Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/560

546 considerable number of poor people in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and now the mob, in their rage, fell on the Armagnac citizens, and massacred all they could find. Women, and even children, like demons in their fury, dragged the dead Armagnacs about the streets, mutilating; and insulting them in their diabolical frenzy.

Rouen, from the Hill of St. Catherine.

No sooner was the news of this revolution spread than the equally brutalised population of the country came pouring into Paris to share in the plunder and carnage. The Burgundian butchers once more walked the streets of the capital in sanguinary ascendency, and Paris was a hell! Had not avarice come in to stay the hand of murder, in the hope of ransom, not a single Armagnac would have been left alive.

But even yet the horror had not culminated. Instead of the Duke of Burgundy and the queen, now in the ascendant, exerting themselves to restrain the cruelty and restore order, they kept aloof—Burgundy at Montbelliard, and the queen at Troyes; and they are accused of even stimulating the massacre of their defeated enemies.

Nothing short of the monstrosity of crime to which those long and deadly feuds had led at this time could induce us to credit such appalling suggestions. But the queen is related to have replied to a deputation sent to invite her to Paris, that she would never set foot again in that city while a single Armagnac breathed in it. On the other hand, though Tannegui du Chastel had fled to Bourges with the dauphin, 150 miles off, rumours, said to.