Charles the Bold, Last Duke of Burgundy, 1433-1477. Ruth Putnam
a regulation quite ignored when the duke proposed the names of his sons Cornelius and Anthony. For his obedient knights did not refuse to open their ranks to these great bastards of Burgundy, who carried a bar sinister proudly on their escutcheon. So, too, others of Philip's many illegitimate descendants were not rejected when their father proposed their names.
Again, it was plainly stipulated that the new member should have proven himself a knight of renown. Yet, in this session of 1433, one of the candidates proposed for election, though nominally a knight, had assuredly had no time to show his mettle. The dignity was his only because his spurs had been thrown right royally into his cradle before his tiny hands had sufficient baby strength to grasp a rattle, and before he was even old enough to use the pleasant gold to cut his teeth upon.7
Among the eight elected at Dijon in 1433, was Charles of Burgundy, Count of Charolais, son of the sovereign duke, born at Dijon on the previous St. Martin's Eve, November 10th.8
"The new chevaliers, with the exception of the Count of Virnenbourg who was absent, took the accustomed oath at the hands of the sovereign in a room of his palace."
So runs the record. Jean le Févre, Seigneur de St. Remy, present on the occasion in his capacity of king-at-arms of the Order, is a trifle more communicative.9 According to him, all the gentlemen were very joyous at their election as they received their collars and made their vows as stated. He excepted no member in the phrase about the joy displayed, though, as a matter of inference, the pleasure experienced by the Count of Charolais may be reckoned as somewhat problematical.
The heir of Burgundy had attained the ripe age of just twenty days when thus officially listed among the chevaliers present at the festival. Born on November 10th of this same year, 1433,10 he had been knighted on the very day of his baptism, when Charles, Count of Nevers, and the Seigneur of Croy were his sponsors. The former gave his name to the infant while the latter's name was destined to be identified with many unpleasant incidents in the career of the future man. This brief span of life is sufficient reason for the further item in the archives of the Golden Fleece:
"As to the Count of Charolais, he was carried into the same room. There the sovereign, his father, and the duchess, his mother, took the oath on his behalf. Afterwards the duke put the collars upon all." 11
Thus was emphasised at birth the parental conviction that Charles of Burgundy was of different metal than the rest of the world. The great duke of the Occident made a distinct epoch in the history of chivalry when he conferred its dignities upon a speechless, unconscious infant. The theory that knighthood was a personal acquisition had been maintained up to this period, the Children of France 12 alone being excepted from the rule, though in his Lay de Vaillance Eustache Deschamps complains that the degree of knighthood is actually conferred on those who are only ten or twelve years old, and who do not know what to do with the honour.13 That plaint was written not later than the first years of the fifteenth century, and the poet's prediction that ruin of the institution was imminent when affected by such disorders seemed justified if, in 1433, even the years of the eligible age had shrunk to days. Philip himself had not received the accolade until he was twenty-five.
How his predecessor in Holland, Count William VI., had acquitted himself valiantly the moment that he was dubbed knight is told by Froissart, and the tales of other accolades of the period are too well known to need reference.
It is said that the baby cavalier was nourished by his own mother. Having lost her first two infants, Isabella was solicitous for the welfare of this third child, who also proved her last. He was, moreover, Philip's sole legal heir, as Michelle of France and Bonne of Artois, his first wives, had left no offspring. The care and devotion expended on the boy were repaid. Charles became a sturdy child who developed into youthful vigour. In person, he strangely resembled his mother and her Portuguese ancestors, rather than the English Lancastrians, from whom she was equally descended.
His dark hair and his features were very different from the fair type of his paternal ancestors, the vigorous branch of the Valois family. Possibly other characteristics suggesting his Portuguese origin were intensified by close association with his mother, who supervised the education directed by the Seigneur d' Auxy. They often lived at The Hague, where Isabella acted as chief and official adviser to the duke's stadtholder in the administration.14
Charles was a diligent pupil, if we may believe his contemporaries, surprisingly so, considering his early taste for all martial pursuits and his intense interest in military operations.
At two years of age he received his first lesson in horsemanship, on a wooden steed constructed for his especial use by Jean Rampart, a saddler of Brussels.
His biographers repeat from each other statements of his proficiency in Latin. This must be balanced by noting that the only texts which he could have read were probably not classic. In the inventory of the various Burgundian libraries of the period, there are not six Greek and Latin classical texts all told, and excepting Sallust, not a single Roman historian in the original.15 There was a translation of Livy by the Prior of St. Eloi and late abridgments of Sallust, Suetonius, Lucan, and Cæsar,16 with a French version of Valerius Maximus, but nothing of Tacitus. Doubtless these versions and a volume called Les faits des Romains were used as text-books to teach the young count about the world's conquerors. The last mentioned book shows what travesties of Roman history were gravely read in the fifteenth century.
There are stories17 that the bit of history most enjoyed by the pupil was the narrative of Alexander. Books about that hero were easy to come by long before the invention of printing, though Alexander would have had difficulty in recognising his identity under the strange mediæval motley in which his namesake wandered over the land. No single man, with the possible exception of Charlemagne, was so much written about or played so brilliantly the part of a hero to the Middle Ages and after.18 The simplicity and universality of his success were of a type to appeal to the boy Charles, himself built on simple lines. The fact, too, that Alexander was the son of a Philip stimulated his imagination and instilled in his breast hopes of conquering, not the whole world perhaps, but a good slice of territory which should enable him to hold his own between the emperor and the French king. Tales of definite schemes of early ambition are often fabricated in the later life of a conqueror, but in this case they may be believed, as all threads of testimony lead to the same conclusion.
The air breathed by the boy when he first became conscious of his own individuality was certainly heavy with the aroma of satisfied ambition. The period of his childhood was a time when his father stood at the very zenith of his power. In 1435, was signed the Treaty of Arras, the death-blow to the long coalition existing between Burgundy and England to the continual detriment of France. Philip was reconciled with great solemnity to the king, responsible in his dauphin days for the murder of the late Duke of Burgundy. After ostentatiously parading his filial resentment sixteen long years, Philip forgave Charles VII. his share in the death of John the Fearless, on the bridge at Montereau, and swore to lend his support to keep the French monarch on the throne whither the efforts of Joan of Arc had carried him from Bourges, the forlorn court of his exile.
England's pretensions were repudiated. To be sure, the recent coronation of Henry VI. at Paris was not immediately forgotten,