Harassed and impoverished by tyranny and exaction within the walls, and beset by foes beyond them, the Parisians were hungering for peace. They were the more inveterate against Armagnac, because they were tantalized by the object for which they longed being almost within their reach. Peace had, in fact, been concluded at Montereau, and publicly announced in Paris, and the count, seconded by de Marle, the chancellor, was the sole obstacle to its being enjoyed. He was inflexible in his resistance. To bring about a rupture of the treaty, he sent troops to attack two of the Burgundian posts; seemingly struck with a judicial blindness, the forerunner of his fall, he pushed to an unbearable length his arrogance, extortion, and gloomy precautions; and he is said to have even meditated a sweeping massacre of such of the citizens as were hostile to him, and to have ordered leaden medals to be struck for distribution to his partisans, that the murderers might distinguish them in the hour of carnage. If the character of the man, and the spirit of those barbarous times, were not in accordance with this sanguinary project, we might, perhaps, imagine him to be unjustly charged with it; for, in all ages, it has been the custom to blacken an overthrown tyrant, by loading him with imaginary crimes. That, however, it was possible for persons of the highest rank to tolerate, and probably to command, the cold-blooded slaughter of their foes, was but too speedily proved. Terrible as the multitude is when once moved, it is slow to be moved. Mutual distrust, and the dread of failure, keep its component parts from uniting, till some one, more daring than the rest, or provoked into action by flagrant wrongs, assumes the lead, and gives to it the principle of cohesion. It was a denial of justice which brought into play the man who was wanting, to convert into open revolt the passive disaffection of the citizens. The servant of an Armagnac noble having grossly maltreated Perinet le Clerc, whose father, an ironmonger, was the quartinier, or magistrate of his ward, Perinet applied to the provost for redress. His application was contemptuously rejected, and he swore to be revenged. In concert with some of his friends, he matured a plan for admitting the Burgundian troops, and he opened a correspondence on the subject with Villiers de l’Isle Adam, who commanded at Pontoise, for the duke. The chance of success seemed so fair, that l’Isle Adam readily agreed to risk a portion of his garrison in the attempt. The negotiation was conducted with so much secrecy that not a breath of it transpired.