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.

Louis brought his cousin to this step of concession.  She saw her seventeen-year-old son betrothed to the sixteen-year-old Anne Neville, and later she herself swore reconciliation to Warwick on a piece of the true cross in St. Mary’s Church at Angers (August 4, 1470).

“Monsieur du Plessis [wrote Louis XI. on July 25th], I have sent you Messire Ivon du Fou, to put the affairs of Monsieur de Warwick in surety, and I order him to make such arrangements that the people of the said M. de Warwick will suffer no necessity until he is there.  To-day we have made the marriage of the Queen of England and of him, and hope to-morrow to have all in readiness to depart."[21]

[Illustration:  MEDAL OF CHARLES, DUKE OF BURGUNDY (FROM BARANTE)]

Meanwhile, the king kept agents in all the Somme towns, insinuating opposition to the duke, and reminding the citizens that they were French at heart.  His ambassadors passed in and out of the Burgundian court, saying many things in secret besides those they said in public.  Plenty there were that wished for war, remarks the observant Commines.  Nobles like St. Pol and others could not maintain the same state in peace as in war, and state they loved.  In time of war four hundred lances attended the constable, and he had a large allowance to maintain them from which he reaped many a profitable commission besides the fees of his office and his other emoluments.  “Moreover,” adds Commines, “the nobles were accustomed to say among themselves that if there were no battles without, there would be quarrels within the realm.”