Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477. Ruth Putnam
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Ruth Putnam
Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664629647
Table of Contents
PREFACE
The admission of Charles, Duke of Burgundy into the series of Heroes of the Nations, is justified by his relation to events rather than by his national or his heroic qualities. "Il n'avait pas assez de sens ni de malice pour conduire ses entreprises," is one phrase of Philip de Commines in regard to the master he had once served. Render sens by genius and malice by diplomacy and the words are not far wrong. Yet in spite of the failure to obtain either a kingly or an imperial crown, the story of those same unaccomplished enterprises contains the germs of much that has happened later in the borderlands of France and Germany where the projected "middle kingdom" might have been erected. A sketch of the duke's character with its traits of ambition and shortcomings may therefore be placed, not unfitly, among the pen portraits of individuals who have attempted to change the map of Europe.
The materials for an exhaustive study of the times, and of the participants in the scenes thereof, are almost overwhelming in quantity. Into this narrative, I