ad become absolutely
depopulated owing to the misery of such riots as that of 1411, or the
still more serious outbreak of 1417, when the perpetual quarrels of
the Armagnac and Burgundian parties were reflected in the factions of
the town. The burgesses declared for them of Burgundy, who posed as
the "Progressives," or defenders of the people's rights, and therefore
objected to the Bailli and the Chateau, as being the representatives
of the Conservative and aristocratic Armagnacs, the gatherers of those
hateful taxes, which had been doubled that year, and had thus made
still more difficult a commerce already crippled by constant changes
in the currency. Perpetual imposts and extraordinary war-subventions
had drained the town of its resources for some time. Every religious
community had been forced to forego all privileges and contribute
like the rest. And after Bernard, Count of Armagnac, had assumed
official direction of the Government, his excessive exactions made it
easy to add the loss of Harfleur and the defeat of Agincourt, to the
many sins of his party. The brigandage and violence of an Armagnac,
Jean Raoulet, all along the Seine, brought home to the people of Rouen
with an even more startling clearness the necessity for trying what
the other side could do for them.

So John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, had an easy part to play as
the champion of the downtrodden people. On the 24th of April he sent a
political manifesto into the town (very much of the kind to which
modern France has become accustomed) promising relief from taxation.
Before swallowing the bait entirely the burgesses submitted the seals
to examination in Paris, but the drapers of Rouen scarcely waited for
confirmation before they attacked the royal tax-gatherers with cries
of "Long live Burgundy!" Thereupon d'Armagnac sent three commissioners
with a troop of Bretons and Genoese cross-bowmen from Paris. But the
townsfolk would not let the mercenaries enter, seizing the keys of the
town from the officials and mounting their own guard at every gate.
The three commissioners, powerless without their escort, took refuge
in the Chateau. The King's bailli, Raoul de Gancourt, refused to leave
his post. He seems to have been a man brave enough to make his mark
upon the stricken field of Agincourt, and intellectual enough to win a
local reputation as a poet, a nature in fact somewhat akin to Charles
d'Orleans. But though he could make no head against the ri