powers, that their alliance "for the public weal," as they termed
it, but in reality for the overthrow of all but the external
appearance of the French monarchy, dissolved itself, and was never
again renewed in a manner so formidable. From this period, Louis,
relieved of all danger from England by the Civil Wars of York and
Lancaster, was engaged for several years, like an unfeeling but
able physician, in curing the wounds of the body politic, or rather
in stopping, now by gentle remedies, now by the use of fire and
steel, the progress of those mortal gangrenes with which it was
then infected. The brigandage of the Free Companies [troops that
acknowledged no authority except that of their leaders, and who
hired themselves out at will], and the unpunished oppression of the
nobility, he laboured to lessen, since he could not actually stop
them; and, by dint of unrelaxed attention, he gradually gained some
addition to his own regal authority, or effected some diminution
of those by whom it was counterbalanced.

Still the King of France was surrounded by doubt and danger. The
members of the league "for the public weal," though not in unison,
were in existence, and, like a scotched snake [see Macbeth. III,
ii, 13, "We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it."], might reunite
and become dangerous again. But a worse danger was the increasing
power of the Duke of Burgundy, then one of the greatest princes of
Europe, and little diminished in rank by the very slight dependence
of his duchy upon the crown of France.

Charles, surnamed the Bold, or rather, the Audacious, for his courage
was allied to rashness and frenzy, then wore the ducal coronet of
Burgundy, which he burned to convert into a royal and independent
regal crown. The character of this Duke was in every respect the