Charles, like his father, held his ducal court wherever he might happen to be--both princes often carrying a lengthy train of baggage, including even furniture and tapestries, from one castle to another. Bruges, however, is identified with some of the most important events of his career, and he held his court there much oftener than at the ancestral capital of Burgundy, Dijon. During the last years of the reign of his father, Philip the Good, Charles acted as Regent, and it was during this period of his rule that he astonished and terrified Europe by the ferocity with which he avenged an insult to his parents' honour by utterly destroying the prosperous city of Dinant and slaughtering most of its male inhabitants. On his accession to the ducal throne, however, the great communes of Ghent, Bruges, Malines and Brussels were able to extort from their new Duke all of the privileges that his father had taken away during his long reign. Charles granted these with fury in his heart, vowing openly that before long he would humble these presumptuous burghers. Fortunately for the liberties of the Flemish towns, their Duke's attentions were speedily called elsewhere and he found no opportunity to carry out his threats. Fomented by the emissaries of Louis XI, the turbulent citizens of Liége--already a large and prosperous manufacturing town, as advanced in the metallurgical arts as the Flemish cities were in the textile industries--rose in insurrection against their Bishop-Prince, an ally of Charles. With an army of one hundred thousand feudal levies Charles quickly suppressed this revolt. The following year Louis ventured to place himself in Charles' power by paying him a visit at his powerful castle of Péronne. This famous historical incident is brilliantly described by Sir Walter Scott in _Quentin Durward_. To the king's alarm and very extreme personal danger, the people of Liége took the moment of this visit to rise again. Charles was furious, and, not unjustly considering Louis to be the author of this attack on his authority, had that monarch locked up in a room in the castle. Nor was he placated until Louis signed a treaty still further extending the power of the Dukes of Burgundy in France, and agreed to join Charles in the expedition to punish his unruly subjects. This time the city after being captured was given over to the half-savage Burgundian soldiery to be sacked, some forty thousand of its inhabitants perishing.