"It is simply concerning the proposition formerly made anent the invasion of Brittany. He has been pleased to desire me to urge your majesty to invade and take possession of that dukedom, promising, at the same time, to make over to the crown of Scotland all right and interest France may have in its five bishoprics of Rennes, Nantes, Saint Malo, Dol, and Saint Brieuc. He would advise your majesty, as more fully set forth in these papers which I shall have the honour of laying before your council, to promise to the Bretons that their states-general and all their ancient privileges shall be retained as inviolate, subject, however, to the modifications of the Scottish Parliament."
"What say you to this, my lords?" asked the king, as a murmur of varying opinions rose among the nobles.
"I say nay," replied Angus; "the poor Bretons have never wronged us, and by St. Bryde! why should we invade and dispossess their duke, to please a King of France or to avenge his petty piques and jealousies?"
"The King of France requires no man to avenge his quarrels, Earl of Angus," retorted the Scoto-French Lord of Concressault, turning abruptly round.
"Drummond," said the king, "what sayst thou?"
"I agree with Angus," replied Lord Drummond. "Why should we imitate England of old, by waging wanton wars, and violating the rights of a free people?"
"There are some fine harbours off the Breton coast," said Sir Andrew Wood; "gadzooks, Robbie Barton, we know Nantes well, with its castle at the mouth of the Sevre."
"King Charles desired me to say," continued Sieur de Monipennie, without heeding the nobles, "that twenty thousand men will be sufficient to reduce the Bretons, with such French forces as he would send against them by the way of Maine and Anjou, together with all the Scottish troops now in the service of France—to wit, Sir Robert Patulloch's gard du corps Ecossaises; my thousand lances of Concressault, and those of John of Darnley, the mareschal Stuart d'Aubigne, who has just been created Comte d'Evereaux; and those would enter by the way of Poitou, as these letters will show."
Whatever James thought of this splendid offer from the wily ministers of his cousin Charles the Affable, who was then in his eighteenth year, he had not time given him to say. In 1473, the proposition had been made before, and he had then intended to annex Brittany, at the head of 6000 Scottish infantry; but the Parliament opposed it; and now nearly with one unanimous voice, the nobles said, and perhaps with some feeling of justice—
"Not a man of us will draw a sword or lift a lance in this cause!"