When all these great malcontents saw Louis's popularity on the decline, and the king engaged abroad in divers political designs full of onerousness or embarrassment, they considered the moment to have come, and, at the end of 1464, formed together an alliance "for to remonstrate with the king," says Commynes, "upon the bad order and injustice he kept up in his kingdom, considering themselves strong enough to force him if he would not mend his ways; and this war was called the common weal, because it was undertaken under color of being for the _common weal_ of the kingdom, the which was soon converted into private weal." The aged Duke of Burgundy, sensible and weary as he was, gave only a hesitating and slack adherence to the league; but his son Charles, Count of Charolais, entered into it passionately, and the father was no more in a condition to resist his son than he was inclined to follow him.

The number of the declared malcontents increased rapidly; and the chiefs received at Paris itself, in the church of Notre Dame, the adhesion and the signatures of those who wished to join them.

They all wore, for recognition's sake, a band of red silk round their waists, and, "there were more than five hundred," says Oliver de la Marche, a confidential servant of the Count of Charolais, "princes as well as knights, dames, damsels, and esquires, who were well acquainted with this alliance without the king's knowing anything as yet about it." It is difficult to believe the chronicler's last assertion.

Louis XI., it is true, was more distrustful than far-sighted, and, though he placed but little reliance in his advisers and servants, he had so much confidence in himself, his own sagacity, and his own ability, that he easily deluded himself about the perils of his position; but the facts which have just been set forth were too serious and too patent to have escaped his notice.

However that may be, he had no sooner obtained a clear insight into the league of the princes than he set to work with his usual activity and knowledge of the world to checkmate it.