h
it witnesses. Five or six hundred beggars,[1315] their numbers soon
increased by the petty tradesmen, rush to the town hall, the magistrates
only having time to fly through a back door. The soldiers, on their
part, with arms in their hands, allow all these things to go on, while
several of them spur the assailants on. The windows are dashed to pieces
under a hailstorm of stones, the doors are forced with iron crowbars,
and the populace enter amid a burst of acclamations from the spectators.
Immediately, through every opening in the building, which has a facade
frontage of eighty feet, "there is a shower of shutters, sashes,
chairs, tables, sofas, books and papers, and then another of tiles,
boards, balconies and fragments of wood-work." The public archives are
thrown to the wind, and the surrounding streets are strewed with them;
the letters of enfranchisement, the charters of privileges, all the
authentic acts which, since Louis XIV, have guaranteed the liberties of
the town, perish in the flames. Some of the rabble in the cellars stave
in casks of precious wine; fifteen thousand measures of it are lost,
making a pool five feet deep in which several are drowned. Others,
loaded with booty, go away under the eyes of the soldiers without
being arrested. The havoc continues for three days; a number of houses
belonging to some of the magistrates "are sacked from garret to cellar."
When the honest citizens at last obtain arms and restore order, they are
content with the hanging of one of the robbers; although, in order to
please the people, the magistrates are changed and the price of bread
and meat is reduced.--It is not surprising that after such tactics, and
with such rewards, the riot should spread through the neighborhood far
and near: in fact, starting from Strasbourg it overruns Alsace, while in
the country as in the city, there are always drunkards and rascals found
to head it.

No matter where, be it in the East, in the West, or in the North, the
instigators are always of this stamp. At Cherbourg, on the 21st of
July,[1316] the two leaders of the riot are "highway robbers," who place
themselves at the head of women of the suburbs, foreign sailors, the
populace of the harbor, and it includes soldiers in workmen's smocks.
They force the delivery of the keys of the grain warehouses, and
wreck the dwellings of the three richest merchants, also that of M. de
Garantot, the sub-delegate: "All records and papers are burnt