red
and twenty livres for a copy of the _Chronique_ intended for Charles
V.'s sister Mary, queen of Hungary. Only about one-third of the whole
work, which extended from 1410 to 1474, is known to be in existence, but
MSS. carried by the Habsburgs to Vienna or Madrid may possibly yet be
discovered.

Among his contemporaries Chastellain acquired a great reputation by his
poems and occasional pieces now little considered. The unfinished state
of his _Chronique_ at the time of his death, coupled with political
considerations, may possibly account for the fact that it remained
unprinted during the century that followed his death, and his historical
work was only disinterred from the libraries of Arras, Paris and
Brussels by the painstaking researches of M. Buchon in 1825. Chastellain
was constantly engaged during the earlier part of his career in
negotiations between the French and Burgundian courts, and thus had
personal knowledge of the persons and events dealt with in his history.
A partisan element in writing of French affairs was inevitable in a
Burgundian chronicle. This defect appears most strongly in his treatment
of Joan of Arc; and the attack on Agnes Sorel seems to have been
dictated by the dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.), then a refugee in
Burgundy, of whom he was afterwards to become a severe critic. He was
not, however, misled, as his more picturesque predecessor Froissart had
been, by feudal and chivalric tradition into misconception of the
radical injustice of the English cause in France; and except in isolated
instances where Burgundian interests were at stake, he did full justice
to the patriotism of Frenchmen. Among his most sympathetic portraits are
those of his friend Pierre de Breze and of Jacques Coeur. His French
style, based partly on his Latin reading, has, together with its
undeniable vigour and picturesqueness, the characteristic redundance and
rhetorical quality of the Burgundian school. Chastellain was no mere
annalist, but proposed to fuse and shape his vast material to his own
conclusions, in accordance with his political experience. The most
interesting feature of his work is the skill with which he pictures the
leading figures of his time. His "characters" are the fruit of acute and
experienced observation, and abound in satirical traits, although the
42nd chapter of his second book, devoted expressly to portraiture, is
headed "_Comment Georges escrit et mentionne les louanges vertueuses des