are hounds. They had already made banners for the King of England, and
would fain have planted them upon the gates of the city. They made us
work for nothing, and when we asked for our due they said, 'You rascals,
haven't ye a sou to buy a cord and go hang yourselves? In the devil's
name speak no more of it; it will be no use, whatever you say.'" The
provost of Paris durst not oppose such fury as this. "Do what you
please," said he. The mob ran to look for the constable Armagnac and the
chancellor de Marle in the Palace-tower, in which they had been shut up,
and they were at once torn to pieces amidst ferocious rejoicings. All
the prisons were ransacked and emptied; the prisoners who attempted
resistance were smoked out; they were hurled down from the windows upon
pikes held up to catch them. The massacre lasted from four o'clock in
the morning to eleven. The common report was, that fifteen hundred
persons had perished in it; the account rendered to parliament made the
number eight hundred. The servants of the Duke of Burgundy mentioned to
him no more than four hundred.

It was not before the 14th of July that he, with Queen Isabel, came back
to the city; and he came with a sincere design, if not of punishing the
cut-throats, at least of putting a stop to all massacre and pillage; but
there is nothing more difficult than to suppress the consequences of a
mischief of which you dare not attack the cause. One Bertrand, head of
one of the companies of butchers, had been elected captain of St. Denis
because he had saved the abbey from the rapacity of a noble Burgundian
chieftain, Hector de Saveuse. The lord, to avenge himself, had the
butcher assassinated. The burgesses went to the duke to demand that the
assassin should be punished; and the duke, who durst neither assent nor
refuse, could only partially cloak his weakness by imputing the crime to
some disorderly youngsters whom he enabled to get away. On the 20th of
August an angry mob collected in front of the Chatelet, shouting out that