[84] So called from the familiar appellation "Jacques Bonhomme," applied half in contempt, half in jest, by the seigneurs to the peasants who served them in the wars.
[85] Howell mentions the locution in a letter dated 1654.
[86] Charles taxed and borrowed heavily. Even the members of his household were importuned for loans, however small. His cook lent him frs. 67.50.
[87] This priceless collection of books, which at length filled three rooms, was appropriated for a nominal sum by the Duke of Bedford during the English occupation in Paris and sent to England. A few, barely fifty, have survived, of which the greater number have been acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale.
[88] Each gate of the new wall was defended by a kind of fortress called a Bastide or Bastille.
[89] Aubriot is said to have been the first prisoner incarcerated in the dungeon of his own Bastille.
[90] The scene is quaintly illustrated in an illuminated copy of Froissart in the British Museum.
[91] They melted down the reliquaries in the Paris churches.
[92] In 1417 Charles, returning from a visit to the queen at the castle of Vincennes, met the Chevalier Bois-Burdon going thither. He ordered his arrest, and under torture a confession reflecting on the queen's honour was extorted. Bois-Burdon was delivered to the provost at the Châtelet, and one night, sans declarer la cause au people, sewn in a sack and dropped into the Seine. The queen was banished to Tours, and her jewels and treasures confiscated. Furious with the king and the Armagnac faction, she made common cause with the Duke of Burgundy.
[93] The statue was mutilated at the expulsion of the English in 1446 and was destroyed in the fire of 1618.