place where they could find a little security." Thus the population was
without any kind of regular force, anything like effectual protection;
the temporary defenders of order themselves went over, and with alacrity
too, to the side of disorder when they did not succeed in repressing it;
and the men-at-arms set readily about plundering, in their turn, the
castles and country-places whence they had been charged to drive off the
plunderers.

Let us add a still more striking example of the absence of all publicly
recognized power at this period, and of the necessity to which the
population was nearly everywhere reduced of defending itself with its own
hands, in order to escape ever so little from the evils of war and
anarchy. It was a little while ago pointed out why and how, after the
death of Marcel and the downfall of his faction, Charles the Bad, King of
Navarre, suddenly determined upon making his peace with the regent of
France. This peace was very displeasing to the English, allies of the
King of Navarre, and they continued to carry on war, ravaging the country
here and there, at one time victorious and at another vanquished in a
multiplication of disconnected encounters. "I will relate," says the
Continuer of William of Nangis, "one of those incidents just as it
occurred in my neighborhood, and as I have been truthfully told about it.
The struggle there was valiantly maintained by peasants, Jacques Bonhomme
(Jack Goodfellows), as they are called. There is a place pretty well
fortified in a little town named Longueil, not far from Compiegne, in the
diocese of Beauvais, and near to the banks of the Oise. This place is
close to the monastery of St. Corneille-de-Compiegne. The inhabitants
perceived that there would be danger if the enemy occupied this point;
and, after having obtained authority from the lord-regent of France and
the abbot of the monastery, they settled themselves there, provided
themselves with arms and provisions, and appointed a captain taken from
among themselves, promising the regent that they would defend this place
to the death. Many of the villagers came thither to place themselves in
security, and they chose for captain a tall, fine man, named William a-
Larks (aux Alouettes). He had for servant, and held as with bit and
bridle, a certain peasant of lofty stature, marvellous bodily strength,
and equal boldness, who had joined to these advantages an extreme
modesty: he was called _Big