ity, and had occasioned
confusions the most horrible and destructive that had ever been
experienced in any age or in any nation. The dauphin, now about eighteen
years of age, naturally assumed the royal power during his father's
captivity; but though endowed with an excellent capacity, even in such
early years, he possessed neither experience nor authority sufficient
to defend a state, assailed at once by foreign power and shaken by
intestine faction. In order to obtain supply, he assembled the states
of the kingdom: that assembly, instead of supporting his administration,
were themselves seized with the spirit of confusion; and laid hold of
the present opportunity to demand limitations of the prince's power,
the punishment of past malversations, and the liberty of the king of
Navarre. Marcel, provost of the merchants and first magistrate of Paris,
put himself at the head of the unruly populace; and from the violence
and temerity of his character, pushed them to commit the most criminal
outrages against the royal authority. They detained the dauphin in a
sort of captivity; they murdered in his presence Robert de Clermont
and John de Conflans, mareschals, the one of Normandy, the other of
Burgundy; they threatened all the other ministers with a like fate;
and when Charles, who was obliged to temporize and dissemble, made his
escape from their hands, they levied war against him, and openly erected
the standard of rebellion, The other cities of the kingdom, in imitation
of the capital, shook off the dauphin's authority, took the government
into their own hands, and spread the disorder into every province. The
nobles, whose inclinations led them to adhere to the crown, and were
naturally disposed to check these tumults, had lost all their influence;
and being reproached with cowardice on account of the base desertion of
their sovereign in the battle of Poiotiers, were treated with universal
contempt by the inferior orders. The troops, who, from the deficiency
of pay, were no longer retained in discipline, threw off all regard to
their officers, sought the means of subsistence by plunder and robbery,
and associating to them all the disorderly people with whom that
age abounded, formed numerous bands, which infested all parts of the
kingdom. They desolated the open country; burned and plundered the
villages; and by cutting off all means of communication or subsistence,
reduced even the inhabitants of the walled towns to the mos