Near the town of Nanci he met the Swiss for a third time, and once more the famous horns, ‘the bull’ of Uri and ‘the cow’ of Unterwalden, bellowed forth their calls to victory, and the Burgundians, inspired by treachery or forebodings of defeat, turned and fled. None knew what had happened to the Duke, until a captured page reported that he had seen him cut down as he fought stubbornly against great numbers. Later his body was discovered, stripped for the sake of its rich armour, and half-embedded in a frozen lake. Thus fittingly died Charles ‘the Rash’, leaving the reputation as a warrior that he would gladly have earned to his enemies the Swiss, now regarded as amongst the invincible veterans of Europe. * * * * * The voice of freedom had spoken so loudly through the Forest Cantons that mediaeval Europe had been forced to acknowledge her claim, and elsewhere also democratic forces were openly at work. We have spoken in previous chapters of the ‘Communes’ of northern France and Italy, precocious in their civilization, modern in their demands for self-government. In Italy, at least, they had been strong enough to form Leagues and defeat Emperors; but commercial jealousy and class feuds had always prevented these Unions from developing into a federation. This is true also of southern Germany, where towns like Augsburg and Nuremburg become, as the central mart for trade between Eastern and Western Europe and also between Venice, Genoa, and the lands north of the Alps, rivals in wealth and luxury of Mediterranean ports. During periods like the ‘Great Interregnum’, when German kingship was of no avail to preserve peace or order, it was associations of these towns that sent out young burghers to fight the robber knights that were the pest of the countryside, and to protect the merchandise on which their joint fortunes depended. Union for obvious purposes of defence was thus a political weapon forged early in town annals; but, on the other hand, it was only slowly that burghers and citizens came to realize the advantages of permanent combination for other ends, such as commercial expansion, or in order to secure stable government.