sed 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 allo