Such then was the new acquisition of Charles after four years of his administration. Peter von Hagenbach, his deputy in charge of this unremunerative territory, is a character painted in the darkest colours by all historians. It is more than probable that his unpopular efforts to make bricks without straw were largely responsible for his unenviable reputation. Ground between the upper and lower millstones of Charles's clamours for revenues and popular clamours that the people had nothing wherewith to pay, Hagenbach developed into a taskmaster of the hardest and most unpitying type, who made himself thoroughly hated by the people he was set to rule. It must be remembered that there was no cleft in nationality or in language between governor and governed. He was not a foreigner set over them. He was one of them raised to a high position. There was then no French element in Lower Alsace. It was then German pure and simple. [Illustration: UPPER ALSACE AND ADJACENT TERRITORY BY PERMISSION OF HACHETTE, 1902] [Footnote 1: Gachard, _Doc. inéd_., i., 204-209. "Relation de l'assemblée solennelle tenue à Bruxelles le 15 Jan., 1469."] [Footnote 2: See Toutey, _Charles le Téméraire et la ligue de Constance_, p. 7.] [Footnote 3: See the text given in Comines-Lenglet, iii., 116. Charles is characterised as _ducem strenuum in armis ac justitiæ præcipium zelatorem_.] [Footnote 4: See Toutey, p. 8; also Lavisse, iv^{ii}., 371.] [Footnote 5: Thus was named the assembly of ten Alsatian towns from Strasburg to Basel, organised into a half independent confederation by the Emperor Charles IV.] [Footnote 6: Toutey, p. 11.] [Footnote 7: See "Fontes Rerum Austriacarum" Chmel, J., _Urkunden zur Geschichte von Osterreich_, etc., II^2, 223 _et passim_. One document, p. 229, has _Marz_ as a misprint for _Mai_.] [Footnote 8: Charles was, to be sure, already within that circle for some of his Netherland provinces, but his feudal obligations there were very shadowy.] [Footnote 9: See Toutey, Lavisse, etc., and above all a valuable article by L. Stouff, entitled "Les Possessions Bourguignonnes dans la vallée du Rhin sous Charles le Téméraire," _Annales de l'Est,_ vol. 18. This article, is the result of a careful examination of the reports made by Poinsot and Pellet, Charles's commissioners.] CHAPTER XIV ENGLISH AFFAIRS 1470-1471