the lust of blood and rapine that had possessed their fathers.
Generation after generation of these fiends in human form ranged over
the soil of France committing intolerable havoc. A carpenter of Le Puy
formed an association for the extermination of these bands. Philip
Augustus encouraged him, furnished troops, and in one day slaughtered
ten thousand of them. But so long as the English claim on so large a
portion of the soil of France was maintained, the bands were
incessantly recruited. The French King hired them as well as the King
of England. So, later, did the Popes, when they quitted Avignon, and by
their aid recovered the patrimony of S. Peter.

The barons and seigneurs in the South were no better than the
_routiers_. They transferred their allegiance from the Leopards to
the Lilies, or _vice versa_, as suited their caprices. The Sieur
de Pons went over to the side of France because he quarrelled with his
wife, who was ardent on the English side. The local nobility helped the
_routiers_, and the _routiers_ assisted them in their private
feuds.

The knights of the fourteenth century were no longer the protectors of
the weak, the redressers of wrongs, loyal to their liege lords,
observers of their oaths. They had reversed the laws of chivalry. Their
main function was the oppression of the weak. They forswore themselves
without scruple. The Sire d'Aubrecicourt plundered and slaughtered at
random _pour meriter de sa dame_, Isabella de Juliers, niece of
the Queen of England, "for he was young and outrageously in love." The
brother of the King of Navarre plundered like the rest. When the nobles
sold safe-conducts to the merchants who victualled the towns, they
excepted such articles as might suit themselves--silks, harness, plate.
A prince of the blood sent as hostage to England returned to France in