In the month of December, and during the feasts of Christmas, the duke of Milan[68] was unfortunately assassinated by a gentleman of that country. He had accosted him in the great church of Milan, under pretence of speaking with him, while he was walking there with a foreign ambassador, and had thrust his knife through the slashes of his robe, three or four times, into his lower belly--so that he fell down instantly dead, without saying a word. The cause of this action was, that the gentleman, his relatives and friends had employed all their money to purchase a vacant abbey for one of their kindred,--and the duke had deprived him of it, to bestow it on another, and would not suffer their relative by any means to enjoy it. The gentleman, having made many fruitless requests to the duke on this business, determined to put him to death, which he did as above related. Had this gentleman failed, he had a companion bent on the same business, who would have killed the duke of Milan, because he had detained his wife as a mistress against her inclinations. By the judges and nobles of Milan, it was resolved that the whole of the families of these two persons, males and females, should be put to death, wherever they should be found,--their habitations demolished, and razed to the ground,--all their possessions destroyed,--and even their trees bearing fruit should be pulled up by their roots; and this sentence was carried into execution! In the month of December, the lady Agnes of Bourbon departed this life, at the castle of Moulins, in the Bourbonnois. She was the widow of the late prince Charles duke of Bourbon and of Auvergne, by whom he had a noble issue, as well males as females,--namely, the present noble prince John duke of Bourbonnois and Auvergne, who married the most excellent princess Jeanne of France, eldest daughter to the late king Charles of France; Louis lord of Beaujeu, who died young; Charles archbishop of Lyon, primate of France and cardinal of Bourbon; Pierre lord of Beaujeu, married to the eldest daughter of the present king of France; the prince bishop of Liege; the lord James who died at Bruges; the lady Jeanne, married to the prince of Orange lord of Arlay; the lady Margaret, married to Philip of Savoy lord of Bresse[69]. The defunct lady had long lived a holy life, and her loss was much regretted and bewailed by her children, family and friends, and by all the inhabitants of the Bourbonnois and Auvergne,--and may her soul be blessed! Her remains were interred in the church of Souvigny. The duke of Burgundy, as before related, had marched to besiege the town of Nancy, and had reduced it to such distress, by famine, that negotiations were opened for its capitulation. But on the eve of Epiphany, the duke of Lorraine arrived with twelve or fourteen thousand Swiss and Germans to raise the siege, combat the Burgundians, and secure Nancy.