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When the gentlemen of Beauvoisis, Corbie, Vermandois, and of the lands where these wretches were associated, saw to what lengths their madness had extended, they sent for succour to their friends in Flanders, Hainault, and Bohemia: from which places numbers soon came, and united themselves with the gentlemen of the country. They began therefore to kill and destroy these wretches wherever they met them, and hung them up by troops on the nearest trees. The king of Navarre even destroyed in one day, near Clermont in Beauvoisis, upwards of three thousand: but they were by this time so much increased in number, that had they been altogether, they would have amounted to more than one hundred thousand. When they were asked for what reason they acted so wickedly; they replied, they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do it; and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the nobles and gentlemen in the world.
At this period, the duke of Normandy, suspecting the king of Navarre, the provost of merchants and those of his faction, for they were always unanimous in their sentiments, set out from Paris, and went to the bridge at Charenton-upon-Marne, where he issued a special summons for the attendance of the crown vassals, and sent a defiance to the provost of merchants, and to all those who should support him. The provost, being fearful he would return in the night-time to Paris (which was then uninclosed), collected as many workmen as possible from all parts, and employed them to make ditches quite round Paris. He also surrounded it by a wall with strong gates. For the space of one year, there were three hundred workmen daily employed; the expense of which was equal to maintaining an army. I must say, that to surround, with a sufficient defence, such a city as Paris, was an act of greater utility than any provost of merchants had ever done before; for otherwise it would have been plundered and destroyed several times by the different factions.