with
dissimulation and suppleness in order to succeed in his views, the duke,
on his side, had a great sense of another sort and to another purpose,
which he displayed by a public ostentation of his pride, without any fear
of putting himself in a false position." Between 1468 and 1477, from the
incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at the siege of Nancy, the
history of the two princes was nothing but one constant alternation
between ruptures and re-adjustments, hostilities and truces, wherein both
were constantly changing their posture, their language, and their allies.
It was at one time the affairs of the Duke of Brittany or those of Prince
Charles of France, become Duke of Guienne; at another it was the
relations with the different claimants to the throne of England, or the
fate of the towns, in Picardy, handed over to the Duke of Burgundy by the
treaties of Conflans and Peronne, which served as a ground or pretext for
the frequent recurrences of war. In 1471 St. Quentin opened its gates to
Count Louis of St. Poi, constable of France; and Duke Charles complained
with threats about it to the Count of Dampmartin, who was in commend, on
that frontier, of Louis XI.'s army, and had a good understanding with the
constable. Dampmartin, "one of the bravest men of his time," says Duclos
[Histoire de Louis XI in the (Enures completes of Duclos, t. ii. p. 429),
"sincere and faithful, a warm friend and an implacable foe, at once
replied to the duke, 'Most high and puissant prince, I suppose your
letters to have been dictated by your council and highest clerics, who
are folks better at letter-making than I am, for I have not lived by
quill-driving. . . . If I write you matter that displeases you, and
you have a desire to revenge yourself upon me, you shall find me so near
to your army that you will know how little fear I have of you. . . .
Be assured that if it be your will to go on long making war upon the
king, it will at last be found out by all the world that as a soldier you
have mistaken your calling." The next year (1472) war broke out. Duke
Charles went and laid siege to Beauvais, and on the 27th of June
delivered the first assault. The inhabitants were at this moment left
almost alone to defend their town. A young girl of eighteen, Joan
Fourquet, whom a burgher's wife of Beauvais, Madame Laisne, her mother by
adoption, had bred up in the history, still so recent, of Joan of Arc,
threw herself into the