Duke of Brittany, declaring that it was right and proper and that if King Louis knew what was to the advantage of the French sovereign, he would be glad to see his nobles welded together as a bulwark to his throne.  As to his pension, he had never received but one quarter, nine thousand francs.  He had made no suit for the remainder nor for the government of Normandy.  So long as he enjoyed the favour and good will of his father he had no need to crave favour of any man.

“I think verily had it not been for the reverence he bore to his said father who was there present” continues the observant page, “and to whom he addressed his speech that he would have used much bitterer terms.  In the end, Duke Philip very wisely and humbly besought the king not lightly to conceive an evil opinion of him or his son but to continue his favour towards them.  Then the banquet was brought in and the ambassadors took their leave.  As they passed out Charles stood apart from his father and said to the archbishop of Narbonne, who brought up the rear of the little company: 

“’Recommend me very humbly to the good grace of the king.  Tell him he has had me scolded here by the chancellor but that he shall repent it before a year is past.’” His message was duly delivered and to this incident Commines attributes momentous results.

Exasperated at the nonchalant manner in which Louis’s ambassadors treated him, indignant at the injury to his heritage by the redemption of the towns on the Somme, and further, already alienated from his royal cousin through the long series of petty occasions where the different natures of the two young men clashed, in this year 1464, Charles was certainly more than ready to enter into an open contest with the French monarch.  It was not long before the opportunity came for him to do so with a certain eclat.

In the early years of his own freedom, before he learned wisdom, Louis XI. had planted many seeds of enmity which brought forth a plentiful crop, and the fruit was an open conspiracy among the nobles of the land.

One of the causes of loosening feudal ties was the gradual growth of the body of standing troops instituted in 1439 by Charles VII.  These, in the regular pay of the crown, gave the king a guarantee of support without the aid of his nobles.  By the date of Louis’s accession, certain ducal houses besides that of Burgundy had grown very independent within their own boundaries:  Orleans, Anjou, Bourbon, not to speak of Brittany.[7] Now the efforts to curtail the prerogatives of these petty sovereigns, begun by Charles VII., were steady and persistent in the new reign.  They had no longer the power of coining money, of levying troops, or of imposing taxes, while the judicial authority of the crown had been extended little by little over France.  Then their privileges were further attacked by Louis’s restrictions of the chase.

It was the accumulation of these invasions of local authority, added to a real disbelief in the king’s ability, that led to a formation of a league among the nobles, designed to check the centralisation policy of the monarch, a League of Public Weal to form a bulwark against the tyrannical encroachments of their liege lord.