Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/24

10 merit much gratitude. But he did not care to probe too deeply into the motives of the prince; the great matter was, that Burgundy was the sworn antagonist of Louis, and their interests were, therefore, the same.

The Duke of Burgundy—called Charles le Téméraire, or the Rash, though sometimes more complimentarily termed the Bold—was no match for the cold and politic Louis XI. He and his ally, the Duke of Brittany, fancied themselves incapable of standing their ground against Louis, and now made an offer of mutual alliance to Edward, for the purpose of enforcing their common claims in France. Nothing could accord more with the desires of Edward than this proposition. He had employed 1473 in settling his disputes with the Hanse Towns, in confirming the truce with Scotland, and renewing his alliances with Portugal and Denmark. His Parliament had granted him large supplies. They voted him a tenth of rents, or two shillings in the pound, calculated to produce at that day £31,460, equal to more than £300,000 of our present money. They then added to this a whole fifteenth, and three-quarters of another. But when Edward entered into the scheme of Burgundy and Brittany for the French conquest, they granted him permission to raise any further moneys by what were called benevolences, or free gifts—a kind of exaction perhaps more irksome than any other, because it was vague, arbitrary, and put the advances of the subjects on the basis of loyalty. Such a mode of fleecing the people had been resorted to under Henry III. and Richard II. Now there was added a clause to the Act of Parliament, providing that the proceeds of the fifteenth should be deposited in religious houses; and if the French campaign should not take place, should be refunded to the people: as if any one had ever heard of taxes, once obtained, ever being refunded to the payers!

Armed with these powers, Edward soon showed what, in his mind, was the idea of a benevolence. He summoned before him the most wealthy citizens, and demanded their liberal contributions to his treasury for his great object, the recovery of France. No one dared to refuse a monarch who had given so many proofs of his ready punishment of those who displeased him. From the pride, the fears, or the shame of the wealthy thus called upon, he amassed, it is declared, far larger sums for the war than any of his predecessors had done. To leave no enemy in the rear, and to prevent any tampering of the subtle Louis with the Scots—the usual policy of France on such occasions—Edward appointed commissioners to award ample indemnity to the merchants and subjects of Scotland who had received any injury from England. Whilst Scotland was in the good humour thus produced, Edward proposed and carried a contract of marriage betwixt the Duke of Rothsay, the son and heir of James of Scotland, and his second daughter, Cecily. The portion of the princess was to be 20,000 marks, but this was to be paid by instalments of 2,000 marks per annum for ten years; thus, by making the Scottish king a kind of pensioner on the English crown, binding him more firmly to the alliance.

All being in readiness, Edward passed over from Sandwich to Calais, where he landed on the 22nd of June, 1475. He had with him 1,500 men-at-arms, and 15,000 archers, an army with which the former Edwards would have made Louis tremble on his throne. He dispatched the Garter king-at-arms with a letter of defiance to Louis, demanding nothing less than the crown of France. The position of Louis was to all appearance most critical. If Burgundy, Brittany, and the Count of St. Pol, the Constable of France, who had entered into the league against him, had acted wisely and faithfully together, the war must have been as dreadful, and the losses of France as severe, as in the past days. But probably Louis was well satisfied of the crumbling character of the coalition. Comines, who was at the time in the service of Louis, has left us ample accounts of these transactions, and according to them, the conduct of the French king was masterly in the extreme. Instead of firing with resentment at the proud demands of the letter, he took the herald politely into his private closet, and there, in the most courteous and familiar manner, told him he was sorry for this misunderstanding with the King of England; that, for his part, he had the highest respect for Edward, and desired to be on amicable terms with him, but that he knew very well that all this was stirred up by the Duke of Burgundy and the Constable of St. Pol, who would be the very first to abandon Edward, if any difficulty arose, or after they had got their own turn served. He put it to the herald how much better it would be for England and France to be on good terms, and gave the greatest weight to his arguments by smilingly placing in Garter's hand a purse of 300 crowns, assuring him that if he used his endeavours effectually to preserve the peace between the two kingdoms, he would add to it a thousand more.

The herald was so completely captivated by the suavity, the sound reasons, and the money of Louis, that he promised to do everything in his power to promote a peace, and advised the king to open a correspondence with the Lords Howard and Stanley, noblemen not only high in the favour of Edward, but secretly averse to this expedition. This being settled, Louis committed Garter king-at-arms to the care of Philip de Comines, telling him to give the herald publicly a piece of crimson velvet, of thirty ells in length, as though it were the only present, and to get him away as soon as he could, with all courtesy, without allowing him to hold any communication with the courtiers. This being done, Louis summoned his great barons and the rest of the courtiers around him, and ordered the letter of defiance to be read aloud, all the time sitting with a look of the greatest tranquility, for he was himself much assured by what he had heard from the herald.

The words of Louis came rapidly to pass as it regarded Edward's allies. Nothing could equal the folly of Burgundy and the treachery of the others. Charles the Rash, instead of coming up punctually with his promised forces, had, in his usual wild way, led them to avenge some affront from the Duke of Lorraine and the princes of Germany, far away from the really important scene of action. When the duke appeared in Edward's camp, with only a small retinue instead of a large army, and there was no prospect of his rendering any effective aid that summer, Edward was highly chagrined. All his officers were eager for the campaign, promising themselves a renewal of the fame and booty which their fathers had won. But when Edward advanced from Peronne, where he lay, to St. Quentin, on the assurances of Burgundy that St. Pol, who held it, would open its gates to him, and