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 éclat. 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. Not to follow the steps of the growth of this coalition, it is sufficient for the thread of this narrative to say that it comprised all the great French nobles, the princes of the blood as well as others. Men whom Louis had flattered as well as those whom he had slighted alike fell from his standards, distrustful of his ability to withstand organised opposition, and they threw in their lot with the protestors so as not to miss their share of the spoil.