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 Caesar.  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.