nd several other princes
seemed eligible suitors. Doubtless her father found his daughter very
valuable as a means of attracting friendship. Doubtless, too, as
Commines says, he was not anxious to introduce any son-in-law into his
family. His fortieth year was only completed in 1473, and he was by no
means ready to range himself as an ancestor.

At successive times the negotiations between Charles and Frederic were
ruptured only to be renewed on some slightly different basis. Threaded
together they made a story fraught with interest for Louis XI., and
one that, very probably, he had an opportunity to hear. Up to August,
1472, it is a safe inference that Philip de Commines was fully
cognisant of the propositions and counter-propositions, the
understandings and misunderstandings, the private letters of, as well
as the interviews with, the accredited Austrian envoys that appeared
at one Burgundian camp after another. Probably there was nothing more]
valuable in the store of learning carried by the astute historian from
his first patron to his second than all this fund of confidential
miscellany.

It seems a fair surmise that Louis XI. enjoyed immensely the
delightful private view into his rival's dreams, the disappointments
and rehabilitation of his shattered visions. The relation would have
made him not only fully aware of the reasons why Charles was diverted
from his hot pursuit of the Somme towns, but thoroughly informed as to
the great obstacles lying in the path which the duke hoped to travel.
Naturally, the king was quite willing to rest assured that ruin was
inevitable. If his rival were disposed to wreck himself rashly on
German shoals, the king was equally disposed to be an acquiescent
onlooker and to spare his own powder.

On his part, Charles was wholly unconscious of the extent of his loss
of prestige within the French realm in 1472. There had been other
periods when the king had appeared triumphant over his aspiring nobles
only to be again checked by their alliance. In the radical change
undergone by the feudatories after Guienne's death and Brittany's
reconciliation, there was, however, no opening left for the Duke
of Burgundy's re-entry as a French political leader. It was this
definitive cessation of his importance that Charles failed to
recognise. Confident that his star was rising in the east he did
not note the significance of its setting in the west. Thereupon the
situation was,--Charles, believing