Georges Chastellain

In 1434 he received a gift from Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, for his military services, but on the conclusion of the peace of Arras in the next year he abandoned soldiering for diplomacy.

He was continually employed on diplomatic errands until 1455, when, owing apparently to ill-health, he received apartments in the palace of the counts of Hainaut at Salle-le-Comte, Valenciennes, with a considerable pension, on condition that the recipient should put in writing choses nouvelles et morales, and a chronicle of notable events.

[2] From this time he worked hard at his Chronique, with occasional interruptions in his retreat to fulfil missions in France or to visit the Burgundian court.

He left an illegitimate son, to whom was paid in 1524 one hundred and twenty livres for a copy of the Chronique intended for Charles V's sister Mary, queen of Hungary.

This feature appears most strongly in his treatment of Joan of Arc; and the attack on Agnès Sorel seems to have been dictated by the dauphin (afterwards Louis XI), then a refugee in Burgundy, of whom he was afterwards to become a severe critic.

His French style, based partly on his Latin reading, has, together with its undeniable vigour and picturesqueness, the characteristic redundance and rhetorical quality of the Burgundian school.

His characters are the fruit of acute and experienced observation, and abound in satirical traits, although the 42nd chapter of his second book, devoted expressly to portraiture, is headed Comment Georges escrit et mentionne les louanges vertueuses des princes de son temps.