people there flinging down benches and
stones on our soldiers from the garrets,
and killing and wounding upwards of five
thousand, it was all Sir Godfrey de Harcourt
could do to prevent our enraged king burning
the town and putting the inhabitants to
the sword. Having sent his fleet back to
England deep laden with costly robes, jewels,
gold and silver plate, and three hundred
and sixty prisoners, Edward took Louviers,
burnt Gisors, Mantes and Meulan, and
ravaged all the country. Everywhere he found
the bridges over the Seine destroyed. At
Poissy, seven leagues from Paris, the beams
and planks of the bridge, however, still
lay in the river, so that they could be
replaced. The king's marshals then pushed
on towards Paris, burning St. Germain-en-
Laye (five leagues from Paris), Montjoye
St. Denis, St. Cloud (two leagues), Boulogne
and Bourg-la-Reine (one league from Paris).
The Parisians trembled, for their city was
not yet walled. King Philip then roused
himself, and pulling down all the
penthouses in Paris — we suppose for fear of the
English burning them— proposed to go to
St. Denis (two leagues), where his allies,
the King of Bohemia, Lord John of
Hainault, the Duke of Lorraine, the Earl of
Flanders, the Earl of Blois, and a great
multitude of barons and knights, waited for his
arrival. But when the Parisians saw the
king ready to ride out of their gates they
came and fell on their knees and cried:

"Ah, sire and noble king, what are you
about to do? To leave your fine city of
Paris? Our enemies are only two leagues
off. As soon as they shall know you have
quitted us, they will come hither directly,
and we are not able to resist them
ourselves, nor shall we find any to defend us.
Have the kindness, therefore, sire, to
remain in your good city of Paris, and take
care of us."

The king calmly replied: "My good
people, do not be afraid, the English will
not approach nearer than they have done.
I am going to St. Denis to my army, for I
am impatient to pursue these English, and
am resolved to fight with them at all
events."

The King of England remained some
weeks at the Nunnery of Poissy, appearing
daily at table in a sleeveless scarlet robe,
trimmed with ermine, and there he
celebrated the feast of the Virgin Mary. On
his way to Beauvais (sixteen leagues from
Paris), Sir Godfrey de Harcourt and the
vanguard fell in with a large company of
armed citizens from Amiens, on their way
to Paris. They were attacked by Sir
Godfrey's five hundred men-at-arms and fifteen
hundred archers, and twelve hundred of
them were killed. At St. Messien, near
Beauvais, King Edward, angry at the abbey
where he had lodged being set on fire by
his soldiers, contrary to his orders, hung
twenty of the incendiaries. Careful of his
men and artillery, Edward burnt only the
suburbs of Beauvais; then, wasting all the
country as he swept on, he passed into
Picardy, at Cressy. On the 26th of August,
1346, an army of thirty-six thousand
English men routed the French host of one
hundred and thirty thousand. When our
heralds and their secretaries numbered the
dead, they found eighty banners, and the
bodies of eleven princes, twelve hundred
knights, and thirty thousand common
soldiers. The same month Calais fell, after
a year's siege, and a truce soon followed.

Four years after Cressy came the still
greater victory of Poictiers, when the Black
Prince and his small army of ten thousand
men, being refused honourable terms by the
French, to whom they had offered to
surrender all conquests and all prisoners,
routed an army of fifty thousand, slew
six thousand, and captured King John of
France. During John's imprisonment in the
Savoy, and under the regency of the Duke
of Normandy, France remained for years
in the most unhappy state of misery and
internal discord. The country was overrun
by armed freebooters, the cities were
ravaged by famine and disease; to crown
all, the peasantry, driven to madness by
ceaseless injustice and robbery, broke into
savage revolt, and, under a peasant of
Beauvais, whom they called "Jacques
Bonhomme," burned castles and châteaus
murdered knights and their families, and
committed the most horrible atrocities.

In the height of all this misery a strong,
dangerous man arose in Paris. This was.
Etienne Marcel, the provost of the
merchants, who brought the King of Navarre
to Paris, and with his troops of red and blue
hoods intimidated the Duke of Normandy.
The King of Navarre sallied out on the
revolted peasants, and hung three thousand
of the poor wretches in one day. The
Duke of Normandy, about that time fearing
the King of Navarre, the provost and
his blue and red hoods, retired to Charenton,
and summoned the crown vassals to
besiege Paris. The provost, afraid that the
attack might be by night, Paris not being
enclosed, collected three hundred workmen,
and employed them to dig a ditch round