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The death of his father in the summer of 1467 raised Charles to the Dukedom of Burgundy, and his diplomatic success in England was followed by preparations for a new struggle with the French king. In 1468 a formal league bound England, Burgundy, and Britanny together against Lewis.
For yet were in this land the Saxons settled; Colgrim the keen, and many thousands of his companions, that oft made to our Britons evil injuries. The Britons full soon took three bishops, and seven riders, strong in wisdom; forth they gan proceed into Britanny, and they full soon came to Arthur. "Hail be thou, Arthur, noblest of knights!
The power of Anjou had been built up by centuries of tyranny, treason, and greed. Nantes had been robbed from Britanny, Tours had been wrested from Blois, the southern borderland from Poitou. A hundred years of feud with Maine could not lightly be forgotten. Normandy still cherished the ancient hatred of pirate and Frenchman.
The restoration of the towns on the Somme to Burgundy, the cession of Normandy to the king's brother, Francis, the hostility of Britanny, not only detached the whole western coast from the hold of Lewis, but forced its possessors to look for aid to the English king who lay in their rear.
As if to preclude any revival of the war Richard had surrendered Cherbourg to the king of Navarre and now gave back Brest to the Duke of Britanny. He was said to have pledged himself at his wedding to restore Calais to the king of France. But once freed from all danger of such a struggle the whole character of his rule seemed to change. His court became as crowded and profuse as his grandfather's.
Some said that Geoffrey would hold Britanny of Philip; or he had been made seneschal of France, an office that ought to go with the county of Anjou; or he was about to invade and devastate Normandy.
Britanny had been secured for Geoffrey in 1171; in June 1172 Richard was enthroned as Duke of Aquitaine; in the following August Henry was crowned for the second time King of England. Only the youngest child, scarcely five years old, was still "John Lackland," and in this same year Henry provided a dominion for John by a treaty of marriage between him and the heiress of the Count of Maurienne.
I who am not of an adventurous disposition, I say myself it is a shame to Gaul that such a monster should have reigned fourteen years over our country Britanny fortunately excepted."
I would not that thou shouldst deprive us of our hereditary right, nor vainly seek to rob us of our nature!" In 1182 Henry sought once more to define the authority of his sons, and to assert the unity of the Empire under his own supremacy by ordering Richard and Geoffrey to do homage to their brother for Aquitaine and Britanny.
But Edward's fresh success drove him from the realm, and escaping to Britanny he was held there, half-guest, half-prisoner, by its Duke. The extinction of the direct Lancastrian line had given Henry a new importance.
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