“ 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. Chastellain was no mere annalist, but proposed to fuse and shape his vast material to his own conclusions, in accordance with his political experience. The most interesting feature of his work is the skill with which he pictures the leading figures of his time. ”

“ Chastellain was constantly engaged during the earlier part of his career in negotiations between the French and Burgundian courts, and thus had personal knowledge of the persons and events dealt with in his history. A partisan element in writing of French affairs was inevitable in a Burgundian chronicle. This defect appears most strongly in his treatment of Joan of Arc; and the attack on Agnes 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. ”

“ See A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France; as well as notices by Kervyn de Lettenhove prefixed to the Œuvres and in the Biographie nationale de Belgique; and an article (three parts) by Vallet de Viriville in the Journal des savants (1867) . ”