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.