In Hainault the king was possessed of two towns, Quesnoy le Comte and Bouchain, both which he restored; at which several persons were highly astonished, knowing his aversion to any peace, and how desirous he was to take all, and leave the house of Burgundy nothing; and my opinion is, if he could have done it undisturbedly, and destroyed or divided those territories at his ease, he would not have failed to have done so. But, as he told me afterwards himself, he surrendered those towns in Hainault for two reasons; the first was, because he thought a prince had more strength and importance in his own country, where he was anointed and crowned, than he could have out of his dominions; and these towns were not in his territory. The other was, because there had been solemn oaths and great confederacies between the emperors and the kings of France, not to invade or usurp upon one another’s dominions; and these above-mentioned places belonging to the empire were restored in the year 1478.[24] Upon the same account Cambray was delivered up, or put into a state of neutrality, the king being content to lose it; but the truth is, the inhabitants had received him at first upon those terms. CH. III.—How King Louis, by the Management of Charles d’Amboise his Lieutenant, recovered many Towns in Burgundy, which the Prince of Orange had persuaded to revolt from him.—1478. The war was still carried on in Burgundy; but the king could not accomplish his designs, because the Prince of Orange was chosen by the Burgundians to be their lieutenant, and was secretly assisted by the Germans, for the sake of his money, and not out of love to Duke Maximilian; for there was not a man in the whole country that espoused his interest, at least during the time I speak of. These Germans were Swiss troops in search of adventure, and the Swiss are neither friends nor well-wishers to the House of Austria. The Burgundians had little assistance from them, although their pay was good; and no prince could have paid them better than Duke Sigismond of Austria, Maximilian’s uncle, whose territories lay near, especially the county of Ferrete, which he had sold, not many years before, for ten thousand florins of the Rhine, to Charles Duke of Burgundy, and had afterwards repossessed himself of it, without returning the money: and he keeps it now by force. Sigismond was never a person of great penetration, nor was he very just and honourable in his dealings, and from such allies no great assistance is to be expected. He was of the number of those princes I mentioned before, who know nothing of their own affairs but what their ministers of state are pleased to represent; and they are always rewarded for their indolence and supineness in their old age, as Sigismond was in this case.