vence, where he was once a captive: Rene,
whose memory never dies in Nancy, though his body died 500 years ago.

What if he should rise from his tomb in the church of the Cordeliers, or
come down off his little bronze horse in the Place St. Epvre as ghosts
may by moonlight, to walk with his fair wife Isabella through the
huddled streets of the old town, gazing at the wreckage made by the
greatest war of history? What would he think of civilization, he who
held his dukedom against the star warrior of the century, Charles the
Bold? War was lawless enough in his day. When avenging a chancellor's
murder, the Nancians hanged 100 Burgundian officers on a church tower
for the besiegers outside the city wall to see. But the "noble Gauls"
whom Julius Caesar called "knights of chivalry," would have drawn the
line then at showering bombs from the bay on women and children. We
fancied, Brian and I, that after a walk round Nancy Rene and Isabella
would retire, sadder and wiser ghosts, content to have finished their
lives in gentler times than ours. Back into the shadows might they fade,
to sleep again, and take up their old dream where the noise of
twentieth-century shrapnel had snapped its thread. Their best dream must
be, we thought, of their battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold on his black
war-horse, surrounded by Burgundian barons in armour, shouting, and
waving their banners with standards of ivory and gold; Charles of the
dark locks, and brilliant eyes which all men feared and some women
loved; Charles laughing with joy in the chance of open battle at last,
utterly confident of its end, because the young duke--once his
prisoner--had reinforced a small army with mercenaries, Swiss and
Alsatians. At most Rene had 15,000 soldiers, and Charles believed his
equal band of Burgundians worth ten times the paid northerners, as man
to man.

From the church tower where Charles's men had hung--where St. Epvre
stands now--Rene could see the enemy troops assembling, headed by the
Duke of Burgundy, in his glittering helmet adorned with its device of an
open-jawed lion. He could even see the gorgeous tent whose tapestried
magnificence spies had reported (a magnificence owned by Nancy's museum
in our day!), and there seemed to his eyes no end to the defile of
spears, of strange engines for scaling walls, and glittering
battle-axes. One last prayer, a blessing by the pale priest, and young
Rene's own turn to lead had come--a slight adversary for