A crowd of rustics, maddened at the thought of revived claims of serfage, of interminable suits of law, poured into the streets of the town.

From thirty-two of the neighbouring villages the priests marched at the head of their flocks as on a new crusade.

The wild mass of men, women, and children, twenty thousand in all, as men guessed, rushed again on the abbey, and for four November days the work of destruction went on unhindered.

When gate, stables, granaries, kitchen, infirmary, hostelry had gone up in flames, the multitude swept away to the granges and barns of the abbey farms.

Their plunder shows what vast agricultural proprietors the monks had become.