The weather of this year was a marked contrast to the mild season of 1473. The winter set in early and the cold became very severe, almost at once. Their sufferings made the burghers very impatient for the relief of whose coming they could get no certain assurance. The Burgundian lines were held so rigidly that the interchange of messages between the city and her friends was rendered very difficult.[12] One Suffren de Baschi tried to slip through to Nancy, to tell the besieged that René was levying troops in Switzerland and would soon be with them. Baschi fell into the duke's hands and was immediately hanged. One story says that Campobasso was among the interceders for his life and received a box on the ear for his pains, an insult that proved the last straw in his allegiance to Charles. Commines, however, declares that the Italian urged the death of the captive, fearful of the premature betrayal of his own intended treachery. This execution was one of those arbitrary acts condemned by public opinion as contrary to the code of warfare. Intense indignation among the Lorrainers and the Swiss forced René to retaliatory measures, and he ordered the execution of all the Burgundian prisoners. One hundred and twenty bodies hung on the gibbets, each bearing an inscription to the effect that their death was the work of _le téméraire_. The rancour of the proceedings became terrible. No quarter was given in any engagements. Slaughter was the only thought on either side. Towards the end of December, one Thierry, a draper of Mirecourt, proved more successful than Baschi in reaching Nancy. His information, that René's army would leave Basel on December 26th, put heart into the beseiged and the bells rang out joyfully. Just at this epoch, there was an attempt at mediation between the combatants. The King of Portugal,[13] nephew of Isabella, appeared at his cousin's camp and implored him to put an end to the carnage, and in the name of humanity to stop a war that was horrible to all the world. In spite of his own stress, Charles managed to give his kinsman a splendid reception, but he waved aside his petition, and simply invited him to join him in his campaign. A week sufficed for the Swiss contingent to march from Basel to Nancy, across the plains of Alsace. Meantime René had rallied about four thousand men under Lorraine captains, and to this was added an Alsatian force which had joined him by way of St.-Nicolas-du-Port. They were a rude, pitiless crowd, as they soon evinced by routing a few Burgundians out of the houses where they had hidden, and massacring them publicly. A reconnaissance, sent out by Charles, was easily put to flight.