This was his last effort
of life; and in the evening, after some hours of passive agony, he died.
His son flung himself upon the bed: "He shrieked, he wept, he wrung his
hands," says George Chatelain, one of the aged duke's oldest and most
trusted servants, "and for many a long day tears were mingled with all
his words every time he spoke to those who had been in the service of the
dead, so much so that every one marvelled at his immeasurable grief; it
had never heretofore been thought that he could feel a quarter of the
sorrow he showed, for he was thought to have a sterner heart, whatever
cause there might have been; but nature overcame him." Nor was it to his
son alone that Duke Philip had been so good and left so many grounds for
sorrow. "With you we lose," was the saying amongst the crowd that
followed the procession through the streets, "with you we lose our good
old duke, the best, the gentlest, the friendliest of princes, our peace
and eke our joy! Amidst such fearful storms you at last brought us out
into tranquillity and good order; you set justice on her seat and gave
free course to commerce. And now you are dead, and we are orphans!"
Many voices, it is said, added in a lower tone, "You leave us in hands
whereof the weight is unknown to us; we know not into what perils we may
be brought by the power that is to be over us, over us so accustomed to
yours, under which we, most of us, were born and grew up."

What the people were anxiously forecasting, Louis foresaw with certainty,
and took his measures accordingly. A few days after the death of Philip
the Good, several of the principal Flemish cities, Ghent first and then
Liege, rose against the new Duke of Burgundy in defence of their
liberties, already ignored or threatened. The intrigues of Louis were
not unconnected with these solicitations. He would undoubtedly have been
very glad to have seen his most formidable enemy beset, at the very
commencement of his ducal reign, by serious embarrassments, and obliged
to let the king of France settle without trouble his differences with his
brother Duke Charles of Berry, and with the Duke of Brittany. But the
new Duke of Burgundy was speedily triumphant over the Flemish
insurrections; and after these successes, at the close of the year 1467,
he was so powerful and so unfettered in his movements, that Louis might,
with good reason, fear the formation of a fresh league amongst his great
neighbors in coalition