To these permanent, and in some respects regular evils, aggravated still more by the caprices, the exactions of the kings, or at least, of their officers, were added, to render them more intolerable, the accidental evils of life and war. A series of bad years had brought famine and the plague. The Navarrese of Philip of Longueville, the brigands of James Pipes, and other generals devastated all that the English had spared, and that a few only too uncommon inhabitants had not allowed to lie fallow. The Navarrese, the brigands, and the English inspired them with such terror that the unhappy villeins would leave their dwellings and fields, spend the nights on the islands or in boats moored in the middle of the river, and place one of their number in the church belfry in order that he might ring the tocsin, while they hid themselves in the bowels of the earth, in those subterranean places which were still to be found in the eighteenth century, along the Somme, from Péronne to its mouth. Thus the hardships which nature and warfare imposed upon those living in country places made them more sensitive to those which their masters, if better advised or more humane, might have spared them. Their original devotedness had disappeared, as had their protection, of which they were no longer the object, and given place to muttered imprecations, to a vague and far-away desire to shake off the yoke. The hatred increased every day, but it still resembled a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. In order that it should burst forth, change into violence and activity, it was only necessary that a new exigency, a lesser one perhaps than many others to which they were subject, but more startling to their simple good sense, should arise in some wise to place the weapons in their hands. The occasion for movement was the fifth article of the ordinance, issued at Compiègne, which enjoined all those whom it might concern to put the strongholds in a state of defence at their own cost and expense. They whom it concerned were the unfortunate peasants, who were thus forced to pay for out of their savings, and to rebuild with their own hands, those citadels which when restored would make the oppression more intolerable than ever. This it is that caused a contemporary to say that the rebellion began with a protest against injustice.[i]