In this curious book, the author, besides some assertions in favour of coat-armour, too nearly approaching blasphemy to be quoted, informs us, that the Apostles were gentlemen of blood, and many of them descended from that worthy conqueror, Judas Maccab?us; but through the course of time and persecution of wars, poverty oppressed the kindred, and they were constrained to servile works. So were the four doctors and fathers of the church (Ambrose, Augustine, Hierome, and Gregorie) gentlemen both of blood and arms, p. 98. The author's copy of this rare tract (memorial of a hopeful young friend, now no more) exhibits a curious sally of the national and professional irritability of a Scottish herald.
This person appears to have been named Thomas Drysdale, Islay Herald, who purchased the volume in 1619, and seems to have perused it with patience and profit till the came to the following passage in Ferne, which enters into the distinction between sovereign and feudatory crowns. 'There is also a King, and he a homager, or foedatorie to the estate and majestie of another King, as to his superior lord, as that of Scotland to our English empire.' This assertion set on fire the Scottish blood of Islay Herald, who, forgetting the book had been printed nearly forty years before, and that the author was probably dead, writes on the margin in great wrath, and in a half text hand, 'He is a traitor and lyar in his throat, and I offer him the combat, that says Scotland's Kings were ever feudatorie to England.'
Note 58
The perilling the hand of an heiress upon the event of a battle, was not so likely to take place in the fourteenth century as when the laws of chivalry were in more general observance. Yet it was not unlikely to occur to so absolute a Prince as Duke Charles, in circumstances like those supposed.
Note 59
It is almost unnecessary to add, that the marriage of William de la Marck with the Lady Hameline, is as apocryphal as the lady herself. The real bride of the Wild Boar of Ardennes was Joan D'Arschel, Baroness of Scoonhoven.
Note 60
Attack upon Liege. The Duke of Burgundy, full of resentment for the usage which the Bishop had received from the people of Liege, (whose death, as already noticed, did not take place for some years after,) and knowing that the walls of the town had not been repaired since they were breached by himself after the battle of Saint Tron, advanced recklessly to their chastisement. His commanders shared his presumptuous confidence; for the advanced guard of his army, under the Marechal of Burgundy and Seigneur D'Hymbercourt, rushed upon one of the suburbs, without waiting for the rest of their army, which, commanded by the Duke in person, remained about seven or eight leagues in the rear. The night was closing, and, as the Burgundian troops observed no discipline, they were exposed to a sudden attack from a party of the citizens commanded by Jean de Vilde, who, assaulting them in front and rear, threw them into great disorder, and killed more than eight hundred men, of whom one hundred were men-at-arms.
When Charles and the King of France came up, they took up their quarters in two villas situated near to the wall of the city. In the two or three days which followed, Louis was distinguished for the quiet and regulated composure with which he pressed the siege, and provided for defence in case of sallies; while the Duke of Burgundy, no way deficient in courage, and who showed the rashness and want of order which was his principal characteristic, seemed also extremely suspicious that the King would desert him and join with the Liegeois.
They lay before the town for five or six days, and at length fixed the 30th of October, 1468, for a general storm. The citizens, who had probably information of their intent, resolved to prevent their purpose, and determined on anticipating it by a desperate sally through the breaches in their walls. They placed at their head six hundred of the men of the little territory of Franchemont, belonging to the Bishopric of Liege, and reckoned the most valiant of their troops. They burst out of the town on a sudden, surprised the Duke of Burgundy's quarters ere his guards could put on their armour, which they had laid off to enjoy some repose before the assault. The King of France's lodgings were also attacked and endangered. A great confusion ensued, augmented incalculably by the mutual jealousy and suspicions of the French and Burgundians. The people of Liege were, however, unable to maintain their hardy enterprise, when the men-at-arms of the King and Duke began to recover from their confusion, and were finally forced to retire within their walls, after narrowly missing the chance of surprising both King Louis and the Duke of Burgundy, the most powerful Princes of their time. At daybreak the storm took place, as had been originally intended, and the citizens, disheartened and fatigued by the nocturnal sally, did not make so much resistance as was expected. Liege was taken, and miserably pillaged, without regard to sex or age, things sacred or things profane. These particulars are fully related by Comines in his Memoirs, liv. ii. chap. 11, 12, 13, and do not differ much from the account of the same events in this and the preceding chapter.
Note 61
An homely Scottish expression for something you value.
Note 62
A cant expression in Scotland for Death, usually delineated as a skeleton.
Note 63
We have already noticed the anachronism respecting the crimes of this atrocious baron; and it is scarce necessary to repeat, that if he in reality murdered the Bishop of Liege in 1482, the Count of La Marck could not be slain in the defence of Liege four years earlier. In fact, the Wild Boar of Ardennes, as he was usually termed, was of high birth, being the third son of John I., Count of La Marck and Aremberg, and ancestor of the branch called Barons of Lumain. He did not escape the punishment due to his atrocity, though it did not take place at the time, or in the manner, narrated in the text. Maximilian, Emperor of Austria, caused him to be arrested at Utrecht, where he was beheaded in the year 1485, three years after the Bishop of Liege's death.
Note 64
An old rhyme, by which the Leslies vindicate their descent from an ancient knight, who is said to have slain a gigantic Hungarian champion, and to have formed a proper name for himself by a play of words upon the place where he fought his adversary.
