His uncle of Burgundy had excluded him from the council of State; and he put forth all his resources which were considerable, to embarrass the public business. He protested against the approval of the diet, and raised fifteen hundred soldiers and marched or pretended to march to the aid of the fallen emperor. He threatened to go to deliver the pope who was held in a sort of honorable captivity in his palace at Avignon. During the absence of the duke in Flanders, Louis and his compeer in evil, Queen Isabella, seized the reins of government and filled Paris with their satellites. The duke came back with an armed force and bloodshed was threatened; but the two dukes came to a truce and appeared in the streets, riding side by side, to the relief of well-disposed people. Duke Philip soon returned to Flanders, and while in apparent health he was attacked by a disease then prevalent and which was probably typhoid fever, and died in his castle of Hal, in April 1404, in his seventy-third year. Philip-the-bold was the first and best of the Valois dukes of Burgundy. If the French people were not happy under his administration, it was that happiness could not be their lot. Their country was desolated by the English wars, and war was uppermost in their minds. Even in intervals of peace they would have no peace; and military games not always bloodless were the amusement of all classes. On one occasion a challenge was received from the English pale, that seven French knights should meet seven English to fight à outrance, which means mortal combat. The challenge was accepted. The most noted of the French seven was Tanneguy du Châtel whom we shall meet again in a scene of bloodshed more important. (See Two Jaquelines.) The English knights had planned that at the onset, two of them at once should attack Du Châtel, and he done for they thought to have an easy bargain of the rest. This would of course leave for a moment one of the French champions without an antagonist, and they arranged that this floating warrior should be one they feared the least. This was an awkward gentleman from Champagne, of no great renown, who had been let into the French seven for his ponderous strength. When the signal was given, this unwieldy knight for want of something better, threw himself upon the stoutest of the English seven, and with a single blow laid him dead at his feet. The English could not overcome this disadvantage and were worsted. It is but just to say that the French chroniclers explain differently the defeat of the English. The French seven, before the fight, had heard mass and received the communion, while the English had neglected that precaution.