While the king (as I said before) was at Pisa, the people of that town, both men and women, begged of us that for God’s sake we would intercede for them to the king, that they might not again be subjected to the tyranny of the Florentines, who, indeed, treated them very barbarously; but they fared as well as their neighbours, who are subject to other States in Italy. Pisa and Florence had been at war for three hundred years before the Florentines subdued them. These supplications, being delivered with tears in their eyes, wrought strangely upon our soldiers; so that, forgetting what our king had promised and sworn before the altar of St. John in Florence, they all unanimously (including even the very archers and Swiss) interposed in their behalf, and threatened all such as wished that the king should keep his oath, and particularly the Cardinal of St. Malo[404], who, in other places, I have called the General of Languedoc; and him I heard an archer threaten myself, and others talked as boldly to the Marshal de Gié. The President Gannay, for three nights together, durst not lie in his own quarters; and the great promoter of all this was the Count de Ligny. The Pisans daily made their sad complaints to the king, and moved us all to compassion, though we had no reason to relieve them. One day after dinner, as the king was playing at tables with the Lord de Piennes, and only two or three of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber waiting on him, forty or fifty armed gentlemen of his household entered the room, and, in the name of the rest, the son of Sallezard the elder[405] made a speech to the king in favour of the Pisans, and charged some of the persons above named of nothing less than betraying him; but the king reprimanded them severely, and there never was any such thing afterwards.