and were
cut down on the field, and a large number of fugitives were taken in the
town and abbey. To the leaders short shrift was given. Edward was resolute
to make an end of his foes. The fall of the Duke of Somerset extinguished
the male branch of the house of Beaufort. Margaret was a prisoner; and
with the murder of her son after his surrender on the field and the
mysterious death of Henry the Sixth in the Tower which followed the king's
return to the capital the direct line of Lancaster passed away.

[Sidenote: Charles and the Empire]

Edward was at last master of his realm. No noble was likely to measure
swords with the conqueror of the Nevilles. The one rival who could revive
the Lancastrian claims, the last heir of the house of Beaufort, Henry
Tudor, was a boy and an exile. The king was free to display his genius for
war on nobler fields than those of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and for a while
his temper and the passion of his people alike drove him to the strife
with France. But the country was too exhausted to meddle in the attack on
Lewis which Charles, assured at any rate against English hostility,
renewed in 1472 in union with the Dukes of Guienne and Britanny, and which
was foiled as of old through the death of the one ally and the desertion
of the other. The failure aided in giving a turn to his policy, which was
to bring about immense results on the after history of Europe. French as
he was in blood, the nature of his possessions had made Charles from the
first a German prince rather than a French. If he held of Lewis his duchy
of Burgundy, his domain on the Somme, and Flanders west of the Scheldt,
the mass of his dominions was held of the Empire. While he failed too in
extending his power on the one side it widened rapidly on the other. In
war after war he had been unable to gain an inch of French ground beyond
the towns of the Somme. But year after year had seen new gains on his
German frontier. Elsass and the Breisgau passed into his hands as security
for a loan to the Austrian Duke Sigismund; in 1473 he seized Lorraine by
force of arms, and inherited from its Duke Gelderland and the county of
Cleves. Master of the Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, as well as of a crowd
of German princedoms, Charles was now the mightiest among the princes of
the Empire, and in actual power superior to the Emperor himself. The house
of Austria, in which the Imperial crown seemed to be becoming hereditary,
was weakened by attac