. . As they lacked a captain, they sent to Charles
the Bad, King of Navarre, who was at that time in Normandy, and whom they
knew to be freshly embroiled with the regent; and they requested him to
come to Paris with a strong body of men-at-arms, and to be their captain
there and their defender against all their foes, save the lord John, King
of, France, a prisoner in England. The King of Navarre, with all his
men, was received in state, on the 15th of June, by the Parisians, to the
great indignation of the prince-regent, his friends, and many others.
The nobles thereupon began to draw near to Paris, and to ride about in
the fields of the neighborhood, prepared to fight if there should be a
sortie from Paris to attack them. . . . On a certain day the
besiegers came right up to the bridge of Charenton, as if to draw out the
King of Navarre and the Parisians to battle. The King of Navarre issued
forth, armed, with his men, and drawing near to the besiegers, had long
conversations with them without fighting, and afterwards went back into
Paris. At sight hereof the Parisians suspected that this king, who was
himself a noble, was conspiring with the besiegers, and was preparing to
deal some secret blow to the detriment of Paris; so they conceived
mistrust of him and his, and stripped him of his office of captain. He
went forth sore vexed from Paris, he and his; and the English especially,
whom he had brought with him, insulted certain Parisians, whence it
happened that before they were out of the city several of them were
massacred by the folks of Paris, who afterwards confined themselves
within their walls, carefully guarding the gates by day, and by night
keeping up strong patrols on the ramparts."

Whilst Marcel inside Paris, where he reigned supreme, was a prey, on his
own account and that of his besieged city, to these anxieties and perils,
an event occurred outside which seemed to open to him a prospect of
powerful aid, perhaps of decisive victory. Throughout several provinces
the peasants, whose condition, sad and hard as it already was under the
feudal system, had been still further aggravated by the outrages and
irregularities of war, not finding any protection in their lords, and
often being even oppressed by them as if they had been foes, had recourse
to insurrection in order to escape from the evils which came down upon
them every day and from every quarter.

They bore and would bear anything, it was