In war after war he had been unable to gain an inch of French ground beyond the towns of the Somme.

But year after year had seen new gains on his German frontier.

Elsass and the Breisgau passed into his hands as security for a loan to the Austrian Duke Sigismund; in 1473 he seized Lorraine by force of arms, and inherited from its Duke Gelderland and the county of Cleves.

Master of the Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, as well as of a crowd of German princedoms, Charles was now the mightiest among the princes of the Empire, and in actual power superior to the Emperor himself.

The house of Austria, in which the Imperial crown seemed to be becoming hereditary, was weakened by attacks from without as by divisions within, by the loss of Bohemia and Hungary, by the loss of its hold over German Switzerland, and still more by the mean and spiritless temper of its Imperial head, Frederick the Third.