MR. KIRK'S CHARLES THE BOLD.*

Mn. Klux paints on a larger canvas as he approaches the conclu- sion of his work. This third and last volume of his history embraces little more than two years, from the late autumn of 1474 to the 12th of January, 1477, when, six days after his last battle, Charles was buried in front of the high altar of the Church of St. George in Nancy. We do not think that Mr. Kirk takes too large a space for the story which he has to tell. The last act of the drama is indeed crowded with action of singular interest ; there are sieges and battles to be related which hold no secondary place in European history; there is the fact of the wonderful military superiority of the Swiss, than which there is nothing more signi- ficant in the history of war ; the central figure of Charles is never so heroic, and there is a tragical pathos, not easily to be matched, about the end, when the body of the bravest soldier in Europe was found in a frozen ditch, " stripped naked, horribly mangled, the cheek eaten away by wolves or famished dogs." And Mr. Kirk, as those who have read his former volumes will readily believe, is quite equal to his task. His style is, we think, some- what wanting in taste, but it certainly is not wanting in graphic power. In ornamental description, in that, for instance, with which he opens this volume, he is not particularly happy ; but when, so to speak, there is business to be done, he is all that can be wished. He can make his readers understand and, what is more, retain a distinct impression of a battle, and that is no very common achievement. Less skilful perhaps in describing character than incident, he is yet sufficiently successful. He always aims at impartiality, and often attains it. He shares with other historians of the day the merit of a laborious industry which their predeces- sors in the last generation had not even the opportunity of exer- cising. It is not easy to estimate the amount of labour which is implied by the modest announcement prefixed to this volume that "much of the material has been gathered from manuscript sources."

We have hinted that Mr. Kirk sometimes fails in impartiality. This is the almost universal defect of biographers, and it does something to counterbalance the unquestionable artistic advan- tages of the form of history which Mr. Kirk has chosen to adopt. It almost passes human power to resist the temptation to make the subject of a biography into a hero, to shape his proportions to an ideal perfection, to intensify the lights and to diminish the depths of the shadows, to blacken or to dwarf into foils of his brightness or greatness the other figures of the scene. Against this tempta- tion Mr Kirk does not stand altogether firm. He had a most legitimate work to do for the subject of his history, who had qualities as a soldier and a statesman and a nobleness of personal character that had never before had justice done to them. But he goes beyond this to plead his cause, not disingenuously indeed, yet with a certain spirit of advocacy. The general effect of this volume is to give a picture of an heroic man defending himself against unscrupulous enemies. Nor is this absolutely unfaithful to the truth. Charles was in a way heroic ; be was certainly defending himself ; his enemies, French and Swiss, were suffi- ciently unscrupulous. But this impression ought, in justice, to be modified by a survey of his whole history. It was not, surely, without some reason that by common consent his neighbours and contemporaries called him "the Disturber." He had, as Mr. Kirk never seeks to conceal, schemes of conquest. These had been from his earliest days the ruling passion of his life, and the catastrophe of his end was their result. It may well be true, as our author thinks, "That the great rivalries and struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could never have raged so fiercely and so widely if there had stood between the two parties, instead of a crowd of minor wranglers all • llistory of Charles the Bold, Date of Burgundy. By John Foster Kirk. Vol. Ill. London John Murray. 1868.

feeding the flame, a third of equal greatness, holding the balance, interested in quenching the strife ;" but the question is whether it was the part of a Duke of Burgundy to assume this position. Doubtless this was his ambition, the ambition to rise from the position of a great feudatory to that of a great sovereign ; a man

of supreme genius might have accomplished it even with the means that were at his command, but it was his lot to come into collision

with powers that were too strong for him ; with a consummate water of statecraft in Louis XI., and iu the Swiss Confederacy with a military force by which his skill and valour were baffled, just as the dense solidity of the Theban infantry baffled the Athenian ambition at Delium and at Syracuse.

The course of modern history is to destroy at least as many characters as it restores. Thus Mr. Froude sacrificed a whole hecatomb of victims, the chivalrous Surrey at their head, for the

sake of his hero Henry. And so whatever Charles gains by Mr. Kirk's statement the Swiss lose. They are no longer patriot soldiers, defending against an unscrupulous aggressor the inde- pendence of their mountain home ; but mercenaries in the pay of the French King, and the most ruthless and unscrupulous of their kind, without any redeeming quality but a most splendid courage and tenacity. It seems impossible to resist the evidence which Mr. Kirk adduces upon this point. Not private men only, but the States themselves were bought. Nor did they even attempt to deceive themselves as to the real character of the transaction. We read that " the Council of Berne repealed the regulation under which the statute against bribes was read yearly at the opening of their proceedings." At the same time, we doubt whether Mr. Kirk makes proper allowance for the circumstances of the Swiss people. Switzerland did but follow the law which has ruled every poor country, more fertile of men than of wealth. Arcadia was the Switzerland of Greece, and its mercenaries fought indifferently for Greek or barbarian. Scotland has played the same part in modern Europe. The Swiss fought for pay, because the trade in blood was the chief trade of those days. That trade has been spoilt by the more gigantic mercenary system of standing armies ; but the same necessity still exists, and has still to be met. The overcrowded valleys of the Alps still send forth armies, not of fighters, but of valets, waiters, and traders.

