"Monsieur du Plessis, you know the desire I have for Warwick's return to England, as well because I wish to see him get the better of his enemies—or that at least through him the realm of England may be embroiled—as to avoid the questions which have arisen out of his sojourn here.... For you know that these Bretons and Burgundians have no other aim than to find a pretext for rupturing peace and reopening the war, which I do not wish to see commenced under this colour.... Wherefore I pray you take pains, you and others there, to induce Mons. de Warwick to depart by all arguments possible. Pray use the sweetest methods that you can, so that he shall not suspect that we are thinking of anything else but his personal advantage."[18]
To gain time was Louis's ardent wish at that moment. The envoys sent by Louis to placate the duke's resentment at the incidents in connection with the Warwick affair, and to assure him that Louis meant well by him and his subjects, found Charles holding high state at St. Omer. When they were admitted to audience, the duke was discovered sitting on a lofty throne, five feet above floor level, "higher than was the wont of king or emperor to sit." His hat remained on his head as the representatives of his feudal overlord bowed to him and he acknowledged their obeisance by a slight nod and a gesture permitting them to rise.
Hugonet, a member of the ducal council, answered their address with a prosy speech. Burgundian officials revelled in grandiloquent phrases—which this time bored Charles, He cut short the harangue impatiently, took the floor himself, and made a statement of the injuries he had suffered. Louis had promised to be his friend, but he was aiding the foe of the duke's brother. The envoys repeated their sovereign's offers of redress. Charles declared that redress was impossible. Pained, very pained were the French envoys to think that a petty dispute could not be settled amicably. "The king desires to avoid friction. He offers you friendship, peace, and redress for every wrong. It will not be his fault if trouble ensue. Monseigneur, the king and you have a judge who is above you both."
The insinuation that it was he who was ready to break the peace infuriated Charles. He started to his feet, his eyes flashing with fire. "Among us Portuguese there is a custom that when our friends become friends to our foes we send them to the hundred thousand devils of hell."[19] "A piece of bad taste to send by implication a king of France to a hundred thousand devils," comments the suave Chastellain, aghast at this impolite, emphatic, though indirect reference to Louis XI.
Equally aghast were the Burgundian courtiers present at this occasion. After all, they, too, were French by nature. To wreck the new-made peace for the sake of the English alliance, which had never been really popular among them, that seemed an act of rash unwisdom.
"A murmur went the rounds of the ducal suite because their chief thus implied contempt for the name of France to which the duke belonged. Not going quite so far as to call himself English, though that was what his heart was, he boasted of his mother, ancient friend of England and enemy of France."
There were, indeed, times when the duke was more emphatic in asserting his English blood. Plancher cites a scrap of writing in his own hands which probably belonged to a letter to the magistrates and citizens of Calais, whom he addresses, "O you my friends."[20] While reiterating that he simply must defend his own state he adds, "By St. George who knows me to be a better Englishman and more anxious for the weal of England than you other English ... [you] shall recognise that I am sprung from the blood of Lancaster," etc. His claims of kinship varied with the circumstances.
While he was so conscious of his own greatness, present and future, and of his own laudable intentions to do well by his subjects, it is quite possible, too, that Charles was puzzled more or less consciously by his failure to win popularity. For he was quite as unpopular with his courtiers as with his subjects. The former did not like the rigid court rules. There was no pleasure in sitting through audiences silent and stiff "as at a sermon," and exposed to personal reprimands from their chief if there were the slightest lapses from his standard of conduct. They did not know on what meat the duke was feeding his imagination, an imagination that already saw him as Cæsar. Had he actually attained the loftier rank that he dreamed of, his premature arrogance might have been forgotten, but his pride of glory invisible to the world about him was undoubtedly a bar to his popularity during the years 1470-73.
Before this pompous scene passed at St. Omer, Louis had been relieved of anxiety in regard to the stability of his kingdom, and the dangers of an heir like his brother who might easily be used as a tool by some clever faction opposed to the ruling monarch. On June 10th, a son was born to him, afterwards Charles VIII. of France. Complaisant still were his words to his Burgundian cousin, but the moment was drawing near when his efforts to circumvent him were no longer secret.
The embassy returned home. Possibly their report of the duke's passionate words goaded the king into discarding his mask of friendship. At any rate, his next steps were unequivocal in showing which side of the fresh English quarrel he meant to espouse. Margaret of Anjou hated the Earl of Warwick, not only because he had unseated her husband but because he had doubted her fidelity to that husband. Nevertheless, under Louis's persuasions, she consented to forget her past wrongs and to stake her future hopes on fraternising with him on a basis of common hate for Edward IV. The alliance was to be sealed by the marriage of young Edward of Lancaster, the prince whose very legitimacy Warwick had questioned, with the earl's younger daughter. It was a singular union to be accepted by the parents, separated as they had been by the wall of insults interchanged during more than a decade of bitter enmity.