In the year 1470, the king, having a fair opportunity, as he thought, resolved to be revenged of the Duke of Burgundy, and secretly endeavoured to persuade the towns upon the River Somme, as Amiens, St. Quentin, and Abbeville, to forsake the duke, and admit some of his troops into their garrisons; for it is always the custom of great princes (especially if they be wise), to seek out some fair pretence or other to cover their designs. In order to your better understanding the intrigues and artifices of the French court in this kind of transactions, I will give a relation of the whole management of this affair; for the king and duke were both of them deceived, and a very bloody and cruel war commenced upon it, which lasted thirteen or fourteen years. The king indeed had a great desire to excite those towns to rebel, and set up his standard, upon pretence that the Duke of Burgundy had extended the bounds of his dominions farther than the treaty would bear. Upon this account several envoys and ambassadors were sent from one court to the other, backward and forward, who passed and repassed through these towns, and proposed and drove on their several bargains very securely, there being no garrisons in these towns; for the whole kingdom of France, as well on that side towards the Duke of Burgundy’s dominions, as on the other towards the Duke of Bretagne’s, was in perfect peace, and the Duke of Guienne was to all appearance in great friendship with the king. However, the king had no design to commence a war purely to repossess himself of one or two of those towns, and no more; but his intention was to raise a universal rebellion in the Duke of Burgundy’s dominions, hoping, by that means, to make himself master of all his country. Many persons, to ingratiate themselves with the king, undertook the management of these secret negotiations, and reported them much forwarder than he really found them; one promised him one town, and another another town, and that they had bargained for them all; but had the king’s designs reached no farther than the events which succeeded (though indeed he had cause to complain of his treatment at Peronne), he would not have violated the peace, nor involved himself in a new war; for he had published the peace at Paris[273] three months after his return into his kingdom; and he began his enterprise not without some fear and caution; but the violent desires he had to it, at last prevailed over his timorousness, and he was spurred on to it by some of his courtiers.