into the open country, and the vengeance of the countess was sharp and merciless.
But in the flush of victory wrath gave way to pity again, and the young conqueror is reported to have said, sadly and in tears:
"Ah! I have won, and yet how have I lost!"
But the knights and nobles who followed her banner loudly praised her valor and her fearlessness, and their highest and most knightly vow thereafter was to swear "By the courage of our Princess."
The brilliant victory of this girl of sixteen was not, however, to accomplish her desires. Peace never came to her. Harassed by rebellion at home, and persecuted by her relentless and perfidious uncles, Count John of Bavaria, rightly called "the Pitiless," and Duke Philip of Burgundy, falsely called "the Good," she, who had once been Crown Princess of France and Lady of Holland, died at the early age of thirty-six, stripped of all her titles and estates. It is, however, pleasant to think that she was happy in the love of her husband, the baron of the forests of the Duke of Burgundy, a plain Dutch gentleman, Francis von Borselen, the lad who, years before, had furnished the gray gabardine that had shielded Count William's daughter from her father's lions.
The story of Jacqueline of Holland is one of the
