And when, nerved at length by the very extremity of peril, the nobles took up arms to make common cause against the common enemy, they found themselves isolated and hemmed in on all sides, unable to draw together so as to make head against the countless numbers of the enemy, which, like the waters of an inundation, increased hourly, and waxed wider, deeper, stronger, as it rolled onward. Large bodies could not be collected; small bodies were cut off; till at length so completely were the proud and warlike nobles of the most warlike land in Europe cowed and disheartened by the triumph of their despised and degraded slaves, that fifty men, armed cap-à-pie, and mounted on their puissant destriers, who would, six months before, have couched their lances confidently, and ridden scatheless through thousands of the skinclad Jacquery--trampling them at leisure under the hoofs of their barded horses, and, invulnerable themselves, spearing them at their will from their lofty demipiques--now felt their proud hearts tremble at the mere blast of a peasant’s horn, and fled ingloriously before an equal number of undisciplined and half-armed serfs! About the period, however, of which I write, several encounters had taken place, especially in Touraine, in the Beauvoisis, and the country about the Seine, between the chivalry and their insurgent villeyns, in which the former had been worsted, not so much by superior forces as by superior courage, discipline, and skill. And it came to be rumored far and near that there was one band, and that the fiercest and most cruel of all--consisting of above a thousand foot, spears, and crossbow-men, and led by a powerful man-at-arms, before whose lance everything was said to go down--at the head of nearly a hundred fully equipped lances, which was in no respect unequal to the best arrays of the nobility with their feudal vassals. What was at first mere rumor, soon came to be accredited--soon came to be undoubted truth; for, emboldened by their successes from attacking the parties of chivalry in detail, as they fell upon them traversing the country in the vain hope of combinations, this great band now began to sit down before strong towns and fortified holds, to besiege them in due form of war, and were in every instance successful.