en as if you were in Paris, and
prove that I mean to treat them [the Burgundians] better than any
one in my realm."

The "five natural senses" of the king's lieutenant were employed most
loyally to his master's service. The duchy of Burgundy returned to the
French crown. Before Easter, the Estates were convened by Louis XI,
and there was no longer any duke in Burgundy to be an over powerful
peer in France.

With the exception of Guelders the lands acquired by Charles fell
away, but the remainder as inherited by him passed under the rule of
his daughter Mary, who carried her heritage into the House of Austria,
through which it passed finally to the King of Spain.

On that fatal fifth of January, Charles of Burgundy had only just
passed middle life. He was forty-four years, one month, and twenty-six
days old, an age when a man has the right to look forward to new
achievements. Every circumstance of the dreary and premature death was
in glaring contrast to his prospects at his birth in 1433, in insolent
contradiction to his own estimation of the obligations assumed by Fate
in his behalf. In certain details of the catastrophe there are, of
course, accidents. No one could have predicted that the duke whose
chief title was a synonym for magnificence, that this cherished heir
to his House, who had been bathed in all the luxury known to his
epoch, should have thus lain in death, many hours long, unattended and
uncared-for, naked and frozen on a bed of congealed mud, with a winter
sky as canopy. The actual adversity as it overwhelmed him was too
appalling for any foresight. But the great dream of the man's life
that vanished with his vitality owed its annihilation to no mere
chance of warfare. Had it not been rudely ended by the battle of
Nancy, other means of destruction, inevitable and sure, would have
appeared. The projected erection of a solidified kingdom stretching
from the North Sea to Switzerland and possibly to the Mediterranean,
one that could hold the balance of power between France and Germany,
contained elements of disintegration, latent at its foundation. It is
clear, from a consideration of the Duke of Burgundy and his position
in the Europe of his time, that the materials which he expected to
mould into a realm were a collection of sentient units. Each separate
one was instinct with individual life, individual desires, conscious
of its own minute past, capable of directing its own contracted
future. T