The bourgeoisie were brought together and read a long list of their misdeeds, with the punishments they deserved. At the moment when terror was at its height the two uncles of the king threw themselves at his feet and begged for pity. He let himself be influenced, and announced through his chancellor that he would change the punishments into fines. “This was,” says Mézeray,[e] “the true reason for this _coup de théâtre_!” Paris did not get off on less than 400,000 francs, worth to-day about 20,000,000; at Rouen, Rheims, Troyes, Châlons, Orleans, Sens, in Auvergne and Languedoc, the same proceedings took place, especially the enormous fines. “And this all went,” says Froissart,[c] “to the profit of the duke of Berri and the duke of Burgundy, for the young king was in their power!” This blow fell upon the bourgeoisie more disastrously than that of 1359, because the government was then in the hands of an intelligent man who checked the feudal reaction; in 1383 the princes gave themselves a free hand. The upper middle class was decimated and ruined; and when, after thirty years, public grievances caused them to essay another revolution, they were in no condition to assume its control and left it to violent men, who drenched Paris with blood. In 1384 the count of Flanders died and the duke of Burgundy, his son-in-law, inherited his vast dominions. In 1369 Charles V, in order to facilitate the marriage of his brother the duke of Burgundy with the heiress of the county of Flanders, had abandoned French Flanders to him. But at the same time the king exacted an agreement from his brother, that the donation would be restored on the death of the latter’s father-in-law, Louis de Mâle. But the count of Flanders survived the king, and Philip the Bold easily obtained from Charles VI the remission of his promise. Henceforth the house of Burgundy will turn all its affection towards these rich provinces, and as it finds means for aggrandisement in this direction at the expense of the petty German princes, it will forget little by little both the stock from which it came, and the France which began its greatness. The following year was employed in immense preparations for an invasion of England. They collected, says Froissart, enough ships to make a bridge from Calais to Dover; there were fourteen hundred of them. They built a whole town of wood, which could be taken apart, piece by piece, in order to take an entrenched camp with them. But they let the proper moment for crossing over pass, and the project had to be given up, but not until enormous sums had been squandered. Another expedition against the duke of Gelderland who, for the price of a pension of £400 from England, bade defiance to the king of France, cost still more, and came to nothing (1388). THE KING ASSUMES THE RULE (1388 A.D.)