or.

"On the 22d of May, 1525, the Assemblee des Vingt adopted a resolution
to arrest a certain number of fraudulent beggars who were strongly
suspected of being marauders of the worst kind, but, having been
notified in time, they decamped.... The enterprises of the vagabonds,
the thieves, and the _mauvais garcons_ became more and more audacious;
they had for chiefs three bandits, Esclaireau, Barbiton, and Jean de
Mets, who spread such terror that the archers who were sent against them
preferred to advise them to fly, through fear of being killed by them;
however, the salt barges having been robbed on the 7th of June, near the
Celestins, the _prevot_ of the merchants sent the night-watch against
them; they defended themselves with arquebuses, drove the watch back as
far as the Port Saint-Landry, and all but killed the _prevot_.

"On the 14th, a troop of these rogues traversed the city, crying: '_Vive
Bourgogne! A sac! a sac!_'

"Immediately the watch turned out, there was a fight, and some thirty
men were killed or wounded on both sides. Presently, the disbanded
soldiers and the _routiers_, coming from no one knew where, joined
forces with the truands and spread terror among the inhabitants. One of
the officers of the quarters, charged to take proceedings against them,
asserted that there were eighty of them who frequented the hostelry de
la Coquille, situated in the Rue Saint-Martin, and that there was a
still greater number in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Every one was quite
convinced that these were soldiers who had not been paid their hire, and
it was resolved that some sixty persons, honorable and of divers
conditions (one of them was a president of the court), with twenty
sergeants, should be sent against them, to seize all these adventurers
and bring them to justice.

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF THE BASTILLE, JULY 14, 1789.

After a contemporary engraving by Duplessis-Bertaux.]

"This was a mission sufficiently disagreeable to fulfil, and one which
was not exempt from danger; the vagabonds, forewarned, joined the
Italian and Corsican bands commanded by the Comte de Belle Joyeuse, who
had been authorized by the regent 'to live upon the people,' and who
gave themselves up to all the excesses which were compatible with such
an authorization, quite in consonance with the manners of the times;
when it was desired to raise soldiers for a campaign and there was no
money with which to pay them, they were permitted to li