or regret their new tie with Burgundy. The importance of their
sentiments was a matter of as supreme indifference to Charles as was
danger from the Confederation. Neither conciliation nor diplomacy
was in his thoughts. He had no conception of the intricacies of the
situation. He counted the landgraviate as definitely his by the treaty
of St. Omer as Brabant by heritage or Liege by conquest.

The need of a kindly policy towards the little valley towns--a policy
that might have won their allegiance--never occurred to him. They were
his property and Peter von Hagenbach was, in course of time, made
lieutenant-governor in his behalf.

Apart from all personal considerations of enmity and amity of natives
and neighbours, the territory of Upper Alsace and the county of
Ferrette, delivered from needy Austria to rich Burgundy, like a coat
pawned by a poor student, was held under very complex and singular
conditions.[9] The status of the bargain between Sigismund and Charles
was in point of fact something between pawn and sale, according to the
point of view. Sigismund fully intended to redeem it, while Charles
did not admit that possibility as remotely contingent. Nor was that
the only peculiarity. The itemised list of the ceded territories as
given in the treaty was far from telling the facts of the possessions
passing to Sigismund's proxy.

In the first place the Austrian seigniories were not compact. They
were scattered here and there in the midst of lands ruled by others,
as the Bishop of Strasburg, the Abbe of St. Blaise in the Black
Forest, the count Palatine, the citizens of Basel and of Mulhouse, and
others.

The existent variety in the extent and nature of Austrian title was
extraordinary. Nearly every possible combination of dismembered
prerogative and actual tenure had resulted from the long series of
ducal compositions. In some localities a toll or a quit-rent was the
sole cession, and again a toll or a prerogative was almost the only
residue remaining to the ostensible overlord, while all his former
property or transferable birthright privileges were lodged in
various hands on divers tenures. There were cases in which the
mortgagee--noble, burgher, or municipal corporation--had taken the
exact place of the Austrian duke and in so doing had become the vassal
of his debtor, stripped of all vested interest but his sovereignty.
For in these bargains wherein elements of the Roman contract and
feudal customs were cur