Thus were destroyed the only deeds which could establish the right of the La Tremoilles to protest against the spoliation of which they were the victims. This was done in October, 1476; but it was not until many months later that the king determined to avail himself of the advantage he had thus iniquitously obtained. On the 21st of July, 1479, a decree was issued, terminating the suit in favour of the king and his servant Commines. This decree, however, as it often happens in such cases, satisfied none of the parties, and least of all, the Lord of Argenton. He certainly found himself maintained in the possession of Talmont, Chateau-Gaultier, and Berrye; but Olonne, Curzon, and La Chaume, which Louis d’Amboise had given to his daughter as her dowry, were adjudged to the La Tremoille family, as appertaining to their maternal inheritance. By this sentence of the parliament, therefore, Commines found all his plans frustrated. “That sort of maritime sovereignty,” says M. de Vaudoré, “which he was anxious to create for himself in Lower Poitou, and which he had delighted in representing to his master as likely to prove a second Flanders, as far as commerce and productiveness were concerned, was now greatly diminished. To lose Olonne and La Chaume was to be deprived of a port to which he expected to attract the ships of all countries, and whither, in fact, they afterwards came by hundreds: to give up Bran and Brandois was to renounce the drainage of fertile marshes: to restore Curzon was to resign a position which combined both these advantages.” And yet, how was he to avoid compliance with the orders of justice? His genius, ever fertile in expedients, suggested to him the means of doing so. At his instigation, Louis XI. offered to Louis de la Tremoille certain other lands and lordships in exchange for those of which the parliament had acknowledged his children to be proprietors. This offer was indignantly rejected as an insult to misfortune; for of the estates thus offered, two only did not proceed from the spoils of the house of Amboise. But Commines was not discouraged by this refusal. What the father had rejected might probably, he thought, be accepted by the children. These young persons, though still minors, were drawing near the age when the young nobility usually aspired to rank among men of war; and their forced idleness was irksome to them. Louis XI. would not admit them into his service, notwithstanding the urgent solicitations of their brother-in-law, the Bastard of Maine; but it was intimated to them that they might overcome the monarch’s resistance, and even obtain his favour, by condescension to his wishes. This implied acquiescence in all the past, as they well understood; but they resigned themselves to their fate, in appearance at least. At the same time that they consented to the transfer, they executed, in the presence of a notary, a deed claiming the rights which they were about to renounce, in which they stated that,