Fraeulein, I will come back to
you, if I live.”
Yolanda sank upon the cushioned bench, covered her
face with her hands, and the pent-up storm of sobs
and tears broke forth as Max and I passed out the
door.
Yolanda had won.
MAX GOES TO WAR
The next morning at dawn our army marched. Although
Duke Charles would not encumber himself with provisions
for his men, he carried a vast train of carts filled
with plate, silk tents, rich rugs, and precious jewels;
for, with all his bravery, this duke’s ruling
passion was the love of display in the presence of
foreigners.
I shall not give the story of this disastrous war
in detail; that lies in the province of history, and
my story relates only to Max and Yolanda, and to the
manner in which they were affected by the results
of the war.
We marched with forty thousand men, and laid siege
to the city of Granson, in the district of Vaud.
The Swiss sent ambassadors under a flag of truce,
begging Charles to spare them, and saying, according
to my friend Comines, that “there were among
them no good prisoners to make, and that the spurs
and horses’ bits of the duke’s army were
worth more money than all the people of Switzerland
could pay in ransoms, even if they were taken.”
Charles rejected all overtures, and on the third of
March the brave little Swiss army sallied against us,
“heralding their advances by the lowings of
the Bull of Uri and the Cow of Unterwalden, two enormous
instruments which had been given to their ancestors
by Charlemagne.”
God was against Charles of Burgundy, and his army
was utterly routed by one of less than a fourth its
size. I was with Charles after the battle, and
his humiliation was more pitiful than his bursts of
ungovernable wrath were disgusting. The king
of France, hoping for this disaster, was near by at
Lyons.
A cruel man is always despicable in misfortune.
Charles at once sent to King Louis a conciliatory,
fawning letter, recanting all that he had said in
his last missive from Peronne, and expressing the hope
that His Majesty would adhere to the treaty and would
consent to the marriage of Princess Mary and the Dauphin
at once. In this letter Yolanda had no opportunity
to insert a disturbing “t.” Louis
answered graciously, saying that the treaty should
be observed, and that the marriage should take place
immediately upon the duke’s return to Burgundy.
“We have already forwarded instructions to Paris,”
wrote King Louis, “directing that preparations
be made at once for the celebration of this most desired
union at the holy church of St. Denis. We wondered
much at Your Grace’s first missive, in which
you so peremptorily desired us not to move in this
matter till your return; and we wondered more at Your
Lordship’s ungracious reply to our answer in
which we consented to the delay Your Grace had asked.”
