The troops, who, from the deficiency of pay, were no longer retained in discipline, threw off all regard to their officers, sought the means of subsistence by plunder and robbery, and associating to them all the disorderly people with whom that age abounded, formed numerous bands, which infested all parts of the kingdom.

They desolated the open country; burned and plundered the villages; and by cutting off all means of communication or subsistence, reduced even the inhabitants of the walled towns to the most extreme necessity.

The peasants, formerly oppressed, and now left unprotected by their masters, became desperate from their present misery; and rising every where in arms, carried to the last extremity those disorders which were derived from the sedition of the citizens and disbanded soldiers.[*] * Froissard, liv.i.chap.

182,183, 184.
The gentry, hated for their tyranny, were every where exposed to the violence of popular rage; and instead of meeting with the regard due to their past dignity, became only, on that account, the object of more wanton insult to the mutinous peasants.

They were hunted like wild beasts, and put to the sword without mercy: their castles were consumed with fire, and levelled to the ground: their wives and daughters were first ravished, then murdered: the savages proceeded so far as to impale some gentlemen, and roast them alive before a slow fire: a body of nine thousand of them broke into Meaux, where the wife of the dauphin, with above three hundred ladies, had taken shelter: the most brutal treatment and most atrocious cruelty were justly dreaded by this helpless company: but the Captal de Buche, though in the service of Edward, yet moved by generosity and by the gallantry of a true knight, flew to their rescue, and beat off the peasants with great slaughter.