The last period of Charles's history naturally divides itself into two parts. The year 1475 was not, on the whole, unfavourable to his cause. In the early summer he had inflicted two heavy blows on the Emperor's forces. Then came the grand diversion on which his best hopes were built. An English army, num-

bering 24,000 men, and better equipped than English army had ever been before, landed at Calais. Had Edward IV. had anything of the spirit of the last monarch of his name, it is

impossible to say how the course of history might have been changed. But he had never been a man of commanding ability, and now he was nothing better than a worn-out and enervated profligate. After little more than two months the army returned to England, after an expedition than which there is certainly nothing more inglorious in English history. But though this resource had failed him, Charles, at the close of the year, was not in an unfavourable position. He was master of Lorraine, and Lorraine, the link between his Burgundian and his Flemish pro-

vinces, was, as Mr. Kirk observes, " the natural keystone of the arch on which he desired to build." But 1476 was a year of

unmixed disaster. Three great armies, which he had collected with indefatigable energy, were shattered at Grandson, Morat, and Nancy successively against the wall of the Swiss infantry. The story of his fall is one of surpassing interest, and Mr. Kirk tells it very well. Though extracts hardly do justice to his merits, we will venture on a passage which gives us the last scene of all :—

" Charles saw himself stripped of both his wings, assailed at once on both his flanks. Ho has his choice between a rapid flight and a speedy death. Well, then—death! As be fastened his helmet, the golden lion in the crest became detached and fell to the ground. Ho forbad it to be replaced. hoc est signum Lei! 'It is a sign from God,'—he said. From God? Ali! yes, be know now the band that was laid upon him. Leading his troops he plunged into the midst of his foes, now closing in on every aide. Among enemies and friends the recollection of his sur- passing valour in that hour of perdition, after the last gleam of hope had vanished, was long preserved. Old men of Francho Comt4 were accus- tomed to toll how their fathers, tenants and followers of the Sire do Citey, had seen the Duke, his face streaming with blood, charging and recharging 'like a lion,' even in the thick of the combat, bringing help where the need was greatest. In Lorraine the same tradition existed. Had all his men,' says a chronicler of that province, fought with a like ardour, our army must infallibly have been repulsed.' But no ; so engaged, so overmatched, what courage could have availed? ' The foot stood long and manfully," is the testimony of a hostile eye- witness. But the final struggle, though obstinate, was short. Broken and dispersed, the men had no resource but flight. Some went east- ward, in the direction of Easey, such as gained the river crossing where tho ice bore, and breaking it behind them. The greater number kept to the west of Nancy, to gain the road to Conde and Luxembourg. Charles, with the handful that still remained around him, followed in the same direction. The mass, both of fugitives and pursuers, was already far ahead. There was no choice now. Flight, combat, death—it was all one. Closing up, the little band of nobles, last relic of chivalry, charged into the centre of a body of foot. A halberdier swung his weapon, and brought it down on the head of Charles. He reeled in the saddle. Citey flung his arms round him and steadied him, receiving while so engaged a thrust from a spear through the parted joints of his corslot. Pressing on, still fighting, still hemmed in, they dropped one by one. Charles's page. a Roman of the ancient family of Cotonna, rode a little behind, a gilt helmet hanging from his saddle-bow. He kept his eye upon his master—saw him surrounded, saw him at the edge of a ditch, saw his horse stumble, the rider fall."

This was on Sunday, January the Gth. For the next twenty- four hours his fate remained unknown, but on the evening of Monday, Colonna guided to the spot a party among whom were some "surest to recognize the form—Matthew, the Portuguese physician, a valet-de-chambre, and a laundress' who had pre- pared the baths of the fallen prince." . . . They come to the ditch. Many bodies lie on the edge—at the bottom lies another body- " short, but thick-set and well-membered." It is in worse plight than the rest, is frightfully mangled.

"They stoop and examine. The nails, never pared, are longer than any other man's.' Two teeth are gone—through a fall years ago. There are other marks—a fistula in the groin, in the neck a scar left by the sword-thrust received at Monthery. The men turn pale, the woman shrieks and throws herself upon the body ! My Lord of Burgundy! my Lord of Burgundy !' Yes, this is he—the Great Duke,' tho destroyer of Liege, the terror of France.' "

It is not because we wish to detract from the merits of a valuable book that we point out some blemishes in the style. Mr. Kirk is sometimes too grand, as when, for instance, he apostrophizes the Alps or his dramatis persona; and sometimes be is almost vulgar. Thus the expression " cornered " used of a man in difficulties is unquestionably a vulgarism. But these are trifling faults, which a little care will correct in what Mr. Kirk may do hereafter. We shall be glad to know that a writer who has so many of the his- torian's gifts is at work.