Having already spoken of the king, and the artifice he used to overreach and circumvent the duke, now it is necessary that we should say something of the duke’s designs upon the king, and how he would have acted if the Duke of Guienne’s death had not intervened. At the king’s request, Simon de Quingy had a commission from the Duke of Burgundy (as soon as the king had sworn to the peace, and letters confirming what his ambassadors had done, had been received) to signify the contents of the peace to the Duke of Bretagne, and also to the ambassadors of the Duke of Guienne, who were in Bretagne, to the end they might notify it to their master, who was then at Bordeaux; and this the king proposed as a thing that would startle the Bretons, since they found themselves forsaken by an ally who was the main support of all their hopes. Simon de Quingy had by chance in his retinue one of the equerries of the Duke of Burgundy’s stable, whose name was Henry, a Parisian by birth, and a very sensible, intelligent person, to whom the duke had given a letter under his own hand, directed to his ambassador Simon de Quingy, but his instructions were, not to deliver that letter till the ambassador had left the king, and arrived at the Duke of Bretagne’s court at Nantes. Then he was to deliver the letter to him, show him his credentials, and let the Duke of Bretagne know, that he had no occasion to fear that his master would quit his alliance with him and the Duke of Guienne, for he would still stand by them both with his life and fortune; that what had been already transacted was only to avoid war for the present, and repossess himself of Amiens and St. Quentin, which the king had taken from him in time of peace, and contrary to his promise. He was likewise ordered to acquaint him, that the duke his master (as soon as he should be possessed of what he demanded) would send notable ambassadors on purpose to the king, to desire and entreat his majesty to desist from his enterprises against those two dukes; and would not adhere too strictly to the oath he had taken; for he was resolved to keep it with no more strictness than the king had kept his in the treaty before Paris, called the treaty of Conflans, and the pacification at Peronne, which for a long time he neglected to confirm and ratify. He designed likewise to put him in mind, that he had seized the said towns in time of peace contrary to his solemn promise, and therefore he ought not to be surprised if the duke had taken the same measures to recover them.