consternation, and not without cause; for in eight days' time they
would scarce have been able to raise eight men-at-arms, and for other
soldiers there were not in the whole country above one thousand five
hundred--reckoning horse and foot together--that had escaped from the
battle in which the Duke of Burgundy was slain, and they were quartered
about Namur and Hainault. Their former haughty language was much altered
now, and they spoke with more submission and humility; not that I would
upbraid them with excessive arrogance in times past, but, to speak
impartially, in my time they thought themselves so powerful that they
spoke neither of nor to the King with the same respect as they have done
since; and if people were wise, they would always use such moderate
language in their days of prosperity that in the time of adversity they
would not need to change it.

I returned to the Admiral, to give him an account of our conference; and
there I was informed that the King was coming toward us, and that upon
receiving the news of the Duke's death he immediately set out, having
despatched several letters in his own and his officers' names to send
after him what forces could presently be assembled, with which he hoped
to reduce the provinces I have just mentioned to his obedience.

The King was overjoyed to see himself rid of all those whom he hated
and who were his chief enemies; on some of them he had been personally
revenged, as on the Constable of France, the Duke of Nemours, and several
others. His brother, the Duke of Guienne, was dead, and his majesty
came to the succession of the duchy. The whole house of Anjou was
extinct--Rene, King of Sicily, John and Nicholas, Dukes of Calabria, and
since them their cousin, the Count du Maine, afterward made count of
Provence. The Count d'Armagnac had been killed at Lestore, and the
King had got the estates and movables of all of them. But the house
of Burgundy, being greater and more powerful than the rest, having
maintained war with Charles VII, our master's father, for two-and-thirty
years together without any cessation, by the assistance of the English,
and having their dominions bordering upon the King's and their subjects
always inclinable to invade his kingdom, the King had reason to be more
than ordinarily pleased at the death of that Duke, and he triumphed more
in his ruin than in that of all the rest of his enemies, as he thought
that nobody, for the future, either of his o