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Regarding you as just and pious folks, as our next neighbors, and perhaps even of our own race and blood, he preferred you my brother told me so to those Byzantine heretics, flayers of men and thirsting for blood, but yet, the Mukaukas is as good a Christian as breathes."
A terrible legacy of the Hundred Years' War, which, indeed, was not yet entirely ended by the Peace of Tours, was the existence of bands of men trained to nothing but war and rapine, and devoid of any other means of subsistence than freebooting on the peasantry or travellers, whence they were known as routiers highwaymen, and ecorcheurs flayers.
Know then that though there may be peace between our own provinces and the French, yet within the marches of France there is always war, for the country is much divided against itself, and is furthermore harried by bands of flayers, skinners, Brabacons, tardvenus, and the rest of them.
But what could Charles VII. do? How impose respect and obedience on so many daring men? Where could he find the means to repress these flayers of the country, these terrible little kings of castles? They were his own captains.
"He is the son of Caboche, the head of the flayers, one of the most pestilent villains in the city." "Keep your eye on him, Tom, and when you see a chance send an arrow home." "That armour of his is but common stuff, Master Guy; as soon as I get a chance I will send a shaft through it."
As the war drew to a close, the lawless troopers became a terrible scourge to the country and were known as flayers, on account of the horrible way in which they tortured the peasants in the hope of extracting money from them. In 1439 the Estates General approved a plan devised by the king, for putting an end to this evil.
These hireling combatants sold their swords for a time to the best bidder; and, when such service was not to be had, they made war on their own account, seizing castles and towers, which they used as the places of their retreat, making prisoners, and ransoming them, exacting tribute from the open villages and the country around them and acquiring, by every species of rapine, the appropriate epithets of Tondeurs and Ecorcheurs, that is, Clippers and Flayers.
"Yes, I could tell you even more extraordinary things about his power over elephants; but some day when you're in the jungle with him you may see it for yourself. Oh, isn't it hot? I do wish we were home." Arrived at the dâk bungalow the tiger's carcase was lowered to the ground and given over to the knives of the flayers summoned from the bazaar of Madpur Duar a mile away.
A Spanish chaplain, belonging to the army of the Emperor Charles V, passing through Paris in order to repair to Flayers, threw himself in this man's way, and worked on his mind till he had made him a complete fanatic: "Your king," said the friar, "protects Lutheranism in Germany, and will soon introduce it into France. Be revenged on him and your wife, by serving religion.
"If you mean those who travel with the better filled purses," answered the Scot, "I am none of the number, and will rather stand my chance of your flayers on the highway, than of your flayers in the hostelrie." "Pasques dieu!" said his guide, "how cautious your countrymen of Scotland are!
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