Nancy has been called the prettiest town
of France, and it certainly excels its rival
towns in the same province—Metz, Verdun,
Luneville, Chateau Salins, and Epinal—
by its cleanliness, and by a certain air of
distinction becoming the old capital of
the Dukes of Lorraine. The buildings are
regular and harmonious; the streets are
broad and spacious. The great epoch in
the history of Lorraine, and therefore of
Nancy, was in the reign of that arch
hypocrite Louis the Eleventh. The story is well
told by Commines. In 1475, the ambitious
and restless Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy, longing to open a passage through
Luxembourg into Burgundy to surround his
territories, and make it all his own riding-
ground from Lyons to Holland, invested
Nancy. What followed is a chapter from
Anne of Geierstein. One of the duke's
captains—a rascally Italian refugee, called
the Count of Campobasso, who had come
from Naples with four hundred lances—
had offered the Duke of Lorraine to
prolong the siege by allowing the Burgundian
army to run short of ammunition and other
necessary supplies. This scoundrel had
also promised, through a physician of
Lyons, to betray the duke and hand him
over as a prisoner to Louis the Eleventh,
who, however, acquainted Charles with the
treason, which he would not believe, knowing
how full Louis was of tricks and
artifices. In the mean time, just before Nancy
surrendered, the duke, cruelly defeated by
the Swiss at Granson and Morat, and
forsaken by his allies, sank into a sullen
melancholy, from which he never quite
recovered, so much did he take his losses to
heart. While he thus sulked, the Duke of
Lorraine took Vaudémont and Epinal, and
besieged Nancy, in which town there were
three hundred English and twelve hundred
Burgundians, who, afraid of the townspeople,
and driven to eat horse-flesh, were
constantly tormented with as many as
twenty-one shots a day from two bombards,
one culverin, and several serpentines,
which eventually (such was their "remorseless
fury") broke down a gate and upset a
wall. The Duke of Lorraine and his ten
thousand Swiss made it an unpleasant time
for Nancy; so the English, tired of the
siege and the Duke of Burgundy's delay,
surrendered the place just three days before
their tardy master arrived to relieve them.

Afterwards, and in the depth of winter,
the Duke of Burgundy besieged Nancy
with a mutinous, ill-paid, ill-provided army
that, since he had been unfortunate,
censured and despised his enterprises. The
king of France had lent the Duke of
Lorraine four hundred thousand francs to hire
Swiss soldiers, and had also sent a body of
eight hundred lances and Frank archers to
Barrois to observe matters. The King of
Portugal, visiting the Duke of Burgundy's
camp, the duke pressed him to stay and
defend the pass of Pont à Mousson, but the
king refused, having only come to France
to obtain help against Ferdinand of Castillo
(Columbus's Ferdinand).

The Duke of Lorraine now hurried from
St. Nicholas, and advanced to give battle
to Burgundy, and that same day
Campobasso went over to the enemy with eight
score men-at-arms. A draper of Mirecourt
instantly clambered into Nancy, that was
near surrender, to entreat them to hold out,
and the Duke of Lorraine presently threw
men and provisions into Nancy, for the
Duke of Burgundy had only four thousand
men, and only twelve hundred of these
were in a condition to fight, and the head-
strong Duke of Burgundy was advised to
retire to Pont à Mousson, and the towns
round Nancy, Lorraine would, it was urged,
wanting money, retire, and the duke could
recruit his forces with the four hundred
and fifty thousand crowns he had ready in
the Castle of Luxembourg; but the madman
resolved to rush like a bull on his enemies,
and gore them or perish. To the Count de
Chimaz, who advised retreat, Charles said
insultingly:

"I deny what you say, but if I were
to fight alone, I would fight all the same.
You are what you are, and show clearly
that you are sprung from the house of
Vaudrémont."

The Germans, to their credit, being
unwilling to receive such a traitor as
Campobasso, that rascal retired to the Castle of
Condé, where he fortified the pass with
carts, hoping to swoop down, like a carrion
crow for plunder, if the Duke of Burgundy
should be defeated. He had also left men
in Charles's ranks who were to desert him
in the charge, and others who were to fall
on and murder him in the rout.

All happened as might have been
foreseen. The duke's scared, faint-hearted
army broke at the first shock of spears and
halberds. The duke was knocked off his big
black horse and fell into a ditch, near the
marsh of St. John, where a statue now
marks the spot. A knight named Claude
de Bausemont, coming up, gave the fallen
man a lance-thrust, while others clove him
down with halberds and pierced him with