the offspring of the North, also came
into these lands, and here, too, as in all other countries, it
degenerated. The more powerful vassals gradually made themselves
independent of the crown, and the royal governors usurped the countries
they were appointed to govern. But the rebellions vassals could not
maintain their usurpations without the aid of their own dependants,
whose assistance they were compelled to purchase by new concessions.
At the same time the church became powerful through pious usurpations
and donations, and its abbey lands and episcopal sees acquired an
independent existence. Thus were the Netherlands in the tenth,
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries split up into several small
sovereignties, whose possessors did homage at one time to the German
Emperor, at another to the kings of France. By purchase, marriages,
legacies, and also by conquest, several of these provinces were often
united under one suzerain, and thus in the fifteenth century we see the
house of Burgundy in possession of the chief part of the Netherlands.
With more or less right Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had united
as many as eleven provinces under his authority, and to these his son,
Charles the Bold, added two others, acquired by force of arms. Thus
imperceptibly a new state arose in Europe, which wanted nothing but the
name to be the most flourishing kingdom in this quarter of the globe.
These extensive possessions made the Dukes of Burgundy formidable
neighbors to France, and tempted the restless spirit of Charles the Bold
to devise a scheme of conquest, embracing the whole line of country from
the Zuyder Zee and the mouth of the Rhine down to Alsace. The almost
inexhaustible resources of this prince justify in some measure this bold
project. A formidable army threatened to carry it into execution.
Already Switzerland trembled for her liberty; but deceitful fortune
abandoned him in three terrible battles, and the infatuated hero was
lost in the melee of the living and the dead.

[A page who had seen him fall a few days after the battle conducted
the victors to the spot, and saved his remains from an ignominious
oblivion. His body was dragged from out of a pool, in which it was
fast frozen, naked, and so disfigured with wounds that with great
difficulty he was recognized, by the well-known deficiency of some
of his teeth, and by remarkably long finger-nails. But that,
notwithstanding the marks, t