[Footnote 13: I., ch. xii.] [Footnote 14: Commines, I., ch. xii.] [Footnote 15: La Marche, iii., p. 27.] CHAPTER VII LIEGE AND ITS FATE 1465-1467 "When we have finished here we shall make a fine beginning against those villains the Liegeois." Thus wrote the count's secretary on October 18th.[1] Charles had no desire to rest on the laurels won before Paris. To another city he now turned his attention, to Liege which owed nothing whatsoever to Burgundy. Before the days when the buried treasures of the soil filled the air with smoke, the valley where Liege lies was a lovely spot.[2] Tradition tells how, in the sixth century, Monulphe, Bishop of Tongres, as he made a progress through his diocese was attracted by the beauties of the site where a few hovels then clustered near the Meuse. After looking down from the heights to the river's banks for a brief space, the bishop turned to his followers and said, as if uttering a prophecy: "Here is a place created by God for the salvation of many faithful souls. One day a prosperous city shall flourish here. Here I will build a chapel." Dedicated to Cosmo and Damian, the promised chapel became a shrine which attracted many pilgrims who returned to their various homes with glowing tales of the beautiful and fertile valley. Little by little others came who did not leave, and by the seventh century when Bishop Lambert sat in the see of Tongres, Liege was a small town. An active and loving shepherd was this Lambert. He gave himself no rest but travelled continually from one church to another in his diocese to look after the needs of his flock. He was a fearless prelate, too, and his words of well-deserved rebuke to the Frankish Pepin for a lawless deed excited the wrath of a certain noble, accessory to the act. Trouble ensued and Lambert was slain as he knelt before the altar in Monulphe's chapel at Liege. Absorbed in prayer the pious man did not hear the servants' calls, "Holy Lambert, Holy Lambert come to our aid," words that later became a war-cry when the bishop was exalted into the patron saint of the town. Not until the thirteenth century, however, when the episcopal see was finally established at Liege, was Lambert's successor virtual lay overlord of the region as well as Bishop of Liege. Monulphe's little chapel had given way to a mighty church dedicated to the canonised Bishop Lambert. The ecclesiastical state became almost autonomous, the episcopal authority being restricted without the walls only by the distant emperor and still more distant pope. Within the walls, the same authority had by no means a perfectly free hand. There were certain features in the constitution of Liege which differentiated it from its sister towns in the Netherlands.