Pictures of the old French court

by Mrs. Bearne

MEAUX.

The Mayor and burghers threw open the gates, and about nine thousand furious ruffians, armed with scythes, pitchforks, and knives, rushed into the town.

The towns people received them with open arms, supplied them with abundance of food and wine, which excited them to still greater ferocity, and joined in the tumult of fearful shouts and cries as the bloodthirsty savages swarmed through the streets looking up with murderous eyes to the towers and walls of the Marché.

Now the Marché de Meaux was on an island formed by the Marne, which flowed on one side of it, and a canal that went round it, coming out of the river on one side of the Marché and going back into it on the other. On the side of Meaux there was a bridge over the Marne from the Marché to the town, and on the opposite side of the Marché another bridge, across the canal to the other shore. Most fortunately, the Dauphin had recently caused the island to be strongly fortified, and his having done so now saved his wife and sister from a horrible death. All round the Marché were high strong walls and towers. Trees could be seen above the parapet inside, and the ground rose high in the middle. It was a strong place, but they were so few to defend it against the furious hordes outside. In it were the young Dauphine, the Princess Isabelle de France, daughter of the King, then about ten or eleven years old; Blanche de France, Duchesse d’Orléans, who had just escaped from Beaumont-sur-Oise; and, as was before said, at least three hundred women, girls, and children of the noblest families in France. The gates were closed, the walls guarded as well as could be done with their few defenders, but the position grew every moment more alarming. The streets were crowded to overflowing with these bloodthirsty wretches, and all down them were spread tables with bread, meat and wine for their refreshment. All over the town they were thronging and feasting, while their horrible cries and brutal threats rose to the ears of the besieged women and children who waited in terror and despair, all hope of deliverance seeming to be at an end.

The fortress was always attacked from the town side, and from this direction, when the Jacques had finished feasting, the assault would certainly come.

But the Marché was fortunately not surrounded by the town. On the other side, across the canal, lay the open country of Brie. And suddenly a troop of men in armour was seen approaching at full speed. It was Gaston, Comte de Foix, and Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch, two of the most famous soldiers in France, with about sixty lances, who rode under the gateway into the beleaguered fortress, and were received with acclamations by those within its walls. The troop was a small one, but a few tried soldiers under such leaders counted for more than hundreds of the rabble outside, and the Dauphine and her companions must have felt that they were saved.

Having no particular fighting to do just then, the two knights had employed their leisure in an expedition against some heathen tribes still to be found in Prussia; and on their way back, passing through Châlons, had heard of what was going on at Meaux and of the perilous position of the ladies shut up in the Marché. The Comte de Foix was brother-in-law of the King of Navarre; and the Captal de Buch, a Gascon gentleman, was a subject and follower of King Edward of England. Etienne Marcel, on the other hand, was a strong partisan of Charles of Navarre. But the project of the bourgeois prévôt to throw the wives and children of French gentlemen into the power of a mob of brutal savages was not likely to recommend itself to the two knights, who at once turned their horses’ heads towards Meaux, and pushed on with desperate haste to save the Marché before it fell. The white banner still floated from its walls,[21] but they were only just in time. The Jacques, having done feasting, now ranged themselves in order of battle, and in immense numbers, with frightful yells, pressed towards the Marché and began the attack. The shrieks of the terrified women and children mingled with the tumult outside,[22] but Jean de Grailly and Gaston de Foix ordered the gate on the side of the town to be thrown open. Then, raising the pennon of the Captal and the banners of Orléans and Foix, they rushed out and fell upon the enemy. Down to the bridge they rode, over which was thronging a multitude like ferocious wild beasts. But before the charge of the knights the Jacques went down in heaps; those behind them hesitated, then drew back and fled before the cavaliers, who pursued them with levelled lances and drawn swords through the streets of the town. Several of the nobles were killed, amongst others Louis de Chambly, called Le Borgne, but thousands of the Jacques were slain. Many of the citizens of Meaux were killed in the battle that raged all over the city; the rest were carried prisoners to the citadel. Jean Soulas, the traitorous mayor, was taken during the fighting and hanged when it was over. The nobles then set fire to the town, which was burning for a fortnight. The royal château, with many houses and churches, perished in the flames. Froissart says that seven thousand Jacques were killed. The inhabitants of Meaux, “for their detestable deed,” were declared guilty of high treason, and the town condemned to be and for ever remain uninhabited. The Regent, in consideration of the Dean and Chapter of Meaux, and at the petition of some other towns who interceded with him on behalf of the place, afterwards remitted this sentence. But the commune of Meaux was suppressed and united to the prévôté de Paris.[23]

Jeanne and her companions watched from the Marché the victory of their friends and the destruction of their enemies, and it must soon have been evident to them that their danger was at an end. The destruction of the Jacques on that day, June 9, 1358, arrested the course of the rebellion. The nobles scoured the country, putting to death all the Jacques they could find. Learning that some of them had taken refuge at Sens, they resolved to inflict on that city the same punishment as on Meaux, and for that purpose a party of them, on the 13th of June, presented themselves at the Paris gate of the town, demanding the keys in the name of the Regent. But the inhabitants had received notice beforehand of what was intended, and had taken measures accordingly. Therefore, when the nobles, having been admitted, and thinking themselves masters of the place, advanced with drawn swords and cries of “Ville gagnée! ville prise!” the citizens, and even those nobles who belonged to Sens, pushed down from the top of the street, which was very steep, carts with scythes fastened to the wheels which they had prepared for the purpose, while armed men issued from the houses, and women threw stones, lime, and boiling water from the windows, by which means some were killed and the rest escaped out of the city.

But the defeat at Meaux broke the head of the insurrection. From the terror, the slaughter, and the discouragement of that day the Jacques never recovered, and the finishing stroke was given by the King of Navarre, on whose support some of them had been foolish enough to reckon, because of his hostility to the King and Dauphin.

The gentlemen of Normandy and Picardy sent an invitation to Charles de Navarre, who was then at his castle at Longueville, to be their leader in this contest; he “who was the first gentleman in the world.”[24]