ks of wine to set them drinking, and
to make them drunk. I pray you, my friend, let there be no need to
return a second time to do the mowing, for you are as much crown-officer
as I am, and, if I am king, you are grand master." Dampmartin executed
the king's orders without scruple; and at the season of harvest the
Flemish country-places were devastated. "Little birds of heaven," cries
the Flemish chronicler Molinet, "ye who are wont to haunt our fields and
rejoice our hearts with your amorous notes, now seek out other countries;
get ye hence from our tillages, for the king of the mowers of France hath
done worse to us than do the tempests."

All the efforts of Louis XI., his winning speeches, and his ruinous
deeds, did not succeed in averting the serious check he dreaded. On the
18th of August, 1477, seven months after the battle of Nancy and the
death of Charles the Rash, Arch-duke Maximilian, son of the Emperor
Frederick III., arrived at Ghent to wed Mary of Burgundy. "The moment he
caught sight of his betrothed," say the Flemish chroniclers, "they both
bent down to the ground and turned as pale as death--a sign of mutual
love according to some, an omen of unhappiness according to others."
Next day, August 19, the marriage was celebrated with great simplicity in
the chapel of the Hotel de Ville; and Maximilian swore to respect the
privileges of Ghent. A few days afterwards he renewed the same oath at
Bruges, in the midst of decorations bearing the modest device, "Most
glorious prince, defend us lest we perish" (Gloriosissime princeps,
defende nos ne pereamus). Not only did Louis XI. thus fail in his first
wise design of incorporating with France, by means of a marriage between
his son the _dauphin_ and Princess Mary, the heritage of the Dukes of
Burgundy, but he suffered the heiress and a great part of the heritage
to pass into the hands of the son of the German emperor; and thereby he
paved the way for that determined rivalry between the houses of France
and Austria, which was a source of so many dangers and woes to both
states during three centuries. It is said that in 1745, when Louis XV.,
after the battle of Fontenoy, entered Bruges cathedral, he remarked, as
he gazed on the tombs of the Austro-Burgundian princes, "There is the
origin of all our wars." In vain, when the marriage of Maximilian and
Mary was completed, did Louis XI. attempt to struggle against his new and
dangerous neighbor; his campaigns in