They suffered from incompatibility of temperament and perpetual discordance of will; and the more they advanced in years the deeper they plunged into a state of serious difference and hopeless bitterness.

The king was a man of subtlety and full of fence; he knew how to recoil for a better spring, how to affect humility and gentleness in his deep designs, how to yield and to give up in order to receive double, and how to bear and tolerate for a time his own grievances in hopes of being able at last to have his revenge.

He was, therefore, very much to be feared for his practical knowledge, showing the greatest skill and penetration in the world.

Duke Charles was to be feared for his great courage, which he evinced and displayed in his actions, making no account of king or emperor.

Thus, whilst the king had great sense and great ability, which he used with dissimulation and suppleness in order to succeed in his views, the duke, on his side, had a great sense of another sort and to another purpose, which he displayed by a public ostentation of his pride, without any fear of putting himself in a false position." Between 1468 and 1477, from the incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at the siege of Nancy, the history of the two princes was nothing but one constant alternation between ruptures and re-adjustments, hostilities and truces, wherein both were constantly changing their posture, their language, and their allies.
It was at one time the affairs of the Duke of Brittany or those of Prince Charles of France, become Duke of Guienne; at another it was the relations with the different claimants to the throne of England, or the fate of the towns, in Picardy, handed over to the Duke of Burgundy by the treaties of Conflans and Peronne, which served as a ground or pretext for the frequent recurrences of war.