horrible famine, where hungry dogs, and even wolves,
put an end to the miseries of starving, homeless children
of slaughtered parents; another, the people would be
gazing at royal banquets, lasting a whole day, with
allegorical “subtleties” of jelly on the
table, and pageants coming between the courses, where
all the Virtues harangued in turn, or where knights
delivered maidens from giants and “salvage men.”
In the south there was less misery and more progress.
Jacques Coeur’s house at Bourges is still a marvel
of household architecture; and Rene, Duke of Anjou
and Count of Provence, was an excellent painter on
glass, and also a poet.
CHAPTER III.
THE STRUGGLE WITH BURGUNDY.
1. Power of Burgundy.—All the troubles
of France, for the last 80 years, had gone to increase
the strength of the Dukes of Burgundy. The county
and duchy, of which Dijon was the capital, lay in the
most fertile district of France, and had, as we have
seen, been conferred on Philip the Bold. His
marriage had given to him Flanders, with a gallant
nobility, and with the chief manufacturing cities of
Northern Europe. Philip’s son, John the
Fearless, had married a lady who ultimately brought
into the family the great imperial counties of Holland
and Zealand; and her son, Duke Philip the Good, by
purchase or inheritance, obtained possession of all
the adjoining little fiefs forming the country called
the Netherlands, some belonging to the Empire, some
to France. Philip had turned the scale in the
struggle between England and France, and, as his reward,
had won the cities on the Somme. He had thus
become the richest and most powerful prince in Europe,
and seemed on the point of founding a middle state
lying between France and Germany, his weak point being
that the imperial fiefs in Lorraine and Elsass lay
between his dukedom of Burgundy and his counties in
the Netherlands. No European court equalled in
splendour that of Philip. The great cities of
Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and the rest, though full of
fierce and resolute men, paid him dues enough to make
him the richest of princes, and the Flemish knights
were among the boldest in Europe. All the arts
of life, above all painting and domestic architecture,
nourished at Brussels; and nowhere were troops so well
equipped, burghers more prosperous, learning more
widespread, than in his domains. Here, too, were
the most ceremonious courtesy, the most splendid banquets,
and the most wonderful display of jewels, plate, and
cloth-of-gold. Charles VII., a clever though a
cold-hearted, indolent man, let Philip alone, already
seeing how the game would go for the future; for when
the dauphin had quarrelled with the reigning favourite,
and was kindly received on his flight to Burgundy,
the old king sneered, saying that the duke was fostering
the fox who would steal his chickens.
