Bascot de Mauleon's capture of Thurie
Bascot de Mauleon was extremely determined to capture the town and castle of Thurie.
At about midnight I laid an ambush quite close to Thurie and went on myself with just five others. Dressed in women’s clothing with jugs in our hands we reached a meadow just outside the town and hid ourselves in a haystack, for it was around St John the Baptist’s Day in midsummer and the hay had been cut and dried. When the time came for the gate to be opened and the women were beginning to make their way down to the spring, each of us took our jugs and filled them. Then we started back towards the town, our faces covered with headscarves so that nobody would have recognised us. The women whom we met on our way exclaimed, “Holy Mary! You must have risen early!” We replied in the local and in falsetto, “Yes indeed!” and passed on, all six of us arriving at the gate. When we got there we found that there was no other sentry apart from a cobbler who was setting up his lasts and rivets. One of us blew a horn to summon our companions hidden in ambush. The cobbler paid no attention to us but when he heard the horn he asked us, “Cooee, girls! Who sounded that horn?” One of us replied, “It is a priest going out to the fields. I do not know if it is the parish priest or the town chaplain.” “Oh yes of course,” he said. “It is our priest,Master Francis. He is fond of going out in the fields in the morning to hunt hares.” Immediately after this, when our companions had arrived, we entered the town where we found not a single man ready to put hand to sword in its defence.’
Jean Froissart