Scarcely had the Regent quitted Meaux when discord and strife broke out between the inhabitants, led by the Mayor, and the nobles shut up in the Marché. The exasperated bourgeois laid siege to the fortress and sent to Paris to ask for assistance, at the same time summoning all the peasants in the neighbourhood to join them in attacking the Marché.[20]
They were not slow in answering to the invitation. From all parts of the country round they came swarming to Meaux. The Prévôt des Marchands had responded to their appeal by sending Pierre Gilles, a grocer of Paris and one of the leaders of the insurrection, with a body of armed men from Paris to Meaux. He knew the Regent was absent and the garrison weak, and thought the Marché would fall into their hands by assault. Pierre Gilles and his troop burned all the châteaux on their way, and forced the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed to join them.
The Mayor and burghers threw open the gates, and about nine thousand furious ruffians, armed with scythes, pitchforks, and knives, rushed into the town.
The towns people received them with open arms, supplied them with abundance of food and wine, which excited them to still greater ferocity, and joined in the tumult of fearful shouts and cries as the bloodthirsty savages swarmed through the streets looking up with murderous eyes to the towers and walls of the Marché.
Now the Marché de Meaux was on an island formed by the Marne, which flowed on one side of it, and a canal that went round it, coming out of the river on one side of the Marché and going back into it on the other. On the side of Meaux there was a bridge over the Marne from the Marché to the town, and on the opposite side of the Marché another bridge, across the canal to the other shore. Most fortunately, the Dauphin had recently caused the island to be strongly fortified, and his having done so now saved his wife and sister from a horrible death. All round the Marché were high strong walls and towers. Trees could be seen above the parapet inside, and the ground rose high in the middle. It was a strong place, but they were so few to defend it against the furious hordes outside. In it were the young Dauphine, the Princess Isabelle de France, daughter of the King, then about ten or eleven years old; Blanche de France, Duchesse d’Orléans, who had just escaped from Beaumont-sur-Oise; and, as was before said, at least three hundred women, girls, and children of the noblest families in France. The gates were closed, the walls guarded as well as could be done with their few defenders, but the position grew every moment more alarming. The streets were crowded to overflowing with these bloodthirsty wretches, and all down them were spread tables with bread, meat and wine for their refreshment. All over the town they were thronging and feasting, while their horrible cries and brutal threats rose to the ears of the besieged women and children who waited in terror and despair, all hope of deliverance seeming to be at an end.
