Bidding the others hold their places lest the assailants
should return, Guy ran in and joined Lady Margaret at the window. A fierce
conflict was going on in the street, with shouts of "Burgundy!" "A
rescue!" "A rescue!"
The knights, who were followed by some fifty men-at-arms, rode into the
mob, hewing them down with their swords. The humiliations that they had
received from the arrogance and insolence of the butchers had long rankled
in their minds, and they now took a heavy vengeance. The windows of all
the houses opposite, from which men and women had been peering timidly
out, were now crowded; women waving their handkerchiefs to the knights,
and men loudly shouting greetings and encouragements. The whole of the
traders of Paris were bitterly opposed to the domination of the market
guilds, and while they cared but little for the quarrel between the rival
dukes, the alliance between Burgundy and the butchers naturally drove them
to sympathize with the opposite party. The proof afforded by the charge of
the knights upon the mob delighted them, as showing that, allied with them
though they might be, the Burgundians were determined no longer to allow
the rioting and excesses of the men of the market guilds to continue.
In two or three minutes all was over. The resistance, though fierce, was
short, and the mob was driven down the side streets and chased until the
trading quarter was cleared of them.
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