SOON after the deliverance of the King of Navarre out of prison, a marvellous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights, and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition every one assented, and added, Shame befall him that should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed! They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and with no other arms than the staves, shod with iron, which some had, and others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near, and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the children, both great and small: they then burnt the house.

After this their second expedition was to the strong castle of another knight, which they took. They then murdered the lady, her daughter, and the other children, and last of all the knight himself, with much cruelty. They destroyed and burnt his castle. They did the like to many castles and handsome houses; and their numbers increased so much that they were in a short time upward of six thousand. Wherever they went, they received additions, for all of their rank in life followed them, while every one else fled, carrying off with them their ladies, damsels, and children, ten or twenty leagues distant, where they thought they could place them in security, leaving their houses with all their riches in them.

These wicked people, without leader and without arms, plundered and burnt all the houses they came to. He who committed the most atrocious actions, and such as no human creature would have imagined, was the most applauded, and considered as the greatest man among them. I dare not write the horrible and inconceivable atrocities they committed. They had chosen a king among them, who came from Clermont in Beauvoisis; he was elected as the worst of the bad, and they denominated him Jacques Bonhomme.[28] These wretches burnt and destroyed in the county of Beauvoisis, and at Corbie, Amiens, and Montdidier, upward of sixty good houses and strong castles. By the acts of such traitors in the country of Brie and thereabout, it behooved every lady, knight, and squire, having the means of escape, to fly to Meaux, if they wished to preserve themselves from being insulted and afterwards murdered. The Duchess of Normandy, the Duchess of Orleans, and many other ladies, had adopted this course to save themselves. These cursed people thus supported themselves in the countries between Paris, Noyon, and Soissons, and in all the territory of Coucy, in the county of Valois. In the bishoprics of Noyon, Laon, and Soissons, there were upward of one hundred castles, and good houses of knights and squires, destroyed.