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--René, 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 own subjects or his neighbors, would be able to oppose him or disturb the tranquillity of his reign. He was at peace with England, and made it his chief business to continue so; yet, though he was freed in this manner from all his apprehensions, God did not permit him to take such courses in the management of his affairs as were most proper to promote his own interests and designs. And certainly, although God Almighty has shown, and does still show, that his determination is to punish the family of Burgundy severely, not only in the person of the Duke, but in its subjects and estates, yet I think the King our master did not take right measures to gain his end. For, if he had acted prudently, instead of pretending to conquer them, he should rather have endeavored to annex all those large territories, to which he had no just title, to the crown of France by some treaty of marriage; or to have gained the hearts and affections of the people, and so have brought them over to his interest, which he might, without any great difficulty, have effected, considering how their late afflictions had impoverished and dejected them. If he had acted after that manner, he would not only have prevented their ruin and destruction, but extended and strengthened his own kingdom, and established them all in a firm and lasting peace. He might by this means have eased, his own country of its intolerable grievances, and particularly of the marches and counter-marches of his troops, which are commanded continually up and down from one end of the kingdom to the other, sometimes upon very slight occasions.