Page:Historyoffranc00yong.djvu/105

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v.] THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 8i Somme from Burgundy. But the lack of pomp was a grievance to the nobles, and an edict forbidding them to hunt in the royal forests filled them with wrath. They had an instinct that the crown was ruining them, and in 1464 they formed a band called the League of the Public Weal, which made great professions of reform. The king's brother, the Duke of Berri, was the nominal head, and it included the Dukes of Britanny, Bourbon, and Nemours, the two heirs of Duke Philip and King R^n^, Charles Count of Charolois and John Duke of Calabria, with Dunois and other great captains. There were in all five hundred nobles, with sixty thousand men under them, who all marched towards Paris from different sides. The king had only his small paid army. Their army and that of Lewis came on each other unexpectedly at Monti 'Jiery, and there was a general medley, out of which the Burgundians came victorious. Paris was then besieged. Charles advanced, trusting to the old love of Paris for Burgundy, and there leally was a party in his interest. But the king won the citizens by remission of taxes and other advantages, and flattered them by trust- ing to them his queen, Charlotte of Savoy. Paris therefore held out, and Lewis entered it, but he found it expedient to sign the Treaty of Coiiflans, which seemingly granted to the League all that it asked. The price to his brother was the duchy of Normandy; that to Charles of Charolois was the county of Boulogne and some of the towns on the Soir.me, and the Count of St. Pol of the house of Luxemburg, whose lands lay between the French and Burgundian possessions, was made constable. Thus the League fell to pieces ; every man got something for him- self, but of the schemes of reform nothing more was heard. The Duke of Berri had no sooner taken posses- sion of Normandy than he quarrelled with the Duke of Britanny, and the uproar that ensued gave Lewis an excuse for resuming Normandy by authority of the States General, while the Duke fled to Britanny, think- ing himself safer there than with his brother. 40. The Ruin of Dinant, 1466. — Burgundy was too strong for open attack, but it was easy to raise up enemies against the duke who was grasping at all the small fiefs and cities which joined or intersected his dominions. One cf these states was the bishopric of Lilttich or Liege, a fief of the Empire. Six years before Philip's interference had obtained the election of his nephew Lewis of Botirbo7i G