Editorial note — Chapter XV

[Footnote 1: Journal de Jean de Roye, i., 258.]

[Footnote 2: Commynes-Dupont, iii., 202.]

[Footnote 3: Plancher, iv., cccvi., May 28th.]

[Footnote 4: Rymer, Fœdera, xi., 735. Pro Ducissa Burgundiæ super Lana claccanda.]

[Footnote 5: Lettres de Louis XI., iv., 256.]

[Footnote 6: One of Guienne's retinue who, later, passed to Louis's service.]

[Footnote 7: Louis's sister Yolande.]

[Footnote 8: The Duke of Brittany had married the third daughter of the Count de Foix.]

[Footnote 9: This was an allusion to a proposed marriage between Guienne and Jeanne, reputed daughter of Henry IV. of Castile. Vaesen cannot explain the use of Aragon. Various documents relating to this negotiation are given. (Comines-Lenglet, iii., 156.)]

[Footnote 10: Vaesen gives femmes, Duclos filles. The king was above all afraid that his brother might marry Mary of Burgundy.]

[Footnote 11: Lettres de Louis XI.., iv., 286.]

[Footnote 12: There was a pestilence raging at Amboise.]

[Footnote 13: At Orleans, in the last days of October and the first of November, there was a conference wherein the king apparently promised to restore St. Quentin and Amiens to Charles, if he would renounce his alliance with the dukes of Brittany and Guienne and would betroth his daughter to the dauphin.]

[Footnote 14: Ythier Marchant negotiated the proposed marriage between Guienne and Mary of Burgundy. He had received "signed and sealed blanks" from the two princes in order to enable him to hasten matters. (Lettres de Louis XI., iv., 289.)]

[Footnote 15: III., ch. viii.]

[Footnote 16: "Cette paix jura le Due de Bourgogne et y estois présent."]

[Footnote 17: The king's envoys who had spent the winter in the Burgundian court. See letter to them in December.]

[Footnote 18: See Kervyn, Bulletin de l'Academie royale de Belgique, p. 256. Also Kirk, ii., 160; Commynes-Mandrot, i., 234.]

[Footnote 19: Louis to the Vicomte de la Belliére, Lettres, etc., iv., 319.]

[Footnote 20: Louis to Dammartin, Ibid., 325. Mars was written first and then replaced by Mai.]

[Footnote 21: Odet d'Aydie, younger brother of the Seigneur de Lescun.]

[Footnote 22: Lettres, XI., iv., 328. Louis to Dammartin, 1472.]

[Footnote 23: Lettres, iv., 331. Louis to the Duke of Milan.]

[Footnote 24: Lettres, etc., v., 4. Louis to Dammartin. See also Duclos, v., 331. There are slight discrepancies between the two texts, but the differences do not affect the narrative.]

[Footnote 25: Odet d'Aydie, whom Louis had hoped to have converted to his cause, was the man to spread the charge against Louis broadcast over the land. The truth of the death is not proven. Frequent mentions of Guienne's condition occur through the letters of the winter '71-72. The story was that the poison, administered subtly by the king's orders, caused the illness of both the prince and his mistress, Mme. de Thouan. She died after two months of suffering, December 14th, while he resisted the poison longer, though his health was completely shattered and his months of longer life were unutterably wretched and painful, a constant torture until death mercifully released him in May. Accusations of poisoning are often repeated in history. In this case, there was certainly a wide-spread belief in Louis's guilt. In his manifestos, (Lenglet, ii., 198) Charles declares that the king's tools in compassing his brother's death were a friar, Jourdain Favre, and Henri de la Roche, esquire of his kitchen.

The story told by Brantôme (Œuvres Complètes de Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme, ii., 329. "Grands Capitaines Francois." There is nothing too severe for Brantôme to say about Louis XI.) is very detailed. A fool passed to Louis's service from that of the dead prince. While this man was attending his new master in the church of Notre Dame de Cléry, he heard him make this prayer to the Virgin: "Ah! my good Lady, my little mistress, my great friend in whom I have always put my trust, I pray thee be a suppliant to God in my behalf, be my advocate with Him so that He may pardon me for the death of my brother whom I had poisoned by this wicked Abbé of St. John. I confess it to thee as to my good patron and mistress. But what was to be done? He was a torment to my realm. Get me pardoned and I know well what I will give thee."

Brantôme tells further that the fool, using the privilege of free speech accorded to his class, talked about Guienne's death at dinner in public and after that day was never seen again. On the other hand, the young duke's will was all to his brother's favour. Louis was made executor and legatee, "and if we have ever offended our beloved brother," dictated the dying man, "we implore him to pardon us as we with débonnaire affection pardon him." Mandrot, editor of Commynes (1901), i., 230, considers the whole story a malicious fabrication of Odet d'Aydie, and other authorities refer the cause to disease. The very date of the death varies from May 12th to May 24th.]

[Footnote 26: Commines, iii., ch. ix.]

[Footnote 27: There is a curious document in existence (see Bulletins de L'Hist. de France, 1833-34) dated fifty years after the event. It is the deposition of several old people who had been just old enough to remember that awful experience of their youth. Fifty years of repetition gave time for the growth of the story.]

[Footnote 28: Commines, iii., ch. x.]

[Footnote 29: Legend makes it that Jeanne Laisné, called Fouquet, chopped off the hands of the standard-bearer with a hatchet. Hence her name was changed to La Hachette, and she is represented with a hatchet.]

[Footnote 30: Barante, vii., 333.]

[Footnote 31: See Lavisse, ivii., 368.]

[Footnote 32:.