The latter had now returned. Henry V had taken Caen (1417), and like a conqueror who is sure of himself had divided his army into four divisions, the more quickly to accomplish his purpose. What, in fact, did he have to fear? The dukes of Brittany, Anjou, and Burgundy had signed treaties of neutrality with him. D’Armagnac could do nothing, for he was reduced to “borrowing from the saints,” in melting their shrines, with the people of his party fast abandoning him because they were not paid enough; it was necessary to protect Paris with the Parisians who hated and betrayed him. [Illustration: A FRENCH CROSSBOW-MAN, BEGINNING OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY] One Perrinet Leclerc, iron merchant on the Petit Pont, had charge of the small gate at St. Germain. “His son,” says Monstrelet, “and some reckless young companions, who formerly had been punished for their escapades,” plotted to deliver the city over to the Burgundians. On the night of May 29th, 1418, Perrinet entered his father’s chamber while the old man slept and stole the keys from under the pillow. The sire de l’Isle-Adam informed in advance, was on the other side of the moat. He entered with eight hundred men, and the former partisans of the faction, the butchers, the slaughterers--all the people of the market flocked around him. Some Armagnacs tried to escape, taking the dauphin with them; but the greater part including the constable were thrown into prison, where their lives were soon in peril. The mob, which in 1413 had made its first appearance, reappeared on the scene in 1418 exasperated and furious with misery and uneasiness. Provisions failed and Paris was threatened with famine at the same time that ugly rumours circulated in the crowd; the Armagnacs were coming to assail such a gate, such a faubourg; the English, another. The cause of these misfortunes, they cried on every side, were those Armagnacs they had in their keeping. Vengeance must be had upon them and an end put to their schemes. Sunday the 12th of June, 1418, the mob got under way and rushed to the prisons, Hôtel-de-Ville, Temple, St. Éloi, St. Magloire, St. Martin, and the Grand and Petit Châtelet, to murder indiscriminately everyone they found there. Armagnacs or not, by Monday morning sixteen hundred people had perished, killed in the prisons and streets. Their bodies were left there and “bad children played with them and dragged them about.” With that of the constable they amused themselves by raising a large strip of skin “to represent the white scarf of Armagnac.” THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY MASTER OF PARIS (1418 A.D.)