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It takes its name from the river Aar, by which it is surrounded. At each end of the town is a wooden bridge covered, to preserve the timber from the weather. The town is a great thoroughfare between Berne, Neufchâtel, and the Pays de Vaud; and we observed, in the market-place, several waggons stationed until morning. We proceeded next day to Morat.
But it was the following comic adventure which made me spend the night at Morat: I found at the inn a young maid who spoke a sort of rustic Italian. She struck me by her great likeness to my fair stocking-seller at Paris. She was called Raton, a name which my memory has happily preserved.
Another vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne, receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufchâtel and Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in communication with the Rhine by steam navigation.
With such fiery and ruthless energy Charles collected a fresh army, having a strength, it is said, of from twenty-five to thirty thousand men, Burgundians, Flemings, Italians, and English; and after having reviewed it on the platform above Lausanne, he set out on the 27th of May, 1476, and pitched his camp on the 10th of June before the little town of Morat, six leagues from Berne, giving notice everywhere that it was war to the death that he intended.
In two great battles, Granson and Morat, Charles and all his chivalry were beaten by the Swiss pikemen; but he pushed on the war. Nancy, the chief city of Lorraine, had risen against him, and he besieged it. On the night of the 5th of January, 1477, René led the Swiss to relieve the town by falling in early morning on the besiegers' camp.
The old castle, however, is more interesting from its connection with the history of Charles the Bold, who retired to La Rivière after the battle of Morat, and spent here those sad solitary weeks of which Philip de Comines tells with so many moral reflections; weeks of bodily and mental distress, which left him a mere wreck, and led to his wild want of generalship and his miserable death at Nancy.
Charles at that time was thinking but little of Louis and their truce; driven to despair by the disaster at Morat, but more dead set than ever on the struggle, he repaired from Morges to Gex, and from Gex to Salins, and summoned successively, in July and August, at Salins, at Dijon, at Brussels, and at Luxembourg the estates of his various domains, making to all of them an appeal, at the same time supplicatory and imperious, calling upon them for a fresh army with which to recommence the war with the Swiss, and fresh subsidies with which to pay it.
Bets were made, too, on the chances of his return. Louis XI. was a very pleasant person when news was brought him that he liked to hear. Commines and Bouchage together had told him about the defeat of Morat and had each received two hundred silver marks. It was a Seigneur de Lude who had the good luck to bring him letters from Craon recounting the battle of Nancy.
The battle was desperate; but before the close of the day it was hopelessly lost by the Burgundians. Charles had still three thousand horse, but he saw them break up, and he himself had great difficulty in getting away, with merely a dozen men behind him, and reaching Merges, twelve leagues from Morat.
But at the long tables below, as the feast thickened, and ale, mead, pigment, morat, and wine circled round, the tongue of the Saxon was loosed, and the Norman knight lost somewhat of his superb gravity.
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