Whilst this treaty was on foot, both sides murmured loudly against the Count of St. Paul, Constable of France. The king, and those who were nearest about him, had conceived great hatred against him, and the Duke of Burgundy a greater, with better reason, for I have heard the true causes on both sides. It was impossible for him to forget that the Count of St. Paul had been the occasion of the taking of Amiens and St. Quentin; and he shrewdly suspected that he was the true cause and fomenter of the war between him and the king; for during the cessation of hostilities he gave him the best words in the world, but as soon as war began again, he showed himself to be his mortal enemy; besides, the count would have forced him to have married his daughter, as you have heard. The duke had also another quarrel against him, and that was, that during the time the duke lay before Amiens, the constable made an inroad into Hainault, and, among the rest of his actions, burned a castle called Solre, which belonged to a certain knight called Baudouin de Lannoy.[380] At that time it was not usual to burn any places on either side: but, to retaliate upon the constable, the Duke of Burgundy fired all that summer wherever he came; so that, to be revenged of the constable, both sides began to conspire against him. In discourse between some of the king’s party and certain of the Duke of Burgundy’s courtiers, whom they knew to be the constable’s enemies, they happened to mention him; and all of them agreeing that he was the occasion of the war, they began to open themselves more freely, and discover all his expressions on both sides, and, by degrees, they unanimously resolved to contrive his ruin. But some persons may hereafter, perhaps, demand, whether the king was not able to have ruined him alone? I answer, No; for his territories lay just between the king and the Duke of Burgundy; he had St. Quentin, a large and strong town in Vermandois; he had Han and Bohain, and other considerable places not far from St. Quentin, which he might always garrison with what troops, and of whatever country, he pleased. He had 400 of the king’s men-at-arms, well paid, of whom he was commissary himself, and he made his own musters, by which means he gained much money, for he never kept up his full complement. He had likewise a salary of 45,000 francs, and exacted a crown upon every pipe of wine that passed into Hainault or Flanders through any of his dominions; and, besides all this, he had great lordships and possessions of his own, a great interest in France, and also in Burgundy, upon account of his relations.