the Barrois and was granted by Ferri, in spite of the hostility of his barons, to La Neuveville in 1257, to Frouard in 1263 and to Lunéville in 1265. In the church lands the bishops of Toul and Metz granted liberties from the end of the 12th century to the communes in their lordship, but not the Beaumont charter, which, however, obtained in the diocese of Verdun in the 14th and 15th centuries. By the will of Duke Charles the Bold, Lorraine was to pass to his daughter Isabella, who married René of Anjou, duke of Bar, in 1420. But Anthony of Vaudemont, Charles's nephew and heir male, disputed this succession with René, who obtained from the king of France an army commanded by Arnault Guilhem de Barbazan. René, however, was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Bulgnéville, where Barbazan was killed (2nd of July 1431). The negotiations between René's wife and Anthony had no result, in spite of the intervention of the council of Basel and the emperor Sigismund, and it was not until 1436 that René obtained his liberty by paying a ransom of 200,000 crowns, and was enabled to dispute with Alfonso of Aragon the kingdom of Naples, which he had inherited in the previous year. In 1444 Charles VII. of France and the dauphin Louis went to Lorraine, accompanied by envoys from Henry VI. of England, and procured a treaty (confirmed at Chalons in 1445), by which Yolande, René's eldest daughter, married Anthony's son, Ferri of Vaudemont, and René's second daughter Margaret became the wife of Henry VI. of England. After his return to Lorraine in 1442, René was seldom in the duchy. Like his successor John, duke of Calabria, who died in 1470, he was continually occupied with expeditions in Italy or in Spain. John's son and successor, Nicholas (d. 1473), who supported the duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, against the king of France, died without children, and his heir was René, son of Frederick of Vaudemont. The duke of Burgundy, however, disputed this inheritance, and carried off the young René and his mother, but on the intervention of Louis XI. had to set them at liberty. René helped the Swiss during their wars with Charles the Bold, who invaded Lorraine and was killed under the walls of Nancy (1477). René's last years were mainly spent in expeditions in Provence and Italy. He died in 1508, leaving by his second wife three sons--Anthony, called the Good, who succeeded him; Claude, count (and afterwards duke) of Guise, the ancestor of the house of Guise; and John (d. 1550), known as the cardinal of Lorraine. Anthony, who was declared of age at his father's death by the estates of Lorraine, although his mother had tried to seize the power as regent, had been brought up from the age of twelve at the French court, where he became the friend of Louis XII., whom he accompanied on his Italian expeditions. In 1525 he had to defend Lorraine against the revolted Alsatian peasants known as _rustauds_ (boors), whom he defeated at Lupstein and Scherweiler; and he