t 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. In other civil wars,
the opposite factions, falling under the government of their several
leaders, commonly preserve still the vestige of some rule and order: but
here the wild state of nature seemed to be renewed: every man was
thrown loose and independent of his fellows: and the populousness of the
country, derived from the preceding police of civil society, served only
to increase the horror and confusion of the scene.

Amidst these disorders, the king of Navarre made his escape from prison,
and presented a dangerous leader to the furious malecontents.[*] But the
splendid talents of this prince qualified him only to do mischief,
and to increase the public distractions: he wanted the steadiness and
prudence requisite for making his intrigues subservient to his ambition,
and forming his numerous partisans into a regular faction. He revived
his pretensions, somewhat obsolete, to the crown of France: but while
he advanced this claim, he relied entirely on his alliance with the
English, who were concerned in interest to disappoint his pretensions;
and who, being public and inveterate enemies to the state, served only,
by the