, and encouraged and even supported
it at several points. Amongst other things he sent from Paris a body of
three hundred men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging
the castle of Ermenonville. It is the due penalty paid by reformers who
allow themselves to drift into revolution, that they become before long
accomplices in mischief or crime which their original design and their
own personal interest made it incumbent on them to prevent or repress.

The reaction against Jaequery was speedy and shockingly bloody. The
nobles, the dauphin, and the King of Navarre, a prince and a noble at the
same time that he was a scoundrel, made common cause against the
Goodfellows, who were the more disorderly in proportion as they had
become more numerous, and believed themselves more invincible. The
ascendency of the masters over the rebels was soon too strong for
resistance. At Meaux, of which the Goodfellows had obtained possession,
they were surprised and massacred to the number, it is said, of seven
thousand, with the town burning about their ears. In Beauvaisis, the
King of Navarre, after having made a show of treating with their
chieftain, William Karle or Callet, got possession of him, and had him
beheaded, wearing a trivet of red-hot iron, says one of the chroniclers,
by way of crown. He then moved upon a camp of Goodfellows assembled near
Montdidier, slew three thousand of them, and dispersed the remainder.
These figures are probably very much exaggerated, as nearly always
happens in such accounts; but the continuer of William of Nangis, so
justly severe on the outrages and barbarities of the insurgent peasants,
is not less so on those of their conquerors. "The nobles of France," he
says, "committed at that time such ravages in the district of Meaux that
there was no need for the English to come and destroy our country those
mortal enemies of the kingdom could not have done what was done by the
nobles at home."

Marcel from that moment perceived that his cause was lost, and no longer
dreamed of anything but saving himself and his, at any price; "for he
thought," says Froissart, "that it paid better to slay than to be slain."
Although he had more than once experienced the disloyalty of the King of
Navarre, he entered into fresh negotiation with him, hoping to use him as
an intermediary between himself and the dauphin, in order to obtain
either an acceptable peace or guarantees for his own security in case o