Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1885 — The Spoils of War. [ARTICLE]

The Spoils of War.

Charles, as soon as he had finished conquering Lorraine, gathered his host at Besancon, and marched to Granson on the Neuchatel Lake. Here a garrison of 500 Swiss was betrayed to him; he hanged or drowned every man of them, including the monks who came as chaplains. Justly enraged, the Federation gathered its whole strength, and with 24,000imen fell upon Charles unawares and’defeated him utterly. The booty was something fabulous; Burgundy, taking taxes from all the rich Netherland towns, was then the richest power of Europe. The spoil was valued at a quarter of a million. You may calculate what that would be worth now. The big diamonds—one is now in the Pope’s tiara, another was long the glory of the French regalia—were among ■ the valuables. The Duke’s throne was valued at 11,000 gulden; all his plate, his silver bedstead, his wonderfully illuminated prayer book, were taken, besides 1,000,000 gulden in his treasure chest,, 10,000 horses and a proportionate quanity of all kinds of stores. No wonder the Swiss never recovered Granson ; there were long and bitter quarrels about the division of the booty, and the coming in of so much wealth among a simple people demoralized them sadly, and led the way to their becoming the chief mercenaries of Europe. —Good Words.