Troubles had arisen in the town of Cambrai between the bishops and the people.

"There was amongst the members of the metropolitan clergy," says M.Augustin Thierry, "a certain Baudri de Sarchainville, a native of Artois, who had the title of chaplain of the bishopric.

He was a man of high character and of wise and reflecting mind.

He did not share the violent aversion felt by most of his order for the institution of communes.

He saw in this institution a sort of necessity beneath which it would be inevitable sooner or later, Willy nilly, to bow, and he thought it was better to surrender to the wishes of the citizens than to shed blood in order to postpone for a while an unavoidable revolution.