Very different was the brief career and tragic end of poor Corneille. He seems to have been a youth of brilliant parts and of a singularly sweet disposition, and to have inherited alike the sterling qualities and the tumultuous passions of his father's race. Of his courage and skill in warfare he gave proof on more than one occasion, and if he had not had a natural aptitude for government, Philip would hardly have named him, young as he was, and in those troublous times, his lieutenant in the duchy of Luxembourg. Endowed with tact, with the charm of address, and, too, with the charm of personal beauty, he knew how to make himself beloved by all with whom he came in contact, too well, sometimes, as more than one woman learned to her cost. He possessed yet a rarer gift, he was able, like his father, to command respect in spite of unworthy actions, and notwithstanding the circumstances of his birth, and the fact that he was Philip's favourite son, he succeeded in winning the goodwill and affection of the Duchess herself, and of the Count of Charolais. Death came to him in a fearful form and suddenly. He was slain by the men of Ghent at the Battle of Rupelmond in the Pays de Waes on the 16th of June 1452, and he fell flushed with victory, and with the foe in full flight. 'The day and the honour and the glory thereof were Duke Philip's,' says a contemporary writer, 'and yet it was a black day for the house of Burgundy, for Fortune, who is no respecter of persons, directed the pike of some damned disloyal villain into the mouth of Messire Corneille, and being thrust upwards it pierced his skull, and his brain fell through his palate, and so he died. And the good Duke grieved for his bastard, and made great mourning for him, for he loved him much, and so did the Count of Charolais (Charles the Bold), and Messire Anthoine, his brother; and he took Wouter Leenknecht, the leader of the rebels, who had been brought in wounded, and hanged him on a tree, but the death of a hundred thousand rebels would not have assuaged his grief, and thus the day ended. And the body of Messire Corneille was sent to Brussels, where the Duchess gave it most honourable burial in the Church of Saint "Gudile," for she loved him much on account of his good virtues; and Duke Philip founded a daily Mass for the repose of his soul, and ordained that every morning his tomb should be sprinkled with holy water, and that the anniversary of his death should be celebrated solemnly with bells and torches, as is wont to be done at the obits of the princes and princesses founded in this church; and to defray the cost thereof he presented the chapter with 700 golden crowns of 48 gros Flemish.'