v.] THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 83 to the Parliament of Paris. So Lewis had to go, almost in the duke's train, to Li^ge to put down the revoh which lie himself had provoked, a humiliation which he bitterly felt, though he dissembled his vexation. Li^ge was taken, though not till after a hard fight, and sacked and ruined as savagely as Dinant had been ; after which the king re- turned, burning to revenge himself. He began to con- trive how to elude fulfilling the terms that had been wrested from him, and threw into his dungeon at Loches the Duke of Alen^on and Cardinal Balue, on whom he laid the blame of his misadventure. 42. Plans of Charles the Bold. — Charles the Bold was full of restless schemes of ambition. His chief desire was to join together the two separate portions of his dominions, the Burgundies and the Low Countries, and thus to form a middle kingdom between France and Germany, like the old kingdoms of Lotharingia and Burgundy. He had only one child, his daughter Mary, by his first wife, Isabel of Bourbon ; his second marriage with Margaret, sister of Edward IV. of England, was childless. He was loth to give himself a son-in-law, but he used Mary as a bribe to each prince with whom he wanted to ally him- self. First he offered her to the Duke of Berri, for whom at Pdronne he had demanded Brie and Champagne, lands adjoining his own. Lewis XI. however beguiled the youth from his shelter in Britanny, promised him the dukedom of Guienne instead of Champagne, and brought him to court. There he died suspiciously, soon after the birth of a dauphin had made him no longer heir to the crown. Next, Mary was offered to Maximilian of Austria, the son of the Emperor Frederick III, Charles hoped to obtain investiture as a king from the emperor, and came to meet him at Trier with a crown and sceptre for the purpose. But either Frederick was not paid highly enough, or he found that the German princes would be offended, for he embarked in the night, and sailed away secretly, leaving the duke in anger and disappointment. Still Charles pursued his plans on the two countries that divided his domains. The House of Austria held various towns and districts in Elsass, which, in the various divisions of the Austrian possessions, were held by Sigismund, Count of Tyrol, who, according to German usuage, bore the title of Duke of Austria. He mortgaged his Alsatian domi- nions to Charles for a heavy loan. Charles was likewise in treaty to pension off old King Rend, and obtain from
