Some months elapsed without any news; but, at the beginning of December, there were seen arriving in France some poor creatures, half naked, dying of hunger, cold, and weariness, and giving deplorable accounts of the destruction of the French army.

The people would not believe them: "They ought to be thrown into the water," they said, "these scoundrels who propagate such lies." But, on the 23th of December, there arrived at Paris James de Helly, a knight of Artois, who, booted and spurred, strode into the hostel of St.Paul, threw himself on his knees before the king in the midst of the princes, and reported that he had come straight from Turkey; that on the 28th of the preceding September the Christian army had been destroyed at the battle of Nicopolis; that most of the lords had been either slain in battle or afterwards massacred by the sultan's order; and that the Count of Nevers had sent him to the king and to his father the duke, to get negotiations entered into for his release.

There was no exaggeration about the knight's story.

The battle had been terrible, the slaughter awful.

For the latter, the French, who were for a moment victorious, had set a cruel example with their prisoners; and Bajazet had surpassed them in cool ferocity.