On the following day--June 8--the army arrived before Négrepelisse, a little town on the left bank of the Aveyron. Louis XIII and his whole army were bitterly incensed against the inhabitants of Négrepelisse, who, one night during the previous winter, had revolted and massacred four hundred men of the Vaillac Regiment who had been placed in garrison there; while a report was current among the soldiers that, during the siege of Montauban, the sick and wounded of the Royal army who had been transported thither had been poisoned. However, as the town was believed to have returned to its allegiance, provided they admitted the King, there would not appear to have been any intention of punishing the inhabitants. But when the quartermaster who had been charged to select suitable quarters for his Majesty, approached the gates, he found them closed, and was received with a volley of musket-shots. On learning of what had occurred, the King ordered Bassompierre, who was with the advance-guard, to invest the town, which he proceeded to do; but, on going forward to reconnoitre the place with Praslin and Chevreuse, he had a narrow escape of his life, being fired upon from a distance of twenty paces by a party of the enemy, whom he had mistaken for some of his own men. “There was not in Négrepelisse,” says Bassompierre, “anything better than a musket; no munitions of war save what each inhabitant might have had to go out shooting; no foreign soldier, no chief to command them; and the place, though it might have offered some resistance to a provincial force, was quite incapable of resisting a Royal army. Nevertheless, the inhabitants would neither consent to surrender nor even to parley.” The probable explanation is that the townsfolk were convinced that the King was bent upon their destruction, and that no terms which he might consent to give them would be observed; and that they had therefore determined to sell their lives for what they might be worth. On the 9th, a battery of seven cannon was got into position close to the walls, and, although the enemy’s musketry-fire was very effective, and caused many casualties amongst the gunners, by the following morning a considerable breach had been made. The besieged endeavoured to repair it by a barricade of carts, but this was of little avail, and the town was quickly taken by assault.