In spite of such horrors no profession was more lucrative or held in greater honour in the fourteenth century than that of the brigand. Even royalty, whose duty it was to protect the peasants, showed itself eager to make advances to the brigands and to reward their strange exploits. Philip of Valois proposed to Croquart, the famous chief of the brigands settled in Brittany, to knight him, marry him well, and pay him an annual income of two thousand pounds, if he would place himself at his disposal. This same king, hearing of the extraordinary cleverness by which one Bacon, a brigand who harassed Languedoc, had surprised the castle of Chambon in the Limousin, wished to keep by his side so daring and crafty a captain; so he made him his sergeant-at-arms and loaded him with honours. Too often the kings did not even attempt to protect the unhappy victims of the brigands. On the contrary they helped to complete the ruin of the peasants by authorising the abuse of _le droit de prise_ (the right of seizure), and above all by arbitrarily raising or lowering the money standard, according to whether the question was one of levying taxes or of paying debts.[h] THE DAUPHIN REPUDIATES THE _GRANDE ORDONNANCE_ (1358 A.D.) [Sidenote: [1358-1360 A.D.]] Under such existing conditions the dauphin believed himself powerful enough to declare that he would no longer tolerate trustees. February 8th, 1358, he revoked the _grande ordonnance_, and thus destroyed the popular government. This was a complete rupture with the states-general and the resumption of absolute power by the crown. Against the dauphin the people called Charles of Navarre, who was dragged from his prison. This ambitious prince, skilful and eloquent, became the orator of the market-places, promising to defend the country and letting it be understood that he was not without some claim to the throne of France. The dauphin hoped to balance this new kind of influence with the same means. He went to the Pré-aux-Clercs; and Paris, as if by a magical transformation, suddenly beheld herself in the midst of the Middle Ages adorned with two forums. But the dauphin lost again, by his unfortunate alteration in the coinage, the sole means indeed of raising money without calling the states-general together. Marcel had armed the bourgeoisie at once and given them, as a rallying sign, caps part red and part blue. At the head of a company of this militia he made his way into the dauphin’s palace, and had the marshals of Champagne and Normandy, the two principal officials, put to death; with his own hand he placed the red and blue cap upon the prince’s head as a pledge of security and said to him, as the two bodies were thrown to the crowd, “I demand that you sanction the deaths of these traitors, for it is by the will of the people that this has been done”--of a small portion of the people, it might be added--the Parisian bourgeoisie (1358).