ce
that I can render you, I am the one who would wish to employ all
that God has given me [to do it]. Written at Namur, August 16th.

"Your very humble and obedient subject,

"CHARLES."

Then the count proceeded to Dinant to inflict the punishment that the
culprits had, to his mind, too long escaped.

Commines calls this a strong and rich town, superior even to
Liege.[13] A comparison of the two sites shows, however, that this
statement could hardly have been true at any time. Dinant lies in a
narrow space between the Meuse and high land. A lofty rock at one
end of the town dominating the river is crowned by a fortress most
picturesque in appearance. It is difficult to estimate how many
inhabitants there actually were in the place in 1466, but there is
no doubt as to their energy and character. As mentioned before, the
artisans had acquired a high degree of skill in their specialty, and
their brass work was renowned far and wide. Pots and pans and other
utensils were known as _Dinanderies_.

The traffic in them was so important that Dinant had had her own
commercial relations with England for a long period. Her merchants
enjoyed the same privileges in London as the members of the Hanseatic
League, and an English company was held in high respect at Dinant.[14]
The brass-founders' gild ranked at Dinant as the drapers at Louvain,
and the weavers at Ghent. As a "great gild they formed a middle class
between the lower gilds and the _bourgeois_," the merchants and richer
folk.[15] In municipal matters each of these three classes had a
separate vote.

As it happened, Dinant had not been very ready to open hostilities
against the House of Burgundy though she was equally critical of Louis
of Bourbon in his episcopal misrule. It was undoubtedly her rivalry
with Bouvignes of Namur that brought her into the strife. That
neighbour had taunted her rival to exasperation, and the fact that
it was safe under the Duke of Burgundy and backed by him as Count of
Namur, had brought a Burgundian element into the local contest.

The incidents of the insult to Charles and the aspersion on his
mother's reputation undoubtedly were due to an irresponsible rabble
rather than to any action that could properly be attributed to the
leading men. Further, it really seems probable that the weight
attached to the insulting act never occurred to the respectable
burghers until they heard of it from others, so insignificant were the