, there was plotted by the Carmelites of Melun and certain
burgesses of Paris that conspiracy which we mentioned on the occasion
of Jeanne's departure for l'Ile de France. It was not the first plot
into which the Carmelites had entered; they had plotted that rising
which had been on the point of breaking out on the Day of the
Nativity, when the Maid was leading the attack near La Porte
Saint-Honore; but never before had so many burgesses and so many
notables entered into a conspiracy. A clerk of the Treasury, Maitre
Jean de la Chapelle, two magistrates of the Chatelet, Maitre Renaud
Savin and Maitre Pierre Morant, a very wealthy man, named Jean de
Calais, burgesses, merchants, artisans, more than one hundred and
fifty persons, held the threads of this vast web, and among them,
Jaquet Guillaume, Seigneur de l'Ours.

The Carmelites of Melun directed the whole. Clad as artisans, they
went from King to burgesses, from burgesses to King; they kept up the
communications between those within and those without, and regulated
all the details of the enterprise. One of them asked the conspirators
for a written undertaking to bring the King's men into the city. Such
a demand looks as if the majority of the conspirators were in the pay
of the Royal Council.

In exchange for this undertaking these monks brought acts of oblivion
signed by the King. For the people of Paris to be induced to receive
the Prince, whom they still called Dauphin, they must needs be assured
of a full and complete amnesty. For more than ten years, while the
English and Burgundians had been holding the town, no one had felt
altogether free from the reproach of their lawful sovereign and the
men of his party. And all the more desirous were they for Charles of
Valois to forget the past when they recalled the cruel vengeance taken
by the Armagnacs after the suppression of the Butchers.

One of the conspirators, Jaquet Perdriel, advocated the sounding of a
trumpet and the reading of the acts of oblivion on Sunday at the Porte
Baudet.

"I have no doubt," he said, "but that we shall be joined by the
craftsmen, who, in great numbers will flock to hear the reading."

He intended leading them to the Saint Antoine Gate and opening it to
the King's men who were lying in ambush close by.

Some eighty or a hundred Scotchmen, dressed as Englishmen, wearing the
Saint Andrew's cross, were then to enter the town, bringing in fish
and cattle.

"They will enter boldly by