For the present, however, the noble lovers, who had never met, were both rather young; there was no need to hurry matters, since Charles himself was still in the prime of life. The disastrous campaign of the great duke in Switzerland has been described many a time, by historians friendly and unfriendly, and by a great romancer who loved all chivalry and who yet could not withhold his admiration from the intrepid Swiss freemen who bore down the power of Burgundy at Granson, at Morat, and at Nancy. Yet, whether we consider Charles a great ruler and leader or a mere military ruffian, no one can look without pity upon that snow-covered battlefield of Nancy, where a generous foe and the heartbroken servants of "the pride of chivalry" must look in vain for two days for the body of Charles; none could surely tell how he had fallen; and when they found his frozen body the dogs had eaten half of one cheek, and the wounds on the head rendered it almost unrecognizable. Mademoiselle de Bourgogne, as she was now to be known in earnest, was far away in Ghent when the fatal news of her father's death was brought. Before it could reach her it had reached the crafty old king. For Louis it was the sweetest news he could have heard; his greatest foe was providentially removed, and as his adversary in Burgundy there was now but a girl scarcely grown, a girl whose selfish advisers he well knew how to bribe or to ruin, as suited his interest. Well may we believe that when the news of Charles's death reached that French court where so many of the nobles had felt him to be their only help against the anti-feudal policy of Louis, "not one ate half he could at dinner," as the shrewd Comines says; now that the pillar of independent baronage was gone, who could tell what the king might do? Marie de Bourgogne was almost a prisoner among her too devoted subjects, the burghers of Ghent. She and her counsellors realized from the first that the real danger was to come from Louis XI, who would now seek to re-annex to the crown those large portions of the Burgundian domain that had originally come from France. Perhaps the letter of the feudal law was on the side of the king, who claimed the right of wardship over his female vassal; but Marie knew full well that this claim was but the first of a long series that would culminate in the actual seizure of French Burgundy as soon as Louis should feel himself strong enough. But though Louis was the ultimate and the greater danger, he could be put off, it was thought, by conciliatory messages; an immediate danger lay in turbulent Flanders, which even the strong duke could not master, and which now, in the midst of much exuberant devotion for mademoiselle, kept her in a state of constant uneasiness. Something must be done to quiet the Flemings.