fective king.

[Illustration: Charles V.----371]

In spite of the discretion he had displayed during his four years of
regency (from 1356 to 1360), his reign opened under the saddest auspices.
In 1363, one of those contagious diseases, all at that time called the
plague, committed cruel ravages in France. "None," says the contemporary
chronicler, "could count the number of the dead in Paris, young or old,
rich or poor; when death entered a house, the little children died first,
then the menials, then the parents. In the smallest villages, as well as
in Paris, the mortality was such that at Argenteuil, for example, where
there were wont to be numbered seven hundred hearths, there remained no
more than forty or fifty." The ravages of the armed thieves, or bandits,
who scoured the country added to those of the plague. Let it suffice to
quote one instance. "In Beauce, on the Orleans and Chartres side, some
brigands and prowlers, with hostile intent, dressed as pig-dealers or
cow-drivers, came to the little castle of Murs, close to Corbeil, and
finding outside the gate the master of the place, who was a knight, asked
him to get them back their pigs, which his menials, they said, had the
night before taken from them, which was false. The master gave them
leave to go in, that they might discover their pigs and move them away.
As soon as they had crossed the drawbridge they seized upon the master,
threw off their false clothes, drew their weapons, and blew a blast upon
the bagpipe; and forthwith appeared their comrades from their
hiding-places in the neighboring woods. They took possession of the
castle, its master and mistress, and all their folk; and, settling
themselves there, they scoured from thence the whole country, pillaging
everywhere, and filling the castle with the provisions they carried off.
At the rumor of this thievish capture, many men-at-arms in the
neighborhood rushed up to expel the thieves and retake from them the
castle. Not succeeding in their assault, they fell back on Corbeil,
and then themselves set to ravaging the country, taking away from the
farm-houses provisions and wine without paying a dolt, and carrying them
off to Corbeil for their own use. They became before long as much feared
and hated as the brigands; and all the inhabitants of the neighboring
villages, leaving their homes and their labor, took refuge, with their
children and what they had been able to carry off, in Paris, the only