ir ministers and favourites
to the complaints and resentments of the people; but this accurate
refined statesman got over this point.

While we were at Lyons, and as I remember, the third day after our
coming thither, we had like to have been involved in a state broil,
without knowing where we were. It was of a Sunday in the evening, the
people of Lyons, who had been sorely oppressed in taxes, and the war
in Italy pinching their trade, began to be very tumultuous. We found
the day before the mob got together in great crowds, and talked oddly;
the king was everywhere reviled, and spoken disrespectfully of, and
the magistrates of the city either winked at, or durst not attempt to
meddle, lest they should provoke the people.

But on Sunday night, about midnight, we were waked by a prodigious
noise in the street. I jumped out of bed, and running to the window,
I saw the street as full of mob as it could hold, some armed with
muskets and halberds, marched in very good order; others in disorderly
crowds, all shouting and crying out, "Du paix le roi," and the like.
One that led a great party of this rabble carried a loaf of bread upon
the top of a pike, and other lesser loaves, signifying the smallness
of their bread, occasioned by dearness.

By morning this crowd was gathered to a great height; they ran roving
over the whole city, shut up all the shops, and forced all the
people to join with them from thence. They went up to the castle, and
renewing the clamour, a strange consternation seized all the princes.

They broke open the doors of the officers, collectors of the new
taxes, and plundered their houses, and had not the persons themselves
fled in time they had been very ill-treated.

The queen-mother, as she was very much displeased to see such
consequences of the government, in whose management she had no share,
so I suppose she had the less concern upon her. However, she came into
the court of the castle and showed herself to the people, gave money
amongst them, and spoke gently to them; and by a way peculiar to
herself, and which obliged all she talked with, she pacified the mob
gradually, sent them home with promises of redress and the like; and
so appeased this tumult in two days by her prudence, which the guards
in the castle had small mind to meddle with, and if they had, would in
all probability have made the better side the worse.

There had been several seditions of the like nature in sundry other
parts o